mendosa back into chile…

Posted by admin ⋅ April 23, 2012 ⋅ 1 Comment

thanks to jorge from hostel independencia in mendosa for suggesting a great ride back to uspallata, it’s been a long time since betsy last saw some dirt!

most of these pics were taken in argentina on a road called las carreras (the racetrack), appropriate name too!

our plan was to ride from mendosa to uspallata and then further north for about 400km to the next border crossing (back into chile) which would take us to la serena where i have some high altitude jets waiting for me at the local ktm dealer.

(some of the passes we want to ride are up at 5000m so it would be nice to have the bike running properly, the guys in KTM santiago are experienced with these altitudes and for the $10 it will cost i think the jets might be a good investment, they had them in stock in another dealer so have forwardrd them to la serena for me. )

luckily for us we bumped into a couple of guys at uspallata who had just been to the pass and had to turn back because of the snow (2m of snow on the road!). we checked with the police and gendarmerie who called forward to the border post and the road is still closed 🙁

hello to pascal from france/panama and luigi from torino! hope to see you again in panama, or if not in cambodia in 2013 : )

so back to chile again and a more conventional route north to la serena. 2 nights back we stopped in a little town called cabildo for the night and spent an hour or more trying to find somewhere to sleep, big thanks to a guy called valentin who had me follow him around town in his car while he stopped at the “la resedencias” to see if anyone would take two foreign bikers.

nope.

by then it was dark, so it was a night ride to the next town called la ligua, much bigger place where we found a nice little ‘resedencia’ and a chinese restaurant with cold beer

‘resedencias’ are local people’s houses where they let you sleep for the night for $10 or $15, we didn’t know they existed until that night, handy to find it out though! the hard bit is that in little towns they don’t have any signage to tell you they are a resedencia, so without some help you can’t find them!

yesterday we rode the 360km north to la serena hoping to get the parts in the afternoon but unfortunately the bike shop doesn’t open on a saturday 🙁

“i guess we’re staying until monday then huh”

“yeah, 2 nights here… so i think tonight we should go large and have a blinder so we dont feel like it tomorrow night and can make an early start on monday”

“good plan”

5 piscos later we stumbled back to la hostela. today my head hurts.