Una Moto en Argentina!!!!!!!

I woke up this morning with a sniffle. I´m not surprised. I´ve been beating my body to death and it needed a day of rest. A rest day means not being on a motorcycle for 8 hours. So instead I hopped on a local bus to the next city over, Valparaiso. (I can´t for the life of me remember how to spell it).

Taking local buses is something I used to do all the time. The thing that used to drive me nuts what how do you know when to tell the driver to stop when you´ve never been there before?? I stopped at the tourist office and asked the woman for a landmark a bit ahead of where I needed to hope off. It worked like a charm.

Valparaiso is a city on a hill and the different neighborhoods are accessed by elevators. The elevators themselves are archaic and belong in a history museo. I immediately thought of my mother who can´t stand near a window, forget look down from any decent height without having a coronary. She would have NOT enjoyed Valpariaso.

The area I went to was Concepcion, which is known for its artists. The thing that I loved about it (other than the fact it was above all the noise) was the graffitti. They have some really funky “urban art” and I spent a good hour photographing nothing else.

I think I particularly enjoyed the “I eat hot dogs every day” one the most because the hebrew script up above which led me to ask “are they Hebrew National hot dogs??” I konw, deep. Really deep.

I did a bit of shopping while in the area, but nothing major. I got a bit irritated when I went to a nice restaurant (Cafe Turri) and they told me they didn´t “have any tables available”. Clearly, they did- they just didn´t have one for me. I wasn´t dressed badly or covered in mud from the bike, so I thought this was a bit uncalled for. I decided to walk around and find a different place for comida. While I was wandering around, I noticed there was a museum dedicated to a cartoonist called “Lukas”. I had no idea who he was, but the views from the museum were certainly worth the $1 entry. After eating and touring, I headed back down the elevator to Errazruiz Avenida. It runs right along the water so it´s hard to not head in the right direction. I flagged a Viña bus that said “Alvarez” and was back home in 15 minutes.

It was still early in the day so I decided to take a walk up to Cerro Castel or the Castle Neighborhood. This is where the rich must live because the houses are huge. There are a few real castles, built by Germans. The houses all had caretakers or help scurrying around and I don´t think I actually saw one person who actually owned one of the houses. They were all probably having their siestas. With that, I called it quits for the day.

I have a long day ahead of me tomorrow and I didn´t want to wear myself out. I need to head back over the Andes pass into Argentina. Just writing that is kinda wild. I will be crossing the Andes, one of the tallest mountain ranges in the world, on a motorcycle. There aren´t many times I´ll probably have cause to say that again.

I may be so tired tomorrow after a 10 hour ride that I might not be able to post. But who knows. Stranger things have happened. Check back tomorrow!!!

Today I woke up in Mendoza and decided I was going to ride to Chile. I had gotten some good recommendations on Vilapariso (I´m spelling this wrong) and Viña del Mar so I headed west to see what they were all about.

Getting out of Mendoza was interesting because I didn´t have a map or any idea where I was in the city in relation to the autopista. Luckily, directions are one of the few things I am good at understanding, so I got there without too much hassle. Once out of the city, there are wineries everywhere… at any other time I´d be sampling every single one, but bebidas + andar la moto = muerto Claudia and we don´t want that now do we??? I passed.

I´m getting a bit photo happy and I have to keep deciding whether or not to stop every 20 minutes. It becomes a project. Find a place to safely stop, take off the helmet, get out the camera, shoot some pics while keeping un ojo on any traffic (especially camiones), put the camera away, put on the helmet, get back on the road. Sounds simple, but it´s not. I long for a small point and shoot camera in my pocket. But, there is a tradeoff, you can´t use the all useful polarizing lens that gives DRAMATIC clouds.

Anyway, so on my ride to Uspsallata I saw this:

Quick note on this landscape… this was where Seven Years in Tibet was filmed because it “bears a striking resemblence” to the Himalayas. I´ve been to Tibet and it KINDA looks the same.

About thirty minutes later, I came across a bright blue lake and I stopped for a photo. Far more interesting than any photos I took was the group of people I met. I´ve been meeting a good number of people because I´m a bit of an oddity - a solo woman on a big bike. People come up to me constantly to chat about it and ask where I´m going. Today was no different. As I was taking my pics a middle aged man came up to me to ask about the bike. He had three women with him and you could tell they were probably inlaws or sisters I chatted with him for about ten minutes in broken spanish until the women got up the nerve to come over and ask for a photo of me with the bike. And all of us with the bike. With four different cameras. I tried to get one of them on it, but they weren´t having it.

As it turns out, the man, Santiago, is a Mendoza resident and he was showing them the beauties of his area. The women were from the same barrio in BA that I had stayed in in BA, Vincente Lopez. They were very impressed that I knew it. It seems he could not understand how they could even consider living in BA when Mendoza had so much more to offer… I wish I knew the spanish for “to each, their own.” Here is a photo of my recent friends:

The group and I passed each other several times and we gave the friendly honk. I saw one of the women trying to get an action shot of me while I was whizzing by… cute.

Oh, and I took advantage of someone else being around to take my photo. Here´s proof I am really here in Argentina rather than just posting pictures of a motorcycle.

Moving on down the road, I came to an area that is known for it´s dinosaur ruins. I didn´t stop to see them, but instead used the pull off for more dramatic photos:

I was nearing the Chile border, but I wanted to stop at a place called Puente del Inca. It the site of some closed down hot springs that were built into the cliff. You can´t go in them anymore because it is structurally unstable, but it´s still interesting from the outside.

After leaving Puente del Inca, I arrived at the Argentina side of the border. They wanted to see my passport and papers for the bike. No problemo. The Chile side was a lot more complicated, but everyone was super friendly during the process. I´ve found I get away with a lot here when people realize I´m a chick on a bike. This was really helpful at the border. Apparently my motorcycle papers that certify I am authorized to bring it into Chile are supposed to be on yellow paper. Mine was white. There were several officials walking back and forth, discussing my faux pas. I took off my helmet, waved them over and asked what the problem was. They told me they didn´t know why it wasn´t yellow, to which I asked if it had all the information they needed. It did. I smiled and said I was color blind. My pathetic attempt to say this got a giggle and I was passed on to the next security hut.

At the next stop, I was told I needed a fotocopia of my bike authorization. So if they need a copy, who cares what color it is! I stepped around the corner, had a copy made for 1 peso and got back to the bike. While I was copying, the officials had decided to move Tranny over to the side of the queue. Unfortunately they parked him in a way that is really hard for me to get him upright so I had to ask for help. The official was still messing around with my fotocopia and rather cranky about it, but his friend was all about seeing the bike. I decided to use this to my advantage. I asked the friend if he would move the bike for me and I let him sit on it and ride it for like 20 feet. Needless to say, this got me through A-OK.

The next stop was customs. Open your bags, do you have plantas, frutas, o carnes? No, no and no. When I was done exposing my packed up undies to the official, he passed me on to the drug sniffer. The drug sniffer brought his dog over while I gave my passport for the final stamp. The girl sitting at the vestibule was really intrigued and asked me all sorts of questions about the bike, curiosity stuff, not official questions. When we were done, she looked at me straight in the eye and said “por favor, conduce con cuidado, la calle es muy peligroso”. This means “Please, drive carefully, the road is VERY dangerous”. I got the feeling this was a personal warning she didn´t give to everyone. This made the road ahead sound ominous.

And it was. If I had known what white knuckle riding I was about to get myself into, I don´t think I would have come to Chile. Hair pin turns with trucks bearing down on you or towards you. And I mean HAIR PIN. I certainly did NOT stop to take a photo but here is someone else who did. What a nut!

So after an hour of “oh shit” riding, I arrived on the west side of the Andes! I crossed the Andes. That´s pretty freaking cool. WHat came next was an unexpected surprise. After a few days of dry red lanscapes, I encountered a lush, green, and tropical climate. The air smelled and felt different. Cleansing almost. It was a welcome change.

I had come to Chile with no map, no idea where I´d stay or how to get where I was going. I just kept following signs to Valpariso until I finally got here. I knew that somewhere in Al Centro there would be an info office and they would have places to stay. Trouble with this one was that there was no parking around it, except in the really posh hotel lot right next door. I took a look at the attendent, pulled off my helmet, and asked him if he would do me the favor of letting me park there for ten minutes. He was more than happy to oblige, and was guarding Tranny when I returned. I figured he´d done me a favor so I asked him about himself, and all that. He really wanted to try out the few words of english he knew and I humbled myself by saying I starting learning spanish too late, at thirteen. I asked him if it was the same for him, which it was. We agreed that 2 or 3 was a better age. With that he helped me back Tranny up and put her in a good position for me taking off. I gave him my best “Ciao!” and took off.

I found a hostel here in town and when I showed up with the Tranny, again I got a huge reception and help from all the people working there. I must have had the look of total exhaustion on my face because other guests got up to relieve me of pushing the bike up the slight incline.

It was true. I had been on Tranny for over 8 hours, and I had had enough. I had done so much I felt like I had squeezed in a week´s worth of activity. Tomorrow will be different. Relaxing and sight-seeing, solamente.

Keep checking back!