Stage 11: Argentina 25th February - 18th March.
25th February. Perito Moreno, Argentina. 130 miles.
Up before dawn this morning and away by seven. I had a two hour ride to Puerto Ibanez to catch another ferry. The road was mostly paved and empty, winding through hills and down rivers with snow capped peaks catching the early morning light. Great scenery but bloody freezing so hard to appreciate. The coldest morning for a long time and even with my heated hand grips my fingertips went numb.
I got to the ferry about an hour before it was due to leave. It didn't look very big but there weren't too many people about either. There was an English guy there in a Land Rover, doing volunteer work with Raleigh International who I chatted with for a bit. I got a bit worried when the captain wouldn't sell me a ticket as he was expecting more vehicles to turn up and I would have to wait and see.
Then three overland bikers all came in together. Steffen from Germany on a KTM, and Jason and Pete from the US, both on big BMWs. They all had tickets which they had been advised to buy in advance in Coyhaique. The owner of the place I had stayed in last night had tried to convince me to do the same but I didn't and began to think I wouldn't get on.
More trucks and cars turned up and they began to load. They packed the vehicles in very tightly with millimetres to spare so the captain could maximise the fares. It took a couple of attempts and re-arranging, but in the end everybody made it. I was resting the bike against the Land Rover as there was not enough space to get it on the stand.
Its a 2 and a half hour trip and I spend most of it talking to the other three guys. They had hooked up in Santiago and are heading the same way as me. The destination port was Chile Chico and from there is was a short step to the Argentinian border. It seemed perfectly natural for me to hook up with these guys and see how we got along. It feels great to be part of a biker gang for a little while after spending so long mostly on my own.
We are camping out tonight, these guys do it all the time, a short ride outside Perito Moreno proper. We ride into town for an early meal and to pick up supplies then its back to the campsite for a fire, wine and story swapping. Tomorrow we head into the emptiness of Patagonia.
Outside the local saloon. From the left: Pete, Steffen and Jason.
26th February. Tres Lagos. 302 miles.
It was extremely cold this morning. We were straight onto ripio and stayed on it all the way. There really is very little out here. Scrub, dust, a few hills, some llama, rabbits, and emus though I didn't see any of those. And armadillos, which just look so peculiar, occasionally trotting along, but mostly road kill.
During the afternoon it got really hot and I was stripping back the layers I had wrapped in when we set off. Lunch was a roadside picnic, literally in the middle of nowhere. The road surface was much better than any of us had expected although deep gravel in places had me fishtailing about, sometimes very wildly, but no trouble really. Making good time we skipped our planned first stop for the night which was also a fuel stop, but between us we had more than enough to get to Tres Lagos, especially as Pete has a huge 43 litre plastic tank on his bike, which we nicknamed the Exxon Valdiz.
The infamous Ruta Cuarenta.
Towards the end of the day, getting tired, the famed Patagonian wind arrived, blowing us around the road a little which somewhat diminished the fun of the ride. But it was still a great day and nowhere near as difficult as we had all been led to believe.
Tres Lagos is a tiny, forlorn looking town with a camp site and a bar and thats about it. No real restaurant but a sign above someone's house for a rotisserie. So we end up eating dinner in their front room, with a couple of Japanese cyclists relegated to the kitchen. They know they are the only place to get any food however and it is relatively expensive though filling. Back to the bar for a couple of beers then everybody is knackered so we turn in for the night.
27th February. El Calafate. 106 miles.
It wasn't nearly so cold this morning. The ride was easy most of the way with only a few rocky sections and some sand to slow me down. People say that this road, route 40, through Patagonia is a very tough route, but really it has been easy. Maybe we were lucky with the wind (none to speak of today) which would have made it a lot tougher, but the famed miles of corrugations failed to materialise, and though desolate its a beautiful place.
Almost all photos of emus are of them running away.
There was more traffic today and when we started seeing tour buses I knew we were back in civilisation. El Calafate is a small tourist driven town on the edge of the Parque Nacional Los Glacieres. Pleasant enough but full of gringos. In the afternoon the weather was baking, again something unexpected this far south, and I was down to shorts to enjoy it. We met a couple of Swiss guys on Africa Twins and chatted at a cafe with them for a while, but they were not stopping and soon got back on the road.
After 2 days in Argentina I finally have my first steak, delicious if a little overcooked for my taste, washed down with some local red wine.
28th February. El Calafate. 102 miles. Passed 20,000 trip miles.
Today we rode out to the park, pavement most of the way to it, ripio once inside. The main attraction is the Moreno glacier which ends in Lake Argentina. The viewing areas is on a hill looking out to the face of the glacier, and its a pretty impressive sight. It was very difficult to get an idea of the scale of the thing until a tour boat pulls up near it, and you realise its at least 50 metres high, and several miles wide. Apart from a dirty section in the middle the ice is incredibly blue. The entertainment is waiting for chunks to fall off and trying to get the action on film. Very difficult as there is little warning apart from sometimes a massive cracking sound as a piece starts to break off.
There was an amazing coincidence when Jason saw an English girl he had met in Sumatra months before. It turns out she is from Tunbridge Wells and went to school in Pembury. She was with an Australian girl and we all sat around chatting for a couple of hours until it got a bit colder when some cloud came in.
The girls had hitched their way here, so Jason and Pete with their bigger bikes gave them a lift back with us to EL Calafate. In the evening we just chilled out round the camp with some food and wine from the supermarket.
29th February. Rio Gallegos. 200 miles.
We got up this morning to freezing rain and packed up camp slowly. The original plan had been to go to another park across the Chilean border – Torres del Paine. As we set out the rain got heavier and we had a couple of diversions off the tarmac onto muddy tracks where the big bikes struggled a lot because of their extra weight, while Steffen and I had little real problems. As the park was going to be more of the same and no fun for walking around either – it was also pretty foggy in places – we changed plans, opting for the tarmac of the main road.
Lunch was at La Esperanza, which was a halfway point in the middle of nowhere. We stopped for a good couple of hours to warm up with steak and chips all round, and I had a couple of hot chocolates. They make therm here not from a powder but a solid block of chocolate that melts in the hot milk. Bizarrely enough they also had crispy cakes pretty much the same as we used to make back home so I had a couple of those as well.
We were all adding more layers against the cold and after lingering as long as we reasonably could at the restaurant had a pretty miserable afternoons riding with rain all the way. First priority arriving in Rio Gallegos was to find a hotel, no camping in this weather was universally agrees, to get warm and dry.
Then Pete's bike started making some horrible noise at a crossroads and we pulled over. It was his starter motor kicking in with the engine already running so we figured it for an electrical short caused by the rain. With Pete parked in a deserted petrol station forecourt we split up to find a place. Eventually Jason and I found one with good parking at a reasonable price and we took a couple of twin rooms. Jason carries a tow rope and pulled Pete to the hotel.
After getting into dry clothes we worked our way through a 1.5 litre bottle of wine left over from yesterday, then it was out for a cheap meal, more beer back at the hotel and bed.
1st March. Rio Gallegos.
It was dry this morning but there was no chance of going anywhere until Pete's problem was sorted so we wrote the day off fairly early. It took some investigation, and the discovery that he could start his bike just by turning the handlebars to the left, but the course of the problem was tracked down to a couple of bare wires being pressed together by another wire, completing the circuit for the starter motor. So all it took was a bit of insulation tape and problem solved.
Did very little for the rest of the day.
2nd March. Happy Birthday Simon. 377 miles. Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world.
An action packed day. Leaving Rio Gallegos we had a few spots of rain, but managed to stop that by putting on my waterproofs. We had a fairly easy run to the Chilean border at Monte Aymond, where Chilean bureaucracy was once more ponderous and excessive although at least there were very few people here. From there we had paved road with some increasingly strong side winds forcing me to ride along leaning way over to the right to stay in a straight line. Although when it was at my back it was great. There was a short ferry crossing from Primero Angostura to Punta Espora, and we were in Tierra del Fuego.
The road was very empty and the wind was really picking up. The pavement continued for a while but then we hit more ripio, although it was good enough quality to keep up our road speed for the most part. A truck caused some delay when the dust it kicked up obscured the whole road for several miles until a change in direction opened up the view and we could all zip past.
We made one stop to take a picture of a small lake which had burning gas bubbling up from somewhere, so no we now where the name came from. Next stop San Sebastian and the second border crossing of the day, back into Argentinian territory. Crossing a section of no man's land we passed a couple of overlanders going the other way, then another just on the Argentinian side. This was a German who had been in Ushuaia since before new year. He'd been in hospital after being hit by a car. Lucky for him Argentinian medical care is free even for foreigners.
Land of fire.
While we were stopped I suddenly noticed a huge crack had opened up in one of my ali panniers around the mounting bracket. Must have been all the vibration from the ripio, but it still should not happen. It was not going to fall apart on me there and then but will need fixing pronto. Luckily for me Jason also needs work on his boxes and has details of a good welder in Usuaia.
It was about 180 miles to reach our final destination and we hit the gas to get there before dark. It started off paved but halfway became ripio again. The wind was stronger than ever as we followed the Atlantic coast for a few miles, the first time I had seen any coast other than the Pacific for months.
Then the road turned in land into hills and mountains and the wind dropped but it was replaced by the cold. As we got close to town we hit roadworks. For a few miles the road became very muddy, making dodging the trucks through single lane sections very interesting. Then with the sun getting very low in the sky we hit the pavement again for a triumphant last 20 miles into the city. It felt very good to make it here and on a downhill section I couldn't help a celebration by standing on my pegs, arms out in the air and a little cheer, though no one to hear it inside my helmet.
Made it.
We are parked at a coffee shop to warm up and consult guidebooks for accommodation. Jason is outside and someone pulls up in a car and offers him a house to rent. After a little price negotiation we check it out and decide to take it. With a kitchen and living room it is a real bit of luxury for a few days.
3rd March. Ushuaia
The weather was pretty terrible all day, cold and raining. We found the welder after taking a few photos of the damage to make a claim against technocrat, I handed over my broken box. The fix up job is good enough. There is very little ripio left, a different route back north will be mostly paved. The welder was a nice guy and we talked for a while although the bill was more than expected, but still less than at home I suspect. I also got my laundry done.
We had met another German biker this morning and hooked up with him again in the evening for drinks. He had a Chinese-Canadian cyclist with him and we found an Irish pub to get drunk in.
4th March. Ushuaia.
Jason and I took a boat trip on the Beagle Channel today which the other two weren't interested in. It was a catamaran with a two storey lounge. We first went out to the park, right near the sign where everybody has their photo taken, that marks the southernmost point you can drive to in the world. However for some stupid reason we were not allowed off the boat, even though we stopped there for an hour to let people on, so no photo. Then we were served a three course lunch and cruised looking at birds and sea lions perched on rocky outcrops. There were also a few penguins in the water.
There was a definite pecking order on the rock. The bigger seals and their harems got the high bits where they could sun themselves, the smaller one were relegated lower down and were always wet.
Heading back to Ushuaia in the afternoon the see got a bit rough and the boat was pitching and yawing like a rodeo bull. I have to confess I got a little bit queasy but managed to hold onto my lunch. It quietened down as soon as we entered the harbour where a Russian Antarctic research ship was docked. At 1000 km from the Antarctic this is the nearest point from which to pick up supplies. Thinking about it I realise that I may never get this far south again.
In the evening no one really felt like going out much so we just cooked up some pasta and sat around drinking red wine all night. Tomorrow we head back north, for me the first time in 4 months I'll be heading in that direction.
5th March. Rio Gallegos. 377 miles
It was pretty much inevitable that we would end up back here, there are not may roads heading in and out of Tierra del Fuego. It was a long if uneventful day. We didn't leave Ushuaia until 10.30, the wind was strong for the first section and mostly straight into our faces, which had quite a marked effect on my fuel consumption up to San Sebastian. I must have gone through 25% more than on the way down.
On the return ferry crossing we didn't have to pay a fare which was a welcome surprise. Once on board I went to pay the cashier and he just smiled , shook his head, and put his finger up to his lips in a conspiratorial shooshing gesture, to make sure this was just between us. Pretty cool.
Due to the late start it was dark by the time we arrived back in Rio Gallegos. The hotel we had stayed in before was full but the obsessive cleaning woman remembered us and sorted out another place down the road. She was at great pains to show us that she was really full and not just trying to get rid of us as unwanted guests, which was funny.
We had all stuffed ourselves with hot dogs on the ferry so were not hungry, but tired, so it was a quick couple of beers then turn in for the night.
6th March. Caleta Olivia. 459 miles. Passed 21,000 trip miles.
More miles of emptiness today and strong side winds coming off the pampa. It is a very weird feeling going round a bend in the road leaning the wrong way. We passed one or two very sorry looking outposts of humanity, but apart from that it was dry scrub bushes, alpacas and a few small emus. Jason said he saw a few foxes and maybe I saw a coyote. There were also some funny little birds that were either a small type of emu or roadrunners, we disagreed on which.
Caleta Olivia is a coastal town but has no beaches to write home about. Its mostly about oil from the Patagonian fields, and in the centre of town there is a huge statue of a man, perhaps capping an oil well but basically turning an industrial wheel contraption. We started off looking at the municipal camp site, almost every town of any size has one, but it was a very sad scrap of land barely more than a car park, gravel only, by the side of the road. No way was I staying there.
We tried several hotels but none of them had any parking until with night firmly upon us we found the Hotel Granada. It is glass fronted opening into a restaurant/bar with rooms at the back. They had a couple of twin rooms at a reasonable rate but when I asked about parking I didn't understand the reply. Until that is we got back to the front and he started shifting about the tables. We were going to park in the restaurant. It was half past nine and empty so I guess he figured he wasn't going to get any other customers tonight anyway. So we negotiated a step up through the double doors and presto change-o the restaurant became a garage complete with TV, pool table and bar. It was late and we had mostly eaten earlier so it was take away pizzas, empanadas because they were on special, and beer of course, in the garage. There were frequent comings and goings of women with men on their arms, and we began to suspect the hotel also served as a brothel. But what the hell, you take what you can get.
Is it a bar? Is it a restaurant? No its a garage.
7th March. Dos Pezos. 278 miles.
The main event today was Pete's breakdown. Or rather his bike. On the main roads we tend to get stretched out and lose sight of each other over the course of a couple of hours. Jason was up front and at 150 odd miles there was a gas station, and you always stop at gas stations out here, you don't know when the next one will be. I pulled in when he had been waiting for about 10 minutes and as it was lunchtime I got myself a schnitzel sandwich, very popular in Argentina the schnitzel. At least another half hour went by and a t first we assumed that the other two had stopped for their own picnic lunch but I began to believe something was wrong and started thinking about heading back to find them. Eventually they appeared on the horizon, moving very slowly and close together. Steffen was towing Pete with some strapping.
Pete's bike had been giving him trouble of one sort or another ever since Rio Gallegos, but this was the big one – his drive shaft had broken making the bike unrideable. Steffen had been towing him for some 50 miles. Not a good thing to happen at any time, but out in the middle of nowhere it was of course even worse, although he remained remarkably calm about it, but that is just what Pete is like, nothing seems to phase him.
The gas station is also a big truck stop so the only option was for him to catch a lift with a lorry driver heading to Buenos Aires, and with space enough for the bike. Something that would of course be impossible back home. We started asking around but whilst the place had been brimming with trucks at lunch time, it was now Sunday afternoon and very quiet. There was a police station across the road and they said there would be very little traffic now until tomorrow morning. It looked like it was going to be a tow to Trelew, over 130 miles away, or camp out until the morning, which I thought was by far the better option, especially as the police had said we could go round the back of the station.
Some trucks came past and we kept trying to flag them down. Some stopped and one or two I spoke to said they would help except they were full up. Eventually we got lucky and an empty one pulled up, not going all the way to Buenos Aires but a good part of it, so Pete went for his offer. With a bit of effort we loaded him up into the lorry then wishing him well said our goodbyes for now. So now we are three.
We had been heading for Punta Tombe National Park and set off again around 5 o'clock with about three and a half hours of daylight left. At first we were on the main road but then turned off to a ripio side track. Funnily enough Pete's lorry was there, checking the strapping was all okay. It was a further 45 miles to the park which took the best part of another hour. We were in the middle of the pampa and kept passing signs saying no camping. However a very drunk looking guy in a camper van going the other way told us there was a camp site, so we kept going. Then we found the park entrance, which had a sign saying it closed at 8pm – only 15 minutes from now, so obviously no camping there and the guy in the van had been lying or didn't understand us.
A quick discussion and we rode another 5 miles to this place marked on the map as Dos Pezos, which when we got there looked to be one more than the actual population of the place. It was getting dark by now and we had to do something, which was either camp with permission or without. So I asked at the estancia (farm house) where an old man said we could camp a couple of hundred yards up the road behind an abandoned house, and told us we must park round the back as well, out of sight of the road. We had no idea whether or not it was his to give, but that was permission enough.
The house when we got there was somehow reminiscent of the one in the Blair Witch Project. It was not particularly old looking but had been empty for some time, covered in graffiti and with broken glass all about the place. However there was some clear and reasonably flat ground so we pitched. We had little choice anyway with the sun setting. To park the bikes we had to get over a dirt bank a couple of feet high, not difficult but I hit it a bit faster than necessary and kind of bunny hopped onto the top.
It was a full moon with clear skies so it didn't get very dark but the temperature which had gotten very warm in the afternoon, dropped rapidly. No one felt like building a fire so we turned in for the night early.
8th March. Puerto Madryn. 154 miles.
It was a little cold first thing this morning but as soon we I got moving around it was okay. First stop was the Punta Tombe reserve – a major breeding ground for Magellanic penguins. They nest here, in holes in the ground, in their hundreds of thousands. This is the end of the season when the young have lost most of their down and are taking to the water, so there were fewer than I had expected but still loads of them. There are marked areas for visitors and you are not allowed on the beach, but of course the penguins don't know that and they are wandering around all over the place, for the most part completely unafraid of us. They waddle about with their chests stuck out and beaks in the air, as if they were mustering all the dignity they could whilst saying “I know I look stupid on the land but I don't care because when I get in the water I kick ass”. There are a couple of rocks where you can look down into the water and watch them darting about.
At one point there is a bridge over a main pathway the penguins take down to the beach. One had a nest right under the wooden slatted stairs, and it sat on the bottom step defending that empty nest like crazy, pecking at boots as we waled past. They have serious beaks and you wouldn't want one to get hold of some bare flesh.
Oi! Are you looking at my bird?
We stayed there for quite a while and because we had camped so close and got there early there was nobody else around apart from a couple of rangers. After breakfast in the cafeteria we took off again. It was ripio the rest of the morning until Trelew where we stopped for lunch. There was a bike shop there and I needed a new rear tyre, but it was closed for siesta until 4pm, so we came another 40 odd miles north here to Peurto Madryn, a sizeable tourist town first settled by the Welsh.
We camp again but this time at a proper site. They are very good here in Argentina and although it is sand rather than grass the facilities are good. Each plot is circled by small trees with a concrete BBQ and table, even a light and electricity supply. We are now also well and truly out of the cold south – its 30 degrees in the afternoon.
There's a bike shop here too but they don't have anything in my size. My tyre is pretty bald but as its mostly pavement from here to Buenos Aires and rain is unlikely, its not an urgent issue. We are heading towards more populated areas now anyway, so I can just wait for something to turn up all the way to BA if necessary.
As we ate pretty well for lunch its bread, salami, cheese and wine round the camp site for dinner.
9th March. Puerto Madryn. 0 miles.
The wind was blowing hard all day today. We had already agreed to have a day off and this was another reason to justify it. So I walked the couple of miles into town and bought myself a new pair of shoes as my old ones were falling apart, I had already glued them a couple of times. I also bought some sunglasses, pair number 5 now. My last ones disappeared on me in Ushuaia, I really don't know how I do it.
I saw Jason riding around town and we went for lunch. We spotted another overlander circling about. He passed the cafe we were at twice and we then tried to find him to see if he needed help, but he was gone. Late afternoon was for football. Steffen is a Stuttgart supporter and they were playing Chelsea in the second leg of a Champions league game. So I became a blue for the day and we found a bar to catch the second half. It was goalless but Chelsea went through on aggregate. I didn't rub it in it too much. Later on we all had dinner in a posh looking but reasonably priced restaurant, with a couple of bottles of wine.
10th March. Puerto Madryn. 241 miles. Passed 22,000 trip miles.
We took a day trip today out to the Valdez Peninsula. I left most of my stuff, including the panniers, back at the camp site and it felt weird riding the bike with almost no weight on it – apart from me of course. We took a side road which turned out to be very sandy and therefore a bit hairy in places (well it was next to the beach dummy).
The peninsula is supposed to be full of marine wildlife but its the end of the breeding season, so there was not much left. All we saw were a few elephant seals, though they were impressive enough. There were a couple of huge males the size of small cars. One was making his way to the water, and had to climb up a gravel slope to get there. He would heffalump along for a few feet, blubber rippling like water, then have to take a break for a few minutes, tired from shifting the huge weight.
Who's the daddy?
On the way back there was more ripio but a much harder surface so I could ride pretty much at road speed. Exiting the park there was a great big German truck pulled over on the side of the road. One of the rear wheels had come right off while they were driving along. Fortunately they had slowed down for the toll booth otherwise it could have been really nasty. It was getting dark as we entered town so ate straight away at a cheap cafe before heading back to the camp site.
11th March. Viedma, 301 miles.
Coming out of Puerto Madryn this morning the sky gradually darkened and a couple of hours later it began to rain, just as I had predicted it wouldn't a few days ago. At first I kept going but it was not going to stop so pulled over and got the rain gear on as quickly as possible. Five minutes later we came to a petrol station for a longer stop, including putting on my new marigolds as an intermediate layer in my gloves to keep my hands dry. Worked a treat.
The road got wetter and I became very conscious of my bald tyre. We had another long lunch but it didn't let up so we got back on the road. Eventually though the skies cleared and within a few miles it was totally dry. On the way into the centre of Viedma I saw a Honda shop so after finding the camp site I went back and was able to sort out a new tyre. It cost over $100 which was expensive for a Brazilian made tyre, but I have now learnt to take what I can get when the opportunity arises rather than look wait for a better deal in the next town.
My old shoes are finally retired.
12th March. Azul, 427 miles.
We had our earliest start in a long time and travelled at speed to get here. It was dry but overcast most of the day. We are getting ever closer to Buenos Aires and are well out of Patagonia now. There is much more traffic on the road and the price of petrol has jumped – its subsidised down south to get people to move there. I don't think its working.
Azul is the home of the coolest place for motorbike travelers, at least on the continent if not the whole world. La Posta del Viajero en Moto is a workshop and clubhouse run by a guy called Jorje (George) and a local bikers club. They have a few bunks and a big garden for camping and you can just turn up and stay here for free, pretty much for as long as you like. We got here and there was a Canadian girl Jo-Anne here and Hiro, a Japanese cyclist who has been here for a month. Jorje decides that as its Friday its asado (or BBQ) night. We supply beer, wine and salad while Jorje gets the meat – huge sides of beef and giant sausages. Loads of the locals turn up- mostly older guys, then a Brazilian – Pedro from Porto Allegre, and its a huge party, all swapping biker stories. A great evening.
The walls, ceiling, windows and furniture are all covered in graffiti and stickers left by other travellers who have stayed here before. Apparently you have to be invited by Jorje before you can make your mark, and stay here for at least a week first. There is even a Swiss flag on the under side of the toilet lid. Apparently the place almost closed down last year from lack of funds until some Germans organised a collection at a meeting to keep it going. You almost want there to be one of these in every country, but the fact that it is unique really adds to the value of the place.
Jorje has just put a stamp in my notebook and says Hi.
13th March. Azul, 0 miles.
Just chillin'.
Jorje.
14th March. Buenos Aires, 201 miles
Jo, Jason and I went out drinking last night and ended up playing pool getting wasted on tequila. I couldn't stand too straight but still managed to beat them both. Woke up this morning feeling pretty bad. Steffen had stayed in drinking the cheap port wine we had bought for the asado ( which he had refused to touch that night because he thought is had gone bad). He was feeling really ill and decided to stay on an extra day.
So Jo Jason and I set off for BA. We made it a couple of miles to the nearest petrol station where we stopped for an hour or so for a burger and fries breakfast, which made me at least feel a little human again. By the time we set off proper it was past noon and getting very hot.
BA is a huge modern city with enormous roads connecting its sprawling neighbourhoods. However Jason had some directions to a hotel to meet a Dutch friend of his, Maarten, who has been going RTW on an Africa Twin since 2002. This makes navigating the city much easier. Maarten turns out to be a pretty cool guy with lost of stories although I am less sure about his choice of cuisine. The guy cannot get enough pizza.
15th-18th March. Buenos Aires.
This is the longest time I've stayed in any one place so far on this trip. My bike needed some work on it, new steering head bearings, and Maarten took us round to meet Javier and Sandra who run Dakar Motos, a great little bike shop. They love travellers, do a bit on their own bikes as well, and Javier is a great mechanic. He makes a lot of his own tools and parts because they are so expensive to buy in Argentina.
So I mooch around the city for a couple of days while Javier sources the bearings. Discover this place near the railway station where a sculptor has a workshop where he makes giant ants, dinosaurs, planes and other stuff out of scrap metal, mostly from the trains. He even lives in a couple of train carriages next to the workshop. He's an old buy with made grey hair and you get the impression he has lots of very bohemian parties here. He has his own brand of wine and ours some out into a very murky looking wine glass and out of politeness I have to try some.
There are quite a few overland bikers here right now. Its the end of the summer and most people ship home from here. There's an English guy, Simon Kennedy, with a flat he rents bu the month and as its St Patrick's day on Wednesday we all have a party at the flat. There are 13 including Javier and Sandra. Steffen is there as is Pete with the story of how his bike got here on the truck, blocked in by a full load of peaches cooled down to almost freezing for a few days. The Swiss guys we met in El Calafate; Didier, a Frenchman from Australia; Catherine – a French photographer going RTW in a car; and Nick a Mancunian living in Brazil, just arrived and about to head for Ushuaia, and everybody keeps telling him how cold its going to get down there.
Its a great night, we go out for an all you can eat buffet that costs all of £1.50 then follow crowds into the centre where a massive street party is in full swing. Next day it makes the news, there has never been a St Patrick's day like it here, and most people have no idea who what they have been celebrating.
Thursday I spend at the shop watching Javier work on my bike, talking politics with Sandra and drinking tea and mate. I learn quite a lot just by seeing Javier at work though it is a bit nerve wracking when he starts hammering stuff around. Sandra says every biker gets the same expression when he starts doing that sort of thing, but the only difference with the way that BMW do it is that they don't let you watch.