PowerCycle

10/05 Leaving the border station I opted to take the less traveled road through Catua. That turned out to be a mistake (other than I needed food so not a huge one). Getting to the town wasn’t bad but the road was a bit sandy in spots. It was all up hill and very gradual for the most part. There was a brick “bunker” of sorts about 9k down the road from the station that might do for a wind break/camping spot in a pinch.

In Catua I went in search of a store and found one stocked with just about everything I needed (bread, cheese, oranges, cookies, 10 chocolate bars and lunch meat). Best of all… 2 cans of beer! The lady writes “4″ pesos like “40″ with no decimal point which made me think I was about to pay a fortune for my stuff. They didn’t have any gasoline in town and the sign by the border station indicating there was a place to eat was misleading. I did run into a house that had a faded sign saying they cooked meals so I checked it out. It was a bowl of beef jerky with some tomatoes and lettuce. I think soup came with it too but I skipped it. At 12 pesos it was pretty expensive ($1 US is 4.20 pesos).

Catua was my first village in Argentina. I could tell from the house I ate lunch at that the people living there weren’t rolling in dough but the thing that surprised me the most was a DirecTV satellite dish in their backyard. I saw several around town.

The road started climbing not much later and didn’t stop until the pass at 14,225 feet. The road up to the pass was brutal and I wouldn’t recommend coming this way to any bike people. The road was so sandy that I had to push for half of the 11 mile climb. I ate 6 of my 10 chocolate bars. Didn’t see any cars on the road today.

Found a place to camp kind of out of the wind next to a sand dune. There are actual large green bushes around. Just about everything up until this point has been half a foot high, brown and sharp as a tack. The sand dunes in the area are cool looking and I went out of my way to avoid tramping over any of them. Hopefully my tire tracks get blown over in a week.

GPX track