The rest of our little holiday in Mendoza was spent relaxing, eating, sleeping and enjoying ourselves. We're really pretty good at all those things now, especially the eating. The only thing worth mentioning was that we went bowling one night and I scored 155. This is without a doubt, the greatest sporting acheivement of my entire life, including cycling (half-way) up South America.
J had planned to start riding again with us from Mendoza, but unfortunately, a day or two before pushing off, the knee went bad again and all cycling was off the agenda for a while... But Rich and I forced ourselves out of our lovely hostel and got on the road again.
We were able to put in some really big days after leaving town, and with some flattish roads and some beautiful, beautiful tailwinds, we managed a couple of days over 165km! The scenery changed quickly North of Mendoza, and within a few days we we were riding through Valle Fertil; compared to the dusty scrubbiness we'd been used to for so long, the sight of a valley covered in green bushes, trees and grass was really quite something. Its all relative of course, as it was still really dry and scrubby, and all the greenery was thorny and spiney rather than lush and leafy, but it was a welcome change!
We had our first real spate of punctures along this stretch, as the ground was full of spines... 4 punctures in the first week out of town. The punctures were more of an irritation than a real problem though and we're getting quicker at fixing them all the time.
In Valle Fertil, we were surprised to find a huge car rally going on. Thousands of people had descended on this fairly small town to watch hundreds of cars in dozens of classes, tearing round the dirt roads. Our day off there was brilliant, as the atmosphere was amazing, the driving was crazy, the weather was hot and the beers were cold. Had a great day, just sitting around and soaking it all up.
Valle de la Luna was the next stop on our list; a bit of a Jurassic Park, where hundreds of dinosaur fossils have been found over the last century. Also, it looks a bit like the moon, hence the clever name. We had to camp at the guard post overnight as there was no space to go on a tour (we had to wait for cars with spaces to go on the guided tour of the valley) but when we forced ourselves onto a minibus in the morning, the Valley was worth the wait. The Valle Pintada (Painted valley) is the small area that gave the whole area its Lunar name, as it really is eerily bleak and the rocks form some crazy shapes, like the completely naturally-formed spherical rocks we saw in one area. We didn't get to see Richard Attenborough saying 'come on my pretties' in the hatching room though, which was a massive disappointment.
More of an issue than the punctures was when the sidewall on my back tyre broke. A bit of gaffer tape did the job for a few days, but it had to be replaced with a new cheapo tyre in Catamarca. Catamarca was the windiest place we'd come to since southern Patagonia and we had a tough day getting into town, battling the headwinds (treated ourselves to a hostel bed that night
. Also, Catamarca was odd because of the unbelievable number of pregnant women there. It was ridiculous. Pretty much every woman of child-bearing age (and some who probably weren't) was busy bearing a child. We weren't sure if there'd been a huge powercut 9 months ago or something, but if not, then it looks like Catamarca is building an army.
One big climb and one big downhill later, we were out of Valle fertil and we descended into another totally new landscape : huge, endless fields of maté plants, as far as the eye could see. Its so intensively farmed that its planted outside all the fences and right up to the edge of the road for hundreds of Kilometres. Every spare patch of usable land that isnt tarmacced has maté on it... and the amount of it that gets drunk here, you can see why they'd need it.
Before we left maté-land and headed up into the hills again though, something amazing happened... we found the best toilet in South America, in a Refinor garage near a town called Monteros. Since we've been here, we've looked for 6 things in the toilets we've used: a seat, paper, a lock, light, and afterwards, water and soap. Up until Monteros, we felt pretty happy if we found any combination of 2 of these things, 3 would get us ridiculously excited and 4, if it ever happened would get an entry in our journals. But 6 was uncharted territory, and totally unexpected. It was the perfect bathroom. And the cherry on the top; paper to dry your hands at the end of it all. Unheard of.
After Monteros, we had a monster of a climb to do, from 400m altitude to just over 3000m. The first 60km took us into another unexpected change of scenery as we hit a patch of rainforest. The windy road around the sides of the steep valley gave some stunning views, and thought the riding was very tough, it was impossible not to stop occasionally and appreciate the beauty of it all.
And just as suddenly as it began, the rainforest spat us out into a brand new landscape, this time a wide open, green valley where we spent an afternoon off in the town of Tafí del Valle. From there, we had another 1000m to climb the next day to get out of the valley and when we reached the pass at "El Infiernillo" ('little hell') we'd finally made it to over 3000m for the first time on the trip. What made it even better was that we had 60km of downhill after that to drop into the little town of Amaicha!
But it was only after getting to Amaicha that the fun really started...
J had planned to start riding again with us from Mendoza, but unfortunately, a day or two before pushing off, the knee went bad again and all cycling was off the agenda for a while... But Rich and I forced ourselves out of our lovely hostel and got on the road again.
We were able to put in some really big days after leaving town, and with some flattish roads and some beautiful, beautiful tailwinds, we managed a couple of days over 165km! The scenery changed quickly North of Mendoza, and within a few days we we were riding through Valle Fertil; compared to the dusty scrubbiness we'd been used to for so long, the sight of a valley covered in green bushes, trees and grass was really quite something. Its all relative of course, as it was still really dry and scrubby, and all the greenery was thorny and spiney rather than lush and leafy, but it was a welcome change!
We had our first real spate of punctures along this stretch, as the ground was full of spines... 4 punctures in the first week out of town. The punctures were more of an irritation than a real problem though and we're getting quicker at fixing them all the time.
In Valle Fertil, we were surprised to find a huge car rally going on. Thousands of people had descended on this fairly small town to watch hundreds of cars in dozens of classes, tearing round the dirt roads. Our day off there was brilliant, as the atmosphere was amazing, the driving was crazy, the weather was hot and the beers were cold. Had a great day, just sitting around and soaking it all up.
Valle de la Luna was the next stop on our list; a bit of a Jurassic Park, where hundreds of dinosaur fossils have been found over the last century. Also, it looks a bit like the moon, hence the clever name. We had to camp at the guard post overnight as there was no space to go on a tour (we had to wait for cars with spaces to go on the guided tour of the valley) but when we forced ourselves onto a minibus in the morning, the Valley was worth the wait. The Valle Pintada (Painted valley) is the small area that gave the whole area its Lunar name, as it really is eerily bleak and the rocks form some crazy shapes, like the completely naturally-formed spherical rocks we saw in one area. We didn't get to see Richard Attenborough saying 'come on my pretties' in the hatching room though, which was a massive disappointment.
More of an issue than the punctures was when the sidewall on my back tyre broke. A bit of gaffer tape did the job for a few days, but it had to be replaced with a new cheapo tyre in Catamarca. Catamarca was the windiest place we'd come to since southern Patagonia and we had a tough day getting into town, battling the headwinds (treated ourselves to a hostel bed that night
. Also, Catamarca was odd because of the unbelievable number of pregnant women there. It was ridiculous. Pretty much every woman of child-bearing age (and some who probably weren't) was busy bearing a child. We weren't sure if there'd been a huge powercut 9 months ago or something, but if not, then it looks like Catamarca is building an army.One big climb and one big downhill later, we were out of Valle fertil and we descended into another totally new landscape : huge, endless fields of maté plants, as far as the eye could see. Its so intensively farmed that its planted outside all the fences and right up to the edge of the road for hundreds of Kilometres. Every spare patch of usable land that isnt tarmacced has maté on it... and the amount of it that gets drunk here, you can see why they'd need it.
Before we left maté-land and headed up into the hills again though, something amazing happened... we found the best toilet in South America, in a Refinor garage near a town called Monteros. Since we've been here, we've looked for 6 things in the toilets we've used: a seat, paper, a lock, light, and afterwards, water and soap. Up until Monteros, we felt pretty happy if we found any combination of 2 of these things, 3 would get us ridiculously excited and 4, if it ever happened would get an entry in our journals. But 6 was uncharted territory, and totally unexpected. It was the perfect bathroom. And the cherry on the top; paper to dry your hands at the end of it all. Unheard of.
After Monteros, we had a monster of a climb to do, from 400m altitude to just over 3000m. The first 60km took us into another unexpected change of scenery as we hit a patch of rainforest. The windy road around the sides of the steep valley gave some stunning views, and thought the riding was very tough, it was impossible not to stop occasionally and appreciate the beauty of it all.
And just as suddenly as it began, the rainforest spat us out into a brand new landscape, this time a wide open, green valley where we spent an afternoon off in the town of Tafí del Valle. From there, we had another 1000m to climb the next day to get out of the valley and when we reached the pass at "El Infiernillo" ('little hell') we'd finally made it to over 3000m for the first time on the trip. What made it even better was that we had 60km of downhill after that to drop into the little town of Amaicha!
But it was only after getting to Amaicha that the fun really started...
