One of first priorities when we arrived in Buenos Aires was to buy jeans. We had been wearing quick-dry travel pants exclusively for over a year and were excited to feel a bit less like travelers. Once we were happily wearing jeans, we set out to explore the city.

The Boca Juniors soccer match that Matt mentioned in the last post exceeded our expectations for out-of-control fans and good soccer. We opted to join a tour group to the game so that we would feel more comfortable sitting in the general admission (the wild side), which the guidebooks tell you not to do alone. The game started with an amazing amount of confetti, balloons and streams thrown down to the field from the highest seats in the stadium. (We didn’t bring our camera, but you can see some pics here, here and here.) I was happy that the home team (Boca) won so that we would have to deal only with happy fans! The opposing fans (for River) were seated in the tier above us and were peeing over the edge onto the Boca fans below! We were happy to be sitting where they couldn’t reach us. The stadium security also didn’t let any Boca fans leave the seating area until all the River fans had left the stadium after the game.

We decided to take some more Spanish classes while we are here in order to solidify our progress. We speak English to each other too much to have become fluent, but we are both doing pretty well. The classes have been good and we have both improved mucho!

The highlight of our time here so far was a week-long visit from Jenn, all the way from NYC. We saved most of our big sightseeing for her and we had a great time. We started right after Jenn arrived on Saturday, first visiting Recoleta Cemetary (which houses Evita, as well as some fantastic tombs and scupltures) and the crafts fair there. Then on Sunday we explored the antiques and crafts in San Telmo, and watched tango on the streets while exploring the crafts fair in La Boca. We spent several days just wandering around town visiting the different neighborhoods, visiting museums and seeing the important government buildings in town. We caught some live rock music one night and a dinner and tango show another night. We also had the most relaxed wine tasting in a little boutique wine store. The tasting included a giant tray of meats and cheeses, as well as four different wines with as many refills as we wanted. We were there for several hours and finished one of the bottles in addition to one or two glasses each of the others. Of course, the store knew exactly what it was doing and we purchased several bottles to take home.

Jenn and I are friends after sharing adjoining lab benches in the Nathanson Lab, so we made it a real lab reunion when Juan, another former member of the Nathanson Lab, invited us to visit his lab here in Buenos Aires. We didn’t get to help with any experiments, but we got glimpse into the world of science here. After the lab tour, we all went out for dinner and had a fun time catching up.

Since Jenn lives in NYC and is used to big cities, she wanted to experience a bit of the country life of Argentina. So, we went to nearby San Antonio de Acero, home of the Gaucho. We visited a couple museums of Gaucho culture and learned about their tradition of making silver jewelry, belt buckles and knives. We browsed leather and silver shops and generally enjoyed the quietness of the town (well, Matt and Jenn did, I was feeling a bit sick and spent a lot of time sleeping.) On the second day, we headed to a nearby Estancia (kinda like a ranch) for a “Gaucho Party.” We wandered around the grounds a bit waiting for all the day-trippers from Buenos Aires to show up, and then joined in on a short horseback ride. The main activities of the day started with a giant asado lunch, featuring a ton of meat and a few salads. After lunch, there was a show with music and dancing traditional of the Gauchos, including a fun dancing duel. Then we headed outside to watch some Gaucho games. The point of the game was to use a stick to snatch a small ring dangling from a string. Can you picture it? Put the stick through the ring, not entirely easy because the ring is fairly small and dangling from a string…and because you are at rushing towards said ring at full gallop on your horse. The Gauchos were pretty talented and managed to get the ring at least half the time. Unfortunately, unlike with the music and dancing, they didn’t allow crowd participation.

The other most important part of Jenn’s visit (for us at least) was to make sure she ate all of our favorite treats. We had alfajores, several kinds of empanadas, milanesa (we cooked some too), dulce de leche, and lots and lots of meat in different styles and cuts. Oh, and hot chocolate with churros and several argentine wines and beers.

We have one week more in Buenos Aires. Then we head out on a short bit of bus travel before coming back to the city for a final soccer match and our flight home.

The road from El Calafate, Argentina to Torres del Paine National Park in Chile was mostly kind to us. We had a nice tailwind for the first 100 km eastward out of town, then the winds died down to almost nothing as we started to head westward. We were quite happy not to fight the wind. Our tent, however, had to put up quite a fight as the wind tended to come up at dusk. Luckily for us, the tent has been mostly winning against the wind, though it tends to lose when rain is factored in.

After four days of riding, we arrived at the park and headed straight for the park’s namesake—The Towers of Paine. We camped for the night, then headed up the trail the next morning. The hike itself was nice, but not spectacular. The view at the end, however, was well worth the effort (see picture above). We had seen the Torres from afar as we rode into the park, but were taken aback by their majesty from close up. The glacial lake at their feet was a bonus surprise. We weren’t able to enjoy the views for too long though, as the wind was strong and cold and seemed to be bringing a rain storm with it. That night at camp we were pretty suprised by how sore the hike had made us. We were happy to be biking again the next morning—no pain on the bikes, though we were feeling pretty stiff just walking around.

We rode through the park to Lake Pehoe, where we wanted to catch a catamaran across the lake in order to do a couple more day hikes. April is the low season, however, so the 3 times a day boat was only running once a day. Although there is not an official campsite near the boat dock, the company running the boats didn’t mind if we set up camp there. We were joined by another biker from Japan, Hiro, who we had been running into since we left El Calafate. Our tent sorely lost a battle with the rain and wind that night, so after stuffing our wet air mattresses, sleeping bags and tent into their respective bags, we decided to splurge on the other side of the lake and stay in the refugio. The refugio was well worth the exorbitant amount of money as we lay, tired from an afternoon hike to see the French Glacier, warm and cozy in soft beds, listening to the fierce winds and rain coming down all night.

The next day we hiked to Glacier Grey, which was the least exciting of the glaciers that we have visited so far. We have been told that if you have the time to hike past the viewpoint, for a couple more hours you end up walking next to the glacier, which is fantabulous. Unfortunately for us, that would have added much to much time to our already long day hike, so we turned back after reaching the closest viewpoint. After another night in warm soft cozy beds, we took the ferry back to our bikes and started riding out of the park.

One more soggy night of camping and a day of riding in the rain later, we arrived in Puerto Natales. We spent a couple days in town, warming up, drying out our things, doing errands and drinking hot chocolate. We left town with heavy wet snow that wet the streets, but didn’t stick. The snow didn’t last too long and most of our two days of riding to Punta Arenas turned out to be windy and cold, but partly sunny riding through only the occasional bit of rain or snow. We stopped for the night in Villa Tehuelches only to find that the only place to stay was full. The proprietor told us to ask at the municipal building to see if there was a place we could sleep on the floor. The people we talked to were extremely friendly and showed us to the community center, which was a small house with just one main room and a bathroom. The lady who showed us the way also gave us some firewood for the woodburning stove, so we had a fantastically warm, even hot, evening in the community center.

We arrived in Punta Arenas last night fighting fierce headwinds for the last 20 km or so into town. Today, we found yet another new rim for my bike (it cracked less than 10 km from town) and also new brake pads to prevent it from happening again. This time finding the rim and the mechanic was easy and we should have a new wheel by tomorrow.

Punta Arenas is our last stop on the South American mainland. We take a ferry to the island of Tierra del Fuego and then have only 4-6 days of biking left before hitting the end of the road!

After a week of riding long days down freeway 5, we were excited to turn eastward towards the Chilean lakes district. Our first stop was in the town of Villarica, where we stayed at the Torre Suiza (Swiss Tower) hostel. The Torre is run by a Swiss couple who, after traveling for 2 years by bike through Asia, arrived at the southern most city of the Americas biked northward, then decided to stop biking after arriving in Villarica. Not suprisingly, their clientel includes many touring cyclists. Our stay coincided with that of two Swiss cyclists, Pascal and Rebecca, who are working their way north. We spent a rest day (much needed after two weeks of riding hard and only 2 days off) visiting some nearby lakes with the Swiss and another day walking around town, reading and working on the bikes.

From Villarica, we continued eastward towards the Argentine border. This meant leaving the smooth, fast asphalt roads for the slow and bumpy ripio. The first day (last one on asphalt) from Villarica we headed south to Lican Ray, then east past the town of Panguipulli. We found a nice beach campsite on the eastside of Lago Panguipulli. When we arrived, the beach was full of Chileans sunning themselves and swimming in the water. In the evening, however, we shared the beach with only one other tent which housed a retired couple who had been coming to this beach for twenty years and were less happy about the road being paved than we were. The pavement, as it does, had made their secluded beach hideaway into a popluar day trip.

Our intentions were good starting out on the ripio road towards Puerto Fuy. It didn’t take walking the bike up more than three extremely steep, gravely hills though, before I was feeling defeated. Luckily, a nice older gentleman in a pickup truck sensed my frustration and offered us a lift. He was going to our destination so we were happy to accept the ride. He spoke perfect English, with what seemed to be a German accent, though he said he was from Chile. We had a nice conversation about his kids, who love camping, his business in Santiago and his hazelnut farm. We arrived in Puerto Fuy in no time at all. From Puerto Fuy we would take a ferry across Lago Pirihueco, then ride over the HuaHum pass into Argentina. We checked into the ferry and found that one would be leaving at 8am the next morning, then rested up for the next day’s ride. The ride across the lake was beautiful, with very little development outside of the two towns on either end of the ferry allowing for a pristine lake surrounded by hills full of trees.

After disembarking, we decided we would push on and try to make it to San Martin de los Andes, a ski/lake resort town in Argentina. It ended up being a hilly, tough ride, but a nice long downhill/flat section at the end allowed us to reach San Martin before sunset. We hadn’t made reservations (as we usually don’t) and were not too happy to find all the hotels with cheap rooms either booked or charging several times what our guidebooks told us. Being too tired to bike to the campsite, we settled for the cheapest room we could find. We then stuffed ourselves on all-you-can-eat grilled meats and salads. The next morning we moved to the campground, then explored the town. San Martin is a very cozy little village, with a definite ski town feel. It is very touristy, but we enjoyed the atmosphere.

From San Martin, we decided to take the scenic, seven lakes route to the town of Bariloche. The ride took us three days, the first and third were mostly paved and very scenic, passing many great lake views. The second day however, was over another jarring ripio road, making for a very slow day. We had better get used to the ripio soon, though, because the further south we go, the less pavement we will encounter.

Bariloche, another ski/lake resort town, is less cozy and quaint than San Martin, but they do have melt-in-your-mouth chocolate and yummy ice cream. We decided to take an extra long rest here to rest from our push to get here and to prepare for the road ahead. Mostly, though because I wanted a day where we had absolutely no obligations—no need to get groceries, laundry, or work on the blog or bikes. So I greatly enjoyed a day of sleeping in, wandering around town sampling the chocolates and reading. We also had a nice, non-loaded bike ride around the “circuito chico” near town. Then for dinner, we met up with Veronika, our German cycling friend who arrived in town that day. She and her friend (who met her in Santiago) are taking a bit of a different route for the next couple days, but we should see them again soon. If we both stick to our plans, that is. Today, we are doing the errands necessary to be back on the road tomorrow. We are headed towards El Bolson, a big hippie town.

Since leaving Cafayate, we have been riding mostly through desert, which means heat (40+ degrees Celsius) with little shade and wind. For the most part, we are able to find a town with a restaurant to stop in for lunch and to wait out the hottest part of the day before continuing on, though we aren’t always so lucky.

Our route from Cafayate to Mendoza mostly followed Ruta 40, an iconic road for Argentina, similar to Route 66 in the US. It is also the route that Che followed for the Argentine part of the Motorcycle Diaries.

Setting out from Cafayate, we passed many small wineries and fields of grapes. We opted to take the longer, paved road to Santa Maria through the town of Amaiche, where we found a fun museum to Pachamama (pictured above) to wait out the heat of the day before riding the last 25 km to Santa Maria. The following day, as we were riding out of Santa Maria, 2 guys on a scooter pulled up alongside us carrying a video camera and large microphone and requested an interview. Matt did a great job of answering the questions (in Spanish) both in a live radio interview, then in a taped interview for the TV news. It took some quick thinking, especially when the interviewer wanted to know what we would remember about (the tiny little town of) Santa Maria. The real answer is awful pizza and overly expensive hotels, but Matt was able to talk about the beautiful landscapes and friendly people.

The rest of the ride from Cafayate from Chilecito was hot! It took us 2 days more than we had planned, first because a calf cramp and an impending thunderstorm forced us to seek shelter before we were ready to stop riding. We were really lucky that the house we stopped to ask for a camping spot had an empty small brick building we were able to pitch the tent in because not half an hour later, we were in the eye of a huge thunder and lightning storm. It would not have been a fun time standing out in the rain to avoid electricution through the tent poles. The other extra day was due to the intense heat coupled with no shade. From the intermediate town of Belen to the town of Salicas, it was 44 degrees and 100 km with no towns to find shade inbetween. When we finally arrived in town, we drank 3 liters of cold soda in no time. The next day, we had hoped to make it 120 km to Chilecito, but were worried about the heat since our energy had been completely drained from it the previous day. We struggled to make it to Piutil about 40 km away. When we finally made it, we found a restaurant for lunch and contemplated finding a hostel. After a liter of soda each and some yummy and much needed beef and salad, we stepped outside to see a huge thunderstorm approaching from the exact direction that we were headed. Since we were also exhausted from the ride, we decided to find a room for the evening rather than ride into the storm. When we saw the town’s only room for rent, we knew right away that it would be extremely buggy and hot in the evening (much more so than camping would have been,) but were too tired to do anything but lie down and take a nap. When we awoke around 4 pm, the storm had cleared and our energy had been renewed. We decided to head back out and see if we could make it to Chilecito or at least closer to Chilecito. With only about 20 km to go, we were feeling tired again and decided to stop in a city that we saw many signs for, Famatina. It was just off the road, or so we thought. Another 13 km and 200 meters of climbing out of our way and we arrived after our longest day of on-the-bike time at 8 hours 31 minutes. We found a nice hostel where we could pitch the tent and a small cafe where a lovely woman who called us “mi amor” made us dinner.

We arrived in Chilecito early the next day and decided that we needed air conditioning. The room was a bit more expensive than we could really afford, but Matt’s grandpa had given us some Christmas money (thank you!), so we decided that AC (and cable TV) would be a great Christmas gift. We enjoyed it so much, we spend three nights! We mostly did errands and watched our favorite Latin American TV channels, but we also did get out to the La Riojana winery for a tour and some tasting. As in Cafayate, there wasn’t much to the tour, but we did enjoy the wines much more. We tried a line of wines called Santa Florentina and found all of them to be quite yummy.

From Chilecito, we deviated from Ruta 40 a bit in order to visit two parks. The first is called Talampaya National Park, where there is a huge canyon cut by a river that only has water after it rains. There are also many petroglyphs in the area. We visited the sites of the park in a van tour. There is a biking tour option, but it was a hot day and we had had enough of the biking in the heat. We were able to camp at the visitor’s center for the evening, then the next day headed to Ischigualasto Provincial Park. We arrived too late in the evening to explore the park that night, but were able to camp at the visitor’s center again. The tours of this park are done in a caravan of private cars in which the guide finds a spot in one of the cars or tour buses. A nice couple from Rosario (near Buenos Aires) offered to let us ride the tour with them and even let us try their Yerba Mate along the way. We mostly visited interesting rock structures formed by erosion as well as a moon-like landscape at the Valley of the Moon. Both parks together were named as UNESCO World Heritage Sites because of their archeological importance as one of the only places where you can see rock deposits representing nearly the entire Triassic period, in undisturbed sequence. This means that they are both big dinosaur fossil sites as well.

It was after Chilecito on the road to the parks that we first encountered the huge head winds that we rode into almost the entire way to Mendoza. We had been hoping to put in some long days to cover large distances, but ended up putting in hard days to cover smaller than we had hoped distances. For several days we were pedaling hard in our easiest gears on flat road and achieving speed of only about 10 kph. The winds almost forced us to take 2 days longer than we had hoped to arrive in Mendoza, but on our last day of riding we managed to make it 120 km after the winds let up slightly late in the day. We topped our recently set record for amount of time on the bike by 10 minutes and arrived at a hostal in Mendoza around 9:30 pm. The hostal was hosting an “asado” (grilled meat) dinner that night of which we were happy to partake. The meat was delicious and we had a fun time meeting the other hostal guests. We ended up going out for a beer with 3 Icelandic guys and a gal from Denmark. We learned a lot about Iceland and its history with Denmark (not so good) and generally had a good time. When we crawled into bed at 3 am, after leaving everyone else at the bar, we were utterly exhausted several times over.

After spending some time in Mendoza doing errands and visting the many wineries, we will be heading over the Andes to Chile. We have really enjoyed Argentina so far, and look forward to our return (our route will take us over the Chile/Argentina border 5 or 6 more times.) We are especially enjoying the salads (safe to eat and available with almost every meal) the steaks (no feedlots here!), the fact that Argentines travel (we don’t stick out as much) and the abundant campgrounds offering hot showers (when Argentines travel, they like to camp—the hotels are a bit pricey.)

On Jan 17, we celebrated one year on the road and 6 months of marriage. Both projects are still going well! We have come a long way fitness-wise—in our month in Argentina so far we have ridden around 1800 km, compared to 1200 km in our first month in Mexico. We may actually be able to make it to the end of the continent by the end of March (though we plan to spend some time in Buenos Aires before returning to the states.)

Potosi, the world’s highest city (of its size-100,000) at 12907 ft / 3934 m is famous mostly for mining in the nearby mountain, Cerro Rico. The abundant silver was drained by the Spanish using indigenous people and as well as imported slaves to do the work. Now, people still mine in cooperative groups looking for tin as well as zinc and other metals. On our tour of the mines, our guide said that while some miners do strike it rich by finding large veins, most work for more meager wages. The most interesting part of the tour was just walking through the network of mines and hoping that our guide knew how to get us back out. We were touring through working mines, so when we came upon miners the guide would ask them some questions then the group would give them some gifts of soda, cigarettes and coca leaves. It seemed a bit exploitive, especially when we were looking at some of the tour brochures later “See the child miners!” they touted. We did learn a lot from our guide, who is a former miner now in college, but planning to return to the mines when he can as the wages are considerably more than the average worker earns (though the lifespan is considerably shorter).

After our time in Potosi, we headed out on what are considered good dirt roads toward the town of Uyuni. We had a miserable first day of riding out of town due to constant rain as well as me feeling generally weak and unwell. We managed to make it to a small town, but without any restaurants we had to refuel ourselves on salchipapas, a small bowl of french fries topped off with sliced up hotdogs, ketchup, mayo and salsa. The next morning, I was still feeling unwell and the rain was still coming down, so we decided that it was time for a bus ride. Unfortunately, busses going to Uyuni were still full of passengers from Potosi when they passed us, so we had to get a bus back to Potosi and from there get on a bus to Uyuni. The trip went pretty smoothly and we arrived in Uyuni before nightfall.

Uyuni is mostly visited due to its proximity to the largest, highest salt flats (the Salar de Uyuni) in the world. The typical thing to do is take a 3 or 4 day Jeep tour, spending one day on the Salar, then driving south through some crazy desert scenery, visiting red and green lakes, tons of flamingos as well as the Arbol de Piedra or stone tree. We were hoping to ride our bikes out on the Salar and camp on one of the cactus filled islands for a night, but as it is the begining of the rainy season we weren’t sure how much water we could expect to encounter on the Salar. Plus, we wanted to visit the colored lakes, so we signed up for a three day trip. We went with Colque tours, which turned out to be an okay choice. We didn’t have any problems and the company didn’t misrepresent what we should expect, though we found the portions of food to be a bit small. The scenery more than made up for it though. It was truly incredible. The pictures can’t do it justice, but we will try to get them up for you soon!

We also visited a doctor in Uyuni. I was certain I had a parasite or some sort of intestinal infection, but it turned out to be a bladder infection. We decided to hang out in Uyuni for a couple days, waiting for the antibiotics to do their job, then headed out on a overnight ride on the Salar from Uyuni to the island then back the next day. The ride was much fun, though we were into a headwind all the way out to the island, which slowed us down quite a bit. We also ended up pretty sunburned from the reflections on the salt. The ride back to Uyuni was extremely hot, as we were now going with the wind and also because we were wearing long sleeves and pants to protect our already sunburned limbs. When we finally made it back to land, there was a nasty storm ahead. Due to lots of lightning, we decided that we should either stay where we were or try to get a ride. We noticed a bus seemingly headed in the right direction, but it turned out to be going north. One of the bus helpers said his boss was coming in a Jeep and would be able to help us out, so we waited around a bit. The Jeep arrived just as we were deciding to find a hotel and bike to Uyuni in the morning. We were quickly loaded up in the Jeep, dropped some people and headed off into the just clearing skies to Uyuni. The road was pretty muddy and had lots of large puddles, with which passing trucks would have surely soaked us, so we weren’t too disappointed to have taken the ride.

We ended up spending quite a bit of time in Uyuni and the area. One of our most exciting finds in Uyuni was Minuteman Pizza, which is run by an ex-pat from Boston. He worked in the Boston pizza business for quite a while until he met his Bolivian wife and set up his own restaurant in the back of her family’s hotel. The food is quite spectacular and gave us a much needed taste of home. It was expensive for Bolivia and consequently we only saw tourists eating there, but since we end up eating at the less-than-a-dollar-for-a-complete-meal local joints quite often as well, we didn’t feel too guilty about it. Plus, at around US$5 each for a meal it even fit our budget! And did I mention the chocolate cake and chocolate chip cookies?  mmmmm….

Uyuni was our last major stop in Bolivia, so it was time to head for the border. We had the choice of biking for five days over what are considered bad dirt roads, which include some river crossing (no bridges) and a couple kms where the road is actually a river bed, or we could take the train. We searched for information about the conditions of the road and were told there wasn’t much rain so the rivers were nothing to worry about right now. With no excuses to not ride, we set off on the bikes. It was nice to be outside and riding, despite the washboard roads. The first day was great, there were some small patches of sand on the road but easily avoidable. We made it about 75km out of town, which seemed like pretty good progress for bad roads, mostly uphill and into a headwind. We camped in a field behind a deteriorating adobe building. Due to the wind and our lack of a windscreen for the super-cat stove, we decided make a dinner out of our crackers, cookies and candybars. The next day, unfortunately, was a considerably less good day. We only had about 30 km to go to the town of Atocha where we had decided to stay the night in order to rest up for the 70 km of bad roads and lots of climbing that lay on the other side of town. That 30 km to town took forever. There were tons of sand on the road, one patch of which caused me to fall at a fairly high speed. No major injuries were sustained, just some bruising, but it made me extremely cautious for the rest of the ride. I was also completely exhausted from lack of a good dinner the night before, plus the constant fight against the sand. When we finally made it to the river bed we were esctatic to find hard pressed dirt. It was like riding on concete!

The next morning, we awoke to rain and soreness. As we headed out we found the roads to be quite muddy. We were happy to be observing the road conditions from the inside of a bus! The bus ride wasn’t the easy transport you might think, however. The passengers were outside the bus helping it through the deep mud on several occasions. I was usually quite happy not to be inside the bus as we watched it slip dangerously towards the edge of the road then ran ahead to help push it back on the road. The bus brought us to the ”old-west” town of Tupiza. After the 8 hour, 100 km bus ride that got us there, we decided perhaps we should jump on that train to get to the border. Yesterday morning we were able to get tickets and sat on the train for a couple hours before the conductor came through and told us that the train could not go. Apparently the rains had damaged a couple of bridges. As the entire population of the train headed over to the bus station, we decided to give the roads an extra day to dry out. We bought bus tickets for today. Hopefully, we will be in Argentina next time we write!

Leaving the city of Cusco, we had our first taste of the Andean altiplano. It reminded Matt of the time we have spent in the mid-west, particularly the flat farm country of North Dakota. I wasn’t fooled, however, as the Andes were clearly visible rimming the edges of the wide plain, whereas in ND there is a extremely straight line dividing land from sky. The flatness (aside from one pass—our highest yet!) was nice, however, and allowed us to make good time on the route from Cusco to Puno, Peru.

In order to make it to Salta before Christmas, we have mapped out our days, giving ourselves an allotment of days to ride between cities (based on what others have done) and an allotment of days to see cities and other sites of interest. The allotting of days turned out pretty well, we won’t need to skip, or even short change, anything that we had on our list, but we don’t have a lot of wiggle room in case of sickness or injury. Luckily, we also chose some slow people on which to base our riding estimates—we decided to push ourselves a bit on the way to Puno and were able to gain two extra days and will gain one more between here (Copa-copacabana) and La Paz. Hopefully, the trend will keep up and we will be able to bank some extra days in the rest of Bolivia as well (we have already used our extra gained days—part of the incentive to ride further is knowing we can take a day off )

The most exciting thing that has happened on this leg of the journey is that we have run into several other bike tourists. About 15 km before we reached Puno, Peru, two French women rode up behind us. When we stopped to chat, we found out that they were on their way from Lima, Peru to Santa Cruz, Bolivia and had about a month left to go. They were about to stop to eat, so we told them where the hotel we planned to stay was and decided to meet up again in Puno. Unfortunately, the hotel ended up being fairly expensive and the French ladies decided not to stay (we were too tired to care by the time we got there), so we missed seeing them again.

The second set of cyclists we met were heading into Puno as we were riding about 15 km south of town. When they saw us, they pulled over to our side of the road and waited for us to arrive. It turned out to be a German couple who has been on the road for 4.5 years making their way from Germany to Africa, then Australia, New Zealand and Asia before arriving in Patagonia and starting the last leg of their journey north to Alaska or Canada (depending on whether they can get a second US visa after leaving for Canada). We chatted with them for quite a while—they had a lot of good information for us regarding the rest of our trip, though we couldn’t help them much with Peru past Cusco. They will be passing through Seattle in April/May 09, so we hope to see them again!

And finally, we ran into the two Colombian cyclists that we had met way back in Latacunga, Ecuador. We were more than impressed that they had made it from Latacunga to Copacabana, Boliva in less than 1.5 months. When we had a chance to chat with them, we learned that they had hitched at least a couple rides, which made us feel a bit better—though, even so, they must be pretty strong riders! We also learned that although they look obviously Latino, the campesinos working in the fields and kids on the side of the road still yell “¡Hola, Gringo!” at them. I knew it was the bikes!

We were a little nervous about the ride from Cusco to the Bolivian border—there is one fairly old story of a cyclist being robbed on this stretch. It was several years ago though and we were itching to ride, so we decided that because we knew of many many people who have ridden the stretch safely since that time, we would go for it. We were both a little on edge and suspicious of everyone, but it mostly just made us feel guilty for suspecting everyone of the worst. What would commonly occur is that a man with his whip (for herding animals) would come out of the field and walk along the road. We’d get all tense and ready to sprint if necessary, then when we passed him, he would give us a huge smile and wave saying, “Hola, Como estas?” And then we’d feel all sheepish. Another nice occurance along the road is that although many of the kids still are asking for money, alot of them run over to our side of the road so that we can slap their hands as we pass, when there are several in a row it’s almost like the begining of a game.

We haven’t done a whole lot besides riding, though we did take a day trip from Copacabana to visit the Isla del Sol, where the Incas believed the sun and moon where created by their god. The boat was extremely slow, but the trip was good nonetheless. There are some interesting ruins, including the spot where the sun originated. Lake Titicaca is pretty amazing as well. As we were riding along the lake on our way to Copacabana, it was easy to imagine that we were riding along the Puget Sound. We even had snow-capped mountains to admire on the distant shore.

There are no good maps of Ecuador. No matter what the map claims the distance between destinations will be, add 20 km to get the real distance. The road signs are additionally misleading, giving distance varying by 20 km in the space of 5 km or less! This problem resulted in more than a couple days being much longer than expected. It also resulted in me taking a speed bump at full speed because I was too busy gaping at the distance predicted by the sign on the road to notice the bump—I definitely caught some air on that one!

We also have also met with some temperamental weather. It is the beginning of the rainy season again, so we biked through fog and rain in the afternoons. Our descent into the town of Alausi (which other blogs have told us has fantastic views) was through dense fog. We had to stop to put on all our clothes to protect us from the misty, cold cloud. It was a slow descent as we could only see about 20 feet ahead of us. Alausi was a pretty city that is the start of the famous train ride down the devil’s nose. There weren’t any trains departing while we were there, so we weren’t able to partake, though the road out of town follows the train tracks for part of the ascent, so we got a part of the experience.

Out of Alausi, our next destination was Cañar. We knew that it was a lot of climbing (around 2000 m) over only about 80 km. There were a couple places where we might find a hotel along the way, but there was nothing confirmed. Immediately starting out of Alausi we were climbing. At one point not too far from town, I looked ahead and saw a pickup truck stopped on the side of the road and a couple of men standing next to it. This made me a bit nervous until I noticed one of them had a fancy looking camera. I assumed that they had stopped to take some pictures of the amazing scenery, until I noticed that the camera was actually aimed at us. Then I notice another person with a camera, and another and another. We rode by and smiled and waved for the cameras, wondering what was going on. When we passed the truck, it all made sense—the truck had an emblem for the Ecuador Ministry of Tourism on it. A couple minutes later, the truck passed us with two of the people in the truck bed taking more pictures! Matt called for them to stop and requested that they send us the pictures. They gave us some Ecuador pens, pins and pamphlets and promised to send along pictures, but it has been a couple weeks now and we haven’t heard anything. If you are in Ecuador be on the look out for tourist brochures with pictures of bikers!

Around 10 km after leaving Alausi, the road deteriorated pretty badly and we were riding on rough gravel or dirt for most of the day. This really slowed our progress as there were many ups and downs and the gravel made the descents especially slow. So when we found a hotel in Chunchi, we decided to stop. The next day, the road was mostly good, but we hit a pretty heavy rain storm. We were able to take refuge under the porch of a church, but we were already drenched and cold at that point. We tried to continue on to Cañar, but the descents proved to be too chilling on our already cold, wet bodies. So we hitched a bus the remainder of the way.

We took a bus from Cañar to visit the Inca ruins of Ingapirca, the most important Inca site in Ecuador. The ruins were a fairly small site with much beautiful stonework. I was pretty excited to be visiting an archeological site again, though it was just a glimpse of what is to come in Peru. In the town of Ingapirca, we happened upon a festival with a couple different parades, first the school kids in marching bands, then people on slightly unruly horses. It was crazy to see all the women in indigenous clothing videotaping the parades on their fancy cameras!

From Cañar, we had a long, but not too difficult day to Cuenca. At this point, we started looking at the calendar and calculating just how much time we had left to get to Boliva before the new entry requirements begin on Dec 1. Since we want to enter Bolivia well before the new requirements in order to avoid any hassles, we realized that we had less than a month or so to make it through the rest of Ecuador and all of Peru. We wanted to dedicate at least a week of that time to Cusco and Machu Picchu. Clearly it was time to hop a bus!

We made a mad dash by bus to the town of Trujillo in northern Peru. The bus ride was pretty uneventful and the scenery, especially in northern Peru, was pretty bland. Vast deserts with lots of low shrubs and tons of garbage strewn everywhere. We weren’t too sad to have missed out on biking this part. The reason for heading to Trujillo was that there is a famous ‘casa de ciclistas’ there run by Lucho and his family. We were cyclists number 883 and 884—they have been hosting touring bikers since 1985. We felt a little sheepish arriving and departing by means other than bikes, but other cyclists assured us that Lucho regularly picks up bikers from the bus station and it wouldn’t be a problem.

We spent four nights in the casa arranging for transport to Cusco (we splurged on airline tickets rather than spend 30 hours or more on the bus—I’ve been having problems with motion sickness on the busses lately), taking part in the Peruvian census, exploring the area and getting to know Lucho, his family and the other cyclist at the house.

The census was Sept 21 and the entire country was shut down. No businesses were allowed to open and no one was allowed out on the streets—not even tourists (luckily we had a nice place to wait it out!) When the census people came to the house, we also had to answer questions and be counted.

We also found out about many more casas de ciclistas in Bolivia, Argentina and Chile. Most exciting is that the other cyclist staying with Lucho has connections (his fiance) with a casa in Salta, Argentina which is where we had hoped to be around Christmas time. When we told him this, he said we would be welcome to spend the holidays at their house! We are also having some new tires and other parts shipped to us at his place, so we will even have some gifts.

We are in Cusco now, we and all our stuff arrived on the plane at the same time and safely! We are hoping to be able to ride the rest of the way from here—no more busses! We still have a long way to go though, almost 8000 km, so we will need to put in some long days if we want to finish before winter hits Patagonia.

Our first day in Bogotá was a Sunday, where their weekly event known as Ciclovia meant most of the main streets were severly restricted to car traffic and open instead to bikes. We had hoped to participate, but since my pedals were missing after the flight from Panama, we couldn’t. It turned out to be for the best as there was a huge parade celebrating solidarity through out the country and the roads were too filled with people to be able to bike through them anyway. We had heard about Bogotá’s promotion of bikes for transportation and were excited to ride the numerous cycle paths throughout the city. It wasn’t quite as spectacular as I had imagined as the paths were also open to pedestrians, which limits the usefulness of the trails.

We spent several days in Bogotá, getting the bikes ready to ride and enjoying the city life and museums. We also took a day trip to the town of Zipaquirá to see the Salt Cathedral, an underground cathedral built into a salt mine. We felt right at home in Bogotá, thanks to our wonderful couchsurfing host, the rainy, Seattle-like weather and all the yummy coffee. There were even a couple areas of town that reminded me of Seattle. It was nice to be home

Our original plan was to bike from Bogotá to Cali and then bus to Quito (Ecuador) from there. However, we realized that we were kidding ourselves after looking over our proposed plan consisting of 5 straight days of riding around 100 kms each day with a couple of days of significant climbing thrown in. We have been practically biking-free for almost two months—we thought it prudent to start a bit more slowly. So, we ended up bussing from Bogotá to Armenia which eliminated most of the climbing on the route. We also decided that we would bike from Armenia to Cali, then possibly on to the next big city of Popayan before hopping back on the bus.

We were a bit nervous starting out riding again, but soon settled into a rhythm and were able to enjoy the beautiful countryside. The end point for the first day was Tuluá, which is a relatively flat 90 km from Armenia. We felt pretty good at first and it felt great to be riding again, but we realized that 90 km for a first ride was a bit ambitious as we were running out of energy about 20 km from town. Luckily, two passing cyclists slowed down to chat, which made the ride go much more quickly. They were mountain bike racers and had ridden to Armenia from Tuluá the day before and were now making the return trip. Despite the increased energy from meeting the cyclists, we were going more and more slowly and eventually were going too slowly for the Colombianos who rode off ahead of us. We perked up again, though, when we saw them waiting for us on the edge of town. They said they would show us some hotels in town then help us find some food. One, Juan David, led us to a hotel, while the other, Jonathan, went to check on another. Crazy as it may sound, there turned out to be no hotel rooms available in Tuluá that night due to a transportation conference in town. So, Juan David brought us back to his house, where his grandma cooked us some lunch and we were able to shower. Jonathan came back later with the news that his mom said it would be okay if we stayed in their spare room for the night, so we headed over there and spent the rest of the afternoon talking to Jonathan and his parents about the wonders of Colombia and answering their questions about the US and our trip. We met up with Juan David later to go to a music festival at the local university where we saw some local music and dancing and also sampled some chicha (yummy!). We slept very well that night after an exhausting day of riding and speaking Spanish.

The next morning, we awoke to breakfast and chilled bottles of sports drink for our bikes! Jonathan and Juan David decided that they would take a recovery ride with us to the town of Buga, 20 km south of Tuluá on the way to Cali. We started the ride off without Jonathan as his girlfriend (a world-class mountain biker training in Italy) called just as we were leaving, but given our slow pace and his claim to regional champion working his way to national champion, we knew he would have no trouble catching up to us before Buga. Our legs were quick to tell us that they had worked hard the day before and weren’t up to another 90 km to Cali that day. So, when we saw lots of hotels lining the streets of Buga, we decided perhaps 20 km was good for the day and we would tackle the rest the next day. After showing us the town’s famous basilica and helping us find a hotel, Juan David and Jonathan set out back to Tuluá with much gratitude from us. Colombian hospitality is talked about a lot on the internets, but we really couldn’t believe how lucky we were to have met Juan David, Jonathan and their families.

The rest day was just what we needed. We felt great on the ride into Cali. Being on the bikes again is invigorating and makes traveling all the more exciting and fun. We found our hostel in Cali without too many problems, that is until we started unloading the bikes and realized that one of my bags was missing! I vaguely remember bumping into a pole on that side of the bike, though I thought I had checked to make sure everything was alright afterwards. Perhaps the bump loosened the bag, which then fell off when I hit a bump later? It seems unlikely that someone could have take the bag off of the bike without me noticing, but who knows? Luckily, the bag didn’t contain anything that can´t be gone without or easily replaced. My bike looks pretty sad these days with one lonely pannier where there used to be four!

Given the difficulties of finding a bus big enough to fit the bikes and the extra hassle of loading them up, we decided we would bus from Cali, where we were certain to find a big bus, all the way to the border town of Ipiales in one long ride, though it meant skipping a couple towns and sites that we would have liked to have seen. We did manage to see the Sanctuary of Las Lajas near Ipiales with our last 16000 pesos ($8) before heading to the border. There are no busses which cross the Colombia/Ecuador border, so we had to ride 2 km from Ipiales to the border then 6 km from the border to Tulcan, Ecuador where we were able to catch a bus to Quito. The border crossing was hassle-free and fee-free as well. At the Ecuador immigration post, I waited with the bikes while Matt went in to get our passports stamped. While I was waiting, a friendly border guard struck up a conversation. I thought I was doing fairly well in Spanish without Matt’s assistance, though the guard had to repeat most of his questions at least once. However, when Matt came back out and understood the first thing the guard said to him with out a problem, the guard exclaimed, “Oh, you understand much better!”

We were sad to leave Colombia and to have missed so much of the country in our rush to get to Quito in time for the Galapagos trip. Everyone we spoke to was so enthusiastic about their country and the great beauty that it holds. We definitely plan to return in the not too far distant future.

Tomorrow we leave for the Galapagos Cruise. The last couple days in Quito were spent picking up the tickets, and buying some last minute items that we will need for the trip (I had to replace yet another pair of shoes from the lost bag!) We also found the South American Explorers Clubhouse where they let members store stuff (our bikes.) They also have a huge wealth of information on South America, free coffee, and a library where we were able to check out some reading material for the cruise. In Quito, we were also lucky to find a bike touring enthusiast who can make me a new pannier (they are impossible to find here otherwise) in just a couple days after we return. We had been thinking we would have to have one shipped from the states and were not looking forward to waiting around for that to happen. All in all, we are doing well—excited for the Galapagos and getting back on the bikes without too many delays when we return.

Our new bike/bus strategy has been working well, though not exactly as planned. The last segment of Central America began by bussing out of San Jose and the Central Valley to the Carribbean coast and the city of Limon from where we planned to ride down the coast to Panama, cross the continental divide and head into Panama City along the Pacific. We were a bit nervous about getting back on the bikes, but on our first day riding, a fellow cyclist going the opposite direction turned around and caught up with us for the sole reason of giving us some of his energy bars!

After 3 days of riding and enjoying the beaches and Carribbean food, we crossed into Panama. Because we had new passports without an entrance stamp, the officer had to check the system to ensure we hadn’t overstayed our welcome. Unfortunately, the system was down, which meant we had to hang out at the border for about an hour while waiting for him to verify our entry date. There was an Israeli guy in the same situation, so we had someone with whom to commiserate and converse. When we finally were stamped and allowed to leave Costa Rica, we rode on to Changuinola where we caught the last boat to Bocas del Toro, an archipelago just off the coast near the border.

The island was beautiful and there is supposed to be great snorkling/diving. Sadly, we don’t have a report on the snorkeling as the day we had set aside for snorkling was rainy, which means low visibilty. We ended up staying in Bocas an extra day because Matt had a sore throat. The second day of sore throat we decided that we needed to get off of the island because it was pretty expensive and our cheap room was really mildewy and it seemed as though the mold might be the cause of the illness.

It didn’t take much riding up steep hills in 90 degree weather before our month off of the bikes in cool mountain weather caught up to us. I was close to overheating when we decided to catch the bus to the next town with a hotel. When we had started thinking straight again, we decided to take advantage of the final destination of the bus-David-since Matt was getting sick and the next day of riding would have been over the continental divide, which we clearly would not be able to do.

We have been in David for about a week now, staying at the Purple House Hostel. It has been a good place to be held up. It feels kinda like we are at home, but have rotating housemates. We have met a lot of interesting people. We have been pretty derailed from our plans lately, but we are hoping to get a fresh start in South America. It almost feels like we are back at home, preparing to leave.

Tonight we are taking the bus to Panama City, where we are meeting my dad. Then we will be flying to Bogota!