Hello From Antofagasta
I am sitting in the central plaza of Antofagasta de La Sierra eating crackers and a tin of something called “Jamon del Diablo” or “Ham of the Devil” in english. It is actually quite good but I had to get over the fact that it looks and smells like Whisker’s Fancy Feast cat food. Antofagasta is a small town, small as in I can see almost all of it from where I am sitting (actually a bit later I found it is a bit bigger than that). It sits high in the mountains of the Northwest corner of Argentina on the Puna, or Andean Plateau. The closest city is Belen, some 300 kilometers away, which is where I slept last night.
Belen was an interesting town. It seems to be devoted to two wheeled travel. Out in the middle of nowhere, I couldn’t see why it had multiple stop lights when I arrived. After siesta, however, the town came alive with 100’s of kids and adults cruising around on scooters, motorcycles and bicycles. I counted three motorcycle and scooter shops and more shops selling stuff to trick out your scoot. I also saw groups of roadies riding outside of town and a guy on a time trial bike motorpacing behind a scooter.
It has been three days since I left Mendoza and I am starting to get in the swing of travelling after three weeks in one place. I had an excuse for staying in Mendoza as my rear brake was shot when I got there and there were no spares in the country. I bought a used one on-line but it took awhile for it to reach Argentina and then even longer to get through customs. Parts in Argentina are amazingly expensive. Most new products are assessed a 70% to 100% import tax. Combined with the lower cost of labor it makes fixing things much more cost effective than just replacing things. I found a great welder to fix my subframe and it was amazing the things he had waiting for repair in his shop.
Even if I hadn’t been waiting for my brake I might have stayed that long anyway. Mendoza is a gorgeous city with tons of plazas and pedestrian boulevards lined with restaurants and coffee shops as wells as a huge park filled with people running, biking and picnicing. Mendoza is also in the center of Argentina’s wine region, kind of like Napa Valley except the people are friendlier and everything is cheaper. Still after three weeks in one place, it was time to move on.
Just short of Belen, I was at one of the many police checkpoints and the cop pointed out two giant thorns in my front tire. It was at that point that I remembered I had left my tire repair kit in Bariloche. I had noticed it missing before and it was on my list of things to do in Mendoza but with my rather long list of things to do and the unlimited supply of good four dollar bottles of wine, somehow it got overlooked. Luckily I still had a spare tube and the back of one of my wrenches can be used as a tire iron so I was OK. When I got to Belen I had my choice of shops to replace my tire irons, tube and patch kit.
A bit earlier ( back in Antofagasta) I went for a hike up a hill (really more of a mound) to take pictures of sunset when I was joined by three kids out for a hike of their own. We went through the usual where are you from stuff and then I took a couple pictures of them in front of the sunset. There is this big rock in the distance called the Pena and they asked me if I wanted to hike to it. As it was sunset it seemed unlikely, but they said tomorrow… or maybe Saturday. When I told them I was leaving tomorrow, they looked incredulous. It was the same look the woman I am renting the room from gave me when I told her I was only staying one night. The pace of life is so slow here that my travelling pace must seem like light speed. Sometimes it seems that my whole trip is just one long series of leavetakings. It seems that just as I get to know a place or people, I am saying goodbye.
Well… off to Bolivia. Time to say goodbye to Argentina…… sigh.