Mendoza - Parque del Plata

Hard life in Parque del Plata with Daiver and Nahir.
Marco found a new playmate, Charlie. They both need to get some exercise, in order to keep retlessness under controll.

Villavicencio - Mendoza

50 km, total 4913 km

Last day on saddles!
We are going to miss our Ronzinantes. Only, someone should explain for me how it could rain on us for 2 days in Mendoza, one of the driest argentinian cities, where torists are not even charged for hotel nights if it has been raining!

We left our bikes and bags at Adriana s, before leaving towards Parque del Plata. It was really fun to meet Adriana , Tamari and la abuela! Thanks for a wonderful day and your hospitality!

Uspallata - Villavicencio

58 km, total 4863 km
Last minor mountain pass and last uphill. The ride was beautiful, despite the gravel being far from good in many parts and many argentinians, on their holidays for semana santa and Malvinas, lived up (down) to their reputation of bad behaved drivers.
We camped beside the house of the Guardiaparques, who where really nice and fun (and gave us a bottle of the locally produced mineral water).
A fox seemed to be aware of the protection of the Guardiaparques and did not seem to be the least scared by our presence.

Barreal - Uspallata

111 km, total 4805 km

A nice ride, gentle uphill in the first half and a gentle downhill in the second half. A middle section of about 40 km of good gravel. While arriving in Uspallata we got striken by heavy rain again. We had already had 10 days without any rain, so we wanted to be sure we would not get too spoiled.
We had  a rest day in a nice family driven camping at the town entrance. And Marco got his Internazionale magazine loaded on the reader!!

wild camp dry river - Calingasta - Barreal

wild camp dry river - Calingastra: 25th March, 114 km
Calingasta - Barreal: 26th March, 43 km

A medium sized uphill, a medium sized down hill, a fairly long uphill, a fairly long downhill, a boring uphill (I honestly started thinking I would not be able to sit down for a while when the trip would be over), an amazing >30 km downhill.
At the end of this dream downhill we reached Rio San Juan, ate lunch and realized a tail wind had started to blow. It took us all the way through a nice blossoming valley to Calingasta.
To find the Camping Municipal and take a hot shower felt too good to be true. But it was true!
The following day, pedalling to Barreal was easy work on good pavement and small ups and downs.
Barreal is nice and has a good Camping Municipal.
We bought Ravioli and a bottle of Argentinian Malbec and prepared for a rest day.

The meaning with showing my thighs is just that Ellen wanted to show an example av our cycle-tan. Nice uh!?