Leaving Belén in the late morning we embarked onto route 40 again.
Just outside town we needed to fix a flat tire on Karsten's rear wheel once more. The next 220 km would take us to Chilecito in 3 days.
This first morning we passed the town of Londres (London) 12km south of Belén.
We navigated a series of very long and straight sections of roads with little traffic and made good progress towards the south.
When reaching 60 km into our trip we ate a brief lunch at the roadside and soon carried on towards the town of Alpasinche 30 km ahead. We had about an hour of cycling left when we met Marie and Martin, two young bicycle travelers from Belgium, coming up from the opposite direction. We chatted with them quite a bit (they were heading up north to Salta and planning on turning NW towards Chile from there). We all noticed that we had a lot of similar bike equipment such as the Ortlieb bags, Brooks saddles, and water "camel" bags.
Sunset as we reached Alpasinche
After saying goodbye and exchanging contact information we realized that we had still a bit of ground to cover with only one hour of sunlight left. After climbing a last hill we enjoyed a nice descent towards the crossing with route 60. Tired from the day we still managed to speed along route 60 for 6 more km and finally reached the town of Alpasinche at about sunset. Turning south onto route 40 again we put up our lights on the bicycles and made it 8km further south to Salicas where we found a nice room at "Camping Hostel Indigo" when looking for a camp site.
We welcomed the convenience of a warm room because the last days the weather became pretty cold, not only in the mornings but during the entire day :( . After loading off our bikes we rode our bikes to nearby Petty's Cafe Restobar, rounding off our long day with pizza, beer and a lomito sandwich.
After the long (almost 100km) ride on the first day our plan to reach Chilecito was to take it a bit easier and to split the remaining 120km into two days of cycling.
Camping Hostel Indigo
Thus, we relaxed the next morning a bit longer at the Hostel, made our own breakfast in the shared kitchen (we were the only guests) and left at around noon. We bought some bread at a Kiosko and had lunch at the main plaza in Charqui. We ran into a musician and theater actor (his nick name is "El soldado") at the plaza who was waiting for the bus to La Rioja.
The ride for the day was neither very long nor very eventful, except that on the road we met and chatted with two Argentinian fellow bike travelers from Cordoba that were going the opposite direction, and that we ended up fighting our way to Pitui for the last hour against a nasty and ice cold wind before arriving in town an hour before dark (total km today about 60).
We found a room (entire house) to rent next door to the grocery shop were we bought some food at, settled in our room there (that had no heating), and went 300m down the road to a recommended pizza and restaurant place. The restaurant - just as our rented room - was pretty cold inside (had a lit fireplace inside but no other heating). We enjoyed the good coteletas and salad but sat there in our full winter clothes the entire time. Overall the entire city seemed pretty deserted on this cold winter evening.
The 3rd day we left Pitui after breakfast in the kitchen (cafe con leche, a bit of bread with dulce de leche - a sweet caramel bread spread, the ultimate south american replacement for nutella, and some youghurt).
The ride in the morning was pretty cold but almost all of the 70km to Chilecito were downhill and we made excellent progress.
The last several kilometers were uphill but we still reached Chilecito's main plaza at about 15:45. At the plaza we had a late and quick lunch at the only open restaurant. The food was ok and the place warm inside and made us feel like in heaven. We found a nice place to stay only 5 blocks away - the Hotel Viejo Molino. After arranging our stay there we rode our bicycles 2 km down the hill to visit the museum de cable carril (and mina La Mexicana) which turned out to be really nice and interesting visit.
Entry of the museum
Station 1 of 9 is still in pretty good shape onehundred years after the mine closed
To end our day we went on having a nice Lebanese dinner at the restaurant "Gorges". There we met the owner (of the same name) and heard some stories of his time in Germany and France and chatted a bit with him in french.
Comments
Post a Comment