Thu 22th Sep: San Juan to Va Media Aqua < 21km

September 22, 2016

On the road this morning, the dual-carriageway south of San Juan, I'm a bit shocked to have strong headwind this early in the day. Worse still, ahead there's roadworks where yellow machines are stiring up a lot of fine sand, meaning, not only have I strong headwind but I'm riding into a sandstorm.

Sand is raining down on me, getting in my eyes. There's sand in my troat too. The road surface was close to perfect until this point. Its hard to see what improvement they are making as a grader levels an extra lane. Certainly no inprovement at present. On going widening I suppose.

Having got pass the roadworks, the wind has gotten stronger. The sky a low brown haze over the road. I resort to riding on the gravel shoulder for my own safety, due to low visability. That and the wind pushing me sideways into the road. Much of the airborne dust whipped up from the right, which is bare of vegetation.

Ahead the dust cloud has lifted while the wind has dropped somewhat, when along come a couple on touring bikes that I swing across the road to meet. A young couple. They tell me their names are Victor and Florin, who come from Wallone, the French speaking southern part of Belgium. They are just started their tour from Santiago to Colombia.

My progress today is slow unlike previous days. I wanted to cycle the bulk of the 165 kilometres to Mendoza today so as to arrive in the city early tomorrow. But look what want has done. At least I've been on the Hostelworld website, listing a number of hostels with their location, so that's taken care of.

Well now I've reached Media Agua. It's lunch time. A town with a railway junction crossing the road with a level-crossing. Everything from the English style railway station give the town a bygone air of not having changed much since 1900.

In reality the trains here have not ran for many decades, as Argentina unfortunately decommissioned most of it's railways. The thinking perhaps was that people would all want to go by car and on buses. Freight would go on trucks.

So today what they have is a dangerous scenario, certainly for anyone trying to cycle, of a near enough constant convoy of trucks on major Argentine roads. A shear regression to a free-market free for all. Well free for the hauliers and bus companies. Speaking of buses, I've never seen so many private bus companies all competing for the same routes. Its chaos, unlike the civilised, well organised world of rail-travel.

Truck drivers lunch break at a "estacion de servico" (phonetically, sir-bis-se-o), or the petrol station, Media Aguas.

A soft shot, but it shows the heavy truck-wheel rut with furrowed ridge at the side and gravel shoulder.

The wind calms down completely in the afternoon, but the road on from Media Agua is reduced to a single carriageway, with the road rutted by those constant heavy truck wheels, leaving a dangerous furrow ridge right along the edge. So for my own safety I've to ride upon a rough stony shoulder alongside.

I halt early when I come to a kind of dry river, pushing the bike off through a gap in a fence to shelter of a clump of bushes.

I finish the day with something to perk me up, by brewing coffee. Meanwhile I see my rear-wheel is soft. Well, I suppose I should be thankful it happened here, not on the roadside, in the wind.

It turned out an overcast afternoon, the sun appearing below the cloud late on.

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