A ride up to Las Juntas, the friendliest town in Argentina.
After 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.
Landscape around Las Juntas when we passed through in January.
We had passed through Las Juntas a few months before when we were exploring some backroads in the area. That time, a random guy hailed us over to the side of one of the high mountain roads and asked if we wanted to go and have lunch with him and his family as they were having a bit of a get together. We stayed there all afternoon drinking wine and eating traditional (and very good) food such as tamales (I dont care if they’re made of pig face, they’re tasty!), locro, homemade dulce de leche and cheese. Although they pleaded with us to stay the night we thought it best to hit the road before we really did eat and drink them out of house and home.
The family who invited us in the first time (Jan)
Las Juntas is the friendliest town in Argentina we have found so far, because it happened again! This time there was a bunch of men sitting near the side of the main street as we wearily rode in who jumped up and started waving us over as we aproached. Turned out they were having an asado (barbeque) of chivito (little goat) and were keen for us to sit down and eat as much as possible to replenish our energy. It worked, especially after the litre of coke each. Again, the guys offered us a place to sleep but we had our hearts set on camping in a little place by the river that we had noticed before.
The night was cold and the morning colder with too much ice, but it was a beautiful little spot. We were finally able to work out what we would really need (about 20 more things) and not need (1 thing) for camping regularly while biking. Looks like we will definitely have to look for those front panniers….
Setting up the tent
Bloody freezing in the morning
The next day we flew back to Catamarca at average speed of 30kms per hour (we were slipstreaming behind a clapped out Ford truck at one stage for about 6 clicks). It took us 3 hours to get down what had taken us almost 7 to ride up.
Grabbing banana sandwich lunches
After a 120km round trip with a 1500m total elevation gain on the first day I think we made up for the pigging out…..
Tags: Argentina, Biking, Camping, Living, working and travelling in Argentina, South America, Travel Destinations
Mel
July 28th, 2006 at 3:36 am
Your photos are magic and exploits enviable- see you in Nov/Dec. Save some wine for us! Love you both.
M&D (J&J)