Sat 10th Sep: Salta to La Vina

September 10, 2016

The broken wheel as I write has been sorted by me taking a bus from the eastern Bolivian city of Santa Cruz, almost a thousand kilometres south, back to Salta-Argentina, where I know there's a large bike shop stocking just about all your cycling needs. Here they have a set of factory wheels. They should do the job.

I arrived back in Salta on a Friday, a rainy overcast day and the sky remained impenetrable grey until Tuesday with bitter cold wind. These last few days though have been delightful, bright and sunny. It's early Spring and therefore the weather is just what I'd expect. Cold. The nights are cold at any rate. It starts getting dark at half seven, that makes the day plenty long for comfortable cycle touring with enough daylight in the evening when camping.

A rough neighbourhood on the way out of town. A car driver motioned with his index finger to his eye for me to be careful.

Here I am finally wheeling my fully loaded up bike out the door of the hostel. Just a note here to say what a comfortable hostel. I had been staying in another backpackers, but I had to get out of there. So rundown. A shadow of it's former self. The same place I stayed when I first visited Salta ten years ago. Such a lively well run place it had been back then. This hostel in comparision is clean and run by people who care for the people they check in, not just filling hours until they can go home.

I should've been off earlier. I was up early enough. I had everything sorted out and the panniers packed yesterday evening. But, between checking that I've everything, little but essencial things such as a working cigarette lighter for my stove, it took a lot of time until I could say I haven't forgotten anything.

It is warming up as I ride out of town on route 68. There's bumper-to-bumper slow moving traffic, but there's a shoulder after a bit for me to get pass, although the shoulder has a very rough surface of tar, that has melted and swelled up into lumps and set. And there are potholes. The traffic and the rough surface lasts until past the final barrio, Santana.

Beyond the road is straight and smoother, with fields of tobbaco, alfa-grass mown and baled. There's fields of yellow stubble from harvested maize. The road is tree-lined with the occational pink blossom of jacaranda trees amongst others. And a yellow blossom I don't recognize.

Sometimes I loose the head when taking a photo.

Much of the day passed through mundane farmland. Therefore: SIGH-LAGE!!! Sigh is something you do when bored, and Silage is what's in the field. Get it?

There is a plaza in Molde where I lunch, a quiet village, quiet because it's three in the afternoon, the middle of the siesta. I'm looking at my map planning my route ahead. My challenge is not to dupicate too much, as I've cycled much of Argentina before. I aim to reach Chalten, in Patagonia in the far south by Christmas, traveling through Spring, when the days are long and before the summer high season crowds come. Time will see.

On from Molde I've cycled a few kilometres, passing through the village of La Vina, to the south of which I came to a dry stream with a grassy streambank, and have decided to pitch the tent. I write as the sun hovers just above the horizon. I've already been here two hours where it's been warm enough to sit outside the tent enjoying a sunny early spring late afternoon.

Cattle would normally run away, but these couldn't, because their hoofs are stuck in mud in the bed of this waterhole, and one or two are pleading for help to get out.

Tomorrow should see a change of landscape from farmland to redrock country, as I pass through "La Quebrada de Conches" with a finish in Cafayate, where I'll check into the hostel there.

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