Food Whilst Cycle Touring South America Part 1

This will be an absolutely enormous subject so I have broken it into two parts.

Part One: Practical Cycle-Touring Food and Logistics

Part Two: Interesting Foods Along The Way

This only covers the regions we visited, south of La Paz, Bolivia. This excludes an enormous part of South America which contains huge diversity of food cultures, ingredients and considerations for the travelling cyclist.

For those wanting to explore further I would recommend the widely acclaimed and comprehensive cookbook 'The Latin American Cookbook' by Virgilio Martinez. Unfortunately I have not managed to find an ebook version with which to travel by bicycle so you will have to suffice with reading it before or after.

Practical Touring Food and Logistics

Contents/Sections:

-Breakfast

-Lunch

-Dinner

-Snacks

-Kitchen + Equipment

Breakfast

For breakfast our usual ritual was to boil enough water for two cups of coffee and a shared single large bowl of 'porridge'. By porridge I mean pouring boiling water over oats, preferably wholemeal, and a mixture of what seeds and milk powder we could find. Sometimes we would mix in quince paste ("Dulce de Membrillo"), jams ("Mermelada") or peanut butter ("Mantequilla/Pasta/Crema de Mani"). Chia seeds were a common component and helped to give an extra boost of long lasting carbohydrate and protein. They were quite cheap usually as it is a staple native food of South America except where they had been identified as 'superfoods' for tourists and then the price could be 4-5x as much. Plenty of milk powder gave a protein and fat boost to the porridge to keep the energy going down the road.

Quince paste and Kumara/sweet potato paste. Both priced here at their highest in the south of Patagonia, as they would often be half this up north. A blackberry variety 'Mora' was also available.

Using up Chia seeds before a border crossing with dark cocoa and cream! A serious powerhouse breakfast

Why worry about ultralight gear when you carry Peanut butter by the kilogram! Often only available in tiny 250gm jars (very good seals for re-use), an opportunity to get a decent supply for the desert sections could not go ignored. Unfortunately, as was the case in NZ 10 years ago, any peanut butter that was rarely available often was laced with sugar and 'vegetable' oil. It strikes me that this is completely unnecessary and a simple 100% ground peanuts paste would be far more desirable to all, but I suspect that poor quality and cheap low oil-content nuts are the reason it's needed.

Sometimes breakfast is pretty basic. Instant oats were more commonly available but provided too short a burst of energy. Wholegrain/ 'integral' 'entera' were much better for this but even just mixing in a decent amount of fat and protein with milk powder nuts and seeds would help.

Lunch

Lunch was perhaps the most challenging meal to manage with a shortage of our usual go-tos from tramping in NZ. In NZ we would usually have a carb such as tortillas/flatbreads or Ryvita crackers with energy dense high-fat toppings such as avocado, cheese, homemade pesto, peanut butter. However these were all either impossible to find or prohibitively expensive.

As such our lunches here revolved around finding and stashing enough bread 'Pancitos' (small flat bread rolls like a mini discus) or dense crackers (brand Hogarenas particularly high energy and dense) and topping with any of the above if we had them. Sometimes we found cream cheese, sachets of chutney, aioli or salami. As much as we tried to avoid processed meats it was one of the only relatively-safe and readily available options rurally and the local llama variety was amazingly lean like venison. We often ran so low amidst either lack of resupply options, disappointments of non-existent shops, or shops that only sold chocolate bars and coca-cola. In these instances lunch would often be an improvised back-up of inevitably smashed crackers and dulce-de-leche (a very popular caramelised sweetened condensed milk spread). Dulce de membrillo or dulce de Mora (blackberry paste) would be less sweet and more palatable in a semi-savoury context.

We tried cooking lunch a few times, once infamously boiling lentils for 1 hour at 4900m from a mistake in food planning. Cooked simple lunches were a nice change and allowed easier to carry/find carbs but we still had trouble having enough protein and fat to make it into a decent meal. We also used a lot more fuel in doing so and in many parts didn't have the water rations for it.

We had expected to be able to find meals or food en route more often but due to the siesta overlapping with when we would often pass through villages, we often arrived to closed shops.

As we headed further south into Argentina we occasionally found good bakeries making proper wholemeal sourdough bread which could be easily worked up into a delicious picnic with a tomato and some cheese.

See Part 2 for a breakdown of cheeses as the varieties are often perplexing and very different to European varieties.

A typical selection of 'food' available in the middle of nowhere. Not bad for a sprint race but not much for a sustainable diet. This example is the snack shelf at a small remote restaurant. Often there would also be pasta, packet tomato paste, tinned fish, dried lentils, rice and oddly-cheap dried ground parmesan.

Note that shops selling groceries had many names, the names have clearly different meanings but the meanings were ignored and often interchangeable. A 'supermercado' could be identical to a 'kiosco' or 'Drugstore' right next door. Arranged below by approximate usage from North to South: Tienda, Mercado, Minimercado, Drugstore, Despensa, Kiosco, Maxikiosco, Almacen.

The ideal lunch, non-existent in Bolivia, pretty easily found in North Argentina and then prohibitively expensive in the far south.

Margarine, a readily-available and energy-dense staple in Bolivia, was pretty miserable at first but in a hungry stretch was a life-saver.

A particularly grim lunch of jam and smashed crackers after a border crossing stripped us of anything fresh.

Bungees come in useful for baguette overflow

Dinner

In Bolivia there were few options available. In Central Argentina and Chile there was much more choice but heading south the prices escalated fiercely to well above New Zealand prices which necessitated a return to simple options.

Carbohydrates:

Rice- generally white due to the huge fuel usage of brown rice

Pasta- wholemeal and egg based was preferable and commonly found, a small boost of fibre and protein

Bulgur Wheat- when found in bigger centres, similar to brown rice but 1/4 as long to cook

Potatoes-Occasionally in Bolivia due to availability but they were quite heavy.

Down in the Patagonian south even rice became extremely expensive. Here 1kg of plain white rice is for sale at $5-10 NZD equivalent.

Protein:

Lentils- generally brown lentils were all we could find, these take a while to cook but are cheap, nutritious and travel well in the pannier. These are not allowed across the border into Chile.

Soy protein/TVP- Suprisingly prevalent and cheap. Needed to be in an already flavourful meal e.g. curry or rich risotto to make it taste less like cardboard. This also tended to stick to the pot, or when boiled erupt out of the pot so we would usually add it near the end and leave the pot to sit and absorb. If you're not used to it this can cause GI discomfort to some people in large quantities.

Salami/Salchicha/Chorizo/Longaniza- Various sausages and processed meats that were readily available and some had longer shelf-lives when stored in a pannier for a day or two. Again, we want to minimise our meat consumption and consumption of processed foods however at times it became really the only option for variety outside of the above two and was nutritionally dense.

Eggs-When we were camping near a shop or a small farm-gate seller these were an excellent alternative. Some travelled with them in custom egg boxes but ours never worked very successfully.

Other Meats were generally sold in extraordinary ways, bulk frozen loose in chillers at shops was the most 'sanitary' manner we generally saw-aside from plastic wrapped in the rare big city supermarket. In general raw meat was sitting out at room temperature covered in flies, often on the ground (Bolivian street markets), and would be of questionable origin. We unfortunately saw plenty of cattle farms with intensive feed lots 'battery-farmed', and these were the ones that were publicly visible. Occasionally we saw Charqui being made, an air/sun-dried and fermented product like jerky, often made from Llama but also from horse meat.

Fish was available tinned but was of generally very poor quality and not worth it. On a few occasions we had sardines or a tinned meat as an 'emergency' backup but they were pretty awful. The fishing industry supplying these tinned fish is also quite controversial with cataclysmic declines in fish stocks and well-publicised government corruption in managing these resources.

A common way of selling meat down south, alarming but at least seemingly safer than the 'wet markets' of Bolivia and Northern Argentina. We steered clear of the whole lot as much for hygiene as environmental and animal welfare reasons given what we saw travelling through the countryside.

Dehy Llama, a good idea but rather chewy and stringy with little flavour.

Argentine Asado, we're cooking dinner at 10pm...

Classic dahl and rice, cyclists staple

One of the rare few times we found tofu, only ever in big cities and sold as a bougie 'health food'. Here we also had dehydrated shiitake stems, much cheaper than the caps but just as flavoursome.

Vegetables:

Dehydrated mushrooms- 'Callampas, Hongos, Morchellas' many different varieties are available. These were available in various forms at a wide range of prices but the cheap ones made for excellent additions to meals being both lightweight and intensely rich in flavour, livening up a lentil dahl infinitely. This was a product we would seek out when we reached a bigger centre, often sold in a delicatessan or dry bulk stores.

Dehydrated Morron- red bell pepper/capsicum, often found in supermarkets this was a handy light product to

liven up a dinner when there wasn't fresh vegetables for days,

Onions, carrots, courgettes

The ubiquitous staples that kept us going. Durable, cheap, versatile, not needing much cooking and nutritious.

The presence of greens makes this a particularly rare and lush vegetable selection for the Altiplano.

Coriander/cilantro popped up often in Bolivia and in northern Patagonia and was always a welcome green

Bulgurwheat in a simple salad with some particularly rare fresh lettuce (lechuga) and cucumber (pepino)

Herbs+Spices+Oil

We travelled with a small 200ml plastic bottle of oil that had a good seal and this was ideal for topping up with olive oil along the way. Latterly olive oil became prohibitively expensive due to a drought and wildfire driven global shortage. It is a very energy dense ingredient that can liven up a sad pasta dish. Oil was useful for simple shallow frying with the thin aluminium lid or a few times we tried some deep-frying with cheap canola oil to make empanadas, donuts and tortas fritas in the middle of nowhere.

We could easily find stock cubes or sachets along the way. These are not great long term given the extensive and minimally regulated additive lists and enormous sodium content but for us they turned otherwise plain rice and lentils into something quite palatable. One positive could be that we were likely hyponatremic with all the sweating each day and that we were just replenishing it here but I suspect this was more than we would have needed, this being based on experience rather than calculation of course. Often we would start cooking with more water than the meal needed so we could pour off a 'soup' to have whilst it cooked which was pretty nice on the frosty Puna when temperatures dipped below zero within minutes of sunset.

Making spice mixes for dahl and various styles of curry was tricky but there were usually useful pre-blended mixes even at small shops. 'Alino completo' was a convenient blend of generally ground coriander seeds, cumin seeds, oregano, pepper and dry garlic. This is a blend that was created supposedly as a basis of chilean cooking but is common across so many cuisines.

We carried a small shaker of salt all the way from Bolivia as a reserve for making oral rehydration solution if we ran into serious GI illness i the middle of nowhere but as it happened this was definitely excessive and it became a travelling novelty salt shaker more than anything else. Not worth the weight. Salt is sold in quantities no smaller than this, often by the kilogram for barbecuing, so try pick up a small amount from a hostel shared shelf if you must.

More unusual local spices and vegetables we encountered and incorporated will be covered in more detail in part two.

DIY Queso and Morchella Empanadas on the road. For these we used pre-rolled empanada pastry which was readily available. A mixture of cheeses gets the best properties working together, I liked Queso cremoso for the creamy-melting-majority with a sharper Queso de Cabra or Roquefort mixed in to cut through. Similarly a small amount of lemon juice, garlic and/or spring onions cut through the cheese.

This required using the pot lid/pan as a sort of deep fryer with about 1cm depth of oil tipped into a corner. Above there is hardly any oil for the first ones and they stuck badly whilst not cooking through, it was later that we started the deep frying idea. Be careful it's super easy to burn yourself with this setup but it allowed us to make a few treats such as donuts and tortas fritas along the way. We don't have a pot gripper for the improvised lid/pan so we used the pocket knife pliers on the lid as a handle...precarious!

The usual approach, a soupy boil up of pasta and veges with a soup to be decanted. A 'frypan' of onions and occasionally some salami or sausages.

Snacks:

Despite being not quite as common as in New Zealand, and often quite variable in pricing, peanuts made a good staple snack on the go.

Chocolate was cheap in the north and astonishingly expensive in the south, as high as $25NZD (!!!) for a 200g block of low quality milk chocolate in El Calafate! When we could find a bulk food store or markets we could stock up on dried fruits and seeds but these were rare and usually not very cheap.

In Bolivia a common snack food was fried broad beans, plantain and corn kernels sold in convenient little bags.

Cookies/biscuits in various chocolatey and sweet combinations were always available and got us through many rough stretches but a long-term diet of these is clearly not a good idea for a multitude of reasons.

Muesli bars are almost non-existent or extremely expensive where sold for tourists (~$2NZD/bar)

Muesli-type biscuits were prevalent and became a common staple but a long-term diet of even these is not ideal.

Hogarena and Cerealita were brands of dense seeded crackers which we could load with toppings such as peanut butter, jams, cheese and membrillo.

If we had had access to an oven, bulk seeds/nuts and some baking supplies it would have been a good opportunity to make our own muesli bars but this combination never seemed to align.

Milk powder mixed with dark cocoa could be shaken up with some cool fresh water into a quick chocolate milk in a Nalgene. Chia added into this gives an extra boost but some will dislike the consistency. Chocolate milk has been shown in several systematic reviews to be at least as effective as conventional 'sports-recovery' drinks in post-exercise recovery,

Fresh Raspberries on the roadside

Crackers and cheese, not all crackers being equal these dense seeded crackers travelled well and were high energy themselves

Roasted Peanuts, these ones were sold scooped from a wheelbarrow in a Bolivian streetmarket

Wild cherries

Kitchen:

My trusty 12 year old MSR whisperlite universal was excellent. It burned gasoline mostly as we struggled to find bencina blanca (white gas, coleman fuel, fuellite). Bencina blanca is banned in Bolivia reportedly due to use in cocaine processing. It is available in some hardware stores (Ferreteria) in southern Chile but in Argentina we could not find it. I used a flint and steel to light this stove which was handy as it could pack in checked luggage, it never got ruined in the rain or ran out. For more detail on stoves see my gear reflections posts.

We used a simple Macpac 1.6L alloy pot. Although conveniently sized for packing, 1.6L was only just enough capacity for two very hungry cyclists and often overflowed whilst a challenge to stir in. Next time I'd bring 2-2.2L.

I picked up a simple aluminium deep-rimmed lid from an opshop in Australia after it became obvious we needed something more versatile than a plain lid for use frying. It was very thin and hard work to fry with but it was what we had and did well for what it was. I would find a small light non-stick pan with a handle removed for the pot lid/pan task this in future. This lid had no handle and we had no pot gripper so I used pliers which didn't work very well.

For crockery we had the collapsible silicone Sea To Summit 650ml bowl and 480ml mug. This was perfectly adequate as someone can eat from the pot while the other has the bowl. [Now right at the end of the trip I have just noticed a few hairline cracks on the folds of the bowl but that could be from how I have stored it in the pannier and they aren't leaking at all]

We also had a Zyliss plunger mug but the ring gasket was fragile and easily failed making it very poor at filtering. Next time I would bring my aeropress go, it's bulky and not versatile but it is infinitely superior at coffee brewing.

We each had anodized aluminium sporks which have lasted many years. Some people have a wooden or silicone spoon for scraping the pot but it was a cheap surface that changed little with the spork metal scraping it so I didn't worry but on a more expensive pot this would be wise.

We had a few knives, too many to be honest. One stainless steel Victorinox serrated vegetable knife which was stored in a little cardboard sheath. This held a good edge being serrated but was quite short. An Opinel size 9 Carbone was a good size for cutting bigger vegetables, bread and had a nicer feel to it. I also had two blades on my Victorinox Champ pocket knife which I didn't use as much in cooking to avoid getting food in all the little hinges and recesses.

A small ~600ml tupperware tub was very useful for storing crushable vegetables, open packets, for chopping on and holding food to be cooked or leftovers.

An experimental beer can meths-cooker in use in Tasmania to keep our MSR clean for the flight. Definitely a useful option but needs a fair amount of tweaking and the boil-times at sea level were grim (~15mins for 1l)

MSR setup before I made a new windshield

New windshield made from a foil roasting pan

The hard-working Sea to Summit bowl. Note the plastic spoon in use whilst the second spork was temporarily lost. Trying to explain the idea of a spork in stunted Spanish in an Argentine outdoor shop was met with baffled expressions and many back-and-forths to the back room producing either fork or spoon but alas no hybrid. Thankfully we found the lost one soon after.

You may also like