Goodbye Argentina!

We have made substantial progress since our last entry. We are now in Salta, Argentina, near the tropic of cancer and Bolivia. Tomorrow we leave for San Juan De Los Cobres, the last town in Argentina before Chile (again)

Mendoza was a dirty and hot city. We didn't like it one bit, except for the food (of course) We tried to visit the BMW dealer there to have them work on Bee (oil Change) but the mechanico was on holiday for the next week. We left early the next morning, in an attempt to miss the holiday rush. We saw a terrible accident on the way out of town, a guy was being carted off in a gurney. Happy semana santa, man. The roads in and around Mendoza are really unsafe, and we took extra precaution.

We reached San Jose De Jachal by mid afternoon, and met a Belgian guy in town. He took us to a great Parilla (steak house) where we dined and talked for a few hours. The guy has been all over the world on his bicycle. Everywhere. He just goes and goes and goes. We met him the next day on the way out of town, riding in the sweltering heat towards the next town.

We rode forever through the desert, and it was HOT! It is hard not to let little things get on your nerves when you are almost dying of heatstroke. I cant imagine doing in on a bike, though.

By the tome we reached Andagala, we ready for a change of scenery. The desert was really starting to wear on us. We left Andagla and our crap room early in the morning in a light drizzle. Awesome! 10 days of not a cloud in the sky-sunburn weather ends! We faced 130 km of dirt roads before we reached the next pavement. The roads across the desert go up and down, up and down. The down is usually a wash for the infrequent floods, and is covered in sand and gravel. Hurry up and slow down. The road out of Andagala was different, though. We immediately began to ascend a mountain, and climbed into the clouds. The road was one lane, dirt and really steep, all hair-pin switchbacks. This went on for like an hour, through the clouds to a plateau covered in green grass, farms and horses. What a change! We were stoked to be somewhere other than creosote country. The road improved, too. We could go like 40 mph on the dirt. We stopped at a gas station, where a friendly Moroccan made us coffee and let us make lunch in his restaurant. Thee hours, 40 miles. Bee almost overheated, too.

We climbed even higher, into cloud Forrest and mud before we began our descent. We were definitely out of the desert now! The downhill part began, and we descended through mists and cloud Forrest for another two hours, hairpin switch-backs in the mud and big trucks coming at us. The scenery was awesome. Thousand foot cliffs at the roads edge. Huge trees with hanging vines looming overhead.

As the road straightened out, it started to rain (hard) - definitely out of the desert now. Finally, the tarmac began, and we took off like a rocket. Five hours, 100 miles. All dirt. Fun.

We made it to the main highway, and promptly got lost. After so long in the boonies, civilazation came as a shock to us. Traffic, stop signs, road signs, passing vehicles, busses... We missed our turnoff to Calafate, and ended up in Tucuman (somewhere we didn't want to be) We decided to push on to Salta, 130 miles away. We made it here by 6pm, and found a great hotel. We had the wind at our backs the whole way from Tucuman to Salta, and Bee got 55 mpg.

We are enjoying the subtropical weather now, but the next week will see us back in the desert. We have decided to cross into Chile again to see the world´s largest open pit mine, and the Atacama desert. We will enter Bolivia from the west, and see the huge Salar´s there before heading north again.

Sorry about the pictures, but we couldn´t track doen the flash-trax. Loading pictures off a CD is really cumbersome and frustrating. I managed to post these before I got totally pissed off at the computer.