Hi everybody!
Greetings from La Quiaca, Argentina, 11,960´above sea level. That´s higher than any mountain we even saw in Patagonia, and we descended to get here. So far our high point has been 12,400´(the cemetary at Tres Cruces). The air is rather thin. We´re adjusting to the altitude pretty well so far, having had a few headaches & a little blood in our noses. Our food is definately not digesting like it used to (I´ll spare you the details) but our appetites are good. We´re drinking lots and lots of water and using lots and lots of sunblock. But as you might imagine we´re a little short of breath all the time. Like when we roll over in our sleep. We can ride the bikes just fine as long as we go very slowly and steadily. And that´s how we managed to get to this lofty place. Slowly, steadily climbing for four days.
The road from Juyjuy just followed the Rio Grande (surely not the only one on this continent) for about 200 kilometers through an amazingly colorful valley. It was only steep for a few kilometers early on. Most of the rest of the way it was almost flat, but never actually level. The world´s most reliable tailwind made it even nicer! We slept at 7,000 feet one night, 8,500 feet the next, and 10,000 feet the next. The towns we camped in got increasingly Andean. Hardly any of the locals looked European by the time we reached Humahuaca, a town with a 399-year-old church, cobblestone streets, and an indoor fruit & vegetable market that exceeded my wildest dreams. I´m not usually the type to search out farmer´s markets back home, but this place moved me. They had stuff I didn´t recognize but wanted to try anyway. Sacks of grains, stacks of brightly colored fruit, baskets of funny-looking potatos caked with dirt…it was, shall we say, very authentic. The town literally echoed with pan-flute music. Y´know, that stuff can be hard to get out of your head but out here it´s icing on the cake. I´m glad they´re so friendly to out-of-place gringos who like to eat good food. We really liked Humahuaca.
The next night we camped next to the river, which was just a couple of inches deep by then, at 11,500´. It rained hard that night so the next day the desert smelled about as good as air can possibly smell. And we definately did a lot of inhaling as we climbed imperceptibly to 12,400´. Then we had thirty kilometers of very gradual descending. It felt really wierd! The clouds looked very different from a downhill angle. Several big peaks appeared way off on the horizon and llamas became our roadside companions. From there to here the road was absolutely flat for 75 kilometers, but at this altitude it was still hard to do 50 kilometers a day with a tailwind.
So now we´re right next to Villazon, Bolivia! We spent the day resupplying with items we might not be able to get in Bolivia and enhancing our bike´s water-carrying capacity. My bike currently has 11.5 liters of water strapped to it, and that´s without the panniers installed. We will probably not need that much, but we´re taking Bolivia very seriously. The local bike shop gave us some encouraging advice today, assuring us we can take the short route to Uyuni. That´s our next big destination: the Salar de Uyuni, which is the world´s highest salt flat. It´s actually at the same elevation as we are right now. We don´t know yet whether it´s bone dry or covered with a few inches of water, making travel across it by bike impossible. If we can, we´d like to ride across it. That´s why we can now carry three days supply of water at 12 liters a day. But we´re approaching the Bolivia part of our adventure with a great deal of flexibility. We don´t really know what we´ll be eating, or how far we´ll be able to go in a day on the famously rough roads. But we are ready! We´ve got food for three days and our visas in our passports, and the border is about a hundred meters away.
Thanks Argentina, we´ll see you again in a month or so!
And thanks for reading everybody! Stay in touch, ´k?
-Andy