So here we are in Mendoza again, well and truly doing some Tacna time now!
A couple of weeks ago we started getting a lot of interest from buyers for the bikes, so decided to go with the momentum and get a sale a little earlier than our finish date if we had a reasonable offer for both, which happened earlier this week.
So both bikes are now sold pending final payment, but we have a 10% deposit so it’s looking good.
Earlier in the week we washed and services both bikes, and did a little preventative maintenance for the next owners, then booked an apartment in Mendoza as we’d already changed a lot of Pesos Argentinos before being denied entry at San Pedro in the north, and they’re worthless outside Argentina.
This last trip across the Andes from Santiago to Mendoza was not as spectacular as the last few passes, maybe because we’re getting used to it, but all the heavy traffic on the road ruined it a bit too. I still had a lot of wow moments but following trucks spewing diesel smoke is a far cry from the isolated passes we’ve been doing.
At the end of the day we were glad to be away from the trucks on the pass, and on a wider road that was easier to navigate going into Mendoza.
We’re going to do some cellar doors while here, walk a bit and try not to spend too much money.
Our accommodation is booked until Tuesday night, with plan to return to Santiago Wednesday, wash bikes Thursday, revert Sally’s to full height, then we have an appointment with the buyer’s agent Friday to do the handover. Fingers crossed it all goes smoothly.
After that we’re considering going to Valparaiso or nearby to maybe do a bit of scuba over our last ten days here.
Looks like everyone at home is melting with the heatwave, thanks to everyone who’s taking care of our garden, tough going with such a hot summer!
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.
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.
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.
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 getting noisy.
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 (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.
