Mary, thinking of you on your birthday - have a great day!

Distance today: 21.1km

Distance remaining: 705.3km

Today was a test of our metal, as it seemed everything was destined to go wrong! A great start to the day saw us on the road by 7am, the bread ration for the day in hand and munching on some pastry delight for breakfast.

The first of 3 hills for the day was very early on the journey, and this is where things started to unravel. The treatment we had applied to Liz´s blister from the day before was failing catastrophically - the super ´second skin´ bandaids we got would just not stick to anything let alone to skin. Even our attempt to fasten them down with a multitude of regular bandaids seemed useless. This resulted in a bloody sock and a grumpy Liz. Add to this constant rain for the first 3 hours of our journey. Not a great start after all.

As the morning went on the clouds remained but the rain eased. By some miracle the blood in Liz´s sock must have activated the stickyness of the super bandaid, and the blister was contained (managable not comfortable).

On the up side of things, we managed to make it to our new Refugio by 12:30pm. We checked in and decided to relax with a shower. To Liz´s surprise (and quiet satisfaction i may add) there was a naked gentleman in the bathroom toweling off when Liz went in. She handled it like a true lady (the situation not the gentleman), screamed, and closed the door. A silver lining to an otherwise cloudy day.

We spent the afternoon wandering the old town, some beautiful churches and impressive plazas. as it was siesta time, nothing was open and it seemed to be a ghost town. Now we sit down to a dinner of cheese and crackers (don´t judge me), a game of UNO and another early night.

PS anyone who knows my brother please tell him to do a better job of looking after my dream teams!! until next time.