Date:     Thu, 21 Aug 2008 (very delayed)

To:         touring@phred.org

From:    Michael Ayers; michael@terminalia.org

Subject: Gondwana - Never quite Accomplished - Northern Argentina

Buenos Dias Phreds,

It had seemed like I had been in Argentina for such a long time. Nevertheless, eight months since I first arrived in Buenos Aires, I entered the country once again, for the sixth time.

Indeed, that entry made Argentina the new record-holder for the country with the most entries of the Tour, surpassing the previous leader, India. My reason for entering this time was to find a good route between the Iguazu Falls area and Bolivia. There are three possibilities, all of which are long, flat, straight, and lonely-looking routes across a semi-arid region known as The Chaco. One crossed western Paraguay, one extreme northern Argentina, and one a little farther south. I would have preferred to stay in Paraguay, and go that way, but in the end I picked the most southerly route, as it seemed to have the most towns spread out along the way.

That required the sixth entry into the country, departing Paraguay, by crossing over the Rio Paraguay, at Encarncaion. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that the Paraguayan immigration officials were determined to uphold the policy prohibiting bikes on the rather long bridge. Actually, though it was two lanes, it looked rather wide, and I certainly wouldn’t have had any trouble going across as long as a clog of buses didn’t appear at some point, though I suppose that was a realistic possibility. In that case, I actually seriously considered making a break for it and sprinting across, as the whole bridge-banning thing was really getting on my nerves, however, just about that time, one of the officials arranged a truck to take me over. After that I was back in the country at a state capital, Posadas. Before stopping there, I made a detour to the north of about 50 km to visit another ruined Jesuit mission, this one in Santa Maria. That site was in a much more degraded state than the one I saw in Paraguay had been, with little more than stone foundations remaining. It was, however, in a nicely forested area, and the jungle had long since begun to crawl over the ruins, in a way ever so slightly reminiscent of Angkor in Cambodia.

After returning to Posadas that day, I stopped again one day later at another state capital, Corrientes, for another, hopefully short, maintenance break, and for once the shipment of supplies I had sent from home had arrived on time, before I did. This time it was another rear rim that needed to be replaced, the third one of the Tour. Once again, it wasn’t wear but damage caused when one on my rear panniers bounced off and damaged some of the eyelets.  I couldn’t complain too much, however, as that incident had occurred something like 20,000 km earlier, at a point in the past that seemed so distant that I couldn’t quite remember just where it had happened. Unfortunately, the damaged eyelets were on either side of the rim joint, and that had begun to cause the joint to fail. It’s a good thing I had the replacement sent to Corrientes, as it might not have lasted one more day. However, with an afternoon’s effort, I replaced the rim and was soon ready to go again. However, during that break another dreary period of steady light had settled in. I had been concerned that the roads and traffic in this region would be as bad as they are in El Littoral, though in reality they were sort of medium in that regard, and generally tolerable. Nevertheless, I was feeling a little tired and not wanting to deal with possible traffic in the rain I only traveled 17 km, back across the river (over a non-bike-banned bridge this time,) to yet another state capital,  Resistencia, where I slouched down for the rest of the day.

From there I was set to cross The Chaco, and rather anxious to get it over with, at that. The region is often referred to as a desert, but that is not very accurate. In the early springtime, when I was there, it was quite green, though it had already gotten surprisingly hot. The actual appearance of the place could best be described as a mix of savanna and thorny scrubland, with a few areas with a certain amount of agricultural activities. There was only one significant town on the route, Presedente Roque Saenz Pena, which I reached at the end of the first day. After that the remaining towns, reasonably well spaced out, ranged from just barely serviceable, to slightly serviceable. Actually, the area was not too unpleasant, if not very interesting. Traffic steadily decreased as I moved west, and the road wasn’t the worst I’d seen in Argentina. If it weren’t for an annoying wrong turn I made which caused an aggravating 65 km round-trip detour, I would have had no troubles at all getting across. When I reached the town of Joaqin V. Gonzalez, at the eastern foothills of the Andes, I was interested to see that I had arrived during a presidential election day, the second time I have done that on the Tour (the first being in Zambia.) This time there were no block-long lines at the polling places, but there did seem to be post-voting parties going on at the various political party offices. In the end the winner was Christine Fernandez, the spouse of the incumbent, Nestor Kirchener. Most people seemed pleased enough with the result, though I couldn’t help but wonder whether the result indicated an emerging trend for spouses of former presidents getting elected themselves. By the time I got around to writing this it seemed clear that it did not.

Shortly thereafter came the rather gradual start of my return to the Andes, a reasonably easy climb up to the major city of Salta, which greeted me with a torrential thunderstorm. I had planned a short stay in the city in order to receive another package of supplies. Of course, I have a long-standing curse on my soul related to anything shipping related, a fact of which most readers may not have been previously aware, which, once again, resulted in an unpredictable, and unwanted, long delay. The short, but still painful, version goes like this. I had ordered some new Schwalbe tires and had them sent to Salta. However, (and list members probably already knew this, though, of course, I did not) when Schwalbe switched from wire-beaded Marathon XRs to the new folding version, they switched the way they label their widths (which are now more realistic than they had been.) Despite a long conversation with the distributor, where I discussed that very issue, I still ordered the wrong size, and the tires that were waiting for me were too wide for my bike. Since the ones I had been using were pretty much completely worn out, I had only the option of having replacements of the correct size shipped out in a hurry (once again, a big thanks to Peter White and his staff for their usual efficient service!) That meant I would need to be in town for at least a week. Since I now had the extra time I decided to make one last effort to resolve another outstanding package issue. Seven months earlier, I had a package containing some replacement tent poles, two replicas of my “lucky” tour hat, the last original of which I had lost in Ethiopia - leading to all sorts of mishaps, mostly back at home - and, coincidentally, three more too-large Schwalbe Marathon XR tires sent to me at the major tourist town of El Calafate in Patagonia. When I had arrived there, months before, there was nothing there for me. After months of useless e-mails, tracking requests, and phone calls, I eventually learned what happened to it. Apparently, when you receive a package in Argentina you are supposed to pay customs duties not at the post office, but at the customs office itself (which officials will repeatedly point out to you, is run by a different department.) These are located only in state capitals and major cities, which, in my case, meant that I was supposed to go to Rio Gallegos, 300 km away from El Calafate, in order to get the package. Of course, I didn’t know that at the time, and now I was something like 4,000 km away. As luck would have it I eventually located a friendly customs broker in Salta, and with broken Spanish, I eventually communicated the problem to her. She was able to call a friend in Rio Gallegos who could go get the box out of customs, and another who could do the paperwork to have it expressed up to Salta, all of which required only three things from me; money, money, and more money. Amazingly, it all worked and I finally had my box, though now I had five oversized tires. With even a little extra time on my hands, I made arrangements for my sister to send me some fresh cloths from my cache at home, and as the ones I had with me had been reduced to mere threads for weeks, and the anticipation of replacing them was rather pleasing. Though there wasn’t too much to do besides taking the local cable-car ride, Salta was at least a fairly pleasant place for an extended break, though not altogether an inexpensive one. And, though it took 10 days instead of three, I did manage to get three shipment problems resolved, which I hoped would give me at least a few weeks of trouble-free travel, especially since I now had a new lucky hat.

North from Salta the main highway is a very good route towards Bolivia. Before any serious climbing begins there is a fine stretch between there and the last major town in Argentina, San Salvador de Jujuy. Along the way the “old” highway reduces to one, traffic-free lane and winds across a low range covered with some impressive cloud forest. It was there that I met the first other tourists I’d seen in a while. When I was in Patagonia I met some of the previous year’s stragglers doing the Pan-Americas routes. Now I began encountering the vanguard of the new year’s group. The first were Nicki and Gerhard Lauser, from Austria. They did an interesting route, following the typical areas from Alaska through North America as far as the Yucatan, then island-hopping across the Caribbean, reaching South America in Caracas, from where they crossed Amazonia on the road which technically no longer exists (Well done!) By the time I have gotten around to writing this they have reached Ushuaia and returned home. Later, there was Neil and Anne from England a retired couple who had set out not long before in Bolivia and were heading south. We were able to exchange some good route tips. After that was a solo fellow from Sweden who had just started at the Bolivian border. He reminded me a bit of myself on my first tour, a little unsure of himself and using a bike wholly inadequate for the task ahead.

Since I left Salta on a Sunday, I had to stop in Jujuy to send back the 5 useless tires (1 kg each!) that I now had. I had considered avoiding the trouble, since I’d just dealt with so much hassle the previous week, by donating them to a local bike shop, however, there are few 700c wheels in Argentina, and they were very expensive to begin with, so I decided it was best to send them all back to Peter. Argentina is a very curious country in some respects. Many aspects are as modern as anywhere, communications, media, electronics, transport, etc., while some areas appear not to have changed since the 01930’s. These include grocery stores with huge checkout lines at 5:00 PM (from everyone going shopping just at the end of siesta,) huge lines at banks all day long (still insisting on closing at 2:00 PM), bike parts that one would normally find in Bangladesh, and then there is the post office (not to mention the Customs office.) In Jujuy the customs office opens at 9:00 AM, though on that particular Monday no one arrived until almost Ten. After they decided how much I was supposed to pay to send these items out of the country they tried, as a surprising number of places still do, to get me to wrap the box in brown paper. Though I usually don’t, this time I insisted that I had no intention of going out to try and buy some paper, and that the sturdy box I had just obtained at the post, sealed with lots of tape would be just fine. For once I won that standoff. Then I proceed to the postal queue. There are two lines, one for surface mail, and one for express. I needed no excessive speed for this box, but the line for surface mail looked like it would take 2-3 hours to get through, so I chose to pay more for express which looked like it might take only one. I really don’t know why situations like these still exist anywhere, but people there seem to shrug it off with a that’s the way it’s always been, so that’s the way it will always be attitude. I promise to never complain about the U.S. Postal service again (well, ok, not really.)  After all that it was late in the morning, and with clouds potentially blocking the expected nice scenery later on, I stayed put for the day.

Continuing north, the route became surprisingly nice, perhaps the best in Argentina, with little traffic on a good road, and sections with a pleasing tailwind. Before long the highway begins a long transit through the Quebrada de Humahuaca, a World Heritage Site based on this scenic gorge’s use as a trade and transport conduit for millennia. The historic sites, at least those close to the road, are a little sparse, at least relative to the rest of the Andes. The iron-rich mountains lining the gorge were quite beautiful, however, especially since I had a stretch of nice weather now. Best of all, this region is where the real climb to the Andean altiplano occurs, and it was pleasingly gentle. Though the road eventually reaches 3,800 m, it never is too steep, and best of all, climbs in a bit of a step-wise fashion. There were also a few low-key touristy villages, and a few without many visitors at all, along the way and I stopped at some of these, partly because I liked visiting them, but also to allow for better acclimatization this time. Because of that, and the gradual climb, I happily avoided any of the altitude effects that I had felt somewhat in the Himalaya. This area is also the place where I began to notice a bit of a cultural change from euro-Argentinean to indigenous-Argentinean, which began to make me anticipate the rest of the Andes.

Eventually, I reached La Quiaca, the last town in Argentina, where a road sign announces that it is +5,000 km to Ushuaia, though my route was considerably longer than that. With that I left, once and for all, one of the countries that I spent the most time in of any, and perhaps also, the last good steaks and salads, I would get for quite some time.

Gracias,

Mike

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The Tour of Gondwana

May 02005 - ???

http://www.terminalia.org/tour