Andes

7th Jan 2020

The flight to Buenos Aires turned ou to be very pleasant,  after nearly missing the connection in LHR due to a delay out of Manchester. When I got on the B777 (still my favourite aircraft ever) I had 3 seats to myself, and slept about 8 hours.  It’s actually probably he longest I’d ever slept on a ‘plane.  As I had no checked in luggage, after an hour or so in a queue for immigration, I wandered out of the airport. A few hundred metres away I could see the gas station where I had arranged to meet Sandra and Xavier, of Dakar Motos.  After a quick coffe, some instructions from Sandra just to smile all the time and leave things to her, we set off to get my bike, which had arrived the day before via Mexico City. I was actually feeling pretty ok for the 4 hours trudging around offices, signing bits of paper in front of bored looking people with computers, before picking up the bike. And, of course, people demanding money for all sorts of regulatory forms. I even had to pay for a copy of the waybill, despite already having one; they would only stamp the one that they provided. Luckily, Sandra is very experienced at importing bikes; I definitely wouldn’t like to try that without local help. Four hours later,  after refitting the screen, connecting the battery, and strapping everything to the bike, I said goodbye to a Sandra and Xavier, and set off for the B&B I had booked through booking.com. I could tell that Xavier was somewhat sceptical of my ambitions.  I suspect he thought I didn’t really know what I was doing. My bike was overloaded, I had told him I’d not ridden on dirt for thirty years, and I was an overweight 59 year old. on a cheap bike loaded with budget gear. I guess I can’t blame him for looking a bit sceptical.

I really lucked out on my choice of B and B in Buenos Aires. Federico is a really good host. For a small fee he even cooked me dinner, and we drank a few beers in the garden before I crashed out for the night. While at his house, I also decided to change the number plate fixing bolts; Itchy Boots lost her number plate somewhere in Argentina, and I didn’t want to lose mine. Federico had a few old bolts lying around that fitted, so that would hopefully be one less thing that could go wrong on the trip.

First day on the road today ended up being 369 miles of motorway, RN9 (Ruta Nacional 9 (I will include the road(s) I was on in the title of each days blog). It was a hot day, with the temperature up to 33 degrees by the time I reached Rosario. Luckily the bike turned out be pretty comfortable; my longest trip on it previous to this had been from London to Manchester. It seemed to like cruising at 5200 RPM, which gave me just under 70mph indicated on the speedometer. At this point, I was still thinking in miles. On the way to Rosario, I found that some tolls on motorways don’t charge for motorcycles, and some do. The clue is in the signs, though at one toll booth I followed a guy in a moped through a gap in a fence beside the road, and realised too late that he’d probably actually just diverted to avoid paying. I worried about it for a km or two, but when I saw no lights and heard no sirens, I thought I’d got away with it. I stopped for a coffee and to try to get my music working, but in fact it never worked for the entire trip.

I dropped in at the Royal Enfield dealer in Rosario, to get spare oil and chain lube if they had it. It was siesta time when I arrived, so the only guy there was asleep; but he heard the bike, and opened up the shop. He was really happy to meet me, and, even though his English was as bad as my Spanish, we had some sort of conversation. Then he sent me to their workshop, just across the road, where a cool young dude called Nihuel showed me round the workshop, and offered me a free service, which I didn’t need as the bike had only done 200 miles since the last one (courtesy of Bolton Motorcycles). Miguel then gave me a litre of oil and a can of chain lube. It’s fantastic, and perhaps unique nowadays, that Royal Enfield dealers everywhere seem very proud of their product.

After leaving Rosario, I decided to get as many motorway miles behind me before it was time to camp. I stopped for the night at Villa Maria, a quiet little town halfway between Rosario and Cordoba.  I had three options from iOverlander for camping. The first choice was a good one, Parador Villa Maria, a very quiet campsite outside town, with only two other guests. However, I found out later I had undoubtedly been ripped off. It turned out to be the most expensive nights camping of the entire trip. The campsite was run by a very drunk couple who kept coming over to my tent to babble incoherently in Spanish at me. I’d been trying to learn a bit of Spanish before the trip, using an app called Duolingo, but it certainly hadn’t got me anywhere near understanding drunk Argentinians. I took a walk to the local shop, and discovered there is a hefty deposit on the litre bottles of beer. I drank one there and then, and took another back to the campsite with me. Luckily the drunk couple had disappeared, and I could hear then arguing somewhere in the main building, which was completely empty and partly derelict. After a shower in a bare breeze block room in the main building,  I cooked some pasta, climbed into my sleeping bag, and fell asleep quite quickly, pretty content with my first day on the road.

Campsite in Rosario