I'll send along a couple more if this works. We can save the pictures for later.
It's very very remote here -- and wonderful. But we pay the price in modern conveniences...
--John
Day 26 – Tuesday March 22: One epic ride from El Blanco to Villa Cerro Castillo
During the night the temperature dropped into the thirties; it rained some too, and the wind picked up. Still, we met for breakfast hoping that our forecasts about stormy weather ahead might be faulty. After breakfast we received good luck send-off hugs by the cheerful white-haired ladies who ran the hotel; then we headed out. Our luck held for a while: the rain dropped off entirely and a tail wind chased us up towards a high pass through the mountains. After summiting the first 1000 foot hill, however, the long winding road became the long windy road: we dropped elevation for a bit but now had to gain back what we’d lost, and more, making our way westward right into the teeth of a considerable headwind. The going was tedious and slow even on the downhills. Sometimes we were buffeted so powerfully that our bikes were blown right into the center of the road, with us leaning into the wind to keep from being blown away. At last we turned south again and began climbing with the wind at our backs. We were now at snow level: it lay on the pine shrubs next to the highway and tiny flakes drifted down. All around us towered steep rock walls that reached hundreds of feet in the air. We finished the last uphill part of the ride shaking with cold.
Our descent began just after we passed through a narrow cut in the rock, and the scene that spread out below us was astonishing. We had broken through the side of the mountains, and the road switchbacked downwards in an unbroken serpentine for nearly two thousand feet. We could see for miles below to the valley of the Rio Ibanez, where the village of Villa Cerro Castillo was located, and beyond to other ranges and valleys. The epic struggle was over; now we could collect our reward, plunging down the steep grade for the last few miles of the ride, stopping only for pictures.
We arrived at Villa Cerro Castillo (The Village at the base of Castle Mountain), a ramshackle collection of buildings marking the end of the paved road. Still cold from the mountain pass, we gathered for coffee in the only café and then proceeded to our hostel, the Teushenkenk, where we’d be staying for three nights. Mario and Soledad Ruiz, our delightful hosts, opened up their home to our tired crew. The electricity was off for the whole village and it was growing dark. We rehydrated by candlelight, ate in camplamplight, and collapsed into bed just as the electricity surged back on. A good sign…
This was not our biggest day: 66km and 3244 vertical, but it was our sixth day of riding in a row, and we all needed a couple days off. R & R was coming up. We were looking forward to each R.