Hasta Luego Sud America

Our Argentine friend, Agustin who is based in Buenos Aires, generously invited us to stay in his apartment for the rest of our time in South America. So a couple of nights turned into a couple of weeks which was brilliant. Agustin’s apartment is in one of the better areas of the city and very handy to the subway into the city center.

Downtown Buenos Aires had a number of impressive old buildings. We spent time exploring the bustling pedestrian only avenues that were lined with many of these old buildings and their shops on the lower levels.

La Casa Rosada (the pink house) - the President's office

A trip to Buenos Aires would not be complete without viewing some tango. We headed to a well known area called La Boca, home of Maridona’s Boca Juniors. It was a public holiday so there were a number of tango dancers performing on the streets entertaining the crowds.

Street tango performance

Relaxing in La Boca

We had a couple of other mates to catch up with who both live in Agustin’s home town of Mar del Plata which is about 400km south of Buenos Aires. We headed down to Mar del Plata for a weekend with Agustin to catch up with Javier and Fransico.

Mar del Plata is a coastal city and a popular summer destination for Argentines. As it was still late winter the beaches were relatively empty but we took the opportunity to dip our feet in the Atlantic Ocean for the first time. We also enjoyed some incredible seafood at a local restaurant followed by a great boat cruise that, with the help of Agustin’s friend, we were able to stowaway on.

Mar del Plata

Taking a dip in the Atlantic Ocean

Seafood Pialla for lunch

Upon returning to Buenos Aires we only had a few more days to fill in until our flight home. After almost six months of travelling light with very little room for extras we spent a bit of time shopping and exploring more of the parks and buildings of city.

Professional dog walker in action

As a small token of our thanks to Agustin for having us to stay we booked a table at a highly recommended restaurant called La Cabrera. We had one of the best meals of our trip here, some incredible steak which came with a countless assortment of side dishes. It was a great note to finish on.

Last meal in South America

In the end our trip was better than we could have imagined. Travelling by bike made it a truly unique experience and took us to some places well off the beaten track. The effort it took to get to these places made them all the more rewarding. The last month was also great when we kicked our feet up and travelled by bus to places we did not have the time to ride to.

Hopefully that is just part one of our South America travels, there is so much more to see and do. But for now, it's back to work...

Three weeks have flown by since we posted our last blog! With no more riding, our bodies did feel a bit strange for a while, and the change in our usual day took a bit of getting used to. With Phoebe and Nico we decided to leave the city of Cordoba for awhile and explore the surrounding areas. We tried to leave Cordoba by bus to get to a small village, La Cumbrecita, but arrived at the bus terminal to find nobody around, and soon learnt that all bus drivers were on strike over a pay dispute. So after a surprisingly cheap taxi ride, we at least made it to the next small town of Alta Gracia.

Alta Gracia is the childhood town of Che Guevara, and they have a really interesting museum in his old homestead.

The "Motorcycle Diaries" motorcycle

The next day, the buses where running again and we stopped in an old German settlement, Villa General Belgrano, in the middle of their annual chocolate festival! Awesome timing! Although it was getting a bit cooler, we all had our camping gear, and wanted to use it. We set up at the campground and found we were the only ones in tents, the rest were in big trucks decked out for camping. There seem to be a lot of Europeans driving around South America in big 4 wheel drive camp trucks, and we spotted one that had passed us on the bikes a couple of weeks earlier.

Another day and a small bus ride took us to the edge of La Cumbrecita. This town is pedestrian only for most of the day, and you are only allowed to drive a car between certain hours in the early morning and evening. We had thought of camping originally but it had snowed a week earlier and there was still snow on the ground. It was such a cute relaxing place, with many trails to walk or run, so we decided to stay almost a week! The four of us found a nice warm Cabana, with a kitchen and good heating and a view of the town, so we made it home for 5 nights. We were lucky to find a place to stay, as the month of July and part of August is holiday time for Argentines.

View from our house

Our walking friend

Phoebe and Nico

5 litre botella of vino tinto

Next stop was another small town, La Cumbre. We camped again, but this time, it was really getting too cold, so on the last night here, we warmed ourselves with a nice meal out and the help of the campground owners bar. There did not seem to be too much to do in this town, so after a couple of days we had walked all over, including up to the biggest statue of Jesus we had ever seen. Too cold to continue camping, we returned to Cordoba, and said goodbye to Phoebe and Nico as they were continuing on north. It has been awesome to be able to hang out with such good friends from NZ, in the middle of Northern Argentina. Feliz Viajes Phoebe and Nico!

Now it was just the two of us again, we had to get a few chores done, like find boxes to pack the bike up. Easily done in NZ, but in Argentina no one seems to keep boxes, as men with horse and cart come around collecting them for recycling. We filled in another couple of days in Cordoba, and had a nice meal cooked for us at the hostal by an older Colombian gentleman who had been staying there the same time as us. He had just retired and was circumnavigating South America by motorbike over 3 years.

The next stop was the capital city, Buenos Aires. We have 3 amigos from Argentina, who we met while working on a ski field in the States a few years ago. Agustin is now living in Buenos Aires, so we arrived to meet him and had the pleasure of staying with him in his apartment in the Palermo area. Buenos Aires is an impressive city, with so many places to wander and explore. We had a couple of days there before heading up to see the famous Iguazu Falls. But we will be back in Buenos Aires to explore and soak up the atmosphere!

Iguazu Falls are amazing. The bus ride from Buenos Aires was 17 hours but everything we had heard about the overnight buses was true. Great big seats, full cama, so easy enough to sleep on, dinner, wine, movies. We arrived in Puerto Iguazu to hot humid weather, and had the afternoon planning what we where going to do, which wasn’t hard, as all you have to do is catch a bus to the falls. A short walk from town takes you to the triple frontier of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina, all separated by river.

The water falls are spectacular, there is an incredible amount of water, and it is hard to describe the atmosphere in words. The ‘Devils Throat’ is the main water fall, we managed to time our day well, and were amongst the first few people at the lookout point in the morning. Later in the day we returned to the same place, and the platform was chocka block full of people. There are enough trails and waterfalls to keep you there all day, and some interesting wildlife and birds. We will let the photos explain themselves.

Garganta del Diablo (Devils Throat)

Now we are back in Buenos Aires, and will have the chance to explore the city as we count down the final 2 weeks left of our travels!

Final days of cycling

From Salta we planned to ride to the Northern Argentina town of Cafayate, a well known wine region. Once again we were greeted with a cool morning but a clear sky and the day quickly heated up as we left Salta. The first day of riding from Salta was the warmest we had experienced in weeks. After 70km we saw a sign indicating a camp ground next to a lake. We headed town a dirt road for a few km’s and found a great spot on the waterfront to spend the night. The facilities were very basic but the cheap beer and incredible sunset made up for that.

The third and final day of riding to Cafayate was one of the best days in terms of scenery we have had on our trip so far. The road continued to gradually climb but now the rocks around us took on incredible colours and formations. There were many tourists along this route although the traffic was never too busy.

"The Devils Throat"

We had a great tail wind for most of the day until the final 10kms when it changed direction and intensified. As a result we ended up being slammed by a sand storm just before Cafayate. It delayed our arrival but eventually made it to the central Plaza in one piece.

Sand storm

Some friendly French people directed us to the only budget hostal in town that allowed camping out back underneath the grape vines. We had five nights there relaxing and exploring some of the surrounding vineyards. The Germans met up with us again here after surviving the rest of their trip across the Salar de Uyuni and the Atacama desert of Chile.

Camping amongst the vines

Green parrots lining the vineyard

From Cafayate we rode with the Germans for a couple more days to Tafi del Valle. This was another very nice little town still high up in the mountains. On the way we had the last hill of our journey to conquer. After 32km of climbing and 3.5hrs later we coasted the rest of the way down to Tafi del Valle in time to watch the world cup final.

Rest stop on the final climb of our trip

The next day was always planned as a rest day for Ben’s birthday. As luck would have it the weather was absolutely horrible that day, wet and freezing cold. Terrible riding weather but great for sitting next to a fireplace and doing very little. That night we had an interesting birthday dinner at a very popular parrilla (bbq) restaurant. We were served a mountain of various meats including pork, lamb, chicken, liver and intestines!

Intestines and liver

From Tafi del Valle we only had three more days of cycling left on our trip before we planned to stop cycling. Thankfully the bad weather had passed by the morning and we headed off on the bikes again. We started at 2000m and 50km of downhill later we were 1600m lower on the plains of Argentina.

"End of the world"

A highlight of the final few days was a campground we stayed at near at the thermal town of Termas del Hondo. It had a large swimming pool filled with the 40 degree thermal water. Low lights were the headwinds (something we had very little of in the trip so far) on the last day to Santiago del Estero combined with an incredibly busy road with no shoulder to ride on which we had to escape by taking a 20km dirt/sand road that was only marginally ridable.

Terrible side road on our last day

Everyone had mixed emotions finishing on the last day of riding. It was one of the most challenging rides so we were stoked to get to the end although a bit disappointed that the biking was now finished for the trip. Having never been cycle touring prior to this trip we had no idea what to expect. It was definitely an adventure and better than either of us could have imagined. There were times when we wondered what the hell we were doing but so many more times when travelling by bike was unreal.

The rest of our trip will be via bus and train. We caught a bus to Cordoba where our friends Phoebe and Nico from NZ met up with us. We had our last couple of days with Carmen and Renate before saying goodbye as they were finishing their trip and heading back to Germany.

Our plans are very vague but at this stage but we will explore some of Cordoba's surrounding towns with Phoebe and Nico for the next little while. We have one month left in South America and plenty of things to do in that time.