San Pedro de Atacama to Chiu Chiu

Well, today is an ún-scheduled´rest day as the last three days cycling have taken their toll on the body. Three full days of crap roads and high altitude riding has both inspired me but at the same time left me totally drained.
I cycled out of San Pedro de Atacama early to get a good start to the day. It was certainly hard leaving that town as it was a great spot. Anyways, I only had 30km to go which you´d think would be a piece of .....but it was climbing from 2400m to 3400m over the 30kms on dirt and gravel roads which were not easy. It took me 5 hours until I reached this amazing natural hot river with hot pools and little waterfalls. Needless to say I spent the afternoon soaking in the pools and relaxing my tired muscles. Thankfully the guy let me camp there for the night so when all the others tourists left I had the place to myself which was great but freezing cold! Thanks Macpac for the toasty warm sleeping bag! Well, the next day started early with me having to push my bike out of the gorge back to the road. I knew this day was going to be a tough one but I didn´t realise how tough. Currently at 3400m above sea level I was finding it hard enough to breath as it was but the day was just getting started. I was on the road for 10 hours and 8 of those were spent above 4100m. Throw in some awful roads which consisted of gravel, dirt and the most dreaded of them all.......sand! I would have fallen off my bike a dozen times after riding along and hitting heavy sand. I´d get up and push the bike for a 100m or so before being able to get riding again! Actually there was a hell of a lot of pushing the bike that day due to being so tired from the altitude and the road conditions. With about 6km to go until El Tatio geysers I hit sand again and came off my bike but after nearly 60km of this I totally lost it and had a bit of a meltdown!! Finally I got it together and limped into El Tatio which took another hour to reach. Thankfully on arrival two girls helped me with getting some tea to drink and sort out a room for the night. They could see I was totally stuffed from the day so they only charged me $4 for the night which is mega cheap. As there were no showers they also sorted me out with a hot tub!! It was just a plastic tub with natural hot spring water running into it but after my day it was heaven (check the photos out) with the Andes as a backdrop.
Up early to check the geysers out at their best it was bloody freezing with the temperature during the night getting as low as -12 degrees!! After breakfast I headed back out for another day in the saddle, well kind of!!! Basically I spent most of the morning pushing my bike as the road was too bad to ride on!! Then I started to go down hill which was great for me but I think the bike was taking all the hits. I dropped from 4300m to 2500m over the day until I finally reached a little place called Chiu Chiu. Totally knacked today I took a day off the bike and hitched into the nearest town (Calama) which I was in last week to rest and do some emails!! I´ll hitch back to Chiu Chiu tonight and head out tomorrow.
Heading north again for the Bolivian border...finally, but it will still take me a few days to get there! Hopefully the next update will be from a Bolivian PC! I hope you like the new bunch of photos?

Riding Stats
> 31st Jan - 30km
> 1st Feb - 63km
> 2nd Feb - 93km