Only in Argentina mind - although I will be stopping in two other towns on my way back to Jujuy, Iruya is the northernmost town I'll visit in Argentina before getting the bus across to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile (if you're wondering why I'm not cycling across, it's because there's nowhere to get water for 300 odd kilometers).
As it turned out, the trip to Iruya was a more than fitting way to bring my time in Argentina to an end. Some 25km out of Humahuaca the road turned to gravel and stayed that way for the remaining 50km. As if that wasn't enough, I had to climb to 4000m (I'd started at 3000m) before dropping to Iruya at 2600m. To say that the going was tough is an understatement (see my leg time), more often than not the "gravel" turned into boulders or sand that made it nigh on impossible to cycle on, and in even those rare stretches where the road surface was, ahem, good and I could reach a breakneck speed of 10km/h, it wasn't long before I found myself stopping to catch my breath on account of the altitude.
The descent wasn't as much fun as you'd expect either, Toops can't half gain some momentum when loaded, and even with the brakes on for the entirety of the drop she took such a battering that its life expectancy has probably been halved. Needless to say, I ended the leg quite worse for wear too; aside from the physical exhaustion, my toes and the balls of my feet were completely numb, my fingers and wrists were so sore that I struggled to take the panniers off afterwards and my crotch felt like a pack of feminists had taken turns at it with a baseball bat. Indeed, if I ever get an erection again it will be the most unlikely feat of gravitational defiance since Howard Hughes managed to make the Spruce Goose airborne.
But of course, that's not why it was a fitting farewell to Argentina. Upon reaching the pass at 4000m (the highest I've been so far), the descent to Iruya was nothing short of spectacular. The road hairpins it's way down the hillside before bordering a canyon and passing dramatic cliff faces and mountain sides. Iruya itself appears out of nowhere 20km later, almost hidden in between walls of rock. I will put up photos soon but as you can imagine they will barely do justice to what has probably been the high point of the trip so far.
As it turned out, the trip to Iruya was a more than fitting way to bring my time in Argentina to an end. Some 25km out of Humahuaca the road turned to gravel and stayed that way for the remaining 50km. As if that wasn't enough, I had to climb to 4000m (I'd started at 3000m) before dropping to Iruya at 2600m. To say that the going was tough is an understatement (see my leg time), more often than not the "gravel" turned into boulders or sand that made it nigh on impossible to cycle on, and in even those rare stretches where the road surface was, ahem, good and I could reach a breakneck speed of 10km/h, it wasn't long before I found myself stopping to catch my breath on account of the altitude.
The descent wasn't as much fun as you'd expect either, Toops can't half gain some momentum when loaded, and even with the brakes on for the entirety of the drop she took such a battering that its life expectancy has probably been halved. Needless to say, I ended the leg quite worse for wear too; aside from the physical exhaustion, my toes and the balls of my feet were completely numb, my fingers and wrists were so sore that I struggled to take the panniers off afterwards and my crotch felt like a pack of feminists had taken turns at it with a baseball bat. Indeed, if I ever get an erection again it will be the most unlikely feat of gravitational defiance since Howard Hughes managed to make the Spruce Goose airborne.
But of course, that's not why it was a fitting farewell to Argentina. Upon reaching the pass at 4000m (the highest I've been so far), the descent to Iruya was nothing short of spectacular. The road hairpins it's way down the hillside before bordering a canyon and passing dramatic cliff faces and mountain sides. Iruya itself appears out of nowhere 20km later, almost hidden in between walls of rock. I will put up photos soon but as you can imagine they will barely do justice to what has probably been the high point of the trip so far.
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