Embalse La Paloma, Rio Grande. Monte Patria…South of La Serena…Chile

20th November ’14.

A repressed river blocked off to create an industry. A dam wall holding back a merger puddle of irrigatable water, a part fraction of the potential holding. Yet the tidelines, like grubby streaks on a bath’s side, show that this was once South America’s second largest body of artificially held water. Only it’s some time since it was at any form of capacity. Espina trees are growing down in the bed, tamarisks are colonising the old, newly returned river banks, animal corrals are starting to sprout where historically they once would have been. Idyllic pictures on a roadside story board depict a vast, attractive tract of blue water, a fact confirmed in my mind by businesses offering lakeside cabins and boats for hire. Camping by the lake looks distinctly attractive. The shoreline lives on, only the waterline is several kilometres away. The pictures are pre Photoshop, so they’re a truth, but what they never tell is a date. It would be intriguing to see a timeline for the lake’s slow, decreasing demise. I suspect those tidelines are an arithmetic graphic, each defending mark representing a new trellis of vines, a new parcel of palta, a new orchard of oranges that are clambering up the mountainside. That dam’s construction in the early ’60s, allowed for a vinicultural revolution in this valley. But I wonder if that industry isn’t outgrowing the largesse of its provider. The drilling rigs are already starting to plumb for bore water. Insurance or necessity?

There’s something fantastical about the juxtapositioning of Copao cactus, which in a moist Scot’s mind says “desert”, and the angular regularity of a vinefield.the assault of wet greenery on a dry dunscape. Another battle between nurture and nature.

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For those in the know: Coast road through Vina del Mar ~ ConCon, Autopista CH5 ~ Los Vilos ~ CH47 ~ Illapel ~ Combarbala ~ Ovalle ~ La Serena. Date 15th.~ 20th. Nov. ’14.

End to Enders. We’ve met a few, those on a mission. The Round the World, be it the horizontally recognised route of Europe, near Asia, Far East, Australasia, or the ‘Tour de Pacific’: Americas, Africa, Euroscandanavian circumnavigation. Big visions that probably need a certain mind set. One that keeps the end picture in focus. I have a great respect for them. In part because I find our goals becoming shorter and more immediate with each journey. Our travel projects getting shortened down to a series of linked adventures. Most of them conceived at short notice. When mapped, more the image of the double helix. Which is a long handed way of saying “we don’t do planning very well”. Respect for the ‘ender’, because their route through the Americas invariably takes them along the PanAmericana. The road that goes from Ushuaia, Cape Horn to Dead Horse, Alaska. We’ve riden parts in the Peruvian Atacama, it’s stunning landscape. But it also takes in what we started to cycle just north of Valparaiso.

Valparaiso, port city to the conquering Spanish, a city of forty-seven hills, a place of old colonial houses, trolley buses and street art, a place where the dead hand of the town planner never took root. Mapped, the streets look like a warren for grubs in a tree trunk. To escape to the north we have the inviting opportunity to use a Costanera, scored for pedestrians and bicyclists, only it’s the other side of the tracks. The wrong side of a six lane motorway and a metro system. Access is via a two, read at rush hour, four lane slip road. We elect to pavement run, and of course this will inevitably decease behind a crash barrier and a lighting column. It has to be the hump-backed stairway. If we have issues, consider the wheelchair or baby buggy user. There always somebody worse of than I. A thought I use, as I castigate the local government for a lack of joined up thinking. Another city emasculated by a coast-grabbing highway, albeit one that is mitigated by a new mass transit metro system.

We head north, and into the resort Costas that commence with Vina del Mar. Described as old fishing villages. Only they’ve been gutted of their smelly parts, bits like fish and fishermen. Under a discouraged grey sky, these canyons of condominiums gaze down on this morning’s empty strands and the horse drawn traps awaiting custom. The road wynds around headlands, sweeps round bays, passing through ever increasing bands of exclusivity. Cascades of villas tumble down the steep hillsides, that then segue into the architects’ creative dream, discrete designer creations of smoked glass and burnished steel. From there into the inevitable land of “plots for sale”. What is noticeable throughout this passage is the distinct lack of food retail. Not even a spade and bucket shop. Does everybody eat out or do they haul in from the mega-malls in town? It has the distinct feel of a Las Vegas, that place where all the services and their support workers are housed over a hill, out of sight, fifty kilometres away. Each lamp post becomes an advertising location. A flickering succession of endearments, entreaties, enthusiasms. A land of wishful hopes. There will be a swimming pool populated by pale blond happy families, there will be a tennis court for the beautiful professional, there will be a cycle path for that elegant third age couple. All of whom will be North European, or so I’m led to believe. But first you’ll have to buy your piece of windswept sand dune. I find it depressing, in part because the shoreline has been privatised, created exclusive to these redundant plots. A place shorn of tree and bush, carved up with barbed wire, padlocked gates and posted with peeling notice boards advertising a telephone number. A vacant lunarscape.

There’s a pattern starting to emerge, we’ve seen this all before; out of season pleasure palaces, vacant parking lots, stacked picnic tables. With these negative thoughts we try to track down a mythical campground, end up finding one that’s closed and are turned away from a third. Turned away…it has only happened twice before….I can with utter authority state it would not happen on the other side of the Andes. That neighbour will always squeeze in another camper. Our eventual camping site is inevitably an overpriced, dry dusty spot under my least favourite shade tree. Eucalyptuses shedding twigs and bark at an interesting rate. We’re collecting mood swings that remind me of that autumn on the North American east coast.

Less than enthused with these feelings we head onto a motorway. It’s the only road for the next seventy kilometres. There are no restrictions on cycling, a fact confirmed as two carabineros ignore our presence. Travelling north, we’re on the landward side, but there’s some interesting possibilities for a wild camp over toward the shore. Only between there and I, is a ‘Beecher’s Brook’ of two waist high crash barriers and a cement moat for a central reservation, followed by a ten strand barbed wire fence. An obstruction that will run north for the next two hundred and fifty kilometres, totally unbroken. Pity the occasional householder who might wish to gain the other side of the road. They will have to drive to the next underpass, a round trip of fifty kilometres, just to gain a mere 5 metres. We’re imprisoned in a sterile zoo. The specimen countryside, those inviting tors, that silver sand, sadly beyond our reach. Are there dangerous animals out here, or are we the problem? And yet this road, by any European standard would be considered quiet.

We have a choice. Ride out the next 250km with a tailwind, the only social contact being a gas station tomorrow night or take to the hills. Considerably longer with a lot more climbing, but it takes little persuasion. Within the first few moments we start chatting again, and I realise just what an effect that road was having. Cycling in a sterile bubble. Now there is something positive to talk about. The prison fence has gone, the verged wildflowers return, even the fifteen kilometres of climbing, much of it at 10%, couldn’t dampen our spirits. We’re back amongst places where people live and work. A diversion that will double in time, but the rewards are immense.

There’s a simple moral to this tale. Now I understand those comments from that lone ‘ender’ last year, who bitterly complained that there was nothing to see. We were standing in front of the Nazca lines, the world’s highest sand dune to rear at the time. Stay resolute to you goal and you might just end up missing some interesting places, some curious curiosities. Like this vertical wall of advertising vegetation.

 

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For some reason I can’t sleep tonight. Possibly because, having been on a ration of connectivity due to a dearth of recharging electricity and hot points, I’m now able to compose in bed. More probably it’s the extra coffees due to the inducement of easy access to an electric kettle, the diuretic effect of caffeine and age.

I’m in an old colonial house. All steep stairs and high ceilinged rooms in the old part of town. The window is open. Voices drift up from the cobbled street, the occasional exhaustless car grinds up the steep incline, clanking the slack drain cover. A radio plays from another place. Squabbling pelicans debate which boat’s gunnel they’re going to poop on. The inevitable alarm warbles in the distance as the bin lorrymen chuck glass bottles into their wagon. The compactor growls, the air brakes squeal and they roll away downhill, to allow another new quiet to descend; the soft thrum of air conditioners. The singular signature of a pigeon’s flight as one shuffles the perching order on a window ledge. A key turns in the iron gate below; the hinges need lubrication and I count sixty footfalls up the long outside staircase. All in a single flight, a long fall. It’s not exactly the silence of the night, but it does make a change from the usual barking dogs and non-dawn cockerels. There’s even the faint tang of fish and the sea, for the Pacific Ocean is just three blocks away. This night we’re in Valparaiso.

Last night I had the noise silence of Ocoa National Park. A quiet so intense that I could hear the gnawing of a rodent, feeding on fallen seeds and the feel-sound, the vibration of a passing ass’ hoof fall. The occasional soft gust of air would rattle the stiff palm fronds, a sound of rain in a forest’s canopy. A silence concentrated by the knowledge that the nearest human is many miles away.
It’s that under-appreciated sense. Sound. The one that lacks the wow factors of sight and smell. It crept up on us today, a graduated increase with each decreasing mile towards town. With each too-close passing collectivo bus, each in a manic competition for that one last passenger. I needed three sets of eyes, the navigator her fish-lens. The reek of exhaust melding with fish meal factory. Sound as a pollution, that has driven the song birds to alter their habits, so now they serenade for a mate in the relative quiet of the sodium infused, undark city night.

The silence returns. Somebody’s church chimes the forgotten hour, as a thrush sings a night time song in Sotomajor Square.

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Seven weeks into our trip and other cycle travellers are somewhat thin on the road. But the quality far out ways the quantity. There’s certain ‘honey spots’ that help to concentrate the possibilities of a chance encounter. Cities have poor returns, too many places to miss. Campgrounds are better, ‘ender routes’ better still, but best is an international frontier and the general couple of days around them. Paso Christo Redendor was especially fruitful.

Ben, ex Orcadian, ex Lancastrian, no accent, married to Natalia a Braziliana. Who on first contact, and this is so typical of cycle travellers were reticent about what they had been up too. Reticent, unassuming. They volunteered the information that they had just come on RN7. My subvocal reaction is: why? It’s a fast, narrow, semi-infested road. But I’m too polite. They too are heading “over the hill”, just like us, we’re bound to get either confirmation of their virginity or the real explanation over the next couple of days. On a road that’s over two days long, there’s bound to be crossover somewhere. Yet we manage to pass and repass each other, they tracking down food, we, a siesta behind a giant rock, eventually coming together at the tunnel entrance. We take breakfast in the cafe together as we await the truck transport through the tunnel. That truck-congested Route Seven is but a fraction of their story. They’re on a proving trip for their sponsors. (Swiss pharmaceutical wishing to launch a new sunscreen in Brazil) They left their front door in São Paulo forty odd days ago…four thousand odd kilometres ago…I can do the math, they’re not hanging around. It’s their last section. Now it’s back home, then off to Canada, “to fatten up”, cycle from the US border to Winnipeg in December, followed by a ski to Resolute Bay! So, not so much travellers as Adventurers.

Two days later we find another brand of adventurers. On differing occasions we’ve met, or we’ve heard reliable second hand stories of families on tour. Oddly or coincidentally most seem to be French. Famille Jouen are Bretons on an extended tour. Ewan(8) is on an independent, just like his mother Solenn, whilst his sister Meline and dad Oliv are on a recumbent tandem. It’s an impressive set up. Forty kilos of kit and eighty kilos of cycle. There on their way over the same route that we’ve just covered, only they will be climbing up those twenty nine hairpin bends. Hopefully the wind will stay on its prevailing way for them.

Now there’s been enough chatter on line about taking primary age children out of formal education for an extended period, I’m no expert, but I am an observer. I can’t help but note the confidence, the inquisitiveness, the self assurance that’s exhibited. Nature or nurture. Was it there before the journey started or is it a product of this tour? To have had those skills at that age. Their blog is here.

Footnote. The Jouens are ‘over the hill’, both physically and metaphorically, now heading north to Salta, Argentina. Ben and Natalia have signed up with their sponsors and are awaiting a firearms certificate… polar bears up around Hudson Bay. Their website is here.

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For those in the know: RN7/ International – Paso Cristo Redendor – CH60. (The main road between Argentina and Santiago, Chile.)
Another roller coaster of a day. Both geographical and psychological. It starts with a climb, a truck ride and a frontier crossing. Starting at -2 degrees and finishing at 28, started with the silence of a high altitude bivvi, and finishes with a Latino birthday party. Started in one country and finished in its neighbour’s. We collect some more passport stamps and yet another version of officialdom’s non-comprehension.
Camping and that essential element, sleep, are integral to a travel. Divining places of rest can be a trial, can be exciting. Like crap food which is best valued as simply fuel, so a poor site is simply a way of passing the dark time. At best a piece of questionable brain rest. A poor site, be it a grubby overpriced room or a mozzie infested scab of withered grass is tolerable but soon forgotten. Where as the notable or unusual is cherished. We collect two of the latter in quick succession. There was the tented classroom that came with parquet floor and trestle benches, followed closely by a bivvi high up on the Western Hemisphere’s highest hill. To which was added a full moon.

At one time two competing train lines ran over the Paso Christo Redendor. Amazingly much of the infrastructure still exists. The track and the ties are intact, if at times swallowed up by the incessant upheavals of flood and avalanche. Near the top a series of corrugated tunnels still stand, the wooden beams still beautifully weathered, in places still charred by that last steam locomotive. In the past we’ve pitched between the rails of defunct lines. We were keen to repeat the experience, just for the sake of it. A bit of eccentric fun. On a wet and windy night the tunnel would be perfect, but with the promise of that moon and the array of high tops across our immediate horizon, we opt for the bielded shelter behind a couple of strategically positioned iron sheets. The afternoon gale howls down the tunnel, rattles loose tin, setting others to chatter and squeal, such that I’m convinced there’s a troop of children advancing down the line. Eventually with the dusk, a profound silence settles as the sun sets and the moon arises. The mountain views still at full volume. Into this quiet a rogue gust of wind echoes along the tunnel waking me up. A ghost train of the imagination, those chattering tin sheets adding to the image.

Next morning is clear, the glacier melt streams frost rimed, but the promise is for heat. Rising through the bends to the Christo Redendor tunnel and a truck ride to Chile. Cerro Aconcagua and its attendants sharp, pristine, the ski resorts naked, empty and forlorn.
This crossing is popular with touring cyclists. It’s the easiest way to access the Andes and western Argentina. Fly into Santiago and start climbing immediately. We know of eight cyclists who crossed during our two-day sojourn in the vicinity of the frontier. So what followed is a bit of a puzzle. This is our second entry into Chile with cycles; the last was with the convoys of Bolivian petrol trucks. The last was simplicity itself. Lorries and cycles being of a similar nature, the Navigator oft describing her cycle as a camion. The staff more interested in our impressions and intentions; their sole concern to make sure we had no garlic. Only here, we simply don’t fit their simplistic binary formula, neither a bus passenger nor a car driver. The computer has no square box into which our round peg can be rammed. I’m now tempted to create an officious, laminated document just for my bike, along the lines of our spurious passport creations that nobody has yet to question.

We passed in and out of that hall numerous times, as we were sent back to acquire another piece of paper, to block up another queue. It became comical, its sole redeeming feature being the stunning panorama each time we emerged from that cavernous concrete hall. The Navigator giggling with each fresh absurdity. We eventually end up in a police office collecting a piece of photocopied document that states our name and number. I think its to show that we entered with cycles and when we come to leave, are not exporting or smuggling cycle contraband. Said scrap of paper accumulates four rubber stamps and now I’m concerned that I’ve garnered yet another piece of paper to lose. Yet the real absurdity has yet to be perpetrated. The bag search, carried out without the aid of an x-ray machine. Chile is well known for its fido sanitary restrictions, it has a major agricultural industry to protect, so the nuts and raisins are confiscated, yet the pan dulce is given the all-clear. Pan dulce has nuts and raisins in it. There’s a giant poster right behind my parked up bike, depicting banned products, included is just what you might expect, fruit, veg, animal products and pencils. I carry a pencil, as pens get afflicted with altitude sickness. I also have a pair of Uruguayan sheepskin mitts that I’m rather fond of. I present them for inspection and they pass muster. Don’t ask, I certainly didn’t. Strange place the frontera.

We eventually escape. It took two hours, easily a new record. What comes next is pure acceleration. Down a headwall head first, Down twenty nine hairpin bends. Not one single crash barrier. Go over the edge and you would free fall onto the middle of the rising carriageway, the road’s route so tightly stacked. Surreal, made extreme by the ski chairlift that passes overhead. I pull over to rest my breaking fingers and to watch the choreography of marching semi articulates. From my vantage point, I have a view that is solid road, lorries appear to be playing ‘chicken’, racing towards each other, then just missing by a hair’s breadth. Down through this we sail.

Last night it was the silence that is sweet noise. Tonight it’s Latino party night, to which can be added the clanking diesel loco and the jake brakes of tanker lorries, finally mix in a hazchem of rotten eggs. A day that gave us our fourth Andean crossing, yet it will be hard to think of a day that has given us such extremes.

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The navigator is in her natural habitat. On a mission to track down a paper map. The kill might be the desired result, but at times I sometimes wonder if the stalk isn’t more exciting. In this age of digital mapping you might assume that what’s on offer on our tablet would be adequate. We set off on this trip with that premise. No paper maps. It was at first exciting, gone the half kilo of, at times dubious information. Being able to press a few keys and, especially for me, if, as by magic, we had a new map for a new country. Being open source, it was even free. Rolling into a new town, flicking fingers and we knew where a hostal, campground or mercado were. No more going around in ever decreasing Blocks and squares tracking down each new and differing local’s favoured shop or second cousin’s accommodation. And yet. There’s no substitute for sitting staring at a giant piece of paper on the floor. It’s an essay of infinite words. So many possibilities, so many permutations, so many journeys.
Copec is an Exxon Mobil company that sells petrol. They also justifiably have the reputation for producing the best Chile road map. We know they exist, as we eventually tracked one down last year. The navigator can spot their telltale blue red and white logo at any distance. We start the hunt. Soon learning that map sales are the responsibility of the pump attendants and not the shop assistants. Many are helpful, going raking in cupboards, but all to no avail. The stalk reaches double figures with no map; it’s becoming a game. Then a modicum of success. One man unearths an Esso edition from the bottom of a drawer, dated circa 1985. Well the towns will be in the right places, but many of the roads have moved. With still no success we’re about to give in when she gets a bit of useful intelligence. This year’s edition has sold out, next year’s still to be printed. Best to head for a city bookshop and try for a generic map. Only it takes a certain level of population to support a bookseller, so we head for Valparaiso. It’s fun to have a frivolous purpose when wandering a new place. So often you will end up in an interesting situation. That ‘interest’ can, on occasions be more of a euphemism, red light districts and wrong side of the tracks being two of the navigator’s specialist destinations.
We find the bookshop by chance and now have a map. Whereupon the next petrol station that we stop at to use their bathrooms has just one road atlas left. Of course we have to purchase it. Suddenly we’re back with that half kilo of mapping paper. Is there a phobianomic for those who can’t leave home without a map? If so, we’re both afflicted; fortunately it’s easily treated. Buy a map.

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For those in the know: provincial route 52, Mendoza province. Argentina. The back road from Mendoza to Uspallata. Ruta del Ano.

A very British garden starts to materialise all around us. A creeping greenery of vegetation, surprising in its unexpectedness. Wild Rose, petunias, antirrhinum in two colours, ajuga and wandering sailors. The wild antecedents of a nurserymans breeding stock.

Leaving the desert city, the oasis town of Mendoza, with Its vineyards and its traffic, we climbed away from water influences and into a brittlescape of sand and scrub. We’ve plotted an alternative route from the road we took to get into town, using an atlas that lacks contours. I know that it must go uphill by the fact that there depictions of some hairpin bends and by the fact that we’re surrounded by hills. There’s no obviouse escape route through the barrier in front of us. The only question is how high? A question that we omitted to ask at the information kiosk, the same place that failed to volunteer the fact that the hotel at the termas was closed and that the campground was only for mine workers. We were probably her sole visitor that day, so I’ll be generous and award two ‘clowns’. We, of course came away with the standard clutch of paper, a glossy with a picture of a road twisting up a hillside. Its entitled “Ruta del Ano “. We’ve found ourselves yet another classic route by accident. Serendipity.

A slow and imperceptible change takes place. We move out of a two season year, wet or dry and into a euro- spring time. The verges erupt with colour and scents. The heavy, sweet smell of Mediterranean broom, a yellow stream of colour that picks out the transient winter water course. The steep hillsides speckled with rose, then step from the road and you crush geraniums, and wild rocket. A raw scar of recent rockfall is being populated by the early colonisers; white and magenta flowering petunias, and red valerian. The latter, a plant that’s prevalence in Britain is blamed on the Romans. Only they can’t be accused on this occasion. False acacia and Curtain poplars, with even one hawthorn complement the tree species. At first it’s the surprise of the familiar, the discovery of vegetative greenery. Then comes the realisation that these are all weeds. Plants in the wrong place. Strangly, Australia’s greatest export, the gumtree, is absent. Yet there is a certain admiration for their tenacity, their ability to expand and exclude the native flora. They’re using a particular geological feature, an upwelling of ancient mineral rich waters. Only they’re not the first conquistadores.

This feature has had its place in history. The route we’re following is old, pre-Columbian, used by the indigenous Huarpes to trade over the Andes. Next wer the Jesuits and the designation: Camino Real.Then came the invaders. Capt. Joseph Villavicencio in 1704 hunting for easy wealth, and starts to extract silver. His legacy remembered by a mill stone and a name. “Villavicencio: The Brand” can be found in every shop, gas station and lining the verge of every Argentinian road. Yet It would have been utterly inconceivable for the original conquistadore to realise how his name and his property would discover such an unlikely new wealth. Bottled water. He was Spanish, the new owners: French.

Danone have built a bottling plant and acquired a tract of land, then preserved their investment by creating a natural park, to which is attached the usual ranger service. Were invited to camp the night in their pavilion classroom. All seventy-two square metres of it. Definitely a new sleeping location for us. They also furnish us with the interesting fact that the top of the hill is another 1200 metres above us and between here and there are 365 bends. Now the name “Ruta del Ano” makes sense. It takes over four hours to reach the top, by which time I’ve long given up the count. There’s little point, the views are infinitely more inviting. But it’s that sudden moment then we top out at 3100m and there in front, stretched across our horizon is the Cordillera Aconcagua.

Having been gracious enough to give us a sleeping space, I should offer some product placement. But as to why they have used the image of a North African camel on their bottles is a mystery. Presumably to suggest thirst quenching’. A pity as the park is well populated with another camelid, the guanaco.

Two roads into or out of Mendoza. Two utterly different experiences. One a dance with rampaging transfrontera java airs, the other a near deserted Gordian knotted road.

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For those in the know: Argentina rutas 491~150~149, Huaco~ Jachal~ Rodeo~ Callingasta~ Uspallata. La Rioja Provice.

We fought the wind and the wind won.

Temples of the wind.

Downhill gradients of 5%, pedalling hard to make a meagre headway, on the outside of the bends, driven to a near standstill. Crossing the bridge at the bottom, over the Río San Juan, we give up and push. The road, having found the valley floor, then meanders in concert with the river around cliffs and buttresses, clinging to the side wall, the wind force strong enough to start grit avalanches and localised dust storms. On asking the police at the local check point if this is usual: We’re offered a wry smile and “yes all day, all week”. A bit like asking a Skye man “are these midges normal?” A poleaxing wind that attacks from every angle, to include that from above, its sole intention to empty my mind of any appreciations. An attack in violence and noise, so all-consuming there is neither time nor brain space to understand our surroundings. Yet to the left is the pre-cordillera, the foothills to the true Andes that climb up on our right. This road and our route are literally consumed within these mountains. The tops rise above me, 6000 metres high, but that’s only a number gleaned from a map. It’s impossible to appreciate their scale as there’s nothing to measure against. The numbers are big, but the views are vast.

Parts of this route are credited as being the windiest in Argentina. A fact possibly only credible if you ignore Patagonia, Cape Horn and the Argentinian Antarctic. Speeds of 120kph each afternoon in October are considered normal. Windsurfing and its associated offshoots are catered for, with land sailing on the sand pampa around Leoncito, for which we saw no evidence. Which was a pity, trying to photograph wind is difficult. The Alamo poplars never bend, nor craft into wind shapes, the Sauce willows just flow gracefully, like sea swept seaweed. Neither showing any concern for the ferocity of the gale. Which should be a metaphor for our angst amongst this normal weather event. Don’t fight it. Stand it out with British stiff upper lip or be Latino and go with the flow. Truth is we’re probably tackling this route in the wrong direction, or we should have sought divination at that temple. Instead we investigate the underworld, climbing down into yet another culvert.

To sit still and await the early evening meteophysics, when the blessed stillness creeps in. These naked mountains take on a sidelight, the gullies and cliffs etched out stark and sharp. The tinnitus of silence. A silent wild camp, with the sure knowledge that we will get the ten minutes sunrise that can memory erase hours of wind battle. The tops sitting astride the frontier, the continental divide, picked out in pinks and russet reds, against the dark Chilean pre dawn. For its these few precious moments that make a weather battle and dark start so worth while.

The Río San Juan gives us our first true river on this trip, one that is glacier fed, albeit pinked with sediment. A 7/24 affair, the feeder side streams mere part timers, more seasonal rios of sand. It also offers that great boon, the reassurance of a resupply. It would be a difficult extraction, down crumbling banks to a questionable footing, but the thought alone, that of available water is comforting in itself. Fact is we’re carrying an Aquarians’ worth of tap water. Once we might have questioned our logics if we’d hauled an oversupply to the next destination; now I do not care. Water in this parched landscape is more precious than that stash of oats, bread or Mars Bar lurking in the bottom of a pannier.

Wind or no wind, this is a classic Andean introduction. An up close interview with these young mountains.

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You’ve got to eat a peck of dirt before you die. An old wife’s Bon mot. A truism to rank along side the ‘five second rule’: if it’s off the floor inside five seconds…eat it. One way to acquire an inoculation of germs and avoid the repeated trip to the bathroom medicine cabinet. A peck being a dry volumetric measure for feeding oats to horses, a quarter bushel or its metric equivalent of around nine litres. A not insignificant amount that could easily be ingested whilst sleeping out the night under a bridge in an Argentine wind storm.

We’re crossing the Campo de Arena and as the name suggests, it’s a plane of sand and low scrub. A place of little shelter, offering poor tethers for a tent. A place of beautiful austerity. We’ve been this way before, we’ve been caught out in a hot wind storm and needed to find some sort of meager shelter. This time the wind is sitting square on our backs, we’re being pushed along and are near to the finish. Then it drops away and returns with a vengeance, full frontal, stuck on our nebs. There’s little point in fighting it, it will only result in a sufferfest. Time to investigate the culverts under the road. There’s good shade and a cooler sand that’s not been baked all day. The downside is the wind tunnel effect, that picks up grit and hurls it along the surface, at much the same height as a sleeping face.

Culverts, bridges and road cuttings are useful accoutrements for the cycle camper. The last can be exposed to the sun, but has the advantage that most humans have an inordinate inability to look upwards. It’s easy to find a hidden place away from headlights and the black-time thoughts of crashing vehicles. The former two have the shade advantage but come with a particular South American trait. Garbage dumping. Fling the the black poly bag over the parapet, nature in the form of rain storms will sweep it out of mind. More often it’s the wind that does the distribution, draping the thorn country with a flowering of polythene. Lay-bys are to be avoided, most are alfresco loos. Yet this trip has already disproved some of these assertions. A mirador, a tourist stop-off and lookout in the Valle Tafi gave us a jungle camp with screeching parrots and a dawn chorus, with the added thoughts about the night time creepy crawlers.

If you set to to construct a meal out of a can of corned beef, a few rolls and that wind, you soon learn why it might be termed a sandwich. It helps to keep up your quota of ingested dirt. We zip up the bivi bags and listen to the prattle of grit with a sense of security, yet still the talc-like dust insinuates its way through the zip. By morning there are ripples of sand formed around me. I’m scraping crud from my eyes and contemplating the tonnage of earth modelling that can be achieved in just one night.

Nine litres of dirt, one lifetime, I think I might be eating for my country this morning.

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The Welsh tourist organisation, a good number of years ago, had an accreditation system for accommodations, using, rather than stars, ‘red dragons’. Patriotic, appropriate. Or so I thought, after encountering some of the less than welcoming landladies. We were on a cycle tour, they didn’t like cyclists. They seemed well enamoured with our pound notes, it was the bike they had a problem with.

Dragon awards, it’s got me thinking. I need a measuring tool for other visitor experiences. So it will not be a surprise if I nominate ‘ The visitor information services of the he world’, as my first category. For this I will use ‘clowns’. Characters whose sole aim is to make you laugh out loud. A belly laugh that leaves you feeling replenished. So no irony there. Truly it’s the only reaction permissible that will leave you sane.

Automobile Club of Chile, like so many of their ilk, once produced serviceable road maps, the Argentina version still does. We need a map. We pass their Valparaiso offices; the Navigator is on mission, feeling masochistic, and enters. A single solitary answer, augmented by the evidence of her dentist’s skills. 5 Clowns.

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