A Long Day to the Middle of Nowhere

The plan for today was to have an extremely early start at 6am, to beat the headwind on the first 80km stretch of nothingness to the next villages. However, this plan went down the drain when only 5 minutes after my alarm had woken me up the first thunder started roaring and lightning enlightened the sky...accompanied by the most massive downpour of the trip so far.
I had no choice but to wait for thunder and lightning to die down, which they finally did around 8am, and face the fact that I would have to cycle through the rain - which was still going strong - if I wanted to avoid the heavy headwinds predicted for 12pm.

While my jacket kept most of the rain out, my oh so great "waterproof" socks failed me within minutes, and instead turned into footbaths, keeping all the water in instead of out. Yey. 🧦

It continued to rain for 2h, as I was following the same storm that had just passed Londres and was now heading south. But to my surprise the long first 80km stretch of nothingness felt very easy. With a slight tailwind and a 1-2% descent I got to average 28kph on this stretch. 🏎

This was until I had to turn east and into a massive headwind...luckily only for a few KMs.

I passed the sign of KM 4000 on Ruta 40, where it's tradition to take a picture, and soon arrived at the aglomerate of little villages after the long empty stretch. But of course all restaurants and shops in the villages were closed as it was not only siesta time but also sunday...good that I still had some leftover Pizza to snack on.

Still feeling full of energy I decided to carry on for another 50km to the next village, Pituil, and wildcamp there.
This meant turning into cross-headwind. The progress was slow but spirits were high. And so once I reached Pituil, I still did not feel like calling it a day.

It was 5pm by now and I had set my eyes on an abandonned house/shrine showing up as potential shelter on iOverlander, roughly 20km further south down the road, which Matt had stayed at the night before. However, not wanting to have to cook when I got there I found the only open restaurant in the village and had a hearty meal first.

As it turns out it was good I stopped, as I had managed to get a pinch again and was greated by yet another flat tire when leaving the restaurant. 👎
It was definitely much nicer to have some wind shelter and company from the restaurant owners while fixing the tire than if it had happened on the next windy stretch of the ride, and the bike was ready again in no time.

Now came the toughest 20 KMs of the day which took me almost 2 hours. The wind had become stronger and I was now facing full on headwind. There was nothing exept for a couple of bushes along the road until I reached the shelter, just about when the sun set behind the horizon.

This turned out to be quite the deluxe accommodation in the middle of nowhere, with a small room featuring a table, chairs and even a fire place.
Tired but happy I pitched my tent in the little house, watched some episodes of a show I had downloaded on my phone and fell asleep to the sound of the howling wind. ✌️
...
🚴‍♀️ Distance cycled: 156 km -> longest solo-ride to date 👍
⏳️ Moving time: 7.5h
🪡 Punctures: 1
🚴‍♂️ Other cyclists met: 1 🇳🇱
🌬 KMs cycled with headwind: 50Leia mais