June 2020 – Jetlag Jon

Jan 8: RP9

Jon Andes June 6, 2020June 6, 2020 0 Comment

8th Jan 2020

I only left Villa Maria about 11:30, after going into town to buy a sim card. Plus it’s taking me ages packing…..packing has never been my strong point. Nor has getting going early. I’d dumped a few clothes and other items at the B&B in BA. I would pick it up gain on the way back. I had too much stuff. My sleeping bag and tent are nearly the volume of a pannier. On the flight over, I had only brought hand luggage, the rest of the stuff was shipped with the bike. But my hand luggage consisted of three cameras, 4 lenses, 2 video cameras, a drone, batteries for everything, and a tablet computer. redistributing it on the bike had taken me over an hour before I’d left Buenos Aires.

First 160 km was motorway. Then the motorway was finally done with, and it looked promising, for a while. Green hills, trees, winding road. Then it all flattened out and I saw about 4 corners in 200 miles. And it got hot. The thermometer on my USB port said 43 degrees. The bike said 50, but the Himalayan is known to over -read. On the flatlands, with no shade, it was just too hot to stop. I went through 3 Camelbacks of water, and still polished off 2 litres when I got to the campsite. The bike ran really well though: it seems to like 67 mph, which surprised me. Takes a while to get there, but then it holds it’s speed on hills better than at 55. I can cope with boredom, and I got used to heat on rides around Qatar with Jackie and Wataweet. But boredom and heat together? Not recommended. I soaked the Hypetkewl vest today, and it sort of worked. I had been having to drink a litre an hour, and another litre at stops. Last night I drank two litres in a couple of minutes while eating chips frosted with salt.

Wrong fuel

In Rayo Cortado, I pulled into a station with 2 identical pumps. A young girl working there happily filled my bike with diesel, after I had asked for “Gasolina”. Luckily I was just topping it off. This was when I discovered that, in Argentina, the colour of a fuel pump’s hose bears no relevance to the liquid it is conveying. The pump was green, the hose was green, and next to it was a black pump. After realising she had filled my bike with the wrong fuel, she ran into the building, and her dad then turned up, syphoned the tank, and filled it up with petrol. he apologised, and din’t charge me. Strange thing is, it seemed to run better afterwards.
At the next fuel stop, I filled one of the cans, which was just as well. With 65 miles to go to the next gas station, it was on reserve. I pulled off on a long straight through some salt flats to empty hte can into the tank. I’d carry extra fuel now until a week before the end of the trip. I arrived in Santiago del Estero just before sunset. After cruising along the river I found Camping Las Casuarinas. It was a very scruffy campsite with a few hippy vans parked in it. I put up the tent, took a quick shower in the filthy shower block near my tent, then locked my expensive gear in the Pacsafe, locked that to the bike inside my scruffiest bag, and walked into town. Stalls line dthe road, selling Milansesas, hotdogs and other junk food. It all looked very dirty, so I ate two portion of chips. Time for bed. The temperature was forecast to hit 40 degrees the next day. I needed to get north quickly: it was currently only 12 degrees in La Quica.

The campsite in Santiago del Estoro was a total disaster. As soon as I got back to the tent, I knew it just wasn’t going to work. 31 degrees, 90% humidity, and a campsite that is the locals favourite place to party. So at one in the morning, I went on Booking dot thingy and booked a hotel, the highly recommended Coventry Hotel. I got there at 3 in the morning. It was adequate, and the same price as the campsite I’d slept at the night before.
Total miles today, 355. I think another 2 days to get to La Quica.

Jan 23: RP 23 & RN40

Jon Andes, Part1-Ruta 40 June 3, 2020August 23, 2020 0 Comment

23rd Jan 2020

Today turned out to be the best days riding of the whole trip. It started with leaving the spot where I had the best nights sleep; I slept for about 9 hours solid. I felt refreshed, and ready for a bit of dirt. I made some mate tea while I packed up, then set off. The road started off as gravel, a bit loose in places, interspersed with stretches where it was so well packed it was almost like tarmac. I flew along, feeling very confident in the bike, knowing it was getting serviced in the next few days. It had been thrashed a bit up north, and the oil definitely needed changing. I crossed a few short sandy bits, standing up, and leaning slightly forward, giving it plenty of throttle. The rear fish-tailed a bit, but I had by now regained the confidence I’d had thirty years earlier, tempered with a bit more common sense. I found I was enjoying it. In Botswana, where most of the roads where I grew up were sand, my old XR500 had fishtailed far more than the Himalayan. I then passed a few km of brand new asphalt, with piles of dirt showing that work was obviously just about to start resurfacing the entire road, sad signs of yet another great road being flattened and sanitised for the masses. But not quite yet. On it’s way past Aluminé and Pilolil, Ruta Provincial (RP) 23 follows the Aluminé River southwards. Interesting rock formations, a few steep hairpins, but mostly following the river valley, the road makes it’s way south to join RN40 at Justin de los Andes.

Alumine River, hairpins in the distance

Beautiful scenery

The weather was great, the scenery sublime, the road not too difficult, but hard enough to be interesting, though there were some large trucks chucking up huge amounts of dust on one stretch. Further south a few homesteads and small farms started appearing.

I rejoined Ruta 40 at Justin de los Andes. Initially my plan had been to stop here for lunch, but the sight of hordes of tourists put me off. What I saw of the town looked very pretty, in a twee Swiss-chalet sort of way. Since I’d started the trip, I had felt a complete antipathy to crowds, noise, traffic; civilisation in general. In fact, this antipathy had started before I left home. The whole point of the trip was to get out in the wilds, see some scenery, push the envelope a bit; to see if I could actually do it, after years of thinking about it and imagining myself out there. And I’d found out I could, and that civilisation held no interest any more, at least, not on this trip. I could go to a coffee shop or a nice restaurant any time I liked, but I only had two months for this.

After Justin de los Andes, I rode on the the best bit of Ruta 40 so far, excluding the 700km of dirt up north. Sweeping curves through a landscape that looks like all the best bits of Scotland with a bit of northern Italy thrown in, the smell of pine in the air on a sunny summer’s day (temperature was 23 degrees). The road passes many lakes. I videoed some of it, but didn’t stop to take many photos, partly because I knew I would be exploring this area with Jackie in 3 weeks, and also because I wanted to get the bike serviced in Villa la Angostura, and wanted to get there for the evening business hours. I knew Itchy Boots had got her bike serviced in Villa la Angostura, but she never answered my message asking exactly where. I had already discovered that there was a place you could rent Royal Enfields, so that seemed the obvious place to start. Just before Villa la Angostura, I pulled over at one of the scenic viewpoints by the lake. I chatted to a couple on a BMW, who offered me some mate tea. It looked like Scotland on steroids. The lake was huge, and the mountains round it fitted the scale. Then I set off for Villa la Angostura. First stop was the campsite, Unquehué camping y Dormis, which was conveniently situated next to a supermarket. It was, however, quite full. My worries about noise were somewhat allayed when I was told that they had a strict noise curfew at midnight. The price, at ARS700, was the same as I’d spent on a hostel in La Quiaca, so I knew I was in a tourist hot-spot.

Lago Espejo Grande, RN40

Lago Nahuel Huapi, just north of Villa la Angostura

While putting up the tent, I snapped a pole. On the ground on the next pitch, I could see a couple of broken fibreglass tent poles, so I asked the occupants, two young guys from Buenos Aires, if I could have one of the broken poles. They said they were from a previous occupant. Luckily, the metal collar on one end of the poles, used to fit another section into, was exactly the right size, so the repair was quick and simple. While I was putting the tent up, the sun was getting in my eyes, so I put my Boca Juniors baseball cap on. “No, no….” the guys both moaned, and I realised they were River Plate supporters. They ribbed me about my hat for the rest of the evening, until they both collapsed from drinking too much wine.

After putting up the tent, I headed to town. With the help of a local biker, I found the shop that rented out Royal Enfields. Termi, who works there, told me that a guy called Marcello serviced all their bikes. He jumped on his little dirt bike and showed me the way. It is actually an approved RE service centre. Marcello asked a few questions: how many miles, how much had I been abusing the bike, how much oil was it using. He seemed impressed it had only used a litre of oil after being thrashed down desert highways in high heat for days on end. I arranged to drop the bike off the next morning at 10am. Marcello told me it would be ready by 1800, so I was committed to another night in this campsite that cost as much as some decent hostels in more remote parts of the country. I headed back to the campsite, picked up some shopping, and cooked spaghetti bolognaise. They sell bolognaise sauce in small Tetrapaks here in Argentina, and it was about to become my staple for the rest of the trip. I had a few drinks with my neighbours, who were getting thoroughly pissed, extolling the virtues of Argentinian red wine before eventually collapsing. The whole campsite seemed to partying hard, with music blaring from different directions. Drunks staggered around tripping over guy ropes, shouting at each other. I was wondering if I would get any sleep when, exactly at midnight, all the noise suddenly stopped.

Mileage today 197 miles, about 60 on dirt