2017-07-04 Day 79

A slow morning but only -3.5°C so nice and warm…

Drove down closer to town and spent a few hours catching up with emails etc. We have been without Internet since Iquique.

Back into town, filled with water and I wandered the markets buying fresh produce, oats and flour.

Out to the salt pan. Amazing we drove 40km’s and stopped for lunch.

The pan is at about 3700m altitude and contains an estimate of 10 billion tonnes of salt. The salt crust is up to 2 meters thick.

Drove on another 40km’s to an “Island” just had time to climb to the top to watch the sun sink. Looking towards the sun set the salt pan seemed to extend upwards like we were in a big dish. The salt pan is flat only 1m difference in altitude over the whole pan some 11,000 sq km's

Headed out into the sunset – not quite we drove north towards another volcano on the edge of the pan. It looked about 10km’s away but the map said 40km. We stopped after 10km’s pulled off the “road” and made camp.

Stove didn’t work so John did up the filter hose clamps another half turn. All good now we are in for a cold night about -17°C or so we were told by the locals on the “island”.

Will be doing 3 hour shifts to run the engine for half hour to try and keep the fuel filter liquid.