The last of the Argentine steak

We arrived into Salta in northwest Argentina and landed into a great hostel that even organised some local music for us. There was a good group of people at the hostel, one of the lads, Ryan Fitzpatrick played bluegrass music with the locals and had even toured Ireland. That and the local food was great, such good empanadas that theý put the Chilean food to shame. The town also had a cable car ride up to a viewpoint, handy for us to get a look at the road ahead.

We hit the road out of town, due north of course and before long we were headed into lush green valleys, a stark contrast with the borderline desert of Mendoza. We took the old mountain road and it was sublime, a narrow curving tarmac road one and half cars wide, cut along some hillsides and lined with trees and vegetation. The corners were even banked so we could whizz along on the bikes, getting glimpses of the jungle valleys below through the gaps in the trees.

At the smaller city of JuyJuy we had our first taste of Llama meat at a local restaurant. We thought it tasted similar to pork and lamb. After a short wait while Paul´s travel towel caught up with us from Salta thanks to the excellent bus parcel service we hit the road again, this time facing into some serious climbing and some of our toughest days cycling yet.

We were cycling through the Quebrada de Humehuaca, famed for its colorful rock formations. I guess at the this stage you´re probably wondering how many rock formations we can cycle by and be interested in. After 6 months of traveling we are getting a bit hard to impress but the reddish brown colored rock jutting out of the green valley sides was impressive none the less.
A bigger issue for us was the altitude, we were now at 2700m or so and the air was getting noticeably thinner. no problem if you´re in a car or a motorbike you just give it more throttle but for us it meant really working on our breathing. Even taking a sip from your water bottle had to be timed right so you didn´t end up out of breath. What was most frustrating was the lack of speed, we´d had to slow right down and lose the speed we´d built up over the previous months touring. It was a tough slog.
We stayed a day in the pretty town of Tilcara, meaning to get online and do some planning but the lack of any decent internet meant by midday we´d got nothing done so rather than face the mid day heat we hung out another day. A sign of things to come as basic services like internet became a luxury further north.

We continued north, stopping in the dusty town of Huemehuaca and keeping a good eye to the rainstorms to the north. The town´s river bed was dry when we´d got there, rainy season hadn´t started but one afternoon a storm kicked off in the distance and later on a crowd passed our riverside campsite. We thought there was a local soccer match on but no, they were all watching the river fill up. Some of the storms were spectacular, with big black thunderous clouds and massive flashes of lightening, not something you´d want to be caught cycling in.
As we hit the road north towards the Bolivian border luckily the rain had passed. We´d have to say that at this stage the cycling got a bit boring, flat plains at altitude with nothing much to see. Even if the cycling was a bit tame the Argentines´ beeping at us and waving was still a bit of fun and their friendliness lasted right up to the border. 4km from the border town of La Quiaca we had a couple insist we pull over so they could give us water and chat us about our travels. Great people and we were certainly sad to leave their country.
As a farewell meal at the border we ordered some steak and chips, our favorite food on the road. We weren´t expecting it to be great as we were very far north and quite remote but it was so tasty we ordered as second helping which came out even better and bigger.

Next day we bought 4 days supplies in Argentina to get us to the first Bolivian town with some to spare as we weren´t sure what to expect in Bolivia. I´d read a book about an Irish girl who´d ridden on horseback through Bolivia and called it "the land of we don´t have it" because they´d so little. It seemed like all the Bolivians crossed to border to do their shopping, the stores in La Quiaca were all more like wholesalers and there was a stream of Bolivian women crossing the border with shopping tied up in brightly coloured blankets. Have to say it was fairly noticeable that the men would walk round with their hands in their pockets while the women carried the load in the heat.

The border crossing was a good old fashioned harem scarem seething mass of people. You had two bridges to start with, one bridge for the locals crossing over and back unchecked on bikes and by foot, even gangs of dogs seemed to wander over for a look and a sniff. The other bridge was controlled, if controlled meant long queues supervised by sun beaten border officials wearing aviator shades. Wary of the mayhem and how wealthy our bikes looked compared to the locals we queued up with our bikes to get stamped out of Argentina one last time.
At the Bolivian entry side we queued for 20 minutes before I noticed we were in the wrong queue, but once we got into the right queue with our bikes and started blocking up the place the border officials saw us. As we weren´t going to part company with our bikes Paul queued while I stood by the bikes, we were blocking up the place so the officials took our passports and fast tracked us though.

Bam, We were in Bolivia, hard to believe this was our third country on the trip. We were looking forward to something different Bolivia didn´t disappoint. Villazon was a real frontier town, everyone was hawking something from stalls or just the side of the road. One guy was standing by a 3 metre cube of beercans for sale, street stalls offered shoe repairs on the spot and lots of Bolivian´s were selling coca leaves from huge bags. The smell of the coca leaves will be one of my lasting impressions of Bolivia, initially it smells like hay drying in a field but then you get a musty, pungent smell in the back of your nose like somethings rotten. No need for sniffer dog´s to find that stuff.

We hit the orad out of town and had to speed up to avoid getting caught in a thunderstorm that was sweeping across the plain. The landscape was very desert like, no trees, just some small shrubs. People were living in mud brick houses, some had thatch roof and were showing the wear of a couple of seasons rain.
We put in a good days cycling across the plano, the ripio road slowing our progress where the road was corrugated as it made no sense to be shaken the daylights out of for the sake of going a little bit faster.
That night we camped on the side of a hill, leaving us a nice downhill to start the day and a view of the thunderstorms across the valley as we ate our pasta.
Next morning the valley was soaking from the nights rain and shrouded in mist that burned off within half an hour to reveal a beautiful valley below. We´d had a few occasions to count the seconds between the flashes and the noise of the thunder during the night but we´d pìcked a good spot to camp so were safe, thankfully the ground was gravel so we could de camp without much hassle.

We set off for Tupuiza, descending into hot valleys and passing small, poor towns that reeked of no proper sewage systems. Any river were littered with plastic bottles, mud served as road, footpath and lawn for most houses and the people seemed quite poor. In one town a kid was playing with a bike wheel, rolling it along. I think the last time I remember kids playing with wheels was in roman history at school.
Round about the end of the days cycling I started to feel unwell, my porridge hadn´t settled well and despite drinking lots of coke, the only drink available I was dehydrated and really feeling the heat now we´d descended. I ended up getting a lift to town rather than make myself worse like I´d done previously. We got a taxi to collect my bike and Paul cycled into town where we took two rest days and ended up meeting two other cyclists Dave and Tom from England who were travelling the same route.

The 4 of us booked a 4 day jeep tour of south east bolivia and the salar de uyunyi together.
More about that in my next post, Im about 2 weeks behind so will hope to get up to date tomorrow.