After 10 days in BA and spending 20 hours in Spanish school, of which I believe I have retained less than 5%,it was eventually time to head out of town to my first port of call, Mendoza, the wine capital of Argentina at the base of the Andes mountains. Many of you may know that I am quite badly dyslexic (and no that is not a anagram for thick, before the smart arses out there suggest it is!) so I found going back in to a class room a distinctly intimidating process. It is clear to me that if I am ever to try and learn a language again, I most conquer this issue first.
For those of you that have herd that BA is a throbbing metropolis of fashion and style, I'm sorry to disappoint you. The fashion looks like it has come straight from the rejects section at Primark and as for the rumours of the place teaming with stunning beauties, well I was highly disappointed. What it has got in bucket loads is great night life, but as long as you like eating at 10.30pm and going on the town at 12 midnight, is a real strange set up. The people are though extremely sociable and friendly. Everyone seems to be out at night having a wine or a coffee, just to catch up with friend. Beats rushing home to watch some shite on TV. The one exception for this is when a big game of futbol is on, usually Saturday afternoon. This then keeps EVERYONE glued to the TV. For those who can`t afford the cable channel that show the live game, there is another channel that shows live pictures of the crowd, no football, just the crowd, so you can get the atmosphere, unbelievable!
I left BA at around 11am on Monday 27th and what should have been a relative easy ride out of town quickly turned in to a mission of one way streets and u turns, but using my radar like sense of direction, which is fortunate that I possess as I can ask for the road that I require, but not understand the response. I eventually pick up Ruta 7 after around an hour , the sun is shining the sky is clear, I crank up the ipod that's loaded with classic rock track and just kick back and let the miles roll. Not a bad way to spend a Monday.
I saw my first wild Flamingos as I cross the large saline Largo La Picasa, standing out in vivid pink against the darkening evening sky. The whole of my journey to Mendoza would be the same, dead straight, not the most imaginative start, but its the way to the mountains and the real beauty of the country. I spent the night at a small town called Loboulaye, rather ordinary, but a decent enough hotel and there where some restaurants were I could eat some of Argentina's great food. That is said with a certain irony, as this consist of either grilled meat served with chips, or something made from ham and cheese. I would never have thought that you could fill a menu with ham and cheese!
Tuesday saw a change in the weather, it had now started to rain, which it would do all day and it had turned cold, what a difference a day makes. Lunch stop was a real treat though, a proper truck stop, in the middle of a wind blown plain, my bike being dwarf by these huge 18 wheelers. A salad bar! Bloody hell I haven't seen one of these before and in a truck stop, sheer luxury and I have to say the largest BBQ I have ever seen, at least 10FT wide, with huge slabs of beef being roasted over slow burning logs, I just couldn't resist. You certainly don`t get this on the M1.
Stuffed and ready to hit the road again, I donned my waterproofs for more rain, ending the day at the town of San Luis. Feeling wind blown and damp, I dried off in my hotel and watch an awful movie subtitled in Spanish. I had a lie in the following day as it was a relatively short ride to Mendoza.
Leaving at 11am, I headed out in to a crisp sunny day on Ruta 7 , kicking back an listening to some chill out tunes on the ipod. I arrive at Mendoza at around 3.30pm and find a suitable guest house. Unfortunately everywhere is pretty busy and I have t say expensive, so I settle for a dorm room, which I am sharing with a rather strange girl from Korea, who is back packing with everything in pink and continually plays games on her Iphone, if she was 18 I would expect this ,but she is 35!
So I have covered 650 miles of dead and I mean real dead flat and straight road, I am now at the foot of the Andes, the longest mountain range in the world at 5400km. Time to explore and see what all the fuss is about, I ventured up to the Chilean border and took in the sites, of snow capped mountains and scenery very similar to that of Ladakh in northern India, in fact I discovered today that the area I road through was used for the filming of the Brad Pitt movie "Seven Years in Tibet" crap film but good cinematography.
It was good to get out on to some real roads and get to grips with the bike again, I feel extremely happy with the modifications that I have done and the work (and expense) that I have put in to her, it felt like putting on an old pair of jeans, everything just seems so easy and right!
So now I am waiting for my travel buddy, Cecilia to arrive on her bike, which apparently is in desperate need of repair, before heading out down the Andes. In the meant time there is wine tasting to be done and I have found a yoga studio, I believe that is what they call Ying and Yang!
Hasta la vista. Stu x
