We decided to get up early as we had heard horror stories about the road today. Danneile from Italy had rode it 4 days ago and it took 8+ hours to go 200 kilometers… 3–4 foot deep river crossings that are 20 or 30 yards wide. Lots of deep mud and very slow going. It hadn’t rained in the last 4 days so we were hoping for the best.
The road turned out to be dry and very fast in some sections. The washboards were big and seem to smooth out the faster you went. We were cruising at about 65 on these stretches. As long as you don’t need to stop…. It was ok.
On the parts of the road that were mud, it had dryed and more or less turned to concrete. We could easily see how extremely tough the river crossings would be… We got lucky though and most of them were dry. We did the 300k all the way to the border in about 5 hours.
The scenery was fantastic! Huge vistas with the road climbing and descending over and over. It would drop down into a rocky river bed. Only to ascend back up to a high ridgeline. Then it broke out into a massive river valley with cool rock formations. 
We arrived at the boder and quickly found the crossing. The border itself was pretty straight forward. Wait in line for about 45 minutes to get a 3 second stamp in the passport. However, when we went for the bike paperwork we were told to go to this other window. Then the dude at that window says go to this other window, and so it went for about a half hour till we finally got to the right place. The guy there says, “cee, have a seat”
So we sit…. the three of us in the office with three customs people. 2 of them are messing with they're blackberry's laughing and basically messing around. This other gal is pounding on the computer…. So we sit. Some other guy comes in and the blackberry dudes rush his paperwork out and boom!, he’s gone. We sit…looking at each other wondering. Eventually the gal finishes her paperwork and starts ours.20 minutes later and we’re out of there, A quick search of our bikes, very quick when he got a whiff of my dirty clothes!
Start to finish I would say we were at the border crossing about 2.5 hours. It was getting late so we decided to stay at the the border town. Not usually the best choice as border towns can be scummy. This one was ok though and we found a cheap place, got a bad pizza and went to bed.
The motobrothers are in Argentina!! 5121K to Ushuaia!!
Tomorrow we ride south’
Cheers.
We did encounter a minor problem when we discovered Argentina has different electrical plugs – what?! I didn’t read about that in the travel brochure – so we marched around town looking for some adaptor plugs and trying to figure out how to ask for them in Spanish. We finally found them at a little hardware store and we got all our little goodies plugged in for charging.
We had some special roads marked on our maps that we had heard were great biking roads. One of those was Route 9 (Ruta 9) going into Salta. This thing turned out to be a single lane (maybe 1 and 1/2 lanes at times) which twisted back and forth, up and down and was a blast to ride. We initially thought it was a one way (going our way of course!) until we met a car – surprise! From then on we cut back on the speed and lean angles. 
We jumped on to Ruta 68 which we had read was a great road and we weren’t disappointed. The first 40 or 50 miles were not that spectacular but then we entered a series of canyons that were spectacular! – Very similar to the southwestern US in southern Utah and Arizona – the road surface was great and we carved it up till we passed a roadside canyon that was incredibly tight – we circled back and decided to hike up into it.
We rode thru miles and miles of canyons and rivers – the scenery was fantastic.
We pulled into Belen after riding thru a nice canyon with a little river at the bottom. Belen wasn’t much of a town and we just picked up some groceries – rode back up the the canyon and found a place to camp.
The road weaved thru some random canyons and kept heading south.
After Dan had not seen Wes in the rear view for a while he slowed down too give him some time to catch up. John got curios and turned around – they decided to head back and find Wes. Well, he was on the side of the road and his front tire was flat. Great – in the hot desert sun. We quickly setup a tarp and helped him pull the wheel, lever the tire off and replace the tube. We were probably on our way in 30 minutes but Wes’ thermometer indicated over 110 in the shade so it was toasty.
We had some great weather to ride out of San Juan – warm and sunny. And some awesome roads albeit a little straight in some places.
We were kind of in the middle of nowhere and it was getting late – so we decided to ride up a small road that ran along a river with the hopes of finding a spot. The wind was howling and we probably covered about 20 miles up the road looking for a spot – we were almost to a small town and figured we would just hit the town and find someplace to stay. John decided to check out one more little side road and he found an awesome campsite that looked protected from the wind – at least a bit.
We broke camp early and were on the road by 8ish. The morning was cool – maybe cold. We headed south on route 40. We knew some of the road today would be gravel so we got an early start. We made tracks on the pavement and were just flying along down the straight and smooth pavement. The Air was crisp and we were feeling good…
We got out of Zapala wearing almost all of our winter gear. The ride today was only going to be a few hours as we were staying in Bariloche for two nights. The wind was whipping and we were ready for some cold riding. The road was fast and smooth. High desert like scenery and were again “stretching the throttle cables”. We cruised along at 90 for about an hour or more, The road had just enough corners to keep us awake.
If you have ever been to eastern Oregon this stretch reminded me of that. Complete with Mt Hood in the background. And of course Dan’s UFO in his camera!
The road took a turn and dropped down a hill into the Lake district. It was quite a contrast to the desert we had been blasting through. High rock formations around beautiful smooth lakes. Not one boat on any of them. With the road down in a canyon the wind had stopped and the sun was out! The road also began curving along the shoreline and we were loving it. 
It really wasn’t a mile later we came around a corner and bingo a gas station in the middle of nowhere!! Not sure why a guy would have his business there, but we were happy he did. While topping off we saw a Restaurant on the hill over looking the lake. We decided to go have lunch. It turn out to be a forgettable lunch but the view was great and it was nice to take a break during the day. Our normal routine is to ride all day, Skip lunch and just ride till were ready to stop for the night.
Dan had a important business phone conference today so while he tended to business I did a little bike stuff. Went and had the rear tires changed. The dude who changed the tires was super cool. Felix @ 
Bariloche is a really pretty city. It is the down season for tourism so it was pretty quiet. Just the way I like a city! Didn't do much really. Walked around and did a little shopping for my wife….
We pulled the tools from John’s bike and set to work - first we took off the countershaft sprocket cover and saw the chain was super wedged in behind the countershaft sprocket… we tried prying on it, putting the chain on the rear sprocket and trying to rotate the wheel, then putting a little rod we had for leverage on the wheel – then we just sat there and looked at if for a while. John said something like “that’s wedged in there and we’re not going to get it out” – We talked about getting the bike back on the ground and pushing it backwards or something – then Dan said “I’m going to go take apart that fence and grab a fencepost” – about 10 minues later he came back with a steel fence fence post and we stuck it into the rear wheel and used the swingarm for leverage – after 2 or 3 tries we freed the chain from the super wedgy… only to find the chain had fractured the engine case and that was the source of the oil leakage. John said “we’re done dude”. To top it off, Suzuki in their infinite wisdom had placed the clutch actuator shaft/rod right next to the countershaft sprocket – sort of daring the chain to break and blow the rod apart – which, of course, it had. 
We talked about it and decided we needed to pull the left engine case cover. But we didn’t have enough oil to refill the engine. We thought about laying the bike on its side but we’d lose the gas out of the tank. So we decided we needed to just lean the bike over far enough to get the case cover off without losing the gas. We took off the left side case, propped the bike on one of it’s own side cases and we used the fence post to hold the rear end up.
Once we got the side case cover off we saw the extent of the damage. The engine case was busted badly, the side case cover was busted and the chain had sheared off some wires. The wires used for the neutral switch and the wires used for the battery charging system…. Of course the clutch actuator rod was blasted apart like a bad guy’s car on the “A Team” TV series.
We had some quick steel putty witch is like JB weld. So we set about cleaning the oil and chain spoodge off. Dan mixed up the putty and we built it up as good as we could. This stuff is allot like play dough in that it holds its shape, However when it cures it is like steel. You can file or drill it. While the quick steel cured, we repaired the wires, we had a 12volt soldering iron with us. So those were a pretty easy reapair. After the wires were fixed up,we then filed the putty where the mating surfaces of the cover and case go together. So they were smooth and matched up as well as can be expected. We both were happy with the fit of the cover, So we applied some silicone sealant we had. (Dan had bought some to glue some decorative thingy’s on his bike, good thing too!) Anyway we reinstalled the cover. We had an extra masterlink for the chain so we reinstalled the chain.
Anyway we got to the bike shop. SM Motos in RIO Gallegos. It didn’t really look like much from the outside and we were a bit skeptical…. But after going inside we saw they had a proper repair shop and more importantly a guy who knew his shit and was willing to help. We pulled the clutch rod from John’s bike and showed it to him. He dropped what he was doing and started searching his shop. He found a rod that was very close. It was a little too big on one end but he set about turning it down on the lathe in the corner. We stood there in disbelief. We had been in his shop for about 30 minutes and he was MAKING a part for us. 
It turned out to be a bit more of a job then planned, but in the end we left his shop at 8:30 that night with a working clutch and new chains on both bikes. He charged us about $60 bucks US to make the part and he spent about an hour and half making it…. After closing the shop he then led us to a hotel and wished us luck. 
Our route today took us south into Chile – and we’re entering the last fold on the map of Argentina… Once in Chile we had to make our way to a ferry and cross the 
Well – the run from Rio Gallegos to the Chile border was fast and wet. – maybe an hour or so – then things ground to a halt. Checking out of Argentina took a long time – we just slogged our way thru the lines, dripping wet and leaving a water trail thru the immigration/custom lines. Finally free from Argentina we took off into no mans land for the Chilean border. These guys were only slightly faster than the Argentina guys – after leaving a trail of puddles in the border offices we were free to go and set off into Chile.
We shot down a concrete two lane road that was an awesome road surface – even in the rain we were doing 60 mph – after a short ride we came to the ferry crossing area – just as we rode up to the back of a truck, that truck rolled forward and onto the ferry and we rode right behind it and onto the ferry. I don’t think we actually fully stopped at all – good timing. The ferry deck was wet and steel – and we could see the water was rough – so we stayed down with the bikes to hold them up. Good thing because there was some rock and roll going on during the short crossing – maybe 30 minutes. We all got cooled off standing there with the wind and the rain… unfortunately we couldn’t see much during the crossing because the sides of the boat were maybe 10 feet above the deck.
We forgot to mention in the blog from yesterday Dan had more problems with his machine. After we got back from riding out into the National Park. He said his bike was making a grinding noise. An inspection of his rear wheel found bad wheel bearings. So we set about taking the rear wheel apart. With bearings in hand he headed out on my bike to find some replacements. The first shop did not have any, the second shop did not have any but the owner took him to a bike junk yard and there they found a used set. Our bad/good luck continues!! They seemed ok and with out any other options we repacked them with fresh grease. Installed them and the the rear wheel seemed good to go. Time will tell.
We decided Wes must have got on the ferry and is waiting on the other side. So we rode the ferry over and here we find Wes having lunch with our old friend Pete we told you about in earlier blogs. Dan and I were kind of pissed off about wasting a couple of hours looking for Wes. It was a good thing Pete was there or we might of strung up Wes. In the end we all made up and had a laugh about it. 
We had some tea and listened to Pete’s stories of his journey since we last saw him. He was still heading south and with only a few days to Ushuaia, it looks as though he’s going to complete his quest as well. 
We headed north on Ruta 3. Not much to say about today. The road was fast and straight. Down in the southern part of Argentina they’re really is not much to see. Its flat and boring. You can ride for a 100 miles without a turn… I rode at least 20 miles at one point with my hands off ther bars. Making small direction changes by shifting my weight. I know riding without you hands on the bars is not a good idea. But, you have do do something to keep yourself entertained! With the main part of the trip over we are getting restless to get home. 
