The day started with a long tough climb away and up out of the hollow. Two hours and only fifteen kilometres covered. Looking back, the white sheet of saltwater at the bottom with slopes rising out and up to beiges hills, and my rest-place campsite up from the shore, were still not far behind. Motorbikes echoed from above me and then came purring down: spluttered down through the gears and into the corner, then gunned back up to a smooth pur and came down towards me; each biker in turn raising a gloved hand aloft in salute as they zoomed past. pur...um pur...um pur..um..... A lift in moral, seeing others for once even if motorised aliens in bubble-helmets. Admiring my sense of adventure, perhaps..... Foolhardiness more like.

The descent down the other side was very steep: snaking into a gorge with steep rising ground either side. I was thinking about the hard climb the German cyclist I hear of back in Pumamarca would have had coming the other way.

The road emerged out upon a broad inverted L-shaped valley, with a branch running off on the left to a white conical mountain peeking out between beiges hills, while the road straight-lined far ahead, along the main valley with a wall of hills a fair way off on the right. After a bit, on the left, there were salt marshes with extensive reed beds; and at the roadside, an interpetation sign bearing words: Reserva Nacional something... and, Respecta Los Flores y Faunas: plus text and pictures of birds. Then a long green lagoon openned up amongst the reeds stretching across to the hills. I lunched further on, on the edge of a salt marsh channel where the valley narrowed between eerie hills opposite , across from where I sat eating sardines on crackers, and a big lump mountain rising straight up on the other side of the road behind me.

Round the mountain and onwards, the road ran out upon a rolling landscape with high escarpment off a good way to the left and to the right. The way swung this way and that a lot and was all the time up and then down over brown hillocks which looked somewhat like an extensive unbroken area of brown cultivated farmland ready for crop sowing. But it was all stony and barren close up. The wind which picked up and chilled me to the bone any time I stopped, caused hardship on a few stretches, though it wasn't the hinderence that it had been yesterday. And so by days' end, I'd made good progress having gotten as far as kilometre board forty five. I camped just after five on a dry aroya with the bank down from the road providing a degree of shelter.