Welcome to Patagonia

Lakes are meant to be calm!

We're in Patagonia! And for the last couple of days we've been getting the traditional Patagonian welcome. Wind. I've decided that I prefer hills to wind. Hills are marked on a map, they're predictable when you're on them, and they're much quieter. Yesterday we covered 25 miles in about 7 hours. The road was awful and there was quite a bit of uphill, but the real problem was the 35mph head wind which slowed us to walking pace for most of the day. It can turn what should be a pleasant, short ride into a long and hard day. This morning we experienced the flip side as we had the wind behind us as we cycled from our lovely, sheltered, campsite at Lago Lolog to San Martin de Los Andes. We had planned to be here by lunch and got here in time for coffee. It doesn't mean I've forgiven the wind for yesterday though.

The view from bed in Villa Pehuenia

We're now in the heart of the Argentine Lake District, which is definately the most beautiful area of Argentina we've seen so far. Since the last post we cycled through the famous (in the world of wine...) Uco Valley in Mendoza, spending a few days in a small town called Tupungato where we had a couple of wonderful gourmet meals at vineyards. We then caught a bus down to the lakes, via Zapala to Villa Pehuenia, a small village in the quiet northern region of the district, on the bank of Lago Alumine. We arrived late and the hostel we planned to stay in was full so we ended up a place nearby called Posada la Escondida. It was the most incredible hotel we've stayed in - the kind of place where they make your bed in the morning, then re-make it (for sleeping, with chocolates and candles) while you're having your evening meal. Mental. Our room was a couple of metres from the lake so we had the most wonderful view from bed; so great I actually got up at 6:30 to take photos.

A typical road through the lake district
 (sometimes there are lakes too)

Since then we've done quite a bit of camping (our way of paying off the hotel bill...), including our first night wild camping next to the Alumine river. We spent a couple of nights in the 'trout fishing capital' Junin de Los Andes, where we tried our hand at fly fishing. Unfortunately the trout are protected so I had to throw back the one I caught, but we got to keep the perch that Marion caught. The restaurants there will cook your fish for you, so we went to a lovely place on the plaza, perch in a plastic bag, and they served it up with garlic chips and a bottle of wine. mmmm.

We're going to stay a day here in San Martin before heading down La Ruta de Siete Lagos (route of 7 lakes). This is a 3-day ride through apparently some of the best scenery in the lake district. It should be wonderful, but at the moment we're just praying for the wind to stop!

Our wine tasting holiday

It's been a while since we last posted. Our excuse is that we were hoping to bring you a guest author, but she never quite got round to writing anything and has now left us for Guatemala.

The stars from Leoncito Observatory

As you'll be able to see from the map and photos, we've been quite busy for the last few weeks - though haven't done a great deal of cycling. We have seen the stars from an Argentine observatory, visited Cordoba, met up with Lou, toured about 12 vineyards in San Juan and Mendoza (and tasted countless wines), ridden through El Zonda (not fun), done a couple of Spanish classes, gone to Chile, been to the beach, and lost a camera.

One of many oaking rooms!

We're now back in Mendoza having bussed over the Andes this morning. The camera has been replaced and I'm just waiting to hear how much of the crazy Chilean camera price my insurance will cover. As well as being back in Argentina, we're back on our own again after almost 2 weeks with Lou's wonderful company!

As she joined us for the Mendoza period we, unsurprisingly, spent most of our 'holiday' time visiting vineyards and tasting wine. The vineyards around Mendoza are just amazing. We spent a few days in Maipu, a small suburb of Mendoza where there are 30+ bodegas (vineyards). A typical visit involves a short tour of the bodega, with an explanation of how the wines are made and how their specific processes or techniques differ from those of other bodegas, followed by a tasting where you may get anything from 1-5 wines (sometimes for free). We've been learning everything from the different effect French oak has on the flavour vs American oak, to the optimum direction in which to plant the vines. It's definitely given us a flavour for good wine though I still don't think I can always pick the malbec from the cab sauv. More practice is required.

The beach at Vina del Mar

After a few days in Mendoza we headed over to Chile where we left Lou to get her plane from Santiago. Marion and I then headed for the beach at Viña del Mar and Valparaiso. It was great to see the sea and the wonderfully creative street art in Valparaiso. Unfortunately the Pacific around there at this time of year is very cold so there was no swimming, but we got a good dose of sun and sand.

Tomorrow we're going to try to sort out the next part of the trip: a few days in the Uco valley for some more wine tasting, before we head south for a change of scenery (and temperature) in the Lake District.

Marion and Valparaiso graffiti

Stranded

It's Tuesday and we're stuck in a fancy hotel in the middle of scrubland. We've got practically our 1st views of the snow capped Andes - but the mountains are some distance away.

We cycled 10 miles yesterday, incredibly gently, from incredibly windy Rodeo. Pob's knee is still grissly despite throwing our precious bikes around in the bottom of a few buses and 2 days enforced bed-rest in Rodeo after a poisonous ham and cheese pizza.

There are worse places to be stuck. The hotel is built around an indoor thermal bath complex - fluffy white dressing gowns, optional treatments, that kind of thing. The smart restaurant serves fittingly health-conscious food, but you can still get a greasy steak if you ask nicely. It costs about 5 times as much as our usual hostel, but thankfully they take credit cards, especially important because yesterday the Rodeo cashpoint was out of cash.

The next town is 25 miles away - currently unbikable but with buses leaving daily at 4am. We'd just got our heads round this to book tickets when the concierge remembered that it's a national holiday tomorrow, for the national census, so there's no bus til Thursday. So two more days of lazing about for us. Hopefully some supporting thermal water will do Pob's knee some good.

Disco chicken and all-you-can-eat beef

We're now in a small town called Guandacol, and we got here by bus from Villa Union. I've damaged my  knee somehow - not badly, but bad enough that the odd day off here and there hasn't been enough for it  to recover, and each cycle seems to make it worse. So we're having some proper rest time and will  probably bus the next couple of trips. It seems that when cycling heavy bikes up hills, your body  doesn't complain about pushing it too hard till the morning after when it's too late!

Marion on the Miranda Pass

The cycle into Villa Union was wonderful, over the Miranda Pass. It was the toughest climb so far, but  the mountain scenery was spectacular - much better when seen from a bike than from the 4x4 a couple of  days before! We also had an entire afternoon of downhill, which was nice.

Villa Union is a junction town, only mentioned in passing by the Lonely Planet. There are a  handful of posh hotels on the outskirts which we assume are used by car-tourists as a base for seeing  the national parks. We stayed in a slightly less posh (though still had cable TV!) place in the  centre, thinking the best restaurant(s) would be in town. It turned out the best restaurant was  actually a couple of km out of town, by the  posh hotels which, with hindsight, makes sense.

The wonderful menu at La Palmera

'La  Palmera' is the kind of place whose menu consists of meat, wine, and desserts - really. Not only that,  but the meat options (which include the fantastically named disco chicken) are 'libre' - all you can  eat. We were served by an Argentine version of Bruce Forsyth who was single handedly waiting on the 30  or so guests. He managed this by using a persuasion technique which involved telling you what you  wanted, rather than asking. This way he could make sure everyone ordered the same thing so the parilla  (BBQ) in the back could work much more efficiently. So we both had all-you-can-eat Beef ribs, and a  bottle of Malbec. To be honest it's what we'd have ordered anyway which is probably why he gets away  with it.

Tomorrow we're going to try our luck at hitch hiking. We need to get down to San Hose de Jachal next  and there are no buses (it's in the next province and it seems there's not a huge amount of  cooperation between Argentine provinces). For now, we're going to enjoy the rest of the evening  sitting outside the local hotel. The owner has just turned up with a bag of beef. Things are looking  up :)

The heat on the way to Villa Union

Being proper tourists

Hola chicos,

This is my second attempt after I started typing to you 2 days ago during some kind of dry gale (what do you call it when there's loads of wind but no rain?) but then the TV aerial got fixed so I got distracted...

Chilecito has a cactus botanical garden 

We've just arrived in Chilecito for the second time after a bout of being Normal Tourists.  Pob had a sore knee after our last 200km through the wilderness from Belen, so we decided to make the most of a pause by checking into the best hotel and testing out the local heladerias and the local wine cooperativo. Apparently 25% of Argentinian wine exported to the UK comes from this province (La Rioja), and the best comes from this local coop, but the bottles often get labelled in the UK.

After visiting the local sites (this seemed more topical 2 days ago), we decided against a looong cycling detour to visit the more distant sites on the basis of time and Pob's knee. So we joined an  Argentinian couple from Rosario travelling in comfort to visit some mighty impressive rocks that were around before the dinosaurs were.

The trip from Belen to here wasn't quite so cushy, despite entirely paved roads.  We had a short ride to Londres (to be honest it's got more in common with Colaton Raleigh than London - well kept gardens, chatty locals, a stream...)

A cycle blog from 2004 told us about a hostel in a place on our route called Salicas that provided one of the worst breakfasts of their trip. We went there on Saturday night cos it's useful to know of the existence of hostels when travelling slowly through expanses of desert.  We got there to find extensive preparations for a Halloween-themed birthday party (on 9th Oct).  The owner told us only one room wasn't being used by the party-makers and it just happened to be the one right next to the party room.  We the party started at midnight and Pob tells me it went on until 7.30am, so we had a late start the next day. The hostel manager felt so guilty for all the noise he wouldn't let us pay anything for our stay.  

The next night we stayed in Pituil, again using the 2004 blog that informed us of a hostel run by an 84yr-old.  We weren't quite sure if the 90yr old would still be in business in 2010... But we got there and were relieved to find a hostel sign on the door, but after waiting outside her house for some time we discovered she was out of town!  We set about trying to find a place to stay and ended up in someone's front yard (too dusty to call it a garden) who again out right refused any money.

Tomorrow we're heading up towards the beautiful Miranda pass, and I know it's great cos we drove over it on our tour yesterday, but happily neither of us minds seeing it again at a slower pace.  After that we're torn between visiting the beautiful but barren Calingasta valley (check out the population density) or taking some paved, inhabited, but comparitively boring roads down to San Juan.  If you want to know what we chose before the next blog post, keep an eye on the map which Pob updates whenever he can.

Ruta 40... so far

I'm not sure I'm really qualified to write a post about the RN 40 (Ruta Nacional 40) yet, given that we've only cycled about 200 miles of it, but I'm going to anyway.

The RN40 runs the length of western Argentina and along its way the surface varies from new tarmac to sand. Since the last blog post we've had 4 days on it, and passed through Santa Maria, Punta de Balasto (a night camping in a churchyard), Hualfin, and Belen. In the first couple of days from Cafayate we encountered an 18 mile section which is in the process of being paved. This means that the 'camino consolidado' (basically hard packed gravel and sand) was closed for resurfacing and instead we were cycling on a temporary road of sand, which isn't easy on a bike weighing 40kg.

This isn't a road

About 20 miles before Hualfin we got our first experience of the real unpaved RN40, and it's not at all pleasant for cycling. The road is grit and sand compacted by cars and trucks, and weathered by the wind, so you get a choice of cycling on the washboard bumps, or in the deeper sand to the side of the tyre tracks. It's pretty clear we can't keep up the distances we need if the road is in that kind of condition, and each map we see tells us something different about which parts of the road are paved, which doesn't help! Anyway, for now it's back to tarmac at least until Chiliceto.

Whether paved or not, the road has been pretty spectacular so far, and is infintely more interesting to cycle than the alternative RN38 through endless crop fields. It also attracts more travellers. We've met a bunch of German bikers who were going round the world - they started in 2007, and yesterday met an Argentine cyclist with a very interesting stove who we spent the day with.

We're in Belen at the moment, resting up for a couple of days, stocking up on steak (today is a 2-day) and plotting the next part of the route.

On the wine trail

We've travelled about 200km and have been resting in Cafayate for the last 3 days. It's a slow-paced pretty town famous for its Torrontes white wine. They even have a place that sells Torrontes ice cream, which works surprisingly well.

So far the cycling is really great fun. I was enjoying it so much on day 3 that i was mentally preparing my top 10 reasons why travelling by bike is best... but then I got a puncture so that particular blog post will have to wait (and besides, I'd only got to number 7).

We left Salta after a 5 day intensive Spanish course, and were both pleased when we got beyond the motorways to the open road, with few cars on the ruta 68. On Tuesday we took a small detour to a reservoir/holiday resort before heading to La Posta de las Cabras - as recommended by Andrea.

Wednesday's ride through the Quebrada de Cafayate was wonderful despite involving 57 miles and a 600m climb. But we had a 15mph tailwind which basically pushed us up the hills. I'm not saying I wasn't tired at the end of it, but the journey seems less daunting than previously.

On arrival in Cafayte we reached the end of Ruta 68 and turned onto Ruta Nacional 40 - this will be our main road most of the way south. The Lonely Planet can't mention RN40 without preceding it with the word 'spectacular' but if we mention it to the locals they tend to try to persuade us to take the larger less interesting roads through the cities, or to take a bus.

Today we had a delicous lunch of picadas (literally chopped up things) at a vineyard at 1850m.