To set the scene for the next statement, imagine me jumping up and down amidst the smoke and flames of burning panniers in a central city square, shouting at the top of my voice. I'VE DONE IT! – I’ve reached my destination.
There are two alternative routes to Uspallata on the way to Santiago from Mendoza. I chose to go the hard way. This road is relatively flat for about 15 miles then climbs from 600m to a little over 3000m in about 30 miles before descending 20 miles to Uspallata at 1400m. During most of the climb and all of the decent it was dirt. The other more southerly route is all tarmac and climbs gradually from Mendoza to Uspallata in a valley (boring!). It was fantastic to leave behind the monotonous lowland plains and get back into the Andes. Going up was amazing, the road zigzagging up the face of a mountain with amazing views. I only saw about 3 other cars on the road all day. Having rested in Mendoza for a week I was also full of energy. Near the top started getting a headache which was probably due to soroche as I had climbed so fast. The soroche is apparently made worse with overexertion. Also, the last few miles to the top were in a dry river bed and I had to let the tyre pressures down to reduce bogging down in the sand. On the way down I overtook a car and the headache disappeared. When I got to Uspallata I realised that my watch had been running slow and I had been riding for 11 hours. I think I would have camped at the top if I had known the real time. Uspallata is fairly popular with tourists for walking and horse riding. I had a meal and a beer with two backpackers who were Irish and English. The English bloke used to race in elite downhill competitions and was sponsored by Animal.
The next day was all tarmac on the main road between Mendoza and Santiago. It was very busy with buses and large lorries. A mini bus full of monkey-arse backpackers drove alongside me for a while one of them videoed me. The road follows a valley all the way to the top and then descends to Argentina through a 3 mile long tunnel. I stopped at some small ski resort just before Puente del Inca to make enquiries about climbing the nearby Aconcagua which is the highest mountain in the Americas at just under 7000m. After a while I found one of the guides who said that there is an expedition setting off on 22nd of this month. It takes 15 days to do the climb and return, five days of which are spent at one camp at about 5000m to acclimatise. I had been thinking that I would give it a go if the price was around 200 pounds, but when he said it was 1500 dollars I was still seriously considering it. This made me realise what an effect that climb of Huaina Potesi has had on me. Physically it is the perfect time for me to do this as I am in peak physical condition, but I have decided not to do it as then I would return home with no money. I am just worried that I will later regret not doing it. I have looked at various websites about the climb and it seems quite serious stuff and with recommendations of some climbing experience before attempting it, although it is not technical in the sense that it is walked, with no ice walls to negotiate. About 4 people die each year up there and there is a graveyard close to Puente del Inca exclusively for climbers of Aconcagua . I think this is somewhere I might go in the future, though I do like ice walls, so perhaps a different mountain would be better.
I stopped for the night at Puente del Inca and stayed in a hostal run by the Argentine army! It was quite a bizarre experience. When I arrived in the town I saw a regular looking hotel, which looked out of my price range, so I asked an armed guard at the entrance to a military camp. He told me to go up the road 100m and turn right by the snowmobiles. I did this and was met by more armed guards who escorted me into a small office with some higher ranking army men. They made telephone calls and rushed about for 5 minutes and then I was given an armed escort to the front door of the adjacent building and then taken into a nicely decorated room with a huge TV, fireplace and a bar which was presumably for officers. I got a room for about 4 pounds including breakfast. My headache had come back a bit, but I got off to sleep O.K. However at about 2:30 in the morning I woke up with the bad headache, hyperventilation, nausea and pounding heart of altitude sickness. I was surprised to get it at only 2700m, especially as I had been to over 4000m with no problems only a few weeks earlier. I think it must have been due to the fact that I had climbed a total of 3700m in only 2 days having started at only 600m. I think I was in a state of semi consciousness for a few hours and then I had the frightening sensation of a sudden and violent shuddering in my head. I have never had anything like that before. I think it may have been a very minor fit that I had, although I suppose it could have been no more than a nightmare, anyway it fucking well woke me up properly! I read through the descriptions of altitude sickness in the South American handbook. There are mentions of deliriousness and frothing at the mouth, but there was nothing of fitting. I then remembered a dog my mother had which suffered from epilepsy and that it would have "petite mal" fits before the "grand mal" proper. That was a scary moment, but I managed to calm myself down and went back to sleep. When I woke I was in too bad a state to ride, as I was weak and dizzy with cold sweats. I ate nothing until the evening. I had a good nights sleep and felt fine in the morning.
Before setting off I went to look at the Puente del Inca which is a natural bridge over a river with a span of about 60 feet. It is quite an amazing sight. Experts think that it was formed when the river was frozen and a stream from a nearby hot spring on the higher bank flowed over the river to the lower bank. The yellow/orange minerals from the spring were deposited to a great thickness and remained in place after the ice melted. On the upper side of the bridge is a colonial bathing house which is supplied by the hot spring. It has been neglected but is still very interesting. It was great to see it without hoards of tourists. In fact I was the only one there.
There was a steep climb up to the village of Las Cuevas at 3000m where I enquired about taking the old pass to Chile which goes up to 3600m or so. All the signs said the road was closed to traffic and I had read the same in my S.A. handbook. It is also impassable by car at the moment because of ice and snow, but it was walkable. When I got to the entrance to the tunnel, I was told that I could not go the other way as there was no longer any facility for giving exit stamps in Argentina. The combined passport control for Argentina and Chile is a few miles after the tunnel in Chile. I was also told that I could not cycle through the tunnel (which I knew beforehand) for safety reasons. BOLLOCKS!!! This pissed me off as the bike has rolled all the way from Lima airport to that fucking tunnel. Also I quite liked the idea of trying to get the bike over that pass in the snow and ice. They gave me a lift through in a van. I thanked the driver for the lift but it was not sincere. Before I would frequently think to myself about having ridden all the way, but now it is I have ridden all the way here except for... Oh well it does not really matter. The road went zigzagging down for miles and miles. I passed scores of lorries. I was even passing them going around hairpin bends. The road flattened out and I made it to the town of Los Andes. I ate a family sized pizza and went to bed. In the morning I felt crap again with alternating hot and cold sweats intense headache and stomach ache. I noticed that my stomach was amazingly bloated and almost comically it got so bad that taking deep breaths was painful. I peered over the mountain to watch cable TV all day and eat nothing. I did not leave my room all day. Next day I was better but still weak and dizzy, so I had another day off.
After 2 days rest I was still not right, but well enough to ride so I headed off on my last day’s riding to Santiago. I came across another tunnel where cyclist were barred. There was an alternative dirt track path, but I was tired and there seemed no point in avoiding another lift now so I took it. The road was not really to my liking as it was a motorway equivalent. There were signs along the road depicting ‘no cycling, pushing wheelbarrows, riding horses or horse and carts’, but I saw other cyclists and the officials at the tunnel had an established procedure for giving free lifts to cyclists through the tunnel. I passed through large slum and industrial areas on the way into Santiago. I think it would have been a serious mistake to travel through these areas after dark. Once in the outskirts of Santiago nearly everything was covered in graffiti, including the buses and shops. Some of the work was extremely good quality, using brushed on paint as well as the spray paint. closer to the centre the graffiti disappeared but everything is grey and grimy. I rode around for a while looking for accommodation, but I was confronted by flights of steps leading up to the reception, which is no good for me. I found a place but the door was locked and one of the guests was standing outside waiting for the owner or staff to come back and let him in. He was called Dan and was a Canadian of about 50 years of age. He had a harp with him and he explained that he had been travelling about for the past few years earning a living playing solo in restaurants. The last place being in Panama. He had been here for 2 weeks and was looking for work here. There seemed something a bit odd about him, but he was friendly enough and showed me to hotel around the corner. This is where I am still staying, although to begin with I found it to be a bit dodgy. The staff and owner were not very friendly, although I am getting on better with the owner now and it seems bearable. One of the staff is odd. She shuffles about talking to herself. When I went to get my breakfast she was saying something to me in a very agitated tone of voice, but I could understand absolutely nothing. I told her I was learning Spanish and that she was speaking too fast for me, but it made no difference and she continued to babble on. I just said yes every once in a while. The hotel is a colonial building, but is now falling into ruins. Big rooms have been crudely divided into little cubicles and I can hear everything going on in adjacent rooms. Unfortunately for the first few nights in one adjacent room there were two guys one of whom suffered from severe and continuous wind and the other adjacent room is a toilet. The price is right however at 6000 pesos per night including breakfast, which is less than 6 pounds. The cost of living is cheaper here than I expected, and as a result there is no significant saving to be made by coming home early as I would have to pay a 100 pound penalty to do so. I will take a flight on 1st December and should be home by the 3rd. I am going to spend my remaining time having a holiday, with perhaps a day trip or two on the bike. I might even go to the city of Valparaisoo on the coast which looks quite nice from the paintings and postcards on sale, but I plan to mainly relax. Santiago seems to be quite a nice place, but I have noticed that most of the people walk around looking as though the end is nigh in stark contrast to the inhabitants of Mendoza. On the plaza de Armas are scores of artists, painting and displaying their work and there are loads of kiosks and very small cramped fast food restaurants in one arcade along the plaza. The prices are cheap but the food is quite good. They have displays showing actual plates of food on their menu, and what you see is what you get. Some of the artists are doing work that I like a lot and I am looking into buying a few pieces. The problem is how to get them home. I would have to buy packing and either take them on the plane or post them. It seems I also need to have a permit of some sort from a certain art museum even for original works.
In conclusion, the trip has been amazing. I think my favourite cycling was between Lima and Cuzco, and in general Peru and Bolivia were a big adventure in terms of terrain and culture. Cycling in Argentina between Salta and Mendoza was boring most of the time, but there were a few highlights. I can't complain really as most of the journey has been so good. I think there are almost bound to be boring bits in any trip like this. The excursions of walking the Inca trail, the day on the motorbike and of course climbing Huaina Potesi were fantastic. That section I rode between the Salar de Uyuni and Laguna Verde was the most hard core bit of cycling I did in terms of adventure and endurance and was very scenic, however if any sandy trails like those existed in Wales I would never ride them. I do not think that driving a 4x4 across that area would be half the experience of cycling it though.
As I have been writing this I have noticed a strange sequence of events on the 20 ft long stretch of pedestrianised street that I can see out of my window. First of all I noticed a parked motorbike, then a man came up to it as though he owned it, and started speaking into a walkie-talkie whilst scanning the street. He was wearing ordinary clothes and it was not a police motorbike, but I assumed he was a plain clothed policeman. Next I saw a man approaching a waste bin and fiddling with a small plastic bottle. There is nothing unusual about people rummaging through bins, but he seemed too well dressed to be looking for food. I ignored him. Later I saw some cash being exchanged quickly and discreetly between two men. Most recently I noticed a young guy walking past quickly and picking up a small seemingly empty plastic bottle off the floor next to the bin without stopping. I suppose it is all something to do with drug dealing. Just this second another reasonably well dressed young guy walked up to the bin, grabbed hold of a bag, moved it about a bit and walked off. I will try to get this computer again when I come back here and try and learn a bit more of what is going on.
I have been taking things easy since I got here. Life at the moment consists mainly of eating sleeping, using the Internet, wandering around the city, reflecting on my trip, daydreaming and reading. I am liking Santiago more and more. There is always something going on around the plaza. The markets held there on Sundays are very interesting. I take after my father in having a love for old junk. There was a stall selling old mechanical wind up record players. They were even demonstrating them with some old records. I thought how funny and inappropriate it would be to play some hard core gangster rap on one of them. Another stall had 2 old mechanical calculators. These were fascinating. They had 3 numerical displays like those of a car odometer but with about 20 digits. There were numerous levers, switches and handles. I think it could add, subtract, multiply and divide two 20 digit numbers. I suppose things like this would have been mainly used by accountants. They wanted $100 for the smaller one. I was tempted, but reason ruled the day. There were also a few old cameras of the type which look like a hand organ and where you operate it with your head under a black cloth shroud. Two vintage cars were on display (from about 1930) a Citroen convertible and a Ford coupe. They were interesting but unfortunately not very mechanically original. I suppose it is to be expected in a South American country as it would not surprise me if these cars were in everyday regular use until 10 years ago, in which case it would have made economical sense to graft on more available parts from modern cars as the originals wore out. There are a lot of street hawkers selling music and software on CD-R's for about 2 pounds a pop. Yesterday I bought Microsoft Visual Basic for under 2 pounds. This software retails in the U.K. for close to 100 pounds. These traders advertise their wares by 4 foot square sheets of laminated mosaics of photocopies of the front covers of the original music or software, which they lay out on the pavement. When some police approach they gather it up at the speed of lightening. Also the person doing the selling does not hold the actual discs. The disc I bought yesterday was hidden in a baby's pram with the baby. I don't think the police give a flying fuck about this kind of thing in Bolivia. Who knows if my disc will work, but I think it is worth the gamble. I bought a piece of artwork yesterday which is a stylised figure of some kind depicted on thick cloth. Apparently the technique is one that the Incas used, where the medium is beeswax mixed with vegetable matter of some kind (If I understood the artist correctly). I do not know how exactly this was applied to the cloth, but it has soaked right through, as the image appears on both sides of the cloth.
I have found a hill in the middle of the city centre! It is about the height of Mwnt, but long and narrow and with some almost vertical faces. It has been cultivated into a kind of wild looking informal garden and has an extensive network of paths and staircases. There are large trees, shrubs, flowers, stonework and metalwork. It is an amazing contrast to the adjacent sky scrapers. There is some kind of castle near the top on one side of the peak and a church on the other side. The view from the top is amongst the most spectacular I have ever seen. The city itself is in a relatively flat basin of roughly 20 miles square with mountains all around. It is the view which in which the Andes have seemed largest. The skyscrapers seem like little toys dwarfed by the snow capped peaks.
I had quite a frustrating day on Monday trying to find out where the local mountain bike trails are. There is a particular area of the city where there are scores of well stocked bike shops, but none had any maps of mountain bike trails and did not seem to have any enthusiasm about their local trails if they have any. I don't think they have much of a concept of going out and mountain biking on trails for fun around here. There are lots of nice bikes and components for sale, but I think they are used almost exclusively by racers and poseurs. The only suggestions have been to go to the tourist information centre. Strangely there does not seem to be any tourist information in the centre and I doubt that they would have information on proper mtb trails anyway. I can't wait to get back on my regular trails at home and see some proper British mud again.
I have nearly finished that book on Plato's Republic. It was too difficult a read in my state of exhaustion when I first got here, so I went out to the market with the intention of getting a novel, but came back with an "Introduction to the teachings of the great Psychologists". Oh well, it was easier reading than the Republic. I was amazed to discover that there are distinct clinical definitions of cretin, moron, imbecile and idiot. If I remember correctly moron, imbecile and idiot are part of a scale stupidity in descending order of stupidity! Furthermore the term cretin is a label for a certain genetic disorder and is usually an idiot. The tests developed for gaining an insight into the functioning of the minds of humans and animals are very interesting, but some of the invasive experiments they do on animals are sick. I think that parts of this book would have an animal rights activist in tears or an angry rage. In fact I think certain extracts from this book would serve well as animal rights propaganda. In it are described experiments where a monkeys reasoning abilities are tested before and after certain parts of its brain are removed. Also open brain surgery has been performed on conscious monkeys. Specifically sticking electrodes in various parts of their brains to see which part of the body moves. Another nasty experiment involved conditioning. Conditioning is a learnt response where some object or action is associated with something else. For example if a whistle is sounded every time a dog is given food, after a while the dog will salivate on hearing the whistle. Well, these bastards wanted to test a theory of internal conflicts, or something, by observing the effects of conditioning kittens to associate electrocution with eating. I wander what conclusions these psychologists would come to if they analysed their own behaviour?
I bought a book called "Economics and the public purpose" a few days ago. I have started it, but it seems pretty fucking boring to be honest (I bet your thinking "well what did you expect?"), but I will give it the benefit of the doubt. One point made in the book is that Economics is in flux and basically, what is learnt now will not apply in a few years time. I immediately looked at the inside cover for the date of publication: 1974. BOLLOCKS!
I am going to ride off to the airport soon. I felt quite miserable packing up my gear for the last time yesterday. On the plus side, I got chatting to a German guy who works for the United Nations here in Santiago who is a mad keen mountain biker and he showed me the local mountain bike trails on Friday. Absolutely superb.
