Even when we started off this morning, it was already pretty warm, our faces were rosy cheeked pretty quickly.

It was another long straight road for most of the ride today, with the exception of heading around San Juan on our way to Mendoza.  Mendoza is the capital of the Mendoza region, and once again a major attraction on the wine route (I’m sensing a theme here).

The day was passed in our normal way of waving to vehicles who flash their lights coming towards us, or to those cars beeping alongside us, (this normally means that the passing car wants to take a photo or a video, and we need to wave on cue).

This really is such a pleasure, those grinning faces, or thumbs up we receive all day long certainly help to keep us motivated.

As it was a Saturday today, we also saw lots of cyclists out riding together, dressed in their lycra outfits, just like at home.

The day got hotter, but only to 35 degrees celsius today.  It’s a funny feeling, as it’s such a dry heat, you really don’t sweat hardly at all, but it does feel HOT, especially with all our riding gear on.

Mendoza’s roads were quiet when we arrived, which we were thankful for, as our hotel was near to the centre.  

Hotel Grand Balbi. Hmm, a little overstated perhaps. I think it’s grandeur may have been in the past, although it has a wonderful lift with a metal concertina gate, which needs to be pulled open to step in, and you can see through to the floors as you ascend.

However, the best bit about the hotel was Basil Fawlty on arrival!  As you can imagine, being so hot means we cannot wait to get into our room, and cool down.  We arrived at 2.15 pm, and I asked for directions to the car park, which was around the back of the building.  Paul took the bike round whilst I checked in.  At 2.30pm Paul came in and I was still waiting.  Basil had welcomed me, but he also saw to several other people at the same time.  There was an absolute cascade of paperwork, which required magnifying glasses, and a lot of show and explanation to us. Finally, at 2.45pm we were checked in and taken to our room, by which time we were hanging! Still, a good room with air conditioning soon made up for that.  After a rest, a McDonalds to eat (!) and a quick nip around the local Carrefour we were more than restored.

Ready to go another day, in fact.

During our ride today, it was very hot again, but mainly overcast today. It seemed a long day, mainly because there were a lot of long roads through scrubland, that were straight and went on for miles, surrounded by hazy scenery.

There was however one very beautiful road which took us up through red mountains following the Ruta 40, and there were plenty of places to stop, and admire the view.  We rose to 2,000 metres, which we used to consider high!

As has become the norm these last few days, there was very little traffic other than us, which is such a joy after months of frantic traffic.

This afternoon, we saw Condor birds on the road in front of us, who took off as we drew nearer.  A spectacular sight that unfortunately I didn’t capture on photograph.

We have a small overnight apartment in San Jose de Jachal, and have just been along to the tiny supermarket to collect items for tea, as there is a fridge (a real luxury these days). Funny thing is about the shops here in Argentina, well to us anyway, is that they close between 1.30 and 5pm.  I’m guessing it’s just too hot to go out shopping between those times.

We’ve made the most of the wi-fi here and been planning our next few nights stops.  This is not something we normally do in advance, but we have hit peak season, high summer and everywhere, particularly alongside Ruta 40 is getting booked up. The further South we go, the more popular the area is as we head back toward the Andes, and the Argentine Lake District in Patagonia.

here we are being famous and doing our bit for Argentina!

the other couple are John and Wendy. 

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We were up early this morning and following in the wake of all yesterday’s Dakar competitors and service trucks, who all passed by our hotel in Cafayate at some point yesterday.

We had spent a very enjoyable time yesterday watching these riders and drivers pass by us, followed up with an afternoon touring the local Bodega in Cafayate with John and Wendy learning about their wine making process- oh and a little wine tasting thrown in!

In the evening we chose a different eatery in the plaza, but were still thoroughly entertained by all the activity within the square. It was full of small children enjoying the end of a beautiful day’s entertainment with wide beaming faces. What a wonderful atmosphere.

The route today was to follow the infamous Ruta 40.  Paul has done a lot of research on this road, because although much of its 5,100 kilometres is now tarmacked, not all of it is, so we need to be careful.  We knew a short section of today’s route was to be gravel, but thought we had found a good route around it.  We missed that part, so ended up bumping up and down for a good 20 kilometres, although it was pretty painless.  It was finished off with a couple of tiny crossings through running water. Exciting!

We were soon back on the blackstuff, which took us the entire route to our stop for tonight, which is a wine hotel, part of the many wine routes that pepper the north of Argentina. They have excelent conditions here for producing wine, with high altitudes, and the appropriate frosts etc.

The route was fairly long, 250 miles, and took us about eight hours in total. We are now back in to heat, Paul saw 40.5 degrees celsius register on his temperature gauge today. I think it might be that way for a few days at least.

We had a later start today, as it was only to be a short journey to Cafayate, where we had arranged to meet up with Wendy and John, the other sidecar couple.

John and Wendy’s plans were to camp, our most definitely not! The weather forecast was showing thunderstorms for this afternoon, so hopefully the tent would be up before then.

Anyway, we wandered off about 11, and had a lovely ride alongside the lake lined with mountains.

About 30 minutes into the ride, and all of a sudden on the side of the road there was a van, and behind the van were John and Wendy on their sidecar.

It turned out that the people in the van had been filming the Dakar Rally for a local news station, they were on their way back, and had spotted John & Wendy riding along and started to film them!

Having stopped, the film crew were adding a tiny camera onto the front of Wendy’s sidecar so they could film them going along for a while.

The double excitement caused when we then pulled up behind the first sidecar was immense!  There followed a period of time where we were interviewed by the news team, filmed by normal camera, and by a drone camera in the sky.  They wanted us to say ‘Argentina, world friendly’, and ‘visit Argentina’ into the camera whilst looking really excited!

The news guys took all our email addresses, so hopefully we shall receive a link to the edited version of their piece when they’ve produced it. They told me I looked like Judi Dench (not the first time I’ve been told that).

After that excitement, we enjoyed a leisurely drive through the red rock lined roads, which were breathtaking, in tandem. We snapped photos of each other in the sidecars, so that we can share them.

Arriving at Cafayate we parted, and we settled into our hotel, whilst John & Wendy managed to get their tent up before the thunderstorm set in.  The storm lasted about an hour, and the ironic thing was John & Wendy stayed dry, whilst we discovered that the roof in our room leaked all over our bed!

Of course, when we shared this information with Wendy & John when we met up for dinner, they thought it was hilarious.

We spent a great evening on the square, sharing dinner and watching the world go by. When we took a stroll around the square on the way back to the hotel about 10pm, all the Argentinians were just heading out to enjoy the music, dancing, juggling, chatting, before their evening meal begins at 10.30pm.

Today we are watching the Dakar Rally passing through town, sadly the racing stage today has been cancelled, due to a landslide caused by heavy rains yesterday on the route of the race. The extremely sad part of this is that local people in a village were killed by the landslide. This was about 200 miles North of where we currently are.  A harsh reality indeed.