The longest ride

Even though we wanted to make it all the way to Mendoza today we both managed to sleep through our alarms. So we had a late start at 11am, and braced ourselves for a very hot day to come, with temperatures going up to 36°C. But at least we were promissed tailwinds all the way!

To get out of San Juan we first had to get on the highway. Not my favourite cycle path, but at least we had a wide shoulder to ourselves. From what we heared most cyclists opt for taking the bus from San Juan to Mendoza. But hey...we are not most cyclists 🤗

Soon the road became smaller and more quite and Ruta 40 started looking more like irself again.
However, this also meant there was no more shoulder to ride in, which with quite some truck traffic along this stretch of the route meant you had a lot of highspeed pickup drivers racing passed you at a couple of centimetres distance. Not great, but what can you do 🤷‍♀️ At least it was Sunday, and so the number of proper big trucks on the road was not too high.

We powered through the day without any long brakes, occasionally aided by some tailwind (the promissed, strong and continuous tailwind turned out to be a lie..). Views were very boring and I kept myself entertained by listening to maybe a dozen episodes of my favourite podacst back to back (Stories of scotland - can 100% recommend).

By 7 pm we were maybe 30 km outside the city, when the road turned into a complete unpaved mess due to roadworks.

Slowed down by the road conditions we
Arrived in Mendoza just before sunset.
To get to our AirBnB we first had to cycle past the airport and the had dodgy neighbourhood of Las Heras.
But even there our only interaction with locals was a nice one, with 2 seemingly drunk guys insisting on explaining to us the fastest and safest way to the city centre. 👍

Tired but with a sense of accomplishment we got to our apartment around 9pm, went for a celebratory ice cream and called it a day.

🚴‍♀️ Distance cycled: 170 km
⏳️ Moving time: 7.5 h
🐎 Horsecarts overtaken: 1
🚗 Time spent on highway: 45 min
💨 Time cycled with tailwind: 1 hourRead more