August 20, 2016
Amused: Montegude to roadworks
I breakfast outside the room door in a courtyard, boiling water with my stove for "mat-tee", best described as looking like green tea, but quite different, having a strong uplifting effect after drinking, like strong coffee, but not quite the same. Anyway, I was looking for black tea while out shopping yesterday evening, but failed to find any. Such is trying to find some basic groceries here. There was no supermarket as usual, just a collection of kiosk/small shops, mostly stocking cans and processed foods, and a lot of sugary junk food.
Even at 7am there's a constant rev of small motorbikes, like a Mad Max world. A relentless sound of motorbike engines as they speed around town.
I roll the bike out through reception about eight, stopping to show the reception woman my map to see can she show me the way out of town. She turns the map in her hand and looks at it like some strange article she'd never seen before, but finally she gives me believable directions.
I wheel the bike down the steps to the street to a constant moving melee of cars and small motorbikes which'll stop for no man. The narrow pavement is packed with a steady throng of people making it hard finding a place to lean my heavily loaded bike by a kiosk to buy a big bottle of coke for the day; further frustrating because at the first kiosk I manage to stop at, there's no one in attendance. I've to find another. So much time just to buy a 2L bottle of coke.
The way out of the chaotic town following the road shown me by the reception woman is simple enough, initially it switchback up and through a low range of hills to the east of town, along which are lots of good wild camping opportunities. Then descending and following a narrow wooded valley with small farms by the roadside all morning upon a surface almost as good as tarmac. Actually much of the way they're building a new road parallel.
It is carefree zooming along until shortly before midday, I pass the entrance to a quarry and from there on I'm both passed and met by tipper-trucks every minute or so, leaving me in a cloud of dust in their wake. This truck run is only about four kilometres until they tip their load upon the new road for grading, but beyond this, the road deteriorates to what had been a hard surface, but with a red powdery material spread out on top about 12cm deep, like overnight fresh snow. I try remaining on the compressed car track, but run off with either front wheel sliding me to a halt, or rear-wheel sliding sideways halting me also.
Then it must be a case that locals don't ever see a cyclist here, never mind a foreign touring cyclist, because, a car slows alongside me with windows down, moving in so tight to the side on my left, I thought they where attempting to push me off the road. The occupants, a middle aged woman in passenger seat, man driver of coarse with other adults and children in rear seats all think I'm very funny the way they look out at me laughing.
I reach Vaca Guzman, the next town as it shows 13.00 on my watch; which, I find to be a very much more pleasant town than Montegude. There isn't that constant chainsaw-buzz of motorbikes, Mad Max scene. People here are empathic. I eat in a small family run café with an Argentine sports channel on TV screen. There's Focus on "Boca Juniors. CABJ" then a long interview with a "Pumas" (their rugby team) spokesman: the headline "Las Pumas Perdieron 30 - 26 a Sud Africa"
Oh and I actually got another front flat tyre here, where I yet again patch the inner-tube. Then a man come over and kindly holds the bike upright while I put the wheel back in the fork.
Riding on I pass through the main centre without the constant menacing traffic and with a pleasant green plaza.
Most of the afternoon is spent climbing gradually with cloud closing in, cooling things down considerable enough that I put on a warm layer when high up the mountain. The rain is on down in the valley to the north, but no rain would reach me. Then crossing the summit come an almost vertical sided valley with a stupidly steep switchback descend down in which I hold onto the brakes for dear life. The surface again red powder. And the echo of a tunnel boring machine coming up from below. The road being so ridiculously steep a tunnel is in process of being built, which later I pass the entrance to: and a few kilometres on down, road works for a new road is ongoing.
By this time it has gone five and work has stopped for the day and I'm on the look out for a camping spot, not so easy in the tight jungle clad valley; though shortly I come to a narrow field to the right with pole-barrier entrance, which I slide the bike under. Inside is an old water collection tank/reservoir. I push the bike along, a few hundred metres from the entrance; far enough that no stopped car driver would walk, to where I find a plentiful area of level grass to pitch the tent hidden from the road by a thicket of bush between the field and road.
Today's ride: 72 km (45 miles)
Total: 12,387 km (7,692 miles)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 0 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |