Back on the tarmac and happy to have made it over all the landslides, river crossings and the snowy mountain pass we headed direction Salta through amazing rainbow coloured mountains. A new challenge was needed, but we decided on a less strenuous one: to ride through the wine area of Argentina and taste one wine a day, until we cross into Chile to get to Santiago 🙂 So how long can we stretch the days to Chile?
After a few days of easy riding, camping and enjoying the Argentinian lifestyle, the plan was to cross back into Chile at Mendoza. The day before we pulled over on a lovely lake near Rodeo because our bikes had started surging. This must have been the aftermath of bad fuel from Bolivia. After limping to the nearest gas station at 30 km/h with our bikes sputtering, we dismantled and emptied the tanks – just to find out that the gas station had run out of gas! Gladly Basil was with us, so fuel was sucked out of his tank. Which involved him getting a fair amount in this mouth and nearly vomiting on the road side. Thanks Basil 🙂
From there on Google Maps showed us the fastest way leading to Mendoza down a road that looked paved, but it turned out to be a gnarly trail leading over lots of rocks and river crossings – again! In the middle of nowhere Kate suddenly got yet another puncture. It was late in the afternoon and dark clouds were approaching us, with the sound of thunder coming closer by the minute. Turned out this happened just outside a police station. The policeman happy that finally some action was going on, came out to check if any help was needed and have a chat. He told us that there were long waits to get over the border at Mendoza due to a massive landslide and that the crossing further north at Paso Agua Negra was much faster (where we had originally planed to cross, but had decided not to because it was another offroad pass – and it hadn’t stopped raining).
To cut a long story short: Paso Agua Nedra turned out to be closed too, but Mendoza’s border was more likely to be opening again, as it is the main transport route. After bumping into Paul & Lauren, our friends from the Stahlratte sailing, we headed direction Mendoza together. So we managed to stretch the days to Chile and Paul & Lauren joined in on our challenge 🙂
