Southern Exposure

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

With so little distance to cover today, we slept in until 8, and packed up slowly. Inna had been up late writing, and we proofed and posted her writing. We’re almost two weeks behind in writing and it’s taking diligence to get caught up.

We ate another nutrition-less breakfast of coffee and bread with jam, this time supplemented by yogurt and juice packs we had bought the night before. We’ve finally figured out that the standard provided South American breakfast of coffee and bread was sapping our late morning energy by only providing empty calories and zero nutrition. Even our Mexico breakfasts of yogurt and granola bars were more nutritious.

We rode west out of Uspallata towards the border. Uspallata had been a cute town located in a scenic meadow between some surprisingly colorful, rugged mountains. The ride out was nicer than we had expected, as the massive uplifts of sedimentary rock provided startling amounts of color to the barren mountain hills.

We climbed west, enjoying the easy ride above the river below. We stopped occasionally for pictures and zoomed west. We stopped in the tiny “town” of Puente de Inca for a coffee and people watched the buses unloading hordes of tourists upon the sorry little craft market.

We rode another mile down the road and decided to stop in at the small park at the southern base of Aconcagua. We had plenty of time, so a short hike was in order. Aconcagua is the highest peak in the Andes at 6,959 meters, and is actually the highest peak in the world outside of the Himalayas. It was a beautiful site, but it strangely did not seem that tall to us from our current altitude of 10,000 ft.

We had a nice walk, and it was good to get some exercise. As I was looking up the valley, I saw a huge shadow moving across the hill in front of us, and when I looked up I could see it was a condor. I had been dying to see a condor since learning of its sacred place in Andean culture, and my desires had been stoked by seeing a condor feather as long as my arm in the comedor in Los Baldecitos. The condor flew low and straight above us. It was truly massive with its 12 ft wingspan. It was a rare treat to see one so low and close, and it was soon high, high above us riding the thermals before it disappeared completely.

We returned to the bikes and resumed our course towards the border. At a small stop we made to see about buying some stickers for the boxes, a Lassie type dog, excited by the bike, tried to bite my thigh, according to Inna. I had felt it jump up on my leg a bit but not the bite at all. I looked down and saw a little drool, but my thigh armor is incredibly thick and covered in Kevlar, so Motoport pants 1, dog 0.

We were waiting and waiting to see the Argentinean immigration and aduana to check out, but we soon found ourselves through the long mountain tunnel and in Chile. We thought surely this couldn’t be right, as the border post is always within the country, so we went back through the tunnel and back 15 km to find the ingress station. After asking the officials, they said this station was only for people entering Argentina, not exiting, and that the exit post for Argentina was a few kilometers past the tunnel crossing in Chile. This was a first time that the aduana process had to be done in the next country. We should have done our research.

We rode back through the tunnel and to the combined border post on the Chilean side. The process was tedious as the Argentinean agents were too busy lounging in the sun listening to music from one of their car stereos to be thorough. More than once I had to return from the Chilean officials to amend something the Argentines had missed. We were through soon enough, and I’m always grateful it’s not a Central American border. It baffles me why the borders in South America are so much less stressful and easier than their counterparts in Central America.

Immediately leaving the border, the road descends in a long series of switchbacks surrounded by steeply towering rocky mountains. Judging from the ski lifts the border is also a resort in the winter. The road to Los Andes was a painless 80 km ride. In Los Andes we found ourselves a slightly overpriced but nice bed and breakfast, which was the cheaper of the two available hotels. We went out to the main plaza for a nice chicken dinner, grateful not to be eating beef for a change. Who would have guessed that after the endless miles of chicken dinners we would miss it in the face of endless beef?

We watched the 2nd World Superbike race back in the room, and then it was back to work for me, more catching up on writing. Inna treated herself to an early night.