Pisco, Ica and Nasca were the last cities we would see in a long time. The road was very straightforward, just going as much south as the coastline allows. Reaching Arequipa would prove impossible. We setteld for a Beach hotel in Camaná.
Day 22 We head south along the coast of Peru towards Lima. We are still way behind the other teams who were around Lima yesterday but in think we may be closing the gap. Hopefully Maybe who knows
kevinbotz wrote:Cantonese is a completely nonsensical f*cking alien language masquerading as some grossly bastardised form of Chinese
Gonzo wrote:Wasn't there some sort of communisim in the East part of Germany?
Anthony Byrne wrote:We may be out of Peru, but there seems to be no end in sight of this desert. Yesterday, we stopped an hour short of ten hours, sharing our accommodation with some of our rivals. Today, we stopped damn near two hours short. We spent the best part of eight hours driving in a sun that felt like it could boil water. We may only have been in the Atacama for just over a day, but already it's getting to me. It's getting to Eoin too, who ran out of weed while we were in Colombia. Mostly, he'd been fine since then, but now he can't sleep, even as I write this he's... shivering in the corner. I think he's hallucinating. The enemy is catching up. We can't let them win! But how do we get out of this godforsaken place? All around is lifeless desert stretching to the horizon and beyond for what may as well be a million miles! It's like we're on a whole different planet! What if we are on a different planet?! No! Snap out of it, Tony! You're not on a different planet! There are humans running this hotel! But what if it's like that movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers? No! That's ridiculous! You can do this! You'll make it out of here alive! You've just got to keep going!
A nice rest, at the sea. Wowziedowziepowzierowzie. Don't let my excitement fool you, the fun is long gone. We past the Arequipa city, we passed Moquegua, we pased Tacna, we passed Chili. Oh look, another spanish speaking country! We passed Arica, then we headed into the mountains, because Iquique was out of our reach. Decided to stay a little lodge. There is really, absolutely nothing here. Not even wildlife, just some some vultures waiting for us to die. It's ridulously hot during the day and cold at night. We ran out of waffles and we're stuck with some Irish guys who haven't washed themselves in weeks.
Day 23 the journey south continues traffic through Lima, We end up in a hotel and it seems we have travelled a similar distance between London and Sydney, the disappointing thing is that everyone seems to be taking the same route hope it doesnt stay that way
Nothing to see here. The furthest we could go would be Antofagasta as the hotel near the Very Large Telescope would beyond our reach. Most teams will probably catch up, but at least theres a small dozen of hotels to choose from.
Consider the race reset again. 
Anthony Byrne wrote:I knew it! The enemy is following us! We stayed well clear of them last night, and this morning too. This time, it was us that would follow them today. We must track their movements, make sure they aren't doing anything funny. We continued across the Martian surface, where we were greeted by a landscape that looked something like this:
and came to one of their cities on the coast. We stopped in what we assumed was a hotel. I couldn't understand a word those people there were saying. It was no Earth language, that's for sure. They nevertheless accepted our Earth currency in exchange for a room. I had not been feeling well at the time, so Eoin, who is certainly not the rambling lunatic he was yesterday, helped me up the stairs and into our room. I sat down on the bed and began writing this diary entry, but I'm not sure I can go on. I'm feeling really tired right now, something's not right. I feel very light-headed, like I've lost control of my body, and am just a disembodied soul looking through a window that happens to be my eyes. I think I'm about to lose consciousn___________________________________________________
Nice city, but the rest was the middle of nowhere. Again. The sight of the Very Large Telescope was impressive, altough we couldn't get close enough to get a clear view. Desert, sea, things like that. Nothing new under the sun. The bloody hot sun. Even towns or villages were extremely rare. We stopped in Vallenar. Considering there's nothing else around here, i expect lot of teams to rest here too. Altough there's thankfully some choice in hotels, so we wouldn't have to spend the days with these guys. The nights are getting cold though, thankfully i got a nice fuzzy Alpaca wool blanket out of Peru! Never thought i'd say this, but i miss the sight of llamas! Less than a week until it's over!
Still a day behidn the other teams we are all on the same route so i don't see catching up such a shame that everyone is using the same route but we are rather limited for options
Anthony Byrne wrote:I woke up this morning with no sense of where I was. The last thing I remember was driving the car through a weird landscape that looked like something out of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I looked through the diary. At the top of the last page before this one was an entry in what seemed to be my handwriting detailing the previous leg. Whoever has their hands on this probably already knows what that was. I gathered my senses, got dressed and went downstairs. Eoin was already having breakfast. We had a long conversation about what had happened to us in the past two days. It turns out that while we were in Colombia Eoin had acquired a LOT of drugs. Obviously, sneaking them across the Ecuadorian border was going to be a little problem, so he either dumped them or hid them cleverly in our supplies. He mixed LSD in with some of our water and as we eventually got to the particular water bottle the acid was in we lost ourselves. Eoin had been drinking from it the most the first day, so it was no wonder he was a mess that evening. Yesterday, it was me that suffered. Eoin, realising his mistake, had tried to stop me from drinking from it yesterday morning but it was too late. He had to drive himself because I was in Wonderland, which is weird because I could've sworn that I was the one that was driving yesterday. Anyway, now that we were both of sound mind we set off again, this time for Vallenar. There ain't much to see in the Atacama, and after almost nine hours of sun-baked dry rock we came to our destination.
Middle of nowhere. Altough we've been in the middle of nowhere so long, that one of those points were certainly not literally the middle. Taking about middle, somewhat past halfway, we finally saw some civilisation again. The first thing about civilisation that we saw was a car accident. Then we passed the huge city of Santiago. That was a welcoming sight. To our left, the mighty Andes was getting close. We stopped at a hotel between Talca and Linares. We're not the only ones here, just like we weren't the only ones this morning. We drove a whopping 934 km today, so it's been productive. Tomorrow, we will likely pass the 20000 km mark, and we might have to cross the Andes.
Anthony Byrne wrote:At last. Progress. We made it out of the Atacama. I will never forget what happened there for as long as I live. We passed through Santiago today. Unfortunately, the traffic was not what we had hoped , and we had to stop much earlier than we would have liked. Still, it was more productive than the last few days.
Anthony Byrne wrote:This is it. The last country of the journey. We're just shy of four weeks now, we just passed 20,000 kilometres and it looks like we can still win this. We departed from the Hotel Euro Charles at dawn and continued south in the usual fashion, turning eastward at Pitrufquén, crossing the mighty Andes into Argentina. We stopped in San Martín de los Andes, by Lago Meliquina.
The hotel name says everything: we miss Europe. It all went rather good direction Los Angeles. Somewhat after Ternuco we left the 5, which we have been driving on for ages, direction Andes mountains. This was a lower part of the andes, flanked by some volcanoes. Stll, nice change to see those snowy mountain tops. We then entered Argentina. And then... another desert. Oh help. Some teams headed straight into the mountains again to find a hotel. We stayed in the small town of Junin De Los Andes. Staying as close as possible to the faster 40. It's a gamble, but we have to try something.
