Recipe for the preparation of a nothing day:

Take the mist and thicken to a steady drizzle, allow for short bursts of more persistent rain, interspersed by the temptation to de-vest, or de-skin waterproofs.  Take this primary concoction and add to the flat land, spread out to a thin humid layer.  Then add a slight wind, side delivery is best. Care should be taken here, as a tail wind will excite the mix, giving too positive a spin, and a heavy head wind will depress and deflate the recipe.  The seasoning of a monocultural vegetation is a vital ingredient and should not be omitted.  Warning to cooks: at no time should the prospect of blue sky or any semblance of a shadow be allowed to be enter into the preparation as it will only lead to deflated depression and inflated optomism, spoiling your resultant day.  Now cook your cyclist for six hours in a skin of Gore-Tex, ensuring that humidity is kept at a constant 110%, and temperature is held at 22°C.  This should ensure the prospects for mild non-clinical depression are kept on a potential constant.  Should the recipe be exhibiting signs of failure, I offer this ’cook’s secret’: over the prolonged and delicate cooking period it helps if you can add the tantalising prospect of ‘coffee relief’  This can best be achieved by placing names for non existent places on the map, and by building an extinct ‘Policial Control’ on the provincial border that from a few kilometres away looks like a truckers stop.  Placing the Cola delivery lorry in the vicinity, will further enhance this misconception.  Should your recipe still be failing, try a supplication to the Saints – St. Lawrence is your man, although some would adhere to Santa Delia of Norwich as being more efficacious.

The perfect cycling non-day was well under way, but in the end it turned out spoiled.  Two bright positives were inadvertently added to the mix, spoiling what was building to be a perfect creation.  The first was one of those momentary pictorials.  Two sows, with small litters of porkers are rooting through a roadkill carcase of a cow. I would reckon that they’ve visited this comedor on many occasions before.  Possibly the rain has softened the desiccated leather hide, adding some new flavour.  My view is of a pig’s butt, it’s tail twitching with porcine bliss; the rest is inside the cavern of the rib cage. It enlivens my day nicely, starting the decomposition and putrefaction process.

La Cumbre, a polite town that sits towards the alpha end of a socioeconomic scale. My measure is based upon the ‘croissant coefficient’ and the ‘impedimenta index’. Our empirical evidence being the availability of wholemeal bread and pond sieves, book exchanges and artists’ studios. Then there’s the bike hire with child’s trailer and the reappearance of private school uniforms. When two shops can sell architectural and agricultural scrap, you know that you’ve entered a different type of town.

The maroon checked faltas, plaid kilts, hitched up to a revealing pelmet height for the ladies of the secondary, the juniors in gender segregated red and blue smocks. An old wooden cart and a rusting iron stove sit on the pavement, whilst another shop sells child sized terracotta urns and amphoras, rustic impedimenta for the designed garden. Paraphernalia, that to the west would find a second life mouldering at the back of the house, or blocking a hole in a fence.




Free WiFi at the YPF petrol stations

Cafes, or more properly coffee shops, swell onto the pavement, leaving narrow obstacle coourses through a throng of ‘meet and greet’ tables and chairs, and providing us with a moral dilemma. The YPF petrol station sits in the midst of this coffee culture, so do we keep loyalty, fidelity for all those times and occasions when they were the only choice, the only chance of a caffeine fix for miles around, or do we abscond, decamp to a new brand? The decision is taken from us; all their tables are full. We’re disbanded and then re- branded.

Five months gone and a domestic, sedentary life seems and feels like an alien concept, an exotic notion; you know that it exits, you know that you once lived it.  Somewhere in the subconscious you know that you will return to it.  Yet……..

Three weeks left, such a short time; then you have to remind yourself that that’s a year’s worth of holiday allocation for many.  A luxury for most and so must not be squandered.  Yet…….. I hate this bit.  Suddenly, we actually have to start planning more than one day ahead.  Now there’s the imperative of not heading off in a vague, undisclosed direction, sniffing out a spoor, following a suggestion that’s been gleaned from a snippet of information, or a chance remark from a passing stranger.  Now we need to count the miles per day, factor in climatic imponderables. We need to keep our bikes pointing in a general direction of east and heading for the Atlantic coast, heading for the big conurbation. However, there’s a problem with conurbations: people live in them.  So many months of misanthropic meanderings, wanderings in the wilderness, studiously by-passing cities, plotting avoidance routes, shunning the masses, that we’ve got out of the habit of assertive cycling, competing for street space.  Already the gloom mongerers are advising us to take a bus over the Pampa.  ‘Ten minutes and you’ve seen it all’,  the ‘MAMBA’ stories are coming thick and fast.  The trouble is, I’m a cantankerous old sod and comments like these are a goad, a provocation to do otherwise.  Anyway it’s a little over 700kms, Cordoba to BsAs, a week with a tail wind; or have I just temped fate?

Three weeks until the tentacles of a sedentary society apply their suckers and start to drag us back into its maw, back into the sticky clutches of its warm embrace.  Or so I thought.  Whilst checking our correspondence, we find that there’s a notification that we’ve just paid for our first delivery of organic vegetables at the end of the month.  I guess that confirms it: we are going home.



Deserted downtown BA this morning.  Which holiday is this?



We would like to say a huge ‘Thank You’ to everyone who has been enjoying the journey with us.  It has been great to have your company; in fact, more than that: your encouragement and invisible presence has been very important to us both.

With best wishes,

Chris (The Chronicler) and Lesley (The Navigator)



So we head out of town, provisioned with comestibles and some reliable information on water sources; it’s the latter that defines all trips in these parts.



Looking from 4350m to 6700m



It is a tantalising prospect, for out in front the really big hills are clear of cloud. Cerro Pissis coming in at 6700 metres, is the world’s highest volcano, sits along with it’s neighbours, Bonetes Chico y Grande. For a day’s company we still have the bulk of the Sierras del Miranda which tops out with Cerro Famatina, an isolated land mass, that we’ve been watching for days. Isolated, in that it seems dislocated from the main Andean chain, to the extent that it has its own weather system. Each morning is born blue clear, then a thin line of new clouds form along the lower slopes, sitting on a thermal layer. Developing and growing, these then start to detach and float away. Buying up moisture and energy, they quickly develop personalities, like they have consumed an engrossed spirit of the boll weevil, that’s punching it’s way to freedom, to escape the smothering confines of an indigestion of puffed cotton. It’s a pointless exercise that eventually turns to a temper tantrum. A few short lived sparks of lightning, the odd grumble of thunder. Yet nothing comes from the histrionics. Each day is the same, yet you know that eventually these traumas are leading up to an event.

Somehow, we’ve got to find 3,300 metres of climbable elevation, yet our first day is an easy, pleasant run up the Valle Bermejo, through a couple of pueblos that redefine a town planners idea of linear development. Seven kilometres in length, two properties wide and yet both can manage to create the mandatory Avenida San Martin with it’s central reservation of grass and a plaza for the church to gaze upon.



Torta delivery by Guardafauna at 2500m



The local fauna has a habit of confusing us. Somehow I had gained the impression that these animals, along with their close relatives the guanaco were in serious decline due to indiscriminate hunting, and would be a rare sighting. We had had the same experience with the woodland bison on the Mackenzie river in northern Canada. 4,000 head lost in 40,000km of Laurentian shield. On that occasion we had resorted to photographing the roadside warning signs, reckoning that might be the closest we would get to seeing a real live specimen. Then we got excited when the first one hove in to view. By the end of that day we were blasé, as herd after herd wandered up the middle of the road. As with arboreal Canada, so with Andean Argentina.

You could not have wiped the smiles from our faces when we spied our first group. The lens at maximum shows a blurred backside disappearing into the bush; the next one I stalked from behind a crash barrier. Then a small family group, then a large family group. When the total reached four score and ten, we reverted to counting by herds. That night I spent a considerable amount of time deleting pictures and recovering pixels, resorting to the three best examples. If iconic fauna has this disconcerting habit of disconfirming us, of second guessing our preconceptions, then these landscapes do the same. As we climb, we can see these pink and peach coloured mountains clearing out of the cloud. I photograph intently, in case this is our only sighting, our only encounter with an image that’s been a haunting. It comes from a coffee table book of climbing photos, colour prints of impossibly coloured mountains, pictures that verged on paintings.

Ribbons of green oxidised rock bleed from a cliff, form a screed rivulet, a runnel that flows down a cream hillside. Smooth in profile, rough in texture, granulated hills, like pastel coloured jelly moulds, stacked one upon t’other, all the way up to our horizon. The slopes fishnetted by ascending and descending animal tracks, dotted by pimples of hard tussock grasses and by slabs of mat forming Andean alpines. One specimen has been washed out in a flood, has been left stranded, a flotsam. A plant with a thick, deep tap root, attached to a short, thick, gnarled trunk. A miniature tree that is entirely submerged, root, trunk, branch, in the shattered rock, leaving just the surface canopy exposed out in the elements. In the firing line, in a hail of wind driven sleet, strafed by ice pellets and slugs of winter. Then blasted by a grapeshot of dust and grit for the short flowering season. Perfect adaptation.

It’s a decade since we spent a Christmas with my sister and her family in Lima. We had taken our time doing the Inca bit, Cusco, Macchu Pichu, Ollantaytambo, the full fascinating, ultimately depressing cultural story. Then for some relaxation we headed south of Lima, down the Pan- Americana highway to Paracas National Park. To the extremes of dry desert and strong alcohol, to the Atacama and Pisco sours. I know that I can date this fascination with desert landscapes to that afternoon’s short road trip. The Humbolt chilled Pacific ocean on our left, the dry land stretching away on our right. The wind sculpted rocks, the encrustations of saltpetre beds. A naked landscape shorn of green, stripped of modesty. My infatuation with hills is harder to date, but easy to locate. Goat Fell, Isle of Arran. Now put these two geographical elements together and you have a reason to be in these high Andean places. A sublime place that’s out of this world.

It is another world. Gone are the clear, sharp red rocks, the slow oxblood river, now replaced by cutouts of ill-defined, soft focused, wet cardboard sheets. The river a mushy brew of aggregates. ‘Derrumbes’ says the sign; ‘falling rocks’ says my brain. A near onomatopoeic, that might describe the initial noise of a falling rock, a tumbling boulder; what it doesn’t catch is the ominous thump as it bombs the soft, grit road. A deadening blow, pounding whomp that leaves little to the imagination, expands a heart rate and surges pedal revolutions.

Back through Vinchina, we attempt to deregister with gendarmeria. The duty man is more interested in how we enjoyed our trip, than removing our entry from the register. Down wet roads, with glutinous shoulders. Once dry arroyos now run liquid mud. The companionable company of the enfolding mountains all lost to a humid world of waterproof jackets and trousers. We retreat back to Villa Union, back to our original cabin, back to roofers failing to plug out a continuous ingression of rain. A town we first met in December in a Zonda of 42° and a dust storm, a town we left four days ago in a clarity of a summer’s day. A town that today is puddled from kerb to kerb, has water-rippled sandbars the length of its main street, and has its denizens brushing water out their front doors.

Wind storm, leads to dust storm, leads to zip failure and for once my hand was not attached to the offending item. I wasn’t even in the vicinity. Our municipal site is sun shaded, but the understorey is denuded of modesty or of anything green. Rivulets of dust are running low across the surface, twisting and knotting just like river waters, collecting up píne needles and candy wrappers, then settling out in inside any crevice or bielded corner. Finding ways into book spines, screw tops and zip closures. Ears, noses and throats. Knickers, bearings and insanity. A dry powder that is hygroscopic, that attracts any moisture, dampness or sweaty body, creating a grinding paste of industrial strength and the question: will I ever get clean again?

From our vantage point we are blinded to any impending storm, relying on non-visual indicators like time and wind speeds. The last three days have unfolded to a similar scenario: late morning cloud magically materialises over any high point, starting to construct columns of thunder heads. Late afternoon these have acquired enough energy that they can now be released and allowed to roam freely across the low lands. Walls of wind precede the shedding curtains of rain, blasting the land with bolts of lightning all to thunderous applause.

The rain eases off; the storm has only given us a glancing blow, but it’s enough to dampen the ground and settle the dust, for a short while. Everything dries so quickly in this arid air.

It’s a pre-dawn rising, the dust motes dancing in the torch beam. Every surface covered in a near invisible gritty scum. A short cycle run down into Cañon de Atuel, and we find the evidence of how close we came to a real soaking. New puddles are linked together by a thin dribble of rusty red water, damp shingle washouts stretch across the road, deep gutters have been hacked through the soft sandy soil. Another few hours and all the storm evidence will have evaporated away, returning the cañon to it’s accustomed aridity.
m writing this piece under further evidence of just how violent some of these storms can be. Once again we’re sitting out an afternoon of hair dryer heat, this time under a shade clothed car port. Not sun shade but hail shade. Those high mountains over there can conjure up some very interesting weather.

I’

If you read some of these posts and find they are making little sense, blogger.com seems to have taken a dislike to the apostrophe and sometimes (only sometimes) uses it as a signal to scramble the post.  So no, the stream of consciousness is not any more confused than normal, it is the technology.  I will try to fix it in due course.
The Editor

Camped high and wild, amongst the cactus, ridden the ripio down, down to an ashen grey Rio Grande, all to the sparse accompaniment of the occasional passing car. Found the tar and sailed out onto the open strath. The river removed from the constraints of it’s volcanic corset, exhales and plaits braids across the wide, flat lands. For a background we have the world’s greatest concentration of volcanic spouts. Payan Matru has been our constant companion for two days, sitting high and elegant on our eastern horizon. Last night, dressing in a thin mantle of cloud, a gauze negligee that barely preserved her modesty. Then as darkness descended, she stripped off and flew her garments like a flag in the rising night wind. An exquisite, classic near symmetrical volcanic cone, standing clear above her neighbouring siblings. Lower down, a sloping table land is softened by low vegetation and a low rising sun, that accentuates with deep shadows the numerous small volcanic eruptions. The slanting light also captures and enumerates the encampments of portacabins, the derricks of drilling rigs and the plumes of dust disturbed by servicing fuel tankers and speeding pick-up trucks. An acne of exploration among the volcanic pimples. Now we understand the bright light, that we initially took to be a star, one that never seemed to move. It was more flood-light than epiphaneal nova.