While I can't remember exactly where I exited the province of San Juan and entered Catamarca, when I look back at the images that bubble to my mind they very clearly demarcate a territory of long straight roads that are stranded in desert. Indeed the highway acted like stepping stones to safety across the burning hot sands of Catamarca and into the jungle province of Tucuman. Catamarca is known to be one of the most arid provinces in Argentina and desert would become an appropriate place for me to be at that time.
When cycling both the terrain and the environment can be very challenging. In the case of Catamarca it was the climate. At first it's exciting riding all day on straight roads but such roads inevitably win the staring contest and you end up demented by the lack of anything else to look at. It is difficult not to take the desert seriously when there are shrines to Difunta Correa everywhere. This is a woman whose husband was recruited to serve in the local territorial army. On hearing that he was sick and had been abandoned by his comrades, she took her baby and went searching for him to tend to him. She never made it as she died from thirst in the desert. The baby survived by suckling the breast of his dead mother. He was discovered alive by gauchos who were herding cattle through the area. Correa is adored by Argentinians and is believed to perform miracles having saved her child. Truck-drivers tend to her thirst nowadays by leaving bottles of water for her by the road-side. These shrines are everywhere and serve as a constant reminder of the dangers of the sun.
Shrines to Difunta CorreaIt didn't help my cause that the temperature in Catamarca was nudging forty. Simply there was no escape from the furnace and, as if in a war-zone, some people can lose the plot. It is difficult to enjoy the mental game of torture caused by hanging from the precipice that is the word 'quit'. In this case quitting would be taking a bus or hitching a lift in a pick-up truck. The people who persist take satisfaction from whatever sense of achievement there is in getting through it. The people who quit take satisfaction from the fact that they are now free of a miserable situation. At a certain age you realise that there is no shame in quitting but it doesn't make it any less of a dilemma when it comes to actually doing it. Anybody who races understands what it is like to take your body to the limit and to have to endure sitting there waiting for everybody else to quit. Mostly the competition has the upper-hand and they take you to your breaking point. However, in the case of the human-being we can generally suffer quite a lot. We all know what human suffering is like and if I'm hurting then the other person sure as hell is hurting too. We hang in for an age in the hope that the other person is just about to quit and thereby terminate our suffering. If the other person isn't hurting then the loser takes solace from the fact that the other person 'isn't human'. Indeed, the sport of cycling is among the purest forms of suffering as the cyclist is physically brought to the brink by the terrain he must cross and he is mentally brought to the brink by the speed his competitors force him to do it in. However, when it comes to solely man versus nature the normal rules of competition do not apply. The size and scope of your opponent is unknown and he generally has the element of surprise up his sleeve. Indeed western man thinks of only four classical elements; fire, water, earth, and wind but there is a fifth element, the one of surprise. It is this one that catches man out every-time in terms of natural disasters. Such disasters could be seen to be the truest form of expression that the classical elements have. When it comes to such times that nature is taking you to your breaking-point it is often more sensible to quit but persisting and overcoming the five elements is truly rewarding. This is because the feeling is not one of triumphalism but one of humility; you respect your opponent for having spared you. In effect it is that same sense of good fortune we experience when surviving a bad car-crash or whatever. I am pretty pragmatic when it comes to taking the sensible option but I do have a huge amount of curiosity in terms of wondering how bad things can actually get. Thus, I delay pulling the rip-chord on things in the assumption that there will always be another way out at some point or in bike-touring terms, a pick-up truck. Catamarca would prove to be a stern test of mental resolve.
After a few days of riding through Catamarca I was on my own once more. I had been riding with Mike, Jeremy, Riccardo and Steve. I abandoned Mike as he was knocked out with allergies and a stomach bug and so was better off doing his own thing until he was back on top form again. Jeremy had his fill of desert after one day and so he conveniently caught a bus to Rioja so that he could catch another ride to Buenos Aires. Riccardo is a 67 year-old multi-lingual Italian doctor living in Switzerland, who was virtually whizzing through his lap of the continent by virtue of the amount of lifts he needed to take when roads got too bad for his skinny racing tyres. Steve is a 62 year-old Brummie and a former globe-trotting croupier. Even when he is home he is not in the one place for too long as he likes to tour England aboard his canal boat. All these characters would exit the scene as I went in search of some civilisation alone. Steve, Mike and Riccardo would take the more direct route to goal. I ended up taking a right to get to a bigger town so I could make some phone calls as I needed to resolve the dilemma that was work and is reality. It turned out that I would wander straight into as much a metaphorical desert as a physical one as I did some soul-searching of biblical proportions to determine the fate of the bionic dude.
The long straight roads were one thing but it was the heat that really hurt. Normally I am fine riding up to 40 degrees, however, once it gets over forty then I have to be careful. The problem with Catamarca was that there was no respite as there was little shade to speak of and the temperatures never dropped by much. Generally a touring cyclist has no problem getting out of bed early if it means an easier passage during the heat but in Catamarca it was already thirty degrees by first proper-light at 8am and when the sun-set at 8pm it was still plus thirty. It even took a long time for the temperature to drop as once the ground heated up it was just radiating as much heat as the sun. It was a virtual furnace up until 7pm each day.
at last something interesting to look at ... out-skirts of Aimogasta
olive plantation
what will somehow soon be an olive plantation ... white line in background is salt desertI was trying to make my way to the town of Andalgala so that I could pass through the mountains and then get back onto the more beaten tourist path headed north. I was riding a tourist route but the salt flats I passed could not really be seen from the road due to the amount of olive tree plantations. It is amazing how man can somehow cultivate the most deserted pieces of land. The day I eventually got to Andalgala I was almost cooked. I had ridden 140k in similar conditions the day before and while I had only to ride 110k the next day, it would be the wind on top of another day of 45 degree heat that would take me to the brink. There were two particularly bad moments, the first when I finally accepted that the town I had planned to stop at for coke, more water and some shade did not actually exist. Thankfully I had enough water with me but this too would be boiling, Thus, while it served its purpose it was not exactly the refreshment I needed. The second bad moment was when the road twisted and with it the wind direction. All five elements seemed to be against me. I had been biking pretty fast making the calculation that I was better off putting in more effort up-front to get out of the sun sooner than I was to save my beans and take my time. I had reckoned that I would arrive into Andalgala in an hour as I was biking about 30kph and had roughly that distance still to cover, however, the twist in the road would put me into a cross-wind, which slowed me down to 15kph almost doubling my estimated time of arrival. You can imagine how heart-breaking it was when the road switched direction again and left me staring into a virtual wind-tunnel. The bike computer was now reading 10kph and so all my perceived effort seemed in vain. I never thought it possible but I was now going backwards in time. It was agony to say the least.
In the end I would have a pleasant surprise thanks to the town not being quite as far as marked on my map. The policeman at the check-point probably never met someone so happy to see him. For once the coldness of bureaucracy had its plus-side.
Talk soon
Marco
the oasis on the horizon that was San Blas - trees marking signs of civilisation