10,000 Miles: Episode 10
Mile 6,553*: Salta, Argentina
After cycling to the Salar De Uyuni — the world’s largest salt flat, located in southern Bolivia — the road forks. The road southwest climbs above 15,000 feet to the pristine Bolivian lake district then crosses the Chilean border to the remote Atacama Desert. The road southeast descends out of the high desert into the verdant Andean foothills of the argentine wine country.
Setting out from La Paz, I had my heart set on the wine country, and the weather in the high plains of Bolivia helped solidify my conviction. The high plains (Alitplano) that lead up to and surround the Salar De Uyuni lie between 11,000 and 13,000 feet. The weather fluctuates between 20–80 degrees Fahrenheit over the course of each day, which meant my daily cycling schedule went like this:
6 AM: I wake up in my tent, cuddling my water bottles and contacts, so they would not freeze overnight. After I peal out of my two sleeping bags, it is a mad dash to put on all of my clothes — my bike shorts underneath my long johns and windproof outer layers, two pairs of socks, three pairs of gloves, hat, scarf, and balaclava over my face, etc.
6 AM — 9 AM: Stop every 30 minutes. Get off bike. Do jumping jacks and leg kicks (High knees! High knees! Higher! Higher!) until I can feel my fingers and toes. I look like an oversized version of a child actor in Snow Day attempting a Radio City Rockette routine. A few primal screams to punctuate the routine adds a little cathartic boost, which helps to alleviate the misery.
9 AM — 3 PM: Stop every 30 minutes to remove a layer of clothing until I am sweating in a t-shirt and shorts.
3 PM — 6PM: Stop every 30 minutes to put back on a layer of clothing as the sunlight starts to fade.
6PM — 8PM: Set up tent and prepare/eat dinner as quickly as possible so I can get into my two sleeping bags before it gets below freezing.
Those of you who have spent an extended period of time with me outside during an Ohio winter will know: I f$%king hate feeling cold. So after a few days muttering early morning psyche-up speeches to myself in my sleeping bags, I was yearning for the Southern-California-esque weather of the Argentinian wine region.
I guess I will see the Atacama and the Bolivian lakes when I return to South America, maybe from the inside of a heated car.
“You need lubricant for your bike, for the vibration**.” The bike mechanic said to me in La Paz, when I told him I was heading to the Salar De Uyuni.
I thought I must have misunderstood him. My bike will vibrate? That cannot be right. It’s a bicycle not a sex toy. But instead of asking him to repeat himself, I went straight to my default response when I do not understand something in Spanish: I chuckled and nodded.
The Salar De Uyuni is about 200 miles from the Argentinian border, 150 of which is sand, mud, and rock. I crossed the border into Argentina with a bicycle broken in four places from (you guessed it!) my bike frame vibrating as it rattled along unpaved roads.
*Miles indicated are total miles cycled, not total miles travelled.
**All italicized words are translated Spanish.
I descended out of the high plains of Bolivia into a different world. I had been above 10,000 feet in elevation for an entire month, riding through a two-season landscape, bone-dry at the end of a long dry season. Coming down out of the Andes, I was shocked: green trees and flowers everywhere — I had bicycled into spring!
Living on/around the 40th parallel my entire life, I have witnessed the coming of spring twenty-two times. But I have only experienced spring happening over a series of weeks, in a slow shuffling step from the bleak barrenness of March to the slutty fecundity of May. This time spring happened over the course of a single day, which overwhelmed my senses.
My nose was besieged by the smells of things living: blooming, blossoming, shooting up out of the ground, defecating en mass (a byproduct of the famous argentine beef industry), etc. My eyes were constantly darting away from the road, distracted by the vibrant colors of leaves and flowers. My mouth froze in a grin as I shot farther down the mountain valleys towards wine country. Maybe this comes across as stupid, but being quickly immersed in life made me feel very much alive.
The change of seasons (or rather a change from two seasons to four) was not the most jarring transition. In terms of GDP per capita, Bolivia is the poorest country in South America, while Argentina is the richest. By merely crossing a border, I had entered a country in where the per capita income is well over three times as much as their Bolivian contemporaries.
I had grown used to cycling through lands where toilet paper is never complimentary, hot water is a rare luxury, potable tap water is non-existent, supermarkets are only available to wealthy urbanites, and people have more silver in their teeth than in their pockets.
My first full day of cycling in Argentina I was sitting outside a gas station enjoying an ice cream, which I had bought from said gas station — a phenomenon I had not experienced since leaving the ritzy part of Lima (AKA the part of Peru where the white people live) — when a woman walked up to me…
Before I continue with this anecdote I want to write something about ice cream:
I consume an aggressive amount of ice cream. I eat ice cream about ten times a week. I’m not talking about ten servings of a humble single scoop in a cup. I’m talking about multiple ice cream bars at each sitting, tucking into whole pints on a tri-weekly basis, waffle cones with multiple toppings, sundaes drenched in fudge sauce, towering milkshakes… my gluttony knows no bounds. I do not eat this much ice cream because I crave it: I am driven by the fact that I have the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to eat as much ice cream as I want guilt free because I exercise over fifty hours a week — a luxury no one else I know can afford. So I eat enough ice cream that would make my tubby ten-year-old self quiver in envious rage.
Anyway, so I’m sitting on the curb outside this gas station in Argentina, double fisting two ice cream bars — I could not decide between a Cornetto or a Magnum so I thought “por qué no los dos?”— when a woman walked up to me and asked, “Excuse me, do you know the wifi password here.” She indicated to the gas station behind me.
“The password, to here?!” I jerked my sagging Cornetto in the direction of the gas station behind me.
“Yes…” The woman answered expectantly.
I was already shocked that this gas station sold ice cream. The fact that this gas station had free wifi was totally beyond me. What’s next? Was I going to walk into the men’s room to find a guy handing out moist towelettes too?
The woman was still standing in front of me brandishing her iPhone so I quickly dismissed her, “Sorry madame, I do not know.”
Cycling farther south into Argentina, signs of wealth were everywhere I looked: stores that sold only cupcakes, large muscled men because lifting heavy objects for a few hours every day is a leisure activity, restaurants open well past midnight to cater to a population that did not wake up at first light to head to work in a field or a mine, and people enthusiastically cheering me on because they understand the opportunities that have been afforded to me to make my journey possible because they themselves have been given similar opportunities.
I am back in a land of abundant privilege. And keeping with the cyclical theme of this journey, Argentina — beginning of the end — feels a lot like the my beginnings in the US.
LA PAZ TO SALTA BY THE NUMBERS:
Flat Tires: 1 (Bringing Le Grande Totale for the entire adventure up to a frustrating 28. It was a particularly nasty one this time: a paper staple hooked itself into the lining of my tire. It took an hour to remove.)
Strangest Bike-Breakdown: My metal front rack of my bicycle (the frame used to hang my saddle-bags/panniers) snapped in two places. (FYI the word for welder in Spanish is “soldador”. Argentinian soldadores are an unusually grumpy bunch).
Miles Traveled: 779
World-Renowned Salt Flats Cycled On: 1
Coldest Temperature Cycled Through: 23 Degrees Fahrenheit — an 84 degrees colder than the warmest temperature cycled through.
Borders Crossed: 1
Ice Cream Consumed: Over the entire trip? Conservative estimate? Twice my body weight (roughly 300 pounds).
Bike Touring Tip: This is just good life advice, but I am going to type it out anyway. Always pack a good roll of tape (duct tape or equivalent/greater adhesion) and a tube of strong glue. Things will break while you’re traveling that you will have no idea how to repair, but slapping a bit of tape on it will keep it together in the interim, while you pedal to a mechanic’s shop.
After the grumpy argentine welder finally relents and repairs my front rack this afternoon (“I’m busy! Come back later!” I told him I am coming back at four, and he just grimaced and grunted at me — Argentine welder speak for “okay”.) , I’ll pack my things and tomorrow morning I’ll head southwest to ride along the mythic Ruta 40 — a road that runs the length of Argentina from the northern frontier to southern Patagonia. I will pay my respects to the venerable route by riding 700 miles of it through the beautiful Argentine wine country. Stay tuned for red meat and red wine food-porn when I get to Mendoza.
That’s all I got for now.
Peace&Love
— Dante
