We left Vicuna driving south (Peter hates going back on ourselves but the border pass was not quite far enough south) to visit a small park. A little way along the very bumpy road a loud clunk alerted us to a problem. It turned out to be a broken rear shock absorber. The mechanic on board quickly got to work and replaced it with the spare. We felt it wiser to return to Vicuna and search for another spare before we headed out on any further bumpy roads. We couldn't find one in Vicuna so next morning, under advise from a local, we headed to La Serena. After visiting 3 different garages we found a little corner shop that was able to order us a couple from Santiago. Peter nearly had heart failure when he heard the price but needs must. We had to wait a few days for them to arrive so we headed south to the Valle del Encanto to see some petroglyphs ( I do love a good petroglyph) drawn by the El Molle people who occupied the area between 100 and 600AD. They were a hunter gatherer people who abandoned this lifestyle for farming along the river where they developed a system of artificial irrigation. All around the site were rocks with large circular holes where they ground grains. The following day could be rated as one of our least favourite. It started okay with a drive to Monumento Natural Pichasca, mentioned in our guide book. Their entry turned out to be a little misleading. The Parque had a large plastic replica of a dinosaur on a hill, a large cave with some evidence of past habitation and one petrified tree. We left to drive to a town also mentioned in the guide book, Andacolla, but this was also a disappointment and with a two day concert in progress it was rather crowded and there was nowhere to stay. We headed north and stopped at one motel, which looked a bit grotty and advertised rooms by the hour! From here we arrived back in busy La Serena to find the beaches absolutely covered with holiday makers. Finally we gave up and drove 78km back to where we started. We arrived hot, dusty and very grumpy at 9.00 PM. We treated ourselves to a nice meal out, the first for 3 weeks.

We were very pleased when, a few days later, we finally picked up the new shock absorbers and headed north on Highway 5 (Pan American highway) through semi-arid desert to Vallenar. Peter even managed to get the broken one welded back together in a little back street garage in Copiapo.

We found a nice hotel and left Gerty in a secure car park at the rear, or so we thought. We decided to leave the top vent open to help keep her cool – a big mistake. The next morning Peter went to Gerty and on opening the door he found that we had been burgled! Bread rolls, torn plastic bags and rubbish everywhere. A cat burglar had got in through the vent. When we say cat burglar, we do mean a cat! As though this wasn’t bad enough the burglar had left a large smelly pooh on the driver’s seat. What did he need to do that for?

It was in a mine just north of Copiapo that the 33 miners were trapped in 2010. In the museum they have the capsule that was specially built to bring them, one at a time, to the surface and also the note, saying they were ok, which was the first contact they had with them when they first broke through.

After Copiapo we headed east through the San Francisco pass back into Argentina. It is a very long pass with beautiful green, red and grey mountains, some snow-capped. We camped in the pass at 4738 metres and again we both felt very lightheaded and couldn’t sleep. During the night a massive storm with great flashes of lightning came over us. The temperature dropped and in the morning Peter found ice on Gerty. We arrived in Argentina to temperatures in the 30’s again.