From Anchorage to Ushuaia by Bike

We were warmly welcomed by Ramon and his family in Salta for three days. Thanks so much to them for their hospitality. We’re not the first people to stay in their home: since 2004, they’ve had dozens cyclists from all around the world.

I have a new headset on my bike, and Sara’s problem still isn’t fixed. Her back wheel makes noise, and the bike repairman took it all apart and couldn’t find anything amiss. So we push on...

Since arriving in Argentina we’ve seen a lot of French cars – even more than in France! More than half the cars are French, mostly Renault, from all different years: there are a lot of R12, and also R9 and R11. There are the most recent models too, including the 4x4s. There are Peugeots too, mostly 504 and 307.  

When we’re on the road, we’ve been getting lots of encouragement from drivers and their passengers, which is nice and always motivating.

Just like we wrote about, there are a lot of things not allowed in Argentina: many more restrictions than in the some of the other countries we’ve been though. We’ve also found properties fenced with barbwire all along the road and the idea of private property. It makes camping a lot more difficult!

We were able to camp though, two days ago in the beautiful Quebrada of Cafayate. A cold front has swept through Argentina recently, and so we were pretty chilly. When we woke up, the surrounding mountains were covered in snow! A cold wind pushed us up the slow climb of the Quebrada. The cloudy weather unfortunately meant that we didn’t get to fully appreciate the landscape, and we missed the sunlight illuminating the unusual multi-coloured rock formations. Coming around a bend, we all the sudden came out of the clouds and found ourselves in the sun which warmed us as it lit up the landscape.

Yesterday as we arrived in Cafayate, we ran into Caroline and Stéphane, two French cyclists who are traveling north. We had a wonderful evening with them, comparing stories and swapping information.

Cafayate is the second most important wine region in Argentina, after Mendoza. We took the afternoon and visited some cellars and tried the excellent local Syrah and Malbec of the “vinos tintos,” and also the white grape Torrontes.

Question:

Do you know how Argentineans drink their wine?

To your keyboards!

Sébastien

We’ve been in Salta for two day now, staying with Ramon and his house of ciclistas, having a well deserved rest after 7 days of biking and more than 500 km (100 km of which were off-road). But we haven’t been lying around: we’ve been washing the sleeping bags, printing off stamps and visiting cards, getting Jose to take a look at our bikes (Sara – problems with a back spoke, hand grips, oil; Sebastien – hand grips, cleaning the gooseneck), sending a package to France (5 kg!), getting some new gear (socks, mostly), etc. Unfortunately for our research, the only microfinance institution in Salta refused to see us.

Argentina is different from all the other countries that we’ve been through. It was pretty strange going from the US to Mexico, but traveling through all the other countries, the differences between them haven’t been very abrupt. But going from Ecuador/Peru/Bolivia to Argentina has been disorienting and we’re having trouble adjusting.

Landscape

We left behind the altiplano, cold and sterile with its yellow, dry grass, and arrived in the Quebrada* of Humahuaca (too touristy for our taste), surrounded by colourful mountains. Little by little we descended in altitude: we started at 3500m and finished at 1200 above sea level. The head wind ruined our descent though. We had to pedal hard the whole way down and barely ever got going faster than 25km/h! It was infuriating. In the Quebrada we crossed over the tropic of Capricorn.

The route between San Salvador de Jujuy and Salta was really stunning. A little country road wound in between the lakes, and through green wooded landscapes with small flowers. It was a nice change, and we felt like we were on vacation – finally, a little bit of summer!

Lodgings

Argentina is more developed and so accommodation is more expensive, especially in the touristy Quebrada of Humahuaca. We were a bit alarmed at first when we saw the prices, but eventually we found something more to our taste. Luckily, camping grounds are pretty common, either city-run or private, with all the amenities so important to cyclists: a shower and a place to pitch the tent. And the further south we go, there more camping grounds there should be.

Hours

The daily rhythm of Argentine life is actually what’s causing us the most problem. Stores open up around 8 or 9 in the morning, but they close at 12:30 or 1:00 until about 4:30 or 5:00 for the infamous “siesta”! That means that we can’t even count on a convenience store being open during the afternoon, much less any other business. But once they open in the afternoon, stores stay open until 8:30 or 9:00, or even 10:00 pm. And of course restaurants don’t open until 9:30 or 10:00 at night.

At home, people never eat before 9:30 or 10:00 and often don’t go to bed until past midnight. When we were living in Paris, lots of people we knew thought that we were living “late,” that our timing was delayed, but compared to the Argentineans, we really weren’t that off at all!

Traffic

Argentineans are aggressive behind the wheel. We noticed as soon as we crossed the border. When they come to unmarked intersections, it’s whoever is the bravest who goes through!

On the other hand, one way streets and traffic flow rules are carefully followed, which we haven’t seen since we got to Mexico, last November! Generally, there are lots of rules that are followed here that we haven’t seen for almost a year!

Thief!

The day after we stayed in Humahuaca, we left for Purmamarca, a little village known for its seven-coloured hill. After about 15 km, I decide to take a picture, but our little camera was gone. It wasn’t in the handle bar bag, and neither was the camera case, which was strange since we never take the case out of the bag. I emptied the bag out on the ground, but it wasn’t there, even though Sebastien had put it in there this morning. We checked our pockets and our food bags just in case, but couldn’t find it.
Sebastien decided to go back to the hostel where we spent the night. He left me by the side of the road with all our bags climbed back up the hill we had just come down. In Humahuarca the owner was surprised to see him. Sebastien explained the problem and insisted that we had had the camera at the breakfast which had been !!include!!d. The manager called the cleaning women who got a strange look on her face when he asked her if she had found a camera in Room 11.  Right away she rummaged around in her bucket and there, hidden at the bottom, was our camera. The women tried to explain and the manager tried to cover for her. But that doesn’t change the fact that our camera disappeared (we didn’t forget it!) while we were at breakfast talking with the owner. We’ll never know whether they were in it together, but at least we foiled the plan. Good thing we hadn’t gone 50 km! You can’t fool these cyclo-tourists, on the road 15 months, and who know exactly what is and what isn’t in each one of our bags!

*dry river bed

Sara

We didn’t get out of Tupiza as early as we would have liked. We still had about 90 km left in Bolivia, and we thought we would spread it over 2 days, to prolong our Bolivian experience a little longer.

We had been worried about Bolivia, and planning for it had been tough. But in the end we enjoyed the culture and people more than in Peru, and the roads weren’t as bad as we were expecting. We came into the country more than a month behind in our itinerary, but we’re leaving only three days behind. So we’re a little sad to be leaving, even as we struggle along the gravel road. It’s under construction, about to be paved. There’s lots of equipment along the way, and detours too, but on the bikes we can weave around the worst of the sand piles and signs. We get to see the torn-up ground, waiting patiently to be covered over in asphalt. Since leaving Tupiza, we’ve had lots of encouragement: the whole construction team knows that there are two cyclists struggling along. While we were taking a break, there was a huge explosion. Apparently, in their surprise at seeing us, the workers had forgotten to mention that they were about to blow up the mountain. A little bit of dynamite and a whole piece of mountain fell onto the road, where we had passed only minutes before. Hearts pounding, and thanking our lucky stars that it hadn’t been a few minutes earlier, we hurried away from the explosion.

After about 40 km, we decided to pitch the tent. Getting back to biking after a week of rest was harder than we thought. The workers had a good laugh when they asked us if we were really going to spend the night here. Well, yeah! And, we’re even going to cook – pasta with tomato sauce.

The next day we had 50 km to go. We were a little choked up: we were about to go into Argentina, where, according to other travelers, you can find everything from good grocery stores to excellent steak and wine. But there was still a long road ahead of us and we wouldn’t be crossing the border until 4:00 pm.

Actually leaving Bolivia didn’t take very long. As they flipped through our passports looking for the Bolivian stamps, the customs officers were astounded at the number of other recent stamps we had!

Just as we crossed over the imaginary border, a customs officer waved us over to the immigration line. We lined up, but after 15 minutes we hadn’t moved at all! That’s when a different officer came over to us and asked us what we were waiting for. Well, customs. Duh. He told us we were in the wrong line, and followed by Sébastien, he took our passports and gave them his colleague in a different office. They asked us all the regular questions, and the two officers were totally incredulous when we told them our story, even though we know that there are lots of cyclo-tourists that cross the border here. They stamped our passports and sent us on our way, happy to have avoided that crazy line!

Next was the health inspection. Well actually, the bikes had to pass the inspection, and then we would be able to relax a little, knowing that we’d been through the most difficult countries, like Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. The customs officer asked us to wait…. And then we realized that we had peanuts and apples, neither of which we’re allowed to bring into the country. But then a man came up to us and waved to his colleague that everything was ok, and they let us through.

The sign said only 5121 km to Ushuaia! Our final destination is in sight! Although that is the direct route along Route 40, not going into Chile. It seems like we have only a few more hours left to go!

We celebrated our entry into Argentina with a good steak and the “vino de la casa” in La Quiaca, a town just inside the Argentine border. The steak was great and the wine was strong, especially at 3400 metres in altitude and after two days of biking under a hot sun.

Today was an easy day, 75 km of flat road with a favourable wind. We discovered Argentina, straight roads and light winds, and drivers who wave and flick their lights at us for encouragement. They at least have figured out that deafening us with their horns isn’t helpful at all, not like their Peruvian counterparts. We ended up in Abra Pampa, an unattractive little village on the plains. We found a little “residencial,” a low end hostel. We avoided them as much as possible in Bolivia since the sheets were never clean, there was no shower, no water, and the bathrooms were at the other end of the lot. Juan opened the door to the courtyard, and we weren’t impressed, but I went to see a room anyway. It was all new, very clean, and there was a shower with hot water, a sink and a bidet. There was even wifi… although temperamental.

In two days we’ll head down from the plains, going down 1000 metres each day, and ending up in Jujuy, only 1200 m above sea level. That will be the end of the altiplano for us, with its cold temperatures and glacial winds. No more llamas watching us from afar, and that will be the end of the native culture here, so mysterious to our European eyes.

Sara

When we arrived in Tupiza we looked into doing trip in a 4x4 around the region. It’s supposed to be beautiful, but very difficult by bike.

Agency: Tupiza Tours

We wanted to book with a company that other travelers had recommended. There are a lot of agencies in Uyuni and Tupiza that offer trips to Lipez, and there are a lot of trips that go wrong too…

The Group

All the agencies book people in groups in order to fill a jeep. Normally there are 5 people in each car, but the agency had 6 people on its list, so we went in a group of 6 – after asking each of us if it was ok. We were in a group with Sanne and Bonnie from Holland, and Els and Jan from Belgium, all backpackers. They spoke Flemish to each other, but we spoke English in the group so that we all could understand.

The Staff

There was our driver-guide-mechanic, cautious and knowledgeable. And the cook, Eli, who would normally have been in the car with us, but wasn’t because there was already 6 of us.

The vehicle: Toyota Landcruiser

Like all vehicles that have rough drives, we ran into a few “pequeños problemas.” We got a flat tire, blown fuses, and a clogged gas filter (the gas in Bolivia is only refined once so it’s not very clean).

Food

All the meals were !!include!!d. For breakfast we had bread or pancakes, jam, butter, Dulce de Leche, tea, coffee and hot chocolate. Lunch was generally a picnic with vegetables, meat, beans, fruit and drinks, and at night we ate soup, meat, beans and vegetables. There were also snacks of tea, coffee and drinks, and candy and cookies. There was as much food as we could eat.

Itinerary

Day 1: Tupiza, Quebrada de Palala, Sillar, the mineral deposits of Nazarenito, Chilcobija, Cerrillos, Polulos, Rio San Pablo, San Antonio de Lipez.

Day 2: San Antonio de Lipez, Torreón, Laguna Morejón, Quetena, swimming in the thermal baths of Chalviri, Lagunga Polques, Laguna Verde, Licancabur Volcano (5960 m above sea level), the Dali desert, the geothermal area Sol de Mañana, Laguna Colorada.

Day 3: Laguna Colorada, the Siloli desert with the Stone Tree, “Jewels Road” and the Ramaditas lagoons, Honda, Chiarkota, Hedionda, Cañapa; Ollague volcano (still active), Tomasamil volcano (5900 m high), the salar de Chiguana, Atullcha (a salt hotel).

Day 4: Atullcha, salar de Uyuni (3650m in altitude) and Incahuasi Island, el viejo hotel de sal, Colchani, the hub of salt extraction, Uyuni. And then back to Tupiza for those people who wanted.

Regrets

It would have been nice add another day to the trip and climb up the Licancabur volcano, but we couldn’t get two other people interested in doing that. We talked with the Tupiza Tour staff and they told us that in July and August lots of people had added the day to climb a volcano – either Licancabur (5914m), Uturuncu (6008m) or Tunupa (5432m).

The Commentary

Fernando finally explained to us the mystery of the cars with steering wheels on the right. They’re second hand cars that have come from the other side of the Pacific Ocean (Japan, Australia, New Zealand) and which arrive in Chile. Bolivians involved in car trafficking [Trans. note: ha!] buy them in Chile and sell them for three times as much in Bolivia. Often they move the steering wheel to left, but the exhaust pipe is still on the wrong side, the gear box and the hand brake are closer to the passenger than the driver, and the signals and windshield wipers are backwards. Fernando showed how to spot these modified cars by the windshield wipers and we noticed that almost all the cars in Bolivia had been “converted.”

We saw some of the trails around Lipez and it would have been pretty hard on a bike. No doubt that if we had started out our trip on that kind of terrain we would have gone right back to France, totally disenchanted with biking. We didn’t see a single cyclist for 4 days, and the ones we had met earlier who had biked through had really sweated it, without many opportunities to stock up with food and water.

The region is about the size of a dozen French departments and has breathtaking wild landscapes, but only about 7000 inhabitants. It is very dry, cold and quite hostile. At its lowest point, it’s 3600m above sea level. We climbed up to 4900m. The few villages that we saw survive on mineral exploitation, including tin, lead, silver, zinc, borax, and antimony.

Along the whole 1000 km that we travelled, we saw lots of vicuna digging around in the sand for food, American ostriches, a condor, partridges, viscachas (like rabbits with a long tail), lots of birds, and lots of red flamingoes in coloured lagoons, like the reddish-pink Laguna Colerada. Our favourite was the Green Lagoon (4400m), at the base of the Licancabur volcano (5960m). The emerald green colour comes from a high concentration of lead, sulfur, arsenic, and calcium carbonate.

After our trip, we went on a 5 hour horseback ride around Tupiza, through the “quebradas,” dry river beds that look like canyons, surrounded by varying rock formations. The landscape was beautiful and our guide told us all about some of the strange formations like “Devil’s Door,” “Machos’ Valley,” (so named for the many rock formations that resemble masculine characteristics), and the “Canyon del Inca.” Sebastien’s horse didn’t like water and jumped over it, much to Sebastien’s surprise. He also decided to go home a little faster than the others, and took off at a gallop, while Sebastien hung on. I guess after 15,000 km on a bike you learn something about riding! It was a great day trip, for only $2.00 an hour. (Especially considering riding in France [Trans. note: or in Canada] costs between $15-20 an hour!).

Sara

This trip is outside the scope of the Association Planète Durable et Solidaire. But we will use the site to keep you updated on all our news and adventures.

But it was a lot of work to get there! Reaching the salt flats wasn’t so easy.

The first day out of Oruro was flat paved road, through the extravagant landscapes of the altiplano. It was easy going with a favourable wind, and after about 80 km, we stopped at thermal baths for a shower and pitched the tent just a little further along.

The next day we biked another easy 40km and arrived in the last major town before the Salar. We stocked up with enough food for five days. Challapata was a surprising little urban centre, populated by strange cars that we didn’t understand: there were second hand vehicles everywhere with no license plates but with inscriptions on the wind-shields. And the steering wheels were all on the right! Pretty bizarre considering we’re in the middle of a continent where normally everyone drives on the right side of the road. Just another one of those mysteries of globalization… The next 40 km of road were under construction, but there wasn’t much traffic. We biked part of the way on the paved road, part of it on the path beside the road, consistently climbing over piles of gravel. We camped in the middle of the barren altiplano, beside an old ruin, the only shelter we could find against the strong, icy wind. The full moon shone down on us all night, rising in the east just as the sun set in the west.

These days more than ever we live according to the rhythm of the sun: we pitch the tent just as the sun is setting (6:25 pm) and make dinner by the dying light of day. We eat in the tent as the air cools and turn out the lights by 8:30 or 9:00. In the morning we get up with the sun, around 6:30 am, the coldest time of the day. But the air warms up quickly and by 9:00 am, it’s quite pleasant. That night in the middle of the altiplano was the coldest night we’ve spent so far. Our proof was in our water flasks: frozen solid.

The third day on the road we faced increasingly strong winds. And to complicate things, we made the mistake of taking the “short-cut” to avoid some construction. We ended up on a sandy track and wasted almost an hour and a lot of energy. We figured that at this rate it would take us an extra day to get to Uyuni, and more food and gas for the stove. We asked in the next village whether there were any buses that would help us catch up. They told us that there was nothing that day, but that there would be one tomorrow. We had not been passed by a single vehicle so far, although we had seen several buses and trucks going the other direction. The trucks are the public transportation in Bolivia!

So we continued to brave the wind, figuring that it would let up soon. We had to ford a river barefoot which meant we lost even more time. We ate lunch while watching the whirlwinds around us, hoping that none of the them would sweep us up and carry us back where we came from! A few kilometers after that we saw a truck in our rearview mirror. We’d only covered 37 km, instead of 60 km like we were hoping to. The wind was tiring and discouraging. It didn’t take long for us to decide to take a chance and stop the truck – the only one we’d seen all day, and it was already 3:00 in the afternoon. The driver of the truck also took a chance – he asked for $20 to take us to the next village, about 70 km away. We agreed on 20 bolivianos (about $2.50). And in a few minutes we found ourselves in the back on the truck with our bikes and bags, being bounced along to the rhythm of the road, and trying to breathe through our scarves to avoid the dust. Four hours later, just as the sun was going down, the driver dropped us off at the service station of Salinas de Garci Mendoza. We filled up with gas and then biked off into the night, much to the surprise of the locals. About 2 km outside the village we found a quiet little corner to camp.

We knew that the 4th day the road would be rough: rocks and stones bounced around in front of us, sand and dust, and sheet metal bumps – we saw it all. But it was worth it. We came around the Tunupa Volcano in the middle of a wonderful landscape, passed through lovely hamlets and ended up at the top of the Salar d’Uyuni! It was very moving to discover the flats as we crested a hill.

35 km later, we arrived in Tahua Sunday afternoon, right in the middle of a public assembly in front on the town hall. Our arrival was not unexpected – the fact that we were looking for a place to stay has preceded us, and a young woman welcomed us into her little hotel where she hosts many traveling cyclists, mostly French! We enjoyed a mostly warm shower (electric heater), and we couldn’t ask for more. Perhaps we weren’t the first people to sleep in the sheets that night, but oh well.

The next day our host showed which of all the “islands” that we could see was Incahuasi Island, our objective. Once we arrived on the salt flats, however, after going down a sandy track, it was out of sight. It was 40 km away and the curve of the earth meant that we couldn’t see it. We knew the coordinates though, and our GPS showed us which way to go across the vast white expanse. It was a strange feeling as our tires crunched across the salt. It felt like riding across a frozen lake, but the traction was perfect. The total flatness was unbelievable. We set a course straight south for 40 km, the wind on one side. We closed our eyes for 10, 20 then 30 seconds, and even a minute. It was a strange experience and impossible to keep going in a straight line (check out the videos once they’re online). Our brains played tricks on us, and after a couple of kilometers on the flats we felt dizzy. It was disorienting. And apparently the compass doesn’t point north on the salt flats. We could see tire tracks driving off in all directions. It’s easy to get lost on the salty white desert.

As we arrived at the island, tourists in 4x4 on organized tours saw us coming and took pictures of us, like of animals in a zoo. We weren’t planning to stick around, figuring it would be quieter on the other side of the island for lunch. But just as we were biking away, one of the tourists, more persistent than the others, came over to say hello to us. He was part of French tour, and they offered us lunch in exchange for our stories: it was lovely! Then we climbed on the little island all covered in cacti to take pictures and to test the strength of the west wind. It was lucky for us since we were heading east. We pushed off and then didn’t have to pedal again for 40 km! The wind literally pushed us along at 20 to 25 km/h without us pedaling at all! That had never happened to us, in all those 15,000 km. (By the way, that makes 1000 hours on the bike since Anchorage).

We had planned to camp in the middle of the salt flat – an old dream – but in the end we didn’t try. The wind was so strong that we wouldn’t have been able to pitch the tent, and the ground was so hard that it would have been impossible to stake. At 4:00 pm, although we had planned to stop, we decided to keep going and try to get to somewhere to spend the night. In the GPS we had the location of an old salt hotel on the Salar (quarrying the salt is not allowed anymore). It was about 7 km from the embankment, and we reached it after covering 104 km across the salt flats. We were able to put up the tent using blocks of salt, sheltered from the wind by the dirty building. It wasn’t quite in the middle of the flat, but we still camped on the Salar. It was like camping on an ice floe. We watched the sun rise and the sun set. To our surprise, it wasn’t all that cold, despite the icy wind – our water barely iced over.

The next morning, we froze in the icy wind, and after a long photo session we started out. We biked until about 11:00 am, with the wind still at our backs. At the edge of the Salar, after passing salt pyramids and getting back onto the sheet metal road, we met three French cyclo-tourists at Colchani. We talked with them for 3 hours, sharing our experiences. The wind continued to push us along the dusty road all the way to Uyuni. We loved that city so much that we left it as soon as possible. We skipped the 200 km of sandy road and packed the bikes into a bus yesterday morning at 6:00 am and arrived in Tupiza, perfectly situated for a day of rest 700m beneath the altiplano. Given the state of the road that we saw from the bus, we made the right choice!

Tomorrow we’re leaving for a trip on a 4x4 (naturally, outside the scope of the Association) for 4 or 5 days across the high plains of Lipez.

NB: The Salar d’Uyuni is the biggest salt flat in the world. It is 12,106 km², or the size of two French departments. It was formed when the huge lake that covered the whole south west of Bolivia evapourated 25,000 years ago. The lake didn’t drain into any rivers and so the minerals from the surrounding mountains had been accumulating there for millions of years.

NB2: For those of you who don’t know what a sheet metal road is, all you need to know is that it is a cyclist’s nightmare! What happens is that because of the wind and the traffic, a flat road develops all these little bumps that make it look like corrugated iron sheets.

Sébastien