In The Andes

11 April 2006
Jujuy
Argentina
Distance +-3125 km
Day 24

Salta was a blend of work and tourist fun. Arriving on a Saturday evening left me with Sunday to do some tourist things, finding out where the Bolivian consulate was, catching up on admin and writing my weekly newspaper article.
Writing skills must have been lacking when they issued me out of the pearly gates because it takes me hours to write something.

Monday morning had me early at the Bolivian consulate who issued me with a visa as I waited which was a pleasant surprise. From there it was of to check the bike out and that pretty took up most of the day. Part of checking the bike out was to go for a longish ride which landed up being my first little incident. Drivers seem to pass unnecessarily close when coming from behind and one of them did not make it. They hit my arm off the handle bar with their side mirror.
I blew an absolute fuse and was ready to kill. It was a case of an overdose of mixed emotions when the very apologetic driver was a beautiful woman. What could I do?

This morning I left Salta and the bike was none the better. I rode about 300km and had to turn back to a town Jujuy to have it seen to. Jujuy is only 125 km from Salta and going back is something that really bugs me. The bike is now with a different set of mechanics who are going through the same process all over again inspite of me trying to explain that it is not those problems.
We probably all do the same and think because someone can´t communicate we assume they don´t know what they are talking about. I certainly have on occasions been guilty of this myself.

Today I turned around at a small villiage in the mountains called Purmamarca. It is a beautiful little place about 7500 feet high in the mountains. They had all their colourful woven cloths and handcrafts on display in the village center. It looked exactly like the travel brochures with the high, equally colourful mountains as a back drop.

Hopefully I can leave here tomorrow as Easter weekend is drawing close and I will be stuck in one place and I now desperately want to get going North.

Adios
Ricky