Farewell to my new friends (From Stroud News and Journal)

Farewell to my new friends

At the age of 43, school teacher Ally Mountain from Amberley decided to set off on a global adventure with just £5,000 to take her travelling for a year. Here she sends back her latest report from South America.

LEAVING Buenos Aires two weeks ago, I cycled three blocks from the hostel when a ribbon of lightning split the sky, the heavens opened and down came the rain.

By now, I was used to the reaction of the Porteos. "You are cycling through the Andes on your own for two months. You must be loco"

At first, I found it a little worrying but they dont even have a verb for cycling in Argentina so, perhaps, this was just a normal human reaction to a journey into the unknown. Nevertheless, as I sheltered under an awning I shivered and hoped this was not a bad omen for the big cycling adventure I had planned through the quebradas of North West Argentina.

The rain ceased and I cycled the rest of the way to Retiro Bus Terminal, chatted up the baggage handlers so that they would take care when loading my bike, and settled down for the 26 hour journey to Humuhuaca, a tiny little Quechua town about 150kms south of the Bolivian border with Argentina.

I climbed off the bus into a different world. Here in the North West, tiny, adobe cottages sit precariously at the foot of the awesome Andes which rise up each side of the Quebrada de Humuhuaca, a canyon sliced out of rock by the Rio Grande millions of years ago.

The landscape is a painters palette of colours formed by the different minerals in the mountains thrown into relief against the deep blue sky. When the Spanish Conquistadors arrived here, the inhabitants had not long been taken over by the Incas and the Quechua people, their descendants, scratch a living from the land by growing maize and raising scrawny livestock.

Cycling into Tumbaya three days later I found myself in a ghost town. The adobe buildings seemed empty. I had been forced to stop by the headwind that blows up from the south at midday. The only noise was the eerie sound of the wind blowing the dust into swirls.

I half-expected tumbleweed to roll down the street and Clint Eastwood to walk around the corner in his poncho smoking a cheroot. Instead, it was Dolly, the owner of Tumbaya Hosteria, the only joint in town.

She showed me to the only room and her two daughters found the owner of the little shop to sell me some bread, fruit and water for my journey the next day.

I spent the afternoon with Noemi, 11, and Andreas, five, struggling to teach me new card games in Spanish until 9pm when the rest of the inhabitants came to watch the football on the only TV in town.

The next morning I said a tearful goodbye to Dolly and off we went - me and La Bonita Rocha Bicycletta, climbing 5kms up a mountain road. The reward was spectacular; 13kms down a series of hairpins. I reached a maximum speed of 65.1 kms per hour and couldn't resist some rebel yells on the way down.

I think I frightened a few donkeys and goats, not to mention myself. Arriving at a campsite 4kms out of town to find that you and a very mangy-looking dog are the only inhabitants can be quite disturbing, too.

Of course, by 7pm, having not spoken to a soul for 22 hours, Muttley had shared my corned beef and become my best friend. He guarded my pitch all night so I felt really guilty for not patting him but I was rather afraid that I might catch something.

When I cycled away, he followed me until his little legs could go no further before slumping down on the grass to groan in a most pitiful manner. The worse thing about this travelling lark is that almost every day you have to say goodbye to some really good friends...