Along the Cordillera to San Juan

Camping in a dry river bed on the second day cycling towards San Juan

We where planning to cover the about 305 km to San Juan in three days and were back in the saddles, leaving Villa Union around 9:30. This morning was still pretty cold,  just like the days before, and we wore our "full" winter gear including gloves for the first hours of our ride. The first 40 km we made good progress towards the south, the Cordillera close to our right (west). The road is mostly flat and even the sun came out after our cloudy day in Villa Union.

Roundabout with Town of Guandacol letters

Around 1pm, after about 40km, we reached a roundabout where we ate our lunch (bread rolls with lunch meat, youghurt etc). Soon, but too late, we learned that also places with nice letters indicating a city name can have thorns on the ground, and we had to fix a flat tire - on each bike - c'est la vie ...

Unfortunatley for us, soon after moving on, a nasty wind from the south set in, which for the next 60km made our progress frustratingly slow and strenuous (often our progress was less than 9 km an hour). The indication on the Google map - that the terrain here is nearly flat - turns out to be kind of a bad joke. Temporary river beds ( now almost all dry in the winter month) are crossing the road every several hundred meters, which results in a small but nearly constant up and down, kind of like riding along a hilly mini golf course with your bike.

We have another snack break at 17:00, rested behind a hill on the roadside, a bit shielded from the wind , and had by then reached a measly total of 70 km - after 7 hours on the road. Thus, we where weighing our options: whether to try and reach 100km or more today - in order to keep the next two day km requirements manageable - or whether to camp early...

We decided to carry on until dark and that we would then evaluate what to do again. Luckily the wind softened up over time, which allowed us to progress faster, and thus we had covered a total of 100km at dusk! Stopping for another cookie and water break we decided to put on the lights on our bikes and to attack the remaining 20km to reach the town of Huaco. There we should be able to find a Hostel and also hoped to get some warm dinner as a reward for a long and challenging biking day. 

Soon things did turn in our favor: almost instantly after the break the road "up and down" topography ends and turned into a constant downhill,  so we are "zipping" through the dark towards Huaco. The remaining 20 kilometers took us less than an hour to complete, welcome news for our really sore muscles.

We reached the Hostel in Huaco around 20:30,  got a room for the two of us, and just in time arrived  for dinner there:  quiche and empanadas !

We covered 123 km that day, the second longest daily distance of the tour

Hostal in Huaco

Day two of biking towards San Juan, we started after a good rest and breakfast at the Hostal at around 11. Despite our pretty late start the day turned out to be a really nice one - but quite uneventful. The road is mostly flat or even downhill and we easily covered 101km when we set our camp at around 17:30 at an awesome location in a dry river bed (NOT recommended in the wet season !).

Awesome and warming fire 🔥 yeah, great sight of southern hemisphere stars and Milky way

After breakfast the next day, shortly before packing up (the night was really cold again, the water in our bottles was frozen ...)

Day 3 riding towards San Juan was mostly like day 2: an awesome and easy to ride stretch of road. We make a lunch stop at a virgin shrine, stoped just to refill drinks, cookies etc. on our way. Our progress was really awesome as munch of it is a bit downhill and in one hour we once topped 23km distance.

Our private roof top room at the Hostal 

Thirty kilometers before San Juan we had to climb a pretty long and steep hill (for several km) which we easily overcame ("Altiplano steeled" muscles 😉) and soon enjoyed a nearly 15 km downhill race just afterwards.  We reached San Juan around 15:30 and at our first chance in the city enjoyed some ice cream at a street cafe before settling at San Juan Hostal. We walked around the City for a bit, and later had dinner at a bar/restaurant.