October 14, 2016
Fri 14th Oct: Junin de Los Andes to San Martin de Los Andes
When the computer looked to be dead yesterday, how fortunate that Javier, the Spanish cyclist, with his knowledge of computers was at hand to get it going again.
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There was still a problem with the computer this morning though, so I got Javier to have another look at it. This would take quite a lot of time; in fact all morning.
We'd both cleared our stuff out of the room we shared and checked out. Then Javier continued working on my computer in the hostel common-room, until the cleaner had asked us a few times are we staying another night. She clearly wanted us out from under her feet. So we moved out into the street-front garden, where there is still a wifi signal.
We were waiting for a program to load where, the loading icon was spinning away without any sign it'd finish anytime soon.
Eventually, at half twelve, it is done and we could leave. Me cycling on ahead of Javier as he preferred cycling slowly and alone, but we would meet up again later in San Martin de Los Andes, our destination for the day.
I told him its all downhill, but how wrong I was as I find out myself after passing the last houses on the southern edge of town. Ahead looks flat; its deceptive though, being an ever so gradual uphill barely visible until I find myself in a climbing-gear. Or is it I've a headwind?
All the same its a slow uphill drag into a headwind toward a mountain; at the forest clad slope of which, the road could be seen to swing sharp right. I recall then from having ridden this road in April, the downhill actually begins at this point. It descends into a valley all the way to San Martin de Los Andes.
However, distance can fool the eye here. What looks only a short distance to the road swinging right at the forest, where I'd have shelter from the wind, in reality is ten kilometres.
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Eventually, I reach the road swinging right, and the long downhill much of the rest of the way.
All is well until approaching the city where there's a build-up of traffic to a constant flow of commercial vehicles and cars on a narrow single-carriageway road, with a rough loose stones shoulder to the side. One car hoots in an angry protesting way for me taking up more than a metre of the road where I had go out further, because the road curves sharply round and down in a switch-back. It sounded as if they were telling me to ride on the rough shoulder.
I remain put, riding wide until the road straightens out below the bend, while the car squeezes by without any space for error on my part.
In any case why should I ride off onto the rough shoulder? In the gutter so they can pass quicker. I wonder what the hooting car-driver would think if told to drive on that shoulder, out of the way of cyclists.
I check-in to La Puma hostel and Javier turns up an hour or so later, also complaining about the traffic on the way into town. It is well he did turn up then as I have yet another problem with the computer; namely, it wouldn't connect to the internet. But this is a minor thing that he soon puts right.
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