Thursday January 20, 2011, 99 km (62 miles) – Total so far: 968 km (601 miles)
First day with hard rain.Already in the night it started to rain and it wouldn’t stop.We started at 6am and we prepared ourselves with some garbage bags but it was senseless against the rain.After riding 8 km and almost wet to our bones we stopped at a small hut beside the road to get shelter from the rain.As we were wet, we felt the low temperature and we started to get really cold.
The argentinian Mate tea saved us from freezing.We unpacked all of the stuff we needed to prepare it and it warmed us from inside a little bit.For four and a halfhours we stayed there until therain stopped a little bit and we decided to ride on.The road was decending all through the yungas of Tucuman,with a lot of cascades falling down from the mountains and crossing the road like small rivers.Once,when I stopped for taking a picture,my wife almost got hit by a huge rock falling down the steep mountain beside the road.
What a noise and what a shock!We kept riding on road 307 until the junction with road 38,the main road leading to La Rioja.Traffic became more intensive,but we were lucky the road had some shoulders.At 5pm we arrived at the small town of Aguilares and started to look for a hotel.We found an amazing,big,colonial house with every comfort of a modern hotel,even WIFI,a pool anda lovely restaurant.What a surprise in a town where you thought to be lucky to find a place to sleep at all!
