Asuncion, Formosa, Recistencia, Santiago del Estero, Rio del Hondo, Tucaman, Mollar, Cafajate, el Vina, Salta, Jujuy, Humauaca, Quiaea.
From San Miguel de Tucuman in the north of Argentina where the sun is not shining for a change we will inform you about our little adventures.
Our Spanish course was fun but now we have to manage without our lovely Spanish teacher Rosita.
The atmosphere in Argentina is different, more European but the people are still curious?Where are you from? Where are you going?, people know about Maxima and Alexander and sometimes a handsome man wants to know if we are brother and sister. Ha!!!!
In the meanwhile we?ve been on the road for 16 weeks, we?ve cycled 5600km and we?ve repaired 4 flat tyres.
It?s going well in Argentina. The chaco (Asuncion-Formosa-Resistencia-Santiago del Oestro-T.d.r Hondas-Tucuman) was flat and easy cycling but with almost no facilities and also no accommodation in between two towns. So we had to make pretty long day distances to find a bed and a shower.
Flat countryside gets boring but the towns we slept were nice and very lively. People seem to spend much more time on the street than we do. Well, I have to tell that it was a very unique experience to cycle 1200km through a flat and desolate area like the Chaco..... We have camped again. That was fun. We miss camping by the way!
So we spent the night in this very touristic town called Termes du rio Hondes, with too much old people who enjoy the hot springs which seem to be very healthy for high blood pressure and reuma. We met this lovely couple (both 82) who made a worldtrip as well (a long time ago) so lots to talk about.
Villazone, 21st September 2002
We are already in Bolivia and we have 6500 km in our (poor) legs. On Sunday the 8th of September we left Tucuman for our first meeting with the Andes (El Mollar, Cafayate, La Vina) and the first two days we had two tough climbs ahead of us (1500 and 1000m) until our first highest top of 3040 m. Breathtaking and worthwhile. And you know that after every climb you're always going downhill again.
The most beautiful part was the "Quebrade de Cafayate", a stunning 85 km long canyon through amazing landscape, and together on your bike and no other traffic ....is just perfect.
We camped now and then and slept once in an empty house where we were the only guests. We even met another Dutch cycling couple (Marco & Chantal) who cycled already for about 15 months, so they had a lot of information for us. The next day we bumped onto another couple..
In Salta we took a few days off to organise some things. We stayed in this very nice youth-hostel, and met Haikie (from Austria) with a very interesting life-style..and interesting stories.
From Salta we cycled to Villazone via Jujuy and met again another cycling couple...Jamie and Ryan from The United States. We didn't know at that time that we became friends for life.
They gave us this address from a guy called Raoul in Humahuaca who really likes cyclists for some reason and offers them a place to sleep; a kind of a casa de cyclistas actually. Well, we can always give it a try, don't we? So we did Well, not exactly true, we found him in Humahuaca but when we saw his house we already had a bit of a funny feeling and when he stepped out of the door we both were speechless. I really have never ever seen such a dirty man in my entire life. It was Catwezel himself. He introduced himself and told us he spoke English and even French. Maybe it could have been an interesting night but... no thanks. We really wanted a place where we could take a shower and we were both sure Raoul didn't have one. Ha ha ha!
So, how do you tell somebody with the best intentions you're not going to stay? Well, you just thank him friendly, turn around quickly and leave............
And now we have already our first bolivianos in our pocket and we look forward to experience Bolivia,it is gone be tough!
