Tainted salteñas and a free ride to La Paz

Never again

For the past week or so, these spiteful meat-stuffed turnovers have served as a quick breakfast when I don´t have much time to cook or sit down for the pitiful excuse that is your normal South American breakfast (bread and tea...and sometimes jelly). Since entering this beautiful country, these palm-sized morsels were digested without incident atleast every other day...until I stopped in Oruro. And here my troubles began...

Some kind hearted folks found me 74 km´s northwest of Oruro on ruta 1 and could immediately tell I was in trouble, for I was buckled over on the side of the road, unable to mount my bike let alone stand, and covered chest deep in explosive salteñas. Despite the vomit soak cloths and poo pants, this sainted family loaded me in the back of their pick up a drove me all the way to La Paz, where I was dropped off at the emergency room with the shortest of goodbyes. The doctor´s orders were simple and practical. I was handed two litres of water and told to drink every drop. This immediately resulted in an hour long vomit fest in which I was sure my insides were a heave or two from gushing forth into the trash can.

After a well deserved slumber in a hospital bed, I was back to normal by morning (yesterday)...but my clothes were still covered in puke and poo.

So I'm in La Paz, sitting here at the hostel computer wearing some boxers and a towel while my clothes are drying. Tonight, adventuring is afoot. However, no more streetfood, especially salteñas.

Big news!!!!

Argentina is no more. I am now somewhere in the center of Bolivia, a country a few weeks deep in hail season. I'm quickly regretting what I said earlier in Salta about needing a change from the sun and heat. I'll take a healthy dose of UV radiation any day over being pelted by pellets of ice every time four o' clock rolls around. I'm just glad all the scenery is keeping my spirits up.

Backtracking a bit, the last leg of my Argentinian route was harrowing and cursed once again by another pair of Germans promising great tail wind all the way to La Paz, a guarantee that was immediately followed by crippling head wind and a pledge to myself never to talk to another German cyclist for this reason.

La Quiaca was the last Argentine town on my route, and what a send off that turned out to be. For two days, I chilled at the local firestation, which-due to the lack of fires this time of year-reverted to a 24/7 asado hut for volunteers and guests such as myself. The half dozen of us spent the next 48 hours cooking up pretty much every meat imaginable and bringing the llama population in Jujuy province down  to near extinction levels. These guys were true dudes, taking me out on driving tours to the ancient town of Yavi that all the other tourists had to pay good money to get too. When it was time to leave, they packed me a bag full of vegetarian tamales and helped me get across the border into Villazon, Bolivia.

The next day, I was rolling up Bolivia's ruta 1 for the first time, and quickly discovered the roads to be more friendly to cyclists than Argentina. The shoulders are wide here, and drivers are crazy about using their horns, so the cars don't sneak up on you here like they do in Argentina. Half way into my first day on the road, I ran into fellow solo cyclist Nicola from France who's been conquering the roads of North and South America for the past year. Being on the road for so long, it was no wonder the guy was speaking gibberish about how we were actually living in post-Judgment Day but that the leaders of the Bilderberg Group managed to stop god's wrath by summoning satan once every year, and that he was biking to bring awareness to the conspiracy and TimeCube.org. 

I'm kidding, Nicola was alright and sane.

It was also on this first day that I was introduced to the schizoid Bolivian weather pattern that I will have to face for the next few weeks. While not a cloud blemishes the morning sky, a wall of dark grey clouds usually comes rolling in from the north around noon, along with a terrible headwind that brings my progress to a crawl. Around two o'clock, it begins to rain, which I have no problem with. Two hours later, the temperature drops ten degrees and the rain turns into hail, which sucks in so many ways. 

Arriving in Tupiza a little bit bruised by the storm, I decided to get a bus ticket to Potosi to see if I could get ahead of the storm (yet another mistake). I got a reservation for the next day and decided to get some rest in the bus terminal. Less than ten minutes into my nap, I am roused to alertness by this lemon-faced gremlin of a man jabbing his broomstick into the back side of my thigh. He's telling me I can't sleep here, not in the terminal. I look around and a good ten other people are passed out on benches all around me, something I calmly point out to him. He says I can't sleep here because I'm not a bus passenger. I produce my ticket and hand it to him, but he shakes his head and says to me the ticket is no good, that my bus left yesterday, and tears half way through the ticket before I shout "WHAT THE FUCK" as loud as I can while grabbing the half torn ticket out of his stubby little fingers. He grabs his broom like he's about to take a swing at me before a police comes over to assess the situation. The bus gremlin is eager to explain his side of the story first, telling the police that I'm not a passenger and I have a ticket that's no good and there's no use talking to me because I can't speak spanish (I understand every word he's saying at this point). I hand the ticket over to the police and explain en español that I am a passenger and that my bus leaves tomorrow. The gremlin points to the date on the ticket, telling the police "See, his bus left yesterday". The police brings his watch in front of the gremlin's face, show's him what day it is, and with a high pitched grunt, the gremlin waddles into the night, angrily tapping his broom handle against the ground as he dissapears into the dark. The police tells me to ignore the guy, and that I should try to find another place to sleep because the gremlin is pissed.

After camping out in the central plaza, I return to the bus station the next day, ready for a quick ride to Potosi when who is there to greet me but the gremlin, who tells me bikes aren't allowed in the station. He has back up this time...a young kid in an identical green custodial jumpsuit who's got a hold of his broom and duster like some sort of imperial guard. I make for the terminal anyway, blowing past the kid with the duster. The stubby little gremlin starts slapping the ground with his broom as if he's trying to shoo me away like a stray dog. He ends up hitting some woman's luggage and stumbles sideways as the woman screams all kinds of bad into his ear. At this point, a quarter of the terminal turns against this guy. He cowers in fear, looking around for his sidekick with the duster who's nowhere to be seen. He finds shelter in the men's bathroom, and for the next two hours pretends to clean sinks and does not emerge until I'm on the bus.

With that episode out of the way, I take my very first bus ride of the journey to a city two hundred km's up the road. Potosi is the name, and while I was expecting to arrive in a modest sized town similar to Tupiza, I am surprised to find a vast citiscape scaling up a steep mountainside. At the base of the mountain, it's your usual generic brick packed corrugated roof neighborhood, but as I make my way to the top of the mountainside, the city changes into some kind of colonial quasi medival city with the most magnificent architecture I've seen so far on my trip. This city center is beautiful. Cathedrals and churches built in the 17th and 18th centuries are found at every other block. The houses and cabildos look like they've been plucked straight from Spain, and I'm saying that as a person who's never been and will never go to Spain. My lack of expectation definitely contributed to my surprise, along with the fact that you have to really physically exert yourself to get to the prettiest part of the city, unless you cheat and take a taxi.

Another thing I'm digging about Bolivia: the produce. Not only is it cheap (when it's not being sold at the entrance of el mercado negro by a grumpy old lady looking to mercilessly gouge extranjeros for peaches and bananas) but it's really fresh and makes for some good cooking. I've traded out my packs of freeze dried rissotto and pasta for kilos of apples, corn, bananas and figs, and once again my energy is up because of it. So what is the general Bolivian diet you ask? From what I've experience so far, it's increasingly different from the Argentinian palette the further north I go. Bread and empanadas become less common. Corn, rice, and mentas (mintas? I'm not sure with the spelling...it's a vegetarian tamale with cheese) are the norm, and every dish is accompanied by a saucer full of hella spicy minced peppers. Sorry Argentine amigos/amigas, but I'm digging the transition. My stomach thinks bread and wheat is satan's food so I do better with the corn stuff myself.

Due to my strict schedule, I could only spend a half day lounging around the city before heading for ruta 1 once again. The days of coasting easily through the plains were over for the moment, as I soon found myself in Andes country. That's right, I was entering the Andes mountain range, something I would have never thought possible two years ago. The word Andes invokes images of mummified Incans, stranded travelers, and cannibalistic soccer teams. It strikes fear into the hearts of men, and by men I mean myself. I was once terrified of this place, but as soon as I began traversing the steep slopes of the Bolivian Andes, I instantly lost all my reservations and yes...fell in love.

This is love

But it is a bittersweet love, for no sooner did I enter this magnificent mountain range that I first encountered some pretty abismal poverty. The mountain sides are full of men, women and children either shepharding llamas, tending to corn fields, or mining ore. To a passerby in an automobile, this might appear to be a picture perfect postcard image, what with all the fantastic scenery and the beautiful, colorful garments that these folks of the mountains wear, but to someone crawling along at 8 kph, you kind of have more time to assess the situation and talk...or atleast try to talk with the folks. These people are not making a comfortable living by any means. Families of four to eight are packed into these leaky mud brick houses that almost seem to melt in front of your eyes when the afternoon hail rolls through. They all sleep on the same small bed, which is probably for the best seeing that they have no source of heat save for the scarce amount of wood they collect each day, which they have to conserve for cooking. The shephards and farmers typically live ten to forty kilometers away from their flocks and fields, and with no personal source of transportation save for the occasional rickety bike, these folks have to rely on kind hearted drivers or the infrequent taxi to get them to their work...or back to their homes. Because of this lack of transport, I've seen far too many people stranded in the middle of nowhere in a thick hail storm or close to sun down, desperately looking for a ride back home. To see these old women and young kids wrapped up tight in whatever knits they have on them during a storm is a terrible sight. A lot of the kids will raise cupped hands to any vehicles that pass, including myself, and it does not take long to realize these kids are asking for food and water...not money.

Even if I'm moving at a snails pace, I still feel like I'm passing by this situation as apathetically as any passerby in a car. I'm constantly kicking myself in the face for not having the proper means of communicating with these folks, for while my Spanish is always improving, my Quechua is non-existant. Even so, one does not need to acquire a whole new language to know how bad these people of the mountains have it.

I have seen the top of the mountain, and it is good.

Descending at last

For the past four days, I have climbed mountains, and now I am exhausted. Luckily, I have found a town with fast internet, which means big time updates tomorrow...so stay tuned folks.

I think I might have eye cancer...

...from all this awesome I´m seeing.

Tres Cruces - Argentina

Toclaca - Bolivia

Internet has slowed to a crawl, so I can´t update you folks on too much. The trip is going great, although there will be no more nightly updates as to my location because a grown ass man stole my satellite tracker. Probably thought he was getting an Ipod or something. Joke´s on him.

I also cooked and ate llama for the first time. Tastes like beef injected with orange juice.

Llamas should be eaten, not worn.

Tourists...

...they are not making it easy to find free places to stay. I´ve been rejected by the bomberos in the last two towns I´ve visited and when I ask folks around town if I can park in their yards, they point me to the nearest hostel instead. I hate tourist season. Stop ruining my trip.

Mas...

 My bomberos buddies in Salta. These guys were great. They let me yell at pedestrians with the truck intercom.

...and I entered my first jungle on the way to Jujuy. Things are looking up.

Fascist fries for firefighters

Who needs tattoos

 Here I am in Salta, lazing around in my first big city since Cordoba, taking a break from the road to and trying to take in one last bit of Argentina before heading for Bolivia, where the empanada situation has yet to be determined. Having reached this far north, it appears the rainy season has officially begun. Like clockwork, the storms kick in right around dinnertime, flooding the streets in minutes. Rumor has it this storm system stretches across northern Argentina, over the Andes in southwestern Bolivia, and cuts out somewhere halfway into Peru. The locals are telling me the rain lasts well into February, if not longer, which means I´m looking at a very wet couple of months ahead of me. I for one welcome the change in climate. The heat, sunburns, and chapped lips have been taking their toll.

Taking a few days break in a town or a city is quite a difference from spending hours a day on the road. Time moves a lot slower when you´re on the saddle, with seconds turning into minutes, days turning into weeks, and so on and so forth. This is by no means a bad thing, as it gives you a chance to take in every sight and every sensation of each environment on the route. I´m always surprised by the fact that I´ve only spent two weeks on the road. The long days on the bicycle makes it feel like it´s taken months to get to this point.

 As always when I reach a town, I head for the nearest firestation for a place to stay. This time around, the bomberos weren´t ready for my arrival and told me to come back the next day when they were less busy. This meant a hostel stay, another first since Cordoba. After weeks sleeping on rocks with a punctured sleeping pad and taking midnight dumps in scorpion country, I felt like I was checking into a five star hotel. The host gives me sheets, a towel, and since I smell like piss urine, points me in the direction of the nearest shower. The water is hot...another first in a long time.

Taking a break is blast...for a bit. I tend to eat a lot of crap when I´m on the road; cans of lentils, rotten apples, freezer pops, pasta with nothing but a little bit of olive oil and salt. With butcher shops and a refridgerator close at hand, all these little conveniences mean I can fill my stomach with some substance. Lomo...french fries...lomo covered in french fries and palta and pimienta and cebolla. And since I´m getting so close to Bolivia, the produce is getting a lot more diverse...and cheaper. Por ejemplo, today I bought a kilo of figs for $2.50 USD. Now I just have to figure out what to do with a kilo of figs.

Hostel stays put a lot of things in context. Meeting with so many fellow travelers from other parts of the world gives me a chance to compare my own experiences with other folks that aren´t traveling by bicycle. For the most part, other travellers make their journey across the continent using the vast bus system that connects the numerous cities of South America together. One can jump from Salta to Rio de Janeiro in a few days or so. I can´t say I don´t envy the speed in which all these "backpackers" traverse the country. A journey that takes me two and a half weeks is but a day long bus trip for the vast majority of hostel residents. On top of it, they get to punctuate each one of their day trips with warm beds and hot showers.

The other method for getting cross country is hitch-hiking, which appears to be sort of a rite of passage for a lot of university students from Buenos Aires. Pretty much every town on ruta 40 and 68 is filled with college kids from the big city looking for a ride to the next big tourist spot. Tis the season for hitch-hiking. School is out for the next few months and despite the heat, people want to spend as much time as possible outside.

DROP ACID, CHILDREN!!!!!

Spending a day in the life of your average "backpacker" is quite a difference from my daily experience on the bike. For one, everyone speaks English, and after two weeks of speaking stilted español, I can finally articulate all the crazy notions that´ve been bubbling inside my head for the past couple of weeks. And it´s a chance to exchange useful information about the places you´ve been to and where to head next.

Franciscans getting fancy at the Church of St. Francis

But despite all the luxuries and social interactions that come with a hostel stay,  it´s simply not the same as being on the open road and staying with families. This was discussed at length with Craig, Jason and Sonja back in Pagancillo. The whole point of traversing the globe in a bicycle is to take your time, relish every moment, and more importantly, connect with the environment and the people. You never really know a place until you talk and share a meal with someone who´s lived there their whole life (or maybe a few years).

Though hostels give one a chance to relax, I feel like they ultimately deprive a person of an integral aspect of a journey. They are like little embassies that displace travelers from the environment and locals. For me, with all the amenities and the english speakers that hostels have to offer, these sanctuaries are like going back home for a short period of time and resume the same patterns of interaction that one would have in his/her motherland. Sure, I may be speaking with French folks or hitch hikers from Buenos Aires, and as fun as it is to hang out with other extranjeros, it´s far from an immersion experience.

Province State Theater

The day I checked out of the hostel was the day I promised to hang out with two Brazilians and a French tourist for a walk around Salta. After dropping my stuff off at the firestation, we continue on our way to the central plaza. The situation was hard to maintain. We could only speak spanish to each other and we were all equally challenged in that regard. Still recovering from my ride the day before, I was ravenous for any food I could get my hands on, so I basically stopped at any and all kiosks on the way, eating everything from a tub of ice cream (which I shared) to a huge bag of kettle corn and a novelty-sized bag of cheetos. At first, my new amigos were amused by my antics, but I think they began to get a bit concerned as soon as I brushed off my second hot dog. Their worries were well founded, for my second hot dog turned out to be only half cooked and quickly began to ravage my stomach, but not before I finished the damn thing out of spite. Hunger is a fatal weakness of mine. If something´s smothered in mayo, butter, and ketchup, I´m going to eat that shit no matter how much it makes me want to throw up.

Check it out, they got fresh trucks from the States

I tried to follow the crew for as long as I could, but the hot dog was taking it´s harsh toll and I had no choice but to return to my new home at the firestation. I recovered instantly and went out in search of more food...fresh food. I wanted to try my luck with french fries so I bought out the nearest verduleria of all their papas and spent the next couple of hours frying that shit for myself and the bomberos. As it turns out, I´m a damn fine fascist fry maker. I was impressed by my work, and so were my firefighter amigos. My fries tastes better than Morm-n-Out.

Chilling with firefighters brings me back to what this trip is all about: overcoming language barriers, making hella tasty food, and sharing your work with locals. More so, it´s about getting out of your comfort zone, stepping into a world outside your own, and forming good bonds with people living half way across the globe. At the end of the day, I´ll do just fine with a smelly sleeping bag and a punctured sleeping pad as long as I´m meeting all these great folks.

Juan Antonio Alvarez de Arenales - known for invading
pretty much every country in South America



New Years in La Pampa

Belén

Ah New Years...what grand expectations I had for 2012. Roland Emerich and Terrence McKenna set the bar pretty high as far as apocalyptic visions go, so I was kind of dissapointed by the lack of earthquakes and/or satanic minions scooping up babies and stuffing them into stomach pouches then dissapearing in a cloud of smoke, returning to the gates of hell. 

Deciding where to be for the big New Years Day bash was a little difficult since there weren´t too many places for atleast a few hundred kilometers down the road from Chilecito. It was only by chance that after two rough days of slow ascension up ruta 40 that I came across Belén, a decent sized town with all the fixins of a big city, despite it´s remote location. After wandering around the city center for a few hours and asking random hippies for free places to stay, a family invited me to set up my tent in their backyard, and for a few pesos, use their laundry equipment and shower.

I thought for sure I found my New Years day city. The family was planning a big party for the 31st and out of the kindness of their hearts invited me to attend as well. My two hostesses took me on a grand hike up a steep mountainside for a great goat´s-eye-view of the town and snapping a few shots of a very ostentatious statue of Albert Christ´s mom. It was here under the watchful eye of Baphomet´s one night stand that I made a fatal error.

One of the hostesses, Lucianna, asked me to go dancing with her later that night, and as I tend to do when I´m answering a request in spanish, I responded in the positive rather hastily without taking into account that I was still hella tired from my ride and had absolutely no energy for a crazy Argentinian dance party, especially since they go hard til four or six in the morning. So, after saying yes like a dumb dumb, we all head back to the house, cook a massive feast of meats and greens, and prepare for the night´s festivities...except for me. I pass out in my tent as soon as the eating is done.

So much for a care free New Year´s eve party. The next day I wake up to a lady with an icy-cold death stare who absolutely refuses to to say a word to me, and while my spanish has improved immensely since I left Cordoba, I´m not yet at the point where I can console or give a sincere apology that goes beyond five words. I screwed up for sure, but without the means to convey my regret, the day grew painfully awkward. Dusk was approaching, and not wanting to spoil these ladies´ New Years eve festivities, I pack up and head north into la pampa for a night of storm watching in the desert. This turned out to be an absolutely amazing experience despite the solitude, for that night I camped out underneath an old gas station and watched one of the most magnificent electrical storms I´ve ever seen light up the desert plain for most of the night. Damn, I love lightning.

The next day, I wake up to an apocalypse-free Catamarca landscape and ascend some more. In Huaflin, I find myself in wine country once more and the whole town is still awake, drinking heavily, and are all really excited to see me. An off duty police detective makes me chug down a half flagon of wine, which instantly results in headache. I hit the road hard and fast, trying not to focus too much on my throbbing eye. Extreme physical exercion always helps mitigate the effect of these things, and within a few minutes, the pain is gone.

By mid-day, I reach the peak of ruta 40, and for the first time in three days, I am descending...really really fast. Right after I reach the peak however, I have to pull over to enjoy the sights for a bit. I am in the middle of this vast plain surrounded on all sides by steep mountain ranges that look like they reach 5000 meters in altitude. With not a soul in sight for twenty miles, I lay out my poncho and sit on the side of the road for a good two hours, watching a dozen dust-devils tear ass through the plain and listening to the white noise of la pampa--that unceasing breath that fills the air with the steady hum of spiralling pillars of dust and vegetation. You need nothing but your eyes and ears to enjoy this place.

I somehow pull myself out of the trance, hop back on the steed, and descend really fast for the next three hours, going fast enough to pass trucks and Dutch campers on the way down the mountain range. I´m in wine country again and camp in a small town named Santa Maria. The next morning, I wake up stressed since I am missing one of my sandals, and since a good pear of sandals is hard to come by in these parts, I absolutely have to find the thieves that made away with my sandal. I go to the cabaña to ask for some help when I see a gang of vicious perritos using MY footwear for a bed and a chew toy. Well...I just couldn´t find it in my heart to be mad at these guys. It took every bit of my willpower to stop myself from buckling up one of these pups to my trailer. Cute little minions of darkness they are.

I was off to Cafayette, a much talked about locale a hundred kilometers down the road that is said to bring good times and has all kinds of cakes and cookies and pies and sugary delights, like one of those little disneyland villages. Upon entering Cafayette, I found myself in tourist country, surrounded by Europeans and cool kids from Buenos Aires, and while I have nothing against tourist towns, I have a hard time connecting with local folks the way I do in other villages on the road. Everyone´s looking to make a buck off of you, so it´s almost impossible to find a place to spend a night for free. I had to head 5 km out of town before a nice family agreed to let me setup camp in their front yard.

The next day, it was on to Moab, UT, for a weaving ride beside the Colorado river. I´m sorry to be using so many references to places in the states when it comes to describing all these different environments a country half way across the globe, but the similarities are so apparent, there are days when I think my folks have paid a gang of private detectives to travel to South America, drug me, fly me back to the states, and have me wake up in southeastern Utah none the wiser (protip: I´ve also met Mormon missionaries out here). I wouldn´t put it past them, but that just shows you how much love is in my family. Anywho, putting aside such grand delusions, I was transfixed on all the sights around me. I was deep in canyon lands and I couldn´t be happier.

Then midday hit, and traffic became absolutely ridiculous. I should have explained earlier...as soon as New Years is over, everyone who isn´t a student has another week or so of vacationing before they have to go back to work, so as soon as the family festivities are taken care of, the roads become inundated with tourists, and eight times out of ten, these tourists are from Buenos Aires, and having witnessed and written about the driving qualities of these city dwellers, it goes without saying that biking conditions become a hell of alot more dangerous as soon as these types start filling up the road. Whereas traffic for the majority of my trip has given me plenty of space on the road, these tourist have clipped me once already and have me giving the finger while screaming BALUDO!!!! (thanks Paula) at the top of my lungs.

Also I mentioned the wind briefly in my previous post, but I have to reiterate this point: every time a cyclist mentions that I´m going to have a fantastic tailwind on my route, it´s like they´ve summoned a hex that instantly curses me with a crippling headwind for the rest of the day. Despite some positive reassurance from a German cyclist earlier that day, the wind was against me all the way down to Salta, and even though I was following the river downstream, I could--at most--shift to the mid gear range and keep a steady pace at 12 kph, which is too damn slow. I will say one good thing about the wind: it keeps all these friggin flies from always buzzing in my ear.

Enough writing for today. I´m here in Salty city for a few more days as prepare the DreamCrusher for Bolivia. I´ll have more posts on the way, so stay in touch folks...

Salty

I am in Salty. After a solid seven days on the road without a break, it´s time to rest. Pictures to come...

Oh, and the next cyclist that tells me ¨you´re going north? you´re so lucky to have all that tail-wind on your side¨ is going to get this face:

oh really?

Don´t say shit about the wind. You bastards have jinxed me every single day. The only time I´ve had a tail wind was between El Eje and Santa Maria, and that´s only because I was descending so fast the wind started to run away.