Day 30 - Well that was better than expected

Purmamarca to Jujuy (pronounced Hoohooay) (60km) Thursday 15th September


Now some people (guide books, Olivier) say Jujuy is a "bustling commercial city" "one to be avoided", so you can understand our surprise when we fell in love with the town.
As expected the first 20km of our day was a downhill battle against the wind, though not quite expected was just how green the scenery would become. At some point the sand turned to mud, the yellow straw spikes turned to grass and the cacti turned to full blown trees - like actual trees with leaves! I think there may have even been a trickle or two of water in the rather ambitiously named "Rio Grande"!!
And then a 100m climb hit us out of the blue! What?! We thought we were going down hill! Thinking positively we were at least relieved it would shelter us from the wind for a few km. What we hadn't bargained for was the amazing 400m fast descent that followed - yeah baby that's more like it! And it took us far enough down the valley for the wind to lose its ferocity and us to feel stronger than ever as we cycled downhill into the city.
Ant was stoked, green trees, green square, ice cream, fountains, beautiful hotel, supermarket (that wouldn't sell us beer (grrr!!), It really was a lovely place to spend the night. Arriving mid afternoon gave us plenty of time to explore the city. This involved sitting in the park watching the fountains for an hour or two, then sitting in a cafe drinking beer and playing poker for an hour or two. The bet - minutes of massage time. Now sometimes I am awesome at poker, especially after a beer or two - this was not one of those times. I now owe Ant 270 minutes of massage (yep 4hours 20minutes!) bugger! That's not how I imagined this playing out when I suggested it!
We found a wonderful pizza and pasta restaurant and had a lasagne for starter (Nick would be proud!) followed by a pizza for main. This was the first of two nights in a row that we got stopped half way through our food order and told we were ordering too much!
So we like Jujuy and would happily go back, but tomorrow we leave and head for Salta.