Argentina and Uruguay

Well, it has been a curious time on the long road for this hardcore adventurer. After yet another dramatic conquering of the Andes and the many perils that this entails, your correspondent cut the ride short in central Argentina in order to get to Buenos Aires and also avoid the drudgery of a boring road with no shoulder. (note to write a sternly worded letter to the Argentinian road engineers). The road being flat, straight and boring and the trucks and buses a tad annoying, Buff3y soft-cored onto a bus for the last few hundred kilometres of the road. I figure that after riding the continents (and North America twice), in their entirety, that I can go a bit soft in the core on occasion.

The photo above was from further back up the road on the Bolivia Argentina border but I forgot to include in the previous post. Ushuaia is the bicycle touring pot of gold at the end of the trans-continental cycling journey to the south of South America. 5,121km from the top of Argentina to the bottom (Tierra del Fuego).

The buildings in Buenos Aires are quite beautiful with magnificent colonnades, turrets and decorative facades on all manner of apartments and hotel buildings particularly around the centre of town.

It is a one and a half hour ferry ride from Buenos Aires across the Rio de la Plata to the UNESCO protected town of Colonia de Sacramento on the Uruguayan coast.

This is a lovely sunset over Colonia de Sacramento in Uruguay. This town is worth a bit of a wonder around for a day to check out the cobbled streets and over-priced pizza and parrilla (BBQ steak and bits), then cycle on down the coast towards Montevideo.

The Uruguayans don’t mind a vintage car and elect to place them out in the oddest locations.

So campers, what have we learned from this little trip?

Bolivia is a truly amazing country and an equally amazing ride. The salt plains are just a breathtaking truly unique experience and well worth the second visit. Any decision to go and ride over the Andes is invariably a good decision. My love affair with this part of the world deepens with every visit and this ride will not be the last to take Buff3y into the Andes.

Strategically it was probably not the smartest decision to plan a route that started with a huge rise up onto the Altiplano (note to self). The attempt to make that ride up on a remote by-way that didn’t have enough guaranteed water supply was also an interesting one. A tad more preparation might be in order if you are not so interested in pushing a touring bike up Andean climbs.

The ride through far northern Chile was a beautiful experience . An untroubled one as this part of the world has not really been discovered yet, as most just head straight for San Pedro de Atacama for their Chilean desert hit. The Northern road along the boarder with Bolivia is a special place with magnificent volcanoes puffing away.

Buff3y is now off to Colombia for some well-earned R&R before returning to the relative drudgery of life in Australia. Will mow the lawn, watch Netflix for a few thousand hours and plan the next exciting bicycle ride into the great beyond.

Stay tuned for the next exciting chapter!