Rodeo - Villa Union -Chile Cito -Cafayate - Salta
link to the map
Hi all,
It is a bit more than one month that our bike tour is finished. Arthur is since the beginning of May back to "norma lworking life" in Lausanne and Ilaria, still in nomadic mood, just finished to travel through the USA Nationals Parks and is now kind of settled for few days in San Francisco.
Now is definitely the time to take the time for counting you the last part of our story!
Let's remember the facts. Close to the end of March we passed in Argentina crossing the Paso Agua Negra and now (well sometimes ago, but we speak at the present tima as the souvenir in our mind are strong as if it was just yesterday...) we are on the eastern side of the Andes.
First pueblo on our road: Rodeo...mainly famous not for the horse riding but for...wind surfing!
Arthur began wind surfing last year on the Leman lake...waiting weeks and weeks for good winds...15 nodes were there the best affordable conditions... but here in this "zona de viento" every day is 30 to 40 nods!!!
Basically windsurf PARADISE!!!!
You say windy???
Are you ready?
Let's go!!!!!!!!!!!!
We stay few days in this mecca of the windsurf. Meeting strange and interesting people:
With JuanJo, the local Richard Geere!
Enjoyingtime at the Lamaral Hostel
We leave Rodeo late in the morning. The landscape is mineral and very very dry.
Does it rain here?
The guy of the hostel say us that until the next village it's only down hill, 40 km in 1 hour!!!
Sounds easy isn't it?...
....If just would be true...
First part of the supposed downhill...
Good by Rodeo Lake, we'll be back...maybe...
Nice erosion...
But as it doesn't rain so much here...another natural element should create this wonderful erosion..maybe the wind???
In fact the area along the lake famous for wind surfing is reasonably called "Cuesta del viento"....but also this rock formations where we are passing close by have a quite explicit name:
Los templos del viento...
The guy was right, now it's down hill along the river (the lake is made by a dam)...but we are "accompanied" by a really strong front wind...unexpected here, isn't it?
We must pedal hard almost as we have done in Terra del Fuego...welcome back in Argentina!
Down hill, but front wind!
We finally join San Jose de Jachal and decide to continue. We cross a green valley with many ancient houses in adobe.
Adobe are bricks made, in general, with straw, water and sandy clay. They are the tipicalconstruction material used in this northen part of Argentina (but in many many other parts of the world as well). They have really good isolation properties and they are a really cheap construction material as all the necessary ingredients are just aroud us. Moreover the hauses looks then really aesthetic and perfectly integrated in the landscapewhichas, of course, very similar colours!
To know more: link
The tipical adobe houses
Althought it's quite late the light and the temperature are now so nice that we decide to continue. The landscape continue changing and at a certain point we reach a big rocky wall with a very narrow tunnel...
A strange tunnel...
...which leads us to a wonderful scenary with an amazing sunset light!
Happy rider in sunset light...
At the end we realize that we are at the top of a plateau and with the really final light of the day we go down in the colourful plane jst in front of us...
A winding downhill and an oniric landscape to coclude our day trip...
Down the slope is a police station and, as in Terra del Fuego, we are nicely welcomesby the local argentinian policemen. They offer us beers, meat, their kitchen to cook and a place where to put our the tent.
Argentinian police station...one of the best accomodation of the country!
Today we aim to reach Villa Union, approximately 100km northward. The road is flat, straight and paved and go through a broad valley...no villages neither hauses.... We cross really few vehicles, mostly pickups driving toward the only thing attracting our attention in this not really exciting strech of the tour: a huge mine. One of the hundreads disseminated in the area as we will see later on...
Behind the montain, dust from mineral extraction.
After 75km we are finally again on the road 40 where we rode the first time several thousands km ago in Patagonia!
Next time in Harley Davidson on Road 66...
The next city to reach tomorrow is Chile Cito on the other side of a snowy and majestic 6000 mountain.
Are we sure we want o cross this mountain?
The road is actually turning around the summit.
The road starts pretty flat passing through nice red rock formations... doesn't look so hard for the moment...
Which will be the next difficulty?
Flat all around...
After this soft initial part we have now to attack the famous Cuesta di Miranda...
First on asphalt
Than red nice ripio
In the middle of the cactus
The road gets steeper and steeper and the wind increases getting close to a narrow passage carved in the mountain: the Venturi effect works against us...
Last efforts against the wind ...
Here we are at the pass!!!!
And now let's just relax with a 30km downhill!
Down in the canyon
On a really scenic road
And finally back on asphalt
At Chile Cito we spend few days meeting other cyclists, writing the blog and making some city seeing. In between we visit themuseum of the Cable Carril: the aerial ropeway that ran from Chilecito to the gold mines in La Mejicana, high up in the Andes. Builted in 1904 by a german company, it is 36 km long and ended at an elevation of 4600 m asl, making it the longest and highest ropeway on the planet at that time. Even today, its vertical height of 3528 meters remains unchallenged!
Despite the uniqueness of this masterpiece of engineering, no funding from the argentinian governement are devoted to the preservation of it. The existence of a museum and the preservation works are only thanks to the guy in the photo here below: the nephew of one of the last generation of miners who worked in this place...
(for the german speakers here are some extra interesting details: link )
At the cable carril museum
Nowaday the mines are dismissed, but La Mejicana (which was, according to the guy of the museum, the famous El Dorado) and the rest of the mountain chain called Famatina is still attracting many multinational mining companies which hope to open a new enourmous open sky mine...
This idea doesn't like at all to the people of ChileCito and all the villages at the foot of those "gold" mountains because of the enormous environmental and social problems that the so called "megamineria" would imply: link
Till to now the people manage to throw out all the companies which tried to start any kind of mining activity in the area (link), but till when they will manage to fight against such strong economical and political preassures?
Water yes, gold no!!!
No we know as well...
We continue riding at the feet of those mountains of peace and disputes...
...and we feel so smalls on earth...
In this interesting region we learn a lot discussing with people, before about the mining issues and now about the everyday life with this unusual couple...
Grandfather with the little child searching for their donkeys.
Cactus along the road are really big: like real trees.
Hope it won't fall now...
The next difficulty of the trip is the Cuesta di Zapata: an ancient trail built by the Inca, succesively trasformed in part of the Ruta 40, but nowaday closed to cars because of too bad conditions...
We camp just at the biginning of the canyon where the rouad climbs up.
Nice campsite
...with full equiped kitchen...
...sunset with cactuses while preparing dinner...
...and full moon night...What asking more to life?!?
After a good sleepingnigntwe are ready for the Cuesta!
On the ancient inca trail
Up and up and still up on an amazing road
Sometimes a bit too stony...
...sometimes on the sand from the seasonal rivers which cut the trail...
....sometimes close to the crateres left from the seasonal rivers below the trail...
...but in any case a really really nice ride!
At 17.00 in the afternoon we finally reach Londres making the record of the shortest bike strech in the longest time: 20km in 5 hours!!!!
To relax after this quite strenous day we offer us a forbidden night visit at the Inca site of "El Schincal".
At the light of the full moon, in the middle of this ancient ruins where the only sound is the cricket sing, we feel like in a dream...
With the moon as only guide light...
Under the stars...
Salta is now not so far anymore as well as the famous andean altipianos. Today we will the first of them!
We ride until the night with a strong back wind and around us big 5000 m mountains.
Riding on the Altiplano.
Not snow, but sand!
As protection against the wind getting colder and colder (without realizing it, we reach almost 2500m!) , we finally put up the tent lose to the unique structure we find in the middle of this totally flat and wild altopiano.
Where can we put the tent???
Finally safe from the wind!
Breakfast in the sunrise
The day after we descend along the Valles Calchaquíes, a region still populated by a lot of diaguitas native comunities. The Quilmes one is famous in the whole Argentinabeing their name associated to the most popular brand beer of the country, but we discover that really few people know why. Actually this is one of the few comunity which resisted with tenacity against, first, the Inca invasors and then the spanish ones till when they were all deported in Buenos Aires hoping in this way to definitely destroy their strong and rooted culture....
There are the ruins of their ancient city of Quilmes and the interesting Pachamama museum dedicated to their culture.
The Pachamama (Mother Earth).
Praying mask toward the sunset...
In the recent decades some of the descendent of the Quilmes gather back in their origin land and now it exist a new Quilme. We arrive there at Easter and we were invited from a nice couple of craftsmen to celebrate with them and put our tent in their land.
With our gentle Quilmes hosts.
Our Easter campsite .
The day after we reach the famousArgentinian wine region of Cafayate.
How is the red wine here?
After only 40km we can't resist to the temptation of trying the local wine production and we stop in the lovely village of Cafayate for a delicious and copious lunch accompanied by a wonderful bottle of Malbec.
With a name like this we can't continue without lunch!
Obviously no way to continue pedal in the afternoon...so better continue profiting with some extra enogastronomic testing and some good local music!
Enjoying hurban life with our new argentinian friend.
Next day we are not really in perfect shape, but we still decide to continue cycling.
Now less than 200 km are left from our final arrival point, Salta!
From Cafayeate we have two possibilities:
Option 1: Asphalt road along the beautiful Quebrada della Conchas.
Option 2: Ripio road again along the beautiful Valles Calchaquíes.
Beautiful for beautiful and given the after party body condition we take the asphalt road....
...and we definitely get not disappointed by our choice!
Nice landscapes...
...nice rock formations...
...nice cliffs...
....and nice animals...
What asking more?
Maybe a bit of climbing over this incredible sandstone structures which remind us the Wadi Rum in Jordan...
But here is not allowed...
Better just have a break and enjoy the view!
One, two, three... Smile!
The Quebrada is wonderful but the temperature is in the middle of the day pretty high, luckily we find a natural schelter...prretty amazing...
The devil gorge
...where we can have a relaxing lunch accompanied by some live music!
Concert in a rock amphitheatre
The canyon likes us so much that we didn't realize the time passing and the weather changing...
Now we really have to hurry a bit...
Luckily we manage to find a small village and other gentle people which let us planting the tent in their land just before a big storm comes over our head...
Tomorrow we will reach Salta and finish our bike travel.
This is the plan, but...read the next article!
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