My week in Mendoza was more about learning the lingo and some last-minute fine-tuning than exploring the city. I didn't have that much tuning to do due to the fact that the parcel of things my brother sent me had not arrived in Bs As before I left. It does not matter too much as it is mostly warm-stuff I will need when I climb up onto the Alti-plano on the way into Bolivia. My bike shoes were in the parcel too so I may have to clock up some more kilos in flips having accumulated over 4000k in them so far. Thus, all there was to do was to jettison some load and buy my fourth pair of sunnies on this trip. Now that I have a hard case this pair should hopefully see me through. As I am carting all my camping gear on this leg I had to lose weight elsewhere. This meant that all my civvies bar two tees and a pair of light trousers had to go ... bye bye jeans and chucks ... boo-hoo. I also shipped my solar panel as it was not compatible with my iPod touch (I didn't expect the Touch to be so fussy) and I had not managed to pick up a compatible adapter for my netbook. It's not that heavy but I will have access to power every few days so there is no need for it. The real issue was to create enough space in my bags to carry provisions and extra water. Typically when one has space one fills it with stuff, be it a room in a house or in my case, a pannier on a bike. This is the first time on this trip that I will be remote enough to have to stock up on food and water.
I also met up with Mike from Cornwall, he is travelling north too having started in Puerto Montt in Chile some 2000k south of Mendoza. He is ultra-light and a much smaller rider than me. I felt obliged to cut my load to the bone in light of the fact that I am some five kilos over my ideal weight and I would be carting 5 kilos more than Mike. He weighs 10 kilos lighter than me and is a pretty gnarly rider having raced 1st-cat before doing mostly long time trials in recent years. I don't doubt my own ability but some of these passes will be quite high and so there is no sense carrying much more than the other person, especially if you are already 15kg net heavier. Mike has managed to accumulate ultra-light gear over the years and is pretty economical with his stuff. This includes weighing his flip-flops and cutting off the excess cable on the power-supply for his laptop. Where there was an option to shave weight he managed to do so. Such is the benefit of experience and some months of planning. The only luxury I allowed myself was to start with six books. I do not expect to be able to trade them en route so I wanted some inventory. The only other real dead-weight is my bike bag and my ruck-sack travel cover which I need for my flights. The temptation is to post these items forward but routes can change so I will start out with the dead-weight and worry about it later. So, all I have added to my load is a 4 litre water bag and a cool Mountain Equipment Prima-loft jacket to keep my bones warm on the Alti-plano (this doubles up nicely as a pillow in the tent too).
The last thing to take care of was one last proper night out in civilisation. Mike and I headed out for some brews with Suzie and Steve from my Spanish school and then onto a cool club on the outskirts of town. I was in bed at 5 and up again at 9 to hit the road for the first day of my Andean adventure.
I'll talk from the road
Marco