Enjoying the Lakes District

Here is an interactive Google map with blue flags to locate the cities mentioned in the write up….incase you were wishing or wondering ….. View From Santiago we headed south to check out the lakes district and the resort towns of Pucon, Chile, San Martin de Los Andes and Bariloche in Argentina.

On our way we ran into a couple, John and Gabriella, from Santiago on a new red GS Adventure. John is originally from Australia and Gabriella is originally from Buenos Aires. John is building a Motorcycle Touring business. It is called South American Motorbike Tours. The website is http://www.samotorbikrtours.com/ . They gave us some good advice on routes, what to see and where to stay. We had lunch with them in one of Chile’s famous ski towns, Pucon. In Pucon they ski down a volcano. It looked to be a steep descent. We rode with John and Gabriella to another interesting little ski town called San Martin de Los Andes. We spent the night there and walked around town. Funny how, if you changed the language, it could have been any ski town in the world.

Cool Caballeros. We instantly decided we needed a hat like that.

The first of many Chile Argentina Argentina Chile border crossings. Argentina requested if we had purchased Argentina insurance for our motorcycles. From where? We are in the middle of nowhere???? They didn't push it and let us in.

As we continued south we traveled through the picturesque “Lake District” roads heavily promoted by the Argentine travel industry for well founded reasons. The planned route was 80% pavement for the day. We ended up making a wrong turn and enjoyed an 80 percent dirt route that followed the shoreline of a beautiful lake. Some of the views of the bright blue green lake were simply stunning. The dirt road condition was not all that challenging so we could enjoy the views. We rejoined the pavement on Ruta 40 (Route 40), more on this famous route later. We did a lunch stop in Bariloche. It is a well known Argentine ski town. By now we had our fill of ski towns and pushed on further south after lunch and spent the night in El Bolson.

Ohhhh....so cute.

Our first introduction to the Argentina art of Asado. Much more on that later.

Great views and fun roads....

Barilochi

We met the rider of this motorcycle in Barilochi. He was from Buenos Aires and obviously skilled at welding aluminum. We rode south together out of our final ski town visited.

Before leaving Argentina we stopped in the town of Esquel. This is the little mining town that was made famous by the 30 year old book “The Old Patagonia Express”. The town has capitalized on the train’s notoriety and promotes one day train excursions from the town to a national park and back. The remains of the original wooden train, the author rode, still exist. It is in the train yard next to the station. It consists of one car and some sub frames. It doesn’t look like it is destine to exist on this earth very long. If you just walked up to the train station you would completely ignore the remains, no sign, nothing. Anyway we are going back in to Chile for some really fun roads and sights.

In and Out of Santiago...Quickly

We pulled into Santiago around 2PM. Santiago is a big city with a downtown area that rivals any modern sophisticated large urban center in the world. It is picturesque, with plenty of quaint shops, cultural areas and attractive common areas. We would have to leave checking out the city for later. Our first priority was to find a hotel and then get the motorcycles in for some maintenance. We found a really nice area in the downtown area with cobblestone streets and a number of reasonable price hotels. We stayed at the Hotel Plaza Londres. I highly recommend the hotel and the area. The area was close to the main plaza but far enough away to avoid the crowds. It is very quaint, quiet and within easy walking distance to Museums and, shop.

After we checked in we went to the dealership to check on getting the motorcycles serviced, new tires and a battery for Chris. We were greeted by a friendly service manager that told us we could have everything done if we could bring the motorcycles in by 8AM tomorrow. A great relief to us was that they had the rear Continental brand knobbie tires we wanted. The TKC80s we put on in Lima still had some life in them but it was clear they were not going to last to Ushuaia and for sure not the 2000 miles of asphalt back up to Buenos Aires. It all sounded too easy and too good to be true. Little did we know…..

We arrived at the dealership at 8AM. The service orders were promptly written up. We asked about the price of replacing the front tires. The quote for the fronts was fair so we said sure, replace the fronts also. With confidence that we were in good hands we walked to a restaurant a few blocks from the dealership that had real coffee and some sinful pastries. To really boost our spirits we discovered the place also had wifi. It was the kind of café that Starbucks has patterned itself after. It had outdoor tables adjoining a little park area to add to the atmosphere.

As we walked up we spotted a brand new MVAgusta and a beaming owner. After talking to the owner in Spanish, his lady friend, in perfect English, assured us the owner already knew he had a cool motorcycle and we didn’t need to repeatedly tell him.

Chris, after enjoying his double coffee, walked back up to the dealership to retrieve his computer. Our first sign of trouble was the motorcycles where still sitting in the place where we parked them an hour and a half ago. We wondered why they insisted we get the motorcycles there at 8AM only to have them sit out in the sun.

After killing most of the day at the café, we walked back to the dealership only to discover the motorcycles were being worked on but not done. Long story short they did not have the tires we needed and did not plan to solve the problem today because it was their closing time. So while they were closing up shop they found it easy to just ignoring our pleas to help get us underway today. All we got was manana-tomorrow. We resigned ourselves to our faith and unceremoniously caught a cab back to the hotel for the night with a promise that the motorcycles would be ready by 11AM tomorrow. What a day. We spent a total of 10 hours hanging around a dealership to get 2 hours worth of work not done. The following day we returned to the dealership. Of course 11AM came and went. By 1PM we were leaving the dealership and on our way out of Santiago with new tires, fresh oil and a real battery for Chris.

To the Coast of Chile

We were happy to have arrived in Calama and to have found nice accommodations, but both of us at that stage of the trip were eager to get to see the Pacific Ocean again and to get to Santiago. Thus, after our usual continental breakfast of rolls and coffee, starting my bike with the use of my new miniature jumper cables, and gassing up, we were speeding along Ruta 25 and heading for the Pan American Highway along the coast. We were also happy to be riding at lower altitudes with higher octane gas, as the bikes had been decidedly pokey with low octane Bolivian gas and altitudes of 12,000 to 15,000 feet. We were now at about 8,000 feet and headed for sea level. The landscape was again a barren desert with mountains in the distance. From time to time something interesting would show up on the side of the road.

But a lot of it was listening to the Ipod or goofing off with the camera...to pass the time.

We had decided to stop at the small fishing port of Taltal on the Pacific after weighing the options presented in the Lonely Planet. It turned out to be a great decision. In the early afternoon, we branch off the PanAm and headed for the town of Paposo on the coast, which is north of Taltal. The ride from Paposo to Taltal proved to be one of the most memorable rides of our journey. The windy road hugged the coastline with spectacular ocean views on the right and volcanic mountains on the left plunging into the sea.

Taltal itself is a very pleasant small fishing town with a pretty square and an interesting downtown area.

We stayed at the Hotel Mi Tampi, which also exceeded our expectations in terms of hospitality and elegance. On the recommendation of the hotel owners, we walked up the coastal road to a local family-style restaurant that specialized in the fresh catch of the day. Once again, our “late lunch” was also dinner in view of the hour of the day and the size of the portions.

On the following morning, we made our way back to the PamAm in a heavy fog. However, once we were a few miles inland, the fog cleared and we were again speeding south in the arid landscape that is northern Chile.

Our destination was La Serena, the location of which would put us on a schedule of arriving in Santiago at a decent hour on the following day, in time to get situated at a hotel and to visit the BMW dealership to make arrangements for service. While the landscape was becoming monotonous, the light traffic and smooth road enabled us to make “good time,” fortunately without interference by the authorities. We arrived in La Serena in the late afternoon and, after prowling the streets of the city for a time, selected a modest hotel for our evening stay. Once again, we found a great little restaurant that served the catch of the day.

Getting Out Of Bolivia

After the battery fiasco on the Salar de Uyuni and the temporary, make-shift solution of the new undersized battery and homemade jumper cables, we were eager to make our escape from Uyuni and our way to Chile. We soon found out how utterly deceptive our maps were with respect to road quality. My Hammond Map of South America made Route 5 (701 on other maps) to Ollague, Chile, appear as a super highway. However, a local tour guide in Uyuni set us straight: “Just stick to the biggest dirt road going southeast.” As with the ride from Potosti to Uyuni, we were in for some adventurous riding in one of the most remote areas in one of the most remote countries in South America. We were riding in a high plain desert (over 12,000 feet) on some very rough, loose-gravel roads. Nevertheless, the landscape had an amazing beauty of its own.

After several hours of riding in the high desert of Bolivia, we were happy to come to the remote and barren frontier crossing near Ollague, Chile. Unlike our unpleasant border crossings in Central America, getting out of Bolivia and into Chile was a breeze, relatively speaking. Our only disappointment was the later realization that one of the Chilean border officials had had some fun with us in advising us on the ease and rapidity that we would experience on the road from Ollague to Calama.

Salt piles, big pink birds and storm clouds made the isolation erie at timesThen the sun would come out but the dirt got deep and soft in places.

The Vibration Gods claimed its first mud guard.

After pounding along on a deteriorating gravel road for miles on end, it became clearly apparent that we had had our legs pulled and were in for another tough stretch. The bright side of the experience was another opportunity to gaze upon some fascinating terrain of high deserts, more salt flats, and mountains framed by an incredibly blue sky. Eventually, we came to the paved portion of the road to Calama and were able to make illegally good time to our destination. We found that Calama was a good-sized town with numerous hotels and restaurants and a lovely town square. The source of the prosperity we learned was the abundance of copper and the extensive mining operations in the area.