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Published: March 18th 2013
Road miles to date: 28,504
The militant border crossing obviously wasn't deemed sufficient as the police had also set up a checkpoint about ten miles down the road. Although we weren't carrying any contraband, we had just left Bolivia where the police saw dinero signs at the sight of a gringo and we weren't yet sure that the Argentines were any different, added to the fact that we had three big Union Jack stickers proudly displayed on our bike as we entered a country that had recently raised the age old Falklands quarrel. Lorries and buses lined up along the side of the road as police officers searched them with sniffer dogs and we nervously rolled up to an officer who had flagged us down. He smiled, asked us to turn on the bike headlights which sat just above our biggest Union Jack, looked satisfied and then waved us on. Suddenly things were looking up and our mood instantly turned on its head as we passed by groups of annoyed lorry drivers and tourists who hadn't been so lucky.
The sun shone on us for the rest of the day as we rode across some stunning, deserted landscapes comprising
valleys that ran through incredible mountains striped with colourful sedimentary layers that had been blown over the centuries into smooth waves or worn down to sharp pinnacles. Live volcanoes were spread out in the distance and giant, bulbous cactus scattered the landscape. Everything was looking good until shortly after crossing the Tropic of Capricorn we felt the dreaded wobble of the rear wheel.
We pulled up on a patch of gravel beside the road with the sun beating down on us to set about fixing another puncture. Although it was the most breathtaking view of all our puncture sites to date, it was also one of the hottest and our water supply soon ran out. As had become custom, this repair was not without its complications. After strapping up the centre stand, removing the front wheel, the exhaust and the rear wheel, we got the inner tube out and found the cause to be a previous puncture patch that had burst, most likely in the heat. When we went to replace it with a spare inner tube, it too began to hiss and we found a grazed patch of very tiny holes sitting right next to the last repaired
area that had obviously been too small to spot before. Short of our own puncture repair materials we had no choice but to use the spare nineteen inch front wheel inner tube on the eighteen inch rear wheel and chance that it would get us to a gomeria (tyre repair workshop).
With no water left to keep hydrated we had to get moving and waved goodbye to the herd of goats that had joined us a while earlier. About twenty miles down the road we lucked out at a gomeria where the workers were not having a three hour siesta. The owner was apprehensive about being able to repair both the burst patch inner tube and the grazed inner tube and while he was experimenting with a solution, Byron borrowed his pump to inflate the rear tyre. Two seconds later a resounding bang followed by a hiss told us we now had three inner tubes to get fixed.
As we debated what to do, a highway patrolman pulled up in a truck and was soon convincing the gomeria owner to at least attempt to patch the two inner tubes while Byron got the rear wheel off for the
countless time on this trip. As we got chatting to Luis the patrolman, he offered to drop Isabel in the local town to get water and cash since we now had neither. Festival season was still in full swing and it turned out we had actually stopped just outside Humahuaca, a beautiful small colonial town full of jesters and masked revellers covered in flour. A while later, equipped with water, puncture patches and cash Isabel set off back to the main road and arrived to find Byron had sorted the rear wheel and was ready to go. The burst-patch inner tube had taken another patch well but the grazed inner tube was a write off. It turned out the bigger front wheel inner tube whose valve had burst under the pump bizarrely had nothing wrong with it and was now our only spare.
It was late in the day so we decided to spend the night in Humahuaca and after finding a hostel we went out for our first taste of Argentinian meat, simultaneously discovering that the days of affordable menus of the day had come to an end. As we sat savouring our Llama stew the heat of
the day literally burst the sky open and a deluge descended on the town. We tried to wait it out but it was set in for the night so we braved going outside and were soaked to the bone in seconds. The small cobbled streets and pavements disappeared under rivers of rainwater but we made it back to our room where we realised we had no water to drink. It was too late to buy any so we took our bottles outside into the rain and filled them up from a stream falling from a gap in the gutter on the roof. The next morning we were full of hope that a new country might bring an end to the poor excuse of white bread and butter that had made up the hostel breakfasts over the past month but sadly it was not to be so after a nutritious start to the day we continued South.
We made a quick stop at a bike shop in town to buy a new spare inner tube and like the gomeria the day before, business was booming with local scooters and push bikes queuing up for puncture repairs. The guys working the
shop had what we found to be an increasingly common habit of what looked like mouth abscesses but were in fact cheeks packed tight with coca leaves. Luckily they did have a tube to fit our rear tyre but unluckily it was a quarter the thickness of the one we had had to ditch and was highly unlikely to stand the weight of the aga. However, not wanting to jinx anything by not carrying spares, we bought it and set off through more stunning scenery and under clear blue skies.
Having missed riding the renown Uyuni salt flats in Bolivia due to their being flooded, we took a detour west to seek out the Salinas Grandes - a smaller salt desert but as far as we knew, a dry one. We rode to the small village of Purmamarca which sits below the hill of seven colours and is the gateway to the road for the Salinas Grandes. The striped backdrop of pink, red, grey, blue, green, brown and white, representing the ancient layers of sea, lake and river beds where it once sat, were lit up beautifully in the bright midday sun. Keeping in theme with the entire journey,
the geology of this northwestern province took our breath away at every turn with sites we had never seen before. There was no petrol in any of the pumps at the stations on the way to Salinas Grandes and the only shop in town that sold it at an extortionate price was also out of stock so we put our new jerry can to use for the first time and made our way high up into the mountains, passing through the cloud line then down into the wide expanse of white below.
We pulled up to the desert where a local guy wouldn't let us take the bike down because they work to extract salt and we guessed they didn't want vehicles contaminating the area. So slightly disappointed but saving some potential rusting of the bike, we walked down onto the stretch of white sitting under crystal clear skies and had some fun with perspective photography, adding layers of salt to our bike gear that still had remnants of mud caked into it from the puncture outside La Paz. When we made our way back we worked on softening up the local guy who agreed for us to take
the bike down onto the salt but not to ride it. Just as we go it onto the flats, we managed to get one photo before our camera battery ran out of juice. We chatted to a few Argentinian tourists on holiday from Buenos Aires, none of whom mentioned the Falklands, and attempted to put our camera card in their cameras but to no avail so salty, dirty and hot we gave up and made our way back across the mountains.
We stopped that night in San Salvador de Jujuy and by luck had stumbled on the auto/motorcycle district where we found a hostel and planned to service and change the oil on the bike the next day. In contrast to the freezing temperatures we were hearing about back home, we spent the hottest night in a long time in a hotel where the rooms heated up to twice the temperature as the corridors.
After a day off servicing the bike and stocking up on groceries, we made our way south and went and got ourselves another puncture along a road where there was no shade at all to avoid the burning hot sunshine. After the usual process
we discovered another burst puncture patch on the inner tube and got ready to test the far inferior spare we had bought in Humahuaca. Just as Byron got the tube inside the tyre, the tyre iron touched it and was so hot from the sun it melted a hole straight through the rubber. It was probably a good job that we hadn't tried to ride with it but we now had no choice again but to use the bigger spare front inner tube. After the work was done we had a picnic by the bike and set off through wine country and some really fascinating rock formations in the Calchaqui Valley that were very similar to those of Monument Valley in the US.
We decided to keep pushing on and so rode higher and higher up into the mountains, through a complete contrast to the last few days into thick fog, freezing cold winds and rain but in a landscape littered with dry bush and cactus. At one point a complete rainbow sat for miles on our right, following us as we made our way to Tafi del Valle - a name with strong connotations of the Welsh heritage
there.
That night we found a hostel where a homemade pizza party dinner was included with the room and we spent the evening with French, Spanish and Argentinian guests. Despite the many road signs along the motorways declaring to the populous that Las Malvinas son Argentinas (a wise use by the government of dwindling public funds which we're sure the people appreciate) and many a motorist stopping us to take photos and enquire after the bike, everyone had steered clear of any Falklands chat so far. However at the pizza party the first hint of it came up when one girl told us their president was crazy and another girl quickly stopped her in her tracks, declaring food and politics should not be mixed. After we attempted to practice a bit more Spanish with them, our brains slowed right down and we went to bed. The next morning we set off in the rain after another standard white bread and butter breakfast.
We made our way to Cordoba where we planned to pick up our fourth new rear tyre and hit the Pampas landscape - a sparsely populated area of flat, open, prairie land covered in dry brush
and apparently where most of the soy is grown that is exported to China. The roads here were much like those out in US deserts where single lane carriageways run deadly straight for miles and miles and miles right through this wide open flat land and wind comes across them with brutal force. As we entered this area we saw two adventure bikes had stopped by the road up ahead so we pulled over to see if they needed a hand. Here we met Jean and Chantal from Quebec on GS bikes and it turned out they were just layering up to face the weather ahead. We all stopped at a petrol station further along and warmed up with coffees, deciding that we would stop just outside of Cordoba and camp for the night.
A couple of hours later we pulled into Jesus y Maria and sought out the local campsite which turned out to be owned by a scout group that gave us great rates and let us camp out of the rain under their shelter. It seems Argentina has been heavily influenced by years of European immigration and as well as scout groups, there are rugby clubs
and polo clubs all over the place - almost unheard of in most Latin American countries we have visited. We spent the evening cooking burgers and crackers that we had bought two days before.
In the morning we made our way into Cordoba as Jean and Chantal headed off to Buenos Aires, also in search of new tyres. Most petrol stations in Argentina have wifi connections so we began to get lazy with planning ahead, assuming we could always look up information when we stopped to fill up. However, for one reason or another even when we picked up the signal the internet very often didn't work on our ipad and that morning we had the same problem so weren't actually sure where we could get a new tyre and Cordoba wasn't exactly a small place. Eventually we got ourselves to a BMW dealership that had a tyre but the workshop was just about to close up for lunch.
As we could no longer afford to eat out and stay in hostels we were resigned to camping our way down to the bottom of the world and so took the time waiting for the workshop to reopen to
seek out a local supermarket and stock up on a good stash of food. When we got back to the dealership we found the tyre they had was not going to be durable enough to last the rest of the trip so Byron ended up going to a nearby warehouse and buying a new one there, plus two of the most heavy duty inner tubes we'd ever seen. The new tyres and inner tubes cost more than double the price of buying them in the UK due to some very complicated import /export rules and the fact that everything bought in Argentina is sold at the equivalent black market US dollar rate. Unfortunately when we got back the guys in the workshop already had our bike up on a bench and were trying to force the rear wheel off. After spending so long with the bike and working through the majority of its problems alone it was tough to watch other people manhandling it.
Byron eventually got through to them that they needed to take the front wheel and exhaust off first and then we sat and watched them change our wheel and clean the bike, irritated that we
were now going to have to pay for them to do a job that we do all the time. It was later that one of them also tried to balance the carburettors without warming the engine first and that their chemical wash of the bike had deformed half of one Union Jack sticker. Although the guys were really nice and the work they did was well intended (though we still wonder about the flag deformation), we bitterly handed over a days budget for the privilege, then went in search of a campsite where Byron immediately set to work rebalancing the carburettors while Isabel sought out a laundromat as it had been over three weeks since we had last washed our clothes.
A quote of twenty dollars to do a bag of laundry soon had Isabel deciding we could wait a little longer while Byron attempted to subtly get rid of an extremely odd German man who hung about us as and watched as we tried to sort the bike out, sort the laundry, unpack, get the tent up and eat some food - all in about half an hour before darkness set in. After telling us he had done
the same trip but in twice the time and twice the distance and twice the number of continents, then asking us what advice we wanted to ask him before going on to berate us for learning Spanish too late, he hung about a bit longer in silence watching us struggle, then walked off without saying a word and we never saw him again but spent the night wondering if he was going to come back and sabotage the bike while we slept.
The next few days were spent riding for miles upon miles through the pampas, camping then riding then camping, looking forward to reaching petrol stations as they became our only break from the monotony. The rest of the vehicles travelling this route seemed to feel the same as people poured out of cars at every petrol station, jumping onto the wifi, stocking up on media lunas (mini croissants with a sweet glaze) with strong coffee, watching the news or latest European football match on tv and queuing at the hot water machines to fill up their mate flasks (mate is to Argentinians what tea is to Britons - it is also a tea made from the dry
leaves of the yerba mate plant and is prepared loose then drunk through metal gauze straws by just about every single Argentinian).
It was during this time and as we passed into Patagonia that we learnt the extent of land (the mileage we covered in this country would lap Britain and all it's islands many times over) and natural resources that the country actually has and understood less and less why the government here makes such a fuss of the Falkland Islands, on which an Argentinian national has never actually lived. Politics aside, we began to pass and be overtaken by many more adventure riders than we had seen on the entire trip put together and discovered that riding Argentina is very popular with Argentinians and Brazilians who get stickers, contact cards and tour t-shirts made up for the trip. The heat and sunshine we had enjoyed further north disappeared completely and was replaced by grey skies, strong wind and rain.
At the end of one day the dark was about to set in and we decided to stop and camp in a lay-by where a lot of trucks had pulled up for the night. We picked a
spot in amongst some shrubbery, cooked a meal and got an early night. In the morning it began to rain and within minutes the tent was sitting in a pond of water that was quickly rising and encompassing everything inside. After doing our best to salvage the sleeping gear, the bike fell over into what was now a small lake, ripping off the tent guy rope we had tied to it. It was still pouring with rain so we got the bike onto dry land, packed up everything soaking wet and twice as heavy, pulled on our soaking wet helmets and gloves and got on the road looking on with envy at the truckers still sleeping in their warm, dry cabins. The wind and rain was torrential, freezing us in our wet gear to the bone and blowing the bike all over the place. Forty miles along a coastal road beside a very rough sea the front wheel of the bike skidded on a flooded section of road and veered us straight into the path of an oncoming car. Luckily the car swerved out of the way and dangerously close to the sea while Byron managed to correct the bike
but it took a fair bit of wobbling and skidding before we could stop completely. Shaken up, wet, cold and miserable we deemed it too dangerous to go on, found a hotel and blew a day's budget on a room. By a stroke of luck the hotel had a big boiler room where we hung up all our soaking wet camping gear and clothes to dry out then gave up on the day and had our first hot bath in months.
The weather improved the next day but the winds were still high. We rode further south where petrol suddenly cost a third less than in the north and began to see more Patagonian wildlife - herds of guanacos, ostrich-like greater rheas or nandu, pink flamingoes, foxes and condors beside the road. But then the power began to fail and the bike began to splutter. We crawled to the next town and Byron got to work finding out what the problem was in a local petrol station where we met Murray and Carmen from Australia riding their way back up north. A few days before the same problem kept happening every time it rained so he had already taped
up the spark plugs and created a shield from a plastic bottle for the HT leads. This time he changed the points, the spark plugs and the HT leads with Murray while Isabel got some tips of where to find penguins and orcas from Carmen. The changes seemed to work but later that day the bike began to splutter again. This time we think it was the poor grade fuel getting blocked in the very full fuel filters and we limped on.
It began to get colder as we rode south but the rain stopped and the sun returned making the rides more bearable and bringing out more wildlife. We made good progress with our ride all day, camp, ride all day routine and were soon at the Chilean border, not too far from Tierra del Fuego. We had just stocked up on groceries at the nearest town an hour before we approached the border and true to sod's law, we spotted agricultural guards and sniffer dogs searching every single vehicle. When Byron stamped the bike into Chile he had to sign a declaration that we had no fresh food on us. Although every border has a token sign
up with the same rule, this was the very first border where we had to sign a declaration and be searched. Knowing we had too much on us to hide we declared the illegal goods and inevitably were told they had to be chucked. As we were so near the end of the trip, the budget was tighter than ever and throwing food away was just not an option so we asked to camp at the border for the night so we could eat it.
The border guards sent us down to their football pitch at the back of the building and we set up camp, deciding that cooked food would be ok to take over and so got busy cooking up everything we had. We fed a bit of sausage to a couple of foxes that were stalking the area looking peckish then attempted to eat all the fruit, eventually only sacrificing two apples and a banana to the border compost.
The next morning the guards were taking no chances with us and searched every single bag and box we had. Not so well trained to spot a camping short cut though, they missed the cooked food
in a saucepan so we will never know if it was allowed under the strict criteria of their reign or not but they did confiscate some dry vine that Isabel had been given in Tikal back in October. Finally they let us across and we made our way over the water to Tierra del Fuego - the land of fire - an island split between Chile and Argentina and home to the furthest southern city in the world, where we would find the end of the road.
There were seventy miles of ripio (unpaved road) to tackle on the way down and we rattled along it for a good three hours, riding beside a tantalising, freshly laid concrete road that was not yet open. At the end of the ripio road we reached the border back into Argentina and were soon in Rio Grande, a seaside city that was obviously important during the Falklands war as it stations a Malvinas military camp and proudly displays aeroplanes and tanks used during the war all over the city. Huge memorial sites are scattered about as are many signs that relentlessly claim ownership of the islands. After snapping a few photos we
continued south, getting ever closer to our destination.
The landscape got increasingly interesting again as we traversed the coast, made our way inland, skirted the edge of Cami Lake then hit the outskirts of Tierra del Fuego national park. Snowcapped and rugged mountains rose in the distance, greenery reappeared wild and lush again and the sea glistened beside us as the sun began to drop. It was stunning and truly a breath of fresh air after days on end following flat, open, endless land.
The road into Ushuaia was simply stunning and the realisation that we had finally arrived was surreal. Thinking back to the journey that had got us to this point was impossible - there was just too much to remember so we revelled in the moment; our savings had just about run out and the bike was very tired but we had reached the end of the road. Mission complete. Now we just had to figure out how to get home!
Scroll further down for more photos.
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Thor
non-member comment
Congratulations
Good show guys. The memories you'll have of this epic ride will get better and better as the years pass. Your ride tales have certainly "made my day" more than once, and provided welcome chuckle now and again.