The Americas- Week 14 (part 2) - Slowing down to a stop

The rush across Argentina brought us to the small town of Cafayate. The last fifty kilometres into the town took us through a wonderful series of valleys where the Earth's tectonic activity had pushed the land into all sorts of wonderful shapes. It was fantastic riding through the huge, brightly coloured hills.

From Cafayate we headed north, up part of Ruta 40, back on gravel road again for the first time for quite awhile. The scenery in this section changed quickly as we gathered height soon becoming very dry.

Unfortunately I paid a bit too much attention to the scenery at one point: a moment's inattention as we moved off from a scenic lookout saw me drop the bike and my ankle broke its fall. Net result, one very sore ankle,  and our planned one night stop at Cachi becoming three as I recovered.

The one blessing of this is it has given me a bit of time to altitude acclimatize; Cachi is at 2300m and has 30% less oxygen than at sea-level and I really feel it, Gaby on the other hand loves it. It will be interesting to see how we cope with the 4000+ metre altitudes of Bolivia.

The Americas - Week 14 - Paraguay

The SE corner of Paraguay, the only land-locked country in South America was visited briefly this week. The original plan had been a more extensive visit, but the unavoidably of "friends of friends" we were going to visit coupled with a growing realisation time was running away from us meant we only just touched the country. It's a pity because what we saw we enjoyed and both would have liked to stay longer and get a feel of the place. As it was the three days there left only impressions thatthat  limited and somewhat superficial.

After leaving Paraguay the rest of the week was spent riding the long and relatively boring highway running from the east of Argentina to the west in an attempt to make up some time and get closer to our next country, Bolivia.

Below are just a few random photos from Paraguay to give a flavour of the place. Future blog pospo I hope I can be a bit less rushed and give an slightly better account of our weeks wanderings.

The Americas - Week 13 - Waterfalls and ruins

Firstly an apology for the brevity of these posts - I always seem to be falling behind and this is the only way to catch up. Also most of my known readers are getting regular WhatsApp message updating them on progress - if you want these let me know.

After we exited Uruguay back into Argentina the plan was to visit the NE corner of that country to see the Iguazú waterfalls. These were one of the few things on my "must do" list for this trip. They didn't disappoint: very spectacular - far better than the more famous Victoria Falls I saw when in Zimbabwe a few years ago.

During the week we also visited a second set of falls - Mocona Falls - a set of longitudinal falls in the same river system. Not as spectacular in height but impressive at nearly 3 km long.

A few photos of both are below as are also some of Jesuit Mission ruins we visited.

The Americas Week 11 and 12 - Uruguay

We crossed to Uruguay just intending a quick visit to the south west corner of 3 or 4 days. Somehow this expanded to twelve. We both instantly liked the country- a place of no great "wow"sights but instead of lovely people and a beautiful calm way of life. A country that is trying hard to balance progress in the modern world with respect for its history and traditions - and seemed to be succeeding.

Here are a few photos to whet your appetite.

The Americas Week 10 - Buenos Aires

Week 10 - Buenos Aires

After four weeks away visiting family Gaby flew back to rejoin the trip at Buenos Aires. Given she would be jet lagged we decided on spending four days in the city. From a practical point by of view this was a good choice but it was a city neither of if us really liked or took to, and we were glad to move on at the end of this. BAs problem is it is big (4 million people), noisy, dominated by cars and has no real distinguishing sights or features of its own.

Our destination after BA was Uruguay which meant one days traveling and one last night in Argentina before crossing the border. Getting out of BA is an adventure- a huge intertwining network of 6-10 lane motorways funneling you and thousands of would be Formula 1 drivers first one way and then another; without GPS it feels it would be a suicidal mission, with, its only a nightmare - like a video game with serious consequences of you make a wrong move (in case you haven't worked it out, no I did not enjoy it).

The last night in Argentina was so spent in the town of Guarlaguaychu - a small, quiet and remarkably pleasant river side town and a wonderful antidote to BA.

The Americas Week 9 - Crossing the pampas plains.

The start of the week saw me still in the Lakes area of Argentina with the plan to quickly leave and start heading to Buenos Aires. In the end the start was delayed a few days as it was so lovely here that I kept putting it off. The day I was finally leaving after an initial two days delay I only managed 15 kilometres before I passed a lakeside campsite at a stunningly beautiful location - and that was another days delay.

Finally getting going, it was actually an easy ride across the pampas plains to Buenos Aires. Three days and 1600 kilometres and I was on the outskirts. The drive across was much like going Adelaide to Sydney; to start with lots of empty space (but always changing so not boring) slowly moving to more developed farming and then in the last 200 kms starting to change into more towns and industry.  A few photos of the week.

One of my all time favourite camping spots
 - near Via Traful

Not the most photogenic of landscapes.

But some nice night skies

I met this character one day
He's walking Ushuaia to Alaska!

And stopped to see this one
The world's largest dinosaur at 40m long

Huge cathedral at Lujan just outside BA

Having been here in Argentina for 4 weeks and South America for eight I think it's also time to put a few of my thoughts down. Sorry if this now gets wordy.

Firstly Argentina and Chile feel quite different. You cross the border and you know you are in a different country, it's as abrupt as Britain is to France. We both enjoyed Chile but the people, whilst friendly, feel very formal and constrained and this rubs off on the towns, they are functional but, with the big exception of Valparaiso, seemed to lack colour and flair. At the very first town we encountered in Argentina (Rio Grande) the sudden explosion of flowers, colour and life on the street was startling and overall it's stayed that way.

So enough comparison now some thoughts on Argentina alone. One overriding impression is it feels like what I imagine Australia must have felt like in the fifties and sixties. One can't overdo the comparison but what I see is a world where life is still lived in the community, children ride bicycles on the street and play unsupervised (stranger danger is not a concept here), families go down the parks together, community sporting clubs seem to be everywhere and booming. It also reflects in the housing, much seems to be owner built and subject to continual change and extension with little sign of over-control or regulation.

Regulations, or the generally laid back attitude for them is another impression here. There are more obvious police here on the street than I used to seeing but they don't actually seen to do much. For example I believe there are laws making motorcycle helmets compulsory here, but as I sit at a cafe writing this, I would judge 75 % or more of the bikes going past, and there are a lot of them, have one or more persons without one. Another example is speed limits: the open road limit is generally 110kph, but this is frequently interrupted by 80, 60 and 40 zones at often seemingly random locations - however if I was to obey these and slow to these limits I'd probably be dead by now so unexpected it would be to the following traffic - which is generally only a metre from my number plate. Safety says at most you drop a small amount only: this gets increasingly bizarre to me when the car that is driving up the back of you urging you to get a move on at "illegal" speeds - speeds sufficient to lose my licence at home - is a police car.

I said there are a lot of police - they come in an enormous range of uniforms from some very casual looking local police, through various types of regional police and then up to the sometimes very intimidating looking, and usually very well armed, national forces. Despite all the forces so far I've only seen one incident of them trying to do any policing - in this case trying to give a ticket to some poor street vendor, but five minutes after they started the process the vendor just ran off, the police looked after him, shrugged shoulders and wandered off in the other direction!

Another very Argentinian thing are dogs - they seem to be everywhere. They come in all shapes but most are small labrador sized but their almost universal characteristic is their very benign and unruffled nature. They wander everywhere and as the day gets hotter fall asleep where there is a little shade - people just step around them and all get along. When I say everywhere I only exaggerate slightly - just today I've seen three dogs sleep under pews in the Cathedral here and I've come across one fast asleep on the floor of the toilet cubicle at the campsite. In fact at most campsites I've stayed at, at some point a dog will turn up outside my tent, appoint itself my personal attendant and promptly fall asleep under a nearby bench for the duration of my stay - interestingly they don't seem to be particularly after food, more just some company.

Anyway that's enough thoughts - next job now is to wander the town here to see if I can find some motorcycle oil, it's time to give the bike a service.