Crazy headwinds, hot springs, beautiful scenery, a broken tent, running out of water whilst riding in +40C degree heat, and a bike reconfiguration would mark my introduction to cycling Ruta 40, Argentina’s famous cycling road.

Ruta 40 is a mecca for tour cyclists and as it runs for over 5000km, from the Bolivian border in the north of the country to the city of Rio Gallegos at the southern end of the country, most tour cyclists will cycle it at some point on their ride through Argentina.

After 3 fantastic days drinking wine and relaxing by the pool it was time to get on with cycling Ruta 40, and for the next 3 weeks it would be my home as I cycled over 1000km along its length towards the city of Mendoza – the main wine producing region in Argentina.

As it was approaching the height of summer in this part of Argentina this ride would see me drop from the cool climate of nearly 2000m into the desert like lowland region where daily temperatures would be pushing 40C as the sun did it’s best to toast me.

As Ruta 40 was the main road through the central plaza of Cafayate and so I didn’t have to cycle far to get onto it given that my hotel was located just off this plaza.  To make the 1000km ride mentally easier I had broken it into three parts – a 450 km ride to the town of Chilecito followed by another 450km ride to San Juan and then a 170km ride to Mendoza. I planned to cycle roughly 100km per day and then camp for the night once I had reached this goal.

The day that I set off I had no real idea of where I would sleep as the only town that I would pass through all day was Santa Maria which lay 80 km away and I wanted to push past there to reach my 100km goal. 

The road out of Cafayate led me into the The Calchaqui Valley which is renowned for its spectacular landscapes that change rapidly, and often dramatically, from desert to mountains to sub-tropical forest.  For the next few hours I would cycle through miles and miles of grape vines to my left with the Andes Mountains to my right.

I had set off at 9am, an hour earlier than my normal departure time, in order to try and beat the sun that I knew would start to roast me the further south that I went and so wanted to try and give myself a ‘siesta’ at lunchtime.

As midday approached I rode through the village of Tambolan and passed a couple of bodega’s

I decided that I might as well as do one final tasting before the vines finished and pulled over at Bodega Las Arcas.  I had actually bought a bottle of their wine in Vietnam as I remembered the label of the bottle which has the signature tagline of ‘Siete Vacas’ which translates as 7 cows.

As I was now a couple of hours ride from the Cafayate it seemed that less tourists stopped here as when I cycled into the bodega the lady said the degustation was free and with 5 wines to try they had the best offering of wine that I had tried so far.

The winner on the day was the Tannat and for 70 pesos (3 GBP) I decided to take a bottle away with me.  Lunch that day was a bag of empanadas that I had picked up just before leaving Cafayate and a bottle of vino.

Although I think that Bolivia was still the winner in terms of cultural experience I wasn’t doing too bad adapting to life in Argentina, and after enjoying half a bottle of red wine with lunch I got a pot of coffee on the go otherwise I would have been having a longer siesta than planned.

In the afternoon the grape vines were replaced by grassland but as they were still framed by the mountains there was no way I could complain about the landscape that I was cycling through.

The other thing that changed was that the good road ran out as I hit a junction where the good road headed east over the mountains towards the city of Tucuman, and the gravel road continued south.   

As I was back cycling on deep gravel this dramatically reduced my progress but as I was over halfway to achieving my 100km goal for the day this didn’t really matter.  Plus, what little traffic that there had been on the road seemed to head towards Tucuman and now there was just me and the horses left on Ruta 40.

The graffiti that I was passing was also getting more deep and meaningful

This one translates roughly as – If these walls could speak how many love stories would they tell?

I had now reached the outskirts of the town of Santa Maria and had a choice of which side of the river to follow for the next 20 km or so.  I could head into town and cross the river to pick up a sealed road or I could avoid the town completely and stay on this side of the river on gravel roads.

I decided to stay on the winding gravel roads as it seemed to be taking me through lots of lovely countryside where the only life I passed were grazing herds of goats

Eventually though the road led me back to the river which I needed to cross:

Thankfully, the rainy season had failed to arrive and so the river was still passable otherwise I would have had to backtrack to the bridge crossing at Santa Maria.

By the time I reached village of El Desmonte I had reached my target for the day of 100km so set about finding somewhere suitable to camp for the night. Before I left the village though I needed to get some water to cook dinner with that night. 

I knocked on the door of a house and when the owner answered I asked if I could fill my water bottles up from his tap.  He said no problem so I got all of my water bottles off the bike and soon had them full.

As I searched for a suitable camping spot at the exit to the village there were two dry river beds that crossed the highway (in Argentina they don’t seem to bother building bridges across river beds)  The second of these had a set of rip rap walls built on the bend nearest to the road to protect the road from getting washed away during the rainy season, which was meant to be now but like in Bolivia I had so far experienced only the odd shower)

As the prevailing wind was blowing from the South West the wall would protect me if a storm blew through in the night and there was enough fire wood lying around to eat my pasta soup dinner (1 packet of Knorr soup with a double serving of dried Penne thrown in to bulk out the carbs) by firelight.

By 10pm I was in my tent and asleep as in the morning I would lose the wind protection of the mountains and wanted to make an early start to try and get as far south as possible before the winds started their normal pattern of getting stronger in the afternoon.

At around midnight I was woken by the sound of cattle mooing loudly and the clatter of hooves and I thought that I was once again going to get a rude awakening from a bull like I did near Salta (Click here)

When I stuck my head out of the tent to check it turned out that it was a large herd of around 60 cattle being moved along the road by 3 gaucho’s (cowboys).  I had no idea where they were going but as they were heading somewhere past where I was camped I zipped up the tent and went back to sleep. 

The further south that I rode the hotter it was getting which meant that I was no longer using my sleeping bag at night.  Instead, I was back to sleeping in my silk liner which was fine until just before sunrise but then even that was too hot to sleep in. 

Now that I was off the puna and heading towards 1000 m elevation it was getting to the point where sleeping in a tent at the height of the Argentinian summer was not comfortable.  I would give it a few more days before deciding whether I would, like in Asia, only camp when I had no other alternative.

When I woke that morning I could already feel the end of the tent that was nearest to my head being blown around by the wind, but couldn’t remember which way I had slept.  I was hoping that the blowing end was facing north which would mean that the wind would be behind me all day as I cycled south.

Luck wasn’t with me that day as when I checked the wind was already blowing hard from the south and all day I would be cycling directly into it !!!!  Still, the view that I had across the riverbed to the mountains while I ate breakfast was not bad.

After breakfast when I set off my intention was to again cover 100km and then stop for the night.  This would put me somewhere close to the village of Hualfin and apart from this village there was no other town on the map apart from Punta de Balasto that lay 10km from where I had camped.

When I arrived in the village there was a police station, a church and a few houses but little else.  I took the opportunity of filling up my water bottles as I knew from the map that I would pass through no other village for the next 8 hours of cycling through 40 C temperatures.

My best bet for water in Argentina, apart from knocking on doors, seems to be schools and churches as they normally have a tap available.  When I checked the back of the church sure enough there was a tap that I could use

Once my water bottles were full I headed off into the desert and ahead of me was my first climb of the day

Although not steep I climbed through a series of large sand dunes before coming out onto a kind of plateau where there was a church

Once I had left the sanctuary of the mountain slopes, which acted as a buffer to the wind, I was out on a kind of plain where the road crossed for 20km from one side of the valley to the other.

This was probably the worst 20km of my whole ride.  The wind was blowing hard straight at me and I was reduced to cycling at under 10kmph as the wind was relentless.  Without any protection from the mountains I just got slower, and longed for a tractor to come past that I could hide behind. 

There was nothing, not even the odd tree,that I could use to take a break from the intense sun.  It was now nearly 2pm and I still hadn’t stopped for lunch as without either shade or a wind break there was no way that I could stop to cook. 

The odd car and truck passed me and I watched them head off in a straight line waiting for them to turn as this would mean that the road had reached the other side of the valley.  Although I kept looking the vehicles never turned before I lost sight of them and it was like I was on some kind of never ending road that just got longer.

On the horizon I could see a building and I knew that this was around 8km away.  Whenever I got there this would be my lunch stop as even if it was abandoned it would be a wind break and offer me some form of shade.

It took me the best part of an hour to reach it and I was mighty relieved when I got there as I could finally have lunch. As the sun was directly over head there was no shade but at least the walls stopped the worst of the wind.

I still had half a bottle of red with me from the day before and soon polished this off with a healthy serving of pasta.

My ‘lunch hour’ seemed to fly past and far too soon it was time to head off again into the wind as I fought my way to the other side of the valley and the windbreak that the mountain slope would offer.

I finally reached the slope and it had taken me over 3 hours to cycle the last 20km into the headwind that was blasting its way across the valley.  Now that I had reached the mountain the wind dropped considerably and I was able to at least cycle at a speed that was in double figures. 

It was like nature was doing its best to make my day hell as no sooner had the wind dropped than the road headed uphill towards the head of the valley.  I could have easily given up and camped for the night but still had the hope of getting to my goal of 100km before my legs gave up.

Another hour passed which got me about 10km further on and on my left was an airport runway and air control tower.  I have no idea who lands at the airport as I had passed not a single house in the last 70km and can only assume that it was a military installation. 

If you ever ride Ruta 40 in the future the airport will be your best friend as once you pass this point the road starts to descend, not steeply but just subtly enough for you to notice the benefit.

I had now covered about 80km for the day and despite gravity being in my favour there was no way that I would get to the 100 km for the day and started to look for somewhere to camp.

I passed a sign saying that there was a kiosca (kiosk/shop) down a track to my left and so headed there in search of a sugary drink and a snack as the wind had been sapping my energy all day.

The kiosca was shut, but when I knocked on the door the lady who owned it opened up and I bought a freezing cold bottle of Fanta and topped my water up from a tap behind the house. (most kiosks in the countryside are just a room in a house where the owner sells drinks and snacks through their front window)

I asked the ‘shopkeeper’ if she knew anywhere to camp and she said that there was a hot spring a few kilometers away where I could camp for the night.  This sounded like a good deal and so after getting directions and cycling out of the village I took the track that she had described that would take me across a river and into the mountains.

The track was fairly sandy and although hard going I was able to cycle my way up it

The shopkeeper had said that the hot spring was about 5km from the main road but given that in Argentina as soon as I answer a question in Spanish they think that I speak the language fluently I was not exactly sure of the nuances of her directions.  Now that I was climbing I could see many tracks that crossed the river and headed into the mountains.  I was just hoping that the one that I was on was the correct one.

The closer that I got to the mountain the rougher, and steeper, the track got

The mountains that I was cycling through were beautiful though

And the track continued to climb

By now I was starting to have my doubts that I was following the correct track when I rounded a bend and met a family who were walking back down the track.  The youngest kids were wearing swimming costumes which was a clear sign that I was heading the right way. 

They said that the thermal baths were about another kilometer up the track and so despite the cramps that were starting in my legs, caused by the hot weather and horrendous head wind that I had cycled into, I could push on for another 5 minutes.

The view back down the valley was worth the climb

I rounded the final bend and saw perched on the hillside the sign that I had been looking for:

As I cycled into the hot spring there was a couple leaving who explained the set up – there were 5 bath houses each with a separate water source where you could close the door and have a bath in private.

I chose my bath house and parked the bike outside.

The first thing that I noticed as I entered was that there was no smell of sulphur (think rotten eggs) which meant that not only could I get a wash I could also wash my clothes.  Now I was back in the scorching heat I needed to wash out my clothes at the end of the day and so was back to needing to camp next to a source of water.

In the bottom of the bath was a plug so I pulled it out to drain the water and proceeded to have a shower under the hot running water from the mountain.

Once showered, and smelling remarkedly better, I put the plug back in and while waiting for the bath to fill I opened the bottle of wine that I had bought back down in the village

It was then time to sit back and soak in the thermal waters whilst sipping a bottle on Malbec.

After shriveling like a prune it was time to find a flat space somewhere near to the baths where I could pitch the tent.  On the other side of the stream, which took the water down the mountain, there was a flat area that was just about big enough for my tent.

The only problem was that as I was erecting the tent one of the poles snapped.  This was the second pole to snap on the tent.  The first had snapped when I was cycling through Indonesia and as it was not in a critical place I had been able to fix it by wrapping it with black tape.

The place where this pole had snapped was at the point that the pole that bends like a rainbow over the top of the tent meets the ground.  There was no way that tape would be able to provide enough stability for it to take the stress but I had a piece of thin metal pipe with me that I could use to use to fix the problem for the night. (the pipe came with the tent for just this reason). 

It seemed to do the job and after taking the lacing out of the poles, putting the pipe in place and rethreading the lacing, which held all of the poles together, it was going dark. At least I now had a tent that seemed to be pretty rigid and hopefully, the wind would be kind otherwise I could see my tent collapsing in the middle of the night.

While I was fixing the tent one of the locals who had come up to use the baths came over to see if he could help.  I explained the problem and said that I was okay.  When he was leaving he gave me a huge bag of grapes to eat.

As the sun went down I collected some firewood and lit a fire and again ate my dinner by firelight

My tent lasted the night and was still standing in the morning.

The next morning there had been a miracle – no Trump was still president but the wind had switched 180 degrees and was now for the first time in nearly two weeks going to be pushing me down the valley towards the end of my first leg on Ruta 40, the town of Chilecito, which still lay two or three days ride away.

After my normal breakfast of porridge and coffee it was time to head back down the mountain back to the highway

Once back at the highway I was flying – the combination of a slight downhill gradient, smooth tarmac and tail wind – meant that I was doing nearly 30kmph for most of the morning.  It was such a difference to the slog of the day before where I think I averaged 11kmph for the day.

The scenery was again breathtaking


After 20km I was going to stop at the village of Hualfin, the place that I had hoped to get to the night before, to buy some supplies as I only had enough soup and pasta left for 3 meals and Chilecito still lay two days ride away.  The sign on the highway said that it was 5km off Ruta 40, and as I didn’t fancy a 10km round trip I just pushed on.

Another few kilometers along Ruta 40 brought me to a petrol station and as I realized that I hadn’t filled up my cooker since crossing the border it was good that I passed it.  In Boloivia there was a real problem trying to get my cooker filled as by law to stop smuggling to Chile they can only fill the tank of the vehicle and no other containers.

Here in Argentina seeing as petrol was nearly 20 pesos per litre, nearly double what it cost in Bolivia, smuggling was not a problem and so there were no issues filling my cooker.

The garage didn’t sell any food, only drinks, so after paying my 10 pesos I cycled off into the crazy heat of the day.

I swear that while I was in the garage a team of movie people came along and changed the set as when I left the garage I was cycling through a desert like landscape rather than the mountainous one which had brought me to the petrol station.

Despite the fantastic progress that I was making I still had the problem that the temperatures were over 40C and with no shade stopping for a break was out of the question. 

My saviour was a bus shelter by the side of the road and I stopped there to get a brew on and to take a break from the sun

I checked the map and it showed a Hosteleria another 10km down the road and even though I couldn’t guarantee that it would be open when I got there that would be my lunch stop sorted.

After enjoying a cup of Canela (cinnamon) tea I cycled off to find the Hotel de Campo which was marked on the map.

For lunch I had Milanesa de Bife with salad and fresh bread.  No matter how remote a place seems to be the food is always fresh and nothing is served from a packet.

After lunch the ever changing scenery that I was cycling through led me out of the desert and into a canyon that followed a river that actually had water in it.

This was the great thing about Ruta 40, the constant changes in scenery meant that although the environment was among the toughest I had faced it never got boring.  Boredom is the worst thing for me as then you start to notice the aches and pains that seem to disappear when your brain is engaged.

People seem to think that this cycling lark is one long holiday, and in a way it is, but I would still ask you to cycle 2000km in a month and then tell me how much of a holiday it really is!!!!!  At least I don’t have to get up and go to work in the morning (although when I do, thankfully, I love the work I do).

I had now arrived at the town of Belen and although I was short of my 100km for the day it offered me the opportunity to get my tent fixed. I was in a bit of a fix though and so will pose this question – if you were cycling into a town in the country where you lived where would you go to get a tent fixed?

My solution was to head to a car mechanics as at least they should have some tools.

After travelling through South America for over a month I can get by in Spanish with ‘everyday’ conversations about accommodation, choosing food, directions etc but asking somebody to fix a tent pole was beyond me.

The mechanic had a friend who spoke English and phoned him to come down to translate and between us we came up with a temporary solution until I could either replace the pole or the tent.

(The guy doesn’t have a growth on his cheek by the way he was chewing coca leaves which most South Americans do)

Within 30 minutes, and a bit of hacksaw action, I now had a tent that would see me through to Santiago in Chile where I could either replace the broken, and now shortened, poles or buy a replacement tent.  I have no idea how many days that I had camped so far on this trip but I would guess at around 80 and so even if I needed to replace the tent then it had paid for itself.

The mechanic wouldn’t accept any money for fixing my tent and was just happy to have helped me on my cycle round the world

I could have stayed in Belen for the night but again (seems to be the way that I cycle without an actual plan) the mechanic had told me that there was an Inca settlement that was the southernmost capital city of their empire in the town of Londres which lay 15km further down the valley and so I headed there.

It turns out that Londres gained it’s name, which means London in Spanish, in honor of the fact that Phillip I, King of Spain at the time of its founding, was married to Mary Tudor (Mary I of England)  

When I arrived there was a Hosteleria in the main plaza but I wanted to check that my tent still worked after the mechanic had shortened the poles and so decided to head out towards the Inca ruins to see if they were still open and if not I would find a place to camp for the night and visit the ruins the next morning.

As it was Valentines day though I decided to treat myself to a cake before I left .  The panaderia, bakery, on the plaza doubled as the local cake shop and had a sign outside advertising heart shaped cakes.  When I asked it turned out that they were only making full sized cakes to order

Even I couldn’t have eaten that much cake so left it and headed out into the bush to find a place to camp for the night

The track I was following led me to the entrance of the Inca ruins but as it was shut when I got there then I would not be able to get a wash or top up my water bottles.  I asked a farmer if there was a river with water nearby and he pointed to a sidetrack which continued up the valley.

After following it for 5 minutes I could hear the sound of running water and cycled until I found the river (or stream in the middle of a 50m river bed) and set up camp for the night.

The setting that I had camped in was sublime and was framed by the mountains that the water in the river flowed out of

This was the first time that I had camped for a long time in a river valley that was inhabited and, even though Argentina is one of the safest countries in South America, you do notice the different noises as you are trying to get to sleep. 

When camping at an official campground in Argentina there is always music and people barbequing, even at 2am, but safety is never a concern and so I stick in my earplugs and go to sleep. 

When camping near towns I don’t tend to wear my earplugs and different noises often wake me during the night and this night was no exception.  I was woken by motorbikes, no idea where they were going but they stopped on the other side of the river channel and then 5 minutes later left again,  dogs investigating my tent and other random noises. 

Maybe the empty darkness was finally getting to me as when I camp solo in the middle of nowhere I know that I would have to be very very unlucky for something to happen but next to towns you never know.

I was still alive and kicking in the morning and by 9am had cycled to the Inca ruins that I wanted to visit – El Shincal

The ruins are located  in  a valley that are surrounded by the precordillera mountains 

Next to the entrance of the ruins there was a small museum and on display were the artifacts and pottery that had been found during excavation of the site.  There was also a model plan of the site that gave the layout of the main buildings – the aukaipata (the great square), the kancha (housing), the kallanka (storage buildings), the ushnu (ceremonial platform).

When I left the museum to begin my walk around the site it was still early but even the Alpacas were finding different ways to get out of the scorching sun and keep cool

The first area I came upon was the ‘kitchen’ where the Inca’s used to prepare their food and you could see how overtime the grinding of cereals and herbs had worn a series of natural mortars into the rock.

These rocks would have been used to grind carob, corn, bean and potato to prepare beverages and foods used in ritual ceremonies.

Apart from the bases of buildings and a few of the walls the majority of the structures that you find today in El Shincal have been rebuilt in the style of what the archaeologists believe would have been originally there.

The only original ‘structures’ still standing are the platforms which were built so that the Inca’s could practice their religious activities associated with the worship of the sun.

The view from the top of the platform gave a 360 degree view of the valley that the capital city was located in and it is amazing to think that this is probably the exact same view that the Inca’s who stood here 500 years ago would have had.

Here is a short video to give you a better idea of the amazing setting for the city:

It was nearly 11am when I left and cycled back into the town of Londres.  For the first time since leaving Cafayate I had phone signal and so took the opportunity to phone my wife in Vietnam and my family back in the UK.

By the time I had finished phoning it was gone midday and I had a choice to make – I could either just check into a hostal, and there was one on the corner of the plaza I was sat in, or I could head off into the desert and continue my journey south towards Chilecito. 

I decided to carry on cycling and headed out of Londres.   I had no real destination in mind as on my map there was no town for at least 100km and given the time that I left I doubted that I would get that far.

The road south was arrow straight and with a slight downhill gradient I was sailing along at over 20kmph.


There were loads of flying beetles along the edge of the road and they were like dung beetles on steroids.  They were flying bombs and as they flew in straight lines I could hear them getting caught up in my spokes and minced.  A few of them hit me in the head and body and I can assure you that they hit with a fair impact.  I have no idea why they were along this section of the road as I had not seen them before, and after 5 or 6 km I never saw them again.

About 2pm I pulled into a derelict building which had a shrine outside of it to have lunch as there was a tree in the driveway that would provide me with shade while I ate lunch

It was then that I realized that I had not topped up my water bottles before I left Londres and so instead of the normal 4 litres that I normally leave with I had left with just over 2 litres and having drunk on the way was now down to only about 1 litre left.

In the last two hours I had not passed a single inhabited building and looking on the map showed no sign of life until I reached the village of  Salicas which lay 50 km away.  For the first time on this cycle ride it looked like I would run out of water and as the temperature was already at 40 C it would be an uncomfortable end to the ride that day.

Instead of my normal lunch of soup with pasta and a cup of tea I decided to save water and just had a bowl of porridge and a few mouthfuls of water to wash it down with.

When I set off after lunch the road was again arrow straight and I could see for a good 20 km and was hoping that I may see a house of cross a river but I could see nothing anywhere in front of me 

The dry sand dunes by the side of the road held little hope that I would cross a river soon. 

After another hour I had run out of water and I was still 30km away from Salicas which was the next village that was marked on my map.

It was amazing how soon my mouth ran out of saliva and as the temperature increased each kilometer seemed to tick past more slowly than the last.

There was a junction up ahead where I had to join Ruta 60 for 5km before I could connect back up with Ruta 40 again. 

As I approached the junction I could see a police check point building.

I had passed a fare few of these and the majority were unmanned and so didn’t want to get my hopes up but as I got closer I could see that the front door was open which shopefully meant that someone was there

As I cycled up a policeman came out and I asked him if he had any water.  He went back in and came out with a fresh 2 litre bottle which had come straight out of the fridge and was ice cold.  It was easily the best tasting water that I had ever drank and he told me to keep the bottle.

It turned out that he was not in fact a policeman but a fruit inspector checking that commercial trucks had the correct paperwork for their loads of fruit.  He tried to explain why he was checking but I didn’t fully understand him – it was either to stop the spread of disease or insects from one part of the country to another as there were restrictions on certain types of fruit. 

Again, it seems that the limits of my Spanish are good for everyday situations but not for the intricate explanations of the policing of the movement of fruit.  Running out of water is not a nice experience especially as I had not passed any sign of life for at least 50km and was not sure when I would be able to get some more. 

Plus, it was my own fault for not checking and filling my water bottles before I had left.  In my defence though I had gotten a bit blasé about water as since descending off the Puna I don’t think I have cycled  for more than 20km without passing a house or a shop.  Just my luck that the day I forget to fill up I don’t pass a single building for over 80 km !!!

After 5km on Ruta 60 I turned back onto Ruta 40 and was met by the sight of a Comedor that had a fridge fully stocked with ice cold drinks.

I bought myself a 2 litre bottle of Fanta and sat there drinking it while munching on empanadas. An hour before I had run out of water in +40 degrees heat and now here I was with food and an ice cold drink.  It is amazing how fortunes change on a bike.

The Comedor had a hose pipe out back which I used to fill my bottles so that I had a fresh 4 litres of water when I set off (I have given up buying water as it is 25 to 30 pesos per bottle).

I had not left Londres until midday and if I had of had enough water I would have stopped after 50km and camped in the desert.  I had to push on though and had now covered nearly 80km with the village of Salicas another 5km down the road.

Where I had cycled through empty landscapes all day I was now cycling through a series of small villages where my camping options didn’t look very good as the land by the side of the road was being farmed. 

When I arrived at the village of Salicas I asked a man if  there was a municipal camp ground in the village and he said there was but if I wanted to camp I should head to the village of Andolucas which was about 20km further down the road.

I looked at the map on my phone but couldn’t find the village that he was talking about.  His directions were to continue down Ruta 40 until I came to a triangle in the road and then I should take the smaller road and after a couple of kilometers I would find the camp ground next to the river.

The man assured me that it was a much better place to camp than in Salicas and it was easy to find by just asking people along the way.

I thanked him and cycled off. I didn’t really fancy another 20 km cycle especially if it was going to be a bit of a wild goose chase.  Up ahead I saw a women coming out of her house so before committing to another hours cycling I pulled over and asked her for directions to the campsite at Andalucas.

She gave me the exact same directions as the man, take the small road at the triangle and then head for the river.  She also said that it was ‘muy lindo’, a Spanish phrase for very cute/beautiful.  As I knew that it existed I headed off for the extra hours cycling and after 5km came to a triangle in the road and the small left road headed off into the hills. 

The sign post at the turn off had no mention of any place like Andalucas though (at this point I had not seen it written down and so wasn’t sure how it was spelt and was just going on something that sounded like the famous regiona in Spain of  Andalucia !!!!).

I decided that this couldn’t be the turn off that they were talking about as it was not far enough away from Salicas and so continued cycling on Ruta 40 to find somebody to ask.  This somebody turned out to be a delivery driver who again told me to continue on Ruta 40 until I came to a triangle in the road.

After 16km I came to the triangle and there was a sign welcoming me to the village of Andalucas and went off in search of the campsite.

When I found it there was a guy on the gate who explained that it was a municipal campground run by the village and that I could pitch my tent anywhere on the site.  There was also a river that ran through the middle of the campground and it was safe to swim in if I wanted to.  The best bit though was as I had arrived on a bicycle with my own tent that there was no charge.

First stop was the river to have a wash as the scorching sun had baked me and my skin felt like a shriveled prune even though I had layered on the factor 50 all day.

The water of the river was crystal clear and lovely and cold so I jumped in for a wash

This section of the river was too shallow to swim in though so after washing and just sitting in the cold water for a while I headed 200m upstream to find the swimming spot.

This part of the river ran through a type of canyon area and so the water was deep enough to swim in which was a beautiful end to the day.

The area was away from the barbecue areas which had power sockets.  When I had been having a wash in the river earlier I had seen people unpacking hifi’s and speakers from their cars and plugging them into the sockets.  Back by the river the cacophony of competing music was just getting going for the evening and so after swimming I decided that I would sleep upstream to the sound of running water rather than to the bass of Argentinian dance music.

The next morning the river was looking as pretty as it had the night before and I was tempted to stay there for an extra day.

 This wouldn’t get me to Chilecito though and somewhat reluctantly I got on the bike and headed out into the blazing sun. Overnight the rough road that I had arrived to the campsite on had a new topcoat of tarmac applied and the traffic was being routed on a detour down up the river valley before looping back towards San Blas.

This would add another 5 km to my ride that day if I was to reach Chilecito that day and as this ride was already well in excess of 100km I decided just to ride over the new tarmac back to the highway.  One of my mottos for this ride is to only leave my tyre tracks as evidence that I have visited an area and in this case they will be there for a long time !!!

It was gone 10am by the time I had gotten going that morning and the sun was blazing overhead.  I think that the donkeys I passed had the right idea and I should of joined them for the day in the shade.

Once I reached the highway there was an 8km steady uphill climb

And on the way I passed a vineyard where they were busy bringing in the grapes, no Bodega though. Next to the vines they were  building a Hotel Rural de Vino which if I ever come back this way with Deirbhle will definitely be a stop for the night.

Once I had reached the top of the rise I was really sweating and the view back down the road the way I had come from showed the reason for my dripping sweat.

Once again the wind was howling across the valley and the going, even downhill, was painfully slow.  I decided that I needed to increase my aerodynamics otherwise the next 8 hours on a bike would be the same slog that the cycle had been the day I left Cafayate.

As I am not carrying much food with me in Argentina I stopped in the shade of a tree and took my front panniers off and put all of the equipment in the back panniers.  I then tied the two panniers on the rear rack above my tent. 

It was a tight squeeze but everything fitted in. 

There are a number of reasons, apart from space, why tour cyclists tend to ride with front panniers that include the bike tends to handle/steer better, increased stability on dirt roads, easier climbing with weight over the front wheel and less weight over the rear wheel (most major breakdowns among tour cyclists I have met seem to be related to snapped spokes in the back wheel).    

Once I head to the Middle East and back into Europe I should be able to reduce the amount of gear that I carry even further by sending my sleeping bag, extra clothes and thermals back to the UK.  This means that I should have enough room to carry food in the rear panniers and so will also be able to post my front panniers home too.

When I set off with all the load on the back wheel it definitely took more grunt to get going but the reduced drag on the front end meant that once I was up to speed it took less effort to maintain that speed.

On the other side of the hill I wasn’t rewarded with the steep downhill that I had been looking for but at least it wasn’t going uphill.

I had now been cycling for a couple of hours and had covered just over 30km and would soon be passing the only village that according to my map I would pass all day.  This meant that I would need to refill my water supplies as I still had the best part of 80km more to ride and didn’t want to again run out of water.  The village of Pituil was a few kilometres off the main highway but when I came to the turnoff there was a large cemetery by the side of the road.

I cycled into the cemetery and found a tap near the entrance.  This would save me from a trip into Pituil and so I decided to have lunch in the shade of the boundary wall and fill my water bottles up once finished as making soup and coffee uses up a good litre or so of water.

When I set off again I had 6 litres of water with me and as I was drinking about a litre and hour that should be enough for me to cycle through the 40C degree temperature with enough to spare if it took me longer than expected to reach Chilecito.

The landscape in the afternoon was even more barren than I had cycled through in the morning and offered no shade from the sun or tall plants to block the wind. 

On days like this I began to question my sanity for deciding to cycle through this part of Argentina during the height of summer when the sun scorched the earth and the wind blew northwards.

When you’re having a bad day and think that not much else could go wrong the road surface badly deteriorated. 

Where the surface had broken up instead of resurfacing it they had just patched the bits of the ‘jigsaw’ back together with bitumen.  This had left a random patchwork of ridges that were about an inch high all across the road. It wasn’t just a small patch either but this went on for kilometer after kilometer and the constant bumps soon got very irritating.

As my mood was deteriorating, and I was finding little to smile at, a white bus passed me and pulled over on the gravel in front of me.  The buses windows had been replaced by paneling so I assumed somebody had converted it into their home.  As I cycled up to it a hand came out of driver’s side window clutching an ice cold beer.

Now this was just what I needed to lift my mood and it turned out that the driver was on his way to Mendoza as it was grape picking season and he traveled around working on different Bodega’s all year either tending the vines or picking the fruit.

The beer tasted sooooo good and worked wonders on my thirst.  My new friend, Pablo, said that if I wanted I could put my bike on the bus and he would drop me off in Chilecito on his way through.  The air conditioning that I could feel coming out of the window and getting out of the sun was really tempting but I had cycled nearly 70 km of the 110 km that I would need to and I wasn’t going to let this section of Ruta 40 beat me.

Pablo offered me another beer but if I had drank it I think my will power to continue cycling would have gone and so instead I took a bottle of ice cold water off him and cycled off into the heat of the day.

Now that I am south of the Tropic of Capricorn I find the late afternoon to be hotter than midday in this part of Argentina but the beer, cold water and chat with Pablo had done enough to lift my mood to forget about the constant bumps, crazy headwind and scorching sun for a while.

Along the side of the roads the constant graves and shrines that I passed every now and again had taken on a cycling theme.

I am not sure whether the bicycles were paying respect to the person’s life or whether they were aimed at Ruta 40 which is known as a mecca for cyclists.

I now came to the final climb of the day and after cycling over 100km in +40C heat it nearly did me in and I must have stopped in the shade of every tree I passed, and unluckily for me there weren’t very many of them, as I climbed my way out of the valley I had just crossed for the last 5km to Chilecito.

What greeted me as I entered the town was a huge Jesus statue with open arms and it put a smile on my face

Near the entrance to the town there is a huge hotel and casino complex and seeing as I had camped out, and had a fair few rough days of +100 km rides, since leaving Cafayate I decided that a treat was in order and headed to the casino to see how much it was.

In Vietnam, it is ‘illegal’ to gamble and whenever you cross a land border to Cambodia there are casinos that offer cheap rooms to entice gamblers in to spend more money.  As I got off the bike at the entrance to the hotel I was hoping that here in Argentina they offered the same deal.

I admit that I looked very sweaty and dirty, and probably didn’t smell too good, but my hopes of getting a room lasted all of 30 seconds as when I walked in the first thing that the receptionist said was that they didn’t have any promotional offers on at the moment.  Did I really look that bad?

The price for a room for the night was over 3000 pesos (more than my weekly budget for food and accommodation!!!!) and although I could have afforded it I couldn’t justify spending that on a ‘corporate style’ room for the night.  I chanced my arm and asked if there were any special rates for crazy cyclists who had just ridden over 100km just to gamble the night away. 

He laughed and said no but did recommend a place called ACA (Automovil Club Argentina).  He marked the location on a map of the town and sent me on my way.  En-route I passed another couple of hotels and checked them out. They could be best described as ‘ropey’, or, compared to the lovely hotel I had last stayed in in the wine region of Cafayate, fleapits.

When I cycled to the ACA hotel from the outside things looked up

In the tree lined car park there was an old Torino that was like me on its own world tour

The building must have been built in the 1960’s and was homage to the post modern era of white straight lined buildings with sharp corners, and it seemed that they hadn’t really done much work done on it in the last 50 years.

For 400 pesos I got a large airy room with a double bed and hot shower. Like most of the hotels I had stayed in in Argentina it is probably best never to look at Tripadvisor reviews but after checking in I was curious what people had reviews this one as.  Here is the most recent review:

This building must have been the height of fashion when it was built in the 60s. We loved it as a building. That is the only positive point. But now it is old, dilapidated and rundown. The bedroom was small with an airco, probably also from from the 60’s. The window could open for warm but -at least- fresh air.  The bathroom was small, it smelled and you could hear all the neighbors by the ventilation shaft.  There is a small swimming pool but we haven’t tried it.

Not the most glowing of reviews, and there was no way my Tridadvisor loving wife (god bless her) would have let me near the place if she was with me but the staff were great and the place had a special charm.  (Although I did change rooms as the air conditioning in the first room sounded like a WW1 prop plane taking off)

Once showered and headed towards the main square to get some food and using their wifi messaged JD, a fellow cyclist who had left Cafayate a day before me, to see where he was and it turned out that he was also in town having arrived the night before. After food we met up in the plaza to have a few beers

JD headed off in the morning  but it was a rest day for me and after a quick look around town it was clear that there was not really much to see.  In keeping with the Jesus statue the were lots of other oversized ‘people’ around town.

I had a couple of jobs to do that included buying new brake pads for the bike as mine were shot


I found two cycle shops in town that were at complete different ends of the cycling spectrum.  One offered only new carbon bikes and all of the latest accessories

While the other one I found was a bike junkyard

Neither of them sold branded brake pads and only ‘Chinese’ generic ones.  I think that they both used the same supplier for brake pads as to the eye they were exactly the same.  Guess which shop was nearly half the price of the other?  Yep – the junkyard !!!

The other job I needed to do was to find somewhere to have a shave and on the square there was an old fashioned barber who for 30 pesos gave my beard a good trimming.

As I was sat in the barbers chair I could see runners with numbers pinned to their tee-shirts streaming passed.  It turned out that there was a 5km (one loop) or 10km (two loop) run in town and once finished I joined the locals lining the roads giving encouragement to the runners.

I haven’t run since having the two operations on my back just before starting this cycle ride and if I had known about the run in advance I would have slipped on my trainers and joined them for a 10km run around town. 

It was nice that they had routed it thorough the center rather than around the outskirts as it does makes a huge difference to how enjoyable runs are when there are people to give you encouragement on the roadside.

My rest day off the bike flew past and before I knew it I was pedaling out of town on the second leg of my 1000km cycle down Ruta 40.  This leg would be another +400km cycle to the city of San Juan which is the capital for the province of the same name and marks the beginning of the most important wine region of Argentina.  

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Cycling Ruta 40, Argentina
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