Circle to Circle Read online

  Andrea immediately gets on the phone, chasing paperwork and writing out directions. She asks if our driver speaks Spanish. Well, he does. The problem for us is that he doesn’t speak English. So Andrea gives Sergio a briefing about where we have to go tomorrow and what we’ll have to do. Once we have the permit we’ll be able to get the bike — no problems.

  Shirley: It’s been a long day and we feel we’ve earned a drink — pisco sours all round. This afternoon we met a taxi driver who probably thought he was lucky to get a 10,000 pesos (about US $20) job from Vina del Mar to Valparaiso. He has driven us around for more than three hours and waited patiently while we tried to work our way through the paper maze that is the Chilean bureaucracy. Despite the fact he doesn’t speak more than a few words of English and our Spanish is rubbish, Sergio is part of Team Rix and will pick us up at 8.30 in the morning.

  Brian: Sergio is waiting outside the hotel at 8.30 on the dot. He seems as excited as us and ready for business. He has his instructions from Andrea and takes us straight to the office that will issue the permit. He comes into the office with us, holding his mobile phone and Andrea’s phone number at the ready. He has taken on the team leader role and speaks to the officials on our behalf, to get things going.

  The office is very olde worlde with wood panelling and frosted glass windows. There’s a hum of people working and the clack of manual typewriters. There are no computers and printers here. We feel like we’ve walked back in time.

  The officials take the paperwork we got yesterday and again completely ignore the carnet. The forms are filled out the old fashioned way — by typewriter. And the man completing the paperwork is typing the old fashioned way — with two fingers. You certainly need to be patient.

  The teenager, who seems to be the junior assistant, scurries away with the paperwork to get it photocopied. When he gets back copies are pinned together and put in a tray for filing. After about half an hour of waiting and answering the odd question, we have the all-important Titulo de Admision Temporal de Vehiculos.

  We jump into Sergio’s car and head back to the freight yard. Sergio doesn’t want to leave us until he is sure we are able to collect the bike. Once we are with Andrea and wearing the all important high-visibility vests and hard hats he wishes us good luck with our journey and gets in his little taxi. Who needs a freight agent when you have a good-hearted driver like our new best friend, Sergio?

  We walk down the yellow brick road, literally, following the yellow paving from the office to the freight warehouse. Huge cranes are picking up shipping containers and shifting them here and there. Andrea insists that we must keep our hard hats on even though she admits they won’t do much good if a container drops!

  We’re introduced to the manager of the warehouse and he sends a forklift down to pick up our bike. I can feel the butterflies in my stomach and look at Shirl. She’s tense. We don’t know what condition the bike is in, it’s been at sea for such a long time.

  Shirley: So close, but we can’t get our hands on the bike until the onsite customs officials sign the paperwork. And finally we have it. The bike is sitting on its pallet — safe and sound. Unfortunately we can’t put it back together in the shade of the warehouse, and it’s forklifted out to an area in the blazing sun.

  Brian: The sooner we put everything back as it should be the sooner we can get out of the searing heat. I decide to do everything I can with the bike still strapped on the crate and then I’ll ride it off — if it starts, of course.

  We take our time to make sure we get things back where they should be, with no left over bolts, screws or washers. The racks that hold on the luggage are reattached. The handlebars lifted to the correct level and the screen refitted. I make good use of Shirl’s smaller hands to get behind the windscreen and start the self-locking screws.

  I tossed and turned all night thinking about what to do if didn’t start. I decided we could fork it onto the back of a truck and take it somewhere to get a battery, and I remembered seeing a motorcycle shop near the freight yard. But now it’s the moment of reckoning. I connect up the battery, turn on the bike and let it cycle through its start-up procedure. I press the button and after a few coughs and splutters the big red beast fires into life. You bloody beauty!

  By now we’ve an audience of truck drivers. I snick into first gear and, with a front tyre with precious little air in it, I ride it off the crate. The back wheel breaks a few bits of wood on the way and I have to pull up as soon as I clear the pallet to avoid running into a shipping container, but we finally have our bike on terra firma.

  All the emergency lights are flashing on the dashboard — low fuel and low air in the tyres — so I use our portable compressor to get the tyres up to a rideable level and we head for a petrol station.

  Our adventure is about to begin. There are 48,234 kilometres on the clock. There’ll be another 20,000 or 30,000 kilometres on the clock by the time we get to Alaska.

  South to Ushuaia, Argentina

  6 November – 11 December 2011

  Shirley: At last, it’s time to hit the road. We did a shakedown ride yesterday and all went well. Now it’s time to head south. We board a ship to Antarctica next month so we’ve roughly five weeks to get to the most southernmost town in South America, the Argentinean town of Ushuaia, about 2,500 kilometres from here.

  There’s a lot to see on the way and this will be the only chance we’ll have to explore this part of Argentina and Chile. We won’t take the most direct route south, rather we’ll head back and forth over the Andes, probably several times, so we can visit the lakes on both sides of the mountains and see the volcanoes and the glaciers. We want to get to Bariloche in Argentina and Pucon in Chile. We’ve heard the towns are great fun, the scenery incredible and the roads good for motorcycles. There’s a lot to cram in, but we think we can do it all.

  In a couple of hours we’ll be in the Andes, taking our first ride over the mountains, through a mountain tunnel and down into Mendoza in Argentina. Everyone we know who’s ridden this road raves about it. Now it’s, finally, our turn.

  I know Brian’s itching to get on the road. He’s been too long away from the bike.

  •

  On the road we pass a sign for Seguro, the insurance we need for Argentina and beyond, the document we’ll need to show at every border crossing. I scramble up a dirt embankment and cross over a disused rail line. It’s for sale in a thatch-roofed cottage where jams, marmalade and drinks are on display and insurance seems to be a sideline. With the help of the phrase book and my Spanish we decide on a five month policy for 126,000 pesos (about AUS $250) that will cover us for the Mercusor countries, the South American version of the European Union — Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

  •

  The road over the Andes doesn’t disappoint. Around every corner (and there are plenty of them) there’s a vista that takes our breath way. Brian is thriving on it and there’s no chatter between us. Brian is at one with the bike and I relax into the groove.

  Brian: This magnificent piece of road is as I imagined it would be. The road surface is just about perfect. The bike’s handling the tight corners so well I forget that we’re fully loaded and would probably tip the scales about 500 kilos.

  There’s snow on the peaks that tower above us as we take on the 50 or more switchback corners. Looking back down into the valley the trucks look like toys, slowly making their way up the Andes. It is truly amazing. As we head higher and higher the temperature drops from the mid 30°C down to a comfortable 21°C.

  The Cristo Redentor Tunnel that takes us to the border between Chile and Argentina is 3,080 metres long. At the Los Andes Paseo Libertadores, the mountain pass, we’re more than three kilometres high, remarkable when you think Mt Kosciusko, Australia’s highest peak, is about 2,228 metres.

  We ride through the tunnel and arrive at the Argentinean border post, Los Libertadores, which is a huge shed off to the side of the road. Inside, buses are lined up with passengers queui
ng and waiting to be processed. It doesn’t take long for us to get the passports stamped, but when we tell a young official that the bike is Australian he tells us to park, get our paperwork, including the carnet, and takes us to an office to get the papers signed. The two in the office laugh, saying that’s the only English he can speak. There isn’t a grumpy official in sight.

  Once the carnet is stamped, they take our temporary Chilean import permit. After the trouble it took to get the bloody thing and they take it off us! Apparently we’ll need to get another one every time we come back to Chile.

  That’s it. We’re officially in Argentina.

  Shirley: The Andes are starting to flatten out on this side. There’s no snow, but the scenery is still spectacular. We encounter a lot of buses and trucks. Even though there’s no room for overtaking, they move over so we can sneak through or just indicate that the road ahead is clear. It’s getting late, after 2.00 pm, and we’re still about 190 kilometres from Mendoza.

  Brian: We ride on and on. It’s hot and the roads are windy and clogged with slow traffic. It’s after six when we finally get to Mendoza and our tempers are a little frayed. We’ve had nothing to eat or drink since breakfast at the hotel and a cold drink half an hour after leaving Vina del Mar on the Pacific Coast. It’s been a long day in the saddle for our first day.

  Cold showers soothe the tempers and a massive Argentinean steak with papas frita and ensalata mixta (it sounds exotic but it’s just chips and salad) is just the ticket. Top it off with a cerveza grande (large beer) for me and a local Malbec for Shirl and we’re human again.

  •

  For the next two days we explore the colonial city of Mendoza with its open spaces planned as safe havens for the citizens when earthquakes hit. Its vineyards make this one of the most famous wine regions in South America.

  We taste the local wines and olives but it is a local liqueur that has me intrigued, absente, the local version of the once banned absinthe. Legend has it that Vincent van Gough was addicted to absinthe and I’m warned this is pretty lethal. I have to try it. It’s served the traditional way, in a shot glass. A minuscule amount of the startlingly green liqueur is dripped onto a small spoon of sugar and set alight. The burning sugar is dunked into the absente when it starts to turn to syrup. Then it’s down the hatch. The third sip is the best but my legs do start to tingle. I might need Shirl to help me get back on the bus!

  •

  Back at the hotel we sip on a glass of Malbec, a much more palatable drop than the absente, and check out the map. We have a real challenge ahead of us if we’re to fit in everything we want to do.

  After Antarctica we plan to spend Christmas and New Year with our good friends Bernd and Heidi in Ushuaia. We met this young East German couple in Iran back in 2003. Despite an age difference of a couple of decades we’ve become incredibly close, drawn together by our mutual love of adventurous motorcycle travel. When the Berlin Wall fell Bernd was doing national service in the East German army. He decided to stay in the East and help rebuild his country. Today he and Heidi live in a tiny rural community and save like mad so they can get on their motorcycles and hit the road.

  Leaving Ushuaia in January will give us just four months to get to Texas in May to meet friends from Australia for a police memorial ride. It’s really all about the weather. If we don’t make Texas in May we won’t get to Alaska in August when the weather is best for a road trip like ours. Any earlier and the mozzies will eat us alive. Any later and it’ll be too cold and the snow will block the roads.

  To ride from the southernmost tip of South America to Alaska we need to hit both the top and the bottom of the world in summer — December in the south and August in the north. We can take eight months or 20, but we’d prefer not to take 20 months. We have children and grandchildren and great-nieces and nephews, a cat, a dog and a house all waiting for us at home.

  It’s all about prioritising. We met people yesterday who told us about great things to see like San Pedro in the Atacama Desert, the falls at Iguazu, and Ché Guevara’s house near Cordoba. We decide the falls and San Pedro are goers, but we’ll have to miss out on Che. Cordoba is a long way out of our way to go to a museum, even if it is all about Che.

  •

  I’m a bit worried about the condition of Ruta 40 heading south. Locals tell me the 3,000 kilometres has huge stretches of gravel with some tarred sections. We’ll just take it as it comes, as we always do, one day at a time.

  Shirley: Stress levels are high as we pack the bike. We still have way too much gear even though we posted some stuff home before we even picked up the bike. The same thing happened on our last trip. Some things never change. We’re probably at the maximum weight now and don’t want to overload the bike and break something.

  •

  We hit the road, taking the notorious Ruta 40 heading to San Rafael and then Malargue. I’m anxious about this part of the trip but the ride is brilliant and the countryside incredibly similar to Australia, its undulating hills covered in a type of salt bush, a yellow flowered plant that looks like a squat wattle. All along the road the Andes tower on the horizon.

  Brian: Leaving San Rafael the vineyards give way to hills that turn into a small canyon with a road tracking through it that’s a bikers’ haven. Tight turns, good camber make this a dream road and I’m disappointed when we head out onto the arid plains, heading back towards the Andes.

  The first few kilometres are okay, and then the wind picks up. It’s annoying at first, a cross wind pushing us around a bit, then it gets stronger and more blustery. The gusts are making me use the entire road just to stay on the tar. Even the passing trucks are struggling.

  Where there’s no vegetation the dust being whipped up is biting and we’re literally getting sand blasted. Visibility gets down to 20 metres and I can’t see much at all until we eventually trickle into Malargue.

  We’re covered from head to toe in a fine red grit and our necks and shoulders ache from the battering in the wind. A long hot shower and life’s not so bad, and after a cerveza and copa de vino we’re fine and dandy. Ah, the joys of motorcycle travel.

  Shirley: After the gruelling day yesterday we start today with a plan. We’re going to make a dash for the border and cross the Andes again, heading back to Chile to visit the lakes district. The plan is to head south on Ruta 40 to Bardas Blancas and then take the road over Paso Pehuenche, Ruta 115 to Chile. Sometimes things just don’t go to plan.

  •

  Ruta 40 begins well with sealed road before abruptly turning to gravel and then road works. It is a bastard of a ride. There are times we’re not sure if we’re on the right side of the road or the right diversion around gaping holes in the road. Then, as suddenly as it began, the gravel ends and we come around a sweeping bend to a bridge across a river. The signs are clear — right to Paso Pehuenche and the Republic of Chile.

  The road is sealed and magnificent and we pass through beautiful valleys with small farms, mudbrick houses and rolling pastures as we dodge horses and goats, the ever-present Andes high above us.

  Then we come around a corner at a fair rate of knots and the sealed road just stops — just like that. No sign, and no road. The only parts of the road that aren’t thick gravel are the bridges over the deep gorges. The gravel quickly turns to mud where melting snow creates watercourses across a road that’s becoming more and more like a track. We push on but I’m getting a little concerned. There isn’t much traffic and absolutely nothing coming the other way.

  We come to a town with a sign saying Aduana and Migraciones — Customs and Immigration. I check what could have been an official building at some time but which is now empty apart from a clothes line and an old motorcycle. Something about this just doesn’t seem right.

  Brian: I keep going, the dirt road taking us high and higher into the mountains. The border post is meant to be at 2,500 metres. I have no idea how high we are, but we’re above the snowline and the road is deteriorating. I’m sure Shirl’s ne
rvous, even though she’s not saying much. When the road becomes nothing more than a black dirt goat track I suggest we should turn around and head back. This is clearly not the way to Chile. I can feel Shirl’s relief as I gingerly turn the bike around and we begin the slow ride back. Going down the gravel is harder than coming up, with the front wheel losing grip.

  Back at the main road we see a sign facing the up side of the road that says ‘no barro’ or something like that. Perhaps that means frontier is closed. Pity we didn’t see that on the way up.

  •

  We need to shake a leg to get to the next big town for the night. Chos Malal is 291 kilometres away and it’s 3.00 pm. This section of Ruta 40 is sealed, but it’s still a bitch of a road. It doesn’t take long for bitumen to turn to gravel. Apart from a few sections of sealed road its rutted and hard going. We’re bouncing around in the dirt and the dust. Ripio, the locals call it.

  The dust is driving us insane, but we press on through trying circumstances made bearable by the amazing scenery of the Andes.

  Shirley: I’m over it, but then, as if by magic, the road is sealed and we make really good time. I can tell Brian is enjoying himself for the first time in hours.

  It’s after six by the time we get to Chos Malal. We see people queuing at the petrol station but don’t think anything of it. We’ll get fuel in the morning. What we need now is a room, a shower and a meal.

  Tomorrow we’ll have another crack at getting to Chile.

  Brian: As we were leaving Mendoza, a nice young man in our hotel told me that if I can ride Ruta 40 I should be in the Dakar Rally. I thought, ‘Yeah mate, in MY dreams’. The big beemer is doing a great job and handles really rough stuff and the tarred sections equally well. The all round ability of this bike, and it’s capacity to carry us two up and fully loaded is a testament to good engineering. I just hope it holds together. This is going to be a real test of man, woman and machine.