A King Sized Adventure - LATAM

We spent three days in Foz de Iguaçu, which is the Brazilian city near Iguazú Falls. There is an intersection of three countries (Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay) and each country has its own city nearby, virtually making one big city divided by two rivers.

Crossing the border between Paraguay and Brazil was insane. Both countries allow their citizens to freely enter each country provided they don’t travel more than 30kms from the border. The fastest way for locals to get across the border is by motorcycle taxi, and there are hundreds of them continuously ferrying people across. They have a border lane just for motorbikes, which is very narrow and flanked by concrete barriers. The motorbike taxis scream along it, but it isn’t so easy on bigger bikes with wide panniers. There is probably less than 20cm leeway on each side for us, so we scraped the barriers a few times. The taxi riders are incredibly good riders, with lightning reflexes, who weave through the traffic at an incredibly fast pace when not in the bike lanes. It was utterly mad and unfortunately, the heat got the better of the GoPro so we don’t have any footage.

The Iguazu Falls are beautifully spectacular. They are the largest system of waterfalls in the world, higher than Niagara Falls and wider than Victoria Falls.

The Iguazu River forms the border between Brazil and Argentina, and each country contains part of the falls.

We visited the Brazilian side first, with a humid and hot 37 degrees. From the moment you get off the bus taking you to the falls, you can hear them, but not see them because of trees. You walk along a path through nice bush and get good views of the Argentinian side of the falls. As you make your way along the path to the main part of the falls, called the Devil's Throat, the crashing sound of the water gets louder and louder and the views more and more spectacular.

We met a lovely young Brazilian couple called Leo and Gabby, who for some reason took a shine to us and spent most of the day walking with us. It was great to have their company.

There wasn’t a lot of wildlife to see, except for Coatis who were extremely used to seeing people and very inquisitive until they thought you had food, then they got aggressive. We didn’t have food, thank goodness.

After about five hours of looking around the falls, we went to try and find a photo opportunity of the three frontiers. They had started to build a new road and bridge between Brazil and Paraguay, which wasn’t showing on Google Maps. We kinda broke into the construction area and did some off road riding to see if we could get a view of the three countries. We couldn’t, but we could see a road that might and found our way there. We came across a walled off venue that gave us the view, but they wanted $15 each just to get in. We thought we would see what the Argentine viewing area was like the next day instead. After leaving though, I (Andy) saw a rough looking road heading down the hill to the river and went down to check it out. I came across a huge but abandoned stone building, and walking around it got to a place looking over the rivers to the three countries!! Got the photograph and saved the dosh.

The following day we crossed the border into Argentina, which took quite a while. Not so pleasant in the heat.

I had already been to the Argentinian side of the falls 32 years ago, and didn’t think they were as spectacular as the Brazilian side, but things had changed. There were parts you couldn’t go to anymore, but the paths had been extended and developed so you can now see a lot more than 32 years ago. This meant that we both thought the Argentine side was probably the better one if you didn’t have time to see them both.

After spending about 6 hours going around the falls, we left to go to another lookout of the three frontiers. Unlike Brazil, it was free to the public which was great. We spent the money we saved from the day before having drinks at a lovely restaurant looking over the rivers and the three frontiers. Very relaxing.

We have spent the last 11 days going through the north of Argentina, taking the long way from Paysandu in Uruguay to Asuncion in Paraguay. It's around 3,000kms of mostly very flat and straight roads. The saving grace is that the speed limit is mostly 130kph and the highways have 2 lanes so everyone does 130 or more even when it isn't.

We went through the big cities of Rosario and Cordoba (both with a population of around 1.5m) which were really nice. As it was our anniversary we treated ourselves to a very nice hotel in Cordoba. We did a walking tour one day and a ride around the countryside the other. We came to a very impressive "Jesuit Estancia" that was in the middle of nowhere and kinda out of place. The gate was closed and the church was shut, so we just took some photos from the gate. As we did, a car beeped behind us wanting to get in, so we opened up the gate for them. We were shutting the gate again when a lady and her daughter got out and asked if we wanted to come in for a look. Great timing!!

It turns out that there is a small complex of housing behind the church and they are descendants of the family that established the place over 400 years ago. Lovely people who showed us around more than if the place was actually open. We were leaving when some more family arrived and they insisted we stay for a cold drink. What can you do! They were all really friendly and between their little English and our little Spanish, we had a really nice time.

We left the next day for Salta, going the long way out from Cordoba into some hills, which was very nice for a change. The hill dropped off steeply from the road and as we were riding along a Condor flew by, only about 15m away, using the updrafts. Incredibly huge and amazing sight. We screeched to a halt (along with a lot of locals) and watched them for a while, but they never got that close again. Still looked amazing.

We diverted about 40kms off the road to ride through some great roads and the Five Tunnel road. Turned into quite a big day.

We spent two nights in funny little towns on the way to Salta. Surprisingly good hotels and only NZ$30 with breakfast.

Salta is a great place and we stayed in a nice place with a pool. It is getting a lot hotter now.

We stayed in Salta for three nights then took off towards Paraguay and Asuncion. It's a long way and we split it up into two longish days (long for us) and a short last day for the border crossing, which can sometimes take quite a while.

It was bloody hot riding and when stopping for a break we found out it was 41 degrees. Even when it's hot, it is usually nice being on the bike with the wind keeping you cool, but this was like riding through an oven. Very glad to get to our first place.

The next day was the same. 37 degrees at 8am and getting to 41 again over the day. Despite this, it was a funny day riding. We saw a car behind two scooters going quite slow, and as we passed them realised the scooters were towing the car.

In another little place we went through a woman was delivering a pizza on a scooter (very common) but she had it on a tray which she was holding up with one hand like a waiter in a fancy restaurant. Gutted we didn't get photos of them.

On this day our Garmin took us a different way than planned. It was shorter, but the road had lots of potholes and at one point what can only be described as a ditch across the entire road with no warning. We flew into it with a hell of a bang, and I looked in the rear mirror hoping not to see Sarah coming off her bike. I didn't (wel done Sarah) but one of her panniers came off and was spinning down the road at a great pace. I thought it would be toast, but it was fine. A good testimonial for Givi panniers.

Shortly after that, we were to turn off onto another road, but it was unexpectedly unpaved. (Thanks Garmin). We didn't have a choice, so off we went. A lot of it was really soft sand which is awful on a heavily laden bike, but fortunately, we both stayed upright. Thankfully we reached the road that we should have actually gone down and it was paved from then on. But with the extreme heat and hard riding we really needed a drink stop, and when we did Sarah had a bout of heat stroke. It took a cold coke, some shade and the distraction of a friendly dog for her to feel comfortable enough to start riding again.

Thankfully it was only about half an hour to where we were staying for the night. It was a one hotel town, but the hotel owner was having a siesta and didn't answer the doorbell. Not great timing. I went to get some more cold drinks and when I got back the hotel was open and Sarah had organised a room. Thankfully there was aircon, and after cooling down with that and a swim, we went to the one restaurant in the place.

It was hilarious. They had all the tables outside because it was too hot inside. There were a couple of enormous toads around us and they were blaring out the 1953 Argentine Top 40 on a massive speaker. The owner was a real hoot. We thought he was another guest at first, but he was just having a drink with some other locals. These small places can be really entertaining. (Or not of course)

The next day it was just a three hour ride to Paraguay. Still 41 degrees though, so sitting in a queue of about 10 cars, no shade, waiting for our turn to go into the drive-through customs was looking unbearable. We parked the bikes, took off the jackets and waited in the shade by customs, moving the bikes along as the queue moved. Thankfully it was a very easy crossing.

We usually stay in the old parts of big places. There is usually a square and nice old buildings, bars and restaurants in these areas. However looking at hotels in Asuncion, the reviews all seemed to say that the hotels were in a rough area. We looked up the more expensive hotels and their reviews said the same thing. After a bit of investigation, we found that the old part of Asuncion had kind of been abandoned by the locals, so we chose a suburb further away which was recommended.

It was a good decision as we found a very nice hotel run by lovely people and it has a pool - a blessing!

Sorry for not posting for ages, save a couple of favourite beers. We had a wonderful time in magical Buenos Aires, then headed for Uruguay by ferry across the enormous River Plate.

Uruguay is a funny place with a self-deprecating national character. The welcome sign at the border said “Welcome to Uruguay. Sorry for the inconveniences”.
There were no border formalities which was weird. We asked a help desk and they said that it was all handled back in BA, but we didn’t have any documentation for the bikes. We kind of had to assume that everything was OK and we wouldn’t have any problems trying to leave.

We had an exciting arrival into Montevideo. We were going to stop at a motorbike shop that had a museum within it. As we got off the bikes, an excited local on the same bike as us stopped. We were talking and about to take a picture when a group of five youths started to rob us. They tried to grab Sarah's tank bag from her shoulder (Good luck with that. Lots of loud swearing from Sarah) which distracted us from the real aim which was to take the other guy's motorbike. We heard it start and one of them was on it ready to take off. I grabbed the handlebar and tried to turn the key off, but the others started to run away and the kid jumped off, helped a bit by our Uruguayan friend giving him a bit of a kick. It was over extremely quickly and they ran away around a corner. A guy from a nearby shop came out to see what had happened as did the owner of the motorbike shop. Everyone was very concerned, but fortunately, nothing had been taken. Hell of an eye-opener though.

We went into the bike shop, which seemed quite small, but out the back it went on and on with about 40 older motorbikes. The owner was a moto-X champ probably my age, and many of the bikes were from my era. I even owned a couple of the models and it was fantastic to see them. He had just finished doing up a 1964 Honda 125 which looked like it had come straight out of one of those old 60’s advertisements when Honda started to sell bikes in the USA. Very cool.

After that we went to look for accommodation, and rode along the impressive waterfront, in and out of the many bays. Looked very nice.

We went for a walking tour the following day and met a lovely Dutch couple who we had a drink with afterwards. These walking tours are great for meeting people.
We left Montevideo and went to Punta del Este. Everyone said it was where the rich and famous hang out. We don’t know any of the R and F, but my god it was built up and ritzy. Beautiful people everywhere. The prices matched the vibe of the place, with a pretty simple breakfast costing US$50 each. (Bu**er that, we went to McDonalds)

We had heard about one of the nations most famous painters, Carlos Paez Viaro, who over 30 years had built an amazing white house nearby called Casa de Pueblo. It is now a hotel and museum with a restaurant and bar. The sunset is meant to be gorgeous, so we tried to make reservations but failed. Decided to wing it and just turn up. The restaurant was full but they said we could go to the bar. At first disappointed, this was the best thing ever, as we got a table on the edge of the balcony with a front row seat to the sunset. About 30 minutes later the place was almost full. The sunset was as promised and we had a really nice time there, with pizza to go with the latest favourite beer.

Next day we rode along the coast to a couple of beach towns which were really nice. We ended up staying for three nights at La Paloma as the hotel was nice and Andy wasn’t feeling too well and it rained.

We rode inland for a few days, seeing a really nice waterfall and some prehistoric caves, before getting to the border town of Paysandu - with horses roaming free through the parks and town!

A couple of photos from our ride into Ushuaia versus two days later. What a weather change!

We made it!! We arrived in Ushuaia, the most Southern city in the world about an hour ago.

We have taken it pretty easy and went back to NZ to miss the South American winter, but it still feels like a big achievement.

We have covered about 31,000kms getting here from San Francisco. (Huge thanks to Todd and Aiste, friends in San Fran, who helped us a lot)

It is not as cold as we thought it would be, but it is just as windy as we imagined.

Big celebratory dinner for tonight I think!

From a great little place called El Calafate, we went on a tour to walk the Perito Moreno glacier. It's a massive glacier around 250 km2, the size of Buenos Aires, a city of around 15m people. The parts that are above the water are 50m to 75m high and go for around 100m under the water. At the top, the glacier is around 500m deep.

We wore crampons to walk on the glacier which took a bit of getting used to. Amazing scenery and whiskey to drink at the end of it. Any day you drink Whiskey on a glacier has to be a good day.

We also saw a large chunk of ice shear off the glacier and fall into the lake, making a huge noise and creating quite a wave.

Was a very special day.

The next day we crossed paths with friends Tim and Jeanette's eldest son, Eric, and his girlfriend Sam. While we knew they were in South America, It's such a huge continent that we didn't really think this would happen. Had a great catchup in a neat bar before they went North the next day and we went South.

We have had three great days in El Chalten, a hiking tourist town. Very cute.

On the day we arrived, we did a short walk to a very nice waterfall. On the second and third days, we did two really wonderful walks. The first was about 20 km, going up and down various terrain but nothing too difficult. We were still pretty knackered at the end though and regretted not doing some training while back in NZ.

The walk was to Lake Torre, where you get a great view of the Cerro Torre granite range. It started out like the Tongariro Crossing with lots of people, but soon everyone spread out and we would only see others occasionally.

There were three hills you walked over to get there, and the top of each hill revealed another view of the incredible mountains. It took about 3 hours to walk to the lake, which you first see quite suddenly after walking up a stony bank.

While we knew that the lake had icebergs in it that break away from the glacier at the top of the lake, it was weird to see them when we were in shorts and t-shirts on a lovely sunny day.

It was a gorgeous view and we had lunch and just admired it for nearly an hour. You could occasionally hear the boom of ice breaking off the nearby glacier.

We met a crazy (nice crazy) bunch of older (though you wouldn’t know it) Australians on the walk back and bumped into them again while taking a break. They said there was a great place for a drink at the end of the walk with a Happy Hour starting at five. We literally counted down 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and walked into the beer garden right on five. It was meant to be.

I would have taken a photo of that first beer but it evaporated really quickly.

The Aussies turned up and we had beers and gins with them. The bar lady poured out big gin measures, then proceeded to just empty out the remaining third of a bottle into the glasses. Squeals of delight from the gin drinkers.

The next day was a really hard 21km walk to a lake that is at the base of Mount Fitzroy, a mountain that is so impressive it doesn't look real. The Aussies had done the walk the day before and it had taken them 11 hours. Feeling a bit tired (nothing to do with the beers and gin) we decided to do the shorter walk to a viewing platform instead.

This was a good choice as the trail was much steeper than the day before. We got to a point where the trail broke to go to the Mirador (viewpoint) or a bit further in another direction towards a lake. We took a risk and went to the lake.

So glad we did, as the view was incredible. We saw a Chimango Caracara, which looked like a hawk, but lived on the ground mostly, was absolutely fearless, and was scavenging for picnic scraps.

We had lunch on the shore of lovely Lake Capri and just marveled at Mount Fitzroy. It looked more like a green-screened movie set. It didn't look real. Couldn't stop taking photos and I don't think any of them do it justice.

After that, we walked a bit further to get a view of the glacier down the valley, before rejoining the original track and heading home.

We reached the end of 1,240 km Carretera Austral (Ruta 9) at Villa O'Higgins and received a certificate from the Tourist Office for doing so. The road is mostly unpaved and quite challenging in parts, so we felt we deserved the certificate plus the slap-up meal and drinks to mark the occasion.

We stayed four nights at Villa O'Higgins, due to some walks and poor weather. Unintentionally, we ended up eating at the place we stayed all four nights, as the chef, Manuel, was just so good.

We went to a bar that brewed their own beer and had a great atmosphere. They had a sign saying "If the music's too loud, you're too old". While taking a selfie of this, the barman photobombed me and insinuated the sign was directed at me.

On the ride out of town, we saw a Huemal deer. They have two distinctive pointy antlers and are apparently the most elusive animals in Chile, so we were very lucky. It hung around for quite a while sussing us out, before determining we weren't any harm and trotting past us. Just incredible.

We crossed the border by going through a pretty remote National Park. The Chillean border control was so small that we needed different paperwork apparently. The officer was nice and said it could be done online and he would do it for us. Great! However it took ages and at the end of it we had to wait for over an hour to get email approval to cross from Head Office.

Great scenery though, and we saw a heap of Guanaco's, a wild and larger type of Lama. An emu crossed in front of us but we weren't quick enough to photo/film it. They are quick!

When we got to the Argentine border, it was an isolated little place with horses meandering around. The paperwork was paper-based and took ages. So with this and a pretty terrible road slowing us down, we weren't going to make our destination.

We stayed in a very funny little place called Bajo Caracoles, which is just a hotel, a hostel and two petrol pumps. The hotel was surprisingly good and our cheapest so far at less than NZ$35. The Restaurant was also a hoot, selling all sorts of things, including a vast array of knives. Slightly disconcerting. Their cat was sleeping on a chair at our table and only woke to get a pat and make sure we weren't a danger, then went back to sleep. Like the room, the meal was surprisingly good. We met some other lovely travelers and had a good night.

The next day we left early and enjoyed the sealed Ruta 40 road. We stopped at a great place for breakfast. Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boardman stayed there when they did their "Long Way Up" TV tour of South America.

The road was sealed, except for 72km's which was really rough. Apparently the roading contractor ran out of money and just stopped. We stayed at another, not quite so little place that night, called Tres Lagos. There was only a hostel, but it was very new and really nice. We were very grateful.

It was meant to take three hours to get to our ultimate destination, a little tourist town called El Chalten, famous for hiking. However the road was great and we cut it out in 90 minutes. This included lots of stops to photograph the amazing scenery. We couldn't wait to get there.

Cochrane was our next stop and we had a hike planned but the place we were staying couldn't give us extra nights to ride out a brewing storm so we high-tailed it to Villa O'Higgins, but not before having a rare mechanical issue - luckily just a flat battery!

We've been riding without visors on the dusty roads and since I tend to follow Andy my face gets mucky.

Our next stop was the bustling city of Coyhaique and on to Puerto Rio Tranquilo, a tiny village that bustles in summer and is snowed-in over Winter.

The town is home to the glacier Exploradores and we turned up hoping to take a guided trek on it only to find that it was now closed - so newly closed that there was nothing online and the tour guides still had signs up promoting their treks. We were still able to do our planned kayak to some marble caves and were lucky to have pristine conditions on the lake.

Our guide told us that within a month all the snow that makes the mountains look so amazing will be gone.

Lots and lots of motorbikers but mostly from Latin America - including a group of 13 at our hotel in Rio Tranquilo - all on KTMs and with 2 support vehicles. Quite a setup!

We stopped for the night in a gorgeous, tiny village called Puyuhuapi. We hadn't had a good sunset in a while and this town over-delivered.

The next morning we visited some thermal baths beside the fjord and even had a dip in the icy water.

Our next ferry was from Hualaihué to Chaitén. We hadn't booked ahead and when Andy turned up on a Saturday he was sold tickets for THURSDAY! However, when we turned up on Sunday morning we were allowed to board, phew!

The ferry came in two stages, a 4-hour leg through the fjords, a quick ride over a "portage", and then another hour to another bay, and then the final ride to Chaiten. We saw dolphins playing and had a lovely calm sailing. So predictably calm that the bikes weren't even tied down.

Port Montt is the start of Patagonia. The weather was dry but bleak. We found a cool bar and ended up drinking Pisco Sours all night.
The following day we caught a ferry and rode to Hornopirén and it was quite an adventure. So many other bikers.

Day nine and we arrived in Bariloche, Argentina and rented a nice little apartment for three nights. Bariloche is a gorgeous sky resort town. We planned to do a hike that started with a chairlift. The chairlift was closed so we chose another that started with a cable car - and when we got there that was closed too. We decided to hike up the hill instead of just down. Even taking the easy route, it was really steep and hard work. However, the views at the top were worth it. Had a well-deserved beer before cleaning up and going out for a nice steak and, wouldn't you know it, some Melbac.

Lago Entrada is a lake side holiday town for Chileans, but we got there slightly before the season started. We chose a place and then had to find it - google had two separate locations. The first one we chose was down a long gravel driveway where we were met by a locked gate and two friendly dogs. We looped back to the other location and were met by the same two friendly dogs! (The two places were only a few hundred meters apart as the crow flies). If only they'd been able to talk they could have saved us some stress. The cabin, however, was amazing and we had the place to ourselves. One of the dogs appointed herself as our minder and was booted out when we went to bed, but returned the next morning to make sure we were ok. Andy headed out to a supermarket - a shed in a field out in the wopwops - and we stoked up the bbq using driftwood from the lake. We had steak for dinner and a NZ$8 two litre tetrapack of Cab Sav called Gato, which is Cat in Spanish. This implied "cats p**s" but it was surprisingly good. It was a gorgeous evening and quite different to our norm.

Valdivia is a cute wee place with a river wrapping around the town. The hotel situation was... ok. The photo of our room looks like we took it straight out of a 70"s magazine. Great view of the river though.

Andy had visited Valdiva 30 years ago with Nigel McLean and we found the boat-restaurant they'd had a drink at all those years ago. Sounds under the boat that sounded like seals turned out to be... seals!

We had a really unusual experience in the chemist. As you enter you have to take a number, then you have to find what you want before your number gets called by a cashier and you go up and pay. If you're ready sooner, too bad, wait for your number to get called!

Next stop: Concepcion - Day 6 was a long day on the bikes, but with a lovely town at the end. Walked through to their restaurant area, patted a few dogs and found a funky phone booth!

Our first ride was back over the Andes and into Chile, bypassing Santiago and heading for Vina del Mar. We expected a small town and found a city! We've already posted about the shenanigans of the football fans but we also enjoyed having a look around and buying new tyres.
On the next town over there's a giant sand dune similar to the one at Bethells Beach.
There are so many apartments with many in disrepair, it seems that they just build new further up the coast instead of demolishing and rebuilding.

Day two of leg two, we arrived back in lovely Mendoza and our gorgeous Guest House. Violetta the dog was very pleased to see us. The day we'd planned to collect the bikes turned out to be a public holiday, but the weather was fantastic so we got out and made the most of it. The next day was all about the bikes with Andy adding hand guards and heated grips for the colder Southern areas we are heading to. We were really looking forward to an Argentinian steak and were not disappointed. We got there just as the owner was firing up the BBQ and he took us through the wine cellar to choose a nice Malbec. We LOVE Argentina.