Sunday 3 November 2013

31/10/2013 Stage 53 Desert camp - under road bridge camp

Road side shrine we think. There are loads sadly.
2013-10-31click for more 
Untitled by malcandmarjetpatterson at Garmin Connect - Details
31/10/2013 Stage 53 Desert camp to under road bridge camp
They say problems come in threes.
1. " You've got the water 1.5L water bottle haven't you" , " no you've got it", "no you've got it". No water and 50 kms to civilisation. Oops.
2. Marjet moves her bike and a scorpion rushes away, lots of screaming mixed with my chuckling.
3. The strong tail wind we had finished with had become a strengthening headwind, we should have pushed on last night.
Still , three problems and the rest of the day should be OK. Wrong.
On the way we photographed the roadside shrines which in Argentina are decorated with red flags and which sometimes have preserved remnants of the RTA vehicle involved in the death which was being honoured. In Peru and Bolivia they had simple shrines which looked like dog kennels and in Equador they painted blue hearts on the road at the site of an RTA.
When we finally got to Las Lajas we had to stock up for another night of camping and met another typically helpful supermarket employee who once again drew maps for us , took us into his office to use his PC to access the weather forecasts and generally was bending over backwards to help. The plan at this stage was for the first time ever on a cycling day to have a good lunch and then push on to 7 pm. A bottle of beer and a bottle of wine later we left to begin the 1100m climb into the mountains and the scenery was becoming increasingly more beautiful. However the strong headwind rapidly began to increase and although we were both keen to struggle on it was getting seriously difficult. Marjet was blown 15 feet off the road into the ditch several times, I was blown into the centre of the road a couple of times and when we gave in we realised we couldn't even push into the wind for very far. It was at this point we found the under road bridge which offered some protection from the thermonuclear Patagonian winds. With lots of boulders bikes and struggling we managed to erect the tent only for the wind to ease and come from the other direction!
It all added to the adventure and we had a carton of wine each so life was good.
About the best shelter from the wind we could find 

There was a lot of nothing and unfortunately too much wind

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