Category Archives: Argentina

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. Holy shitballs.

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‘well i’ve never turned left while leaning right before ‘ says Ben in his Johan Zarco frenchy accent.

It’s true, and I haven’t either.

We’re riding between the frontiers en route back to Chile, the road is loose gravel and all of us are leaning hard to the right while going more or less straight.

This has me wondering at what point the front will tuck. Geez. Sally is understandably freaking out a bit, but at least the wind is consistent (not gusting much), and the road is not terrible so it all goes without issue.

We stop after the Chilean frontier in one of many places plastered with overlanders stickers to take refuge from the wind, and empty a fuel bladder into the tanks.

The forecast is for lower wind speed as the day rolls on, so we decide to do the famous loop through the Torres del Paine NP, 175km of mostly gravel road with some of the most breathtaking scenery I’ve witnessed.

Once up in the mountains though it changed into wind like I’ve never experienced before, gusts out of nowhere, whirly winds taking dust up into the sky with such force you felt they’d take you up too.

At one point I’m following Sally and one of them passes close to her, holy shitballs, I wonder how that would feel if it went through you…

Shortly after that we found out.

I hear a “woooohhhh ahhhhhhhh” through the intercom as I crest a hill and see Sally riding slowly ahead of me.

“oh my god oh my god I need to stop I need to stop” she sounds manic, I’m confused as I didn’t see anything happening and she was still upright on the bike!?

I find somewhere to park and run over to her, grab the bike as she dismounts.

“what’s going on, what happened?”

“I don’t know I don’t know I hit the barrier oh my god”

It’s not making sense yet, but eventually I get it. The wind was coming from the right pretty hard so you lean right to counter it, but in an instant it switched and blew TO the right, and so already leaning that way it shot Sal into the Armco barrier. The crash bars and her MX boots took the hit and she wobbled to a stop, in more than a bit of shock.

I saw the scrape on Sally’s right boot and put it all together. Lucky there was a barrier, there was a steep drop maybe 30m into a freezing lake otherwise.

‘yeah you would have got wet’ says Ben dryly.

Sally is a bit too freaked out to see any positives just yet.

Are you hurt? No I’m fine. Nothing at all? No she says, just as surprised as me.

Bet you’re glad you bought those boots!

Old leavey-behindey strikes again!

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It’s been a couple of hours riding a dusty rocky pass after processing into Argentina, when I go for my water and realise I’m not wearing my backpack.

Balls.

I quickly do the maths, 60ish km back to the Arg border, another ten to the Chilean side if it’s not there, plus the 20 extra we already did to get our permits reissued today, makes 160km extra for the day.

We’re already carrying extra fuel for this leg as it’s too far for one tank, when we filled the bladders I put 3lt extra in each one just in case…

So 6 lt extra x 25km per litre equals 150km. It’s almost enough. So I make a snap decision, skid to a stop, spin around and head back.

‘babe I’m going back, find some shade, I’ll be a couple of hours’

‘um… ok, do we have enough fuel!??’

‘not sure, work that out later, I have enough to get there and back’

I hit save waypoint on the GPS so I know where I turned around, and without thinking much more I’m gone.

Losing my waterpack is not an option, and it has a goretex jacket in it too, so I’m not abandoning it.

Some further thinking would have been wise though.

Around 25km later I realise all the border documents needed to exit argentina are in Sally’s bike. FUUUUUCK.

I stop for a moment to see if I have my passport at least. Yep. Not enough fuel or time to go back for the docs, hope they let me through without them. Keep going.

The road is winding mountain pass, with lots of stones in the surface, but loose gravel mostly, with some blind crests. I can remember the pinch points from the ride there so can take a few risks and carry more speed through the turns, which is good as the bike has no power so carrying corner speed is the only way to get somewhere fast.

Oh how I wish I had Betsy right now.

The 50/50 tyres we have are not super grippy, and there’s not enough power to turn the bike with the rear tyre so it’s not pretty, but I make good time to the Argentine border, where there’s no backpack.

‘no you can’t go through no man’s land without processing the bike, absolutely not’. FFS. It’s 11km, too far to walk.

He calls the Chilean side where they find a backpack that matches my description…

‘but what brand is it?’

I can’t remember, FFS how many people leave backpacks up here, we’re in the middle of frikkin nowhere!

Lucky for me, the Chilean guy tells the Argentine guy to get me to leave my passport there and let me through.

Win.

Arriving at the Chilean side, the customs guy holds up my pack and tells me to check that the contents are all there.

‘no need, I trust you’

He smiles and asks if I have enough petrol to go back?

‘maybe, but it’s ok, we can pool fuel and send one forward with a bladder’

‘we can get you some fuel’

I say thanks but I don’t have any Chilean pesos on me, just Argentine pesos…

‘its a gift, from one motorcyclist to the next’

He points to a KTM 1190 Adventure parked next to the office, ‘its mine he says’

I’m beaming, and in my broken Spanish I tell him I ride a KTM at home, and my brother has the exact same bike.

‘It’s a monster’ I say… ‘that motor is the devil, amazing’

Now he’s beaming, and tells me all about his 4000km round trip from home to work through the mountains. That’s not a typo.

Incredible.

He fills my tank, shakes my hand and wishes me well.

That’s the 4 or 5 litres we needed to get to the next fuel station. What luck!

I ride back to the Arg side, where they make me wait 10mins for my passport, before telling me I’m very lucky and to get outta here now.

As I take off again I forget to turn off the ABS and shoot the next corner off into the scrub. ABS is dangerous on gravel. At least it wasn’t off a cliff I muse.

Dean, be smart. Ride sensibly.

The return trip cost us two hours and four dents in my front rim. Obviously that advice I gave myself was somewhat ignored.

Good thing I love being on a mission huh!

I get back to my waypoint and no Sally… oh dear. I ride on a bit, before doubling back to see if I missed her off the road. Still nothing, so I keep going forward another kilometer to find her and Ben under the only tree for miles. They look relieved to see me, and I’m relieved to be back with company.

Ben was waiting for us not far from where I turned around, so he came back looking after 20mins, with the plan to come looking if I didn’t get back in a few hours. He’s a good man.

I’ve ridden remote places many times solo, and it’s a different beast. A fall, breakdown or even just a puncture are compounded when you’re by yourself. Plus it was already late in the day and gets freezing up there at night.

All these things were going through my mind, usually followed by ‘i wish Betsy was here’

It was 550km for the day, a lot of dirt and 4 frontiers crossed, the beer at dinner time was sooo sweet.

Off to Argentina…?

by

Today has been fun.

We set off from Cochrane this morning with Ben, ready to cross the border into Argentina. With fuel bladders full, paperwork printed for the remote border crossing and dreams of bife de chorizo and red wine for dinner.

Fuel is hard to get in Argentina, especially in remote towns, and if there is a petrol station, it doesn’t mean it has petrol. We identified a town that had a petrol station with a reliable supply and made that our destination. 423 kms. As our bikes only do around 230-250, we had to take extra.

I was expecting the road to the Paso Robalo pass to be a bit rocky so I was prepared for a challenging day. The weather was beautiful and the scenery stunning and thankfully the road wasn’t too bad in the end.

As this border post is remote, we had to apply for a permit (a Salvoconductor) online ahead of time and specify the date of entry. It said on the website that you needed to allow 5 days to receive approval and if you indicated a date less than 5 days it would be an instant refusal. We also read on numerous posts that the date you specify doesn’t matter and you can pass at any time as long as you have the approval.

There is clearly a reason I am telling this story.

We applied for the permit 4 days ago but specified tomorrow’s date, thinking we could pass whenever we were ready. After riding to Tortel (dont bother) and Villa O’Higgins (end of the Carretera Austral), we were ready to cross the Paso Robalo border.

After riding 80 kms we arrived at the border post and presented our documents.

‘The date on your permit is tomorrow, you can’t cross today’

I won’t go into the pleading in bad Spanish we did and reasoning we gave them. They were not going to budge.

‘Can we sleep here?’ I asked, already knowing the answer but trying to portray how desperate we were to cross

‘no’

The thought of doing the ride again, despite its beauty, and spending another night in Cochrane was super disappointing for all or us. It’s one thing to mentally prepare for a hard road once but to have to do it three times was a little overwhelming.

We eventually left with the plan to try to get wifi back close to town and reapply with today’s date as the guard advised.

‘but it says it will be immediately rejected if we specify a date within 5 days’ Dean said in his Italian/Spanish.

They assured us it would be fine.

So, we head back, all pretty deflated and in disbelief. Around 10 kms in, Ben saw a caravan parked a little way off the road and went to ask them if they had internet.

Bingo.

A lovely couple from Holland were happy to share it with us. So, we reapplied with today’s date.

The approval came through in 10 minutes! So happy, we all headed back to the border post and processed customs with no problem.Next Argentina.

Once the guard had finished his lunch, he processed us one at a time and before long we were on our way.

The road on the Argentinian side was a lot more rocky than the Chilean side but just as beautiful, maybe even more. Less green but with blue lakes with pink flamingos. Well worth the stress!

Ben went off ahead while Dean patiently rode behind me as usual. About half an hour ago, around half way through the rocky road towards to Ruta 40, Dean realised that he was missing his backpack.

‘I have to go back to the border post, it’s the only place it can be. Find a shady place and wait for me’

First of all, there is no shade. Second, we already have limited fuel so I’m not sure where this is going to leave us, and third…what if he left it in Chile and not Argentina? Or with the Dutch couple? The papers for the bike are with me so crossing into Chile is going to be impossible

Its at least an hour each way (it took us/me about 2 to get this far) and it’s 4 pm. We still have 300 kms to ride to get to our destination/fuel. I just hope he doesn’t try to go too fast.

Ben has come back to find us and is now sitting with me under a ‘tree’ to wait for him…

Dean retuned at 5.30.

After contemplating what we would do if dean didn’t appear after two hours, Ben heard the motorcycle over the mountains.

He had left his bag at the Chilean border post and after some pleading with the Argentinian guard, he was allowed to cross back into Chile by leaving his passport with him. The guard in Chile handed him his bag and gave him some petro to get him through! How kind. They weren’t so bad in the end.

We ended up arriving into town at 10 pm, just as the sun was going down, totally exhausted. Thankfully, restaurants in Argentina are open until 1 am so we found a place to eat some meat (not bife de chorizo) and drink some wine before crashing.