August 1, 2010
Day ride on Route 68.: Salta to Km150 return. 83kms
I bough a cycle computer inorder to write-up daily distances and overall distance for this journal. It was for that reason I's in the bikeshop on Saturday morning. The sales person Jorge invited me to a group ride meeting-up at the YPF service station in the barria Santa Ana on the southern side of Salta Sunday morning at 8.30am. The ride would be out to the resevour Digue Cabra Carrol on the way to Cafayate where there would be an Asado{barbaque} lunch before riding back.
A good way to meet local cyclists I though. The only problem being the start time 8.30. At 6.30 I'm awake and soon up while on the road, but here in Salta I've gotten into an easy slow pace of life and my day starts late. The reason I'm dating a local girl and last-night when I went to her house at quarter to one she'd only finish eating dinner with the family, a late hour which most foreigers, myself included, fine curiously late to eat, but thats the way it is in Argentina. The nightlife consequently goes on to dawn.
To cut a long story short I didn't open my eyes till ten this morning, so missing the ride. Nevertheless I was intent on getting out, so set off shortly after midday alone on route 68, the road to Cafayafe. It had been a cold grey start but the sun gradually broke through and it was a fine afternoon. It was good to be back riding again after two weeks off the bike. The thing I didn't miss however were the drivers though the main reason I find cycling in Agentina frightening at times is the lack of paved shoulder. There's usually a metre or two with a good hardcore base, surely it wouldn't cost a fortune to pave even half a metre of it just so I could be riding in out off the way of passing cars. After a while though you become less afraid of cars passing so fast and so near as you forget what it may be like to be hit by a car. A road kill dog all bloodly on the whiteline is perhaps a reminder. To be fair the majority slow and give you room but there's a few assholes that act as if you don't exsist neither slowing or moving out to the middle or anything like turning their head to adknowledge they've seen you.
Enough with the rant as it was an enjoyable ride along the Lerma valley which is wide and extentively cultivated. There's brown fields of recent sown crops, fields of a green leafy crop which I believe to be tabaco. The Andes mountain were barely visable in the haze of bright afternoon sunshine. I pasted through a few small villages with colonial arched verandas facing the roadside then shortly after a turning for the village of Chicoana I spotted a cafe serving regional fare and it was time to stop anyway. I order Locro a meat and vegetable stew. The local children were quite amused at the sight of a strange looking man wearing tights and riding a bike which they gathered round and scrutenized with curiocity. One little boy said, it's a beautiful bike mister. They soon saw that I wasn't so strange after all and started to practise their English on me which was limited to, hello, how are you, what is your name. Not that bad for a ten year old.
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