Second accident in two days, Cafayate to Cachi

The guys at Riva Motos sorted my bike early the next morning and once ready I thanked them and rode a short off road section, including a river plain crossing out of Santa Maria.

Dodgy bike gets the thumbs up at Riva Motos

Crossing the river plain on the outskirts of Santa Maria

I only had to cover an easy paved 80km section along Ruta 40 to Cafayate so I had time to stop off at the Quilmes Ruins on the way.  Later I reached Cafayate, which is quite a touristy place all geared around the fine wines that are produced in this area.  I was aiming to meet up with my Oz mate Darren who I had not seen for a few months, but because of my puncture adventure I just missed him and he had left the day before.  So instead I checked into a hostel and literally crashed out as I was still tired from the day before.

The next day I woke early and decided to go to Cachi along Ruta 40.  But first I wanted to see Quebrada de Cafayate, also known as the Quebrada de las Conchas because it follows the Rio de las Conchas.  Its a famous Argentine landscape comprised of a series of strange rock formations with names such as “Garganta del Diablo” and “los Castillos” found just off Ruta 68 north of Cafayate.  It would mean I would have to ride 50km north and then double back to Cafayate before taking Ruta 40 to Cachi.  I’d been told months ago in Buenos Aires that it was worth seeing so after breakfast I headed up there. 

Ugly views along Ruta 68

Farmhouse along Ruta 68, Cafayate

Quebrada de Cafayate, also known as the Quebrada de las Conchas, can see Ruta 68 in the distance.

It was true, there was some stunning scenery and the road was in really good condition with lots of twisties to mess around with on the bike.  I took a fair few pictures and videos and typically for me I ate into a good chunk of the time I needed to get to Cachi.  In this one I tried to kill a dog but it ran off too soon.

 

Riding back to Cafayate I saw a short cut to Ruta 40 so thought it would be a good idea to take it, but as it didn’t show on the map I didn’t realise this included crossing a river.  It wasn’t too deep but was still deep enough to get my feet wet as you can see in this video – sorry its pretty damn shaky as its my usual hand-held work.

A few kms later I finally reached Ruta 40 at about 1pm.  I still had to go about roughly 150km, which although not too far is all offroad, so I had to allow time for this too.  As usual the scenery was spectacular, but the road condition definitely wasn’t.  There was the usual fine ripio where I could get some good speeds going, however this would suddenly change to hard corregrated gravel or sand.  The corregated gravel was uncomfortable and shook me and the bike to pieces so I tried to ride along the edge as close to the sand as was safe and this kept me going nicely enough.  However later in the day the sand increased and always seemed to be on the turns, of which there were many.  Not the easiest thing to ride through.

I was trying to capture some of the ride on video and because I don’t have a helmet camera like every other rider seems to have, I usually resort to using my camera and holding it up in my left hand.  I had just finished doing this, when I saw a left turn coming up fast which was typically sandy.  I tried to turn the best I could but holding the camera made it a little tricky and the sand forced me over to the right edge and I ran out of space.  I slowed as much as possible but it was too late and for the first time ever I fell off the bike.  I wasn’t hurt, just more surprised it happened really but my ankle was caught under the bike.  Luckily I’d fallen on loose sandy gravel on the edge of the road so I could dig it out using my other leg.  My luggage took the brunt of the impact so I needed to adjust it a fair amount to balance it out.  Having so much luggage did mean the bike had not been damaged, so I carried on feeling pretty good to have had my first fall out of the way so easily.

My first ever fall and video below that caused it

Soon after though I noticed my throttle kept sticking in the on position, so I had to stop to see what was going on.  There was some sand stuck in the handle so I played around with it for a bit to free it and went on my way again.  The rest of the afternoon was much the same, a lot of sand and a few dodgy moments but no more falls and I arrived in Cachi in the late afternoon.  Using my GPS I found the campsite but it was a strange place at the bottom of a hill and there were small floods all over the place that didn’t instil confidence that it was a good spot to camp.  I parked up and while I looked for a dry area to put up the tent a guy from Salta who was staying in one of the cabins came over and started to talk to me.  

Within one minute of talking he completely freaked me out.  Some of the stuff he said was pretty out there and when he started saying that I could share his cabin with him and his two friends (who didn’t seem to exist), I politely made my excuses and sped out of there to find another place to stay.  What is it about some people in camp sites the world over?

Finding places was easy enough, but due to the laissez faire approach to things around here, actually finding someone at any reception was not easy so it took me an hour to find a combination of the two.  Eventually I found a hostel and booked in for the night in a dorm room.  There was no parking at all so with the help of some decent people from Buenos Aires who were staying in the hostel we carried my bike into the reception area.   So today 250km covered, with 170km of those offroad.  My arms and legs ache like hell and my eyes are pretty bloodshot from the dust, but all in all am feeling pretty good.

Disaster finally strikes and my lucky escape

Where to start….today turned out to be my personal Everest.  So far I have got away without anything going too badly wrong, but this run ended today.  It all started when I left the motel car park and stalled and un-ceremonially dropped the bike right at the entrance to the road.  I was so annoyed that without thinking I just picked the thing up.  So I have now solved the problem of how to pick up a dropped bike - Make sure people are watching you - you´ll then find through embarrassment the strength to pick a heavily laden bike up.  This incident was nothing compared to later though and was if anything only an omen to what was to happen.

The bike was fine so after stocking up on food, I headed towards the Cuesta.  Cuesta is a name given to any mountain pass in Argentina, the full name of this one is “la Cuesta de la Chilca”.  Its not really well known and I only heard about it from the blog of another rider.  Not even Argentinians I spoke to had heard about it.  It lies north of Andalgala and after reaching the top turns into Ruta 47, the whole section is only 90 kms, so I only planned to take a few hours to cross it and then join the famous Ruta 40 after.  

As I left the town some locals on motorbikes led me to where it began and as I thanked them I soon hit the offroad ripio section that would pass through a few small villages before the climb up the pass began.  The cuesta was like nothing I had ridden before, it was both rocky and sandy and above all else narrow with no barriers and some seriously impressive drops.  Death Road in Bolivia is nothing compared to this.   

I took it pretty slow as the combination of a narrow sandy track and massive drops is pretty sobering.  I lost track of time and the number of twisty curves I took, but I guess it took me about two or three hours to reach the top, and in all this time I passed five cars, some a little too close for comfort as you can see from this video.

  

Reaching the top there were two or three adobe type houses with goats and cattle scattered around and not much else, and after this there was a long section of bends as the route made its way through the top of the mountains.  

 

Later the route dropped down in altitude and the scenery changed again, opening up to a wide dry plateau packed full with cacti as tall as trees and countless dried up river beds.  

 

The gradient of the track kept changing too and the terrain became more difficult to ride as it constantly changed from ripio, corrugated gravel, sand, deeper gravel and even jagged stones. Much of it was new to me in terms of riding a bike and in places there were streams blocking my path so I had to ride across them as well.  

 

It was challenging but enjoyable and had to concentrate hard and choose where to put the bike.  There were quite a few mini accidents and I nearly came off several times.  It was to be like this for the next 50km and after going for several hours I couldn’t wait to find an even consistent track or even asphalt, which was now a distant memory.

Still all was going well until I hit a particularly bad section of rocks, where climbing up out of a dried up river bed at about 60km/h the rear of the bike began swinging wildly behind me 45 degrees in each direction.  It took all my strength (and I’d like to think of course unlimited natural skill) not to fall off, and I stopped to look to see what was the problem was, but I already knew in the back of my mind I had a puncture.  

I was not too worried as I had the emergency can of air/sealant aerosol which had worked in the past, but when I went to use this it failed miserably.  The inner tube must have completely burst and it left me in a bit of a situation as although I had a spare inner tube, I stupidly had no pump.  I was 20km from Ruta 40, 40km from the nearest petrol station and 50km from the nearest town that could help (Santa Maria).  On top of this I had seen no more than eight cars all day and that was back on the cuesta not on this last section of the route. 

I had to work out what to do so was trying to remember what Bear Grills/Ray Mears would do, but considering I didn’t have a camera crew and a hotel nearby like they always have, I realised I needed to try something else   I decided to try to ride the bike in first gear and lean my weight over the front forks and try to make it the 20kms to Ruta 40, where there would be more cars.  This was tough going and I only managed 5km in two hours and was worried my tyre and wheel would be ruined so I had to rethink.  

I only had two hours of daylight left so I set up my telephoto lens on my camera and started to take pictures in all directions and then zoom in on the pictures after to see if I could see any signs of life anywhere.  The only thing I could see was a house to the East about 10km away and some smoke in the north even further away.  The house was nearer so I started to walk a little towards it only to see later that it was derelict, so I walked back to the bike.  I then took some water and decided to head towards the smoke in the north.  The plan was to walk until dusk and if I didn´t find any life in that time I would walk back to the bike and set up camp for the night and then walk on in the morning.  So I took off but first left a note on the bike asking anyone who found it to go north in my direction.

The derelict house in the distance

The smoke on the horizon I tried to walk towards

As my time was running out I could see the smoke in the distance was not getting any nearer and I was about to turn back when out of pure luck I saw a 4x4 was coming in my direction.  I was so so lucky, no one uses this track much.  It was a couple from Cordoba who happened to be on holiday and were the only people to pass in hours.  I must have looked retarded walking in the middle of nowhere in full bike gear, but it didn’t matter, I had help just when I was resigned to sleeping out that night.   In bad Spanish I explained what had happened and they drove me back to the bike.   On the absolute remote chance that someone would pass and steal the bike we decided to find a tree to chain it to.  We loaded my things into their car and then I rode the bike another 1km until we found a tree big enough to chain the bike to.  We then propped the bike up with rocks and took the rear wheel off and drove onto to Santa Maria, about 45km away.  

The couple who I owe so much to dropped me off in Santa Maria, and soon after I had another stroke of luck as there was a motocross bike shop there better than I’ve found in bigger towns, and for the price of £20 they would fix the bike and balance the wheel again.   

 By this time it was 9pm and it didn’t look like I would get back to the bike that night with the repaired wheel so I asked the mechanic if he knew someone with a truck.  After a bit of a search he found his brother in law, Santiago, who would take me and his truck to the bike that night for £30.  I was knackered by then but had to get the bike to safety so we set off, although the truck was not suitable for offroad at all we made it to the bike.  We had a bit of a time dragging a one wheeled bike in the dark to the truck and then lifting it up into it, but we did it after a few attempts and drove back to Santa Maria.  

Fighting with the bike to get it secured

It was after 11pm when we returned so had to knock at the door of the motoshop to get the owner to let us drop the bike off.  Santiago then drove me around until I found somewhere to stay, but before he dropped me off we found a greasy little empanada shop too so I could bring some food back.  The second nasty hotel in two days, it smelt terrible, but it was fine, I was very lucky to get out of that situation in that way.  I’d made it alive 14 hours since first setting off and had been rescued from a very remote area with the help of some kind people who I owe so much to.  The empanadas were best thing in ages and as I ate them on the bed I crashed out until the next morning.

Santiago and the most unsuited offroad truck ever.

Couchsurfing La Rioja style

I had my own bedroom at Victorias and it was good to relax for a few days whilst fixing my bike and generally doing nothing.  It’s a relaxing town to be in with the habitants just getting on with everyday life, which is mostly revolved around olive oil and wine production so you can take it as granted that the climate is just as you imagine.

Victoria is a great host and it was nice to stay there, she has a clothes shop in La Rioja, but she really should work in tourism as she has a tonne of information on the area and has hosted around 80 people through couchsurfing.  She made sure I tried traditional food such as Locro and took me out with her friends on the last night I was there.  The only downside being the hangover I left with.  

Locro time

The plaza in daytime

Typical streets around here

Vicky + friends + too much Fernet = evil hangover.

Hangovers are never fun, and riding a bike with one is worse.  For some reason everytime I’ve ridden with a hangover I have been really cold.  Leaving La Rioja, the weather today was warm but for most of the journey my hands and feet were numb, it has to do with the consumption of Fernet, I´m sure of it.  Today was all about riding 250km out of the way and getting to Andalgala ready for the Cuesta pass tomorrow.  I was planning on rough camping close to the Andalgala, however when I got within 30km I could not find anywhere hidden near the road and there were a lot of people everywhere.  With daylight fading I had to ride into town and find somewhere.  This ended up being a sorry looking motel where I was the only guest that night and most probably the only one in the last few months.