Scott and Pam on the Road

Messing up our paint jobs in the natural beauty of Patagonia

Hi all,

Okay, got a bit of time to finish off the last update. We were heading to El Chalten, which is around 100 km off of Ruta 40. When we arrived at the junction, it was really blowing quite hard, as much as it had been blowing the whole time we´d been on 40. To get to El Chalten, we need to turn west, into a 60-80 km/hr headwind. But we were pleasantly surprised to find that the road was freshly paved! What a treat. So we blast down the road at 70 km/hr and the headwind is much easier to deal with with good pavement under our tires, but is still quite tricky. However, about 40 km along, we find that they are actually still in the process of paving the road and we find ourselves directly downwind of the sand pit they are excavating for the road work and there is sand blowing across the road in this ripping wind!! Now, we have run into these little sandy bits before and I usually take a deep breath and exhale as I ride through- the sand blows inside your helmet so breathing in is not a good idea. But as I finish exhaling, I still can´t see the end of the sand!!!! So I stop to put my head down and take a breath and look behind me, under my arm, and Scott is doing the same. Since this is so unexpected, and the visibility is so bad, I decide to turn around and retreat and as I ride by Scott, who is maneuvering to do the same, a huge gust of wind comes along and blows him right over!!! With our bikes fully loaded, neither of us can pick our bikes up on our own so I need to go back on foot but the only place to park the bike is on the pavement (the shoulder is sandy and unstable and my bike would blow over too). So I flag down a SUV heading towards us on the road and he puts his flashers on, so hopefully no one else will drive into the sand storm and into the KLR and I run back to help Scott pick up his bike. Then the poor guy in the SUV gets out in T-shirt and shorts to try to help us (at least we have kevlar and helmets on). We get the bike upright before he can get there, so we holler “gracias” at him but I would be surprised if he could hear us through our helmets and the wind. We retreated to a hut for the construction workers (actually an ashphalt testing lab in a portable container) and evaluate the situation.... The guys in the testing lab are laughing at us but like the bikes so they let us stay for a while.

We ended up wrapping t-shirts and hankerchiefs around our necks and mouths, sealing the helmet so hopefully sand can´t get inside and we set off again, but after Scott takes off, I go to leave and I have got sand inside the sidestand kill switch cable (bike won´t go forward with sidestand down, for safety) and it thinks the stand is down when it is up so I stall about 5 times before figuring it out and shaking/rattling the cable to let it release the kill switch. By now, Scott has figured out that I haven followed him and tries to turn around to come back for me and guess what, the wind blows him over again!!! Its pretty comical as I type it now but at the time, I was like “why are we braving this hostile environment to go to this place again???”. Ah right, Mt. Fitzroy, the Holy Grail for a climber like Scott and the only place he said he really wanted to see in all of South America. So, once we are both upright and mobile again, we head back into the sandstorm and ride through the other side, both of us keeping a close eye out for each other blowing over. And we made it to the other side. But then, another 15 km down the road, the pavements runs out and there is a crappy desvio with deep gravel. Very difficult to ride in under good conditions and virtually impossible with this crazy wind. We are beat. So close and yet so far away but it is 7 pm and we aren´t sure whether we can make it, period, never mind making it before dark. We gave up and went back to Ruta 40 to a yucky-looking hotel near the junction but they had no rooms but he let us camp in their backyard, which was surrounded by trees for a wind-break. By this time, the sun is low in the sky and our visors are difficult to see through. But not because they are dirty, per usual, but because they are SANDBLASTED!!!! As are the fronts of our bikes and our teeth as well. Problem is that we only have one replacement visor for our helmets. We made an easy cheesy pasta dinner and fell fast asleep. Next day is –surprise, surprise- high winds again. The road we had to travel on between the junction and the place we stayed is actually one big desvio too with large round pebbles for the bikes to swim through and since we don´t even want to face that chunk of road, never mind the road to El Chalten, so we carry on down Ruta 40 to the turn off to El Calafate and we.... rented a car. Yes, we completely gave up and rented a car and went to El Chalten on 4 wheels. The rental company stored the bikes in the warehouse and we hit the road in the evening, after the wind died down and we kicked ourselves the whole way for not trying it again on bikes. Ah well, it was nice to travel and talk and not have to pack up everything so carefully and the only accomodation we could find was in a hostal where we had to share a room with a couple of Irish girls so the secure car was a nice change. Get this, the car was a Volkwagon Gol, not a Golf, but a smally and crummier sibling, the Gol. Hilarious.

We were extremely lucky the next day and awoke to no wind and clear blue skies in El Chalten. We could see the peak of Mt. Fitzroy from town and we hiked 10 km into the glaciar at the foot of Cerro Torre and it was perfectly clear too- from the people we have talked to on the road, it is a very rare ocurrence for Cerro Torre not to be cloaked in clouds. By 3:30 the clouds rolled in and covered the mountains up but by then we had been staring at them all day. People wait weeks for a glimpse, so we felt very privileged to spend the whole day staring at it. Really an awesome day, but to do a 20 km hike in running shoes (we have no room for hiking boots) on a rugged trail after 2 months of little/no excercise (except for picking up tipped over bkes, that is) is not the best idea. But a little pain for a great gain, we´d do it all over again for the experience. Next day, we did a little walk into a waterfall near town before heading back to El Calafate to return the car and pick up the bikes and head to a campsite nearby the Perito Moreno Glaciar. Next am, we get to the glaciar, expecting to spend a couple of hours then head to Rio Gallegos the same day, but it is so awesome that we ended up staying pretty much all day. The glaciar is one of the few advancing glaciars in the world, which means that more snow and ice feeds into it each year than melts or sublimates away. It looks to be 4 different valleys pushing glaciars into this one canal, which then pushed out into an arm of Lago Argentino. Every so often, the glaciar completely dams the arm of the river until dam can no longer support the weight of the lake behind it and it collapses. This has only happened 15 times since 1917 and I think the last time was in 1988, but the glaciar has now pushed across to the near shore and there is only a small opening under an icy bridge allowing water to pass, so the next time could be soon.... something for you all to think about for next year?? While we were there, we saw the glaciar “calve” a couple of times- this is when large chunks break off from the glaciar and crash into the water. The glaciar is so huge and very blue so the sight in amazing but equally as impressive is the sound of the ice cracking and groaning as it flows imperceptibly towards you. Very awesome experience. So we only made it back to El Calafate that night where we sent the last email and ate some great parrilla- El Calafate is quite an incredible collection of conveniences after the desolation of Ruta 40 for several days.

Next day, our arrival in Rio Gallegos (connected to El Calafate by paved roads) was somewhat delayed by our 3rd flat tire of the trip, this time it was Scotts though. I can tell you that we are getting very efficient at changing these things now and I was only too happy to have a flat in a place where there were no sandstorms, even if there was a bit of rain. Today is meant to be “change the oil” day but here we are at the internet place as it is kinda rainy and we are trying to hold out for better weather. We also went to a motorcycle shop to find out that Shoei (brand of our helmets) does not seem to have an Argentinian distributor, so we took it to a glass/plastic shop the motorcycle guy recommended and they are going to try to screw a new piece of plexi to the hinges of my existing visor after the cut out the center part (we have only 1 replacement visor with us and now have 2 equally wrecked sandblasted visors so if they completely mess it up, we are no worse off than before). If this doesn´t work, we´ll have to figure out getting one shipped to us from Canada.

S, we should be in Ushuaia within 2 travel days, if all goes according to plan. My mom looked up our latitude in El Calafate and it is as far south as Smithers is north. It starts to get dark around 10:30 and there is still some light in the sky around 11pm. It isn´t very warm, although it is summer here, but you can expect 4 seasons in one day. Yesterday it was hot, then poured rain for an hour then cleared up and was overcast. Would you believe that I bought a bikini here, only 600 km away from the most southern-most town in South America, as close as you can get to the South pole in the continent? There is a factory here that makes them and I figure I will need to work on my tan (i.e. grow my freckles together) when we get back to Vina del Mar for the couple of days after the bikes ship out, before we come home. Clothes like the type we would buy at home (non-local style) is about half the price of similar clothes at home, although this is still quite pricey for most Argentinians (expensive compared to the cost of living here). We like Argentina, it is cheaper and seems to be more friendly than Chile, although we haven´t been north of Patagonia yet. Our plan after we make it to Ushuaia is to zip north up the east coast of Patagonia via paved Ruta 3 and then cross back to the west side of the country to see this side of the Andes in the Argentinian Lake district before crossing back to Chile just before the bikes ship home from Vina del Mar.

Okay, the oil changes await and we can´t put it off any longer.... Cheers all!

Scott and Pam

Posted by scottandpam at January 22, 2005 06:09 PM