Day 29 - Pedaling downhill, we loce pedaling downhill

Green spot near dried up lake to Purmamarca (50km) -Wednesday 14th September


After spending about half an hour hiking out of our lovely camping spot we were on the road again and ready to face the remaining 500m of the climb out of the valley, this time very definitely with the wind on our backs pushing us up hill. I was feeling strong as steel, Ant slightly less so. Our road was painted out ahead of us like ribbon up the mountain, showing us exactly how many switch backs were left to tackle. Eventually we got to the top, took the obligatory "on top of the world" photo - you could actually see back to the Salina in the distance - mui Bonita, then wrapped up in our wind shirts getting excited about the 40+km of downhill ahead. Our goal was Jujuy which was about 100km away, but we figured it would mostly be downhill, losing over 2000m altitude in the process.
Just one slight problem... The wind! Of course, it blows up the valley and gets stronger the further you go up. So when you're sitting on your saddle at the top of the mountain, there's limited chance of the wonderful whizz down the other side that we were expecting.
The first 10km we were struck by a bitter, really cold gust that had us adding waterproofs on top of the wind shirts, the next 20km was sweeping downhill with wind stopping us instead of breaks, not too bad, just need to keep head together. And then we started pedalling, pedalling very VERY hard, to go down a 5% gradient. This simply was not fair! You expect to work up hill, and can put up with the wind turning a kamikaze downhill into a gentle sweep, but when you actually have to pedal hard to go down it makes you very sad indeed!
So much so that our "lets stop there for a good lunch" spot (Purmamarca), turned into a "sod it let's just stay here", at some point between the sandwiches arriving and us finishing our first litre of beer!
Having decided to save the remaining 60km descent into a head wind until tomorrow, we drank some more beer, found a hotel, met a Swiss cyclist called Olivier coming the other direction, had dinner with him and exchanged some good tips for the rides ahead, drank a lovely bottle of Cafayate wine that Olivier insisted on paying for (think he was glad of our company after 2 months of cycling alone!), decided not to replace Ants sun hat but nearly did, realised that despite selling lots and lots of alpacca based goods there is now an absence of cute baby jumpers - sorry George we tried!, got a good night sleep and got ready to face the wind tomorrow!
What a difference the wind makes hey!!