Hot & windy with friendly truckers and roads that seem to go on forever.

It’s a mind game when you can see the end of the road. Despite the beauty of the desert you seem transfixed with where you are going. The trucks that pass you seem to fade away for the next 30 minutes and you know you’ll get there eventually, but it plays with your head as you pedal away and seem to go nowhere. Pretty much the only traffic is from the mines – endless trucks and red Toyotas – all friendly giving lots of space and a beep of the horn as they pass. One green plant was spotted through the day. I missed that one. Not an animal, not a place to get a drink not even a fly – just sand, heat and wind.

We climbed up to 3000 metres again and dropped 400 metres in the last few kms to camp on the edge of a salt flat, a barren and moon like landscape.