Ephemerica

With a little help from the local authorities in Cochrane, we were able to get connected with a truck driver named Miguel who makes weekly runs delivering goods and livestock between Coyhaique, Cochrane, and Villa O’Higgins. When we talked to him at the beginning of the week, he thought he would have space, and he was happy to take us and the bikes for free (even though we offered to pay…I think he enjoyed the company), but he wouldn’t be arriving in Villa O’Higgins until late Friday night. We were a little nervous about it since the ferry crossing to El Chalten, Argentina would begin at 8 AM the next day, but we didn’t have too many other options. We managed to make it to O’Higgins, purchase tickets, and catch the ferry, although we were almost the last persons to arrive at the dock (it was a 8 km ride from Villa O’Higgins). When we got there, we were happy to see several other bikers on board, including our friends Veronika and Roger again! We were also happy to get a few hours of rest on the boat before our trekking began.

The route between Lago O’Higgins in Chile, and the Lago del Desierto in Argentina was a 22 km hike. The only hitch was that you only had 4.5 hrs to do it if you wanted to catch the last boat of the day across Lago del Desierto. We thought that the time constraints wouldn’t be a problem for us on bikes, especially if we paid to have a horse carry our bags for us. Unfortunately, the trail was quite difficult in places (especially the last 6 km), and well, we just don’t have a lot of experience or skill at mountain biking. So we ended up walking the bikes quite a bit, which slowed us down. But we arrived at the dock just as the horses were arriving with the bags. We hurriedly went through Argentinian immigration, and took the boat to the south end of Lago del Desierto. We stayed the night at a campground near the lake, and then finished the short ride to El Chalten the next day.

El Chalten is known mostly as the launching point for hikes into the northern part of Los Glaciares National Park, where the famous peaks of Cerro Torre and Fitz Roy are. It should also be known as one of the most expensive places in Argentina where ATM and credit cards are largely useless. Due to poor planning on our part, we didn’t bring enough Argentinian currency with us to make it to the next town with an ATM (El Calafate). Luckily for us, we had some extra dollars stashed around that we could exchange, as well as having access to the Bank of Veronika and Roger, who are much better at planning ahead than we are The weather around El Chalten is quite changeable this time of year, but we lucked out and the next day in town was relatively clear. We hiked up to Laguna Torre, and the views of Fitz Roy and the glacier up there were impressive. The next day was a bit rainy in the morning, so we decided to postpone leaving for a day. But we knew that we could only stay in El Chalten for so long with our limited funds, so we planned to strike out the next day, rain or shine.

This was our first time really riding out in the flat pampas of Argentina, where the wind is incredibly fierce. Between El Chalten and El Calafate, we experienced everything: tailwinds pushing us so that we were cruising at over 30 km/h, sidewinds that threatened to push us into traffic, and headwinds that slowed us to around 10 km/h. It’s just something we’re going to have to get used to though…after reading the blog of our three biker gal friends from the US, we know that it’s only gonna get worse. Anyway, the most exciting part of the ride was that the sidewall of the rim on Cindy’s rear wheel cracked about 50 km outside of El Calafate. Ideally, we would have bailed and taken a bus at this point, but since there wasn’t much traffic on the road, we decided to push it and have her just ride without using her rear brake. As we were mostly heading into the wind at this point, we weren’t really going fast enough to warrant using it anyway…

Thus began our search for a replacement. There is only one bike mechanic in El Calafate, and they didn’t have any 32-hole rims (apparently 36 spokes is more common). We were willing to buy a whole wheel as replacement, but there wasn’t a really good option there. So we decided that we’d hop a bus to the nearest large town, Rio Gallegos (about 4.5 hrs away by bus). Thankfully, there are 3 bike stores here (although only 2 bike mechanics), and we were able to procure a replacement rim (Mavic, no less!) from one store, and have it installed at another store. The “new” wheel still looks and feels strong, and the guy we bought the rim from even insisted that the new rim was even better than the old one (but good luck finding info about discontinued models on the Mavic website). All we really care about is that it’s strong enough to last another 1000 km or so to Ushuaia.

To backtrack slightly, while we were waiting in El Calafate for a bus to Rio Gallegos, we visited the premier feature of the southern part of Los Glaciares National Park, the Perito Moreno glacier (pictured above). Rather than bus out to the glacier and do a DIY tour, we decide to go with an “alternative tour” package through the agency that works through the Hostel del Glaciar in El Calafate. The tour took a less traveled road that allowed some additional wildlife viewing opportunities, but was nothing particularly special. However, getting to see the constantly changing face of the glacier up close and personal was really amazing. The glacier (which advances 2 meters daily!) is now occluding the two lakes on either side of it; this means that it is only a matter of time before the water breaks back through the ice—it should be a spectacular sight for those who are lucky enough to be there to see it.

Back to the present—we are bussing back to El Calafate tomorrow (where the bikes and most of our bags are), and barring catastrophe, we should be back on the road again in a few days, with our next destination being the border (again?) and the Torres del Paine national park in Chile.

Posted by Matthew on March 25th, 2008 | Filed under: Argentina, Chile | No Comments »

Sorry to have been out of touch so long…we are getting into more and more remote areas of Patagonia, and thus internet access has been extremely limited. Anyway, on with the saga!

We arrived in El Bolson after a long day’s ride, found a hostel, and then we prepared ourselves for a rest day the following day on account of it was my birthday! We happened to be there for the bi-weekly artisan fair; the most interesting part of the fair for us wasn’t the crafts, but the giant waffles being served with heaps of fruit and cream. From El Bolson, we had the choice of continuing to the Chilean border through the Los Alerces National Park (beautiful, but unpaved road) or along Ruta 40 (not so beautiful, but paved). We figured we would have plenty of opportunity to ride on the ripio when we got into Chile, and the prospect of saving a day on the pavement sealed the deal for us. The most interesting thing that happened to us was that we were acosted by a guanaco (a deer-like critter related to llamas) who was uncharacteristically forward about wanting some food during one of our snack stops. About halfway between El Bolson and Esquel there was a police station on the highway, where the police were nice enough to let us camp underneath some trees with access to water. We’ve really been enjoying the fact that most of the water in the streams down here is safe to drink, although we still end up carrying quite a bit of water because I’m paranoid about running out.

After leaving the Chilean border town of Futaleufu, we headed east to connect with the Carretera Austral. Within a few hours of riding through the town of Santa Lucia, I had broken off the last remaining rack mount eyelet on the left side of my bike (which is the side that I tend to carry the most water on, naturally). We decided at this point to try to hitch a ride to the next town, La Junta, since the rack was more or less unusable. After a couple of hours trying to flag a ride, a bus full of Germans came past and stopped. Their tour guide, an Austrian hostel owner from Pucon, said that he couldn’t take us or the bikes, but he could take our bags and drop them off at the police station in town, which would allow us to ride the bikes unloaded. We decided that we should take him up on his offer and started riding. Within 20 min, we saw a pickup going past and decided to ask for a lift. The guy said yes, and soon the truck was again barreling down the highway with us and the bikes in back (getting heavily covered in dirt, I might add). We waved to the bus full of Germans as we passed them, and met them at the gas station at the entrance to La Junta, where we recovered our bags. After asking around, and assuring everyone that inquired that yes, my bike is made of steel and not aluminum, we found a welder who was able to weld the rack mount back on the bike. The next day, we were off again, and I was going a bit slower over the washboard roads now, since we really didn’t have any idea how long the weld repair was going to last.

Our plan after leaving La Junta was to make it to the Queulat National Park entrance south of Puyuhuapi, but the quick arrival of a rain storm caused us to pull up short and pitch our tent on the side of the road next to the office of a salmon farming company. The next day we rode the last 10 km to get us to the park, where there were supposed to be amazing views of a large glacier feeding a giant waterfall. As we pulled into our campsite, we saw that in the site next to us were three bikers that we later learned were three brothers who live in Santiago, but were biking down the Carretera Austral back to their parents’ home in Coyhaique. They were contemplating leaving that afternoon, but the continuing rain, road closures due to construction, and a big climb that lay ahead made them decide to leave early the next morning. We were glad they stayed; the five of us spent the rest of the day drinking mate, getting to know each other, and trying to keep dry and warm in our little camping shelters. The next morning we all planned to leave together at 8:30 AM to try to get out of the construction zone before the road was closed, but by morning the rain had gotten even worse. And in the back of our minds was the repair job on my rack mounts, and what would happen to us should the rack fail in the middle of a storm, on top of a mountain. We took the cautious route and decided we would wait until the roads opened in the afternoon, double back north 20 km to the town of Puyuhuapi, and then bus forward to Coyhaique, where we might be able to find a more permanent solution to my bike problem.

The Chilenos left the next morning as planned, and we tried to keep ourselves and our tent as dry as possible under our meager shelter until the roads reopened. Right before the roads opened, there was a brief respite in the rain, so we decided to go visit the visitor’s center at the park. There we ran into a US/Chilena couple visiting from California to do some scouting for future sea kayak trips. We noticed that they had rented a pickup, and sheepishly asked where they were going. They were heading south, and although not all the way to Coyhaique, they offered to at least get us past the monster hill that loomed ahead. We decided it was better to continue south for the time being, so we took the ride. When we got to the bottom of the hill and parted ways from our saviours, we found two of the Chileno brothers (one had decided to turn back and take a bus like we had originally planned) and three women cyclists from the US huddled together under a bus shelter trying to dry out a bit. After a small reunion and some introductions, the weather seemed to break a bit, so we continued on together to the next town, some 30 km away, where finally we would be back on paved roads for a few days.

Our cycling posse rode together for the next two days to Coyhaique, and we were quite the sight to behold, being such a large group touring together. I wasn’t the only one whose bike had suffered the effects of the ripio; one of the women (Jude, from Oregon) had her rear deraileur shaken apart, and had to ride the rest of the way in one gear! The boys had called ahead and gotten the OK from Mom & Dad to bring their new friends to their home a few kilometers south of town. When we arrived, Dad fired up the Mr. Beef gas grill and we were extremely well fed. The hospitality and generosity the family showed for us (including the third brother, who had returned by bus before us) was amazing. The next night, all the gringos offered to cook dinner for the family as a show of appreciation. Cindy and I contributed our chili and cornbread, which was rounded out by garlic bread, pear salad, peaches and cream for dessert, and of course, lots of beer and wine. It seemed to be a huge success, and we fulfilled another request for the cornbread recipe. We had originally planned on leaving the next day, but we felt so much at home that we couldn’t resist staying one more day (we had to help eat the leftover chili, of course!). Finally, the five North Americans rolled on down the road south. We rode with the girls for another day and a half before they took a turnoff to bus ahead to stay on their schedule for arriving in Ushuaia.

After riding through Villa Cerro Castillo, the pavement gave way to gravel again. This part of the Carretera Austral is also amazingly scenic (can’t wait to post pictures), but the hills are super steep (up to 15% grade and higher), so the cycling has been difficult for us. Our daily progress is really dependent on the quality of the roads, which has varied from smooth, nearly-paved surfaces to deep gravel where we can’t ride even the flat parts, let alone the hills. The ironic part is that the deep gravel appears where they have just done maintenance on the road to improve it for the cars! Within a few days of leaving Coyhaique, we ran into our friends Veronika and Roger again. We haven’t been riding together (they are much faster than us on the ripio), but we were more or less on the same schedule, so we had dinner together a few nights in a row. Finally we arrived in Cochrane (where we are now), where we had planned to spend a well deserved (we think) rest day. But moving forward is a bit problematic. We had planned to ride 3-4 more days to Villa O’Higgins and then take a boat over to El Chalten, Argentina. However, the boat only runs on Saturdays at this time of year (tourist season is waning), so timing is crucial. The steep hills took their toll on my knee, and we were hoping to take a bus to Villa O’Higgins to give it a rest. Unfortunately, the buses are usually too full to take our bikes. So unless we can find another ride to Villa O’Higgins, we’ll probably miss the next boat and give my knee some time to rest in Cochrane. At least we can catch up on some Internet time here

Oops, forgot to finish the story about the destroyed bicycles. I was able to find a bike shop that was able to weld on completely new rack mounts on both sides of my bike. The mechanic said it was “super fuerte” and wasn’t going to break. That solved my problem, but a few days later, one of the rack mounts on Cindy’s bike broke as well! We moved her rack to the second set of mounts and tried to get hers welded today as well, but the welder here in Cochrane says he can’t do it. Hopefully it will last until we get to a bigger town on the Argentine side. The moral of the story is: touring bikes need to have rack mounts that go through the frame, not these cheap little eyelets that break all the time! If I had only known…

Posted by Matthew on March 10th, 2008 | Filed under: Argentina, Chile | 1 Comment »

We figured it was about time to post some photos, so here they are. Enjoy!

Posted by Matthew on February 19th, 2008 | Filed under: Argentina, Chile | 3 Comments »

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.

Posted by cindy on February 19th, 2008 | Filed under: Argentina, Chile | No Comments »

One thing that you can’t help but notice about Latin America is the overabundance of plastic shopping bags. Not only at the supermarket—where the checkers refuse to put more than three items in a single bag—but covering the entire landscape as well. Even this writer from the NY Times describing Los Glaciares National Park in Argentina (which we will be visiting soon) felt compelled to mention the trash in the first sentence of her article. We have been guilty of using too many plastic bags as well. We bought a shopping bag in Mexico, but we sometimes forget to take it with us, or we just buy too many groceries to fit in the bag. Did you know that there is a giant trash vortex in the North Pacific Ocean?

Well, in Ireland, they decided to try to do something about the problem. In 2002, they instituted a tax on plastic shopping bags. And it actually worked, to the tune of reducing plastic bag usage by a whopping 94%. What if a giant country like the U.S. reduced it’s plastic bag waste by that much? Would the trash vortex be only the size of Washington instead of Texas?

Speaking of WA, there is a bill in the state legislature to ban non-recyclable plastic bags. Personally, I think I prefer the taxation solution to a ban-&-fine system, but it may work just as well.

Posted by Matthew on February 5th, 2008 | Filed under: General | 2 Comments »

The rest of our time in Mendoza didn’t go exactly as planned…I had to do some maintenance on the bikes, and that took longer than anticipated. We found a decent bike shop in Mendoza to true our wheels, and buy some replacement chains (actual Shimano parts or equivalent are hard to find down here). And I scrubbed the rest of the drivetrain and the bikes clean, and adjusted the deraileurs. As a result, the day that we had finally planned to take to visit wineries was rainy—actually the first rainy day that we had seen in some time. But the day turned out actually better than we expected…

After deciding not to bike out to the vinyards in iffy weather, we decided (at the recommendation of our hostel) to do some wine tasting in town at The Vines of Mendoza, a fancy little tasting room near the main plaza. We went to a special “meet the winemaker” event, where we got to taste several wines from a single winery (including a very nice reserve Malbec) and got to hear a little something about the family business and each of the wines from the winemaker. It was there we met our new friend Veronika, a German woman who is living and working in Switzerland. We happened to overhear her talking with the people she came with that she was bike touring through Argentina, so we of course butted in on the conversation, and then invited her to come eat dinner with us after the wine tasting. After some more sharing of stories, we decided that since we were on the same schedule and going in the same direction that we would bike together from Mendoza to Chile.

From Mendoza, we planned to head west through the Andes over to Chile, along the way climbing from 700 meters elevation (in Mendoza) to over 3000 meters elevation at the pass. We had originally thought that we would take an easier route to the town of Uspallata, and then up to the pass, but Veronika (who had some time to kill before meeting a friend who was arriving in Santiago) convinced us that we should instead go through the town of Villavicencio, home of the famous brand of bottled mineral water in Argentina. Well, this would require us to go over another pass of nearly 3000 meters between Mendoza and Uspallata, as well as travel many kilometers of dirt roads. The “town” of Villavicencio was really nothing more than an abandoned luxury hotel (think “The Shining”) and an upscale roadside restaurant. We stopped at the restaurant, cold and sopping wet after being rained on, ate a giant meal, and then camped alongside the restaurant. The next day we continued up the hillside to pass #1, which was encased in fog for most of the day. That was probably good, because I think if we had actually seen the entire road, we might have turned back toward Mendoza to go the easy way Once we got to the top of the pass, the skies cleared a bit for our descent to Uspallata. We celebrated our arrival by eating gigantic steaks at a place called Tibet Cafe in Uspallata, so named to honor the fact that the movie “Seven Years in Tibet” was filmed in the area around the town.

We continued climbing the next day up to the Puente del Inca, an interesting geological formation where a natural bridge has formed from deposits left by hard water flowing down from the mountains. We had a bit of trouble with the law that day, as there were some policemen along the route who decided that they would enforce Argentina’s bicycle helmet law, because Veronika wasn’t wearing a helmet. Now, I don’t condone riding without a helmet, especially while descending on busy freeways. But if you’ve ever been in Latin America, this is a total joke—everyone rides bikes, and nobody wears helmets. This is most likely because helmets here are hard to find and cost the same as in the U.S., upwards of US$100. The police eventually decided to let us go through, but assured us that they weren’t responsible if something were to happen. The did scare us enough to try to find a helmet for Veronika though. The police told us we could buy one in the small ski village of Los Penitentes, but most of their gear was for climbing and skiing, not cycling. To make a long story short, after wandering around town a bit, knocking on a few doors, we found a mountaineering guide/veterinarian (how’s that combo?) named Miguel who was willing to sell her his helmet—which, coincidentally, had already been to Ushuaia twice on previous bike tours. We took this as a sign of providence, and Veronika had herself a helmet.

After our night in Puente del Inca, we decided to part ways with Veronika, as she wanted to stay another couple of days to do some hiking in Aconcagua Provincial Park. Aconcagua is the highest peak in the Andes, and highest peak outside of Asia at nearly 7000 m (22,800 ft) high, so we understood her desire to get closer to that beast. For us, we were content to take a picture or two from the vantage point on the highway We were destined to cross over into Chile that day. From the town of Las Cuevas, at 3100 m elevation, we had two choices. One was to take a 4 km tunnel through the mountain to the Chilean side—but the only catch is that we would have to hitch a ride on a truck, since bikes aren’t allowed in the tunnel. The other way would be to climb another 700 meters on a 9 km dirt road (pictured) to visit the “Christ the Redeemer” statue at the top, commemorating a peace agreement between Argentina and Chile. Inspired by our climbing efforts of the last few days in addition to the gorgeous clear blue skies, we decided to go the hard way. And it was, in fact, quite hard—much steeper and windier (in both the blowing of air way and the zigzag way) than our previous efforts. But the views were spectacular, and we can’t wait to post some pictures for you. After that last push, we made a rapid descent down the Chilean side, passed through immigration, and then camped behind a ski resort hotel overlooking a beautiful lake.

Now we are riding through northern Chile, heading as fast as we can towards the Lake District, where we will cross back over to Argentina. We rode through the capital of Santiago, which was an absolute nightmare between riding on busy highways and getting lost on side streets. Our major impression so far of Chile is that it’s expensive, easily the most expensive country we’ve been in since leaving the U.S. In some ways, it’s like we’ve been transported back to Southern California, complete with traffic, shopping malls and supermarkets. I’m sure that impression will change though as we head into the more rural southern regions of the country. We are riding through the major agricultural belt, as well as the wine producing region, so we are taking advantage of the availability of fresh produce and cheap wine.

Posted by Matthew on February 3rd, 2008 | Filed under: Argentina, Chile | No Comments »

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 extrememly 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 busses. 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.)

Posted by cindy on January 22nd, 2008 | Filed under: Argentina | 1 Comment »

That’s what the posted signs told us when we crossed the border into Argentina at La Quiaca. We’ve traveled pretty far in total so far, but we’ve only biked just over 7,000 kms up to now, so we’re going to need to be a little more disciplined (and luckier) than we have been so far on the trip. The border crossing itself was without incident, except that we almost didn’t make it through before they closed because our bus on the Bolivian side had to stop for repairs several times on the way. We enjoyed our first Argentinian milanesa (yum!), had a nice thick Quilmes Stout (also yum!), and then had our first nights sleep in Argentina.

The next day we started our 5-day trek to Salta. As we slowly started to bleed off our altitude from the altiplano, we were treated to great views in an arid, colorful rocky canyon called the Quebrada de Humahuaca. The only problem was that once we entered the canyon, we faced a horrendous headwind that really sapped our strength, even though we were going downhill most of the time! It was almost as if the Andean goddess Pachamama herself were trying to keep us from leaving the altiplano… Another highlight of the trip to Salta was staying in Purmamarca, which is home to the famous Cerro de los Siete Colores (Seven Colored Mountain), a large rock that, well, has seven different colors in it. To be honest, Purmamarca itself isn’t that spectacular—there is a small plaza where handicraft vendors wait for the occasional tour bus to come through and unload tourists on them, and not much else. But we had gone so far the day before (over 130 km), and the wind, which we had hoped was a one day fluke, was still gale force in our face, so we made a short day of it and rested in Purmamarca.

A couple of days later, we finished our journey from 3400 m at the border to 1200 m in Salta. As we finished our descent, we suddenly became aware of two things: how green it was, and how hot it was. Our last day riding into Salta, we were able to take a bypass highway between El Carmen and Salta that was a little hilly, but was uncrowded, shaded by vegetation most of the way, and quite beautiful. We then finally arrived at the casa de ciclistas there, where Ramon and his family were waiting for us, including our Spanish cycling friend Jose, whom we met at the other casa de ciclistas in Trujillo, Peru. After we chatted and rested a bit, Ramon showed us our Christmas present to ourselves—new Schwalbe tires! On the recommendations of Jose and countless other cyclists on the internets, we bought some Marathon XR tires to replace our aging Specialized Hemispheres (they were especially showing their age on the dirt roads of Bolivia). The German cyclists we met in Peru, Martin and Nadine, said that their Marathons last around 10,000 kms and they have hardly any flats, so we’re hoping for the same luck with ours! We’ve had some experience with Schwalbe road tires, and we know they make a good product, so I think this was a good move for us. They were costly though—between buying the original tires (which are expensive), shipping to Argentina, and paying customs on the packages (50% of declared value!), well, they’re probably the most valuable part of our bikes now

Ramon’s family was kind enough to include us in their Christmas celebration. I have to digress a little here about some changes we had to make in entering Argentina. Everything here happens MUCH MUCH later than we are used to in the US. We usually finish our bike rides here in the early afternoon, and when we roll into town, it’s like entering a ghost town. People take the siesta very seriously here, and it’s because they are up until 2AM (or later) every night! OK, back to Christmas. We went with the family down the street to celebrate Christmas eve mass at 10:30PM. Then we had our Christmas dinner at 11:30PM. We contributed a little bit of smoked salmon (sent by my folks) to add a little NW flavor to the dinner. Then we went out to Balcarce, the clubbing section of Salta. The bars were all open, and the streets were full of people! Ramon assured us that not many people were out, since it was Christmas after all. Then we came home at 4:30AM, and the next day Ramon told his mom that we had an early night! I’m not sure that we will ever truly adjust to the Argentine lifestyle, but we have made some more practical arrangements in the meanwhile…we’ve started buying empanadas (little pastries filled with meat and potato) the night before to eat for breakfast the next day, and we have been taking midday breaks on our rides to stop for lunches at restaurants, in order to hold us over until the restaurants reopen at 8-9PM.

After a relaxing few days in Salta, it was time for us to say goodbye to Ramon and his family. We also had to say goodbye to their collection of cats and dogs, including two litters of recently born and very cute kittens (we really wanted to steal one to take home as a playmate for Sera). As our way of saying thank you, we made dinner for them before we left. We couldn’t think of anything really typically American to make, so we made chili and cornbread. We spent quite some time at the supermarket buying stuff, and it was a bit touch-and-go for a while, because we had to substitute for some things that you can’t find in South America. In the end though, both turned out well, and Ramon’s mom was particularly impressed by the cornbread, so we gave her the recipe we got from the internets. The chili recipe is one I copied from a Martha Stewart Living magazine, and is really good; if anybody wants it I can email it to them

We are now starting to enter Argentine wine country. We rode two days to Cafayate through another canyon, the Quebrada de Las Conchas. This ride was very beautiful…or at least I think it was. The day we rode through the actual canyon, the heat was incredible, up to 46 C (115 F) according to my bike computer, and I think I may have had a small brain meltdown along the way. The Quebrada has lots of famous rock formations like the Devil’s Throat, the Amphitheatre, and the Toad. There were plenty of tourists in cars stopped along the way to mark them for us, but we only stopped at a few to take pictures, being much more interested in where the next shaded place was for us to get out of the heat for a few minutes. The thing to do in Cafayate is visit wineries, of which there are at least six in town. Unfortunately, this isn’t the best time of year to do tours. With this being the holiday season, most of them were closed to the public for New Years. The one we did manage to get into was completely dead since grape harvest season isn’t for several months yet. So we took a 15 min tour through the machinery, tried some less than spectacular wines, and called it a day. The wine highlight so far of Cafayate has been the wine flavored sorbets (they have a cabernet and torrontes, a local style of white wine).

Our path to Mendoza will keep us close to the Andes and hopefully at enough altitude to keep us somewhat cool. We are also hoping that we have better luck at the wineries in Chilecito and Mendoza than we had here in Cafayate.

Posted by Matthew on January 1st, 2008 | Filed under: Argentina | 1 Comment »

I suppose I should also note that on November 10, 2007, Cindy and I became aunt and uncle to this little guy:

Braden Christopher Fisher is his name, and he’s surely the only kid on his block wearing booties from Guatemala (guess who sent him those!). We’re looking forward to making his acquaintance when we return.

Posted by Matthew on December 31st, 2007 | Filed under: General | 1 Comment »

Here is a picture of our favorite kitty, enjoying the holiday season. And even though her mom and dad spent a couple of nights sleeping with another kitten at Ramon’s house in Salta, it was just a meaningless fling…

Posted by Matthew on December 31st, 2007 | Filed under: Cat Blogging | No Comments »