We had been told the Argentinian Automobile Association had free wi-fi in their café, so we paid them a visit before leaving San Jose de Jachal, dutifully buying two coffees to find out the password. The wi-fi wasn’t working, other people were also having problems and there was no one in the office to put it right. I did subsequently find out this was a potential problem with the operating systems we were using – windows 8 and android – rather than the wifi – thanks Microsoft and Google!!

The road RN91 out of San Jose led through an initial area of pampa and then climbed slowly up into a protected park area called La Ciénaga – an area of eroded red rocks and natural beauty.

We eventually dropped down onto the ruta 40 again to a dual carriageway with bike paths running on each sides. We had high hopes for the nearby town of Huacho. Perhaps there would be all services and even a campsite? We detoured 6km. into the town as we at least needed to get some water. On the way we saw vines and an olive grove. There were houses with proper gardens rather than dirt yards. However Huacho turned out to be a street with a few shops and houses, which, as it was siesta time, was still asleep. As we turned around to leave, a convoy of cars turned up electioneering with blaring music designed presumably to waken and enthuse the good citizens of Huacho. A few souls turned out to greet the convoy and we used the opportunity to buy some water from the now open shop. Disappointed we returned to ruta 40 wondering about the politics of the short section of dual carriageway.

From then on the interesting landscape deteriorated once more into pampas. The ruta 40 at this stage was fairly quiet so to save my sanity I put on the MP3 player and listened to an audio book I had downloaded. Rob played music on his phone. It distracted from the sore rear end and the increasing heat. The night was spent camping in a dried out river bed. It was perhaps the quietest night we had spent so far in South America as the traffic on the road died down to practically nothing.

The next morning the ride through the pampas was broken up firstly by meeting up with a fellow cyclist heading south. He had started in Alaska seventeen months ago. We exchanged information and then headed our various ways. After a coke break at a petrol station we headed on up and over a small pass meeting on our way another fellow cyclist who had started in Mexico and was also heading south. A further exchange of information and we were off up a bit of a hill towards Villa Union.

Villa Union was bigger than most of the towns we had previously stayed in and made a good first impression. There was a tourist information centre and they directed us to the centrally located campsite. Time for another day off…