After four days of relaxation, eating and skin-treatment(!) in Mendoza, we started the next leg of our trip accompanied by our friend from college, Rob West, who´s keen to get some fitness under his belt before army trials start in June. Decent tail-winds, good roads, and a distinct lack of hills enabled us to cover the 600km to La Rioja in four and a bit days as well as clock our first 100-mile day of the tour.

La Rioja, despite boasting a population of 150,000, has the most pronounced siesta of anywhere we´ve been so far; even the central plaza has a sleepy, almost ghostly, feel to it between the hours of 2pm and 5pm. The explanation, we quickly realised, lies in the summer-time temperatures, which can reach an unbearable 50 degrees celsius!

Aided by another tail-wind out of La Rioja, we arrived in San Fernando del Valle de Catamarca in one day instead of the alotted two. We stayed in the "Hostal Perregrino" (in English, "The Pilgrim Hostal"), which overlooked the main plaza and was situated alongside a beautiful church - a common theme for the majority of town squares. Northern Argentina seems to be a haven for people making pilgrimages and we´ve encountered quite a few on bicycles travelling in the same direction as us. This, we reckon, is a possible explanation for our recent abundance of tail-winds!

Our evening in Catamarca proved to be both productive and extremely enjoyable. First of all, Rob managed to find a bike shop able to change his 10-speed chainset to allow him more flexibility for climbs. While we were waiting for the work to be carried out, the workers took great pleasure in reminding us of Maradona´s "Hand of God," in addition to taking the mick out of Rob´s physique. Dave and I also happened to start speaking to a local mountain bike enthusiast, Carlos, about our trip. He, subsequently, offered to pick us up (quite literally as it involved the three of us jumping in the back of his pick-up) and take us out for dinner with some of his friends. The evening flew past as we demolished the "best lomitos in Catamarca" and chatted about a range of topics from rugby to the relative attractiveness of Argentinian and English women. In good spirits, we returned to our accommodation at around 1am to find Rob, our chief translator, had let the side down by misunderstanding "dos" (2) for "doce" (12) (pronounced "dos-ey" in South America) resulting in us finding our hostal shut! Fortunately, we managed to catch the security guard´s attention who kindly let us in and, hence, allowed us to catch a good night´s sleep in our beds rather than our considered alternative - sipping beers in the main square until sunrise.

We chose a route to San Salvador de Jujuy (our current location), which included a mountain pass that took us from 320m to a peak of 3,050m over "El Infernillo". Cheered on by many of the passing cars and motorbikes, we completed the 60km climb in 3 stages across 24 hours. The scenery dramatically changed from an almost rain-forest like ascent to an arid, cactus-dominated descent. As a reward for our hard-work, we took an off-day in Amaicha del Valle, which sits in a microclimate that allows it to, on average, enjoy 360 days of sunshine per year. I guess rain in this village must be greeted with the same excitement as snow in England!

Our cycle on to Jujuy took us through the beautiful town of Cafayate as well as the "Valle de Lerma". This is widely regarded as the most magical of all the potential cycle touring routes in Argentina and certainly lived up to expectations with the three of us wanting to stop every kilometre to take another photo; some of which are now up in the photos section.

During a quick lunch-stop in Salta, 90km from Jujuy, we bumped into Ardiego and his girlfriend who we´d met in Bariloche over a month ago. They passed on some information about our upcoming climb to the Bolivian border and Altiplano, which sounds both challenging as well as amazing. We´ll let you know how it goes in the next journal entry...