we leave the main highway headed north and turn east on the no 60, towards mendosa. the road climbs quickly when we reach a set of switchbacks, left uphill hairpin turn, short straight, right uphill hairpin turn, repeat.
i watch the altitude climb from 1000m to 3000m as the mercury drops, as does the horsepower coming from betsy, but she’s still running sweet at the peak of this pass at 3200m.
the mountains are opening up in front of me and i’m having to really concentrate on the road as the scenery continually steals my attention. i have a couple of hot entries into some turns, the nobby dunlop rallye front tyre isnt happy on the tar!
so i take it back a notch and just enjoy the ride, haven’t seen mountains like this since tajikistan or some of indonesia, so will let the pics tell the story…
andes day 1
andes day 1
andes day 1
andes day 1
P1060549 andes day 1
P1060550 end of the day 🙂
barton was actually refused exit from chile for some missing documents for the bike so i’m in argentina solo, hopefully he can get it sorted soon and join me in mendosa as we had some offroad riding planned to head north in the mountains.
“you do not have passport for moto?” asked the friendly customs guy at the border
“this is all i have” said barton
“without the moto passport, moto can not be in chile, we must catch the moto”
“huh?”
“yes is not legal to have this moto in chile without document…”
“fuck!”
“wait and i look on computer to see if we can make electronic copy of document…”
after that mess at the border which saw us ride the 20km through no mans land to argentina, struggle on the argentinian side for an hour with the missing document, then ride back to the chilean side to try to resolve it unsuccessfully, barton had to ride back to santiago and i went ahead to mendosa…
except mendosa was 200km from there and it was getting dark and cold, so i continued until the next little town and found a room for the night instead.
so it’s a lazy day today, i have about 150km to get to mendosa and all day to do it, the sun is shining and betsy is waiting for me so i better get moving.
PS
a really big thanks to Yohan for having us stay with him for almost a week, great guy, we hope to see you in venezuela for some offroad fun!
Barton, Johan and Me
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