Leaving San pedro this morning we had one of those delightful little surprises. Just outside the town was a sign pointing to a gravel side road with the sign Cordillera de la Sal. We spent about an hour negotiating our way along this track past various weird geological structures formed by salt pushing up the ground. Eventually we got stopped by deep sand and had to turn around. Our next expedition vehicle will have a better (ie higher) tire floatation in sand.

The drive from San Pedro to Calama (copper mining town high in the Atacama desert), and then onto Antofagasta (on the coast) continued to provide us with first hand experience of this unbelievably dry place. Even as we approached Antofagasta and the coast the dry landscape and lack of vegetation continued.

On the final leg of the days drive into Antofagasta we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn. We passed the matching Tropic of Cancer in Mexico on the 22nd of June. In the interval we have traversed 47° of latitude. Wow!