San Salvador de Jujuy to Susques - Climbing over 4000m for the first time...

We left Jujuy quite late as we still had some stuff to be done before hitting the road. Once we left, we didn't get very far, add soon I had a flat tire. As Stefan was way ahead with all the tools I first waited quite a bit until he came back and I could finally fix the tube.

Fixing my flat tire in the middle of nowhere

Once my bike was fixed again we continued but again didn't get too far, as we met two Australian cyclists and chatted a while with them. Soon after we continued, the road got a lot steeper and by the time we reached Volcán, we had already climbed about 1000 m of altitude.

I guess once there was a river here...

From there the road continued more or less flat, so we advanced quite fast.

Beautiful landscape and nice and warm weather on our way to Purmamarca

However,  by the time we reached Purmamarca, it was already pretty late, so we decided to spend the night there and climb the remaining 2000 m of altitude to Paso Lipán the next day.

The "rainbow-hill" in Purmamarca

As we went out for dinner that evening we met Nicolas, a French cyclist we already knew from Jujuy and decided to continue together. So the next morning we were three cyclists heading west. As we left Purmamarca, the landscape was gorgeous, cacti all over and many narrow little valleys that often looked as if some giant would have cut himself a piece cake out of the surrounding mountains... The road was leading uphill and steadily getting steeper... Soon we passed a truck that was already struck on the road there for 8 days waiting for some spare parts to arrive from Paraguay - Welcome to South America!! ;-) As we continued, the passing cars and trucks always animated us by honking, bit every time we saw a bit further there was a new hang we still had to climb...

Yippie, I'm already higher up that half an hour earlier... :-)

A few curves later...

At around 6 pm we finally reached the top of the pass, 4170 m above sea level, so far our altitude record by bike.

And finally we got to the top of this damned pass!

You'd think we should have enjoyed our arrival up the, but due to the time we only thought about putting on some warm clothes and using the remaining time till sunset to bike as far down as possible, as we wanted to avoid having to sleep too high up. The next morning it was freezing cold, but as soon as the sun rose, it got a lot warmer.

Our pretty remote campsite next to the Salinas Grandes

And there it is: The first salt lake we saw on our trip!

Observing wildlife is pretty easy around here...

Once we were ready to leave Stefan noticed that he had a thorn in his tire, which unfortunately also punctured the tube, so instead of leaving we first had to fix the tube... But when we finally left we got to the Salinas Grandes (a big salt flat in Argentina) pretty fast and were impressed by this big white area abs the road leading strait through it. Of course I had to taste some of it, but it really just tastes like salt... :-)

Salinas Grandes: The road leads right across it...

Once we crossed the Salinas, we steadily rolled towards the next mountain range, but for a long time it looked as we wouldn't be getting closer at all. And then suddenly, with the headwind growing stronger and stronger, we found ourselves in these mountains. Along a narrow valley we worked our way uphill. 

And the next pass is never far...

Observing local donkeys makes our life climbing the passes a little easier...

nd then we figured why this pass is called Paso Malo (Mean Pass): Once it's already going downhill again you can see how the road starts climbing again... This pattern repeated itself a few times until finally the road leads downhill towards Susques. As I had some troubles with the altitude, we decided to stay a day in Susques in order to acclimatize a bit more before heading towards Paso Jama.