· HOLA! Greetings from Buenos Aires (good airs), Argentina! The last section of riding was our toughest yet, but before getting into that, we would like to inform you about the progress of the Biking to Build Schools project, fundraising, and the bike trip.
Even though the financial crisis is in full swing everywhere, Biking to Build Schools has managed to raise $5,120 USD thus far! We would like to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for giving to a positive cause even when times are rough. We would also like to thank those of you who have helped to spread the word about Biking to Build Schools, who have printed our story in the newspaper, who have shared our blog and travels with their classrooms, and those who have sent us words of encouragement. Remember, for more information about our project or if you wish to make a donation please visit our website: www.bikingtobuildschools.com. Thank you!!!
Our American counterpart organization, InterConnection, has already sent 12 refurbished computers to Paraguay. CECTEC, our Paraguayan counterpart organization, will be receiving them anyday now and installing them in the schools involved in the project. Thanks again to Charles Brennick from InterConnection, and to the numerous people at CECTEC who are constantly working to improve education in rural Paraguay.
From Buenos Aires, we have about a month left of riding. We will take a ferry across to Uruguay, bike up its western side, cross back into Argentina and enter Paraguay through Posadas. Our plan is to bike up to Caazapa, Paraguay and visit Tava'i, the area of focus for our project. Hopefully we will be able to visit the schools involved and see the computers installed etc. From there we want to ride through the communities we used to live in while we were Peace Corps volunteers to say a last hello and goodbye. The very last leg of our trip will take us to the capital of Paraguay, Asuncion. It is extremely difficult for us to believe that this amazing adventure is almost over, but we are ready to visit our friends in Paraguay and our families and friends back in the United States.
We saw this on an overpass just outside of Mendoza. Getting closer!
It has been a little while since our last post in Mendoza. Back in Mendoza, we had just crossed the Andes Mountains and were feeling pretty good with the tasty wine and all. The ride from Mendoza to Buenos Aires however has been our toughest yet, and by far, the most boring.
This leg of the trip took us 1100km across the bread basket of Argentina on Ruta 7. There was one long, gradual hill and the rest was flat, flat, flat. We were expecting the region to be typical pampa, with lots of flat, grassy, dry plains and very few people, but instead we found a lot of corn. It was still rather uninhabited, but impossible to camp in since it was all fenced in cornfields and no cover to hide from the road. There were little towns every 100km or so which we stayed at along the way.
Although we thought this flatland would be some easy riding, there were many obstacles to endure and overcome, particularly for Joel. Joel had bad teeth. Bad teeth in his mouth and bad teeth on his bike. He decided to wait until Buenos Aires to see a good dentist since he needed to have a root canal and a crown put on. So he had been experiencing pain and chewing with one side of his mouth for some time. Then, on the road after we left Mendoza the problem with the teeth on his bike began. After a mere 5850km, the teeth on the chainrings of his bike (the front set of gears) as well as his chain were worn to the point that the chain was skipping along on the chainrings, making it almost impossible to ride. Since we were riding through the middle of nowhere Argentina, getting a replacement set of chainrings wasn't really an option. But, luckily (and unluckily), the smallest chainring of his bike wasn't as worn as the others so he was able to pedal quickly along in the lowest gear. Most of the ride was flat as a pancake, which would normally make for some fast, easy riding in your highest gear ... For Joel however, this was not the case. His legs were spinning so fast at times that Karen could barely see them. It did provide a nice breeze however!
And speaking of breezes, there was one in our faces most of the way, making the riding even more challenging. Although it was still nothing compared to the wind we battled with in the south of Argentina, it made those 100km + days extremely long and unenjoyable. The boring, unchanging landscape plus the fact that Ruta 7 was a busy truck route and did not have a shoulder most of the time made this stretch of road the hardest we have faced yet. Every couple of minutes we had to bail off the road into the grass/dirt shoulder to get out of the way of huge semi trucks barreling down on us blasting their air horns. The trucks themselves generate a gust of wind that will blow one right off the road!! Either that or their winds push against you and cut your speed by many kilometers per hour. It is very frustrating when you are trying to pedal and keep a good pace but your speed is constantly cut by the sixteen wheeler and the ole convoy.
While riding such long distances with not much in the way of eye candy the mind has a tendency to wander and ponder many things. For example, one day after riding for many hours we decided to try and calculate just how many revolutions we pedal on average in a day. Here's what we came to...
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We counted that our cadence was approximately 75 pedal revolutions per minute at a rate of 25 kilometers per hour. At this pace we are making 4500 revolutions an hour. If we pedal an average of 5 hours a day then we turn the pedals 22500 times a day. So over the course of 130 riding days, which is roughly how long it will take to get to Asuncion, Paraguay from Ushuaia, Argentina, we will make 2,925,000 turns of the pedal!!! That's a little something to think about. We took it farther and figured out how far we travel with each pedal stroke, but we don't want to bore you.
It's also interesting how focused our minds and bodies become while riding for long streches of time. We wrote about this before, but sometimes while riding you are just completely in the moment and so focused on what you are doing it is as if you can feel all your muscles working to propel you down the road along with your heart beats, the depth of your breath, etc. The hours and miles pass by sometimes lost in the moment of the ride.
Joel had a dentist appointment on a fixed date so we had to pound out the miles of road to get to Buenos Aires in time. We took just one rest day and pedaled on through the wind, fog, rain, sunshine, and endless corn. This is the type of riding that many people choose to opt out on, and for good reason. It is biking just to get to a place, with little enjoyment of the ride. A lot of bikers we have met along the way have told us about such "boring" places to ride and how it's better to just get on a bus for those parts... we always thought it was a little presumptuous however since we were able to find beauty in even the stark, dry, Tierra del Fuego and the Patagonia. Well, we understood what they were talking about in this stretch of road.
Joel working on his bike as the sun sets.
Along the road we passed through many a small town where we were stared at by the locals as if we had come from the moon. We are pretty certain that there are not a lot of spandex-clad cyclists that roll through some of the small towns that we did. People would turn and stare unabashadly at us. Kids would come up with inquisitive looks and all kinds of questions too. Other people would share stories of a cycler they had seen in the past. It was kind of funny at times, but also gets old real quick. It get tough to keep your cool when you've got a show-all spandex suit on.
Finally, after passing through the town of Lujan, we were just a day of riding away from Buenos Aires. We stayed the night at the only hotel we found in the large town of General Rodriguez. We got up early the next morning, knowing that the last 50km into the city would take us a looong time. We strapped on even more yellow reflective tape to our bodies and packed our spandex away to avoid excessive heckling. We debated whether or not it would be better to take the huge, busy, express-way which had a big shoulder for us to ride on and which would bypass most of the city riding, or if it would be better to take the possibly less busy two-lane road with no shoulder which would take us through all of the little towns and communities leading up to the center of Buenos Aires. We opted for the express-way but then were told that bicycles were not allowed on it. So, we stuck to old Ruta 7 and clung to the side of the road. The first 25km were not too busy. Then it started to pick up. Around kilometer 30, in the middle of a huge intersection with tons of people everywhere, Joel got a flat thanks to a huge thorn in the... We rolled over to a sidewalk/bus stop area to take care of business. Karen watched the goods while Joel replaced the tube. The people waiting for the bus were rather entertained.
We continued on in the noise and smog and traffic, taking breaks every now and then at gas stations. There were quite a few people whom were very interested in where we had come from or where we were going. They'd pull up in their car or on their motorcycle and ask as we all rolled down the road. Some would shout from the sidewalk "Hey skinny!! Where ya headed? What equipment! WHAT EQUIPO!!!! AHHH!!!" At one point, a white van passed us, pulled over, and flagged us down. It was a man who owned a bike shop in Buenos Aires. We chatted and he gave us a neon green cycling jersey as a gift! We rode on and then stopped for lunch at a plaza and fed pigeons. It was grueling riding, all of the stopping and going, and having to be extremely alert of everything around you. The city drivers are insane and not aware or kind to cyclists. We took a less-traveled side road through the heart of the city and at last, found our hostal next to the Plaza del Congreso. We wearily took all of our stuff up lots of stairs and collapsed into our room. We made it across Argentina!!!!!
The famous oblisk in Buenos Aires in the middle of the 9th de Julio Avenue.
Due to the type and amount of dental work Joel had to get done (more on this later), we have now been in Buenos Aires for about 2 weeks. While this will set us back a little bit on our schedule, Joel really had to get the work done, so here we are. Fortunately for us, there is a lot to do in this city of 13 million people. The city is divided into different districts. We are staying in an area called Monserrat... a centrally located place where we can hop on the "subte" (short for subway in Spanish) and go wherever. So far our favorite districts are San Telmo and Palermo. Palermo because of all of the beautiful parks there, and San Telmo because of its cool shops and goodies.
A tango band in San Telmo.
One day we ventured down to the district of Boca to get tickets to go see a professional soccer match. It was a beautiful day and we decided to walk it (we hadn't heard anything about that part of the city's dangers). As we neared the soccer stadium an inebriated man with a dangerous look in his eyes approached us and started to follow us. It was apparent that he wanted what he thought we had. We were just about to set off into a sprint when an older Porteña (the local name for someone from Buenos Aires) woman started yelling at the man to leave us alone and reluctantly he stopped his persuit. We got lucky. Then, about 15 minutes later and 5 blocks away a young man came up to Joel and said "Give me some change," Joel said, "no." Then, the young man said "If you don't want to die, give me your bag!" At this, Joel yelled at Karen to run and then gave the man a piece of his mind. Luckily, there were lots of people out on the street and the kid lurked away. Some shop keepers rushed us in their store and then helped us get a cab.. no way we were walking back the same way! We got lucky again! So, unless you are in the small area/tourist trap known as The Caminito in Boca, be careful! The Caminito is a short little street where the buildings are all painted crazy colors and there are a few restaurants with tango shows.
El Caminito in Boca.
Some of you may have heard about medical tourism and some of you may have not. It is becoming quite an industry these days to fly from the U.S. to another country to have dental work, surgery, plastic surgery, and other medical procedures taken care of... The reason being that you can find amazingly qualafied medical personal outside of the U.S. whom can perform the same service or better (than you would recieve in the U.S.) for a fraction of the cost. Many people are finding it more worthwhile to combine a trip and a medical procedure. Though Joel did not plan on doing this, it has worked out this way so, he'd like to share his experience. He had been suffering from some tooth pains for quite a while on this trip and knew he had to have it taken care of. After a brief call to the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires, Joel got a refferal to see Dr.Isaac Meta (dentist). The work that Dr.Meta and the care in treatment that he has been able to give Joel has been outstanding. It turned out that Joel needed to have both a root canal treatment and crown placed on one tooth. Dr.Meta was able to take care of all this work in a very efficient, safe, and professional manner. After seven visits to the dentist's office in just two weeks all of the work has been completed and is of excellent quality and for a fraction of what it would cost in the U.S. Dr.Meta is an excellent dentist trained in both Argentina and the United States and takes care of the U.S. Embassy staff. He speaks English fluently and takes care to fully explain all the work that he is doing as well as to make sure his patients are not feeling pain. Joel highly reccomends that if anyone reading this needs to have extensive dental work taken care of to consider travelling to Buenos Aires and visiting Dr. Meta. The doctor's contact information can be found at his website: www.biodent.com.ar.
Although we are a little strapped for cash (we have been using our Peace Corps volunteer readjustment allowance for our trip expeditures (which is not very much money)), we realized that we will probably not be back to Buenos Aires in a long time, if ever, so we want to experience it while we're here. We have seen a Boca Juniors soccer game (the fans are craaazy!!), went to the Fantom of the Opera (in Spanish, and it was amazing!!(thanks for the reccomendation Jason!)), eaten delicious food, drank good wine, played truco (a South American card game) with some people at our hostal, been to several great street markets (in San Telmo, Monseratte, and Recoletta), walked in the parks of Palermo, gone to the zoo, went to the MALBA art museum (but it was closed because the workers were striking), gone to other art museums, marvelled at the architecture, checked out a little live music, some bars, and a had a taste of tango as well. But most importantly we celebrated Karen's 25th birthday on June 4th!!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! In general, we have had a great time and we highly reccomend visiting Buenos Aires if you ever have the opportunity. It is truly an incredible city with so much to offer. Our legs are extremely restless however, and both of us are reeally ready to hop our bikes and get outa town.
So, come the morning of June 7th we'll be on a ferry to cross the Rio Plata and get to Colonia Sacramento, Uruguay where we'll start the final leg of our trip back to Paraguay!!
"Get on what takes you!"
