Tilcara Adventures

Weather: Sun plus wind equals dust.

Llama Count: Only six today, and they were six of the eleven I saw yesterday

Turns out the national alcoholic drink, a mixture of fermet (a bitter herb liqueur) and coke causes a very nasty headache in the morning. For the first time in all my experience of South American breakfasts there is no Dulche de Leche. The combination of this, my headache, and my new found Argentinian friends heading back to Buenos Aires makes for a miserable start to the day. It is Sunday, and I feel vaguely homesick. (This is lessened by the home from home experience of the street dog climbing through the dorm window at about seven thirty this morning.)

I decide I really want to join a llama caravan. It is about as close to running away with gypsys as I am going to get in Argentina. I find llamas, but sadly no llama tamers or caravan.

 Plan B I am going to hire a mountain bike. Not quite sure how this happened, but before I know it I am being handed a puncture kit, and asked in very fast Spanish whether I can change a tyre. The bike man doesn´t even wait for me to reply, he takes one look at me and says something along the lines of "don´t worry, lots of nice men in Argentina, they change tyres". I have no reply, I definitely will not be able to change the tyre alone. I am handed a map that I imagine would be similar to the product of Eppie deciding to become a cartograopher (beautifully arty, beautifully vague.) The bike man points to the road and says easy route. I take the hint and head in that direction.

What the easy route description failed to take into account is the hundreds of kamikaze trucks, busses, and cars that whizz past my elbow. After half an hour I decide that the death road in Bolivia is probably safer than this, turn around, and head up the most difficult route the bike man showed me... up the mountain to the devils throat. It is aptly named, only the devil could cycle to the top without bursting his esophagas. I amble up at a walk dragging the bike along side me.

However, upon reaching the top the view is spectacular. I am above the cloud line that shrouds the canyon on one side of the valley. The rock faces are a multiculured, russet, violet, cream and white. It is probably the lack of oxygen, but it is absolutely breathtaking. The ride back to Tilcara is much more fun, I turn mountain biking on its head refuse to do any cycling and let gravity do the work. The bike man is suitably impressed, and I return to the hostel to sleep, exhausted, with a sunburnt nose that is flashing a scarlet to rival that of Rudolph the reindeer.

Tomorrow to get into the outlaw character that Barclays bank seem to think I am, I am off to the Wild west Tupiza in Bolivia, which is famous for being the place where Butch Cassidy and the sundance kid were killed. 

Tonight I am going to sleep very well.