the hills are alive with the sound of....

........tortured mad cyclists groaning in agony!! :-) yeah, we know it´s our own fault, no one made us do it.....

So, two days of cycling so far with us now at 2400m. Day one (Salta to Jujuy - 100km) was lovely with a winding mountainous, jungly road ( much nicer than we remembered from 1991, although we did it in the opposite direction last time ) and an easy 700m of altitude gain.Yesterday was a complete scenery change to desert from Jungle, pretty much climbing all day up the quebrada from Jujuy to Purmamarca with 1200m of climbing in 38 degC!!!. Steve looks like he´s been barbecuing his arms in case we run out of food! Teach him to forget about the sun block. The day was pretty tough on our unfit legs too. The next bit however may well kill us - 2000 metres in 35 km to a high point of 4100m! We then drop down to 3400m where we´ll camp for the night and spend New Year´s eve´on a Salar in the middle of the Andes´. Then two days at least to the next town so we need to carry mucho agua. Maybe 13 litres each Will we make it....? Stay tuned.

We ´re resting for a couple of days in Purmamarca to try and acclimatise a bit before we go for the big one. A nice Andean village with a peaceful vibe to it; well at least there is when the bus-loads of tourists have buggered off .

Happy New Year everyone! More from us in 2009. :-)

xox S&M

Heading for the hills!!

We´ve had a couple of lovely days in Buenos Aires soaking up the atmosphere, and are about to

take a 20 hour bus journey to Salta in North West Argentina where we´ll begin our journey over the Andes. Salta is at 1200m and our proposed route will take us about 10 days and see us crossing into Chile at about 4200m!! Likely to experience some oxygen deprivation ....... even without the cycling exertion. Must try chewing some of the local leaves that the international community seem to get a bit upset about - apparently they´ll help us cope a bit with the extertion and altitude.

Here at at last after grim trip...

We´re enjoying a hot, sultry Buenos Aires after a mammoth 36 hour journey....

The super easy trip to Heathrow and smooth check in lulled us into a false sense of security!

Our journey to B.A should have taken a little over 20 hours with us arriving at our hotel in B.A at about 2pm on the 22nd. As it happened, we didn´t get to check in until 5:30am a day later after a 14 hour delay in Toronto after our plane broke down! :-(. Suffice it to say, we will NEVER fly with Air Canada again.

Anyway, the important thing is that the bikes have arrived completely unscathed, the weather is hot and the beer is cold!

omg!!! getting a bit stressed.....

I HATE the going to the airport bit...... always worry that some disaster is going to befall us and we'll miss the plane or have some uber-stress to deal with.

Never mind - last min' getting bikes sorted, hoovering, etc.....

getting a bit frantic now....

Going through last minute manic getting sorted and list writing.... clean oven, clean fridge, clean cooker, do laundry, defrost freezer, ( we have a friend of Michelle's sister and partner flying in from South Africa for 6 weeks to look after the house and Rosie the cat ... ) general tidy up, buy pipe lagging to protect the bikes, fit new tyres to Michelle's bike, etc, etc....... doesn't seem like we have enough time!!

We have a couple of days in Buenos Aires when we arrive. Staying in a trendy art hostel http://www.artfactoryba.com.ar/los_cuartos_art_factory_ba_eng.html then taking a 20 hour bus ride to Salta in N/W Argentina @ 1200m where we'll start our cycling. - we weren't sure we'd actually made a booking but got confirmation last night - have decided to do it in comfort rather than the usual South American bus experience where you share your seat ( read - hard wooden plank with protruding nails and 6 inches of leg room ) with 2 campesino women, 3 chickens and a goat. Going by this it should be a very nice journey. :-)

nearly time to go....

Ok, after MUCH persuasion we've decided to produce a blog. How often it gets updated will be another thing entirely.......

Our friend Doreen visited last night and commented on our anal-looking preparations so we thought you'd like to see!

The clothes pile with the yellow jacket is mine and the other tiny pile is Michelle's. All for six weeks away! - the rest of the stuff is our camping, cooking and bike kit.

As we have to restrict our luggage to one piece of hold luggage each + the bikes we ended up buying a couple of huge bags to dump all the above in so our anal packing is now reduced to.....