A ride up to Las Juntas, the friendliest town in Argentina.
Wednesday, June 7th, 2006After gorging ourselves on cakes and empanadas at Ariana’s cousin’s baptism (what chimers we have become!) in Catamarca we decided to ride our bikes up north to a small town called Las Juntas to camp the night.
The road was beautiful, climbing steadily and following a clear boulder-strewn stream as it wound its way through a steep valley. After about 20kms the road left the river and switchbacked up another 400m towards the 1800m pass. At the top, and after more than 1000m elvation gain in a few hours we ate lunch, totally exhausted (too stuffed to take photos). We were hoping it was all downhill from there, but it was not to be…. after passing through the little tourist town of El Rodeo (only one of about 500 towns called this in Argentina) the road wound its way up to another pass before dropping down into Las Juntas.
Mel