Curves and corners

Jan 1-3 Vina del Mar to Uspallata

Well after all the excitement last night it was nice to start off a little slower, we slept in but were still the first guests to arrive for breakfast. Mariscol does the cooking and put on a very nice breakfast. They have an agreement with a German baker, that if they buy a batch at a time and the baker will make it to their recipe, it is a multigrain bread with walnuts and a couple of other seeds thrown in. It is nice to chat with Mariscol and she tell us that her niece would like to have us over for lunch today, apparently she was upset that we did not get invited to her house last night but lunch would do fine. Her and her husband wanted to talk to us about our motorcycle travels as they would like to do something similar, although shorter. We decided to take up the lunch offer which would also mean staying one more night. 

A couple of calls were made to let the niece know that we were on for lunch. Then one more change, Mariscol’s sister has been ill for the last while and she took a turn for the worse so the niece would not be able to host lunch, Graham was nice enough to allow us a rather late check-out which allowed us to move on as per Plan A, which was to move along towards San Juan Argentina in time to catch some of the Dakar Rally.

We make it as far as Los Andes, which is not very far but due to the late start still a pretty good day. It is hot here as expected, I think it topped out at around 35C today, but due to the dry desert like climate it cools off nicely at night for sleeping, well 20C feels cool compared to 35C. This is also wine country and the road here passes through many vineyards and other produce farms. Los Andes is not a very big town but we find a nice hotel and take a stroll around town once it cools off a bit.

Our mini pilgrimage to Dakar take us back across the border into Argentina, we are getting the system down to a science but there is always a twist that is unexpected. Speaking of twists the road from Los Andes to the border was a feat of engineering. The only place to build the road was up a steep valley between some very jagged mountains. The road has the curves numbered so you don’t get confused and double back on yourself, plus it helps to keep from getting dizzy.

The semi trailers have the worst time with this section of road, not only do they end up in low gear on the way up but they have to use low gear on the way down as well to prevent too much speed in the corners. We have a grand time zipping around the curves, so much so that we double back a little bit for a few photos.

Just when we thought the fun was over we came to the border control station, or what we thought was the border control station. The nice lady inside insisted that this double sided building was only for people entering Chile, not for us who are leaving. I was confused as to how people entering Chile were supposed to use this side of the building as it was a divided highway with the building in the middle. Essentially people would have to go against traffic. But, she insisted that the exit control station was many kilometers up the road and gave a polite arm flap wrist flick to indicate so. We have learned not to mess with the arm flap.

Sure enough, after passing a very long line of people trying to enter Chile and about another 20-30km of mountain peaks, tunnels, avalanche sheds and curves we come to a toll booth.

This is the spot where you pick up your piece of scrap paper that the attendant writes your license plate number and type of vehicle on. This is a critical piece of documentation that is not to be taken as ripped up zerox paper and lost along the way. This is sensitive government documentation that must be presented down the road at the Aduana office. So after another 10km or so we come to a very impressive and unusually large border control station. It seems that Argentina and Chile decided to cooperate and build one big facility instead of two smaller ones. Unfortuneatly that is where the brain trust stopped and South America Factor took over. The building is off to the North side of the highway and the single lane approach splits into a huge multilane area that at first looks like each lane has an attendant to process paperwork and help move people along. Not so much really, all the lanes are a parking lot that has the resemblance of a ferry terminal waiting area. Then all these lanes get bottle necked down to 3 lanes that enter the big building, that then branch out again to 6 or 8 lanes of border control officials for both countries.

Ok, some kind of flow control or something. As we wait, and wait, we notice that up ahead the vehicles have to make a hard left turn to get to the officials who sit in what can only be described as a toll booth. This at first made no sense and still doesn’t, because anything larger than a Toyota Tercel has to run over the curb to make the corner or wait for the adjacent lane to clear so that they can swing wide enough to miss the curb, this results in many officials without customers because they can not make it to the booth. Good thing there is a grumpy old soldier making sure everyone moves ahead until their bumpers are almost touching which ensure that nobody can back up enough to maneuver around the corner. And while we continue to wait and observe, we notice that some of the toll booths are facing each other with two lane of cars in between, this now ads pedestrians to the mix as the drivers have to get out and walk around their car to hand documents to the officials who appear to be strapped into their chairs until it is time to give long extended greeting to their fellow workers who show up for shift change or coffee break or chat break. While we wait, we also start to feel a little “off” that is when we notice that many of the vehicles in the building are idling and the fumes have no escape, great, carbon monoxide poisoning as a bonus to a complete cluster fuck. Can you say cluster fuck in a blog?? So all is not lost while we wait and roll our bikes ahead a foot or two at a time, we are entertained by a little girl in the car next to us, she would look over with big eyes and then play shy, then wave, then shy, then Hola, then shy. It didn’t take long for me to break down and dig out some Canada stickers, she was only about three so did not fully understand the exchange, but mom did and thanked us a few times then rattled to the little girl in Spanish who smiled and waved at us one more time.

Then it was their turn to jump the curb and our turn to push the bikes up to the booth. As I said we have this down to a science, but this time there seemed to be an issue with our paperwork. We were asked to roll the bikes off to the side so that others could be processed while we were sent to the National Policia office. Ya like anyone else was going to get processed, there was a bus in the building now and he was trying to make the corner. The two young officers each processed our documents and from what we could gather the problem was that the official back in Rio Turbio, the first crossing into Chile, did not cancel our paperwork so in the computer it looks as if we have never left Chile and our 30 day visa is overdue. We show them our passports and they realize the error, stamp stamp, new documents are made, sign here, please leave and enjoy Argentina. Finally the chaos is over, almost, we exit the building through the two lane opening in the building that expands to six lanes immediately, then loops around in an almost complete circle and dumps us onto the highway, be careful of the sign that say “yield to trucks” as they have the right of way so that they can keep momentum up the hill into the truck zone of the border station.

So let’s review, cross the highway into and out of the Aduana offices, two lane entrance to 8 lane staging area, 4 lanes into building, two sided toll booths in a building filled with exhaust fumes, cute kid, stam stamp get out, two lanes out of building and six lanes in a big circle with one lane approach onto the highway if you don’t get hit by a semi pulling off the road into the truck parking area.

All we can figure is that at one point the building must have been intended both exit and entrance for both countries, you can see without being here how that will likely never happen because you would have the above scenario working in both directions at the same time in the same physical space. But it looks impressive from the outside, and with government that is a success.

Down the road and down the mountain we go until we reach Uspallata, a small town thriving on tourism. Many of the attractions that people go and see are up the mountain towards the border control and a few are into the dessert to see old mines and geological formations. We spend a couple of nights as it is a relaxing little town and we found a fantastic Hostal adjacent to the nicest 5 star hotel in town, that amazingly allows the Hostal guest to use their facilities. We are not much for sitting around the pool but it is a nice relaxing change of pace plus after riding around in the desert it was nice to relax and sunbath for a bit and try to even out our funky tan lines.