5am in the morning we all got up to go and see the condors. Two hour dirt track to the canyon, apparently the best time to see them is between 8 & 9am. Got sat in a good spot and waited and waited, nothing. All the tour company buses left and we waited, a local chap said stay until 11am. I really needed a wee by now so of course as soon as I went the first condor materialised, typical!! So worth the wait though, one was so close catching a thermal and circled up level with us, so huge.

Stayed with Dan and Marien as we headed down more windy roads through the desert towards the Chile border. Dans bike then fell into mine, (dodgy sidestand) and broke my handguard and clutch lever, luckly had a spare lever with us and Dan had the bracket made that snapped on the handguard so all good again! Tims had problems with the chain roller on his bike because he lowered his bike (short legs!) there isn t a lot of clearence between the chain and the roller, been through 3 rollers now so hes uped the suspension which seems to have worked, but he may get the rods made to put it back to standard height again.
The border took ages, Dans paper work wasn t quite right, a number was wrong on my number plate, they x ray the luggage and the officals forgot to stamp our paper work as they where chatting about the bikes and the UK so much! But make it to Arica in the dark. Dan and Marien have friends there that we stayed with a couple of nights, fantastic people and looked at the sights.
We left them there for christmas and headed towards San Pedro. The coast road is stunning, with odd mining towns along the way. Another windy road through the desert and mining areas to San Pedro. Its in a green valley and one of the oldest settlements in Chile. Treated ourselves to a hostal as our Christmas present (after a lot of price haggling!) Met a few Brazilean bikers all on cruisers, who wanted to take lots of photos of us and a Brazilean couple on a Harley in our hostal who gave Tim their bike club T shirt.

Crossed over to Argentina on Boxing Day, Chile is so expensive and we plan to go back into it further down but want to ride the main bit through Argentina as the valleys and national parks are meant to be stunning (and the wines cheap!) We are heading towards Cachi, the scenery is amazing, how I imagine it to be on the moon, very dramatic and then it all turns green with trees on the mountains, stunning, you never seem to get used to the scale of it all and I was so ready to see some green again!! Seeing a few more bike travellers now too. Argentina has good campsites that are pretty cheap as is food, petrol etc compared to Chile. Have stayed on the campsite in Cachi for 3 nights as its such a nice spot with friendly camper van families. Theres a lovely random campsite dog that Ive had to buy some dog food for, he lies next to our tent at night or under the camper van next door, I hope other people look after him when we leave. We have a bit of time to get down to San Juan where we want to catch some of the Dakar rally around the 12th/13th January, very excited about seeing that. Anyway going to try out some more of Tims amazing campsite cooking off of our little stove, had to borrow a bigger pan from next door last night, maybe we being a little to adventurous for a single stove!