The gravel wasn’t even worth a mention (in the last post), so I mustn’t listen to these stories as I only get a nervous tummy. Another puncture yesterday, a nail in Tony’s rear, his second, the third overall. Gomeria shops everywhere so got the tube fixed. We had last night in Las Lajos after a […]

We are now on a slightly different schedule due to the “terremoto” (earthquake). We are traveling down Ruta 40 (mainly) in Argentina and loving this place. The sophistication of Chile seemed to bring with it higher prices, worse service, and it seemed harder to interact with the locals especially in the cities. Anyway back to […]

Today I was booked on a winery tour in Mendoza. The lure of the grapes had started in the north of Argentina with my visit to Cafayete. 160kms north of Mendoza once again I was tempted as we drove through the fertile San Juan region. Today’s tour was about trying the flagship grape varietal of […]

We have come into Santiago to hopefully continue south through Chile but the earthquake has caused roading and infrastructure issues that are likely to cause us to go back into Argentina. This probably means more unpaved roads and generally bigger and harder days. So, I decided to do another gear clear out and leave surplus […]

We came across a magnificent road from Mendoza, Argentina into Chile and had flurries of snow as we cleared customs at 3200m but then the race was on as Gareth and I left the others for a speedy ride to the Santiago hotel “Atton” where he had promised to be available for a radio interview. […]

Time to head out of Argentina for a bit – to Santiago for some bike servicing and to sort out whether we can ride south on the west side of the Andes to Osorno, Chile’s lake district. With the aftermath of the quake being public disorder in the southern towns, stories of it taking 48 […]

We were in the small town of Villa Union (about 200km North of Mendoza, Argentina). On the street I came across Miguel a key cutter, working out of the back of an old combi van, sounds pretty normal until you look at the setup. He was also living in the van, and when you opened […]

What a beauty! here we were in this rather understated hotel in Villa Union, Argentina last night and earlier over a few cervazas been talking about robustness of the structure, typical of many it looked like the Big Bad Wolf could blow it down without much effort – when at 3.30 am the whole place […]

The day started with the navigation of the one way system of Salta and the morning traffic rush. Soon we were on the outer ring road which lead us on to highway 68 the main road south from Salta. 40Kms down this road we turned off onto highway 30, the start of a 160 Km diversion […]