Revisiting Ruta 40

Ruta 40 is somehow sort of famous amongst those who ride in South America. The road showcases the remote beauty of Argentina, and in the south it provides the only link between such mind-blowing places as the Perito Morneo glacier, El Chalten and others. If it didn't link such special places, I don't think I would go looking for the road just to ride it as it seems many do. But then I grew up in Australia, and have maybe lost my interest in riding dirt for the sake of it.

Ruta 40 in Patagonia is a long, lonely dirt road. There are some special challenges to it - it´s remote, there's not a lot of water, and mechanical or medical help, should it be necessary, is absent. You need a good fuel range - or a collection of coke bottles - and even then luck plays a part as petrol can be unavailable in the few service stations. The road itself is also located down in the thin end of the south american wedge, meaning that in summer, you share it with other biker travellers.

The surface can be difficult to ride, varying from fine sand through deep, loose gravel to round, tennis-ball-sized rocks. Football-sized rocks lie on and protrude from the surface all over the place. Heavily rutted in parts, with high ridges between wheel tracks, the surface changes frequently and suddenly. You are often on a patch less than 10 cm wide, just enough for the tyres, and just as regularly you have to dodge and zigzag to avoid the bigger and sharper rocks, or steer to counter the wind. Dry river crossings can mean long stretches of quite large rocks, and are the parts of the road that provide the most nerve-tinged excitement. For much of Ruta 40, the surface shifts under the bike as you move across it - for non-motorcyclists, imagine riding a bicycle across a waterbed! For kilometres in a row, at times. the wind can also be scarily strong, especially in the afternoons, and when we were there it was bloody hot, too.

Of our motorcycle traveller mates, it seems most had some or other difficulty - fellow Aussies Ken and Carol were blown off the road with their bike and ended up sore and looking for a welder. Ted had to return along the most remote stretch in search of a lost bumbag and documents, and had a hard crash in the process. Peter and Carol's old BMW dumped all its oil after rock damage, and they had to buy a coke-bottle of oil from a bloke in a truck. Uschi used discretion well, getting off and pushing her tall and light bike at times when the wheelrut she was following went off-piste or just ended. Lucky with the wind, we got off pretty lightly with just a couple of punctures to repair (and a good kit to do it with: www.tyrepliers.com.au), besides Emily's stomach cramps which she toughly ignored as we stood, sat, stood, sat along the road. Besides the broken shock absorber, that is. We teamed up and rode with Uschi for a day or two, and it was good to know that Peter and Carol were somewhere around.

Riding a motorcycle is a confidence game at any time. If you don't think you can, you don't. This is even more true when your bike is your house, weighs several times more than you do yourself, and is carrying not just one but two precious lives through a harsh, threatening environment. It's a matter of trusting yourself, your tyres, your bike, and importantly in our case, my passenger. Any little hole in bike maintenance, rider concentration, fitness, planning, or even in the way luggage is attached to the bike can make a very big difference out this way.

So when you need to cross that ugly-looking ridge of gravel to change lanes (ruts), you accelerate. Yep, searching if you can for a gap or a low place in the ridge, you stand up, set the bike up, maybe give a dab on the brakes, then gently squeeze the throttle to lighten the front wheel, and cross. Hands and arms relaxed on the handlebars, let the front wheel and then the whole bike wobble underneath you as it crosses the obstacle, let it all settle on the new path, then repeat. Or sit down for a few hundred metres, if you are lucky. And when a grotty patch of deep, loose and round river rocks makes your eyes boggle, stay calm, back yourself and your tyres again to brake and lose some speed. Lean back a bit, lightly on the throttle, let the bike weave, wag and carry on beneath you, keep your head steady and just ride with confidence.

Know a good mechanic in Mendoza?

At the beginning of the week after Em's birthday, we thought we might spend a few days in Mendoza, a pleasant, leafy city in the irrigated west of Argentina. Catch up on some blogging, do some bike maintenance and that kind of thing. We checked into a campground, I went looking for a mechanic and some parts, and Em set about the internet stuff.

I wanted to mount some aluminium tubes beneath the cylinders of the bike to carry tools and spares in. This is a bit out of the ordinary, so I asked around who might be able to fabricate them for me. This quickly led me to Ariel Rodriguez, the top guy among mechanics in Mendoza. Right from the first moment, Ariel took time and care to listen to what I wanted, besides wanting to hear about our travels. We sat down and had a yarn, the idea of the tubes started to come alive, and it became clear that I was dealing with a caring professional tradesman, the kind of bloke it has been hard to find in Argentina, and that you don't find every day anywhere.

I went back the next day - maybe Emily thought it was a bit odd that I was so enthusiastic for her to meet Ariel - but hey, I was also excited that we were going to get our tubes. This time we also met Paola and five-year-old charmer Ariadna, the rest of the family.

Shift forward a few days. We've had a mob of stuff flogged along with Em's bag at an internet cafe, leaving us without any bank cards (I had left mine in a bank machine days earlier. Bravo.), and with very little cash. Em has to head to Buenos Aires to replace her passport. All of a sudden we are house guests at Bahia Blanca 625, the house of Ariel, Paola and Ariadna. They would hear of nothing other than us sleeping in their own bed. Really, we tried to insist... but neither wanting nor able to knock back their help, all we could do was be really thankful for it. It was complete rescue!

Em headed to Buenos Aires, and I stayed another night, before heading back to John and Annette's plum farm.

Down on the finca

Some of the traveller crew we had met back down south had told us about an English couple and their plum farm at a place called San Rafael. Seems John and Annette travelled on their bikes a few years ago, saw enough to convince them that they didn't want to live in their home country any more, so opted for another change of lifestyle. Neither had much experience farming, but that didn't stop them from buying a few acres of aging plum trees and making a go of it, learning of the vagaries of irrigation, hail and the local labour marked among other things. Nowadays they offer motorbike travellers a place to stop for days or weeks, in exchange for some contribution to the running of the place. I guess they are thankful that traveller season coincides with the plum harvest!

When I first arrived, while Emily was still at school in Bariloche, there were no other travellers there. I hung out with John and Annette for a day before Emily arrived, but then we headed off to Mendoza for Em's birthday. We liked the place, the people, the idea of what J & A are doing, and were disappointed we could not stay longer. A week later, after a little misadventure in Mendoza, we were happy to go back and sign up for the "room, board and beer" deal!

Again I arrived without Emily, who had gone to Buenos Aires to have her passport replaced, but this time there was a crew of bikers there. Peter and Carol, the Canadians, and Chuck, a nice bloke from the US. Phil the tiler was there too, and after Emily arrived, Sebastian and Carola from Germany swelled the numbers further.

Annette, Carola, John and Sebastian take a coffee break

This was good timing for J & A, given that the local workers were not showing for work and the plums needed picking.

A half-day in the field - or in the house - earns tucker, sleep and shower and pretty well as much beer as is required, it seems. Maybe even more. Not that there's any formality to it, far from that - J & A could hardly expect to rouse their visitors out of bed too early, given that they themselves are the ones keeping the party going late into the night! As for shaking trees, picking up plums and carrying boxes, each just does what seems fair.

Em takes the wheel

A good, slow week off the road.

Peter and Carol shoot through

Muddy birthday

What an awesome day! It dawned clear, and it was a pleasure to be riding over the vast Argentinian plain - the rising sun on our right, and the Andes range looming on our left.


Sunrise at a chapel, one of the many we have eoncountered on these lonely roads, odd litttle shacks surrounded by red flags, other offerings, and - strangely - bottles full of water. Guess the virgin must get thirsty.

Andy had prepared a surprise for me, and as we rode north my anticipation grew. We turned towards the mountains, and then rode right into a canyon, but I still had no idea.

We've had plenty of wonderful experiences this year, but luxurious baths (or even showers) hadn't been among them. Imagine my delight when we arrived at a little resort, offering thermal spas right there in the canyon!

What a treat for two dusty travellers to be handed fresh white towels and bathrobes on arrival! We got our gear off, donned the robes, and spent the rest of the day luxuriating in the sauna, steambaths, mudbaths and thermal pools. After lunch (one of the best meals we've had in Argentina) we went back for more, before finishing the day with a massage.

T'was a magnificent, muddy birthday :)

San Carlos de Bariloche

Time for a change of pace. Bariloche, situated in the foothills of the Andes, on the shores of beautiful Lago Nahuel Huapi and ringed by lofty mountain peaks, provided a good opportunity for us to take a breather.

While Andy spent the week repairing the bike (removing first the rear and then the front suspension)

I went back to school for another couple of weeks of Spanish lessons. This was made more difficult by the fact that I bluffed my way into a class above my level. I spent the first few days wondering if anyone else knew what was going on and what the teacher was saying, and hoping my intermittent utterances of 'si' and 'bueno' were appropriate. However, after two weeks, I had an idea (in pricinple, at least) of three of the many tenses available, and was happy to try out my new skills on anybody patient enough to listen.

I'd booked to stay with an Argentinian 'family' (which turned out to have as many other students as 'real' family members), an enjoyable expierence: dinnertime (sometime around 11pm, something I never really got used to) was a raucous gabble of fluent and not-so-fluent Spanish.

Andy was in a hostel on the other end of town, and we met every evening for an icecream (one of Argentina's culinary specialities, it really is the best in the world as far as we know), and a salsa lesson (quite a bit of fun, despite our three left feet).

On the weekend, the bike back together, we took it out for test-ride to Los Rapidos, about 50ks away. The Bariloche region has a big name in Argentina and attracts climbers, cyclists, campers, anglers, skiiers in winter, and plenty of families out to barbecue on the lakeshores in summer. We again found our way out to the very end of the very smallest road before sussing out a camping spot on just any old crystal-clear river.

A forest walk, waterfalls and another swim in a magnificant lake on the Sunday and we headed home for another week of Spanish, icecream and salsa. Wow, they do their swimming holes well in these parts!

Ruta 40

They told us we could drink the water in Los Glaciares NP. We headed off on our our two-day hike with only our 1.5L waterbottle, filling it from the streams that we regularly crossed. In town, however, we filtered our water, as our campsite was downstream of town. It was only on the last night after a few drinks with Ken, Carol and Penny that I got complacent and decided to drink straight from the river.

Not a good move. I woke on the morning we were to begin our ride on the the notorious Ruta 40 (which begins with over 500 km of dirt) wracked with stomach cramps. Hours later, after Andy had completed our tasks in town, I gingerly left our tent and we set off into the afternoon.

Riding dirt means for us frequently shifting from a sitting position to standing on the footpegs. Paticularly dirt such as this, which is unpredictable, and offers hundreds of kilometres of loose gravel, golf-ball size stones, and regular sand wash-outs. My stomach gave me increasing grief as I heaved myself off the seat behind Andy (usually a fluid movement for us), but he kept the bike under control, and our first 100 kms or so passed without incident.

We stopped in the sunset outside Estancia La Siberia (a former cattle station, aptly named, no different from the endless miles of sandy pampas around it), congratulated ourselves on our progress, and spoke hopefully of reaching Perito Moreno township (still 370 km up the road) for lunch the next day.

No such luck. It was then that we realised our rear tyre was hissing, on the way to being completely flat.

We pushed the bike towards the homestead, encouraged by the workshop symbol on the station sign. It was a pleasant surprise to be greeted by a fellow biker, Uschi (from Germany) who we had met earlier on the road. Uschi had been hoping for petrol at the station and company for the rest of the road. Her wishes were granted, and we hoped we would have a similiar sucess by nightfall.

It turned our the tyre levers offered in the workshop were a rusty crowbar and a hammer. No worries though, Andy pulled out Tyrepliers kit we had been carrying since it was given to us by the manufacturer in Australia, and set about getting the tyre off the rim. (tyrepliers.com.au were the first of our two sponsors, and the kit provides an easy way of breaking a tubeless tyre bead to get the tyre off the rim.)
Meanwhile, I set about making camp in the windy dusty paddock available, and cooking dinner (to date our worst yet). We finally fell into bed about midnight, the tyre patched but not on the bike, and my stomach still horrible.

We woke in the dry-heat, the dust and the wind to discover there was actually another hole in the tyre. Somewhat deflated, but determined to get us out of there, Andy prized the tyre off again, made another patch, and convinced the station owner to turn the generator on for a third time so we could use the compressor to pump up the tyre again. (The tyrepliers include gas bottles, patches and a pump, but we kept these a little secret just in case we needed them further up the road!)

Meanwhile, Uschi had set off in the morning, expecting us to catch her down the road. It wasn't until mid-arvo that we did, stopped on the road for a break.

As we rode on through the endless pampass with the sun beating down on us, standing and sitting and standing and sitting, Andy concentrating heavily on the road and me in pain, I decided this was definitely a low point of our trip. We maintained our hopes that we would reach Baja Caracoles (an outback township near the end of the dirt - we'd long given up on Perito Moreno) before evening.

Some time in the afternoon we realised the tyre was going down again - one of the puncture sites had two holes, as it turned out.

This time there was no chance of a workshop, or even of shade. Luckily Andy was able to patch it while the tyre was on the bike, and we all had a go hand-pumping it with Uschi's pump (slightly bigger than ours) before I fell asleep in the shade of the bike. I felt rather lame, Andy and Uschi were skilfully navigating this paticularly treacherous part of the road, and I didn't even have the energy to chat with them while they fixed the tyre!


After about an hour, we headed off again, our hopes of reaching BC before nightfall sinking with the sun.

As sunset approached, I started looking for somewhere to camp amongst the pampas (which was too spiky to put the tents on). Finally, just as the sun was beginning to set (sometime around 11) I spied a track which led, miraculously, to a concrete slab in a pleasant spot at the base of a line of hills. We set about with the business of making camp and me of making a meal (using Uschi's ingredients, as by this time Andy and I had run out) and enjoyed the lightshow put on by a storm on the horizon in the sunset as we ate.

The next day, determined to reach BC for lunch, we set out in convoy.

Luckily we hadn't been putting too much hope into it, there wasn't much there when we did get there. No petrol (Uschi had almost gone through her small tank and her collection of coke bottles by this time) or a gomeria (tyre repair shop) that would be any help to us. With a resigned sigh, Andy took out Uschi's pump and hand-pumped the tyre outside the only one in town - which was closed for a (very long) siesta.

Back on the road, the landscape started to change, and the endless pampas gave way to low ranges of hills of red, yellow and grey, and every colour in between.

Our first sign of civislization was a beautiful clear river snaking through a valley between the hilss, and, after three days of dust, we ignored the law against nudity in Argentina, and splashed around in the cold water until we saw a truck approaching in the distance.

Dressed and refreshed, we headed towards the bikes, looking forward to covering the last 40kms of dirt and reaching the bright lights of Perito Moreno. However, when we got back to the bike, we discovered an ominous patch of oil under ours!!

The rear suspension second was now leaking the rest of it's oil, finally giving up the ghost, and we watched as oil spilled out, and the stain on the road got bigger. Andy put a sock around it to soak up the oil, and we gingerly started out.

I have been making people laugh by telling them it was like riding a kangaroo (any Australian's limited Spanish vocab should include the word 'kangaroo', which is very similiar to the English version). It was true. We pogoed down the dirt, Andy controlling the bike under circumstances which had just been made much more difficult.

When we reached the ashphalt, about an hour later, we we so happy we bent down and kissed it! (Uschi and I did, anyway, Andy was busy checking the bike).

It was ony 60km by this time to Perito Merino, which we covered relatively quickly. We arrived during siesta (not hard to do, siesta takes up half the day), and had to content ourselves with ham and cheese toasted sandwiches and (almost cold) beer. We were later joined by Peter and Carol, who had also just covered the road, with their own stories to tell.

We had made the remote part of Ruta 40.

Not much more to report, except that my cramps (still as strong as ever) changed form (somewhat convienantly) the moment I spied the clean porcelin in the campground, and I spent more time in there than in the tent that night. Also, I jumped on a bus to Bariloche (over 1200 km up the road - the closest hope of fixing the bike) and Andy made the bouncy trip solo to meet me a day later.

Ushi filled her bike with petrol (which was by this time running on fumes) and went back down the road to visit the Cave of Hands the next day.

El Chaltén

Gluttons for the natural beauty of Patagonia, we headed straight from the glacier towards El Chaltén, a village that owes it's existence to the fact that it is nestled under the spires of Cerro Torres and Mount Fitzroy, further north in Los Glaciares National Park.

We were treated to an amazing (and apprently rare) view of the spires without mist as we approached just on sunset. El Chaltén - a collection of tin and fibro constructions - was unmistakable, lit up as if it were a city. Ironically, the brightest part of town was the power station, which apparently runs largely to illuminate itself. Despite the constant hum of the station, the village is a tranquil place, and we set ourselves up in one of the free campgrounds next to the river.

We were there to trek into the park, so we set about it in the morning. Our estimated time of departure was quite different from the actual time (nothing new there), and - having hired packs and stashed the motorbike - we set off for the spires in the late afternoon.

What a beautiful walk! The National Park is home to the largest ice field outside Antartica and Greenland, feeding 47 large glaciers, including Perito Moreno which we visited earlier. The valleys at the base of the spires are filled with green forests and icy-cold glacier fed streams. We walked up one of these, filling our waterbottle as we went. Andy couldn't resist putting his newly waterproofed boots to the test.

The designated campspot was about an hour's (very steep) walk below the torres. We set up camp next to another Aussie, Penny, who we got on with immediately, and, despite the fact that she had made the final accent earlier that day (see below), was pretty easy to convince to come another time.

We weren't disapointed. Up there, the spires rise straight out of the glacier field, and those out of the many lakes they feed. It's an awesome sight!

One ascent wasn't enough, and the next day we headed off for another go. In contrast to the harsh environment of the vegetation-free peaks and glaciers, the valleys are green fertile places dominated by Magellanic Beech forests, and are relatively protected and mild.

However, we couldn't stay in there forever, so, after we had lunch and stashed our packs, we headed again towards the torres.

After walking along and over glacial moraines (much to Andy's interest, and ours, as he explained the geology to us), we arrived at another lake at the base of another glacier.

We spent a few hours there in the warm sun, watching as icebergs floated over the lake.

Later, tired and hungry, we walked out, along aonther valley. Our packs seemed to get heavier with each hill, and we were very glad to arrive at the village. On the way, we trekked past a reminder that we weren't the only people to have been robbed.

We reunited ourselves with the bike, and headed back to the campground.

Since this time, we have had our photos stolen, and it will be a while before we get a copy of them again (from the internet cafe we uploaded them in at Bariloche ... we are very lucky!). These are all Penny's, who kindly sent them to us. Thanks Pen!