The icy cold wind continued today and the clear blue sky in the morning soon closed in with thick grey cloud shortly before noon making it even colder, though as Is cycling north and it was a southerly wind it was largely on my back helping me along. The mountains had a fair sprinkling of fresh snow and Is dreading another back wheel puncture as my thumbs were still raw and tender after Monday's difficulty putting the tyre back on the rim. At the same time Is feeling optimistic; thinking about tomorrow afternoon-arriving back in Salta and having a few day's-relaxation in the city.

Route 68 between Cafayate and Salta is reputed by travel companies to be the most beautiful in the provence. I agree. The route is beautiful insofar as it's nice to be riding on smooth tarmac again. There are a few unique rock formations worth mension though. The first: "La Castilla": is a huge orange block with curved edges towering from the riverbank. Shortly followed by: "La Ventana". I found this one the most impressive. The road does a great V, so the road already passed can be seen over on the left. But midway, going through the bend itself, the road rises up an incline and then through a cutting where ahead and to the right of the road can be seen an orange-pink wall of rock with ribbed ledges rising up in a number of pinnacles with square-ish holes carved out by the winds of time. There were others as the road wound it's way around and onwards through the rocky desert valley with gravel-bars and pale green riverbank scrubs below on the left and red rock, beige and chocolate brown clifts on the right.

By mid-afternoon the valley had narrowed and greened and the hills closing either side were steep and bush-clad. I was then passing Alemania, which didn't seen worth the effort of the turn-off and crossing over the big iron-girder bridge to access it's mid valley location. The road past the turn-off went up a short incline and so where I stopped was up on the hillside looking down on the settlement. It had an open space bound by trees in the middle: a play area with goalposts where three boys were kicking a ball. On the near side of the open area was a big rusty corrugated iron warehouse and at the far side in clearings between trees, were half a dozen corrugated iron houses. Facing the warehouse, the most striking feature was a railway station where the train no longer comes as the track clearly no longer exists, instead the railroad was overgrown with weeds and scrub. The station house has been well maintained though and is an attactive turn of the century building with four-sided appex corrugated iron roof sloping down to decorative wooden railed veranda round three sides.

As my lunch had only been a small triangle sandwich: four layers of spongy white industrial bread buttered together with two pink lines and a yellow line: I think ham and cheese, bought at the YPF petrol station on the way out of Cafayate this morning and now it was near five, Is feeling depleted. What a relieve it was to then see a roadside cafe a little way ahead. It was a goat farm with farmshop-cafeteria when I'd gotten that far: a pleasing woodcabin with large windows. There were half a dozen cars parked outside and only two remaining tables spare inside. My sandwich when it came looked scrumptious: a homemade bread, a bit like Italian ciabata with wedges of goat cheese overlaping each other, topped with sliced plume tomatoes and garnished with green olives. Delicious. I finished off with a cuppuccino; more goat's milk; then went outside. It had turned still and foggy and so wasn't as cold. I passed through a small gate in a fence to the side of the main house to where a couple and a little girl were reaching out and petting a goat that had come over to the fence at the front of a pen of goats, to the rear of which was a collection area and milking parlour. It was early yet to see the goats being milked, so I returned to the bike and set off again. It was not far to La Vina which I reached round half six. Like most villages it has a municipal campsite where I paid a modest fee of five pesos. I made a small bit of polenta to use up some food items in my bag. I wasn't really hungry after the cafe stop earlier.