Day 82

Well I got up today knowing I had a long day ahead of me and shit was I right. I was on the road and moving by 7am. It was a brisk 41 degrees and hailing at my hostel. I hit the road watching a late sunrise over the mountains and boy was it beautiful. I headed out to the mountains and the closer I got the hail turned into snow. My rear tire is as bald as can be and sliding on every piece of patching I hit on the road along with painted surfaces on the road. It was getting pretty sketchy. I knew I had to be real careful because if I crashed here no one would be surprised. Thankfully my heated gloves were keeping my hands nice and toasty and for the first time I wore my balaclava because of how cold it was.

I covered some ground real hard and as I got closer to the first border crossing I was certain I could make the 11:30 ferry. The winds were blowing hard as hell but I was sure it wouldn’t be as bad as yesterday which means the ferry wouldn’t be shutting down. I hoped

I got to the first border crossing and there was no one at the Argentinian side. It was quick and I got through in maybe 5 minutes. I flipped up a water bottle with fuel right before the crossing in case I ran out of fuel or got low on it. I was doing a consistent 90 and burning fuel real quick. I got to the Chilean side a few minutes later and it was a shitshow. There were about 25-35 people on line and it wasn’t moving that fast. It took me about 30 minutes and I saw some friends I made from Brazil when I was in Ushuaia. I got on the bike and boogied. I was burning time off the ferry arrival time and I ended up taking a long detour around a city so I wouldn’t have to ride on a dirt road for 5 miles. I didn’t want to get my bike dirty after paying $10 to get it washed! I ended up getting to the ferry at about 11:05 and there was a line of cars maybe 3/4 of a mile long. I skipped everyone and got right to the front where I met Nick from Texas on an Africa Twin. We got on the first ferry that came to us and we were lucky. The line last night for the ferry was 2.5 miles long and some of these people slept in their cars to wait for this morning’s ferry to arrive.

Nick and I chatted on the ferry and we decided to ride like wild men to the border crossing because we both heard the lines there were brutal. He was on an Africa Twin which is much faster but he wasn’t getting in front of me. I almost got blown off the road one time and he saw it. It was bad. I learned to ride in the oncoming traffic lane on the windy days to give me some more room for big wind gusts like that. We assume that one that hit us both was probably 60mph. I got to the border crossing about 30 minutes off the ferry and jumped off my bike and ran online. Nick showed up not 2 minutes later and there were about 50 people behind me. He’s lucky I got there when I did or our day would have been fucked.

The border crossing took us about an hour which sucked. I got right on the bike to save us another spot to enter back into Argentina. That was even worse. The line was a few hundred feet long and we got there just when the workers were having lunch. While we were waiting on line some man came up to me and said my name “Marko”. I was confiused and so was nick. This man saw my bike in Baroliche and we chatted on facebook messenger for a bit. Small world. He was stuck at the ferry last night with the high winds he was telling us. Hes heading north too. Some old man cut us in line when we got to the booths and I lost my shit on him. We ended up taking his wife’s spot on the Aduana side and I told them all to fuck right of if they have a problem with it. I said bye to Nick since he had to stay there to send some pictures to the shipping company they needed ASAP!

On the road I was hauling ass doing 90 all day long. I was making a lot of ground and figured I had three long 12 hour days ahead of me. I stopped for fuel around 7pm and walking about the bike as I always do I noticed a piece of my tire fell off the tire and the white threading was exposed. Fuck. This is not good. I was scared of having a blowout. The next town was 4 hours ahead and it was too late to go for it. I checked Ioverlander and I saw there was a gas station hotel about 75 minutes ahead. I started hauling ass there worried about having a blowout which would end my trip. I learned quickly that I can lean the bike over to the left while I hang my body to the right to get the middle of the tire off the road and let the bike ride a little bit offset. I arrived at the gas station at 8:15pm I think and luckily they had a room open for me. I dropped my stuff inside and started ripping the bike apart. If I had an issue here it would really suck. I got the rim off the bike and started to pull the tire off the rim when a man showed up to help. In my broken Spanish I learned he was a mechanic and was a great helping hand. We got the tire off in no time and put the new one on. I removed the tube and decided to run tubeless again so I can fix a flat in a minute if needed. I would keep the rear tube as another spare as I already had one. Now I have 2. Can never have too many spares down here.

We had a problem setting the bead on the rim because my compressor didn’t have enough pressure. 2 girls came over with their car and gave me their compressor but it was the same problem. People are so sweet here it’s insane. The first man that was helping me ran over to a truck because they all have compressors on them. He rigged up a little system and between the three of us we got enough pressure in the valve to seal the tire onto the rim. I slapped my rim back on my bike and cleaned up all my tools. I gave the mechanic a hug along with everyone else that was trying to help and I filled up my tire to the proper pressure, adjusted my chain and brought all my stuff inside.

I got myself a little shitty weird dinner in the restaurant there and cleaned up all my tools and parts in the hotel room. I crashed at about 10:30pm or so but didn’t actually fall asleep until 12:30-1am. I was very anxious for some reason with how tight everything is running time wise. I am very happy and relieved today went as well as it did in the last part with the tire swap because who knows what could have gone wrong or not worked. I set my alarm clock for 6am and eventually fell asleep.