Dried chile anyone?
Greenery finally!
After a month in high desert, it is hard to describe how amazing it was to see flowers and rivers and life again
Yes, that is our road...alright!!
We made it to the end of Paso Jama, but part of my sanity will always be lost forever there amongst the sand and vicuna. Never ever again! We crossed into the Argentinean territory and kindly the border guards allowed us to take in our potatoes as long as we cooked them that night. We stayed in an abandoned house behind a gas station and enjoyed feeling like we were inside for a change as the house had a roof and door. Still, 4500 meters is very cold at night.
We debated about the route we would take through the country. Argentina has a plethora of roads and we could actually not decide where to go! Finally we decided we took a ¨shortcut¨ down to route 40 through a salt flat. The road was more sandy that salty, but worth the effort for the feeling of being completely cut-off from the outside world. We spent more lovely nights camped isolated outside with just us, the stars and a wind break. We were running low on drinking water and so to save it we had pasta boiled with water from the salt flat…very tasty!
An example of Argentina: We made it to San Antonio de Los Cobres and here we found a small nice hotel. We talked with the owner about finding a cheaper rate for us and the 83 year old woman agreed to let us sleep in a constructed room for a half rate. She also let us wash our clothes and when we told her we like to make bread she said ¨I have an oven, you can make bread in there.¨ She was just too kind with us, and when we told her our route south she said ¨you are going to meet just the nicest people over there.¨ That is quite the opposite as to what people usually tell us, which is often that ¨people down the road are bad, but they are good here.¨ But, thus far people have been so nice to us here in Argentina.
Then we climbed our last 4900 meter pass. Abra del Acay is a sand road winding up to the top of the high desert with a descent into a green beautiful valley filled with farmers, trees and streams falling out of the Andes. Merilee and I were in paradise as we reveled in running water and the greenery. The descent was quite hairy though as an unstable road clung to the side of big drop-offs. Go brakes go!!! We had to stop and give our hands a rest from gripping the breaks so much! We made it safely though and also ran into the first cyclists going our way! Connie and Andreas are a couple from Germany on their vacation from work cycling around northern Chile and Argentina. We rode with them for two days from Saladillo to Cachi (where we are now). The first day we were headed to a small town. When it finally appeared about 10 kilometers off the main rode and in a round about way we decided to pool our food and water resources together and ride on. We made it to a small town, El Rodeo, and camped behind a community center and the next day rode into Cachi. We enjoyed two nights together having dinner and talking about any which thing. They invited us to dinner the second night. So cheers to Connie and Andreas for several lovely days together! Happy journey!!
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