Why do I bother to set the alarm, we never get up when it goes off, it merely gets tapped to snooze or it gets turned off, this morning I opted for off as we didn’t have that far to go, two hundred kilometres. We did wish to beat El Zonda though as this regularly kicks in around 1.30-2.00. We managed to get going around 10.00 am heading for the service station only to find the tanker truck replenishing the station and a massive line up. I spoke to a couple of people and found out there was another station on the outskirts of town, I couldn’t understand why everyone was hanging around here when there was a quicker alternative. Off we went and pulled in for fuel at the empty station. No problem with the fuel, no food, no coffee, no visa, no paper to wipe my visor, it dawned on me why, no patronage!
It only took a few minutes and Paul and I were off the bike taking photographs, this continued for the fifty to sixty kilometres of the Quebrada, it was filled with colour and just begged to be photographed. The perfect bike road wound it’s way through the multi-coloured hills requiring Paul and I to forego a little photography to just enjoy the thrill of riding. Even though the coloured hills petered out the road remained in hills, this time covered in foliage. The days riding was once again nothing short of fantastic, Paul was ecstatic at having had the chance to enjoy such a day. Previously I had driven this road in the opposite direction, it was a revelation to ride it in this direction, a great day on the bike.
A few blocks from the centre or main plaza of Salta we managed to find a fantastic hostal with secure parking across the road. The bikes were actually locked inside the office of a parking yard that was behind a high fence. The ladies running the hostal were absolutely lovely and so was the guy running the parking yard. I needed my shirt ironed as it was the last clean shirt I had and upon asking if I could borrow the iron the proprietress took my shirt and gave it the ironing of it’s life. Paul reckoned I needed to lock the door that night!!
21st April
Business Day, first off was to give the bikes a thorough going over as well as Paul cutting holes in his air box to let it breath better in the mountains and hopefully get better fuel economy, and myself to get the horn going again, I have been using it for the last month thinking I couldn’t hear it because of the wind noise!!!! We took all our clothes in to the lavendaria to get washed. Paul repaired the window on the lens of the camera on his phone, did some painting that he wasn’t happy with, found a statue that looked like him and posed while I took a photo, spent an inordinate amount of time looking for a bank that didn’t charge a commission for taking money out and just ended up getting really, really angry. I changed the slider on the main zip of my bike jacket which now works really well and had a haircut. I also bought myself a very big tub of ice cream then bought the ladies at the hostal a big bunch of flowers because I just felt like it! Sat up to 12.30 updating the blog and posting on Facebook. A busy day actually!
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