Luxury hotel? Beautiful beach? After two nights we were anxious to get back on the motorcycles and ride back into the wilderness and high elevations of the northern Atacama desert.
We were on long relatively straight high speed roads climbing back to elevations over 10,000 feet. My big 1250cc engine was loving the speed and we were eating up the miles frequently setting the cruise control (I know…. ) at 75mph and just sitting back.
Riding from 9 to 5 we covered 328 miles and ended up at the small town of San Pedro de Atacama where we had booked a boutique hotel, Quelana Lodge just outside of town. We did that on purpose to avoid the busy tourist city and the throngs of Europeans with backpacks who arrive by the busload. We spent the time getting ready for the next border crossing into Argentina. I found a currency exchange office and picked up about $120USD in Argentine Pesos. The largest denomination is 1,000 pesos which is equal roughly to $1 USD. Needless to say it was a huge stack of money that I just threw in my backpack.
The nice thing about being a little bit out of town is the spectacular night sky. I tried to take a few pictures with my iPhone using night mode. The milky way stretches from horizon to horizon.
If you know what to look for you can see the Southern Cross constellation. Something we don’t see in the Northern Hemisphere. Cool.
On the way to the border at Paso Jama the road climbed to over 15,000 feet in the first 50 miles. We were enjoying the cool crisp air and again feeling sightly light headed riding at 80mph on the spectacular scenic pavement.
More than once we said the wide open spaces must be what Mars is like with the red soil and occasional rocks and boulders.
Soon we were at the border crossing into Argentina at a remote windblown desolate location at 15,500 feet. We went through the usual shuffle going from window to window and finally had enough stamps on a tiny slip of paper that we could leave the country after a final inspection of our bags. Whoo hoo, we were in Argentina. The first stop… gas. We knew there was a gas station just a few hundred meters from the checkpoint. We arrived and were the only ones there but it was closed. Hmmmm, of course. Welcome to Argentina!
I noticed a fuel truck filling the tanks and remembered that in Argentina they close down the pumps when the tanks are getting fueled. Well, ok. Maybe a safety thing? So we waited. Soon more motorcycles arrived and lined up behind us. Then even more.
I took this picture but that was nothing. In the next hour a couple of motorcycle tour groups came in and lined up behind us, there must have been at least 50 big adventure motorcycles lined up before they started filling us up one by one. We were glad we were first in line, got our gas and beat the crowd out of there. Interestingly, most of the bikes were tourists from Brasil. Whatever that means.
The route down the east side of the Andes is famous for motorcycle riders with its high speed curves and scenic views. A popular place to stop is a Salinas Grandes which literally translates to Large Salt Flat. We stopped there in 2013 with Michael and took this iconic picture.
Nowadays, they charge a fee to ride on the salt flat so Deby and I were content to take a photo from the parking lot.
We met an interesting couple from Italy who were two up on a Tenere. They are full time YouTube content creators. I suppose there is some money in that, or so I’m told. We tried to find their channel but it’s called, Frank’s Affair. A Google search turned up a lot of content that had nothing to do with motorcycles so I gave up. Of course, now I get a lot of pop-up ads for Italian woman who want to meet me. Ha.
Again, more amazing roads which elicited big wows around almost every corner.
After another almost 300 mile day of high speed riding we arrived at the touristy town of Ticara as it started to rain. We found a hotel, Las Terrazas, that was within walking distance of the main square and settled in for the night. It was cool with off and on rain. The forecast was for more rain in the next few days. Yuck, not good for riding.
Not too impressed with Ticara, we continued south the next day on the famous ruta 40 towards Cafayate. We knew this was a fantastic ride with excellent red rock scenery.
The weather was cool and the clouds threatening but we had another great day riding and enjoying the region. For lodging we looked at hotels in the touristy city of Cafayate but they were all booking online for well over $200 USD. Instead we found a room at a bodega (winery) outside of town for about $90. It was a great place with good wine and an excellent restaurant. Nice.
Yea, now we were just getting into a different riding mode. Fast, paved roads, beautiful scenery, nice hotel stays. We had to constantly monitor our fuel situation as there are long distances between cities and not all gas stations have fuel. So far, so good and fortunately everyone takes credit cards so we haven’t needed to use our big stack of cash as much as I thought we would.
More riding through mountains, valleys, remote areas and stunning scenery as we made our way south to Chilecito. The battery on my helmet cam seems to be dying so I didn’t take too many pictures and the clouds and off and on rain didn’t make for many opportunities. Deby took this picture of me defacing an iconic road sign with one of my stickers.
We spent a quiet night at a small hotel in Chilecito that had only four rooms. When we arrived it looked vacant and locked up. It took some phone calls to get the owner to let us in at 3:30PM. The whole city was closed down for siesta including the hotel. The owner gave us a set of keys including for the front door and told us he was leaving and would be back for breakfast. We had the whole place to ourselves, all normal…..
Oh, he said as he was leaving, the shower has a leak but I left you a squeegee and some extra towels so don’t worry. We found the reason for the leak…. the installer never got around to adding the door to the shower stall! Oh well, all normal…..
With rain in the forecast we continued on and decided to book somewhere for two nights to let the weather pass. As was getting to be our routine, we picked a place about 6 to 8 hours away and looked for somewhere to stay. This time we found a place called Termas Pismanta Hotel and Spa. Ohhhh, sounds nice. Termas is what they call hot springs in Spanish.
It was fantastic riding but we were going through off and on rain showers which was not that much fun. We stopped for a break to admire a huge dinosaur display along the road.
There was a friendly dog that greeted us and wanted some of our cold pizza from the night before. We had to leave in a hurry when suddenly the dog thought I was attractive and tried to hump my leg. He was determined to have his way with me and Deby worked at shooing him away so I could jump on the bike and ride away. Geesh…
We were again on some fun roads.
The road we were on is on the right side of the valley about halfway up.
Of course, Deby loved all the rocks. Too bad the weather wasn’t better to enjoy it more.
So now we are settled into another swanky resort hotel with thermal pools and a nice restaurant. Dang, we are getting too used to this. But what is next????
I looked at the map and we are only 50 miles away from a border crossing in the mountains called Paso Agua Negra. Look at this view from Google Maps.
It’s about 100 miles of dirt roads, over a 15,500+ foot border crossing that is usually snowed in most of the year. We learned at this point it is briefly open before it will close for the season. Wow, we have to go!
So, not that much excitement. We weren’t robbed, seem to be making due with our currency and even though we had some bad weather the riding has been excellent. I’m fine with keeping up with this trend. Tomorrow we’ll head over the pass and explore new territory for us. It should be fun!
Thanks for following and more to come.
Donn and Deby
