Tuesday 18 September 2012

Leaving Corrientes – Riders on the Storm and Back to Rosario



Yesterday Fletch was feeling a lot better, but unfortunately his bike is not.  Its burning a lot of oil so he needs to get it to a specialised mechanic that understands bikes.  This means heading for Buenos Aires and a lot of money leaving his pocket.  I still have no definite plans so I thought I would join him the first 800km until Rosario.  Its been a while since I’ve been there afterall!  Brasil can wait a bit longer.  The last night in Corrientes we had a bit of a party with the whole family and Fletch and I bought a huge sickly cake that went down well with all.  We said bye to Rebeka that night as she sleeps during the day but Jorge was there to see us off in the morning.  I’m going to miss the old boy, he reminds me of my granddad a lot!

We set off in convoy and stopped to get petrol.  This took some time as there was a fuel shortage and we were trying to get our Jerry cans filled too.  They wouldn’t do it so we had to leave without any spare petrol.  As we headed out of the city I saw the familiar flashing lights in my mirrors.  I hoped they would pass me but no, I was pulled over by another Argentine policeman and Fletch kept on going.  We'd previously agreed if one of us is stopped the other should head on and wait out of sight to prevent problems for both.  It was pretty funny as for a moment there was a moving mime act to establish who had to pull over.
 
I went through the motions of showing my papers and waited for what my supposed infraction was.  Unbeknown to me I had turned into the petrol station through a red light.  I don’t think this is entirely correct as I had already turned when the light went red.  The most annoying thing is the policemen waited 15 minutes until we were clear of the busy petrol station and well down the road to pull me over.  The reason as always was the bastard wanted money.  I tried to argue my point, but he kept saying it was a US$400 fine and I had to withdraw the money right then.  I knew it was complete rubbish and I played dumb and told him all my cards and money was with Fletch.  After a 20 minute standoff I started to get tired so I pretended to find some money and said I could give him $20 dollars now.  I should insist on the papers from them next time and call their bluff, but its always so tiring dealing with corrupt police.  As some consolation though, while he sheepishly looked around to check no one was watching him take the money, I swapped the crisp $20 for a grubby $10, folded it up and put it in his hand and then rode off haha. 

The rest of the morning was without incident and I did my usual "trying to keep up with Fletch" riding.  As the day wore on the dark clouds started to get really ominous.  I’ve been lucky not to have any rain in 5000kms, but there was going to be no escaping this time, so after a fuel stop I dug out my waterproof jacket and dodgy 2nd hand skipants I'd bought in Santiago.  The land is very flat in this part of the world and we could see both fronts of cloud rushing in to converge right above our heads.   Soon after this epicly loud thunder started, followed by lightning strikes that were landing on both sides of the road.  Fletch had stopped to sort out his oil so I carried on on my own.  I’ve never seen this and at one point a bolt touched down 200m to my left.  It was quite eerie as there was nothing around, no people, cars, houses, just flar land in all directions.  As the rain started to come down I was trying to work out how safe I would be if I was hit by the lightning.  I figured the rubber tyres would save me, so I decided to ride on.  I still don’t know if that is correct?  Tormenta is the name for a storm in Spanish and it really applied.  The rain became harder and harder and then the wind picked up, blowing the rain from the side.  I was riding in a straight line, but fighting with the wind at my side, the bike hung at 45 degrees and I had hardly any visability.  It was pretty grim so I was forced to stop at a house and ask a farmer if I could shelter under the porch.
The happy view from the porch
I was in a pretty drowned state by the time Fletch turned up.  My whole bottom half was wet.  My boots have gaps in the soles and I discovered my skipants have holes burnt in them from being stored in the saddlebag close to the exhaust and also have a poorly placed rip in the crotch area!  If that wasn't bad enough, my gloves seemed to absorb a litre of rain each and while I was waiting for Fletch to turn up, the area where I left my helmet became flooded so my helmet was underwter too haha..  A really impressive storm that.  Still it was not as bad as what happened to Fletch later.  
Bit wet like


When the storm died down a bit we rode on.  I couldn’t get any wetter so it didn’t matter to me.  Fletch in his professional clothes was toasty warm so he was ok too.  We eventually arrived in La Paz after another 400+km day and went to find the campsite.  Somehow we lost each other in the tiny town and I rode aound for nearly an hour trying to find him.  By the time it was dark I went back to the campsite to wait for him.  He turned up later covered in thick mud to tell me that he had gone down a track close to the river to get some photos.  This had been a massive mistake as the mud had turnt to slick in the rain and he had dropped the bike.  He had to walk back to a house and get some help to lift the bike.  Both him and the bike were clogged up hahaha.  The campsite was a quadmire – nice word hey, so we asked if we could camp in the BBQ area which was concrete and had a canopy above.  We were pretty knackered by then so we didn’t bother with the tents.  A good decision until the rain blew in sideways in the middle of the night.  Anyway I think you get the picture of how well we slept that night.
The result of a day riding in the storm, me soaked through and Fletch covered in mud after falling off the bike.

Got to love ending the day wring the water from all your clothes
The slightly exposed campsite, with everything I own drying out.


The next day the bad weather was over, and other than having to put on my wet clothes again nothing bad was going to stop me getting to Rosario.  For some reason though the distance was longer then the maps yet again and no matter how many Kms we covered the roadsigns kept saying the same distance! It seemed to go on and on.  Although compared to the day before this was nothing.  Entre Rios Province by the way is all cattle, rivers, islands and bridges and after 300 or so kms the only thing I wanted to see was the last bridge.  Its not difficult to find, its massive as it needs to cross the huge River Parana.  Crossing it was a huge relief, the journey was almost over and looking over to the left we could see the sun reflecting off the skyscrapers in my favourite city – Rosario.

Entre Rios: Cattle, rivers, islands and bridges, cattle, rivers, islands and bridges, Ok the cattle are hiding in this one, but trust me they are everywhere.
Crossing the river into Rosario.  Picture from Fletchs camera - need to get the original sin the funky messed up formating

Thursday 13 September 2012

Corrientes - Transvetite Drs and Hobo travellers

I love it when you know nothing about a place and it turns out to be somewhere great.  This is Corrientes.  I had no expectations before and as there are not many tourists you feel like you have the place to yourself.  Its a really nice city next the Parana river and if you like sunny weather like me (not Fletch the mountain boy from Colorado), then Corrientes has this too.  It was between 28 and 38 degrees for the 5 days that we were there.
The city beach  Looking towards Resistencia and the Chaco.
We arrived in the afternoon on the 13th hoping to contact Andrea from Couchsurfing for a place to stay, however I couldn't reach her on her phone.  So instead we parked up near one of the plazas and I left Fletch sitting next to the bikes looking like a scrounging hobo with his upturned cap on the ground, while I went to find an internet cafe.  Unfortunately we had mixed the dates up so we had nowhere to stay and I walked back to Fletch to break the news.

I'd only left him for 20 mins but in that time an older lady called Rebeka who spoke no English had walked past Fletch, thought he was homeless and offered us to go back to her house for a shower.  God knows how it happened, Fletch speaks no Spanish but I guess she was technically right as we didnt have anywhere to stay at that point.  In the confusion I thought Fletch had already agreed to go back when he hadn't.  I didn't realise this until we were already following her along the path with our bikes.  We debated whether this was the wisest thing to be doing and joked about how we were about to be scammed out of everything we have.

After a short walk we reached the front gate and could see it was a grand old house right in the centre of town.  Rebeka opened the 12ft tall black front door and beckoning us in, bikes included.  It turned out the only way in was to actually ride the motorbikes through the centre of her house.  We felt pretty uncomfortable and although I wanted to shout "StrangerDanger" I found myself saying "ok".  To get up the front steps I had to get a bit of a runup and I was a bit concerned about crashing the bike into whatever was behind the door, but I managed it successfully and shot through the house dodging furniture and burst out into a large courtyard out the back.


Looking around, the whole place was really ancient and quite rundown, but this gave the place a lot of character.  Backing onto the courtyard was a deceptively large overgrown garden, filled with orchids, banana, papaya, orange and a load of other trees I didn't recognise.  There was artwork everywhere, but for every piece of sculpture there was either a huge crack in a wall or an interesting attempt at repair.  For example one section of guttering had been replaced with a line of plastic Coke bottles taped together. The whole place was layer upon layer of dodgy repairs and I loved the originality of it.
Rebeka and Jorges House, spot the repairs.
If the house wasn't interesting enough Rebeka and Jorge made up for it.  They simply were the coolest ecentric old couple I've ever met.  Jorge is a retired businessman with a bald head and a rattail ponytail who hangs around the house all day in an pair of shorts.  He says he stole Rebeka 18yrs ago from Buenos Aires and never let her go back.  Rebeka is super healthy (if you ignore the cigarrettes and the odd joint) and only eats fruit and vegetable smoothies in random combinations.  Shes has converted one of the rooms of the house into a clothes workshop and works all night to avoid the daytime heat and sleeps in the day.  They both constantly joke about the other but you can see how much they mean to each other.

One of Rebeka's original smoothies, Apple and Tomato!  She insisted we had them too

We were only going to stay an hour or so and find an excuse to leave, but we never found that excuse.
Even if we wanted to leave I don't think they would have let us and with Fletch getting progressively more ill and me being in no rush to leave we ended up staying 5 days in a small flat next to the garden.  We soon felt part of their family and forgot the reason why we were there.  Especially so when all the extended family came up to stay from other parts of the country.  The only minor  downside to the stay was the unusual amount of mosquitos that flew through the windows left open due to their broken latches.  It took me a while to find, but the source of which turned out to be a half filled stagnated swimming pool hidden at the back of the garden.  I don't know how I missed it.

Hanging out with Jorge and Fletch
I was having a good time and seen a lot of the city and finally met Andrea and her friends for a night out.  I'd also taken a trip to San Cosme, where Andrea's grandparents had a house next to a lake.  But by the third day Fletch was still feeling sick and had no signs of getting better.  Rebeka told me that "Fletch is like a Tomato plant, and tomato plants whither in the sun" hahaha.  She then made me take him to the hospital to get checked up, which lead to some kind of surreal Monty Python incident. The hospital was not used to seeing foreigners and so a lot of people in white coats were clambering to see who we were.  We were crammed into an examination room and seen by two young trainee doctors, who found my job as translator hilarious as I struggled with my lack of vocabulary.  It decended into a series of ridiculous mime acts taken in turns by all four of us in the tiny room, while all the time a transvestite Dr was peeking through the keyhole to the room watching us.  We know this as he/she fell through the door when our trainee Dr opened it.  The whole visit was a really bizarre comedic exprience.  The peeping trannie Dr ended up being the person in charge of the ward and suggested Fletch should have an X-ray on his skull! So he had that done, but then they wanted to give him an injection in his arse too.  This was too much for me and I completely lost it by this point.  All this for a cold!  Funnily enough Fletch said no to this and went for pills instead.  We then quickly made our way back to the normality of Rebeka's and Jorge's.

Night time by the river.  The sunken ship is still used as a clubhouse.

Going shopping for Rebeka

Andrea's Grandparents house in San Cosme

Argentinian icecream and Dulce de Leche cake with Andreas's sister Gaby and friends.
Calle San Juan Murals
Parking up for the night Corrientes style
Fishermen in the portside area

The small flat at Rebeka's and Jorge's









Jujuy to Corrientes - The Long and definitely not Windy Road.

While in Jujuy I had to make a few decisions that I'd been putting off.  The biggest being that I was supposed to be in Buenos Aires sitting on a plane ready to fly back to England.  But seeing as I was on the wrong side of the country with a motorbike, that was not going to happen.  So I rang up and added another 6 months to my flight date and now stand a chance of making that one...maybe?  Jujuy itself didn't strike me as the most exciting place to visit but I was only there a short time and most of that revolved around seeing if Fletchs bike can be repaired there.  The highlight of the stay being a leisurely 3km stroll through the city pushing Fletch’s bike through busy traffic to get it to a mechanics.  The positive thing being at least it was fixed.  Now with 6 more months I decided to head east towards Uruguay and Brazil and maybe check out some opportunities I've been reading about, and as Fletch is going to Iguazu we both set off east together on the 11th.

I didnt really plan the route, mainly because most of it is one long seriously straight line along Ruta 16, and the less I knew about how featureless it was the better.  Fletch had already studied the route and knew where to stay.  With a faster bike he was always going to be in front anyway, so the only thing I needed to look for was his bike parked up waiting for me every 50-100km.  All in, it was a good 1000km to Corrientes and I had to prepare mentally for the ruler straight road.

Fletch dodging potholes

As expected the first day was looonnng, we covered 420km, the most I'd ever done in a day on my slow bike and as light was fading away we realised camping out on the roadside was not an option.  There was nowhere suitable and farmers around here seem to be on some kind of roadside verge burning binge and we were not keen to be burnt alive.  So with the last rays of light we resorted to stay in a small town called Monte Quemado and asked to camp out the back of a hotel in their carpark.  The owner wanted a stupid amount to camp, which we were never going to pay so when she asked what we normally pay I gave her a low amount knowing she was going to charge double....which she did.
 
Lunch stop, Fletch's bike is starting to need a lot of TLC.

In Chaco there are a job lot of Falklands signs due to a large number of locals who were drafted into the army at the time.
Monte Quemado felt like a real frontier town and camping out the back of the hotel we saw a strange mix of people passing through to stay in the hotel.  The best of the bunch was a chilled out group of Brazilian bikers and an Argentine beef farming couple from Corrientes on their way to Salta for holiday.  We had a good chat with the Brazilians in Spang-ugese, and they took a few photos of the 2 idiot gringos, probably to laugh at later.  The farming couple were really kind and gave us some grapefruit from their farm for breakfast.  They were pretty traumatised, which is fair enough really as they had just hit a donkey on the outskirts of town and damaged their 4x4 in a pretty impressive way.

The beautiful campsite

I don't know what this drink was but Sunny D has nothing on it and no children should be given it.  It tasted like liquid bubblegum and I couldn't sleep for ages after.
The next day we set off early, there is nothing really to say on the route.  It was 430km to Parque Nacional Chaco, way off the map and GPS calculations of 300+km.  Thats 850km in 2 days, a record for me.  The only real change in the monotomy was passing the poor dead donkey the Corrientes farmer hit and Fletch decapitating a bird at 100km/h and not noticing its body stuck in his sun visor until he stopped later.  Tragic yet impressive at the same time.  Parque Nacional Chaco, is home to a number of endangered animals including the Jaguar, however you'd be fooled into think it is home to nothing other than every mosquito in the Southern Hemisphere.  Within seconds of arriving we were covered in Mosquitos.  They are the horribly impressive type that can bite through clothes so I ended up making up camp wearing my full bike gear including the helmet.  I'd have rather come across a Jaguar, then again they are probably all dead due to Malaria.

The gravity of the situation

The next morning Fletch was feeling sick and after a slow and lacklustre start we set off for Resistencia - my fault entirely it took me an age to pack.  Only 150km so we still arrived about lunchtime and stopped for a couple of hours to check the interent to see if our Couchsurf contact Andrea had written to us.  Fletch was feeling really sick and his bike was in a bad way too, burning a lot of oil which usually means something expensive.  We didn't know where we were staying but decided to ride over the bridge to Corrientes anyway and see if we could find Andrea.  A slight lowpoint but as soon as we rode over the skyline dominating bridge and saw the people enjoying the beaches below and a group of women in lycra practacing joga, our moods miraculously changed for the better. 

Saturday 8 September 2012

Passing gas in Purmamarca



Meeting all these bikers I realise I know nothing about bikes so it has been really good to learn a few maintenance tips from them.  I’ve walked to the bike shops so many times and bought a multitude of things, but then again I don’t want to be stranded in the middle of no where again.  Possibly my best modification though has been to pad out my seat with a fluffy blue towel to save my numb arse...and to think some bikers spend hundreds upgrading their seats when they could be using a stolen hostel towel.

Today I felt ready to move on and decided to check out the area between Salta and the Bolivian border, around Purmamarca.  Purmamarca is a village in an area called Quebrada de Humahuaca.  The Quebrada is famous for the many colours of the rocks in this area with the hills surrounding the village aptly named Cerro de Siete Colores.  Andy just left for Brasil, but Fletch has not seen this area yet so is going to come along as well.  It took a bit of time getting out of Salta as we used my GPS, will I never learn?  Once out we took the amazing twisty track of Ruta 9. Its only a short run of 160km and great fun with all the corners but I didn't get any pictures as I was always trying to catch up with Fletch's bike.  Every half hour he would stop and wait for me and when I got there we would set off again.  Damn my slow arse bike. 

Ruta 9, Snack stop with Fletch.  Note my impressively revised towel seat.

Was a good easy run, but when we arrived Fletch noticed an oil leak caused by an oil bolt that had sheared its head off the bottom of the engine.  He could carry on using it but there is also a risk of the rest of the bolt being sucked into the engine when it is warm.  If that happens he’d have to replace the bottom end of the engine.  Bit of a disaster as we are in the middle of nowhere, the nearest bike shop is in Jujuy 70kms away, which means we have to somehow ship the bike there.  Easier said than done and we spent all afternoon walking around the village trying to find someone who has a camineta (pickup truck) who could take the bike and Fletch to Jujuy.  I resorted to walking around knocking on doors of houses that had a camineta parked outside.  It was a pain, people would tell you to go to one house then when you arrive you are told to go to another only to later find out the person you need is not in the village.   Just as we were giving up we met an argentine girl visiting from La Plata who said she knew where to find someone and helped arrange the lift for tomorrow for 300 pesos.
Parking up just outside the village
Cerro de la siete colores
Looking back into the village at sundown
Not sure what the crack is here, but they look just as happy as me to be up at sunrise....must be religious then.
Fighting off the queues during mid season sales.
Pretty cool hotel built into the hill

So now its night time and we've set up camp.  Not much else is going on up here tonight.  Its pretty cold camping at this altitude, but we just had a load of deep fried empanadas topped with chilli sauce.  There is actually real chilli sauce that came with the empanadas, a first in Argentina as they hate spicy food.  Going to bed now just waiting for the twangy music to stop in the restaurant nearby.  It sounds like they made the instruments five minutes ago using what ever they could find in the bins out the back.  
Despite appearances we are having the time of our lives
09/09/12
Ok new rule no chilli sauce while camping.  Was the first time in months since I ate it and we both over did it a bit.  It didn’t help the campsite toilet resembled the one from Trainspotting, even more so after we left.  Anyway early this morning I helped load Fletch’s bike onto the pickup and then rode 70km off to the salt flats called Salinas Grandes.  The route to Salinas is the start of Ruta 52 which continues onto the Paso de Jama and into Chile - the most northern border pass between the two countries.  Its a high pass hitting 4200m which affected the running of the bike causing the engine to misfire a bit, but otherwise it was a simply inspiring route with long sweeping curves and a fair few trucks to dodge.
Twisty
Curvy
Bendy
At the top.  I made the mistake of running up this hill and nearly passed out through lack of air.
Not quite the same distance for a crow
Behold! a Euromot 200GXT.  A thing of beauty
Job done!



Twisty stuff on the way back
Returning to Purmamarca I packed up my tent and went to get petrol, only to realise there is no petrol available anywhere.   What with the chilli sauce incident in the morning it reminded me of a saying I'd been told about Mexico that applies to here too.  “You should never pass gas, otherwise you’ll either shit your pants or run out of fuel”.  So true.  I should have bought more petrol leaving Salta.  Still I figured I had just enough to do the 70+kms to Jujuy so I set off.  Using the cheapskate technique of being pulled along in the slipstream of a few trucks and also freewheeling on the long downhills I got into the outskirts of Jujuy and treated my bike to a full tank of permium petrol.  It was late afternoon and I checked into Dublin Hostel, where I'd arranged to meet Fletch.  Strange name for a hostel in Northern Argentina, but it does have an Irish bar of sorts.  Perhaps next they should look into stocking Guinness.  I found Fletch crashed out in one of the dorm rooms, so he'd obviously had one of his busy days.