South-America (4).

In the evening he brought us eggs and milk and with a thermos flask of hot water under his arm, a maté-pot in his hand, he asked us endlessly about the Netherlands.
"You know", he said "until recently long hair and a beard were forbidden in our country." That is probably the reason why we were seen as cycling guerillos: "Che Guevara on a bicycle".

n the distance we already saw the next village: a green patch at the end of a straight road through the Argentinian pampas. Above our heads hung a threatening dark cloud. Would we be able to reach the village before the storm. At a reasonably high speed - with a tailwind and asphalt - we rode over the road and I was riding very close behind Henny, too close. Suddenly an enormous bang and my bicycle jammed. I had ridden in a pot-hole and my rear wheel looked like a heart, the spokes dangling loose and bent, rotating the wheel was out of the question. The previous village was the nearest, so back we went, but how? All our luggage was loaded onto Henny's bicycle, which I had to lead and he took my bicycle on his neck. A very sad walk of a few kilometers and we arrived in a pampa-hamlet. The garage owner referred us to the bicycle repairer. Well, well, there was one. In a grey, clay corner house with a dusty shopwindow, behind which you could perceive something that looked liked bicycles, that was where he lived.
The bicycle repairer looked at the ruin, scratched his bolding head and said: "No this cannot be repaired anymore" but, - and I could not believe my ears - "I still; have an old rim which will fit." We dragged our things into the workshop and he began to take the spokes from the old rim.
And indeed the rusty rim was 28 inches, what a miracle!
The whole afternoon he worked hard, Henny learned en passant how to lace a wheel. The front wheel, also dented, was straightened again. The evening fell and a corner, between all the rusty parts, was swept clean where we could sleep. We were hospitably invited for dinner, piles of meat, Argentina's basic food, with lettuce. In the morning I awakened by a well known sound: click click click, rrrrrt, click, click. Antonio was aligning the wheel.
He had finished before the morning coffee. In all their poverty - I walked in my last trousers - he later wrote, he didn't want to accept a penny from us. "Los ciclistas holandesos" had been a great pleasure for him.
Are the Netherlands totally flat? The Argentines asked and shook their heads in disbelieve. More than a thousand kilometers straight roads through perfectly flat grassland, those were Argentina's own pampas. Some haciendas, villages and train stations, there was not a lot more to be seen en route. Cows, yes cows plenty of them. In front of us a few gauchos on horse back who were driving a large herd of cows to another field, they walked neatly on the roadside. One of the gauchos perceives us, cyclists, behind him, grins and drives his cattle across the road. Laughing we continue cycling, into the herd. In panic the rear ones jump aside and in no time the whole herd is running from here to there and everywhere, where we have passed already. Looking back we see the flabbergasted gaucho, who tries to rally his cows again. Did he know through how many herds of goats, cows and even camels we already had cycled!
Sube mucho", the people said and looked seriously. We saw the Andes rising on the horizon, and yes it looked terribly high. But everyday a thousand meters and you are there in no time. The first night it was already substantially cooler, he second was nice and chilly, the third day was cold, we crept in our sleeping bags and after the fourth night we could no longer roll up our tent in the morning, frozen stiff it was. We had left behind the vegetation long before, the mountains were stoney and completely bare. The beautiful tint in the naked rocks, whimsical, zigzagging in all kinds of compositions, formed a super terrestrial decor.
On the roads, unpaved of course, the rare traffic swirled up enormous dust clouds, which caused a considerable shortage of breath. The extremely dry air hurts our noses. We panted a bit more, but besides that, the height did not trouble us anymore.