Let’s play the ‘get out of town’ puzzle again shall we. I’m sure the people that implemented Högertrafikomläggningen when Sweden moved from driving on the left to the right in the space of a single night emigrated to Argentina. I’m sure the road system is different in the morning to what is was the previous night. This is only a small town but it takes 40 minutes on unmarked roads to get out the flippin place. It’s a mountain day today. We’re just in the smaller Andes siblings but we still go above 2200m on piste as we cross a small range. FUCK ME the drops are HUGE. Ruta 40 is as wide as a runway one minute with perfect flat tarmac, then a few miles later
it’s 6 foot wide with loose piste and and death drop on one side, then a few miles later it’s back to tarmac again. Spectacular views though. A lot of the mountains here look like huge piles of old workings from days long gone by. I reckon when the world was under construction that South America was the builders merchants. ‘Whata you want eh? We’a got plains, mountains, lakes, deserts. We’ve got sand, rocks, boulders, earth in every shade of red and brown, anything you want, I got. Whata weather you want to go with that? I got sun, rain, snow, ice and I’m a doing a special on wind at the moment. Extra strong, as much as you like. Buy one getta one free’. I reckon the Swiss came and bought a load of mountains but dropped some on the way home, Africa went overboard on sand and sun and the Dutch turned up with the wrong luggage and ended up with a load of flat pack scenery. England bought a ‘lucky dip, bargain bucket’ selection box I reckon. Not a bad ride today though and extremely varied. We end up in Catamarca at a hotel where we find fleas and bed bugs queueing up at reception complaining about the standard of accommodation. Nice.

Today was a day you wait a long time for and realise just how lucky you are to have the resources to be where you are and doing what you are doing. At first it’s no great shakes, everything starts off very lush, green and semi tropical. There is a protest on and the roads are blocked all over the place with makeshift burning barricades, they’re letting bikers through though…well…most of them are anyway. I come to one and they’re pointing to the right…towards a little town. I stare..they stare..I stare.. In the absence of further instructions from the crowd and being the owner of both a British passport plus a BMW bulldozer I proceed to approach the barricade. I shunt the front wheel over the top of a old of logs to the right of a burning section then proceed to spin the bike up and over, out and onto the other side. Just like a load of ants when you cut a line in their operation, the locals go into a frenzy and bolster up their defences before the others following on behind can get through. They have to take the diversion as do all the others that follow later. The suddenly we’re going into the mountains. The road just rises suddenly like a giant staircase into the clouds. Its all very tropical as the we climb, climb and climb up into the sky.

Tufts of cloud look like they’re caught on the mountains like a piece of wool on a fence. Up, up, up we go, twisting and turning on the tight wet road. Denser, denser, denser get the clouds until they get so thick that you’d have trouble seeing your own pillion. The roads are quite shit, lumpy, uneven and badly scared but when the clouds clear for a second the views are spectacular, like riding through a huge steaming greenhouse. If you’ve ever ridden ‘His Dark Materials’ where characters can cross between worlds by using a knife to cut a small gap through, well this is what it’s like today. Its cloud, cloud, dense cloud for miles. Tight twisty wet roads with big drops then instantly, and I mean instantly, the whole scene changes to ‘the hills are alive with the sound of music’land. It’s mental, its wrong, its weird. 10000ft and we’ve popped out into a parallel planet. A huge vista stretches out in front of me, complete with lake and rolling hills covered in cows and horses. A huge town appears nestling between the mountain tops that rise still higher around us. This is at above 10000ft – it’s wrong, just wrong, especially after the journey up here. The town is a big ski resort/tourist trap and after a quick ride the wrong way round the one way system (yep..err sorry about that) I get out and continue up into the peaks. It’s sunny here, cloudless blue sky, but cold and dry. I want to take some pictures of the birds soaring above me. Every time I stop I see their shadows sweeping around me, assessing. I think they look through their little target silhouette handbook and don’t see a tall skinny ugly leather clad creature as suitable food so they move on before I can point a camera at them. Very frustrating. Later it’s over different mountains, completely different again. Huge cacti and rocky outcrops, then later we descend onto sunny savannah with long green grass filling the horizon. I reckon I’ve spent the day riding through the ‘mountain showroom’ of the builders merchants, and very impressive it’s been too. Camping tonight in a lovely campsite by some more wine groves. Hot, sandy ground, perfect.

Last night before bed I asked the builders merchants to knock up a road demo. ‘I want the best roads you’ve got. I want roads like a snaking river bed. Fast and smooth through spectacular mountains and following cool flowing water. I want up, I want down, I want switchbacks and I want some that flow like water over rapids. I want verdant greenery, I want clouds stuck to mountain peaks, I want it all’. ‘Sure, no problem’ says the man. ‘Only thing is, we have no straights left I’m afraid, the Romans came and cleared us out years ago’.

The man did himself proud. It was astonishing, fabulous, amazing. A breakfast of fast dry open roads along side the river running through the mountains. Tight and twisty for lunch then in the afternoon it really started showing off. The mountains turned up the scale for a start. Monstrous, absolutely monstrous. The kind you have to move your head to take in, much more than an eye can do alone. The roads too. Absolutely astonishing. A truly fantastic day of riding like I’ve never had in my life. It was a fitting finale to Argentina. Chile tomorrow. I doubt ” beat this day in a hurry.

Last night I asked the bloke if he had any other roads and mountains for his ‘special customers’, ones he usually keeps locked away from those who can’t appreciate them, the creme de la creme, the absolute ‘top of the range’. Well, whatever I thought about yesterday, today he went totally over the top. What a day. What an absolutely stunning day. Over the top of the Andes. Its very difficult to describe a day like today. I need to invent new words, I just can’t do it justice. There is absolutely no way to really describe it. Its frustrating that I can’t convey the feelings of amazement and elation that riding a road like today can bring. The one way, the only way to understand it is to ride it. There is absolutely no substitute for experience on a day like this, nothing. Over the top of the Andes. Up, up, up and more up. Twist, turn, back, up, up and up. Feels like we’re on top of the world. The sky has been scrubbed clean and it’s the most piercing blue, it surrounds you, comes at you from all angles. The roads, well the roads are amazing too. Fast and open then tight and steep. the builders merchants have really gone to town today and pulled out all the stops.

After a few hours we level off at about 4000m and spend hours and hours riding through dried salt lakes, hugh rocky outcrops, sand dunes, volcanoes, everything. We exit Argentina then cross the border into Chile but at this point it is just a sign on the road, the actual border is another 100 miles yet. It’s too isolated to have a border post up here (even though Argentina does). Then the real bonkers stuff begins. The road today has to be one to the words best surely, its probably the best I’ve ever ridden. The Chile section is all new and follows the old dirt road as it drags itself through a very inhospitable landscape in an effort to let you get out of there as soon as possible. From the start of the climb this morning to the seriously bonkers peak just into Chile is 250 miles of the most ridiculous tarmac you’ll ever see, not just a 30 mile mountain pass, not a ride through the hills, 250 miles of utter unrelenting mountain madness. After those 250 miles, just like a firework display, the final big bangs start as the show reaches a crescendo. The bikes are really struggling by now, puffing and wheezing and feeling flat. If the scenery here hasn’t left you breathless, then the altitude surely will. The road here climbs to 4870m, that’s nearly 16000ft. You can feel its effect each time you open the throttle and the old engine tries to compress the thin air. The roads are still perfect and inviting, delicious, just taken at lower speeds. Then it’s down, down, and more down. It sounds stupid but it was quite scary. A long straight road to the horizon, looking like it was disappearing into the earth as it lost 3000m as soon as it could. The roadside has bottomless fissures in and an off here would be a bad experience. The lorries coming down on their engine brakes at 10mph for fear of getting out of control. I’m sure you could just coast for the best part of 40 miles as the roads descends to the Chilean desert. Hot to cold to very very hot. We arrive at the customs at San Pedro de Atacama. Customs is an absolute arse. We get there as a bus arrives and disgorges its passengers into huge queues before we can join. It’s too hot, far to hot here on the edge of the Atacama desert. As I go through customs I’m with a Norwegian rider who is hewn from solid granite and is the size of a giant giant. He’s got a problem because his passport wasn’t stamped out of Chile properly earlier. There is a bit of an altercation during which I accidentally cuff the customs lady round the head. There is a tense moment. It could end up with a fat rubber clad finger up my poo tube but luckily the bread lands butter side up and the moment passes. Off to the camp site to pitch under the trees.