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CHAPTER 4: Argentina to Iguazú
Tuesday 2nd March 2004 – Argentina – San RafaelWe left San Martin and its grey skies on Sunday morning, on a leap year 29th February, to ride north towards Mendoza. From Mario, we learned that next weekend there is a huge Wine festival – the ‘Vendimia’, celebrating the annual grape harvest and sounding like a wine flavoured Oktoberfest! Within 25 miles at San Junin, the cloud broke up and we were once more in sunshine. The road wound on into the afternoon and we stopped to look at a Condor roost. It sat along a huge basalt cliff that towered over the road and an observation gallery had been sited at its base with some useful information panels in Spanish & English giving information on the birds and the geology of the area. There weren’t any Condors at home when we called but we did get to see their poo – the cliff-face was covered in it and the white staining is a giveaway to the position of their resting places (they don’t build nests – just roosting in the rocks where they lay their eggs). There then followed an amazing ride to Zapala and on along the mountains to a place called Chos Malal. The landscape was a real Rolf Harris’ palette of coloured rocks in rusty reds, mustard yellows and verdigris copper greens smeared and layered all over the place on a gigantic scale. The cobalt blue skies completed the awesome colour spectrum for this delightful ride. Chos Malal sounds like it could be French for ‘bad choice’ and it was! On our arrival we stopped at the routine police checkpoint outside town, where we completed some questionnaires for the local tourist board. Here we saw a good day turn bad as we learned that the good roads shown on our map up ahead were in fact 80km of horrendous Ripio (gravel roads). We had just ridden 130 miles up a blind draw and with Mags arm still a little tender, we simply couldn’t risk continuing over the bad roads, which we were told were now worsened by recent heavy rain. We were gutted but on confirming the poor condition with other locals, including a motorcyclist on an XL 600 Honda we decided to turn back and take a longer route around this section that would take an extra day out onto the flat Pampas. Still, the day was salvaged by a little Fiesta in the town plaza with local bands playing on a stage and whole families out for the evening, eating ice cream, enjoying the music whilst in amongst it all a melee of small children and dogs ran riot everywhere. The kids all go back to school tomorrow and it was lovely to watch them all out playing carefree in the park, celebrating their last night of freedom before the school term begins again. On Monday morning we turned back, not particularly looking forward to the repeat run back over yesterday’s roads. However the gods of travel were determined that one way or another we would have an eventful day. If we had denied the Ripio the chance of another bite at us, it was now the turn of the Patagonian wind to have a go. The bright colours of yesterdays landscapes were muted by leaden grey skies and as we rode out we were buffeted by a continually rising side wind rushing down off the mountains. The next few hours had us sailing rather than riding the bikes as we tacked along the road and into the storm. After a while we stopped to put on wetsuits as it was threatening rain and had to take care where we left gloves etc as they could easily be whipped away by the ferocious gale blowing. It was a good challenge and one that we rose to with big grins as we battled the elements. From Zapala things improved as we were now leaving the mountains and the road direction changed to put the wind behind us so that we could clip along nicely to our destination for the day – Neuquen, our last stop in Patagonia. Here we found the excellent Hotel Royal and some well-deserved beer, steak & chips. On Tuesday 2nd March, we rode north across the flat rolling grasslands of the Pampas and on to San Rafael. Loading the bikes up outside the hotel provided early morning entertainment for all the Neuquenos going to their work and we had a small crowd of curious onlookers keen to see how on earth all of the piles of black binbags on the pavement (our camping kit) would ever fit onto the 2 bikes. It was a friendly curiosity with one or 2 stepping forward to ask where we were from and then wishing us a safe journey. The Pampas proved to be a series of step down plateaus with stunning vistas of the limitless horizon at each step and a road ever vanishing to infinity. We were grateful to be merely clipping a small corner of it as after a few hundred miles of riding the straight line it is a little monotonous. Still we had pleasant blue skies and passed the time chasing cloud shadows across the rolling prairie. The plants are all very tough specimens – adorned with thorns and spines to inform you that this is still a hostile place for life. Later in the afternoon we entered a better-watered region and softer bright green grasses sprang up along the road. It was a beautiful and simple sight as the grasses appeared to be illuminated from below. There were also stands of the tall feathery Pampas Grasses, such as adorn posh gardens at home! As we approached San Rafael, trees began to appear – lines of Poplars along the roads providing shelter to the vineyards and olive orchards, which abound in the area. In the late evening sun the shadows from the Poplars bar-coded the roads and we zipped along for a glorious end to the day. San Rafael & Mendoza were heavily populated by Italian immigrants and their influence is obvious both on the landscape (this could easily be Tuscany) and in the cities with their broad tree lined cool avenidas and boulevards. We found another excellent stop over in the ‘Apart-Hotel San Martin’, where the staff insisted on carrying all of our baggage to a beautifully appointed apartment. It got even better as we were recommended to go eat at the nearby Jockey Club. This was a strange place – from the outside it bore little resemblance to a restaurant, looking more like a big house set back off the street and we followed some other people in. Inside it was like a huge ranch house and again we were a little disconcerted to be handed the menu on a scrap of printed-paper announcing the 5 odd dishes available for the evening. It was too late to go looking elsewhere so we ordered 2 chicken dishes as they came with sliced Zucchini (courgette) and we fancied the vegetables for a change. First we were invited to sample the cold table – a selection of 40 or 50 salad platters all laid out on some table tops. It was stunning food! We tried not to pile our plates too high but there were so many curious dishes demanding to be sampled that we left the tables like two greedy guts, with our plates filled to the gunnels with some of the finest salad dishes we’ve ever tasted. And that was just the starter! The chicken dish duly arrived - a fine cut of moist breast meat rolled and stuffed with an indescribably delicious vegetable stuffing. The Zucchini was great as were the lightly fried Basil leaves and caramelised shredded carrot that completed the repast. We’ve already had the best steaks in the world here in Argentina – tonight we had the best-ever chicken dish! All of the food was served by a thoroughly professional waiter who took his time to explain the menu and the wines to us. We staggered home pleasantly replete to slumber in our King-Sized bed. You’ve heard the expression ‘spread-eagled’ – well this bed was so big you could spread an Ostrich on it! This the morning we dialled reception for breakfast, which is served here in the room. A maid duly arrived with a tray laden with freshly squeezed orange juice, fresh melon cubed into bite sized pieces, some fine breads and a pot of hot coffee with milk. Ahhh! Food Heaven!!! Friday 5th March 2004 – Argentina – Vendimia in Mendoza! Well, the fruit harvest has at last been gathered – that we can attest to from the number of ancient lorries we passed on the road to Mendoza, laden down to the axle stops with tons of blushing ripe grapes on their way to the wineries for pressing. A beautiful thing to overtake, as they are slow and their sweetly scented succulent cargo wafts through our helmets making our mouths water. So now is a time for celebration in this lovely Italianate city at the foot of the mountains – it is Vendimia, the annual celebration of the wine harvest. The wine festival, as it has now become a huge event with celebrations lasting from 29th February, with the Benediction of the fruit, right through to 7th March when the grand finale takes place on the Sunday evening. 150 – 200,000 people throng the streets of the city to enjoy the party and we were 2 of them! Accommodation was a bit of a nightmare to find as the event has reached such celebrity that rooms are booked up for months in advance. We decided to have a mooch around the city in the hope of finding a spare room with Plan ‘B’ to camp somewhere in the outskirts if this failed. After 4 or 5 ‘completos’, fortune favoured us and not only did we find a room, but a small apartment with cooking facilities in ‘Apart Hotel Los Andinos’ – all for 80 pesos a night (around ₤15) including garage parking for the bikes and a small breakfast in the room included. We then booked tickets for the ‘Acto Centrale’ – the main event, which takes place on Saturday evening in a huge open-air amphitheatre, with music, dancing and fireworks. Mendoza is a fairly big city of almost 1,000,000 inhabitants and the streets, like San Rafael, are lined with trees making it pleasantly cool and shady outdoors. It is not a particularly attractive place with little evidence of any fine colonial architecture. According to our Lonely Planet Guide, a lot of the old buildings were destroyed by earthquakes and replaced by more modern, utilitarian earthquake-proof dwellings. Still, the area is in a beautiful location, close to the mountains for all manner of outdoor activities and the region produces 70% of all of the wine in Argentina, hence the big celebration. During this Vendimia period the streets were certainly alive and bubbling with happy Mendocinas giving the city a wonderful atmosphere. There is also a BMW dealer in town (corner of Moron & the main drag, San Martin) where we bought some oil filters & replaced the broken mirror mounting on Maggie’s bike – the last damage repair required after her accident on the Ripio. Bikes are horrendously, almost prohibitively expensive here. To buy an F650 would cost US$11,000 as compared to about US$7,500 at home (mainly due to import duties & taxes) but the F650 is used here as a Police bike, so there were some parts available. Tonight, we trotted off for an early dinner in time to see the first of the major celebrations – the Via Blanca – a carnival procession through the main streets of the city due to start around 10 in the evening. Dinner in both Argentina & Chile is served late. Most restaurants do not open until 9pm and it is not unusual to see diners appearing at 11 & 12pm for an evening meal. So when we turned up just before 8 we were the first people in the restaurant and obvious tourists! By 9:15 we were fed & watered and standing in amongst the thousands of well behaved spectators lining the Avenida San Martin waiting in the tree speckled illumination of a full moon for the action to start. At just after 10 a light cavalry band, resplendent in their dark blue Napoleonic uniforms, heralded the start of the proceedings. They were followed by a troop of ceremonial lancers, a police band and then some ex-servicemen marching stolidly along like elderly clockwork soldiers. Then the action started as the main pageant arrived. The whole thing is a celebration of wine, harvest and beauty consisting of huge floats pulled by monster tractors & articulated lorries, each one representing a different area or wine producer and decked with various themes associated with the grape. They were manned by a vast array of stunning young ladies, all of them competitors for the titles of regional beauty queens. The winner of this year’s regional Queen dominated each of the floats, standing aloft from the runner-up beauties. These regional queens would all be competing tomorrow for the supreme title of ‘Queen of the Vendimia’ for 2004. The first display contained a number of queens from previous years and we were amazed at how many blondes were amongst them. We chatted to a lovely local woman and a young lass from Buenos Aires who were in the crowd in front of us and they explained all of the procedures, keen that as foreigners we should understand the significance of what was going on. The fun began when the floats with this year’s crop of competing queens arrived. Their main function is to look stunning on the brightly illuminated floats, which they managed quite well, tottering on high heels on the wobbly trailers, all decked out in formal evening gowns & tiaras. At the same time they have to distribute small gifts to the eagerly expectant onlookers - small bunches of grapes and newspapers from some of the sponsors. It was all a great laugh – there were all the girls, trying to look poised and regal, whilst chucking out sticky messy grapes from huge buckets concealed about each float, flinging them with a limp-wristed girly action (they were probably terrified of breaking a nail for tomorrow!). The result was that the air was filled with grapes – heading everywhere but the intended direction from their pretty launchers. A little later some of the girls, fed up throwing small clumps of grapes and keen to discharge their messy cargo, started hefting whole bunches into the crowds where they exploded with spectacular consequence in the upheld hands of the catchers - Mags was hit in the head 3 times by juicy shrapnel! Some of the girls were also launching apples and plums but we took cover when a float containing football-sized melons opened fire. It was a grand celebration and lasted until midnight, when all of the floats had passed. We went for a cool beer and then wandered up through the craft market set up on the main square - ‘Plaza Independencia’. The Mendocinos were out in force enjoying this wonderful night. A rock band appeared on the huge stage in the centre of the Plaza and began playing at around 1 o’clock. We sat on a wall in the park to listen to them for a while, playing a number of rhythm & blues songs that somehow suited the evening. Throughout the whole evening we were amazed at how well behaved everyone was. There was no trouble and we never saw anyone drunk or misbehaving (in fact come to think of it, we haven’t seen this behaviour anywhere since we left home!). The police were a visible presence but they were mostly good-natured, staying in the background, enjoying the party like everyone else. At a quarter to 2 we finally wandered back through the dim tree lined streets to our little apartment. Outside, Mendoza partied on. Saturday 6th March 2004 – Argentina – Vendimia in Mendoza! The streets of Mendoza were once again thronging with people this morning, when last night’s big parade was repeated in daylight (this act is called La Carrousel) starting at 10am. It was a little early for us, so we just caught the tail end of it. No, for us today’s celebrations would take us to the huge open air spectacular – the Acto Centrale at the Teatro Griego Frank Romero Day. The setting is in a massive Greek amphitheatre set in a natural bowl with an enormous stage shaped like a 4-leaf clover and the lot surrounded by hills. It was a superb venue for any entertainment. To get there we took a thrilling 20-minute taxi ride. Sorry, for ‘thrilling’ read ‘scary’! The cab was an old Peugeot 504 and had all of the components normally associated with a motorcar. The difference was that whereas in a normal car these items - the wheels, suspension, brakes, engine etc, etc - all act in harmony to provide the passengers with a smooth ride, in our taxi they had at some point (about 20 years ago I’d say) had such a serious falling out that now each component was acting independently, happy to do it’s own thing and trying desperately to break away from the others. To make matters worse, I seriously pissed off the driver when I slammed shut the paper-thin back door. So we set off, the driver avoiding our attempts at reconciliation, the car components doing the same with each other. Although all the bits were doing their own thing the net effect was that the whole assembly obtained a forward motion, in a roughly straight line and the manic fairground thrill ride began! Oh did I say too that the driver was a complete nutter? He had his hand almost permanently on the feeble horn, driving like baby Maggie at the start of ‘The Simpsons’, minking his way along the road, pecking & puffing at the other drivers who wouldn’t get out of his way. ‘Lane discipline’ where 2 words missing / blanked from his vocabulary and we carved our way out of town, his head down, elbows raised as he sought to peer out of the obligatory cracked windscreen. We got there with white knuckles still intact, gratefully paid the 12 pesos fixed fare and headed off to relax and unpucker at the show. The show itself started under another full moon at around 10pm. We arrived around 9 to get settled in and had the great joy of participating in our first ever ‘Mexican Wave’! It was brilliant fun, watching the ripple approach from our right and then standing with upraised hands to join in as it reached our section of the crowd, sitting down again as it passed and watch it lap on round to the end of the audience to our left. At the end of each wave, everyone had a good chuckle and gave themselves a big round of applause before the next wave started. It was a lovely example of spontaneous mass self-entertainment and great fun! The show itself told the story of the wine year and its traditions through the medium of song & dance. The impressive cast consisted of around 700 artistes dressed as Gauchos & pretty Senoritas performing boot stomping routines that covered the whole spectrum of Latin American dance. Tango dancers lent an element of grace to the proceedings but for us the star of the show was the stray dog, who managed to somehow get on stage between 2 acts. He was a scruffy old black mongrel with lollopy ears & tongue and he just walked on stage to the huge amusement of the crowd. Once he reached centre stage he stopped, looked up at the hundred odd thousand people watching him, decided it wasn’t a good place for a doggie to be and left the way he came plodding slowly of the stage. The organisers were brilliant, just letting him do his thing, knowing that he would leave and with no one chasing him with a big stick or anything because he shouldn’t be there. It is said that everyone has their 5-minutes of stardom – well it was that wee doggie’s big night! At the end of the evening this years Reine de la Vendimia was elected from the beauty queens we’d been introduced to at the previous entertainments (Miss Rivadavia won for your information!). Once the Queen was crowned, the night ended with a grand fireworks spectacular – launched from the surrounding hills to a series of appropriate oohs and ahhs from the crowd (these expressions are universal and don’t require translation from Spanish to English!). The whole thing was amazing to behold – we haven’t enjoyed such an entertainment since going to see ‘Riverdance’ years ago in London (it really deserves to be in the same league) and this show will go down for us as one of the real highlights of our trip. Friday 12th March 2004 – Argentina – Leaving Mendoza, Fuel Crisis!, Valle de La Luna, Breakdown!!! Cordoba What a week it’s been! New plans made at the start of the week are already broken, we have had some more fun with Di Funta Correa, we have had a successful return to riding on the Ripio in some awesome scenery (desert this time), and are now in Cordoba with one dead bike. All in all, our trip has taken us in new and unintended directions, but more of that later. When we were in Mendoza we took some time to plan out the next stage of the trip. We are so taken by the beauty of Argentina that we decided to change everything and spend longer here. So our plans were revised accordingly to head North towards the mountain city of Salta, where we will spend next weekend before riding east to Iguacu Falls at the border with Brazil. From there, we planned to head west again to visit Cordoba, completing a northern circuit of Argentina after which we would head back into Chile to pick up our original route north towards Bolivia. Well that was the plan! We left Mendoza on Monday 8th March riding north towards San Juan on fairly easy roads through a vast desert flood plain at the foot of the mountains and on into mile after mile of vineyards that surround San Juan, where we got slightly lost trying to avoid the city. By early afternoon we were back on he right road and were approaching the little town of Vallecito, believed to be the place where Deolinda Correa died, giving rise to the cult of Di Funta Correa and its numerous roadside shrines at which travellers make offerings of water & food for a safe passage (see earlier entries on this in January & February). We hadn’t intended on riding this way and decided not to stop, checking on the map to see that there was a decent sized town called up ahead at Marayes where we could get fuel. The area is all scrub desert and it was baking hot. We saw numerous little twisters – columns of dust spinning crazily across the barren reddy coloured landscape – as we rode along. This was a hostile place and we reflected on the story of Di Funta Correa and how she died with her baby suckling at her breast, to be found by a passing mule train and to develop into national folklore. We both admitted later that we felt bad as we rode past and should have stopped at the shrine and fully deserved what came next! Some 50 miles further on, my fuel light came on telling me I was on reserve & to find fuel within around 40 miles before the tank ran out. A few miles later, Mags fuel light was also on. We reached the turn off for Marayes, where an information sign told us we would find fuel, food & accommodation. Imagine our horror when we found a one-horse town (the horse had fled some time ago) with no sign of a petrol station. We stopped at the local bar – it resembled one of those ‘middle of nowhere’ bars you find in spaghetti westerns – a long low brick building with no windows. You know the sort, where Clint Eastwood rides up & the bad guys are inside giving the fat greasy barman a hard time, drinking whisky & cussing & spitting and you know it will end badly. Well luckily there were no bad guys around but the lady inside smilingly told us that, no, there was no fuel to be had here. The petrol pumps had closed along time ago (around about the same time the one horse had left by the look of it). Nearest fuel? Well, that would be back at Vallecito at Di Funta Correa’s Shrine 50 miles back down the road. We bought some cold water & sat on the little veranda outside contemplating what to do next. We could not go on as the road ahead took us further into the desert and the next fuel was over 70 miles away. It would be better to go back to the main highway, back to Vallecito – that way, if we ran out (which seemed likely, having used up 8 miles of our reserve already) we would be more likely to meet someone on the road to cadge some petrol or a lift. We couldn’t transfer fuel into one bike as the tanks are under the seat and almost impossible to siphon or drain fuel from. Serves us right for not stopping at the shrine! So we mounted up & rode out of town, back the way we’d come. We rode at 50mph for optimum fuel economy, even switching the engine off to glide 2 miles down a big hill. It was a nerve-wracking experience. It was round 4pm; that quiet time of the day when afternoon spills into evening. Overhead, huge vultures circled the road looking for carrion. We had food and water for when we ran out and gingerly monitored every mile back along the cactus lined road towards the fuel pumps. At 35 miles into our reserves we found a Police checkpoint where we killed the engines & enquired for fuel. Nada – nothing! We informed the policeman of our plight and rode on watching 40 miles, then 45 miles come up on the trip meter. From this point on our nerves where on end as we waited for the first chug of an engine splutter to indicate the end was nigh! There were several false alarms, such as when we rode over some rippled road surface that made the bike falter a little. Eventually 50 miles was logged and a faint glimmer of hope sparkled – if we could only get a little further, we may be able to walk for fuel. At 55 miles, I spotted a radio mast that signalled our approach to the little town and finally with 57 miles on reserve, we pulled onto the lovely forecourt of the most welcome petrol station on Earth! We were both staggered at the fuel economy of our bikes. We refuelled and promptly made our way to the Shrine of Di Funta to pay our regards! The shrine itself was an incredible and very moving experience. Whilst it outwardly appears to be what some would call Catholic idolatry, the whole phenomenon of Di Funta Correa is steeped in the culture of mass belief and is quite a separate thing from any church. There was a small shrine on top of a hill with covered steps leading up to it. The roof supports at the each side of the path were covered with car number plates and the walls in the little chapel at the shrine were covered in engraved plaques giving thanks to Di Funta for safe journeys from all over the world. Down at the bottom of the hill were more chapels – one dedicated to truckers, another dedicated to racehorses! There was a little museum with an old car and an even older motorcycle inside. The hillside was littered with thousands of little homemade houses – offering safety & shelter to the Di Funta. We watched one elderly lady progress in prayer up to the shrine, making her way on her knees, reciting her rosary at each step of the path. Although neither of us are particularly religious, when we got to the shrine we offered our thanks to Di Funta for getting us safely out of the desert and asked for a safe onward journey for the rest of our trip. It was a very moving experience. Leaving the shrine, we rode back over our 50 miles and on into the desert in the early evening, watching the brilliant blue sky turn to violet as the sun sank behind the mountains. We stopped at another little one-horse town called Astica (the horse was still in residence this time!) arriving just as it got dark. Here we found a small room in a Hospedaje for $10 pesos for the night (₤2!) our cheapest accommodation of the trip to date. We washed off the sticky sweat from our desert ride in freezing cold showers and afterwards, the lady cooked us some Pizzas which we woofed down with a well deserved ice-cold beer! Our cheap accommodation with its welcome clean linen was spoiled somewhat by the fact that it turned out to be like sleeping on Old MacDonald’s Farm! Just as we were about to drift of, the local dogs started barking, first in ones and twos & then the whole pack joined in. Just when you thought that it was quietening down, another dog would bark and get the whole lot going. Added to this there were horses neighing (well OK, the one horse was giving his all), donkeys braying and the dawn was greeted by that lovely cock-a-doodle-doo of the roosters. They must have had dodgy alarm clocks, as it was pitch black outside at 4:30am when they all started their racket! We rode on 25 miles to Valle Fertil de Saint Augustin, gateway to Ischigualasto National Park, where the Valle de la Luna (valley of the moon) exists. We stopped to find out more information on the park, intending to visit it on passing on our way north and the tourist information people told us that the road ahead & around the park was in fact our old friend the Ripio once again. Our mishaps of yesterday had fortunately prevented us from inadvertently wandering into this section late in our travels yesterday (our maps all showed good paved roads up ahead – so thanks again to Di Funta!). The park itself contained a lot more to see & do than we’d anticipated so we abandoned our progress for today and decided to give the park and those lovely Ripio roads a full day tomorrow on unladen bikes. Besides, there were some interesting walks around Valle Fertil and we had a very relaxing afternoon wandering around examining some ancient Indian rock carvings near town. Next day we set off for a tassle with the Ripio (our first since Mags accident at Rio Mayo) and a trip around the park. We approached the challenge with more caution, taking our time and to be honest the roads where much better than the Ruta 40 where Mags had crashed. Still they were challenging enough with some sections of sand and mud to tackle. We reached the park around midday and were rewarded with one of the most fantastic motorcycling, touring experiences to date! The 40 km circuit around the park winds through some fabulous lunar like rock formations which give the area it’s name. It was all off road taking us through stunning painted deserts, over tumbling rocky pathways and on into red Martian tracks that led us along red sandstone cliffs reminiscent of some monster sized crazy Hindu temple. The rock & stone formations were awesome with names like El Hongo (the mushroom – a dumptruck sized rock balanced on an impossibly thin sandstone column) and El Submarine (looked like the Russian Sub from the Hunt for Red October). There were other unnamed features resembling giant birds and huge heads and everywhere you set your eye there was a view to die for. The area dates back to the Triassic period and is one of the richest fossil / dinosaur bone fields in the world. It is impossible to describe the park – just look at the photos elsewhere on this Website. We rode back having successfully turned over around 120 miles on the Ripio today, elated at our grand day out in the park. The mountains had been busy today too, gathering cloud and as we arrived back at the little Cabana we were staying in, it began to rain – the first serious rain we’ve encountered on the whole trip. Next morning, 11th March, we awoke to a grey dawn with a fine soaking mizzle clogging the air. We now had to ride back over some 40-odd miles of Ripio in the wet – another first – another challenge. When we set out it was actually better than yesterday in the dry! The rain overnight had dampened down all the loose dirt on the road making it just that little bit firmer and easier to ride on. After about 12 miles, KP (My bike, called after the first 2 letters of the number plate) began to splutter having just passed through a big puddle on a short paved stretch over a riverbed. The engine then died and refused to re-start. Mags caught up on KG all smiles at the easier than expected going to meet our latest challenge for this week! Several connectors underneath the bike looked to be soaking wet s we disassembled the belly pan & crash bars to take the switches apart and try & dry them. No change – the bike still refused to start. Next up we examined fuses and other connectors but still with no result. Finally, I took KG and rode back into town to arrange for a pick up truck to recover us to somewhere drier, where we could work better on the bike out of the rain. I met a guy called Fernando who ran a local Gomeria (tire repair place) and he quickly arranged for another Gomeria, Juan, to come & get KP with his battered old pick up truck. 2 young fellows climbed on the back & we went out to recover the bike. In the truck Juan told us that today there had been some sort of explosion on a train in Madrid with a lot of people killed. Initially we thought it was gas or some dangerous materials that had exploded, but we later learned the horrible truth, that it was in fact the work of terrorists. All of a sudden our immediate problems were trivialised by the news of this terrible event. The bike was duly recovered and we returned to town to begin the painful task of trying to find the fault. We had a spark at the plug, but it seemed that no fuel was getting through leading to a suspect injector or fuel pump. The locals in Valle Fertil were just amazing & word soon travelled of our plight (as it had at Rio Mayo). An acknowledged local mechanic called Pablo arrived and we set to switching various components from KP with KG to eliminate various possibilities. The injectors were swapped and worked fine on the other bike, so it was looking like a defective fuel pump. At this point more help arrived – Adriana Garcia, the lovely local schoolteacher arrived. She’d heard of our problem and arrived to offer her services as a translator. With Adriana’s help, we called BMW in Mendoza, to see if they could shed some light on the problem, but they needed the bike there to diagnose the fault. Then a guy called Jorge arrived with news that he was going to Cordoba in the morning with his parents in a pick-up truck and could take the bike to the BMW dealer there. It was 8pm and we’d spent all day working at the bike, at the end of which we now knew that the fault lay in the fuel delivery system. There was no internet connection in Valle Fertil to search for further help and the wet connectors were looking like a red herring so we decided to head to Cordoba for professional help and arranged a 6am start with Jorge in the morning. Throughout today we were once again impressed with the help that was forthcoming and the interest people took in our situation. When we finished I tried to pay but no one would accept any money. Juan wanted only 20 pesos for recovering the bike (₤4) and Ferndando, who organised it all and whose shop we worked in would not take any payment for his services. In the end we insisted on a small amount to buy everyone a round of beers and it was reluctantly accepted. The journey to Cordoba was another fantastic experience. We set off in the dark early morning in pouring rain on a different Ripio road, with Mags in the cab with Jorge & his elderly parents and me following on KG. That ride broke several of the taboos of travelling on bikes – riding in the dark, in the rain on an unknown road in bad condition after a sleepless night. We stopped a few miles out of town for Jorge’s parents to leave an offering of food & water at a small roadside shrine for a safe journey. After around 40 miles of dirt road we were back on paved stuff for 300 miles to Cordoba. We were fed en-route by Jorge’s Mum on homemade Milanese (steak in breadcrumbs) sandwiches and we had several Maté stops along the way – where we dosed up on this caffeine rich herbal tea. It certainly took care of any potentially sleepiness problems! We stopped to drop off Jorge’s folks with some friends at La Falda, a small town 40 miles before Cordoba. We were invited into their house for a lunchtime feast of the tastiest empanadas (mince meat pasties) yet – homemade of course! When I said how good they were, I was rewarded with more food – a scrumptious slice of vegetable pate rolled in meat – totally mouth-wateringly delicious food that would not have looked out of place in any fine restaurant. On finishing this, another dish appeared this time a cold potato salad beautifully presented and garnished on a tray of shredded lettuce. It would have fed all 7 of us and I had to turn it down, otherwise I would never have gotten back on the bike! We had a tour of their beautiful house and then took some photos (Jorge’s mum was dying to try on a crash helmet!) before we left for the final leg of our day’s journey. We reached BIG motorcycles, the BMW dealer in Cordoba around 3pm and unloaded the bike & our stuff from the pickup truck. We said our farewells to Jorge and waited patiently for the BMW mechanic, Ricardo, to turn up. By the end of the day, the bike had been tested on the BMW ModiTec system – a computerised fault tree analysis tool that first of all got it wrong by saying that the engine management unit was defect (it wasn’t – we’d swapped these yesterday & both worked fine). Eventually the fault was traced to the fuel pump and we swapped this for the one on KG and hey-presto problem located! Unfortunately the fuel pump assembly (it resembles & is about the size of a toilet flushing mechanism – so carrying a spare is out of the question) is a single point failure and cannot be repaired. We are now waiting for a new unit (which will hopefully be covered under warranty) to arrive by Tuesday and so are looking forward to spending a restful weekend off the bikes in Cordoba – the first big South American Metropolis that we will have visited. This week and all that happened in it highlights the joys of this adventure travelling lark, where plans run off the rails and new challenges continually present themselves. We have been presented with a number of unexpected encounters demanding quick thinking solutions and the experience is just fantastic. Plans for now? - We hope to get KP repaired & then head in the latter part of next week to Iguazú and finally Salta, our last stop in Argentina – or is it? Saturday 20th March 2004 – Argentina – Cordoba, Snakes & Ladders, On to Iguazú We had a fairly quiet few days in Cordoba, waiting for the new fuel pump to arrive. It was a good time to walk the city streets, look in the shops and enjoy some fine food in some fine restaurants. It is a pleasant enough city for all of these amenities but, like Mendoza, there is nothing special in the city itself to look at and after a few days we were restless to leave. It took an extra day for the pump to arrive but when it did Ricardo soon had it installed and we were ready to get back on the road. We have to say a big thank you to everyone at BIG Motorcycles, the BMW agent in Cordoba. Sergio for helping to organise everything, Anna for sorting out the warranty paperwork, Pablo for his immense enthusiasm and animated tales of the pleasures awaiting us in Bolivia & Peru (he did this trip a few years ago) and finally Ricardo for all the spanner work and sheer dedication to getting us back on the road. We had another delight awaiting us before leaving the city. Esteban & Consuela Sanchez, a young couple who we’d met at the mechanics in Rio Mayo had noted our Website address off the bike and had e-mailed us with an invitation to join them for an Asado (barbeque) should we ever happen to be in Cordoba. We duly contacted them & spent a wonderful evening at their house with Consuela’s sister Dolores & her husband Bernardo drinking beer & wine and eating an assortment of prime cuts of meat char-grilled to perfection by Esteban. Bernardo is a doctor and provided amusement by his all too literal English translations of the cuts of meat (read body parts) that we were eating – “have some glands and you must try some diaphragm!” It was a bubbly evening of laughter & merriment and it was a refreshing change for us to enjoy such family hospitality. On Thursday 18th March we finally left Cordoba and headed for an easy afternoon ride to Paraná, which we selected as an overnight stop on our way east to Iguazú. The approach to the city, in its lovely setting along the milky coffee coloured Paraná River was via a huge 1.5-mile long tunnel under the river. It was a real treat with a lot of beautiful old colonial buildings and a massive area of parkland along the riverbank. We found the excellent 4* Gran Hotel set in the central Plaza for 74 Pesos (₤15) for the night, where we ate tasty Surubi & Pacu – 2 of the local river fish. Our trip since leaving Mendoza has been a like big game of snakes & ladders as we try to make our way up the massive game board of Argentina. We have had snakes, like when Norm’s bike broke down, that have sent us back to find a different way round the board. Then there have been ladders like the convenient lift to Cordoba with Jorge that rescued us from a snakefall! Cordoba itself was a series of lovely ladders – the whole experience of getting the bike repaired, Asado with Consuela & Esteban etc. On Friday 19th March we hit another snake, a real one this time and it was wearing a Policeman’s uniform. In all of our travels in South America we have encountered Police roadblocks – maybe 30 or 40 of them to date. They are usually to be found outside major towns & cities or at departmental borders and are manned by mostly courteous policemen, sometimes from the local police, sometimes from the national gendarmerie. You have to slow down on approaching them and more often than not we get waved on. We have been stopped about half a dozen times and asked for our licenses, vehicle logbooks & occasionally passports but the officers on every occasion have been polite, interested in our trip and have offered advice & help on the best places to see & stay. We have been warned about police corruption in Peru & in some of the Central American countries, but have had very pleasant relaxed encounters in both Chile & Argentina. We were riding east on the Ruta 127 about 20km out from a little town called San Jaime, when we were stopped around 4:30pm in the middle of nowhere at the border roadblock between the departments of Entre-Rios and Corrientes. On producing our documents to the 2 officers, we were asked for Seguro de Mercosur – some vehicle insurance that covers Brazil, Argentina & Chile. We didn’t have it – we were never advised at any border that we needed any motor insurance and research before the trip & with other travellers told that there was no point in having local insurance, even if it was available, as it wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on. At this point we were told it would cost $300 US to buy a Mercosur policy before we could continue. Mags stayed at the bikes with one of the cops, an older chubby guy who was from Brazil. I went off with the other cop, a slick fair-haired dude wearing a blue uniform who seemed to know his business, to sort out the problem at the little roadblock hut. A pad of official forms along with a tariff in a plastic wallet was produced and the $300 fee was explained on the tariff sheet. I told the guy I didn’t have $300 (which was true) and was asked how much I did have. I told him I had 300 pesos (about ₤60) and he said that would be fine. Up to now I was totally naďve thinking that these were honest policemen doing their job but they were corrupt cops – out to make a few quid from passing travellers like us and this realisation slowly dawned as I sat sweating in the little hut, with this guy demanding money from me across the table. At this point I was simply cornered - I’d told the guy how much money I had & he’d told me he was going to take it. I kicked myself later for not saying a lesser amount, but I really did believe that I would have to pay for a genuine policy. I put the money on the table and it immediately disappeared. The forms & tariff were put to one side and my details recorded on the back of a scrap piece of paper and I was told I could go. I asked for a receipt but was told I didn’t need one and that everything would now be done on the Internet. Outside Mags was chatting to the other cop & it was just like all the other road blocks with him recommending where to go & what to see at Iguaçu. We rode off defeated, ripped off and utterly disgusted at this incident. We had an interesting chat with a young waiter a few days previously in Cordoba who was curious to know what we thought of Argentina in the outside world as he’d spoken to some French people & was horrified when they told him how that many Europeans regard the country with suspicion based on tales of corruption. We told him that when planning our trip we looked at 2 arrival points for the bikes – Buenos Aires and Santiago, deciding on the latter as tales of corruption in BA were so bad. In our subsequent travels in this marvellous country we were quite astounded to find the opposite to be true, with wonderfully friendly open people ready to help on every occasion and have had not a whiff of bribery or corruption across the country. The waiter recognised and really hated the petty corruption in BA as he felt it was blighting the whole country. He felt that for many foreign tourists & business travellers the capital city is their first and often only exposure to Argentina and they leave with the impression that the whole country is like that. It is clearly not, from our own experience but our encounter with these bent cops has shown us that you cannot let your guard down (as we did) and that there are bad apples farther afield still spoiling the crop. The day did end however on a small ladder! We rode into the early evening and at around 7 pulled into a little town called Yapeyu on the banks of the River Uruguay, which turned out to be the birthplace of General San Martin – ‘The Liberator’, the man who led the country to independence from Spain back in the early 1800’s. We rode up the dirt high street and checked in to the delightful little Hotel San Martin, on Plaza San Martin and across the square from the church of San Martin de Tours. That evening, we dined on Pollo con Fritas and Brazilian Brahma beer on the hotel veranda under a cloudless sky splattered with stars with the magnificence of the Milky Way on full display. It was a wonderful tonic to settle the upset of today’s reptilian downslide and a reminder that we were still in a wonderful land. Next morning we were up early and had a mooch around town visiting the ruins of San Martin’s home – the crumbling walls of an old Jesuit building, now enshrined in a low Baroquish temple, with arched windows that provided a soft illumination on the ruins. It was very tranquil and quite a beautiful National Monument. We also had a walk around the Museo de San Martin, but it looked like all the important relics of the man were elsewhere as the museum contained only a few replica uniforms and some prints & transcripts from the history of the wars of liberation. There was nothing else to detain us here so it was off to Iguazú for a look next at some Waterfalls. The ride to Iguazú was a fantastic journey taking us in through first forest plantations of pine stands and then later on into masses of ever more jungly foliage, with huge palms and monstrous trees bedecked in creepers and vines. The road was superb, long straights and swooping bends that roller-coastered over and around the low hills of the province of Misiones. We passed slashes of exposed areas of wonderful red dirt, its hues of Burnt Sienna clashing vividly with 40-shades-of-green jungle and the clear blue skies above. The light and colour here has an acrylic brightness and intensity and it is a painter’s paradise. In Iguazú we found a beautiful Cabańa – the Leńador, where we set up camp for a few days to explore the falls. |
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