Gino's Travels: Wind, Sand and riding the rough roads

Thursday, 13 December 2012

Wind, Sand and riding the rough roads

We left the Horizons unlimited meeting on Monday morning after saying our goodbyes to everyone (Thanks to Oscar and his family for the organisation and hospitality) and headed along Rita 1 heading we thought for Puerto Madryn, about 300 miles away. Ruta 1 it transpired was Ripio or Gravel roads, problem was both Fiona and I are pretty damned inexperienced on this kind of stuff, wore still the road was also very sandy, matter of fact sometimes we thought we were in the Sahara. Luckily Werner & Claudia and Georg and Anke passed us, well used to this kind of riding they waited for us, warned us about the worst bits and kept us going with encouragement and advice. I have to say we both found it hard, most of the time managing between 9 – 20 MPH! The scenery was spectacular, the sea to our left and the wild parrots and Lamdu’s on our left, I thought it was herds of Ostriches but I found out later they were Lamdu’s, slighty smaller than an Ostrich. Our attention however was mostly taken up with just making progress. We pass d a cluster of houses and then soon after it looked like we’d taken a wrong turn and were heading along the beach, we hadn’t seen our German minders for a wile and I must admit I was getting a bit concerned, especially when we came to a sand section where we had to manhandle the bikes through, at this point I was taking a picture of Fiona when she fell off but luckily so slowly no harm to her or the bike. I really wasn’t expecting the Sahara like conditions. Evenhtually we met Werner & Claudia and we went together to wild camp on a beach, more sand riding! Or should I say sand pushing and pulling!!

A campsite you couldn’t beat right by the sea, luckily we had rice with us and one onion, luckily we also had 6 litres of water on the bikes also so it was Onion and rice for dinner and of course a few cups of tea. This really was the first real “adventure” day so I broke open the special whisky I got from Campbell for a wee celebration Dram.

The following day we had first to get out of the beach which I managed more easily than I thought then more of the same for around 40 miles with Fiona and I increasing in confidence with every mile before finally getting back on tarmac, the “boring bit” as Werner said, know what , boring is good sometimes, We made it to Puerto Madryn around 6pm on the Tuesday and found a campsite for the night, great to get a shower and change of clothes after the previous 2 days!

Another German “Frank” on an XT660 joined us for the night and then in the morning they all left whilst we decided to have a day off. An hour later they were back, Werners BMW had blown over in the strong wind and was leaking brake fluid, we got it fixed quickly but the wind & sandstorm over the town was so bad they decided to stay put for another night also. As we were sitting around getting sand blown into everywhere we noticed Claudia’s bike had a puncture, this is getting like a Norton meeting now with repairs going on during the day!! Just now on our way to the peninsula Valdez, we’ve just met an American off a cruise ship thats in the harbour, Bill has offered to show us round Chicago when we get there, nice people you meet on the road.