Day 28 - Susques to a beautiful spot by a dried up lake (90km) Tuesday 13th September

What a difference a tail wind makes... If only we had one!
Despite the promise of a new country, a new hotel, thus perhaps a new breakfast regime, we were treated to a meager two butter puffs and a thumb size stale scone for breakfast. This was NOT pleasing!
We quickly packed our bags and headed to "town" to pick up supplies to fuel us for two days. This was not easy. Not easy at all. 55 minutes later we'd visited almost all the unlabelled shacks in the street and asked for bread and empanadas with varying success. Sometimes we left with nothing, one time I left with an egg and cheese burger (!?!) a much better breakfast!
By 11.30 we were armed with 12 litres of water, two day's worth of fried empanadas, bread and cheese and were plugging our way up the hill out of town. Burger fuelled I was climbing well, but Ant not so much. The heat and lack of breakfast sugar was getting to him a little, but onwards and upwards and soon (well by 1.30pm) we were up and over the lumps and onto the huge flat basin that would eventually lead to the Salinas grandes (the salt flats).
This was a basin surrounded by mountains. A beautiful, flat road, long and straight, and long and straight and long and straight.  In fact so long and straight that we watched cars sink into the horizon over about 10minutes. The wind was for once on our backs and we punched out the first 10km no problems and were soon ready to stop for lunch. A few empanadas and swigs of apple juice later and we were ready to tackle the next 50km before heading up the mountains in the other side.
Now here the wind has no rhyme or reason and just does its own thing like a wayward teenager. The only certainty is that it gets more stroppy as the day goes on. Despite sense and reasoning telling us that heading almost directly East, should yield a strong tail wind all day as the prevailing wind is almost always westerly, we were of course greeted by an ever increasing cross-head wind, despite barely changing our direction since before lunch. Clearly the mountains and valleys were messing with the order of things!
So we plugged on, more slowly this time, heads high and enjoying making progress. Eventually we reached the Salinas, which were pretty, but not as pretty as Uyuni and this time we sat up tall and slightly smugly as we rode past the hordes of mini vans letting tourists out of their cage to see the sights. Our freedom and sense of accomplishment was just about enough to push us on strongly, despite the new development of the road being "under construction for 5km"... This means one thing here... Rippio. Nevertheless we were soon out the other side and back on our friend tarmac with slightly more tired legs, but definitely more weary minds.
About another 10km on this straight monotonous road and then we turned left and started to climb... But strangely at the same speed as we were on the flat. Could it be... Could it actually be that the wind is on our back? Geographically we thought this made no sense, but man oh man we would take it. And as our legs got weaker, the wind got stronger pushing us uphill for 15km.
We soon worked out that it is not the compass that guides the winds, even in massive expanses between mountains, it is the valleys and convection. Blows from bottom to top and increases in strength throughout the day. Great if you're climbing, horrid if you're descending... But we won't need to worry about that until tomorrow.
So once the 15km had come and gone we were acting like llamas peeking around trying to hunt down a camp spot, suitably seclude from both the road and the wind. As we got further up the valley, this got more and more challenging as the sides got steeper and more full of falling rocks... Not ideal. Ant thought he'd found an awesome spot, but then a flock of green birds warned him of the rocky heavens above... We moved on.
Like the mist clearing, or the curtain lifting on an opening scene in a pantomime, suddenly out of nowhere, we saw it... "green" said Ant, followed by the uncharacteristic phrase "honey I think I've found us a campsite".
As we'd turned the corner the would be river had once got fat enough to leave a few grassy banks in a flat expanse close to, but well away from the falling rocks. Of course the river was dried up, but this was perhaps the first real green we'd seen in days of desert. Not only did this lift our spirits enough to help us tackle the rocky and steep descent into the basin, but it also promised to be good solid pegging out ground... Ant was a happy man when this proved to be true and he'd built us a home on clayey mud that was strong enough to stand up to the battling wind.
We tucked ourselves into the protection of our new home, and having learnt not to bother trying to cook, ate a replenishing supper of now cold, fried empanadas, chewey bread, cheese, salami and crisps.
A quick game of cards and we were sleeping with the fairies.
Well I was... Ant woke every time there was a rock fall... Not scared of the rocks, but it sounded very like a person walking next to our tent... Must protect the boys.