Aimogasta & Iguazu

Cycling with Ben and Sylvie has been a bit of a revelation for us, and we have rediscovered the possibilities open to us when we leave before 11 in the morning!! This has meant we've regularly been managing 100k days and have achieved our biggest day so far of 125km! Being in a group pf 4 has also given us more accomodation options, and we've been able to intersperse the wild camping with some rather lovely cabana's and taking every opportunity to perfect the art of Asado making.
The road has been mainly red rock and cactus lined desert - we're at a similar latitude to central Australia, and this may be why the area seems not disimilar to that surrounding Ayres rock! It has been entirely different from the barren windswept deserts of Southern Patagonia.


With the extra days off resulting from the trip to the lagoon we were glad to be back on the bikes again, planning to divide the 130km trip to Aimogasta into 2 days. Unfortunately, just 40km out of Aimogasta Sylvie developed a re-occurrence of a knee injury (exacerbated by some very challenging sandy ripio on the way into Chilecito) and she and Ben were forced to take a ride into town rather than cycling with us (a lucky escape from an unexpected heavy headwind!!)






In Aimogasta we had arranged to meet Dom&Michelle, (a South African couple we had previously met in Coiyhaique), thinking that as the route becomes increasingly challenging as we head North it would be nice to travel in a larger group for a while. Also Ja has a provisional date for starting a new contract in London, and in planning his exit strategy is keen not leave me making a solo border crossing into Bolivia!

With Sylvie needing at least a week off to recover, and Ja and I keen not to lose our new friends (and motivational coaches/guides), the 6 of us decided to take some time out and make the trip East to Iguazu to see the falls.

It would take an awful lot to make a 60 hour coach ride worthwhile, but luckily Iguazu is awesome enough to manage to do just that!!

The sheer scale of the falls can only really be appreciated by taking a trip into brazil where they can be viewed from afar in their entirety. This year there has been flooding in Brazil, and where the falls would normally have 1700 cubic meters of water falling per second, at the moment they have an incredible 7 times that amount, with 13000 cubic meters of water per second!!! This meant that many areas of the falls usually open to be explored were too dangerous to get close to; whole sections of the park were closed due to the sheer volume of water passing through. Even some of the areas that were open were impassable due to the falls spilling over onto them! I think it was a fairly unique experience to be able to walk underneath part of the falls!

It was a truly incredible sight and after spending the day in the Argentinian Iguazu national park, by night fall we had it nearly to ourselves except for the local inhabitants!!

After such an epic trip we were hugely disappointed to discover that Sylvie's knee was not yet strong enough to start cycling again. Unfortunately, (after nearly 1000 hard, sandy and thoroughly enjoyable kms together), as Ja has so little time left and is keen to get as far north as possible before leaving, we made the difficult decision to push on and hope that Ben&Sylvie will catch us again in a week or so, when fully recovered.

In their favour with this task is the likelyhood that we will slip back into our old tardy ways without their good influence, and the increasing evidence that Dom&Michelle share our enjoyment of the Argentinian vino and need very little encouragement to make the most of the opportunities afforded to partake in it; there may be a few more bodega visits to book in en route!!

Chilecito and Laguna Bravo

From Talampaya we continued northwards on hot and dusty roads to Chilecito, from where we decided to take a side trip up into the astonishing landscapes of the Parque Nacional Laguna Brava; a salt water lagoon on the altiplana at 4200m, surrounded by copper and iron coloured desert rocks. This is the highest we have been so far in South America (although I confess we were in a 4x4 rather than on the bikes !!), but we must have been reasonably well acclimatised from having been cycling above 2000m for the last week, as none of us experienced any problems with the altitude.

More bitey things ...Scorpions, Spiders and Sdinosaurs...

Since our last update we seem to have spent a disproportionate amount of time encountering a variety of biting, stinging and generally horribly venomous creatures. This started in Mendoza where we had arranged to meet up with Ben&Sylvie, a French couple cycling around the world on recumbents, and where Sylvie and I (in yet another dog related incident) were attacked by what was supposed to be a pet dog. Unfortunately as it was significantly larger than the hair bobbled kitten-dogs of previous attacks, it was therefore able to do significantly more damage than a slight nip to the ankles, thankfully he was pulled off before it got too serious.

Meeting Ben&Sylvie was a slight change of plan, as we had thought we would take a bus all the way up to Salta with a view to avoiding another lengthy ride through the desert and pampa of Northern Argentina. However we then heard that the route although predominantly desert, was actually really beautiful, and so decided we would instead take a short(ish) bus ride to Mendoza and continue the ride from there. It was a very bizarre experience to be on a bus, covering kilometres without moving the legs at all!! We were actually rather sad not to be cycling it, and speeding through all that countryside without really getting to see it properly really highlighted how much better it is to be travelling by bike!

Mendoza is Argentinas most famous wine region, and we took some time over the Easter weekend to take a tour of some of the local bodegas around Maipu, before leaving for San Jaun on the Ruta 40.

San Jaun was memorable only for being the site of the most disastrous haircut since 1992 (the self inflicted undercut using a pair of pinking shears and a bic razor). It turns out that signing that you only want a tiny amount of hair trimmed off, whilst repeating 'solo un poco' can easily be misinterpreted as 'please cut off all of my hair and leave me looking like a bad 80's throwback'. All photos from now on will have the addition of my new hat.


From San Jaun we rode through increasingly harsh and arid desert, towards the town of Chilecito, via the UNESCO world heritage sites of Ischigualasto and Talampaya. These are national parks in which the prehistoric desert rock has been eroded by the wind to form amazing sculptures and towers, and where there have been some important fossil discoveries of dinosaurs. Ischigualasto is also know as the Valle de Luna, which is very apt as both sites have a distinct 'other world' type of feel to them; camping and walking around them feels like being on a film set for something set on the moon or Mars.
Camping in Talampaya as the sun went down and bathed the desert around us in red light, whilst the foxes prowled around us was quite a magical experience. (The enormous spider we found under the tent the following morning was less magical, especially after we found out that she was extremely venomous...although not as venomous as the second scorpion of the trip who we spotted as he made his way towards my toes, and who we understand would have made us quite ill if he'd chosen to sting!).



The poverty has been much more marked outside of the towns as we get further North, presumably in part due to the lack of water for agriculture, however we continue to experience great hospitality wherever we go, being invited to camp on peoples land, offered fruit and drinks as we cycle along, and the novelty of the recumbent bicycles attracting a huge amount of curiosity and interest wherever we go.

Below is a selection of photos from the Talampaya and Ischigualasto national parks.

The 500 charity Kilometers

We left Bariloche and took a fairly circuitous route around the region known as the seven lakes, in order to try and spend time at each one, and clock up a few kms for the Red Cross appeal. The cycling around the region is fairly challenging; a lot of very undulating, unpaved routes with miles and miles of road works where they are trying to improve the ripio, and the lakes themselves largely hidden from view most of the time. That said, when off the road and by the lakes themselves the region couldn't be more beautiful. As the holiday season has now officially ended the area was almost deserted, and we had entire lakes to ourselves for camping and fishing! It was a shame to move on, and we were very tempted to take a week off to explore further, but decided in the end to push on for San Martin de Los Andes. Here we did take a couple of days off, after finding a hostal full of other cyclists, we spent some time servicing the bikes, cooking (always such a nice change after eating food off the MSR for any length of time), and exchanging tips for route planning.


We had previously thought it wouldn't be possible to go back into Chile and that we would continue instead through Argentina, however we had really wanted to visit the Lanin and Villarica Volcanoes via Pucon and as we heard from other travellers that this was still possible, decided to take a little 260km detour across the border in order to do so. As with all such Andean border crossings, it turns out there are a couple of hills to navigate enroute, and crossing twice in a week, although memorable, is probably not something we will repeat in the near future!

The terromoto in Pucon was felt at 7.6, and being at the foot of the very active Villarica volcono the majority of people we spoke to were deeply traumatised not only from the quake itself, but from the belief that the volcano itself was erupting. People described the roads literally waving up and down as if made of jelly, the buildings moving so much that it was impossible to stand, and a general belief that it was the start of the end of their world. Incredibly only four people died in the area, and the majority of buildings remained intact. The only visible remnants of the quake we saw were a couple of land slides onto the roads and in areas where the roads are paved they were often split down the middle for extensive stretches. In general however it was amazing how everyone seemed to be getting back on with their lives, after what was such a terrible natural disaster.

From Pucon we decided to climb the 2800m Villarica Volcano; one of the most active volcanos in South America, (it last erupted in 1984 and there are huge black rivers carved down the sides of the mountain from the the lava streams that ran down it!). This has probably been one of the most incredible things we have done so far on our travels; the climb itself was relatively easy, and provided the most amazing views of the surrounding lakes and volcanoes. The crater at the top was like something from another planet, it was incredibly toxic - very difficult to breathe due to the amount of sulphur and phosphur gases being emitted, and looking down into it felt like looking into the core of the earth!! I was only slightly disappointed not to be able to see a big pool of red bubbling magma at the bottom!
We took the quick route down (throwing ourselves down the snow on our bums!!) which was very funny, and meant I finally got chance to try out an ice axe arrest! (although unfortunately still not christening the axe Ja got me for Christmas last year).

We had a couple of long (100km) and what felt like very difficult days back into Argentina crossing the Andes at the Icalma border (1300m, but undulating so felt more!). Two notable events occured here; firstly Ja's worst fears were realised when he was attacked by a pack of four dogs, and ironically he was not armed with any of the many defensive sticks/sprays/alarms he still insists on carrying. My sympathy for him lessened somewhat when I discovered the dogs he described attacking him turned out to be no bigger than your average kitten, and were the house pets of a hotel owner, all were identical to the one pictured here in its full viciousness - two of them even wore pink hair bobbles. Even Ja admitted with hindsight that 'attack' might have been the wrong adjective.

Secondly we discovered the wonders of the monkey puzzle tree (or pehuén), which is native to the region, and at this time of year is full of the piñones seeds that the native Pehuench peoples were named after. The nuts are like a cross between pine nuts and chestnuts, and taste amazing either roasted or boiled. Collecting them became strangely compulsive and seemed to put us back in touch with our hunter gatherer roots (it reminded me a lot of collecting conkers when we were children, except even better as they are edible) and before we knew it we had managed to weigh ourselves down even further with about 3 kilos of the things. We are now planing a pehuench dinner party, and desperately trying to think of recipes to use them up!!

We have managed to clock up 700 kms since leaving Bariloche, and are close to having raised the £500 we had hoped to raise and donate to the Red Cross Chilean earthquake disaster appeal. Thank you so much to everyone who so generously donated, and Richard you will be pleased to hear that at least 200 of them were uphill, with a headwind and on bad ripio, so I reckon we earned it ;-)

We now plan to jump further North, to Mendoza, where we are meeting a French couple Ben&Sylvie, who we will cycle with for a bit before heading up into Bolivia.