That’s it, we’re going back home
We hit the Southern tip of our trip, and turn around
Ruta 40 is somewhat of a legend amongst adventure bikers. It’s a partly dirt road that starts on Argentina’s border with Bolivia and only ends after it has followed the Andean valleys down all the way to the Southern tip of the continent, in Ushuaia. There’s a huge effort going on at the moment to pave the whole thing, so riders who conquer the road now are amongst the last to ride it on gravel the way the Motorcycle Gods intended. On our last day heading South, it would be a shame not to include a homage to the continent’s final destination by riding a day on the road that leads there.
On this trip we’ve learned that there are many different types of gravel road and that the subtle differences between each type are what can make the experience amazing or just nerve racking. They did a good job with Ruta 40. The majority of the section we did wound its way up a small valley which was littered with cubic rocks that weren’t very big in the grand scheme of things, but looked out of place for some reason in this canyon, like oversized lego blocks. Every 5 or 10 minutes, the road would dip into the stream for a quick river crossing before continuing. Very quickly it became obvious even from this small section why Ruta 40 is a bit of a destination for bikers.
Even though we managed to leave our trusty tripod somewhere by the side of the road (presumably pointing in a direction that creates an impeccably framed shot), we soldiered on having to use our actual hands to hold the camera.
As we crossed a state border into the Salta province, the gravel deteriorated to the point where it landed smack bang in the middle of my comfort zone and suddenly it felt like I was on a mountain bike, right at home. So I gave it some beans kept being surprised by how agile these objectively rubbish dirt bikes are. The asphalt we had covered in recent days had really highlighted how much slower than the other two my bike engine had become. This had been incredibly frustrating for me, so I was really revelling in the opportunity to forget about it on this twisty gravel.
Soon the gravel started opening up and Alex behind me was clearly up to something. He’d been struggling with a cough and was using this as an excuse to not want to ride in someone else’s dust. Because he was totally fine with it before. I thought if he really wanted to get out of the dust, he should probably just ride a bit faster, so continued as I was for 20 minutes or so until he clearly caught on to my thinking and lunged into a corner beside me to finally get his fresh air. Thankfully, the tarmac road to Salta started a few corners later so my lungs were kept nice and shiny.
As we pulled off Ruta 40 and into the outskirts of Salta, something was off. Outskirts in South America are always pretty grim. Here, though, there was green, the roads had central reservations, and clearly some effort had been made all around.
And so it would continue into Salta. Argentina is a very different breed of South America to Bolivia or Peru. While the Spanish clearly had a bit of a questionable policy with regards to natives when they turned up (they murdered them all; everybody in Argentina is now white), they did at least decorate the place nicely. They also wear motorcycle helmets here, although most of the riders seem to wear them like hats, with the bottom opening that’s meant to be around your neck instead perched on top of their head. From behind that makes it look like their neck has snapped. I’m not sure why they bother. We followed one such rider into the city centre.
After parking our bikes in the hallway of a colonial hostel in the center and making the entire place reek of gasoline, we went out for what we really hoped would be an Argentinian steak. Finally.
“Bien hecho?” The waiter asked.
No. No, obviously not well done.
“Inglesi?”
This apparently means rare. It’s quite telling that to South Americans, the English are the the gold standard in terms of pink meat.
A lot of shit Spanish later we think we’ve communicated Medium Rare to the guy, after he walks away seemingly confident he knows what we want.
Sadly, the steak came back well done. The beef was excellent, I think. Probably. But I’ll never know.
The next day Didier and Alex went out into Salta to get Didier some glasses and to replace our missing tripod. It transpired quite quickly that the Argentinians are not salespeople by nature. A man who had several suitable small tripods in his camera shop refused to sell them because he thought our camera was too heavy. He didn’t advise against buying them, he just flat out refused to take our money. Then the exact same thing happened when Didier told the various opticians he knew his prescription but couldn’t produce any documentation to prove it. Next, everybody went to sleep for 4 hours in the middle of the day and the city stopped. They must have been tired from fighting off all these people who wanted to give them money. I’m not quite sure how Argentina is developed.
That evening we discovered a bit of a gem on the advice of Mathias, the hostel owner. La Casona del Molino is a series of chaotic rooms, courtyards and a garden where a completely overloaded waiting staff serves the hundreds of customers their BBQ meats. Every area has at least one person with a guitar serenading their surroundings from one of the tables. It is very difficult to find anywhere to sit because the place is absolutely packed, even on a Thursday night (past midnight). After finally finding a table I was surprised how quickly the delicious meats appeared out of the cloud of noise around the grill. La Casona was a reminder that even though Argentina has all the white people and flashy BMWs of Europe, we are still very much in South America. Predictably, there was no pink to be seen on any of the meat.
We were at the Southernmost point of our loop but we were also quite a lot more than halfway through our time in South America. I was starting to get a little conscious that we needed to make distance in the next few days to allow space for things to go wrong later on. This meant heading straight up North back to Bolivia through the Gran Chaco, a flat, shrubby, seasonally flooded plain that extends all the way from Salta to the sweltering heat of Santa Cruz, Bolivia. We did a 300km day up to Tartagal, the Argentinian border town with Bolivia. Making distance on these featureless roads is a difficult thing to do on dirt bikes with a pedestrian top speed and very little creature comforts. I was immediately reminded that I had the slowest bike and so spent all my effort trying not to brake more than the others for speed bumps, and following in their draft during overtakes. You don’t realise until you lose it what a safety feature power is on a motorcycle. That said, all three bikes were now starting to sound pretty rough.
That evening in Tartagal we had an animated discussion about whether aliens are likely to have motorcycles, where Didier was wrong and Alex was completely missing the point, and then we went to bed, ready for the border in the morning.
We had been pretty lucky with borders up until this one. Here, however, two Bolivians seemed pretty adamant to find any problem they could to make our lives difficult (except my missing number plate, that was obviously fine). After having a big discussion with a misinformed man about whether it is possible to own a Peruvian bike as a European (which it is), and finally convincing him we own the bikes by bringing up the Peruvian system on their computers, his co-worker decided she wouldn’t let us into Bolivia without Bolivian insurance. As you might imagine, it’s a challenge to get Bolivian insurance before being in Bolivia, but she didn’t seem to care. After a while, a fixer (half of whose brain had been replaced by Coca leaves) told us his friend could get us insurance even though it was Saturday. Didier disappeared with him and all of our passports. An hour or so later, he is back with insurance. The evil Bolivian woman reluctantly gave us our stamps (without even really looking at our insurance) and we were finally in Bolivia again, although it was now raining and dark.
Knowing we had to make at least some distance, we pushed on to Villamontes, 90km further on. Our visors had taken a beating over the last two months and their low light performance was questionable. It wasn’t helped by the fact that every oncoming car insisted on flashing their headlights just to make sure we knew they were there. It was not maximum fun, but at least it wasn’t boring. We arrived in Villamontes quickly, where a helpful man allowed us to ride our bikes through his hotel reception and into the courtyard. It was a nice little place, but sadly the showers electrocute you when you use the hot water. That was a bit of a downside.
There was some talk about not being allowed on the road the next day, because of some national no-driving day in Villamontes county. We didn’t think much of it, until we pulled out of the hotel the next morning to find quite a lot of pedestrians on the roads. Almost before we could decide what to do, we were being escorted to the police station by a cop on a commandeered moped. Every vehicle that was passing through the town (on the main highway to Santa Cruz from the south of the country mind you) was given the same treatment. The Police Station was an island in a sea of impounded cars and motorbikes. There goes our early start.
We were told to come back and pick up our bikes at 6pm. That wasn’t really congruent with our aims for the day and so after some discussion we were told to come back at 1pm. Instead, we stayed at the station, getting to know the policemen and doing some maintenance on our bikes. They were all very curious about the trip and were mostly very interested in our experiences and pictures of the other parts of Bolivia. These men were born in Bolivia and had lived there since, but they had never even been up to the altiplano, let alone seen the Salar or the Laguna Colorada. They were very proud of the sights their country is home to. Any pictures from outside of Bolivia, though, and they immediately lost interest. They also had no interest in my missing number plate.
As 1pm rolled by, we asked about leaving and were told that no, it’s 6pm. As we kept asking around, one of the guys with more badges than the others took us aside and told us to get on the bikes and go now.
“Ok, but what if we get stopped by another police man around the corner?”
“It’s 1pm, that is when all the policemen have lunch. You will not see another police man.”
Alex was still a little wary of getting into more trouble, but if Didier and I had learned anything from living in the third world, it’s that if someone gives you a chance like this there’s no point trying to invent your own issues, you just go. So we did, running from the police for the border of the county, as we had been instructed to do by…the police.
Quickly we saw the sign indicating we had made it to the next county, and we were legal again. After a quick stop at a lady’s house for some fuel, we started the long slog to Santa Cruz. Today’s little adventure meant that once again, we were going to arrive in the dark.
We pulled into Santa Cruz feeling very, very tired. Our bikes needed some serious attention and we needed a swimming pool. Sadly, the hostel with the swimming pool and what looked like quite the party going on was full and we were forced to settle for a hostel which was very similar, but a little worse in all the ways. After stinking up the dorm with our riding clothes we went for an excellent dinner by the very grand brick cathedral and then had a very long sleep.
