Southern Exposure

Sunday, April 5

The wind continued to roar throughout the night, prompting me to get up in the middle of the night several times to see if the bikes had been blown over yet. When the weather is bad or I don’t feel the bikes are secure enough I never sleep well and always end up getting up in the middle of the night to look out the window. The morning finally arrived and the bikes survived the wind. After a quick breakfast of our store bought yogurts we were on the road.

The scenery was still the same wide open pampas as the day before, and honestly this many days into it I hardly noticed it anymore. It was just endless boring on loop. As we made progress north, we finally came to feel the infamous Patagonia winds. We’d been very lucky up until today, but the wind had finally arrived in full force. Fortunately, it was a steady wind, so we could just lean into it and move down the road. I think we were luckier to experience it going north than going south, as we could pass trucks on the windward side, rather than going into a wind shadow of a truck and getting blasted once past.

We stopped for a break from the wind and a snack at our new favorite gas station, YPF Full. We had coffee and sconitos. Neither of us was really excited to get back to the grind, but we set off. We had a nice comic moment at the side of the road as we tried to adjust our radios. Both of us had a glove blow off the bike and it took us 5 minutes to figure out how to park without having the bike immediately blown over.

The farther north we rode, the worse the wind became. It was fierce and tried to rip the helmets off our heads. Our necks and forearms were sore quickly and it was a battle against the wind. For once I didn’t mind there was little scenery to look at because I was entirely focused on not getting blown off the road. We took another break at a gas station, and then went back to the wind. We drove past another gas station, but as we had enough gas to reach our destination of Comodoro Rivadavia, we skipped it and kept going. After another 10 miles in the wind I regretted not stopping just to give the muscles in my neck a break. We had heard the wind was bad from so many people and they were all correct. It was miserable riding.

30 km south of Comodoro, our destination for the night, the road drew close to the coast and the wind was the worst yet. It was a strange site to look out over the Atlantic ocean. The swell barely reached the shore as the wind flattened the waves and almost seemed to blow them backwards. As I struggled not to get blown out to sea myself, I heard a huge CLUNK and the motor died. I didn’t really know what to think as I drifted over to the side of the road with the clutch pulled in. I restarted the motor when Inna shouted over the radio that my chain was broken.

My heart sank a bit as this was the one thing I was not prepared to fix. I had tools for all sorts of other situations, but the hole in my inventory was a chain tool. The clip type master link had snapped in half. Poor Inna pulled over to the side of the road and was immediately blown over by a passing truck. I managed to park my bike so the wind pushed it onto the sidestand and then walked over to help her lift and park her bike.

It was 6 pm and we were an hour away from sunset. I wasn’t willing to leave her here alone by the side of the road, so she would have to ride on to town and send back a truck for my bike. As we were talking, a pickup truck pulled over to see if we needed help. I told him our chain was broken and couldn’t be fixed here. I asked him if he could ride with Inna to town and help her arrange a pickup for me and my bike at a gas station since Inna’s Spanish isn’t so good. The man was very nice and agreed to help us out. Inna rode off following him into the distance and I was on my own.

It was a strange feeling to be sitting alone on the side of the road with an immobilized bike. I was confident Inna could get something worked out as we were only 30 km from a big city, but I felt bad that she would have to make it happen on her own. I knew it would be at least an hour before anyone would be coming, so I settled in for the waiting.

I took a few pictures of the ocean, and then just kind of stood near the bike watching the sunset. The wind was still strong so I didn’t even take my helmet off so my head would stay warm. It was probably one of the lonelier sunsets of my life. I dug out my LED headlamp from my tank bag as it was getting dark. The traffic became infrequent and no one paid me much attention as they drove by. The time passed and after an hour, I put the LED light in blinker mode every time a car drove by from the north.

After an hour and a half, the pickup returned. His name was Hernan and this time he had his brother Guillermo with him. They filled me in. It was Sunday night, so it had been very difficult to find a truck, but he’d called a friend from work who was on his way. Inna was waiting back at the YPF in town. I was relieved to hear this, especially that Inna was ok. They invited me into the truck and we chatted until the truck arrived.

The truck was large and had its own crane attached. We put straps around the bike and lifted it up into the bed. With the bike loaded and secured, we headed into town. We arrived at the YPF station, and Inna was there waiting with more bad news. After having been parked for an hour, a gust of wind had blown her bike over into a brand new Jeep, leaving a nice gash and dent. This was really not our day. After much discussion, we arranged to lock my bike up at the gas station overnight. The owner of the Jeep was in Buenos Aires and we arranged over the phone to meet the next day when he returned.

The two brothers who had been so patient and kind to us, sacrificing their entire Sunday evening, took us to the nearest hotel. It was overpriced, but it was after 11 and we were exhausted. We quickly settled into the room, which was like an oven. There were no controls for the heater and the staff said it couldn’t be changed. The night was long and sweaty, an appropriate end to one of the worst days of the trip.