Hi all,
We are still in Vina, packing up our stuff to leave tomorrow. I´ll pick up where I left off in the last email....
Over the bridge from Neuquen province, entering the Mendoza province, Ruta 40 reverts back to Patagonia-like quality instantaneously. It was paved at one point but the province is not keeping it up at all. The road looks abandoned and not much traffic on it as a result. But really, the road was quite fun on the bikes and a few cloud bursts made the road even more fun. A road that is hard for a bike is often easier for a car and vice-versa and it was no problem for us to cross the streams flowing over the road and avoid the gigantic potholes but it would not be so great in a car. We arrived that evening in a town called Malargue, and while driving all over town trying to find a non-festering place to stay, we met a family of 4 from Gibsons travelling for 2 months in a rented car. Lucky kids! They had seen us on the road that day and we compared notes about places we had all been. They suggested that we detour through the Atuel Canyon the next day on our way to San Rafeal and beyond. Great suggestion!
The river flowing through the Atuel canyon was dammed in the 50´s sometime and the company who built the dam put a dirt road in through the canyon that passes all the hydroelectric plants and the deep canyon is very scenic and pretty. It is kind of hard to imagine how the area was before the dam, but it is quite beautiful in most places now. We popped out in San Rafeal and made a dash for Mendoza. Unfortunately, just 50 km outside of Mendoza, after a sunny clear and hot day, the sky all of a sudden turned purple and rained as hard as it could so we had to turn around and go back to another “off the boat” town of Tunuyan where we magically found a great room for a good price right off the bat and they even let us park the bikes in the lobby. This actually worked out well because we then arrived in Mendoza early enough the next day to get a room in a cute Spanish-style hosteria where we chilled out for a couple of days before heading back to Chile. Reading the paper later, it turns out that the freak storm dumped one third of the average annual rainfall in 20 minutes and caused several accidents and a town outside of Mendoza had to be evacuated. They are known to have kind of wierd weather in Mendoza- it is one of the worst places in the world for hail- big hail that is exceptionally hard on grape crops, cars and peoples heads. 70% of the country´s wine is produced in the Mendoza region so they spend millions each year having an American company come in and do “weather modification” for them- seeding hail storm clouds so more little hail falls instead of the big golf-ball size ones that are so destructive. There are also hail shelters along the highway, although some people have stolen the covers off of some of them, which is pretty brilliant.....
The ride to Chile was pretty nice. The road to the border followed a pretty tame river the color of chocolate milk that people were rafting on and I had to laugh because of how amazing the Futaleufu rafting we did was, especially compared to this. The pass between the countries is at a pretty high altitude, something like 3000 m or so-the scenery is great but you would not believe the road!! The very top is a 4 km long tunnel (yikes-scarey) that starts in Argentina and ends in Chile and looking back once you get to the other side, you can look back and see the suicide road that this fairly recent tunnel bypasses. This is the busiest border crossing between Chile and Argentina and for once, they had both country´s migration and customs in the same location and everything was drive through. This actually confused us more than streamline the process but eventually we figured it out and began the incredible road down the other side. I had seen a picture of this road before but thought that it was trick photography so I couldn´t believe when I looked down and saw the road looking pretty much as it did in the pic we saw on John Welburns website, which I have attached for your viewing pleasure (I promise we will have our own digital camera for the next trip).
We arrived that night in Vina and checked back into the place we stayed at when we were here at Christmas. Next day we met up with the Motodiscovery Tour group (at their much more expensive hotel), washed bikes, changed oil and made arrangements to hook up with them again the next day to load the bikes into the container. We had a good time talking with the guys who took the tour. They were on a 1 month tour which cost them as much as we had spent in 3 months, but their bikes were delayed by 5 days so the itinerary changed.
A couple of the guys didn´t like the new route (which skipped Ruta 40) and took off on their own. Several (expensive) bikes were tipped over inside the container because they had apparently been loaded and tied down by customs people in the US who obviously knew nothing about tying bikes. The container had also been broken into during transit and one guys riding gear was stolen and he had to ride in jeans the whole trip (hard to find replacement gear like that here on short notice). The only woman on the trip crashed 100 km into the trip at 140 km/hr while passing a semi- she walked away only by grace of God. Another guy lost his passport. Really, they had a lot of problems for such a short period of time. It made Scott and I really happy to have done things the way we did. We just hope they won´t have as many problems with shipping home. To be safe, we all tied down our own bikes inside the container while customs checked them and the paperwork out and we removed everything that could be stolen- what else can you do??
So now we are just chilling in Vina. The weather is nowhere near as nice as it was at Christmas so we haven´t been to the beach, just scurrying around getting the bikes ready and packing our bike luggage into bags that can go on the airplane and arranging a bus ride to the airport - thank goodness we didn´t have to take the bus all over the past 3 months- it requires a lot more organization and punctuality. I had originally booked our flight home to give us a weekend at the beach to relax before we left and it is too bad that didn´t really work out that way, but not too bad since my dad and stepmom invited Scott and I to join them for a week in Hawaii a couple of days after we arrive home. Since we can´t get into Scotts apartment until March and since we don´t have jobs and since Scott has never been to Hawaii and since I missed Christmas at home, we decided to go, even though we don´t deserve it and can´t really afford it. Ah well, whats another week after 3 months on the road?
Cheers all, and thanks for listening to our travel tales. Scott is currently compiling the trip stats as we speak- kms, what we broke, what bad habits we have developed. We´ll post those at www.zodomatica.com/ontheroad/ shortly. See you all soon!
Scott and Pam
Posted by scottandpam at February 20, 2005 03:00 PM