Going The Distance

Now time to cover some ground. The bottom chunk of Argentina just stretches on and on and on with little happening between settlements. We need to put some serious driving days in so that we can start to cover it. So off we go.

Driving days are fairly dull to report: I’m down in my little bath-shaped world, Mike is navigating everything that the road, the weather and the locals throw at us. I’m in charge of what we listen to – a headphone splitter means that we can both listen to the same thing. We love our podcasts of late – the hours and hours of driving pass much faster when divided into hour long chunks of riveting chat.

The difficulty with this batch of driving days (to and from Cordoba) is the heat. The temperature is a sweltering 39′c which makes for very sweaty days in the sidecar. The wind blowing into our faces as we drive is oven-hot and there’s not a cloud in the sky.

I enshroud myself in nuclear-bunker-wall quantities of suncream.

We pitch our tent just off a petrol station forecourt and pass a night filled with the rumblings of trucks and the crapping of birds on the tent. Good times.

Camping at gas station, Malena. View of tent.

Camping at gas station, Malena. View from tent.

Ale’ left us. We knew the moment would come, but it was deeply sad as we watched his little motorized 250cc hairdryer whizz off down the sunny Cordoban streets.

We had arranged to have lunch with Mike, the Englishman we had met at the Argentinian border. He was staying at a lovely looking 4* hotel called The Windsor in the centre of town. When we arrived, he insisted on treating us to a room for the night. What utter utter bliss: a bed wider than 3 pillows’ worth and so enormous that Mike and I swam in it.

The four of us, with Mike’s girlfriend Lidy, headed to the home of the best asado in town and settled in for the afternoon. We then stumbled back, watched a film, and slept like logs in an ocean of bed. Bliss. Thank you Mike.

Mike and Liddy, driving into salta

‘Jackson’ is a very useful word coined by our incomparable friend, Austin Vince. He has ridden a motorbike round the world twice so he knows his shit when it comes to life on the road. www.mondoenduro.com

Jackson – a noun and a verb. Definition: a random human being.

That’s it. A random human being. I had the pleasure of hearing Austin using the word in Moab, Utah, when we were looking for someone to take a photo of the four of us (with Lois, his wife) and he said “let’s ask this Jackson here” and pointed to a guy at a nearby drive-thru cash machine (which is a blog entry in itself, but not now…)

The reason that I bring this up is that ARGENTINA IS FULL OF JACKSONS. I love the place, don’t get me wrong, but they really really love the bike. Every single time we stop – to get petrol, to get directions, to ask about a hotel – the Jacksons SWARM. Mike left me to buy a bottle of water a couple of days ago and when he came back, there were 15 people around me. Amazing. “De donde vienen?” is always the opener (where are you from? – though with badly spelt Spanish) then it gets on to ‘where are you going?’, ‘how many cylinders is the engine?’ (these Jacksons know their shit) and ‘what brand is this?’. All of which, I have finely polished answers to in Spanish.

The intransitive verb use is “to be Jacksoned”. Mike will sometimes get back from paying for petrol or whatever, and say “sorry you got so Jacksoned”.On the whole, Mike gets really stressed out by the Jacksons whereas I tend to suffer fools (Jacksons) gladly so end up being the one who answers the endlessly identical questions. Such is marriage, folks, each one has their role…

We drive all day from Simoca to Cordoba. The day is blindingly hot: 39′c. We’re with Ale’ and later British Mike and his girlfriend, Lidy on their rented Transalp cross our paths and we end up in convoy. All good. The driving is long and flat, but the sun shines with gusto and the heat feels Southern European.

Ale’, Mike (Clear) and I have organised to meet up with our biker friend, Sergio. Ale was with him when we met them both in El Alto, outside La Paz, and we all travelled together for a few days on the way out of Bolivia. Sergio, who is an architect in Cordoba, had promised us a true Argentinian parilla (BBQ) at his place.

We arranged to meet Sergio just off the city’s huge periferico so that he could lead us to his house. There he was, leaning against his car, looking so urban, so un-biker, so unlike the man who had left us a week before on his 650, dressed in black bikegear. Here he was a normal person, in his normal car. Virtually unrecognisable.

Allow me to digress for a minute here. When Mike and I knew that we were going to do this trip, we went along to a long distance motorbike talk at the biker hangout, the Ace Cafe in Park Royal, northwest London. We decided to go by car as it was rainy and potentially icy, so turned up in my grandmother’s purple Corolla wearing normal clothes, to be greeted by a SEA of motorbikes and people clad in leather. I have never been so intimidated in my life. I thought we were going to be killed. I felt so out of place, I hated every minute of it. It reminded me of how i felt for 2 years with braces.

But the thing that I didn’t know then that I know now is that bikers are part of the one of the kindest, more community-minded groups that I have ever been lucky enough to be part of. Bikers wave to each other when driving, bikers greet each other in petrol stations, bikers talk to other bikers in restaurants and on the street. Like JOrge in Santa Cruz who saw us on telly and came to find us to invite us to have dinner with 30 bikers who’d love to know our story, bikers love to exchange tales.

Dr Helen Fisher (who is the key to this whole mad adventure of ours – she did the original brainscans with neurologist Dr Lucy Brown) has this theory that there are four types of human beings: explorers, builders, negotiators and directors. She uses that to calculate compatibility in romantic relationships, and one of her findings is that explorers can only date explorers – they have both to have that hunger for new experiences (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Fisher_(anthropologist).

Well, bikers are kind of the same too.

Everyone who has done any kind of distance biking (that can range from a weeklong road trip away to round the world twice, etc) The kind of person who is prepared to drop everything and set off into the horizon is the kind of person who is going to get on well with someone else you is also prepared to do the same. All along the route, we have ended up gathering bikers, becoming part of bigger groups which then disperse as people go their own ways at their own speeds, but friendships are made, advice is given, and it’s generally totally wonderful – an honour even – to be part of this community. They’re not intimidating at all.

That’s just the leather…

So, back to Cordoba. We get to Sergio’s house and he is obviously a man who knows how to parilla. He has two fires going, one is laden will burning hot coals, the other is lower and awaiting action. Which he quickly provides in the form of a mountain of meat. We spend a wonderful evening eating our body weight in meat and generally being smutty in our basic but adequate Spanish.

One of the biggest changes about how I am (versus how I was at the beginning) is my moods. I’m just not as happy as was earlier on in the journey. In those days, every day was a joy, I’d grab each day with the gusto of a puppy, talking to everyone and his uncle, hoping to find interview leads in every corner (and the only way we do get them is by talking).

Oh what a difference 7 months makes. I have lost a fair chunk of that bounce. And the worst for both me and Mike is my moods. They change on a dime. I’ve become a timebomb, a gorgon waiting to scratch at any moment. I can’t even navigate them – I’m usually fairly self- aware, and if I think I’m slipping into a fiery laguna of irrationality, I’ll warn him to stay away from him and that none of it is his fault. Not now. For example, this morning, we were doing our usual thing of fannying about for HOURS before leaving. We knew we needed to do some internetting: site needed updating, we’d been out of contact for 5 days which led to a pile of emails. So we were sitting in the hotel lobby merrily internetting. After about 4 hours of this, I suddenly, without warning, snap. “We have to go. We have to go now. I can’t handle this.”

Mike to his gleaming credit is inhumanely patient when his wife is replaced by a firebreathing sucubus of doom. “Ok” he replies calmly and swiftly starts to pack away. He’ll make gentle, unpatronising enquiries as to what may have precipitated his wife’s descent into Evil, but he also knows that communication is futile, and every word uttered is like a joust with the devil.

For my part, the rage suddenly erupts. I think a bit contributor is the lack of any kind of exercise in my life. Mike drives the bike which requires deep concentration but also a lot of upper body strength – this being a Ural with sidecar, you don’t lean into your turns like on a regular motorbike, you pull the entire weight of the bike with your arms. I, however, just sit and fester in the sidecar, eating and sleeping and hurling the occasional insult.

Like a kind of Miss Piggy meets Oscar the Grouch.

It’s really hot. Yesterday it got up to 39 degrees centigrade. That’s whopping. And sweaty.

So no chance of me doing any exercise till it cools down a bit, but I’m hoping that Little Miss Lardy Arse Toxic Chops might retreat into the shadows when I eventually do.

Anyway, there’s my Thought For The Day, folks: I’m just a little grumpy. My lesson to relationships out there – men, just back off. It’s not your fault, but it rapidly could be.

Driving at dusk is foolish. Night is on the way, and generally it makes sense to have found lodgings while there is still the light to do so.

But it can be breathtakingly magical. The driving in Northern Argentina has been some of the most beautiful that we have done: red chiselled rocks to lush green cascades of valleys – all paved and dreamlike, and it’s hard to stop just because the day is thinking about stopping.

It’s summer here, and the landscape and atmosphere are like the best of the south of France: the breeze blows warm, the twilight is alive with smells and sounds. As the sun sets, and I look out across miles and miles to the horizon, the sky is rippled with cloud formations that a London girl knows nothing of, accustomed usually to seeing small bursts of grey skies peeping out from between buildings.

Leaving Bolivia, above the distant horizon every night, we’d see moody dark swells of storm patches, lit dramatically by angry lightning bursts. Now here in Argentina, it’s the hot crespucular descent of summer evening to night. On a motorbike, I feel like we’re the only people in the world as the wind gushes up past the step of the sidecar and strong into my face. I love it. Moths throw themselves into the beams of the Russian, the faces of people light up in the darkness as they walk along the dusty sides of the roads. There’s a silhouette of trees along the horizon against the gunmetal blue of the sky, and the serenade of cicadas to accompany the confident growl of our trusty and beloved steed.

I don’t mean to meander into the realms of exaggeration, but Argentina really is perfection. It has surpassed all my high expectations, leaving me quite dumb as how to begin to describe how lovely it is.

After a day of driving with Ale, we crawl into Simoca, a small town, dusty road, kids play football in the bright lights of a municipal football ground. We crawl into bed, exhuasted. Tomorrow to Cordoba.

We spent last night in a campground in Argentina’s northern wine heaven, Cafayate. As I said, it’s the height of summer and the central plaza is alive with that wonderful relaxed air of summer holidays, of misty cold glasses of local wine, of warm tanned skin, of different ages finding their own fun. As a gorgeous resort town, it was heaving with people. Cafayate has three campgrounds, all heaving with people, tents cheek by jowl.

After a boozy night with others, including Ale’ who had recovered from a dodgy tum to be the “authentic caipirinha” making life of the party, we crash out. And I awake to find that I have been stung on the eye by a mozzie. Great look. Especially if you’re trying to convince people that your husband’s a wife-beater.

Cafayate is wine country. The Salta wine route is marked efficiently with signs, the roads flanked with uniform rows of cascading vines. It’s picturesque. Our challenge was to find a wine couple. There are tens of vineyards so we hoped it wouldn’t be too hard. And in the end, it proved to be third try lucky.

Just to the north of Cafayate is Animana’, also part of the luscious and fertile Cafayate valley. Every hundred yards of the main road, a winery beckons tasters. Past the major winery of Animana, at the side of the road, looking like a small village French deli with green wooden doors, is La Bodeguita. Painted on a large barrel outside the door is the proclamation that it was established in 1928, and that it makes vinos artesanales.

We walk in, hopeful. Behind the counter is an older lady, She stands in front of a wall covered in wooden shelving which houses a world of deliciousness: alongside the bottles of wine, olives, breads, cakes, jars of capers, anchovies.

After we have told her what we are up to, she says that she has been married for 50 years but her husband is not well. He suffered a heart attack 3 years ago, and today his lips are swollen as a result. (This is my weak Spanish, I’m afraid. She may have offered a reason, but I didn’t get it) Her son could do it, but he has been married only 2 years. Come back tomorrow?

But that’s not the wya GTD works. We always leave everything til the last minute, and we’d like to start on the great journey south to Cordoba this evening. Is there no way we can interview her and her husband today? No, he’s not well.

At this moment, by the kind of luck that we have felt blessed with all along the way, her husband shuffles out from the corridor leading from the back of the shop to their house. He is extremely affable and says he’d love to do the interview. And so it is that we meet Juan de la Cruz of La Bodeguita, and his wife, Rosario.

Juan’s father established the Bodega in 1928, and Juan grew up around the world of wine in a village down the road. He and Rosario met at a dance when she was 16 and he was 25. In the early days of their marriage, they were poor. Though Juan was working with his father at the vieyard, he had to take another job as a mechanic to support the family. They have two children, a boy and a girl, and their son Carlos is now taking over the place, making it a three generation affair, nuch to Juan’s pride. The family had to work hard to find the money to send him to viticulture school, but Rosario says, it’s been wonderful because now the vineyard is a mixture of Juan’s experience and Carlos’ theory.

The Bodeguita uses all traditional methods, the grapes are trampled by foot then pressed in the same presses that Juan’s father used. They make 5,000 bottles a year – a small amount, admits Juan, but he doesn’t want to compromise any of the techniques or the quality to make more. He’s fiercely proud of their product and the area, and I have to admit (as we taste the cabernet sauvignon), it’s delicious. (Though I confess I’m far from discerning)

Rosario explains that the fact that Juan is alive has defied everything that the doctors have told him. He should be dead and she considers it a gift from God that he is not. We laugh about Juan telling God that it’s not yet his time. Rosario has a very strong faith, and her eyes light up as she talks about the fact that Juan is still here. She puts it all down to God.

When we ask for advice from their 49 year bank of experience, Juan quickly says the most important thing is that a couple is that they distance themselves from their parents and parents-in-law. He says that if a couple has a problem, if they share it with the outside world, it will just get worse. Only a couple knows what’s going on within.

This is one of the pieces of advice that the experts have repeatedly given us. Only a few real people have given it, but those who have have been adamant about its importance. It’s one which is particularly interesting to me because my parents have been quite involved in this trip. Not only are they the only people to have come out to visit us en route, but my amazing father has also been helping us with researching and finding couples. My father and my husband are very different human beings (I’m in the lucky position of loving my dad enough not to need a father figure – I married my best friend really) and sometimes on this trip I have been pulled between to different life philosophies. Mike is pretty laidback, my father is more of an organisational whirlwind. Most of the time, the two can coexist without difficulty, but when the two are pulling in different directions, I feel the strain. There is of course, no malice on either side, but I have to pull away from my father and back towards my young foal of a marriage and the new life that I have chosen for myself. I find it interesting that this is a phenomenon that exists both for other couples that we have met along the way, but also that it is recognised by the experts.

We knew Salta was going to be good. After the hell of the Bolivian roads and the ballache of the border crossing, the first asado in La Quiaca suggested that Argentina was going to be lovely haven, but Salta really is the jewel. The drive from La Quiaca to Salta takes a day, and it was one of the most wonderful days driving we have had in months: the landscape takes on a European fell: majestic cyprus shoot up from the abundant green.

Our merry trio (of us and the wonderful Brazilian nutter, Ale’) gathered 4 additions: an Englishman, Mike, and his Thai girlfriend, Lidy (on the road for 2 months on a great rented Transalp) and two Canadians, Dave and John, both doing roughly the same as us. There’s a certain pomp to travelling in convoy with other bikers. 5 bikes speeding down the highways certainly turn heads, especially when the bike in the middle has a sidecar. I felt like we were in a cavalcade. We went through valleys with some of the tallest cacti in the world, we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn (Mike took the opportunity to mark the moment in his own special way). Lunch was a meat-heavy affair – the meat here is perfection. Steaks which offer blissful little resistance to the bite, melting perfectly.

We arrived in Salta at the end of a long but exquisite day, exhausted. The usual rigmarole of bed-finding (when there are many folk involved in the decision, it takes a while), then blissful sleep.

Wake at 8.30. Hope to be on the road by 10am. Is that so much to ask? Apparently yes: breakfast takes 45 minutes to arrive. Even though we’ve ordered toast, we’re in the very hostel we spent the night in, and we’re the only people at breakfast. Dude.

Mike decides to take the bike to a mechanic again to get the exhaust refitted. Apparently the road from here to the Argentian border is even worse that the road from Potosi. Frankly, none of the three of us is quite sure how that can be the case given the quality of the roads yesterday (Mike said it was the toughest riding he has done on this entire 7 month journey), but if Bolivians are saying it, jeez, it must be true.

When we get back to the mechanic to pick up the bike with high and secure exhaust (one of its two pipes), Mike notices that the sealing screw of the transmission oil is gone. Which means that the reservoir will be filled with all the dust of yesterday’s journey. Oh shit. So I’m now typing outside the third mechanic we have asked, Mike is with the mechanic, they have cleaned out the chamber, which apparently was filthy, replaced the oil. Mike is now going to take it round the block then they’ll replace the entire oil once more.

Then we’re going to go to the Promised Land of Argentina.

Later: oh my, oh my. Really nothing I can type can begin to capture the experience of travelling on the MAIN ROAD between Bolivia and Argentina. We knew that Tupisa was only 90km from the border. 90km really is chump change – on decent roads it’s less than an hour. It took us 3 and a half.

They are rebuilding the road from Tupisa to the border town of Villazon. Which means that the entire 90km is a mud/dirt track which weaves and winds, dips through rivers, over large stones. HELL. About half an hour into the journey, we were greeted with a large ford. The road dipped maybe a foot into a river red with mud. So as not to flood the exhaust, we went through at quite a lick. And got DRENCHED. The sidecar filled with muddy water, Mike was blinded by the surge. Oh God, we’re now going to be wet and muddy for the next 10 hours on the road. NOT COOL, BOLIVIA.

The road was miserable but we got there eventually. Then it was the turn of the border process. It took 4 hours to cross the border, and actually, it was the Argentinians’ fault. One man types slowly, with one finger, to register all details about all vehicles entering and leaving the country. Peculiarly, he works between two offices on either side of the entry road – half an hour in one, then half an hour in the other. So when you’re in the queue and he changes sides, you know you have at least another half hour to wait. We still have Ale’ the mad and wonderful Brazilian with us so at least the wait is filled with laughter.

When we are finally through, we head immediately to the best asado in town (I spent the hours doing my homework…) The restaurant is a striplit little place at the side of the main Ruta 9, but the owner smiles warmly as we enter (haven’t had that for months…), takes our order swiftly, and shortly afterwards the most delicious meat I have had on this entire trip arrives. We rejoice, involving the whole restaurant in our love for Argentina.

Things are on the up.

Sergio sets off early, leaving us with the wonderful chilled out and generally upbeat Ale’. After the usual fandango of breakfast (“no, we don’t have milk. No you can’t have juice.” and it arriving 45 minutes later), we hit the road.

The first half of the day is tarmacked road. It’s one of the most beautiful drives we have done in South America. We weave along windy roads overlooking vast stretches of altiplano, the colours change from greens and yellows to reds and browns then back again. Breathtaking. Llamas pepper the landscape, herded by bowler-hatted cholla women carrying babies on their backs. It’s the stuff of cinematographic legend.

Then the tarmac stops. Bear in mind this is the main road between Bolivia and Argentina, and the road is like a dirt track leading from a house to its outhouse. For 8 hours.

Dust clouds regularly enshroud us as massive trucks pass us. Every bone in our body is jolted with constant but irregular vibrations as our trusty and beloved Russian steed is thrown by small rocks and ripples in the road. The exhaust pipe falls off. We’re in the middle of nowhere, the sun is blazing down and the pipe itself is hotter than hell. We drive 20 minutes to the nearest cluster of houses. Mud houses, one of which is a llanteria (a tyre seller. He obviously knows that this road is going to drum up some good business). Llanterias are everywhere along the Latin part of the PanAmerican highway. They distinguish themselves with a large black tyre stood up at the side of the road with the word “llanteria” (llanta = tyre) painted large on them in white. I think there are more llanterias than restaurants, genuinely.

The shop is built of what appears to be wood and mud. It’s hard to tell because it, like us, is covered in dust. There is a woman sitting on a small block of wood outside the door to the place. She looks older than time, a face wisened with lines. One side of her mouth bulges with a bolus of coca. She chews sporadically, a thin trickle of dark liquid staining the right corner of her mouth. She squawks manically. She’s drunk, pointing and flailing, chewing all the while, spluttering at us.

The mechanic largely ignores her and gets to work, replacing the rubber holding the exhaust pipe in place. I decide to wander off for a wee. The ground is dusty and littered with dried thorn bushes. I tread as carefully as I can to try and find a suitable hiding place to derobe (there’s nothing elegant about a woman in a workman’s overall trying to do a wee). As I walk, I feel the thorns occasionally pierce through the rubber red Crocs which I so love. A powerful pain. Then comes the blood, erupting out of the sides of the Crocs, dripping on the thirsty dusty ground.

I sit down for the clean up operation. Local unctions are offered (Alexandre even endorses one of them) and I work my way through tissues to tidy up the copious blood (only to find the smallest, most rubbish little wound in the eye of all that blood). My coca-chewing heckler friend is going at me hammer and tongs by this point. I’m sitting near her and she is shrieking and pointing. It’s a little off-putting, if I’m completely honest, reader.

Back on the road. God, it’s long. Poor Mike and Ale have to navigate it. At least the view is good. Darkness starts to fall. The exhaust pipe falls off again. I lose a shoe. And the desire to be in Bolivia for any more time.

The final push into Tupisa is achingly slow. The road is terrible, dusty, hilly. It takes an hour to do 30km. We arrive in the town at 9.30pm in total darkness, having left Challapata at 8.30am, That’s one hell of a day. We’re absolutely covered in dust. It’s everywhere, on all our bags, in our hair, on our faces, in our teeth. Then a much-craved shower. Mike pretty much passes out with fatigue.