back on the worst road in the world

We woke at 6.30 and packed our stuff up. We saw no horses.
I wasn't looking forwards to 27km of the terrible, terrible road, but we had to do it.
It was, as expected, awful. Every second of it. I was counting off quarter kilometres. this wasn't easy, as taking your eyes off the road was almost impossible. At least we were fresher and the air temperature was cooler in the morning.

note the wonky tyre marks. I very nearly fell off.

 We had a rest break every 5km and I wasn't feeling very well. I didn't want any food and not even water. I wanted a poo. But y'know, you wait until you can get to a loo, right?
After some hours, I still felt awful and since we're in the desert, I followed Al's suggestion to just find a hidden spot and go. Who's going to care about a poo in the desert I'm going to bury, anyway?
Walking back to the bike afterwards, I felt 100% better. That was all it was. Miraculously, my ability to take on food and water returned.

I hate this road

We were being shaken violently on this road, it was hard to keep control of the bike, I'd nearly fallen off umpteen times. The last few turns of the road I kept thinking: "is that tarmac up there?" but always no. We went through another patch of deep sand but up ahead, we saw tarmac. It felt so gooooood to be on such a smooth surface again.

We got to a pretty town called San Carlos. It had an inviting hostel overlooking the park, but stopping here means a 20km ride just to get to our R68 plan B. We pushed on to Animaná.
It was hot and we got there hot and tired. We passed a sign for accommodation and another for camping. DO we treat oursevles to a room?


We passed the place and it didn't look great, so we explored the town and found the campsite. It was pretty nie with shady spots and a swimming pool!!!! we put our tent up and jumped into our swimming cozzies as quick as we could. Bliss.

Later we went in search of a shop for food. There wasn't much in this tiny, gloomy room but we bought some stale bread and frosties type cereal.

dist 44.2km
ride time 4:02:29
average 10.9kph
max 25 kph max
starting alti 1653m
trip alti 732
max alti 1849 .