Good and not so good surprises, up and down the hills into Salta

The not so good surprises: coming out of Tafi del Valle resulted in changing some plans in the past two days and not having internet, but the good news is that we made it to Salta as planned and we are back in schedule to meet with our friends Agustina and Beatriz in Embarcacion, provincia de Salta, to do some medical work in a native community. So the surprises: a monster hill following Tafi del Valle to a place called Infiernillo, 3.5 hours of climbing very slow at what Steve thinks was about 7-8% grade. Surprise number two, we expected to descend rapidly afterwards but the road after infiernillo was very crappy. The scenery was spectacular though. We decided to stop before Cafayate (a really nice touristic town with many wineries around it) in a town called Colalao del Valle, third surprise… the hosteria was very cheap and the water heater functioned by heating with a wood fire and there were no restaurant in town, so we made our own sandwiches. It was cold and no heat but a nice alpaca blanket kept us warm. The next day (#3 of riding) we went to Cafayate for second breakfast/lunch with internet, very civilized, what we did not know was that there were no services for the next 60 miles. But the scenery was super spectacular, the Quebrada de las Conchas (Canyon of the shells) is a mostly downhill road in excellent condition that goes with the Las Conchas river and the east walls of the canyon are similar to Sedona but 30 miles long of red rock formations. Last surprise yesterday was getting to the town where we were told there was a Hosteria, La Vina, to find out there was not one. It was 6:30 and getting dark, but as usual we found a place to stay and thanks to Sra. Maria Cota’s homestay place we had a decent room and a hot shower. Today coming to Salta there were no major surprises, as a big city the traffic was hectic at times, we had the first and only unfriendly truck experience but we made it to the Centro and have a nice hotel near the plaza. So the summary of the first 4 days is approximately 260 miles with 16.000 feet of climbing, the butts are a little sore but the rest of the body feels great.