For those in the know: Ruta 27 Ch. San Pedro de Atacama ~ Calama ~ Tocopilla, Chile. Date: 16th- 20th December.

I’ve done enough cycle climbing in the last few days, crossing, then re-crossing all those high hills, what on the map looks like an inability to settle on a country destination. We’re looking forward to some flatland for a bit of light relief. So as we leave San Pedro and immediately start right back into an ascent, I put that two hundred metres of gorge down to the geological feature of a ‘barancas’. An Andean riverbank, and like so many of the local features, it comes in an exaggerated proportion. It’s bound to go flat after this, or so I reason, with some degree of persuasion. Our map is without contours, but with some naming features. ‘Llanos de la Patiencia’. When the conquistador’s cartographer names it ‘Plain of Patience’, I assumed he intended some idea of time and space, I assumed it would be a vast, flatland, stretching all the way to the horizon, across which we could sail with ease. Such are the delusional wishes of an oxygen depleted mind. Patience is exactly the virtue that we will need. For the plain is more a wide valley, into which we freewheel and spend the next three hours climbing back out off. All the way back up into thin air country.

With hindsight, I’m not sure why I was surprised. All mountain ranges have foothills, it’s part of their design philosophy. There’s usually at least two waves of hills before the high tops grow up. When we do eventually crest the top of that never-ending rise, sure enough there’s another range of hills lurking, a vague soft haze of an outline, the merest suggestion of mountain. Only I’ve no idea of their range, of their distance, there’s no ready reckoner, no handy scale.

A long, gradual decent, down a wide open scape that could in no way be described as pretty. Not even austere, more a poorly read ‘design spec’, and a badly calculated quote, for a land restoration job. Then the QS accepted the price. It’s as if the ground had been grubbed over with the intention of rehabilitating it, only the squad of agriculture students, or in the modern Kipper parlance, ”damn Polskis steal our jobs”, have yet to start the stone picking. They took one look at it, turned and fled.

Towards Calama this aura of degraded agro-landscape has turned industrialised. Behind us, we can still just make out that outline of iconic cones, those high tops that we had crossed days previously.To front are some striations on those next hill ranges, geometric petroglyphs that suggest manmade and, closer to us, a small forest of poles. Neither are obvious in purpose or intent, size or scale. The latter are the first to offer a solution. After an hour’s worth of freewheeling down that vast slope, the sticks sprout propellers. A wind farm. Very prophetic, as by now that afternoon wind has switched on and is steadily increasing. Now the questions are; ‘just how big’ are these turbines. How strong will the wind get? As always, there is no measuring stick. That is, until a ‘Matchbox’ lorry climbs out of a depression. The turbine columns instantly elongate into giants.

The wind has now reached that intensity where we’re hunting a sheltering culvert or just a few rocks that could be heaped to give some bielding. There’s nothing, just the enormity of industrialscape. Yet those blades have the audacity to keep gyrating slowly. Lazily. Metronomically. Hypnotically. Relentlessly churning out the power. When, what I would like to see is a whirling blur of blade, it would be more in keeping with the debilitating headwind.

Having found one measuring stick and achieved a perspective on the wind farm, it’s the turn of those scratches on the distant hillside, lurking in a grime of dust. They’re no clearer now, nor seem any nearer. Only there now appears to be an orange building, suggesting that the striated scrapes are modern glyphs. Eventually they take on a third dimension, at which point the proverbial penny drops. It’s the reason d’être for the town that were heading for. It’s a mega-mine, the Chuquicamata copper mine. Those marks are tiered ranks of stacked, flat topped spoil heaps, like giant turned out jelly moulds. Only I have no idea of height, of bulk or of size.

There’s a row of haul trucks in the tyre changing bay at the base of one of the bings, but they too require some measuring scale. I need something well understood to give an idea of the enormity of these endeavours. The stats of scale are readily available, but they too are virtually meaningless. What does six hundred thousand tonnes look like? A steering wheel five metres from the ground? The standard in these instances is to equate to football pitches or the London omnibus, probably not too relevant nor readily available in this instance. What I really need is a person to climb out from a cab, and walk past a tyre, but I suspect he would be shrunk down to gnomic proportions. Anyway, this is a fully mechanised world, where walking is dangerous.

My initial reaction to measuring a scale was to start counting the ‘mine traffic’. Ignoring the convoys of shift change buses, concentrating on the red king-cab pick-ups. That’s ‘Utes to Aussies’ and camionettas to Latinos. They’re always red, this in a land where auto paint comes in a choice of white or variants on white. Red with a day-glo yellow stripe, roll bars, wheel chocks, fire extinguisher and the tethered flexi-whip light stick. It’s the uniform. I start my count, but whilst stopped at a set of traffic lights, I soon give up. We’re surrounded by seventeen red pick-ups. Then passing the airport there’s a stance of near concentrated red pick-ups, at first glance I assumed it to be a pound of imported trucks. No, it’s just the pay and display car park. Eventually I get some scale on those tyres. Two are stacked one upon the other, they out-top a standard steel box container. That’s a tread width of an adults’ full arm span. Yet, still the enormity of the enterprise is hard to comprehend visually, in part, as the low morning light is diffused by the murk of monochromatic dirt. At one point I get a view of a haul truck below my vantage point, it’s a ghostly silhouette. I try a photo’, but nothing shows up on the screen.

So I turn to the incidental societal measurements. The small indicators that start to explain a story, that quantify the mega-mine effect. The mall in town, that could be an ‘anyplace, anywhere mall’. That comes with generic sports shoe shops, Italian designer leatherware, palettes of cosmetics, and inflated prices. The sole dictator of nationality, the prevelance of the national bank’s cash dispensers. So in the interests of investigation, we venture into the DIY store. Pure déjà vu, if you’ve ever been required to shop in a B+Q or a Home Depot store. The lay out is identical, right down to the position of the paint mixing desk. Next up is the electronics store, for yet another tablet charging cable. Success. Happy Editor. And finally the supermarket for those wee luxuries that never seem to materialise in the dark cave that is Puna kiosk. Ciabatta olive breads. Pan de Pasqua. Deli goodies. Happy Forager. Stepping from this rarefied, anonymous world, you would expect to encounter a stance of yellow and black taxis, and as a pedestrian I would anticipate being plagued with offers of a ride. No waspish taxis. Everybody has a vehicle, everybody drives. Just another measure that leads to the conclusion, “no mine….no mall”.

Finally, I play my alter ego role of amateur anthropologist, noting the scatter of bottled-beer crown-caps by the roadside. Exclusively imports. Sols from Mexico, Coronas from Spain, even sub continent Indian Cobra/ Kingfishers. What’s missing are the cheap ring pulled tins of the local generic brews. For me they all taste the same, but then that’s not the purpose of a bottled cervesa in today’s image-orientated culture.

Only we’ll not be free of the mega-mine’s influence for some time. That impression of industrialised desert will last until we reach the Pacific Coast two days later. We’ll have the company of six giant pylon lines, augmented by two poled rows of fibre optics. For much of the time the road will be surrounded, crowded in by all this electricity emanating out of the power plant at Tocopilla. A place that comes as a shock, as it comes with primary colours and a light coastal humidity. Our first contact with either for over ten days. Which serves to emphasise the other beauty of a desertscape. It relies entirely on shape and texture to captivate.

I might have some measure for a mega-mine, some scale for a wind farm, but these aridscapes will always thwart measurement. The road is electric, rising when my eye says that it’s falling. It’s tomorrow’s route when instinct suggests its for later this afternoon. It’s these elements of non-accountability that make these dry open spaces so attractive. They’re so at variance, so contrary to a moist Scot’s natural habitat. Then they defy man’s great desire to measure., to quantify and so to conquer. They’re all the stronger for that.

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There’s a small yellow finch that has all the traits of a crumb scrounging sparrow. That also has a “cheep-cheep” which resembles that of an annoying malfunction on a bicycle. Insistent, regular, such that it can easily equate to the cadences of a wheel, pedal or chain. As a crumb hunter and habituated to humans it will keep pace with a slow pedalling, attitudinally afflicted, climbing cyclist. Convincing same that something is mechanically wrong, at a time when every ounce of energy needs to be converted into accumulating height and distance. So I stop, but the “cheep-cheep” doesn’t. Drafted bird. It’s not alone. There’s another bird that flies at night, in what appears to be vast circles, whose call is that of a car’s reverse warning. Not an issue when we’re camped up well away from traffic. But when a camping ground’s design allows for free and unfettered car access, you can wake in that ungodly pre-dawn confusion, with a racing heart, only to realise it’s only that unnamed bird again.

A cicada on the navigator’s back carrier has now utterly convinced me that she has a puncture. The fizzle from its vibrating legs matches the rolling rotation of her wheel. The suggestion was already seeded in my mind. We’re in thorn country, the roadside verge is sprinkled with glass shards and exploded tyre wire. We’re collecting punctures. I’ve repaired more holes on this trip already, than the total for the last three journeys. A problem probably not enhanced by being cheapskate Scots. We decided to wear out a set of part used tyres. A mean decision that has meant that when my rear blistered, I got to use our spare folding one. The one that’s traveled over fifty thousand kilometres in a back pannier, awaiting this one moment of fame. It’s remarkable that it hasn’t perished yet, or succumbed to a mouse.

Whilst these incidents are amusing in themselves, the real malfunctioning fauna are those that are now habituated to human contact. The slogan “a fed bear is a dead bear”, is well known, if poorly remembered in Canada. The same is true around the campgrounds of the Andes. “Don’t feed the Zorros”. I set to, to light a fire and as if by telepathic magic, two foxes materialise, sitting silent, expectant on their haunches. Now I remember what zorros are. The iguana has already hauled away a bag of banana skins that I thought well secured from animal attack. Rodent and ants being the usual culprits, so I hadn’t anticipated a foot-long lizard’s visit.

Then there are the animals that have adapted to the human built environment, adopting the street furniture for their own needs. Who requires a cliff when the city fathers have planted palm trees or have erected lighting columns? These have a further attraction as they come with a photovoltaic ledge. Nest sites with amenities. In Arica, it’s not the pigeon that poops a building, but cormorants. They cruise low, up and down the main pedestrian street, as if in a seaside canyon. At first encounter I question my identification. Evolutionary prehistoric, little evolved over five million years, they look like they are the original Jurassic avian dinosaur. They sound as if my rear wheel bearings requires a cartridge of grease.

And now there’s a report on ants and their beneficial contributions to society. It’s been calculated that they’re responsible for consuming 60,000 hot dogs per year from the streets of New York. Two-thirds of each ‘dog’ eaten in just one night. Having left a part eaten tin of corned beef, double wrapped, overnight and seen the effects in the morning, frankly I’m not surprised. In this instance more functioning fauna as they’re chompings in the quiet of the night can be equated to any cycle malfunction.

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Fifty thousand pesos for a haircut. Now I’ve always understood that a lady’s coiffure comes with some form of premium, some mystical tribute that lies far beyond the wit of the male of the species. And if we know what is good for us, we don’t argue. We can’t because our brains are utterly clogged with trying to remember that said spouse has gone to said establishment and our job is to comment favourably on said procedure. Even if it’s not obvious that any said procedure has been carried out. Fifty thousand pesos Chilean, or so the chalked up statement claims from the window, that translates as fifty-five pounds sterling, The Navigator decides to pass on this offer. We were in La Serena, an address that seems to have a near magical, inflating effect on a price sticker.

It’s quite difficult for the Navigator, who likes to look neat on tour, she knows what happens to her hair when left to its own devices, so it’s difficult to convince a stylist that she does really want a certain amount of length to be removed. It’s actually why she came into your establishment, “to get a hair cut”. On some occasions I’ve known her to take in her passport photograph to use as a visual aid in translation and interpretation. Ladies with short hair are in a minority in a South American country, witness her interrogation by two school girls on the campground one evening. “Why is your hair short?” Difficult to explain even in English. On that occasion I was given permission to wield the sheers, to trim the wayward wisps that are curling into an annoyance. That was a first.

The obvious solution would be to engage the specialist in short hair trimming: to wit: a gentleman’s barber. She tried that once, I can still see the horror on the man’s face. Man cuts men’s hair, woman grooms women’s hair. Machimiso rules…okay.

I, on the other hand, have little problem. It’s a: ‘# 2’ all over. The buzz cut. Easily accomplished with a pair of scissors held on edge. Well I can’t see the end result, that, and I wear a cap. The ‘problem’, is trying to buy a pair that haven’t been used to cut steel bar first and then returned to their original sales packaging.

Hair cuts on tour can be an adventure. We have one friend who considers a country not properly explored, until a full facial exfoliation and cranial trim are experienced. In New Zealand I’ve under gone the ‘shearer’s special’, wo-‘man handled’ like a Merino tup. It was probably revenge for not requiring a styling. In the US I was offered – and declined – the eyebrow procedure. More pampering than barbering. It’s still the most expensive clip I’ve undergone. It’s why the Navigator has another addition on her traveler’s resume. Over the years, look what I’ve saved – possibly a return flight to South America.

A few more weeks have passed, tomorrow is ‘old year’s night’. The time when the Scottish puritanicals clean out the fire grate, sweep the floors, open all the cupboard doors, to evict all that bad energy. In Colombia you could take an empty suitcase for a walk around the block to ensure a year of travel. Or go in for a bit of effigy burning in Ecador, hurl a dozen pennies in Guatemala, wear yellow knickers in Peru, try to swallow a grape for each bell chime in Spain, jump seven waves for luck or just eat lentils for wealth accumulation here in Chile. The Navigator decides that she needs to initiate her own lucky ritual. The time has come when a hair cropping is an imperative. A good luck cut. A chance to shed a shaggy cloak, to start a new year back in an old persona.

It will have given the ‘ peluquera’ something to talk about, when was the last time she cut white hair? At least she didn’t put on sunglasses. The result is adequate, although the Navigator thought it might have been worth while walking further down the street, going into the next establishment and getting it cut again, so ensuring it ends up at her desired length. They really are terrified of cutting it short. Still, she can go into the next year suitably shorn, with our wealth as suitably protected, for it came with a local’s tariff.

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A body confused, or an excuse to publish a few more images from ‘up on top of the hill’.

The navigator has a pre-sleep routine. She likes to review the day. To rerun the events, the places, the experiences. To superimpose the evening’s view upon that of the remembered image from that of breakfast time. On occasions that day’s elapse can have undergone little change. Crossing the pampa for example, or cycling on the costal PanAmericana. Then it will be a case of remembering the small incidentals, the giant spider, slowly, determinedly, crossing the road, or finding a menu that offers ‘deep fried fish eyes’. On other occasions the transformations will be so radical, it becomes difficult to reconcile morning with evening. The two times so out of kilter, that a body becomes confused. It’s not only the visuals that disseminate a body, there’s the olfactory and the auditory. Travel along the Andes and the changes become kaleidoscopic, a near continuous flicker of change.

Today started with a cut clarity of light, the thin cold air, silent. A flock of flamingos, huddled in the centre of the marsh pond, slowly coming to life, a ruffling of feathers, a stretching out of a skeletal leg, sending the first ripple across the water. The faint drifts of bog gas waft up to mix with that first delectable slurp of coffee. A glimmer of new colour, a sliver of ochres and sand dun starts to grow on the far hillside, the shadow line dropping, shrinking down the desert hills. We’ve crawled from the snug warmth of our bivvi bags, packed away our night spot and started cycling, our panniers near empty as we’re wearing most of our clothing. The only un-frozen water bottle is the one I slept with. The road is near deserted, the frontier won’t open for a few hours yet. We’re on our own, climbing to the last ‘abra’. Our latest and last high point. We know that from here it has to go down. Down to the thick air. It can’t stay up at this level for ever, that and the fact that the kilometre posts are counting down to town. The longer the stay at this height, the lower the count, the steeper the drop. It’s probably as well that we didn’t know about the several short, sharp reascents that lie between ourselves and San Pedro de Atacama. The sun climbs higher, staying the cold air, burning hot through the duvet jacket on my back. That invigorating warmth that slowly melts my frozen toes and numb fingers.

On the final top we stop and count the twenty four separate mountains, ranged in a vast circle right around our horizon. Some are more distinct than others. A roads zig-zags up to the just visible structure of the world’s most powerful telescope, where they hunt for our ‘cosmic origins’. But standing clear is the classic shape of Volcan Lincancabur, the near perfect cone that will dominate our next two days in town.

Eventually the road decides to fall off the side of the Andes. A few half hearted bends, then a single plumb line drop. A ten percent descent that only confirms this passage’s reputation. Going down, going east to west, it’s a 55kms of finger-numbing braking. Going the other way it would be simply brain numbing. One cyclist we met a few years ago had described the road “come out of town and you see your day’s work laid out before you, it rears up, a straight line uphill”. At the time I thought he was exaggerating. We stop part way down to relieve our fingers and look back. He didn’t exaggerate. Your whole climbing day is laid bare. No hidden secrets. No pleasant surprises. No pauses. No punctuations. It would take little imagination to know the purgatory that will have to be endured to attain that summit. Two and a half thousand meters in a straight line. I can think of no other road that comes even near to this statistic. No wonder those that we met over on the other side were so jaded. It would take a day of spectacular scenery to wipe clean that climbing memory. For us, it’s two hours of freewheel breaking, rolling past a succession of lorry traps, which concentrate the mind with images of Paraguayan transports loaded with twelve German cars, out of control. Rolling down into a flat white light that rubs out all clarity, rendering that enigmatic volcano down to a faint haze, the merest suggestion of mountain. Down past the incongruous sight of a barb wired mine field, down into a town of which we’d been advised to have a low expectation of.

We push through the small, unusually non-monumented plaza of shady pepper trees, and whitewashed adobe buildings, decorated not with the usual hand painted logo of a certain cola company, but with faux renditions of native rock art. To one side is the under-repair, Iglesia San Pedro. It’s roof under restoration, like a cut-away drawing, depicting the various stages of its original construction. On the opposite quarter the Casa Incaica, once a conquistador’s home, now yet another artisanal shop. The remaining sides are strewn with awning shrouded tables, set out on the pavement, with wandering visitors perusing the menus and the tour operator’s sales pitches. For this small town is Chile’s premier tourist entre-port for the adventure tourist. The salars, the lagoonas, the geysers and the inevitable Valley of the Moon; every desert destination has to have one of the latter, all are waiting to be visited. The earth streets are unhindered by motor traffic, for the centre of town is ‘peatonal’. A single fact that can transform a place. The juice lorry is parked up outside the cordon sanitare, in a far away car park, and pedal trikes are delivering to the numerous kiosks and mini mercados. Much of it bottled water, which gives the indication as to the majority of the visitors nationality’s. Accepting it as a place who’s purpose is to service a visitor industry, it has a comfortable feel. It has yet to succumb to the plague of ‘highrise condo’ or aggressive sales pamphleting.

We eat well, and we collect a recommendation for a camping, from a couple of Swiss overlanders, who had passed us at some point up on the hill. It leads us to another sanctuary and a very different bed night spot from this morning’s. It’s hardly a wonder that a body gets confused.

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For those in the know: RN 9 ~ El Cornisa: Salta ~ San Salvador de Jujuy. Argentina. The old non-motorway connection between these two cities. (6th.~8th.December.)

There’s one colour that stands alone. One colour to which I’m pathologically attached. One colour that screams ‘Life!’. Green. More particularly the green of vegetation, chlorophyllic Green. Yet, for those of us who inhabit a moist country, it becomes common, the norm. It becomes habitual. But take a few days travelling away from its comforting presence, and its return comes as a physical shock.

Salta is, in effect, an oasis town, with well shaded plazas and some tree-lined streets. The colonising Spanish considered it permanently springlike. Only today, the locals are calling it hot, and this is just early December. But it’s worth remembering that if you travel over a few hills and down into the ‘ Yungas’, the jungly, sweaty cane country, or head south into the dry thorn and arid sand country, this place becomes a comparative haven.

Salta has, over the past few travels, become for us a staging post. A place to start or finish an element within a journey. The fact that it has, right on its doorstep, one of my favourite Argentine roads, is an added bonus. In part, because it’s so easy to incorporate it into the next travel.

Take a standard single track highway, four steps wide, coat with asphalt, then paint a yellow dividing stripe down the middle. Only an Argentine road planner would attempt this. Twist it through a serpentine of valleys, then clothe it in cloud forest. And you have El Cornisa. We set off from Salta on a clear, cool Sunday morning. A time when even the buses have the courtesy to give way to others, giving us time to appreciate the old colonial buildings. Where the only hazards are the congregations spilling out from Mass and the celebration for the first Sunday in Advent. Passing fields of tobacco, their adobe walled curing sheds ranged around a yard. The aromatic drifts of cookfire smoke, the clutches of family gatherings down on the shingles of the braided river. Motos pass, the pillion clutching a giant cooler box of ice. It’s a holiday weekend and the city is fast disgorging out to the campo.

The narrowness and the gradient of the road is a testament to an earlier time of infrequent equine drawn traffic. For this was once the primary route out of northern Argentina, over the Andes to the Pacific coast. It’s now surpassed by an autopista that absorbs the lorries, that keeps to the low ground, leaving our road to wander without intent. Climbing steadily up through the remnant of a volcanic caldera and into a cloud forest of lianas, epiphites and ancient aliso trees, all festooned in ferns, smothered in mosses. Where each tree is a host for a forest. The over arching limbs forming a tunnel of dark vegetative shade that traps the smell of green. Where the sun shafts down through clearings, butterflies swarm on the flowering herbs. Wild beans and the plethora of solanums, that vast clan of the potato/ tomato family are identifiable, the rest are not. Yet, like the butterflies, I don’t need an identification to appreciate, or to claim some form of ownership. Their beauty lies in their diversity. A soft sulphurous one floats along, landing on my bag, an iridescent blue flashes past, such that I only get a fleeting glimpse. In another spot, hundreds hang like flowers from one particular plant. All arising in a cloud as we silently wander past.

That green can only happen if there’s a supply of water. Yet on each occasion that we’ve riden this way, we’ve had hot, sunny conditions. For this trip, we’ve not experienced any rain for sixty-five days, such that our waterproofs have disappeared deep into the pannier’s depths and they’re probably suffering from a seasonally affective disorder, becoming pale anaemic shadows of their former selves. Then, on the second morning, we wake to thunderstorms. Glutinous red muddy rivers are surging down the road, the house gutters are waterfalls, tree leaves quake under the assault. The bromeliads that encase, like threaded fuzz balls, the telegraph wires survive solely from these conditions. Tomorrow they’ll be flowering. We ride wrapped in a fug of humidity, as damp inside as its soaking out. At least my panniers’ un-repaired holes will allow the rain water to escape.

This green cannot last forever. Heading north up the Quebrada de Humahuaca, our bioscape of humidity gives way to the dry again. A transitional zone that is barely ten kilometres wide. The southern slopes of the side valleys are still cloaked in green, only their northern sides are now denuded, mere sparse grasses. The hill tops crowned by explosive thunderheads. Boiling storms building, accumulating a resuscitation of water. Wet season is coming. A new green will be growing over the backside of that hill.

But for ourselves, we’ll soon have the cactus and pepper trees as our travelling companions once again. The small pueblo houses, flat roofed, and painted to reflect the rockhills that are a multiplicity of metamorphosic colours. The merger plots,tiny fields that are utterly reliant upon the occasional trickling spring. Gone the Green.

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Good Morning, and a very merry Christmas to all, from Iquique, Chile.

This is by way of a test, as we don’t seem to be able to upload The Chronicler’s missives. Hold tight, and normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

With Best Wishes from us both,

The Chroncicler and The Navigator

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For those in the know: Jujuy ~ Purmamarca ~ Susques, (Argentina) ~ San Pedro de Atacama. (Chile). Paso Jama (9th ~ 15th. December.)

A thickness measured not in millimetres, but in a rich, heavy humid air, a thinness not in millimicrons, but in lactated thigh muscles and a hammering heart beat. Or by my latest standard, a choice between a Susques milanesa, or a celebratory Chilean steak.. “Could shoot peas through it”, is the phraseology, or as they measure the mortar layer in an Incan temple, “can’t insert a credit card”. Well I think I might have a chance with today’s ‘comedor’ lunch. A piece of breaded beef that’s been pummelled, battered and rendered into a laminate for my dinner plate. I can hear the Navigator’s choice, under going a similar treatment through in the back kitchen. Sounds like ‘chef’ is exorcising a grudge. A meal that has a further local peculiarity. The soup comes as the second course. Possibly another example of Jujuy provincial cuisine. Jujuy could be Argentina’s poorest province, it’s certainly it most Andean, both for its geography, for its ethnicity and for its cuisine. We cross the political boundary and immediately the prevelance of the empanada, that meat pasty with the potentially tooth breaking lucky olive stone, has given way to humitas and bunelos. Maize mash wraps and deep fried dough. The latter slathered in corn honey. The empanada hasn’t totally disappeared, it’s there but now coated in a casing of glazed sugar. Still, it makes for great cycling tucker.

We’re heading through the top left hand corner of Argentina, heading back over the hill once again, back into northern Chile. Back up into another type of thinness. A paucity of oxygen, vegetation and habitation.

Each of the three passes that we’ve crossed this year have had a very different character. The Libertadores with its vacant ski resorts and views of Aconcagua; Agua Negra with its tourist traffic and soft ripio gravel; and now Paso Jama with its sporadic convoys of imported Asian and Germanic built cars. Hondas to Argentina, Beamers to Chile.

All maps that cover this area will show and name a pass. The height being numbered for the border, invariably the continental watershed. The automatic assumption being that this will be the highest point of the whole route. At 4300m, Paso Jama looked a less heart thumping undertaking than our previous hill passage. Or so I erroneously thought. What is not indicated are the two major ‘abras’, that require negotiations, an undertaking, that takes the high point up to over 4800metres. At least they weren’t a surprise. For once we’ve done a bit of research. We knew that there were a few refuges, a possible resupply of water, a gas station at the frontier. Small, but utterly invaluable information. However, I had gleaned small pockets of information over years from other sources, from guide books, from on-line sites and from other travelers. This route was uninteresting, was the conclusion. “I’d take the bus next time”, “it’s boring, nothing to see”. Sometimes I question what was anticipated, sometimes I despair, sometimes I wonder if it’s just me. We’re storm bound behind one of those refuge walls, sheltering out the afternoon westerly wind. We’re watching a family group of vicunas who are trying to reach the sweet water spring. Small lagoons with vocal ducks and fishing flamingos, with sand hills and eroded rock tors for a backdrop. The herd are cautious, something is spooking them, and from their body language, it’s not us. Eventually the patriarch starts a rush, flushes out a fox and chases it back up the hill. An Andean gull joins in, mobbing the retreating animal. It’s an insignificant, minor vignette, but only possible if you take the time to stop, to watch. Uninteresting stuff. As the afternoon progresses, the wind turns from fickle to forceful, lenticulars start to form, stationary clouds that shape-shift and give rise to that tedious game: “can you see the….up there?” Meanwhile far to the east, roiling thunderheads are boiling up; we’ll have another silent light show to augment the shooting stars, tonight. “Should have taken the bus”. Then there are the great imponderables of life that you muse upon as you ever so slowly climb up the next slope, ” why have the Mennonite Paraguayans cornered the auto transport market, and why over the Paso de Jama?”. Maybe it’s the thinness of air, or, “it could just be me.”

Tonight we’ll set up the bivvi bags, as the wind just wants to play havoc with the tent, we’ll overdress for sleep and the anticipated sub zero temperatures, overheat and need to climb from our cocoons, out into the unpolluted silence of a southern night sky.

But what you can never tell when heading up into that thinness of air, is how your body will behave. Physical fitness has little to indicate performance. I know the Navigator performs better than I do, or that has been the experience up until now. On paso Agua Negra she was always In front. And from our experiences on that crossing we know that we’ll need to consider the food element with care. Suffice to say, with six days from Jujuy to San Pedro de Atacama, the body behaved, even if the appetite deserted, went absent without leave, yet again. Pasta and porridge just don’t ‘do it’. By journey’s end we’re both fantasising on steaks inches thick, a mountain of thick greasy chips, with a side of mixed salad to augment the healthy option.

We push our bikes down the pedestrian calles of town, into the shade of the central plaza, into the cultural shock of ‘People’. Find an outside table in one of the restaurants and order the fixed menu, the dish of the day. Mixed Salad. Roast Beef. Fried Potatoes. Rice Pudding. Nothing thin. Nothing thinning. How did they know we were coming?

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Guidebooks can date easily. Guidebooks can cause misinterpretations. On occasions I suspect an entry is created for the fist edition, but with each subsequent revision, is not reviewed or reinterpreted. Reiterated verbatim. One such is the idea that a travelling cyclist requires to carry a spare bike, a full workshop and the knowledge to use same. The former, or at least the perishable spares, was once true, and will still be in the more remoter places. But that’s true of anywhere. Try finding a high end tyre in Durness. Quality workshop skills and their attendant tools never were in short supply. Poor quality necessitates care and maintenance. It’s the comment regarding ‘spares’ that now needs some thought.

The entry for Salta in one guidebook, extols the museums and the ecclesiastical building, it also has this intriguing quote: ” a favourite of many for soothing ruffled psyches with its profusion of services”. Witness the congregation of ‘overlanders’, drawn up in the campings, some awaiting vital mechanical parts, and you understand that truth. We’ve passed this way several times now. It’s a crossroads, a jumping off point for four differing directions, that, and a manageable bus station. Yet up until now we’ve not required the ” smoothing of ruffled psyche” service.

This time last year it was the navigator who required hospitalisation; this year , by way of an anniversary, my bike decided to claim that accolade. What comes next is an embarrassment and a demotion on the touring cyclist’s credibility league. My front fork is twisted, visibly twisted, emphatically visibly twisted. A mole could use it to draw a wine cork. The information was there, I’d noted the brakes that didn’t align, the front carriers that sat at different points, my compensatory riding position. Still I didn’t put all that evidence to the obvious conclusion. I’d added two to two and not even realised that there could be an answer. That is until we met Gerard, a German cyclist who is also escaping the winter, and happens to be a bike mechanic. It’s whilst were stopped for lunch that he offers me the sucker punch line. ” I’ve got bad news for you….I don’t have a good eye for it, but even I can see that it’s bent”, an embarrassment compounded by the fact that I can now remember hitting a bollard in the middle of a cycle path…..in Uruguay….4000km ago. Slow learner.

So it’s time to investigate Salta’s cycleshop world. We start our trail in the sales department. A world of glossy hand built frames and Schwalbe tyres; the latter is an anoraks’ shorthand for: ‘top quality…don’t ask the price.’ Soon were taken through to the ‘spares desk’. Revelation. A vast tin barn that can’t echo because it’s filled to the rafters by ranks of China-built ‘sit up and beg’ steelers, columns of tyres, rows of rims. And forks. Five storemen are serving a milling mass of customers, one old man is tightening a brake block using the captivated spanners; tyre levers are chained to the counter and an air line snakes over the pavement outside. All the supplies for the ‘taller de bici’ are here. Remembering all those tiny dark cycle repair shops that lurk down alleys, that populate the hinterland – it’s obvious when you stop to consider, there has to be a ‘mayorista’, a warehouse that supplies them. I just didn’t expect it to be both so public and available. Forbye, they have two frame builders who drop what they had been attending to, namely customers, to gravitate around my patient. I’m prepared to accept a new fork, expecting to have to botch a modification to fit the pannier carriers. Yet I’m given a series of Nos. No condescension. No tooth sucking. No new part. No, we will repair. There’s a challenge, a fair degree of pride to be won here. I also suspect they’re recognising the workmanship already invested in my hand built frame. “Leave it here tonight, come back tomorrow midday”.

New day: nueva bici. Perfecto. And the final two Nos. No charge. No tip. ” Just tell others about us”…I do, I am. Bicicleteria Manresa, Corrienes and Pellengrini, Salta.

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This is our fourth visit to Argentina. The last two have been short, passing through trips, way stations on route to Paraguay and the Bolivian alti Plano. So it’s been interesting to have a longer stay this time. We’ve been closing some gaps, completing some unfinished business, but also to watch the small, incremental changes that a country makes.

Passing through the small agricultural pampa towns then, a common sighting was the heavy ribbed glass bottles set out like the doorstep milk delivery pint bottle. The soda siphon. The historical significance of soda, had been to cut the sharp edge from the local red wine. Only, now the local rotgut wins medals and has achieved world renown. Yet the tradition still lives on, now with the morning’s cafe con leche, the small dimpled shot glass of carbonated water that arrives with the selection of sweetener sachets. At first I couldn’t work out the blue caps with the plastic trigger handles discarded in the ditch were. It was a new discovery for the amateurish refuse archeologist. Eventually enlightenment comes. Returnable glass has given way to the polyethylene terephalate bottle, and with it the back garden industry for refills.

I’ve never really associated Argentina with the camper van. If one of these behemoths of the North American camping experiences hove into view, it would inevitably have a Brazilian plate, even the smaller, more compact van, ones that are such an integral part of New Zealand touring are still a rare sight. That is until a few days ago; it could be coincidence, but we’re starting to find them. One was Uruguayan. A home conversion. The basic ‘tranny’ white van to which a blacksmith had created a bolt-on side awning, the roofracks was welded rebar, the Jerrycan carrier a pop riveted fruit crate. A classic of Uruguayan thinking. Yet somehow some of the North American concept of ‘the great outdoor camping concept’ has seeped south of the equator. It was cold last night, it would have been much colder in one of these tincans, these un-insulated boxes, than in our tent. So they decided to switch on the engine and power up the heater. An half hour of vocal competition for the dogs. So USA.

Another change is just the other side of our tent. To understand the local camping tradition, is to realise that the asado, the barbecuing pit is central. Fire is king. It’s about the beef. Everything else is an adjunct, mere acolytes. Even the Quilmes beer and the amped up music. It’s a true outdoor experience and if it starts to rain the tent gets the plastic sheet, not the human. And that tent; until now has been a rabbit hutch igloo with, I have to assume the internal proportion of a tardis. A family of five can live amicably in two square metres. Such that on occasions we’ve been embarrassed by our own modest tent’s footprint. Not anymore. The condominium tent, those detached bungaloids, are starting to materialise. However, they appear to be no more watertight than their predecessors. They still require the construction of a moat, only now it’s longer. Signage requesting that the sappers desist their trench warfare are still ignored, in much the same way as the order not to drive around the site is. These signs are all faded, alluding to a previous age, pre- the latest toy. The quad bike. Bought and riden by dad and the younger offspring. Round and round and round. The speed increasing with the confidence and the consequential pall of dust. A new phenomena, just like the spread of secured wifi.

Once we could poach a conection outside a school, an hospital or the local authority offices. We got adept at tracking, hunting the wave; it became a game. True, wifi is starting to become available in the larger conurbation’s plazas and the petrol station is becoming the new ‘telecottage’. Business meeting room, recharging station, sports bar. But speeds are slow, it takes the first half of the big game from Spain, to download three pictures and publish one blog.

Still somethings don’t change. The ice cream shop still dispenses twenty-seven flavours, a sizeable minority featuring variations on a theme of dulce de leche. They still party till six in the morning, the DJ screwing the amp, such that at one point I thought the ‘events’ venue had gone mobil, moving five blocks closer. Slow changes, only I’ve just been seved my cafe con leche sin soda….what are things coming to?

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For those in the know…R41 CH~ RN150. La Serena, ~ Vicuna, Chile, ~ Paso del Agua Negra,~ Rodeo. Argentina. 25th~ 29th. November.

Now I know the answer. My problem is I can’t remember the question. Last night I’m not sure I could even have formulated a question, such was my lethargic thought processes at over 14000 feet. A brain under oxygen depletion and a body running on fumes, all enhanced by a visual inspiration of the encircling cirque of multicoloured mountains, a rolling succession of glaciers all under a impossibly blue sky.

I can see the road gradient up in front, it looks disturbingly level. The map tells me the distance to the top and the elevation I need to climb, I can still just about manage a sum. So somewhere between there and I, there has to be a climb. I look again, start the push, and the lactates in my legs tell me a different story. It’s a strange sensation this difference of opinion between body and brain. Experience tells, at this height you need to move slowly, don’t rush that next insignificant incline, yet sea-level habits prevail. I attack, ” will be up this we bit in a moment, then it’ll level off a bit, I’ll get my recovery as I pedal on”. Only it doesn’t happen. I’m pushing an elephant up an Andean pass. A belligerent elephant. It’s only when I do make the top of the next rise and look back, that I realise what looked so flat was in fact an incline, a significant accumulation of metres to set against the day’s accounts. The hope is, it won’t be debited around the next corner, squandered by the road dropping off to cross a riverbed.

We’re completing a neat circle, a tidy looking navigation on our map. One that’s taken in three conurbations, two passes and an infinity of experiences. Mendoza, Valparaiso and La Serena, Pasos Libertadores and del Agua Negra. The latter, as every Francophonic European will tell you is the same height as Europe’s highest point. Yet I do wonder if that stated elevation for Mont Blanc varies in much the same way as this pass’s does. Differing maps, even the the mandatory passtop board disagree, but then South American road signs never add up. This route has at least four different one hundred kilometre posts.

These are young mountains, still growing, still eroding back downhill. In some places rather quickly. Disturbingly quickly. ‘Derrumbes”, is such a suitable, if seemingly innocent onomatopoeic for a ‘rolling stone’. A schuss of granites slide slowly, ominously, with determined intent, into a gully. Boulders the size of small cars are bouncing down the vast, long steep hillside. The heaviest will make it all the way to the distant valley floor, lying scattered, boules on a giant’s pétanque court.

We’ve left the dubious delights of a seaside resort and headed inland. Our intention to cross back over the Andes, back to Argentina again. First, we need some intelligence. Is the seasonal pass open yet? The web page says “yes, in three days”. Only the update is three days old. Fact is, there’s always been a degree of ambiguity. Our first report had it in ‘early November’, then, in the nearest Argentine town to it, we collect: ‘the twentieth’. What we need is some confident assurances, for we need to haul a few days worth of supplies, which we don’t want to squander, sitting, awaiting opening, at an immigration barrier a day’s ride from a re-supply. Now the Navigator can be the very devil. I know she does it deliberately. It’s closing for siesta time at the Ministry of Culture in Vicuna, the closest Chilean town to the pass. In she goes, out she comes, with; “sometime next week”. Officialdom’s speak for ‘don’t waste my time’. Next morning it’s the turn of the tourist officer, “definitely tomorrow”. For once, stated with assurance and confidence, by a person who understands what a job description is. It also concurs with the roads authority web page. Still we give them a day’s grace, just in case.

We use that day to investigate one of the side valleys, “Valle del Estrella”, ‘Star Valley’, a marketing guru’s branding construct. One that replicates a previous national president’s attempt, who renamed one of the local villages Pisco Elqui, in the hope that the name would be appropriated from the Peruvian town that gave its name to the fermented beverage. We were to pass a number of distilleries that soak up the surplus grapes. It also explains in just one short space the whole Chilean agricultural revolution. A ribbon of verdure completely cloaks the floor, geametrics of vegetative green are stapled to the arid, steep hillside. Stark angular parcels of paltas and orange groves, wind net shrouded trellises of dessert grapes, mangoes in full flower. High value produce that will be on a British supermarket shelf soon. But all totally reliant upon that river, that’s fed from those glaciers and snow fields.

We get the interrogation from the immigration officer. Have we got mountain clothes, “yes, we’ve just hauled them through forty degrees of desert”, are we aware just how high we will have to go, ‘it’s much higher than the ‘Cristo’. I wonder how he’s able to make such an authorative statement, but of course our point of entry is on the screen right in front of him. So too, I trust is the information that we’re not attempting to export contrabanded cycles. He also does the tourist officer bit and suggests the distances to the best camping spots. Not that he’s exactly busy, five vehicles will pass through on our first day.

Successfully stamped out of Chile, we head off into no-man’s land, it’ll be three days until we officially enter the neighbour’s. To start an amazing travel. Up through series of interlocking spurs, a tangle of geology, each new mountain a different colour, the degraded cliffs leaving Paisley print patterns on some, whilst others are striped in a rainbow of striations. One is purple, another is crowned by lenticular flying saucers. It’s other worldery, an antithesis to our own Scottish hills. Yet once they too would have looked similar.

By the third day we’re reduced to a funereal trudge, pushing our reluctant bikes through newly graded gravel that more resembles a rock quarry than a road. Counting the steps, five-~ six~ seven~eight…stop…recover the heartbeat that’s escaping out of my rib cage, start again.

Yet there’s always two sides to a mountain, always a pay back for an investment of effort. It’s that Presbyterian ethic. Pain before pleasure. Suddenly there’s no more road climbing out in front. We’re up high, but not for long. We will be hurled both by gravity and an ugly wind down into Argentina. Down through another landscape of colours, textures and compelling beauty. Down to an answer.

It’s a conundrum that exercises me on occasions. When there’s a choice of asphalt on one side of a pass and gravel ripio on the other. Which to ascend, which to decend? Now I know. The last twenty kilometres have left an indelible bruise on my right shin as I kick, yet again that trailing redundant pedal. I would rather push my reluctant elephant up a smooth, even surface, then I could bounce, slither, slide down the other side.

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