Day 4 – Friday, January 30, 2026

Wow, wow, wow! That could be the motto of the day. Hard to describe in detail, let us just say I started at 7 am and the upcoming hours were probably the toughest riding of my recent years. It led me deep into (up...) the Andes, offering truly amazing views the entire day.

Traffic was interesting - I had a load of huge, oversized trucks, lorries, buses - but at times no one would come from either direction. Weird. A funny detail: I was allowed to overtake a line of cars about 2 km long - they had to wait for road works to pause, I had green light.

My water ran out twice, even though I was carrying a lot of it, first, a road worker gave me his, then a lady lorry driver stopped from Argentina. I also saw trucks from Uruguay and Brazil.

I started at around 1,000 meters and pushed up to 2,880 - my watch tells me I made 50 km in distance, but 2,000m in altitude gain...I feel pretty good.

The lake you see is in a place called Portillo and it is called Lake of the Incas. There is a hotel here, but a single room costs $182, a bit steep for my budget (it looks like a budget hotel). And because Chileans are nice, they let me camp near the hote, that is why I am carrying camping gearl. Nice of them! To thank them, I ordered a nice piece of chicken in the restaurant and got sandwiches to go for tomorrow- as there are no grocery stores anywhere around here...

So now I will assemble my tent...