Don´t Cry for Us, Argentina

Week four of the journey to Salta proved to be the most eventful: my bike frame snapped; we discovered the best humitas and empanadas in all of Argentina; we tangoed with a headwind; and we knocked out the last clicks of the ride like seasoned battlers, finding our second wind, and then our third, as we rolled into the lovely city of Salta, a couple of days ahead of schedule.

Recap:
We were only 15 km out of Tafi del Valle, when the unthinkable happened: the corner joint on the bike frame that holds the bike racks in place snapped like a twig. The first of the two (prions, I think they´re called) had broken off a couple of weeks before, pinged clean as though it had been sawed off. I heard it pop and I turned in the direction of the sound and saw my bike rack and my panniers akimbo, hanging like sad and dirty bags of laundry off a donkey. Dios mio! We brainstormed, Deputy Dawg and I, wondering how in the world we'd attach the rack to the bike. Luckily, the Dep carries with him a magic bag of just-in-case emergency items and he happened to have a cable ring and wire cable. We secured the ring and cable around the frame and the corner of the rack, the weight of the jerry-rigged system settling entirely on the bolt, pulled the wire cable as tightly as we could, and prayed that the sucker would hold through another week of riding. (Photo coming soon.)

The best humitas and empanadas in all of Argentina: at the Terramama restaurant in Amaicha de Valle, some 50 km or so from Tafi. We met the lovely Maria Sanchez, student at the university in Tucuman, who helps out at the family restaurant whenever she can. The humitas were creamy and sweet, like smooth polenta, and surprising -- there were bits of raisins and small chunks of delicate cheese. So much goodness wrapped in a corn husk! The flavors of corn and cheese mingled pleasantly in the air and whetted our appetites. And the empanadas... it pains me as a writer not to be able to accurately describe the empanadas without resorting to overused adjectives like awesome and fantastic and miraculous, so let me leave the taste to your imaginations, gentle readers, and say only this: GOOD LORD!

Cafayate: We did not get to spend enough time in Cafayate, our one regret. It was Easter and we were lucky to find accommodations for one evening, let alone for two. We found Cafayate sweet and charming with its cafes and boutiques and vineyards, and we wanted to linger, but there were no rooms for the rollin' dawgies (except for the ones with smelly terlets and sheets sticky with old man juice, and the dawgies have standards, by god) and so we loaded up and left town the next morning.

The road to Alemania took us through canyons and red cliffs, one marvel after another, with evocative names like Gargantua del Diablo and Obelisko and Ventanas del Cielo. We fought against a headwind all day long, but we were not bowed nor weakened by it. We pushed on, remaining cheerful, buoyed by the fact that there was only one day of riding left and we would make it Salta, no matter what blew our way. I think I heard Deputy Dawg yelling into red-rimmed chasm when the going was especially tough: HAW! Is that all you've got?

After Alemania, we had 90 km left in the journey. The shoulder of the road was wide and smooth and curving, and so we rode it fast, hanging ten like Duke Kahanamoku on a perfect wave, and by 4 pm, we were in Salta, feeling euphoric and giddy, the effort of the journey falling away from us like a distant memory. We felt jubilant, as though we'd done something big, when all we'd done was chart a course and see it from beginning to end, which, in its own way, is thrilling and deeply satisfying.

Memorable: the pousada in Alemania, which we came to by accident. It was luxe and spacious and warm, its hosts thoughtful and generous; the Bicicleteria Sarmiento, best bicycle shop in Salta. The repair guy soldered the two prions back onto the frame like a vulcan god, the repair work is seamless and smooth, a thing of beauty. And all this for $7 pesos! We love Argentina.

-- Mad Dawg copyright 2007

The mountain: in our way. Located between Alguirres and Tafi del Valle (destination for the day); a 100 km ride, a 6,000 ft. climb.

The word: hell.

The attack: spirited (at first), but mainly slow, steady and laughable.

The hope: After 3,000 ft., that the locals had miscalculated the meter to foot conversion, that the climb would level off and we'd be sitting like pretty bandidos on our saddles as we cruised down to Tafi.

The results: 5 hours on the mountain, climbing; another 3 to Tafi. Which was not a cruise.

The law: the mountain will always kick your ass.

What more can we say about the day on the mountain except that we were humbled, that the sign that said Fin del Mundo (to indicate a panoramic vista for picture taking) might have been hilarious had we been in a mood for hilarity, but we were not -- we were cranky, which is the mood that comes after a sound humbling -- and while we were always full of hope that around every switchback was the end of the climb, a good thing to be on a tough ride, the mountain would not be moved by prayers and useless bargainings and, to be honest, grew even stonier and deaf, its road narrowing in places where only goats and tour buses are lords, and that for the last 3 hours on the evil mountain, we resorted to using our granny gears, the lowest gears available to humbled dawgies and wimps, but that at sunset, we came into Tafi, laid out in the valley like a green bed, and that we rested and then went into the center of town and found a parilla and were revived by sweet wine and humitas en chala and bread and grilled meats, glistening and charred on the plate, and by the company of boisterous families and lively tour groups there to celebrate Easter weekend, and that we were happy, the day and the climb falling into something that felt like peace, and that we rested and rested, for 3 days we rested, before we climbed back on our caballos and charted the rest of the ride to Salta, knowing that there would be more mountains -- there are always mountains in the way -- and that this is the way of the road, but that at the end of the day, the mountain would be behind us and that there would be food and wine and rest, and though we had no right to ever expect it, peace, the peace that comes after a hard and honest struggle up a mountain.

Palquita to La Rioja: 70 km; La Rioja to Catamarca: 155 km

There are times when we feel like ghosts as we shuttle through towns, staying only long enough to replenish our waterbags and fruit bowl, and then riding on to the next pueblo, the next kiosko outpost, until night takes over and we must stop.

It is always such a pleasure, then, to stay a couple of nights at a place. There are friends to meet, wine to drink, fruit to share. And there are stories. Always there are stories that we carry, the ones that we find during the day and pass on, from one traveller to another. This is the one of the great joys of being on the road.

From Palquita (which is after San Augustin del Valle de Fertil), we biked hard and long (70 km) and were looking forward to exploring La Rioja, a relatively bigger city (Palquita is a one-horse, one-motel kind of town).

But La Rioja did not like us. And after the mocking of the border police, we did not like it. (I'm pretty sure the policia were sniggering at my passport photo, which I know hurts the eyes, but sniggering? Really, senores, I wanted to say, must you be so amused?)

We should have continued on, but we needed to do laundry, to take a vigorous scrubbing to our tired, calloused dogs. We needed a rest, and so we stayed. The city seemed to seethe, with hostility, with suspicion, with hustlers and crooks. It was the only place in Argentina to which we'd come that our hola was treated not as a greeting, but as an insult. Why are you here, what do really want? they seemed to ask us, giving us sidelong glances and second looks. All we'd known in this country was kindness and friendliness and hospitality so genuine, it swelled our hearts, so the change in demeanor and personality was deeply unsettling. It was the first time on our travels that we felt unsafe. People looked at us as though they would just as soon shank us as shake our hand.

Deputy Dawg observed that the people were so hostile in La Rioja, they refused to say their ''esses'', their words sounding bitten off in speech: no me guto; bata; no hopedaje aqui.

Even our hotel (King's Hotel) had a guarded look with its barred windows, its dark, heavy drapes in the lobby. It was falling into disrepair and slovenliness, even though it claimed 4 stars. It slumped in the corner, right across the city´s sanitarium. Niiiiice. The orderlies brought out the insane and the lost to fume and howl on the cement stoop outside for a couple of hours at night.

We left La Rioja just as soon as our laundry was done.

We set our sights on Catamarca and rode fast until we came to Chumbicha. We needed more water, some carbs; I asked the woman at the mercado if she could recommend a good restaurant in town. I told her we had great hunger. Her eyes lit up and she let loose a stream of adjectives that had something to do with heaven and god and pasta.

Her praises led us inside the barrio to a fort roofed in tin and wood and into the cocina of one Nonna, an angel masquerading as a grandmother. We were shepherded from the dining area of a few tables and a dirt floor, which looked as though it had just been swept, and into the nook of her kitchen; we felt like we'd won some kind of lottery. There were wonderful aromas rising out of the blackened pots on the stove, the scents complex and layered and surprising, like any good story.

She listed the kinds of pastas she could make for Deputy Dawg and when she came to gnocchi, he pounced on it and nodded. She ignored my request for just a salad, but a big one, por favor, looking at me as though I were a dope or an ingrate. Pechuga de pollo suprema, she announced.

The chicken was supreme, in every way. Grilled perfectly with the skin left on for flavor, tender and juicy to the teeth. The lime she had squeezed on it while it grilled over the flames was the perfect complement, leaving a citrusy tang with every bite.

Deputy Dawg took a bite of his gnocchi in a rich marinara sauce and wept. This is better than the gnocchi I had in Venice, he whispered. How can this be? Food this amazing in this nowhere place.

Nonna, we sang, Nonna. Where have you been our lives? She basked in our adulation and when we left, proffered her cheek, as an angel does when it casts its eye on those it loves.

We left the cocina, lighter than we'd felt when the day began and it was all because we'd found our way to Nonna, our angelina de gnocchi.

We rode like crazed and happy devils all the way to Catamarca.

-- Mad Dawg copyright 2007

We left Difunta Correa in the dark, hours before daybreak. We had miles and miles to cover that day.

On the way out of town, we saw that a bakery was open, so we stopped for bread. The baker had just flipped a batch of semitas off the grill when I walked in. She did not seem surprised to see me. I wondered if Difunta Correa was a town of early risers or runners who liked to train before first light. I asked for four semitas, and she tossed them in a bag; her fingers were smudged black from the ash and soot of the parrilla. The semitas are like round popovers, but rise like puff pastry and break apart into soft, thin layers when you split them open. They were warm and steamed out of the paper bag and smelled like the bread my mother used to make on Sunday mornings when I was a child. I tucked them inside my handlebar bag, where all good things go, looking forward to having them glazed with raspberry jam or dulce de leche for breakfast on the side of the road in a few hours.

Daylight burning

There was no cloud cover so the air was cool on my skin as I rode. It was impossible to tell just how far the land rolled away from us, or how big the desert was, or where the sun would rise. I liked that. Our makeshift headlights on our bike racks carved tunnels of light out of the darkness, the only source of illumination in the wilderness, save for the pinpricks of stars scattered above us.

It seemed as if Deputy Dawg and I and the baker were the only people awake and moving in the world.

I felt a delicious thrill riding in the dark, let loose in the desert at that early hour, as though we were getting away with something that had been lost to us, though we'd not known it until just then. I felt as free and happy as I did when I was 8 years old, and had just learned to ride with my hands in the air, finding perfect balance between the forces in the world that keep you on the ground and those that have no such hold on you. When you are 8 years old and discovering your powers, the world seems more wondrous than anything you could have dreamed up, glittering with joys and secrets, which, if you were lucky or observant or both, would be revealed to you, one by one, over time. Riding out of Difunta Correa in the dark, cool morning felt like that.

We thought we would ride into Marvaes, about 100 km away, and stop for lunch, but when we saw Marvaes was nothing more than a few stone houses and a small market, we continued on.

The terrain was hilly, the river and creek beds were dry as bone. We climbed long, steep pitches of rock and scrub and I kept my eyes on the road, which always helps me to focus on the moment and nothing else -- not the next few seconds or those at the end of the day, after the ride and its struggles -- and at the top of the climb, I let myself look up, and there, in front of me, crossing the road about 20 or so feet away, was a horse. His mane was shiny in the sun and he was white with patches of brown. He showed no interest in me; he just crossed over from one side of the desert to the other and then he was gone, a spray of dust in the distance, as if he had suddenly remembered something he needed to run to. He was the most beautiful thing I'd seen that day.

When we arrived in Astica, it was 3:30 pm and we had covered 150 km. All the shops and the markets and kiosks were closed and we could not tell if there was camping in town. A woman who sold jam and chutneys and sweets on the edge of town told us that we could get showers and something to eat at one of the kiosks. She struggled to explain where the kiosk was, so she called one of her kids and told her to accompany us. Her name was Lourdes, she was 11, and seemed to be very popular for when we returned to the street, the Dep and I were suddenly surrounded by kids, about 18 or so, ranging from ages 7 to 12. We felt like Pied Pipers as we made our way to the kiosk, the kids chattering and laughing, curious about our bikes and our gear and about us. The girls were shy and sweet, whispering secrets to each other, the boys bold and full of talk, wheeling their mountain bikes around ours. They seemed to be quite certain we were at a great disadvantage with our touring bikes, which had skinny tires and no shock absorbers. As unflashy as they come. They smirked and gave each other the eye. It was clear the Dep and I had flunked out of the school of cool. They told us as much; we smiled and told them, si, si, claro. You are right.

The kiosk was closed, and so we hopped back on our bikes and waved goodbye to our young amigos who wished us well and told us we had to come back to see the town when everything was open, as though we could expect to see something truly marvelous then. Kids are wonderful like that -- the best things in life are the things they've always known, like their town, their friends, and their mountain bikes with tricked-out shock absorbers.

Our day passed in that way, each town or campsite that we rolled into either dashed our expectations or were without toilets, and so we would move on until we found ourselves in San Augustin del Valle de Fertil at dusk, exactly 13 hours from when we started that morning. We biked 200 km that day, our longest ride yet.

There are some days when you hop on your bike and you feel like you could ride forever, and the day answers in kind, opening a little bigger and bigger with each hour, unrolling beneath you like a dream you hope you'll remember always. And part of the feeling of forever is because you can't see how big the world is, you have no reference for anything -- not the stars or the sound of the desert in the dark -- but it's also because you remember the joy of riding with your hands in the air for the first time and remember again that a day of such new-found powers could lead you anywhere.

-- Mad Dawg copyright 2007

20-22 March, 160 km total

The day of the bees and the locust.

Cactus or ear?

My right ear is a rose. Or a cactus flower. Or, after the locust´s cannonball run into it, the coming of a pestilence.

This is what I have to conclude -- that there is something about the shape of my ear -- its lobe or the crest of the helix -- that makes bees or locusts think it leads to nectar or a love nest.

Three times on day 10, during the hottest part of the day, these flying snipers appeared out of nowhere and tried to ram themselves into my ear. My hand jerked up to swat at them, while my other hand tried to keep my balance as my bike serpentined and fishtailed. Three times I avoided a face plant in the road only because I got my legs out of the bike clips just in the nick of time.

It is a creepy thing to be desired by insects. Not in the way of mosquitoes -- their love is indiscriminating, unconditional. They adore anything with a bloodtype. But to have a single body part that insects find irresistible? Definitely freaky.

From San Juan to Caucete, we started the ride late in the morning. And regretted it. The days were hot and humid; the heat made the horizon and the distance shimmer in waves. The heat made us feel sluggish and drowsy by high noon. It was my kind of weather, but not Deputy Dawg´s. He was swabbed and spackled in sunscreen, terrifically hot.

By the time we got to Difunta Correa, day 13, it was clear we needed a better plan for knocking out the kilometers. We´d never get to Salta at the rate we were going, desert or no; flying locusts and bees, notwithstanding.

The plan was simple: We would get up early in the morning to beat the heat. Duh.