San Salvador de Jujuy

Yesterday when I woke up it was raining pretty heavily. I didn't want to cycle far on that day, so I decided to wait a little. One hour or so later it stopped raining, and I decided to leave for La Caldera, 23km from Salta in the direction of San Salvador de Jujuy. It was pretty cloudy, but it did not rain any more.

The exit from Salta was via a cycle path along the motorway, almost until Vaqueros. But at least I didn't have to cycle on the motorway. After Vaqueros, the RN9 turned into a mountain road, not sufficiently wide for HGVs, and with little traffic. The road climbed up a little, but almost all the time. After a while I reached La Caldera, and went to the tourist information to ask for accommodation in the village. There wasn't much, and in the end I decided for camping. I put up my tent and went to have lunch somewhere – vegetable pie and a beer. In the afternoon I rested, and I met a family on the campsite and we talked quite a lot.

Luckily, it did not rain any more on that day, and later I went back to the village to buy some things for dinner.

Today I got up early. I didn't sleep well, as there were two parties on the campsite – not that noisy, but sufficiently noisy to disturb my sleep. I left the campsite at 7:30am to go to San Salvador de Jujuy, about 70km from La Caldera.

At first, the road went up a little, but not too much. I arrived to the highest point – not much higher than 1450m – and then I went down again (also not much) through the valley on the other side. The road went through subtropical forest, and I enjoyed cycling through the forest on the side of the hill (or mountains – but they were not that high) early.

After 2½ hours I arrived to the village of El Carmen, and had a break to have some lemonade and eat a little. I know that the best part of the trip was over – from El Carmen to San Salvador de Jujuy the RN9 was bigger with a lot more traffic. Shortly before San Salvador de Jujuy it turned into a motorway, and the junction with another motorway just before Jujuy was brutal. Finally I arrived to the centre of San Salvador de Jujuy and had a coffee at the main square.

Later, I went to the Hostel Tantanakuy, and had a shower and rested a little during the afternoon (and washed some of my clothes). Later I went to a camping shop to see if they had a ThermARest mattress, but they didn't, and the similar ones they had were bigger and heavier, so I didn't buy anything. I had another walk through the centre of San Salvador de Jujuy and returned to the hostel. I bought some vegetables to prepare a salad for dinner.