The long and boring road
August 15, 2011
As we left Cafayate, we were sad to leave the wine behind, knowing that we had a big climb to get out of the valley as the price to pay for our detour. The road continued on through more vineyards before opening up along the valley before we turned and headed for the hill. The first day we camped in Amicha del Valle before tackling the 1000m, 33km climb to just over 3000m the next day. In the end, it wasn´t that bad and we made it down the other side for a late lunch and a stop in Tafi del Valle. Reaching a new top speed of 72.5km/h along the way, a record which I´m sure I won´t have the oppourtunity to brake again.
Climbing out of the Cafayate Valley
We left Tafi and still had approximately another 2000m to descend, which we did through the forest on less than ideal roads, before the scenery completely flattened out. Over the next 6 days the scenery was the least interesting of the trip so far, which was no help when we had to get the miles done, although it was relatively flat. Towns along the way were few and far between which meant we had to plan so fairly uneven days. This was not helped when on two of the days the wind was horrendous, making the days a real slog. We also registered our longest day of the trip so far, at a bum breaking 7 hours and 40 minutes but only clocking 129km.
1000km to go!
Along the way, it wasn´t all boring though, we found some more salt flats which we stopped at to take some funny perpective pictures. In Dean Fumes, I was interviewed in Spanish for two different TV stations and before Jesus Maria we camped in the playground of a petrol station as we didn´t make it far enough to the next town (although this time we had permission!). We finally made it to Cordoba on schedule, but absolutely knackered. We will be taking a whole two days off before starting the last stretch to Buenos Aires, a mere 700km away, and the end of the road!
