The first day out of Belen saw our biggest day yet with a total distance of 114km. The road and weather conditions were perfect and we sailed through towns that we had originally planned to spend the night in. The highlight of the day has to have been seeing our first armadillo (crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside). It was in the middle of a long stretch of desert (90km between any sign of human habitation) with no traffic of any kind for hours and the moment he tries to cross he's nearly mown down by Catherine. No picture unfortunately because they're deceptively quick over short distances. We slept the first night in a shit tatty town called Schagui where the campsite contained ... another disco. The woman didn't even bother charging us this time (our faces the following morning suggested that she shouldn't bother anyway).
We thought the following morning that we might just make it to Chilecito the next day because it was only 107km away, meaning we would have a day in hand. The weather wasn't with us unfortunately, so we had to stop just 26km short of town, in the desert again. This would be fine but we had passed through a nice little town called Pituil at lunch where they warned us about the snakes and scorpions that lived in the desert to the south. Their advice was simply to check your shoes in the morning, but I simply chose to let Catherine get up first. Having said this, the only animal contact we had all night was finding out that the desert ants had eaten the bar tape off the bikes! I hadn't considered being scared of the ants until this point.
It turned out that we had camped just 1km short of a monster downhill section so we had a great start to the day - nearly 10km without pedalling. Just as I was at terminal velocity (51.4km/hr according to the bike computer) a motorcycle pulled up alongside and began asking all sorts of questions about our trip. I'm always up for a chat but it's difficult to wrestle with your spanish at over 50km/hr with only a cycle helmet for protection, especially when your new friend is swerving around alongside, dodging the oncoming traffic. Nice man though and he wished us well.
We arrived into Chilecito pretty early the next day because of the short distance, but first impressions weren''t good; they burn the city's waste just north of town in huge bonfires by the side of the road, which means that you have to cycle slowly (it's a 5km uphill approach) through dense plumes of acrid smoke. The icing on the cake: whilst you're in the middle of the smoke, and you look to see what you're breathing in, you see dead dogs mixed in with the tyres. Fortunately the town of Chilecito was one of our favourites so far - set high in the mountains (our first sight of snow), they even have a Cristo Redentor overlooking the town just like Rio, and it's full of really friendly people. We even got ´sponsored´ by a body-building store who insisted that we take some trousers for the journey. I'd popped in for some electrolyte powder (we were fading fast without it), and they wouldn't let me leave without taking some pictures and giving me a 'gift' of some matching his-and-hers branded body building trousers. Keep checking the blog for some pictures of me and Catherine in matching orange and white 'harem pants' emblazoned with their jazzy 'Mega Sport Body Pump' logo.
Day 7: Belen to Schagui - 114km
Day 8: Schagui to Desert - 81km
Day 9: Desert to Chilecito - 26km
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