Been to a lot a places, seen a lot of things, but the Andes…

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So after the Jama pass debacle I spent hours researching Chilean customs law, and managed to track down the elusive amendment to Chapter 4, paragraph 17.2.3, which allows a foreigner with a Chilean registered vehicle to go whatever the fuck they want with it.

Approaching the Aduana (customs) at the San Francisco Pass I was nervous but confident. And ready for a stouch. Bring it Aduana guy.

Instead… Can I have your passport, ok, can I have your ownership document, ok can I see your tax status document… Ok thanks, please wait.Stamp stamp stamp, off you go.

Mother fuckers.

I spent hours researching th

is shit for nothing.

Nevermind, if anyone out there needs Chilean Aduana advice from here on in… I’m your guy.

The ride south from San Pedro was uneventful, even boring, except for the amazing meal we had in a truck stop diner, that was in the middle of the biggest dusty Mad Max style mining city in a desert that I’ve ever, or will ever see. I’m saving all my adjectives for later in this post so I can’t really go into that town in much detail. But bullet town from Fury Road comes to mind.

Oh and when we eventually hit the Pacific Coast, the $1 oysters and 80c scallops that were still quivering in response to lemon juice were pretty good too. No, they were frikkin awesome is what they were. But again… Saving my short list of adjectives for the next bit.

The last fuel stop before paso San Francisco, and consequently our nights stop over was Copiapo, another dusty mining town in northern Chile. The pass is 480km fuel to fuel, (and 4800m in altitude). The distance meant carrying fuel, so we went out the night before to fill 20lt of fuel bladders, 3lt of containers i scavenged, and both tanks to the frickin brim…

We did this the night before because our fuel bladders are actually designed for water and the other ones I scavenged were old oil containers, technically illegal to fill either with fuel, so we thought it best to get this done the night before in case a responsible servo attendant refused to fill them.

There were several servos in town to try, and failing that I have a hose to siphon from the bike tank to the bladders if needed.

It thankfully was not needed.

No a little more please… Just a bit more. Yes keep going, yes yes that’s it, almost there…

Fuel goes everywhere

Yes perfect, thanks. Same for the other one please. Exactamemte!

Loaded up like two Molotov cocktails we headed off early next morning ready for an argument at the pass, but not before the best breakfast we’ve yet had in another truck stop served from a dirty transportable hut dropped on the side of the road where they make their own bread over coals… But again… I only have so many adjectives and am still saving them.

Ok here we go. The San Francisco pass. (And keep in mind that I’m still short on adjectives as quite a bit has happened since then as well).

The road climbs steadily from Copiapo, flanked by colossal mountain ranges that look ancient and round, beaten down by time, black soil, layers of slopes that go on and on, higher and higher seemingly into infinity.

It bends my mind trying to comprehend the view, and at every turn it just laughs at us and gets bigger again, deeper, the colours change, the texture goes from old and round to more steep and jagged, snow caps off to the side, extinguished volcanoes, red rock, then white, then blue, now all three colours in the same place, it’s staggering. Confusing. Awe inspiring.

2000m… 3000m… 3500m, Almost at the frontier complex…

Hey babe are you feeling ok? I’m not sure if it’s the altitude or anxiety but my heart is racing, waves of tension are hitting me.

It’s probably both.

Ok here we go, Aduana in 1km. Bring it.

Total non event.

We stop 500m after being processed on the Chilean side for an empanada we got at the best breakfast place in Chile.

These mountains are epic. Can’t really do it justice in a photograph, it’s just too big to frame.

To add insult to injury, we make a turn at the pass to find a turquoise coloured lake, maybe 2km across, surrounded by volcanoes, with white salt crusted edges. It’s the lake at the base of Ohos del Salado, whose 6000m+ peaks are towering over us .

My mind is spinning at the scale of it all.

So is Sally’s sense of balance. We’ve been at 4500m for a couple of hours and the oxygen saturation in our blood is gradually dropping, causing fatigue, headaches and imbalance.

Oh babe I’m really dizzy, I need to just go slowly for a bit.

Do you want to stop?

Nah just slow a bit.

So we make our way down the other side like two drunk drivers leaving a pub in the 80’s, into Argentina, process customs again (uneventfully) and continue the descent, stopping to take pics as we wobble our way east.

I’m just so tired though, the altitude is really beating me up, I wake with a start at one point, having dozed for an instant on the bike. Fuck, this is not good. I see a sign for a Parada (restaurant-ish thing) in 10km and focus on getting there.

Pulling up we get jackets off and wander in, collapse on a couple of chairs and try to breathe. A cup of coffee later we’re moving again, keen to get down out of the altitude.

The colours and scale of the mountains are still captivating though, and ever changing. As the air thickens we can talk again…

So pleased we got to go this, it’s gotta be the best bit of road yet hey?

Definitely, it’s just incredible. Did you see the colours, like a rainbow in the mountains?

Yep, insane.

By then we were out of altitude, and riding the last 100km into Fiambala, where the scenery changed again, and I kid you not, the mountains and rock formations at one point looked like an ocean of waves, 10 storeys tall, grey black and blue, then bright red waves of rock shaped like tall breaking waves.

This is incredible, no one at home is going to believe this exists.

Don’t even bother taking a picture.

And finally we arrived in Fiambala, sat on a street corner in front of a supermarket that sold beer, and ate peanuts, laughed at the 12 street dogs sleeping in the middle of an intersection carrying on like they owned the place while cars patiently drove around them, and tried to comprehend the enormity of the landscape surrounding us.

And that was before this afternoon’s ride into Rodeo, where Sally once again almost got blown off a cliff, and with the sun low in the sky, lighting up the scene that unfolded as we picked our way back into some altitude, we agree the view was somehow even more impressive than yesterday.

Tomorrow the Paso Aguas Negras. Feeling pretty lucky to be experiencing this stuff on two wheels.

Xo

Altitude sickness and custom issues

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We left Salta with the plan to head to Susques for the night, before heading over the Jama pass to San Pedro de Atacama, Chile.

Upon leaving Salta, we found ourselves on a narrow windy country road which took us through thick green vegetation, reminding us a little of Sumatra – a very different experience to the rough, dry, arid landscape we had been in since Patagonia.

We then crossed a mountain range which was again, magnificent, unique and spectacular.

Dean and I had previously discussed the altitude we were climbing to over the pass and agreed that a night in Susques, on top of the elevation we had been in for a few days since Mendoza would be enough to avoid any altitude sickness.

We arrived in Susques earlier than expected and as usual wondered what we were going to do with ourselves for the rest of the day. Susques is a dusty small town with about 3 streets and it was 4 pm.

‘There are hotels at the pass… Should we keep on riding?’ I said, hoping to get ahead of the queues of trucks and buses the following morning.

‘May as well, there is nothing to do here’ said Dean.

As we were riding up the pass, it occurred to me that we hadn’t discussed the elevation gain we were making and the fact we would be spending the night at 4300 m. We also had got out of the habit of checking the Windy app…

The wind was picking up and I was vaguely aware of a slight headache…or maybe I was imagining it? I was certainly out of breath, having to take larger gulps of air the higher we went. It wasnt a pleasant journey and we were regretting our decision to push on.

We found a very simple place to stay with a lovely family and went to the only restaurant in town to get an early dinner.

We were both feeling very tired and experienced a prickly, itchy feeling all over our body…maybe it was the sand blowing through our clothes but it was pretty strange. We looked up symptoms of altitude sickness which included headache, fatigue and trouble sleeping.

We crashed early however both woke withing a few hours with our hearts racing. This continued all night and we were unable to sleep.

‘Why didn’t we just stay at Susques?! This sucks!’

It didn’t help that I had Kylie stuck in my head on repeat.

Early the next morning we headed to the border to beat the line up. There were already 3 trucks and about 6 cars ahead of us at 7.30am but we were glad to have missed any buses.

All was going well until we entered Chile and I saw the aduana guy shaking his head at Dean

‘You are not allowed to leave Chile with Chilian bikes as a foreigner’ he said. ‘I can let you back in, but you won’t get out again’

‘but we’ve crossed between Chile and Argentina 10 times in the past couple of months, and have had no issues’

‘Well they obviously didn’t know the law’

They spent time looking up the law and appeared to be confused but egos are big in these positions and once they’ve said one thing they are not going to let some foreigner tell them otherwise.

It made no difference to us as we were already in Chile however it did mean we had to change our plans, which was to cross back into Argentina on the same pass a few days later.

We left tired and confused and made the steep ascent over the Jama pass.

Dean had been told that the northern borders were harder to cross but this hadn’t occured to us when we had been planning our route.

‘Is it legal or not?’ I said to Dean in the intercom. ‘i can’t believe all 10 crossings had it wrong but this guy is right!’

‘We are going to be back in Santiago in a week if we can’t do any of these crossings…and we’ve just changed over $1000 to Argentinian pesos!’

We stopped by another border crossing into Bolivia on our way down the mountain to get their opinion.

‘What are you doing coming from Argentina?’ the border control guy said ‘you can’t leave Chile with a Chilian bike as a foreigner’

So it was clear what he thought and yet another one of our plans (to cross into Bolivia) was squashed!

Its pretty frustrating that even though we own the bikes, Chile has some control over where we go and what we do with it. They are concerned for some reason that we will sell it in another country…we have had to sign a power of attorney that we will return the bike to Chile and this document is usually all they need to give us a temporary export into Argentina but for some reason, in the north, they go by another set of rules.

We were happy to get off the mountain which was freezing and descended into San Pedro de Atacama, a touristy town in the middle of the desert with amazing landscapes.

There are hundreds of tour operators in the town which take you to a number of different excursions in the area. Tours aren’t our thing so we headed to a couple of places and tried to avoid the tour buses.

We visited Valle de la Luna which was stunning and watched the sunset with hundreds of others on one of the many lookouts.

The next day, we decided to visit one of the salt lakes. There was one close to town that lots of tours go to, and another one 45 mins away which has less tours. We found out what time the tour buses got there and timed our visit almost perfectly to miss them.

The lakes have 300 grams of salt per litre compared to sea water which has 35 per litre. It was pretty cool. You could float on your back, on your front and you could even stand horizontally without touching the floor…it was impossible to go under the water without really trying, which Dean did and found out how painful salt is in your eyes!

After doing some research on the law for foreigners leaving Chile with bikes, we decided to cross the borders in reverse now that we couldn’t cross back over the Jama pass.

We headed back on the road yesterday, prepared for a couple of days of boring highway miles to make our way south to get the the next pass. Today we arrived in Curico which is the last big town before the San Francisco pass. We feel pretty confident that we will be able to pass and have downloaded sections of the law that state that we can cross into Argentina. If this doesn’t work for us we will have to turn round and return back to Curico (175 kms) which will suck. If we are able to cross, we have a long day (480 kms) to get to the next town in Argentina.

Fuel tanks are full, as are our 10 litre fuel bags and 3 x 1 litre oil containers that Dean managed to find.

Altitude sickness shouldn’t be an issue as long as we dont get stuck on the pass for any reason.

Fingers and toes crossed .

Exactamente😁

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After spending a couple of nights in Cafayate and trying to find any wine that didn’t require a knife and fork to drink, we are now in Salta.

Salta is a beautiful city that feels more like Europe than anywhere else. It has a beautiful plaza surrounded with restaurants in old buildings with high ceilings and huge verandahs, a little like Bologna but without the good food.

The ride to Salta was stunning…the scenery so gigantic it’s impossible to capture it in a photo…the rocks are as red as anything you see in Australia and the mountains go on forever.

To get an idea of the scale, you can see Dean here.

We finally decided to get our bikes cleaned as we approached Salta. They have never been washed and they were filthy.

Now Roger can see again and I can see my mighty boosh sticker

Our quest to find good food is somehow still continuing however I think I have now surrendered (although I do have my eye on a place tonight…and then I will definitely surrender).

Upon arriving in Cafayate, I had a couple of places marked for lunch…amazing reviews, in a winery setting… surely?

We were presented a menu upon arrival by a smiling waiter (let’s call him Rupert). The prices looked reasonable and it had items other than a ham and cheese sandwich and Milanese (schnitzel) so we took a seat. Dean asked if the winery was open so we could taste some wine and Rupert explained the opening hours.

“so it’s closed?”

“yes” beamed Rupert

We asked if they had white wine but was told they only had a sweet wine. No thanks. We asked if they had red wine and Rupert explained that they had a Malbec.

Surprise surprise. “So, nothing else?”.

“No” smiled Rupert.

Perfect. I ordered a lemonade which is against my religion and Dean insisted on ordering the red because “I’m not going to a winery and not having a wine”. Red wine for lunch means Dean sleeps all afternoon.

We decided on a couple of items from the menu.

“We’d like the trout salad please”

“Oh yes, for pasta we have ravioli with a tomato sauce”

“So you don’t have the trout?”

“No” beamed Rupert.

‘Ok…we’ll have the Burrata salad then’

“Oh we don’t have that” said Rupert

“Ok…so you don’t have the trout or the Burrata?”

‘Exactamente!’ beamed Rupert (imagine Manual from Fawlty Towers trying to blunder his way through understanding what’s going except we were speaking his language). No sorry, no acknowledgement that the menu we were shown had few of the items available, just a big smile.

We ended up getting the only salad that was actually available which took about an hour to arrive, but that’s not unusual here. I was getting edgy but he did pour Dean half a bottle of wine into his glass so it wasn’t all bad, except for the fact that we still needed to ride to our accommodation and the riding limit here is 0.

The salad was ok but all in all it was another failed dining experience.

Last night was another ‘experience’. As it was our 14 year anniversary (and Dean still owed me a dinner for my birthday), we thought we would find somewhere nice to go for dinner (we clearly don’t learn). We found a few places that had good reviews and decided to check them out during the day as prices, opening times, menu items and addresses are rarely accurate here. None of them passed the test so we decided to discard our idea of finding anything nice and thought a pizza might be the safest bet.

We went to a bar for happy hour (all the bars have the same happy hour with the same drinks on offer). After waiting 20 minutes to get served, and then another 30 minutes to get a drink, we paid and left a less than ideal tip in search for somewhere to eat.

All venues here and in Chile have their menus as a QR code which is pretty annoying when you don’t have a local SIM, as we always need to ask for their wifi details just to see what they serve.

We walked into a brewery and asked to see the menu/asked for their wifi details.

“Its not working” I said

“yes it is”

“no it’s not”

‘”ook, it’s working on my phone” said the waiter

“ok…it’s not working on mine”

“oh, sorry!x again, big smile

Not a ‘would you like to see the menu on my phone?’ or ‘here is a printed menu’ just, “how strange”

So we walked out of there. To cut a long boring story short, we ended up back in the place where we left a shitty tip due to the bad service. We ordered a pizza ($30), which had grated cheddar and ‘prosciutto’ cut so thick you couldn’t bite through it. We were also sat next to a road that turned out being the main route for all the buses in Salta. They were pretty much constant and buses here are loud and old (think Johnson’s school bus). It wasn’t great. Feeling deflated, we walked home feeling sick and full from the heavy food at around 11 pm.

Yesterday we withdraw money from Western Union. We transferred $1000 AUD and the rude girl at the counter gave us the equivalent back in $2 notes. She didn’t bother telling us that she didn’t have any big notes and seemed annoyed that she had to deal with people who didn’t speak Spanish fluently, despite working for a business the arranges money for foreigners. Luckily I brought a backpack…not sure what we would have done if I hadn’t?!

We then proceeded to change money with the dodgy money changer on the plaza (who had reasonable note denominations) with a tattoo under his eye…but this was more for old time sake than anything else. Good to see that the blue dollar rate is alive and well, just not as profitable as it once was!

Me with a bag full of money.

Today we found a bank that changed the money into more reasonable denominations so we now have space to carry the money.

Another task today was to buy some decent coffee.

We had searched all the mini marts but couldn’t find anything decent. Today I found where the biggest Carrefour was and we found a coffee we were familiar with and the only one that was vacuum sealed.

It had no price on the shelf so we scanned it, expecting it to be more expensive than we were prepared to spend. The scanner didn’t recognise the product.

Exactamente.

We went to the checkout and the same thing happened.

“Its not showing up, sorry”

“so…can you ask someone for the price?”

”sorry”

“erm….we would really like to buy it…”

He seemed very reluctant to make any effort to find out a price for it but eventually made a call to someone and then explained that he couldn’t sell it because it was out of date.

It was the only vacuum packed coffee on the shelf so no doubt the freshest by far and the use by was December.

“we don’t care” said Dean

“are you sure? I’ll just scan this (shitty cheap) coffee if you’re happy to pay that price?”

He clearly thought that the local small packet of coffee was more expensive than the one we wanted.

“absolutely!”

So we got a good fresh coffee which probably should have cost about $20 for $3. Good result!

So, one last hope for good food tonight. It’s a bar that serves wine and apparently has good tapas …let’s see.

Tomorrow we are back on the road and heading to San Pedro de Atacama before zig zagging our way slowly back to Santiago x

*update* I don’t want to talk about dinner tonight, I have officially surrendered, but we did come home with some bread and cheese that we stole from a variety of restaurants and walked out of yet another one. Looking forward to going to a small country town where there are no decisions to make.

Itchy Ears and strangely… Jules.

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So a few days ago after finishing a section of gravel road, we pulled up under a tree next to a farmers hut to reinflate tyres and lube the chains.

(Low tyre pressure is more comfy off-road, improves tyre wear and gives more grip, the opposite applies on the tar, so we go from 33psi on tar to 21 on dirt).

Anyway, so we’ve settled into a routine where we hit gravel, stop, I let down Sal’s tyres while she stays on the bike (she’s VIP), Sal rides off into the sunset while I let my own tyres down, then I play catch up for ten minutes.

On the other end of the dirt we park the bikes parallel to each other but facing opposite directions, with the rhs of the bikes facing each other.

This is so they lean away from each other allowing access to tyre valves, and so the pump that needs to plug into my bike can reach all 4 tyres without moving anything.

Neat.

So there we are, eventually, parked correctly.

‘No Sal, the other left side. No the other way!’

I get out the pump and connect it up while Sally removes 4 valve caps.

It was at this point that Sal realized we were in a midgey frenzy. About a million little flying bitey annoying things were hovering around our heads.

Babe can we do this further down the road at that closed petrol station, there are all these insects here?

We’re here now, hopefully they don’t bite… It won’t take long. (At this moment I made the v wise decision to leave in my earplugs).

Well… They bit alright. And they really seemed to like our ears. A LOT.

These things are driving me insane! Fuck shit fuck!! Little fuckers, fucking ass hat shit balls cu#t… why the fuck are they trying to get into my ears the little fucks (Sally swears quite a lot when agitated)

While Sal did the tyres and swore, I put some oil on the chains and danced around like a crazy man trying to stop the little bastards from biting my ears.

Unsuccessfully.

By the time we were done our ears were red raw and itchy as hell.

That was five days ago and we’re still scratching.

It’s the little routines like doing tyre pressures, hauling gear and loading up in the mornings and that you get into a pretty good groove with after a couple of months moving, and we’re definitely in that groove now.

Sally puts our intercoms on charge every night. I oil the chains each day. We have a fuel routine. We take turns cleaning visors. i make coffee. Sally does the toast. We both do washing. I put padlocks on and off bikes, and Sally does pretty much everything else.

After the mauling, we rode some long days up the Ruta 40 stayed in a couple of nice quiet small towns, eventually arriving in Mendoza for New years…

Crickets.

Turns out the centre of Mendoza is NOT a great place to spend New Years, we passed midnight on our own standing on the roof of the 8 storey building we were staying in, watching fireworks going off 360deg around us, but all more than 10km away off in the distance, with not another soul in sight.

It reminded me of the opening scene from 28 Days Later.

Fuck it my ears are STILL ITCHY.

There was a Voge spare parts place in Mendoza so I managed to get oil and filters and did a service on the bikes while we were there, so not a total waste of time.

The riding north of Mendoza has been a combination of utterly amazing, and completely boring in equal measures.

Tonight we’re in Cafayate, wine country, where I just got this brilliant picture of Julie and Keith, quite oddly Julie asked me not to write about her, so I’ll just post the pic instead.

After two months on the road we’re traveling pretty well, but some things are already showing signs of fatigue. The zips on my rear bag are only zipping some of the time, my boots leak water, the bite valve on my camel back drips constantly, my visor won’t stay open and the final drive on both bikes is pretty worn out.

Sally has thrown away several items of clothing, the zip on her tank bag is frayed to the point of no longer removing it overnight, and the undertray of her bike is held together by pieces of wire, some duct tape, a plastic softdrink bottle I cut up, a few zip ties and a beanie to stop dust entering the air intake (take that Magyver!).

But this is all pretty normal stuff for a bike trip 😀

Back to the itchy ears…

So now we’re on the road just north of Mendoza, on one of the fairly boring stretches, except that the road passes along the base of a sizeable mountain range (the Andes no less), where rivers run down the mountains and across the road at regular intervals, so maybe every 500m there is a really deep dip in the road to allow the water across. So it’s a bit like a roller coaster, up, down, up, down for about 100km this goes on. No kidding.

In every down bit the flood water has brought sand and small stones across the road, so we need to continuously negotiate these at the bottom of a blind crest.

To make it more interesting, we find ourselves sharing this bit of road with about 30 triaxle trucks (v big ones), who are travelling in convoy, at about 80kmh. Ffs.

Since we’re trying to do 100, we need to pass these trucks but as the road is full of blind crests this is difficult. More difficult because the trucks kick up a lot of dust at every dip where the sand is, so following close behind it’s impossible to see what’s coming the other way, also because it’s blind crests as far as the eye can see. To be fair, it’s impossible to see very much at all really.

The solution? I try to get a run up on one at a time and take my life into my hands, pass one blindly, then get enough clear road to tell Sal in the intercom that there’s no oncoming traffic so she can pass safely. She is vip after all.

Repeat.

Having passed 25 or so trucks on this dusty blind rollercoaster I hear panic in the intercom…

Shit shit ouch ouch, fuck I need to stop, something is biting me, OUCH AHHH

Really, um… you need to stop now? (and let all these frikkin trucks back past us?) (I didn’t say that last bit out loud). Okay, so pull over. What is it??

No no I’m not stopping, just keep going, I think I’ve killed it.

It was a wasp, and out here they’re big and scary looking critters. That was two nights ago, and Sal’s arm is still really swollen, bright red and itching like hell.

It’s cured her itchy ears though.

xo

Windy apps and Google maps

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This is what life felt like for a few weeks…constantly checking and rechecking the windy app for updates on wind speed and searching for alternative routes. Its a good way to stop scrolling on social media!

Dean has covered most of the past few weeks, no doubt while I was trying to keep fit and work off the various combinations of ham and cheese that our diet has become.

The food is just so unimaginative. Every restaurant serves the same food. Hamburgers, crumbed meat, pizzas and maybe empanadas. And yes, they all have ham and cheese. Things are bad when a toasted ham and cheese sandwich if the healthy option! There are meat options in Argentina but they are usually a little more expensive and from the experience we’ve had, they like to overcook it. Sacrilege.

We are now in Mendoza where we have an apartment and are spending a few nights over new years. It’s great to have space and a kitchen. And it’s hot! Dean is currently in the shower with his suit on which is filthy. I think I need to do the same.

It is 6.30 pm and we plan to go into the plaza to celebrate the new year. We went to the central market and bought some salmon and salad so we can eat a healthy meal before we head out. Everything in Argentina closes at around 1 pm every day and reopens at 6 pm. Even restaurants close at 3.30 pm and reopen at 9 pm so there are a few hours every day where the cities are dead and there is nothing to do.

Trying to delay going out for a drink or dinner before 9 pm is quite challenging…I don’t know how/why they work these long days yet have dinner so late! Being new years eve, all businesses closed for the day at 2 pm so with no restaurants opening until 9 pm, we have some time to kill which is very challenging for Dean and I. I have no doubt that the city is going to come alive in about 4 hours and will continue into the night 😊 I just hope we find something to do tomorrow when EVERYTHING is closed all day 😬

The ride to Mendoza was a little boring but there was still the magnificent Andes in the distance which still have a little snow on the peaks. We took a detour on the way up, which Ben recommended but unbeknownst to us, hadn’t actually done…it wasn’t great but there some nice views

After Mendoza, we continue to head north. We have a rough idea of the route we will take which takes in some of the stunning scenery northern Argentina has to offer and as many of the mountain passes that we can do in and out of Chile. I’m bracing myself for some challenging off road riding but I have no doubt it will be spectacular. Everything is also getting cheaper as we head north which always makes travel and life in general easier 😊

It seems to be a ‘thing’ to create stickers when you do overland trips here. Every petrol station, cafe, sign post and sign on the Ruta 40 is covered with stickers. We obviously missed the memo

Over and out for 2025!

Argentina Again

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As nice as it is to see my passport filled with stamps, crossing back and forward between just two countries feels a bit odd. I’d guess we’re up to 10 crossings by now!

After leaving Futalefu we crossed to Argentina again and rode on to El Bolson to spend Christmas in a ‘chill’ hostal recommended by another traveller, which turned out to be a great tip.

The hostal did a lovely Christmas dinner, and we spent the night with BenSnacks and Alex (who came there from across Argentina, a full days ride just to be with the three of us!), it was really nice.

With another hike in the mountains thrown in, it was a great break from the road and wind, and we were more than a little sad to leave, and say a last goodbye to BenSnacks as our roads wont meet again on this trip.

Ben’s on the end of his rtw trip, headed to Santiago now to ship his bike back home.

Hopefully we see Ben in AU someday, or we’ll put up with the shit food in France and go visit him instead 😉

Next town 200km north is San Carlos de Bariloche, a heavily tourist town, with some great hiking and a main street full of tourists in matching coats denoting which bus company they’re travelling with. Odd.

So today is Sally’s birthday!! Which was supposed to start with a 10km hike to a view point, but it’s windy as hell, and the view point is covered in clouds so we turned back on the way to the trail head and walked about the city instead. (i.e. tacna time).

On the last hike we did (pic above) I offered to take Sally to a Michelin starred restaurant for her birthday… if she’d jump into the beautiful but freezing river we were following.

Me ‘one star for every minute you can stay in’

Sally ‘do I need to do a full minute?’

Me ‘yes, in up to your neck’

Sally ‘you bastard’

Ben ‘wow really?! does this offer apply to me as well?’

Me ‘no BenSnacks’

So it’s hamburgesas or pizza for dinner (the staples of food in Patagonia).

There will be Pisco though.

Back into Chile

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The weather at El Chalten eventually broke, so we went for a bit of a walk on one of the trailheads that isn’t controlled for tickets (avoiding the $70 hiking fee!), nice walk but it was still foggy up higher so we just did part of it and spared my knee the full descent.

From there we were unsure of how to get out of dodge and further north out of the wind.

There was a 4 hour period very early in the day, 2 days out, where there might not be wind on the famous ’73 malditos’ route (google it), or alternatively there’s another road, twice as long that avoids the malditos but is still gravel and totally unknown.

We decided to do a short day (140km) out of El Chalten and stay in a tiny town on the Ruta 40 called Tres Lagos, (that’s right at the start of the Malditos), so we arrived pretty early and set about some intense Tacna time for the rest of the day.

There was a Hilux with a couple of bikes on the back passing thru town and we got taking to them about the road options, turns out the couple run bike tours and were going to do the alternate longer route that day just to see how it was for future clients to use. Great! We swapped phone numbers and waited to hear back from them with a road report.

Our window with low wind was from 5am till around 9am, so it was an early night! Sometime during the night my watch buzzed with the message from the Hilux guys…

The pic didn’t look bad at all, but anyway I went back to sleep content with that news. If I had to choose 73km of gravel I’ve already ridden, or 145km that I don’t know, and I have only 4 hours in the next few days to do it, I’d take the 73 every time.

So back the dreaded malditos it was. The wind forecast ended up being a little off so there was more than expected, but we got through ok, breathed a sigh of relief, reinflated our tyres to highway pressure and buckled up for a long day to get up north and hopefully cross the andes back into Chile where the wind is less crazy.

As the day wore on the wind picked up, and aware that by 6pm things would get dicey we barely stopped from 5am till 4pm, eventually arriving at the fuel stop before the border and then pausing a moment to work out what to do next.

Just over the border we had two options, either get on a ferry the next morning (if it wasn’t cancelled due to wind) to a small port in Chile and ride north from there on the best part of the Carreterra Austral, or skip the ferry and ride down the mountain pass to the Carreterra Austral and do half a day in the worst part of it to eventually get to the same good bit.

Sally looked at the ferry booking site to see if there were seats for the next morning available, but surprisingly found seats for an extra ferry that had been scheduled to catch up after all the cancellations due to the wind. Fuck yes.

We had 3 hours to rode 80km, cross the frontier and find the ferry terminal. Hit it.

Lucky for us there was no lineup at the border posts, so we made it with time to spare, and were soon on a boat counting our blessings.

On the boat Sally even managed to get a call out to the Clarks/Dougans for Violetta’s birthday before the Internet dropped out 🙂

As it was to be a lateish arrival we WhatsApp’d a local guest house to book a room, and crashed pretty hard after dinner.

Next day on the carreterra was a stunning mountain ride, with rivers, lakes, snow capped mountains and almost perfect asphalt road for the whole day. Really nice to get to do that part twice, I could have turned around at the end of the day and done it all again!

That brings me to yesterday… Our first day in proper cold dreary rain, wet squelchy boots, wet hands, cold, and happy to eventually arrive at Futalefu, a small town 10km from the Argentinian border again, but maybe 500km north from where we excited Argentina just the day before last.

So why all this criss crossing the border, do we love hanging out in customs lineups? No. We just needed to get north of the wind on the other side of the Andes.

In Futalefu we’ve reunited with BenSnacks for a few days till we head north to Mendoza after Christmas, and he catches up with some other guys to go off-road riding.

Not much more to report, tomorrow we’re going back to the Argentine side but staying close to the Andes where the wind is manageable.

We hope.

xxoo

El Chalten

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So we made it, despite the wind, despite my bike having an error code on the dash, despite the bus loads of people at the border that took hours to clear and despite the one fuel stop we needed being out of fuel when we got there (another hour waiting, could have been worse though!), we rolled in here at around 8pm.

Stunning ride in for the last 80km though…

Once again the weather is not playing ball, and it’s bucketing, so we’re waiting out the rain to go hiking later today.

Hopefully.

Wind windows

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We said goodbye to our travel buddy Ben Snacks (Pop Pop Pop) last night, and also to Alex from Germany who we’ve bumped into a few times along the road, and with loose plans to reconvene for Christmas, we rode to Porto Natales this morning on our lonesomes again.

It was a tough ride for the first 100km (wind of course), then the road turned west and into the wind and it got a bit less hectic.

I’d woken at 6am, and immediately went for my phone and the now reverred windy app… balls. The wind was up a bit over the forecast, and coming up more as the day wore on.

‘We better get going Sal’

The forecast was for 45kmh winds, gusting to 65, blowing directly across our trajectory. In all honesty I had no idea whether that was a lot, or totally manageable, but it was the lowest it’d been in a while, or would-be for a while.

Turns out that 45 gusting to 65 is quite a lot, somewhere near the limit I’d guess.

With wind from the left pushing us right, and ordinarily riding on the right (this being South America and all) there isn’t far to get pushed before you run out of road and end up in the scrub.

Which would be bad.

Lucky for us it’s Sunday! So the roads were completely deserted, and we did what any normal Australian would do and rode on the left side of the highway instead. Actually on the left side, of the left side!

This gave us two whole lanes to get blown across before leaving the road. Of course there was the odd oncoming car, truck and bus to contend with, but that extra margin for 98% of the ride was a blessing.

It did have me wondering how the conversation might play out with the Carabinieros though…

‘but officer, I’m from Australia, i didn’t know!’

Tomorow we have another window early afternoon until about 10pm to reach El Chalten, that’s 515km with a border crossing thrown in.

The last 320 of which is without any services, and will be all cross wind (less than today though!) so will be battling that and carrying extra fuel too.

It’s going to be a long day.

You know it was a hard day when Sally is asleep at 4pm!

ushuaia

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When people told us it was windy in Patagonia, I imagined constant strong wind, riding down the road with the bike leaned over at 45deg, getting blown around a bit… Like really windy days back home. Um, No.

I didn’t imagine having to stay in one place for days to wait for a window of time when the wind DROPPED to that level so it would be less unsafe to ride between two towns 200km apart.

But there it is, and so, here we are in Punta Arenas watching wind forecasts and waiting for something below 60kmh of side wind before we leave.

The wind here is evil. At night in the room it feels like the whole building is going to get blown away. Yesterday I had to stop walking and crouch down low not to get blown over in the middle of town. The power lines screech and get blown so hard they smack against each other with such force it feels unsafe walking underneath them.

Anyhow…

The past week was spent getting to Ushuaia (mostly tail wind), being in Ushuaia (mostly disappointing) and then getting out of Ushuaia (mostly side and head wind).

Ushuaia itself is just another mid sized town, with not that much to see or do if you’re not doing excursions to see penguins or taking a boat to visit Antarctica.

The ride there from Porto Natales was nothing like as scenic as we’ve come to expect, just rolling hills and quite barren, aside from the weather we could have been in Australia!

As we were waiting for some spare parts to arrive in the next town we stayed there a few nights, and that was definitely enough.

Luckily the wind dropped to a manageable level for our departure, but even so…

‘babe there’s something wrong with my bike. It’s just going slower and slower’ crackles Sally over the intercom

‘ok… is it misfiring? Any lights on the dash?’

‘no it’s just going slowly, like only 70kmh’

‘mine is too, it’s this headwind, just try to tuck in a bit behind the screen and it’ll go a little faster’

Now we’re doing 80, full throttle. It’s 11am and we have another 300km to go, It’s going to be a long day.

To make matters worse, Sally got food poisoning last night so didn’t sleep, and was vomiting into a bucket half hour before leaving.

Poor Sally.

Also it’s cold. Really cold. 11deg on the dash, but with the wind tearing through me it feels much worse, well at least it’s not raining I muse…

Yep. There it is. Rain.

Kudos to the goretex gear we have though, or more like kudos to Sally for recommending that I bring my rain suit despite the bulk. At least we’ve stayed bone dry.

Unexpectedly those spare parts arrived a week early so we could have left here (Punta Arenas) had the wind allowed, but it’s been pretty brutal these few days. Today it’s averaging 68km/h with gusts at 92km/hr. And today is A LOT BETTER than yesterday.

We have a two hour window at 45km/h tomorrow morning to go north, fingers crossed the forecast is right!