Ride out of Fiambala Valley heading North - El Paraiso Camping in Fiambala to Stealth Camping along HWY 60
Fri, 05/06/2011 - 02:06 — MacKenzie
April 19:
We woke up at the campground and met our next door camping neighbors, a really sweet retired couple from Patagonia that was planning on driving up to the Chilean border and checking out the San Francisco Pass. We had repeatedly heard from Argentineans that this was a very unique place to travel, and we had also read some bike blogs saying the same.
We really wanted to check it out, but biking it in the fall just did not seem like a good idea.got an itch to go up there. Night temperatures were currently at -5 degrees Celsius up there, and the climb would be pretty brutal. Ideally, if we would have gotten an earlier start, we could have hitched a ride really early in the morning with a Border patrol guard and then gotten up to the pass by noon to have enough time to check out landscape and then book down later in the day by bike to stealth camp where the temps aren’t so cold. Maybe some day we'll return for that ride in the summer months. Awesome bike bloggers www.pikesonbikes.com said this one of their fav rides.
We brought our attention back to the original plan and made our way out of Fiambala. The amazing tailwind we experienced arriving into Fiambala yesterday was now slapping us in the face as we left heading on the same road back. We ran into our Spanish bike-touring friends we met in Chilecito, who were on their way to Fiambala that day. They had a series of flats and an overall rough riding day the day prior. So we gave them a bunch of info that we wished we would have known going to the hot springs and other places in the region. Hope their stay was great as well.
We trudged back to Tilongasta and then headed East on Route 60 in order to get back onto Route 40. There was tons of bikers on this route, more than any other route we have biked so far. They were all in spandex, yet all on mountain bikes rapidly flying by in packs. The Route 60 ride had again, a lot of beautiful rock formations and canyons. Even, if the headwinds were gnarly, the view made it all worthwhile.
We road about 50 more km and then called it a day. We stealth camped in another draw off the highway, made veggie curry and rice with a our long awaited pickled eggplant we bought at a roadside farm stand back in San Rafael. Curry was great! Ryan's magic touch adding just a bit of peanut butter made all the difference. We talked and talked over some pretty bad wine that we had bought earlier and didn't hit the tent until midnight.
Comments
Post new comment