Northern Argentina
Salta to Bariloche, Argentina, with bus rides
3 weeks / 850 miles
After 5 years of professional engineering work, I decided to take a little break and see a little corner of Argentina. I flew first to Buenos Aires and spent a few days there walking around, then caught another flight up to Salta near the border with Bolivia. Salta was a more manageable size town for me that maybe catered to travelers pretty well, and was a nice place to start a bike tour. I rode south through the quebrada to Cafayate, then down Route 40 to Belen and maybe to Chilecito. I knew ahead of time I’d probably do some skipping-ahead on buses, and I did so, hopping down to the city of San Juan. I was carrying some paper maps that showed a road going west from San Juan up into the mountains. I tried to take that, but a new dam had started construction and the road had just been permanently closed! I was forced to backtrack, loosing a whole day. I caught another bus up to Calingasta, then biked south through some nice country to Uspallata. Descending the main highway to Mendoza was almost like trying to commit suicide (not from the cycling, but from the passing trucks), but I made it. I hung out in Mendoza for a couple days, then got another bus all the way down to Bariloche. Note, at the time, about 50% of the people in the Mendoza bus station were pick-pocketers and thieves. I don’t know if it’s the same these days… but if so, just don’t go there.
Once in Bariloche, I took another short bus ride up to San Martin de los Andes, and rode an awesome, unpaved stretch of Rt. 40 through Angostura, camping along some beautiful lakes, and back to Bariloche. I putzed around Bariloche a bit, found a bike box at a bike shop in town, and got a semi-fun overnight bus back to Buenos Aires for the long flight home.
Some highlights of the trip were the wide open spaces, the road between Calingasta and Uspallata, and the road between San Martin and Bariloche. The low points were, actually, the long distances between towns and services, which I don’t think I was ready for somehow, some brutal wind, and almost getting robbed in the Mendoza bus station.
