Month: March 2020

On the road again, after a day off to do laundry, buy camping gas and look over the bike. People here are super friendly. I’m finding that my lack of Spanish, in a land where only a small amount of people speak English, isn’t such a hindrance after all, especially if all the participants in a conversation have been drinking.  Sign language, adding an a at the end of nouns, stupid grins and hand gestures, backed up with the occasional reference to Google Translate, all serve to make getting by here actually fairly simple, as long as you don’t want to discuss astrophysics or something.

The road finally seemed to be getting more interesting. For the first time, I realised I had been on the same road since leaving Buenos Aires. This was purely unintentional.

Temperature was 27 degrees, very pleasant, albeit overcast and threatening rain at times. After a few hours I stopped for a break. Like all filling stations so far, this YPF has free wifi. Wikipedia tells me I am following, in sticking to RN9,  the “Camino Real del Perú” (Royal Road of Peru).  This was once the main road to Peru, heading from Buenos Aires up to the Bolivian border at La Quiaca. In those days, before the railroad took over in the late 19th century, and it’s later demise in the twentieth, there were establishments to feed and water horses and their charges every 30-50km. Three empenadas and a coffee later, it’s time to hit the road. 170 miles done so far, 220 to go. I met a Brazilian parked next to my bike who had obviously recently had a big off in mud, and his radiator was leaking. His bike looked in pretty bad shape, and he was limping. I offered him some laundry soap (I bought a bar the day before). It was a trick I had actually used myself to sela a radiator once, many years ago, but he seemed reluctant to try it. He wasn’t having a good time, and told me he had come off about ten KM from La Quiaca, on Ruta 40, on the very last bit of dirt, in a rainstorm. He was heading for Cordoba, a long way to go on a damaged bike in this weather.

Not long after starting out again, the odometer/speedo stopped working. I found that as I opened the throttle and accelerated, it worked fine. But as soon as I reached cruising speed, or was slowing down, the indicated speed dropped straight back to zero. Sometimes I could play with the throttle to keep it indicating for a while, but that was futile really. So I am now relying on Google Maps for my speed. With the Argentinian sim card in my phone, everything had switched to kilometres, which is just as well.  My brain had already slipped comfortably back into kilometres, to match the road signs, and the units of my youth.

At one point I stopped and took the pic above with my phone. About ten minutes later, something hit my leg, and after a quick bit of deduction and a visual check, I realised it must have been my phone. I hadn’t secured it in the phone mount after my photo stop. I hadn’t used the camera as it was inside a dry bag, and not easily available. Duh. I did a U-turn, rode back a few hundred metres, and I saw a guy who had obviously just picked up my phone. He must have scooped it up just before a passing truck reached it, judging by the horn from the truck. When he realised I was coming back for it, he waved it in the air. It didn’t appear to be working, so I think he wasn’t too disappointed I came back for it. I stuck it in my pocket, and the next time I stopped for gas,  had a proper look at it. The screen was scratched really badly, a bit missing from one corner, but to my surprised, powered up. I needed to be more careful with my phone….

The next few hours were spent gaining altitude, with large doses of wetness and cold. I had the heated grips on, and a fleece under my jacket, and it really wasn’t much different than riding to work in Manchester, just a lot further.  The jacket was a warranty replacement for one I bought that had leaked, and I hoped the replacement didn’t have the same issue. My winter gloves were buried in a bag somewhere, so I had very wet hands in my summer gloves, and I could almost see steam off them as the grips warmed my palms. Temperature dropped to 8 degrees, and it rained for two hours solid, including a torrential downpour with lightning flashes on all sides. When the lightning started, I started looking for shelter, but it was 20 minutes or so before I passed what at the first glimpse in my peripheral vision looked like a shop. I almost missed it in the rain. A quick U-turn, and I took shelter under an awning, next to a building that turned out to be an MC’s clubhouse, in the middle of nowhere. I walked across and knocked on the door, with visions of a warm room with beer and a fire, fellow bikers welcoming me in from the storm while feeding me Alpaca steaks. No-one was home. The large sign outside read “Resto Bar Chez Didierm  Parrilla” just above where it said Inca Riders. I was pretty sure that resto bar probably meant restaurant/bar, but boredom and Google Translate and Wikipedia soon told me that parrilla was the Spanish word for torture using electric shock. Maybe they cook alpacas by electrocuting them, using the lightning from storms like the one raging around me, chanting as you watch. Maybe it just as well no-one was home.

Inca Riders Parrilla

I came out of the rain into a sunny patch for a while, and then raced a storm front for the last 40km. The sky was black in the mirrors. I got to La Quica at about 6pm, after 10 hours on the road. I had decided earlier to try get to La Quica in one go, 625km (390 miles), partly because of the weather, and partly because it’s where the interesting stuff starts. In retrospect, probably a stupid idea, as I had now ridden from 1328  feet (420m) altitude to 11,293 ft (3442mt) in one day. I had read enough mountaineering books to know about altitude sickness. Temperature today ranged from 34 degrees to 8 degrees. Scenery varied from flat straight stuff, to twisty green rolling hills, to river valleys that look like images I have seen of Afghanistan. Througout the day, loads of police checkpoints, but I was been waved through every single one.  I had been following RN9 for 1979km, completing a transit of a road I hadn’t been consciously trying to follow.

I stopped and took the obligatory picture by the sign saying 5121km to Ushuaia, then had a quick look for a hostel on iOverlander. The Copacaban Hostel proved to be both cheap and comfortable. I rode my bike through reception to park it in an adobe courtyard right outside my room.

All south from here….

There was a very different feel to the country here, the locals all being descendants of the Incas, and it feels like a very olde worlde type of place, in spite of the modern breeze block buildings.

In the hostel, I met two Argentinian bikers, Ricardo and Samuel. They are on a week long trip from their home in Misiones. Tomorrow they are heading for Cafayate, but not via Ruta 40. They knew of a local restaurant, so we walked there in the gathering dusk. The altitude was palpable. You couldn’t walk quickly without getting out of breath, and it felt like walking on a planet with more gravity. Over dinner, Ricardo and Samuel tried to persuade me to join them. They seemed to think I was nuts to be going on Ruta 40 tomorrow, on my own. “Ripio, ripio!” they warned me. Ripio seems a particularly nasty sounding word for dirt roads, imo. Later in the trip, I started wondering if the sound of the word itself discourages some Spanish speaking riders to venture onto dirt. To be fair, Samuel was on a road bike, and he was planning a bit of dirt down in the salt flats. The local restaurant had a mixed grill, which included black pudding, steak, kidneys, chicken and tripe (yuk).  It was actually I nice enough meal, and great company, but I was very tired and could feel a headache coming on. I was also still wondering if riding on dirt really is like riding a bicycle…..

“Ripio, ripio….” Dinner with Ricardo and Samuel. Pic courtesy of Ricardo Werle.

So Ruta 40 starts here. But no more rushing, I am going to slow it right down, I think, take more pictures, see more stuff. The weather might be dodgy tomorrow, and next 725 km is dirt, so I have no plans beyond getting to Santa Catalina tomorrow, which is only 39 miles away. Plus I can definitely feel the effects of the 3442 metres, or 11300 feet, of altitude. Or maybe it’s the beer….