Crossing into Argentina the plan was to start riding the Ruta 40. The Ruta 40 is a road in the west of Argentina that runs all the way to the most southern point – sometimes paved and sometimes not. Our friend George recommended riding the first part until crossing back into Chile. So ahead of us lay 2-3 days of offroad riding over a mountain pass up to 5’000m and dropping back down into vineyards before heading over another pass back into Chile. Looking forward to a new adventure after missing out on so much in Bolivia we were ready to get going!
After heading down the paved highway to Abra Pampa we quickly stopped to let air out of the tires for the start of the offroad part. In the beginning the road was pretty easy gravel, but soon we had to wade through the first puddle..and then there were many more to come. Sometimes the road was so flooded or even missing that we had to detour trough the desert. It seemed like it had rained here too, not only in Bolivia!
The next day we even had to rescue a group of Germans, who’s car had got stuck in the mud. We found them 30 kilometres from the next town, walking barefoot because they left their shoes in the car so they would not get dirty!?. So they hopped on the back of our bikes, with no shoes on. One of our bikes was still acting up from the Bolivian fuel, not going over 30 km/h and sputtering all the time. So all in all this was a pretty funny ride trough the mud 🙂
The next day the first mountain pass lay ahead. Setting out it started to rain and there were many washed out sections. And also no tire tracks, as Flo remarked. Climbing up into the mountains we made it up to the top of Aura del Atay at 4’895m and it started to snow! Heading down the other side of the pass we managed to tackle the first fast flowing water on the road with rolling rocks in it. After many small water crossings we hit a major river. We couldn’t even reach the bottom of it with a stick and big boulders were rolling in the water. Since it was too late to go back over the pass we had to camp out on the road and turn around the next day. We later learnt that the Ruta 40 had been closed behind us.
