Goodbye Argentina | Bikepacking Patagonia to Alaska: Ep. 6

Hi there, I'm Ilse and this is my husband Ryan and we share a dream. We want to explore the Americas by human power. More specifically on bikes, with strong legs and fueled by a whole lot of ice cream. Right now we've cycled nearly halfway through the continent of South America. Five months after we started our journey in Ushuaia and Patagonia we find ourselves in the last stretch across Argentina. I feel it, I'm a little bit tired, our visas are quickly expiring, but hey! Don't judge us, Argentina really is a massive country. It's the eighth largest country in the world. Fortunately for us, the final thousand kilometers to the border with Chile seem easy peasy. Or not. There's over a meter snow up there so we gotta come up with another plan. Either route around and go into oblivion another way or... While we're looking at the snow-capped mountains in the distance we ponder the changing of the seasons and the rhythm of life as well as the slow winter rhythm that we live in at the moment. As we near the sprawling city of Mendoza we have no other option. But to ride the highway shoulder. As a cyclist this means a never-ending procession of trucks and cars speeding past you. And also desperately trying to avoid broken glass on the roadside. Of course, we didn't quite succeed. Hole number two. Yeah, the second hole here in how long? 15 minutes. Thankfully, we're riding tubeless. So after a short while we're able to continue our ride. That is, until we hear a loud squeal coming out of the tall grass. And there she was. Beautiful! That's not fair to our animal hearts, you know that. A tiny trembling kitten in desperate need for food and love. We figured that someone must have tossed her out of a car window and that's how she ended up here. All by herself. She starts walking up and down our arms and trampling all over our hearts. What are we going to do now? We can't just leave her behind. All right, shall we go? What happened, Ryan? I was kind of expecting to find an animal that was injured, hit by a car or something. And then all of a sudden, there's this little tiny kitten. She came running after the bikes, just screaming, literally running down this gravel road behind us. Screaming for us. So then I turned around and I stuffed her in my shirt. And I don't know, here we are in a little campground now with a little baby kitten that's probably only like three months old or less. She's young. And now she's lost. Lost her mom, lost her family. The daughters of our campground hosts are also smitten with the kitten. Who we decided to give the name Gaia, Mother Earth. Ryan and I go back and forth over the possibilities. But in the end, we decide that taking in a pet on this trip would be too much. But it's hard. I don't know how we... I don't think we can keep the cat while we cycle. Yeah, it's hard. And I don't know what to do. We're trying to look for a place now. Maybe we can leave her in Mendoza with somebody. We're under attack. All the animals have been here. This has become the animal park. Oh my god, this is... The animal tower of Argentina. Feel so much has happened. We woke up and she was nowhere to be found after snuggling in our necks all night. And then we heard a distinct... From far away, all the way up in a tree. So the last hour and a half, we've been trying to get her out. Yeah, this parenting is... We're sleep deprived, dirty, anxious. How did we get her out? With a big branch. You got mommy and daddy real worried. She's still shaking. No message back. Oh yeah, I mean it's early. I'm hoping that she'll get back in her safe spot. It's Gaia now. Gaia, that's right. So next morning, with breaking hearts, we pay a visit to the nearest veterinarian who takes one look at Gaia, immediately falls in love and decides to adopt her on the spot. I miss her. But it's really for the best. I'm super relieved. There's some incredibly caring and loving people here in Argentina. It's unbelievable. What, you're trying to catch a tear? We were excited to take a week off in Mendoza, but still feeling a little depressed without Gaia by our side. Fortunately, there were two surprise packages waiting for us in town. We just got a surprise shipment here. They came a long way to meet us here. We've been waiting for like over a month or something. A replacement for after our airport disaster there. So yeah, this is exciting stuff. After the airline had lost our tent in the beginning of our trip, we searched all over Ushuaia for a proper replacement. After all the mishaps there, we now have a tent. We have a sleeping pad. We have all the gear we need to actually start this journey. And let me tell you, that was not easy to do. So Hyperlite Mountain Gear decided to help us out and send us their ultimate four. Here we go. This is the first test of our new tent. Let's take it first. We got to get a perfect square here on the ground. Oh, way too tight. Too tight. It's definitely going to take some practice. Yeah, I know. Now we have all the space in the world. Stretching, yoga, journaling, sleeping diagonally, cooking. You name it and we can do it in our new Dyneema home. We're proud homeowners. Yeah, the gear really becomes like... I don't know, like a friend or something, right? How many nights did we spend in this thing? A hundred? No, I don't... Almost, probably getting close to a hundred because we've been out here for four and a half months. Four months now. Oh wait, five months. Five months. Oh my god, it has been five months. I've completely lost track of time. So five months. Granted, we don't spend every night in the tent, but most nights, so... Yep, shall we go? Yeah, let's go. Let's go sell a tent in the dark in Mendoza. This is what goes into making one video. Four or five days of food. To weather the sub-zero winter nights on the high plateaus in Bolivia and Peru, it was time for Ryan to get a new fluffy down quilt. Nevegir from Australia came to his rescue and sent him their Warata quilt. Designed to stay warm in temperatures as low as 8 degrees Celsius. Bring it on, cold nights. Ryan is ready for you. Sorry, yep. To the car four, get some food and then head out, eh? Wow. We are leaving Mendoza after an entire week's stay here. Kind of poking around the city and finishing our last video there. It's a beautiful city. It's huge, but it's rather quiet. A whole bunch of little neighborhoods basically and way safer than I thought it was gonna be. So yeah, I enjoyed our stay here. It was busy, a lot of work, but nice. What did you find? I found a feather in a bird's nest. We keep seeing on top of these telephone poles these giant nests. Now we have found one on the ground. They're massive as you can see and completely made out of thorns. So this is actually kind of painful. Yeah, but look at this. They have like a big hole on the bottom too. Wow. Because it's so thorny, they're really well protected. We put our new sleeping setup to the test in the peaceful nature reserve of Altos Limpios. We learn about the birds and the indigenous huerpe people who live in this desolate desert area and are able to weather extremely hot summers and icy cold nights. Don't be fooled. It's a hard knock life out here, both for animals and humans. The stars are absolutely incredible. Really? It's so quiet. And during dinner, we managed to make a curious friend. Good morning. How'd you sleep? Oh, I slept like a rock. I needed it. Yeah. God, so cozy. Real quilt, extra warm, functional sleeping pad. And this giant beautiful tent, a good combination. Yes. We don't have a name for it yet. Yeah. Good morning. We're like in a cloud of mist. And although it didn't really rain, just the mist itself was so humid. You can see the droplets of water hanging at the trees, at the leaves, at the spiderwebs. So this is how this desert here gets its rain. We were super warmly welcomed by some rangers yesterday. Female rangers. And they told us about the species that lived here. There are a few kinds of rattlesnakes, spiders. A lot of them are dangerous, apparently. So we need to watch our step. Although it's cold now. They're probably buried underground, snuggled in the earth. They told us about this rare species of bird, the eagle. And this is a beautiful little natural reserve. There's a museum, which I'm walking through right now, an open-air museum. There are sand dunes. What a cool place. Incredible. We were cycling through it. And even at cycling, you just need to stop and spend some time somewhere to actually get to know the animals that live here, the people that live here. They call this place home. Because at first, it seems a very uninhabited, rough place to live. Whereas actually, this is home for many, many people, for many animals. Even though it is a rough environment, it gets really hot in summer. There's not much that you can grow here. Yeah, the desert. And Belgium for her. For San Juan and much later, Alaska. Yes. Far away. After the first few peaceful and cozy nights, our new tent gets to tackle the biggest challenge of all. A windstorm. When we fall asleep, the sky is windstill and starry. But just a few hours later, everything starts to shake. Help! He's 10 years older. I feel 10 years older. Around 2 a.m. last night, the wind picked up and yeah, it got pretty crazy. I kept ripping the stakes out of the ground. It's super sandy here, as you can see. And even with like big rocks on the stakes, they still wouldn't hold some of them. So I had to get out, I think four, maybe five times in just driving sand. You could barely see. It was like being in the Sahara or something. And yeah, and our tent just flapping away like crazy. I'm speechless, honestly. No words. Just sand. I think it's noon now. Is it noon? Yeah, it's after 12 now. And it's finally like calming down enough that we can actually get out of here. And even the birds are upset. Did you hear them last night? Yeah. Right before it all started. Yeah. They started freaking out. That is a warning sign. If that lasted any longer, we would have been fully packed. And no sun. Yeah, it's going to take us a while to get all this sand out of here. Holy heck. This is crazy. So much for keeping our tent clean. We've been babying our new tents. So thoughtfully and carefully. And then one storm comes. Undoes all our effort. Well, that's the size rock I needed to hold the stakes in the ground. Yesterday I was thinking how much I will miss this country. How much I love this country. And then it throws you that in the face. What a wild, untamed land. Jesus. That's the only way I could get it to hold. I had to tie the stakes to the bike. Even our big-ass rock piles weren't enough. Uh, Ryan. Please not on my stakes. A little bit further, please. You know, in the end, all of our gear survives the storm. And we, well, a little more traumatized. But overall, we're hanging in there. Yeah, of all the forces, the wind is by far the worst. The most intense. As the days go by, traffic completely disappears. And the scenery slowly starts to shift. Red rocks, baby. We see red rocks, colorful canyons, clusters of cardan, and families of condors that brighten our days on the road. I did it. I unscrewed the GoPro from its mount for the first time. We pass by the parks of Ishigualasto and Talampaya. But the hefty entry fees hold us back from exploring the parks within. That's like well over a hundred dollars. It's crazy. Instead, we visit the Free Dinosaur Museum, where we learn all about these mighty reptiles. Oh boy, I'm so sorry that I'm so happy you're extinct. I tried to shout at you, but I don't think you heard me. I found their dens. Hundreds of them. We're cycling through another national park here, Talampaya. And it's totally empty. I think we have less than a car an hour maybe. Beautiful riding. We're averaging like 25 kilometers an hour. Not much more than us, the condors, and some Zoros. The fox. There's the fox. Oh, the fox. The fox crossing. The Zoro green. Very. Slow down to concentrate. Walk slowly. Breathe deeply. Open your eyes and mind to enjoy the essence of nature. Are you walking slowly? Are you breathing deeply? That's it. Is there anything I need to pay attention to? So it has to be like straight and then like just like this. Yeah, and just like ever so slightly tight. This smells so good. Here to the forest berries. So nice to get this morning sunlight. Good catch. Holy ----. Oh my god. No, I think it was just the... There was a thorn in it this morning and I think it just finally tore out. After a few thousand kilometers, my tire is pretty worn out. So now the smallest thorns cause it to leak like crazy now. Especially running higher pressures on the road here. So I'm quickly running out of plugs. But she's still going and I think it'll get us to Salta. So get a new tire there. You're ready for Bolivia. Welcome to Pagansillo. Almost done. We're officially back on route 40 after a nice little detour through some national parks there featuring dinosaurs. Pretty fun. Now we just cruise Chilicito and 105 and then on to Salta. Get ready for Bolivia. Yeah, is this the water hole? Sounds good. I can use it. It's so hot right now. See, it's cold. My tire keeps going flat. So I had to stop and put some more sealant in it and I managed to break the lid. But it is sealant so it should seal itself. There's so many thorns and spiky things that it keeps pricking the tire. And the sealant we found here isn't very good. I had really good Orem seal but the airline lost it. So here we are five months in and things are starting to break a bit. Wear down. Tires are basically done. The front tire is still okay but the back one needs replacing. Look who it is. Elsa's mad at me for having to wait again. Yeah, I have bike problems. There we go. That worked. I only got like four plugs left but yeah, it's really spewing air. Just not sealing. I hope this sealant's a little better. Maybe it'll be enough to plug all these little holes. It's even where I'm plugging them. It's still not really holding. The goal now is to make it to Salta and then prepare the bikes. Do a full maintenance on everything and prepare ourselves for Bolivia and Peru. For the more remote and high country where repairing stuff will be more difficult. But now I just gotta keep things working until we can get there. I think we got a thousand kilometers left so it's not too far. High points. Tire's still bleeding there. Oh, just a bunch more sealant and maybe that'll do the trick. We'll see. It's our final weeks here in Argentina. We've got two or three more weeks to go. A week until Salta. A few rest days. Get Ryan's visa and then Paso de Llama. We've reached kilometer 4,000 of the Ruta 40 here in Argentina. We're quickly approaching the end of our visa. Almost three months in. So it's time for us to skedaddle. Get out of here and get into Bolivia. I've got a master migraine today. I'm feeling super shitty. But it's time to camp. Except camp looks like this. Rocks, rocks, and rocks. And cactus. Further up north, leaving Chilicito behind, we start seeing signs of the Inca presence in these lands. In the tiny town of Londres, which is everything its British famous name is not, we pay a visit to the archaeological site El Chincal, where we listen to stories about the life and customs of the indigenous Inca people. Then the other brother wanted to marry her as well. No, you cannot marry her. I'm older and I want her. And they started fighting. And then maybe there was some movement like volcanic activity. This last part that we're riding on the Ruta 40, it's not so sparsely populated anymore. There's more towns. There's more, I wouldn't call them towns, but houses. And kioskos, little shops, water taps. Yeah, we're back in civilization. A big ass armadillo. Okay, we're out of the village. We're 400 from Salta and then another 500 from being in Chile in the Atacama Desert. So yeah, boy, it's getting tough. My tire is completely failing. I got a big cut in the tread from a piece of glass and the plug isn't holding air anymore. So it's leaking out real fast. I just inflated it like 20 minutes ago and it's already completely flat. I'm hoping that maybe there's just another hole that I missed. But my back tire is also not doing so well. I can see fully through it now. The whole rubber is gone on the back tire. All right, we have a working tire again. I had to put three fresh plugs in and I'm not going to trim them and hope that it'll hold. But it's working. We're good to go. And I'll celebrate with a donut. We also had some really nice guy there that stopped to help if we needed it. But not much for him to do. Yeah, the whole tent is frozen. Ice. Such a freezing cold night. How are you doing? A little cold and grumpy, I guess. Careful. No, it's completely frozen. See? And on one side because it was laying like that. Cold, cold, cold, cold. This was the coldest night yet. Our water hasn't froze quite this much before. But tonight it did. But now that the sun's up, it gets warm pretty quickly. I also made polenta with a lot of dehydrated onion in them last night. And let's just say it was a very stinky night in the tent. I wonder how long until the water defrosts. Okay, the ice has almost melted. 40k from town and the flat tire once again. The hole is so big in the tire that it blew the plug out. So it's completely flat again. And I have four plugs left. So let's hope it's enough. Oh no. I pushed too far and it went into the tire. Locked and loaded. We might end up having a hitch. Wine. Let's drink more wine. Cafayate is the absolute wine hub of northern Argentina. And we simply cannot pass it up. So we take off our bikepackers hat and put on our tourist hat. It's time to taste some wine. That's a lot of wine. Very fancy. So much smoke. Is it a fire or wildfire or a trash processing plant? I don't know. Desert. Yes, it's warm and it's dry. And desert. And red. I'm very red here. Reminds me of southwest USA. Videos are photos. Videos are moving photos. Videos are 24 photos a second. Exactly. And a photo is one second. And I feel like I'm better at that one second than you're just good at both. Let's set up that one big beautiful tent of ours. Big beautiful tent. Let's go. Our biggest danger here is clearly rockfall from up there. But I think we're far enough away and there's a bit of a shelf here that hopefully that's not an issue. Home sweet home. Home. In a canyon. I'm getting dizzy now. Both of us woke up with the strangest sound. I can't even imitate it. But it sounded dangerous. Ryan went out to check. I was too afraid. So I stayed inside my sleeping bag. And Ryan saw a pair of glowing eyes looking back at him. Was it a mountain lion? Was it a donkey? Was it an armadillo? It was loud. I'm telling you. I'm pretty sure that was a mountain lion. I don't know. We'll have to look it up. They say mountain lion sounds like a screaming woman. Yeah. That was pretty close. I was leaving town. Colors fade. But I'm thinking we'll stay just for a little while. Let's lose track of time. Darling, stay for a little while. I heard you're turning away. So, trust your head upon my shoulder. Nothing in our way. It's colder but the days will be hard. Salta is our last city stop in Argentina. Where we give the bikes a full makeover. And rest and resupply for the next adventurous stretch. I've got a huge stack of papers here. And I'm almost at the Bolivian consulate. Hopefully, I can get a stamp now. Cross into another country. This has been such a fun camp. Our first night after leaving Salta. We're surrounded by horses and cows and birds. Our first lake in a while. Because the next lakes that we'll be seeing will be dried up salt lakes. Yeah, good camp. Thank you, Fisherman's Club. With only a few days left on our Argentinian visas. It's time to part ways with Argentina. But soon, we realize that we're in trouble. Today is cold. It's like five or six degrees. It's grey, which doesn't happen very often in Argentina. And we're climbing higher. Which means colder and greyer. If all goes well, then today is our last full day in Argentina. And we'll be sleeping at the pass tonight. And then back in Chile tomorrow. Let's hope. A snowstorm is brewing. And winds up to 100 kilometers an hour are expected. But we only have two days left on our visas. To pedal up a 4,200 meter pass. How on earth are we going to leave Argentina in time? Let's see how high we are. 2,108. Hola. Pablo. Ryan. Christian. Mucho gusto. It's impossible to mount the bikes now. In the winter. The wind is like... 80. Oh yeah. Straight ahead here is Bolivia. But we're going to turn right and go to Chile. If we can. No marker. It's our last stop in Argentina. Maybe. Maybe Yama. This could be it. Five hours later. No ride. We made friends. That was fun. But we didn't eat. We didn't drink. And there's still no hitch. It's been really hard. But it's 5 p.m. We don't give up. Maybe a truck will take us. Somewhere. Roland. Change of plans. After six hours of desperate hitchhiking and no hitch. We're gonna follow capitalism and pay money for a bus. Usually the buses don't take bikes. So that's why we were thinking of hitching. But this bus will take our bikes. Let's go to Chile, baby. Let's go, let's go. We just came through Chile. Through the border control here. Left Argentina for the final time. So we're officially done with Argentina. And we imported our bicycles here. So it's quite the process. Having to unload everything from under the bus. And then scan everything. So we're running circles through the border. With like 20 other people waiting on us. Where are we right now? We're in San Pedro de Atacama in the Valley of the Moon. And we're looking at our route here into Bolivia. These snow-covered volcanoes up there. We're gonna come in straight to the right of the one with the missing top. And that is... And that's the border to Bolivia. Eventually, once that snow melts off. So a bit of a bummer. We're stuck here for at least another week or so, I think. But maybe... It looks like it's melting off kind of quickly. So maybe it'll stay. We'll see what happens. But uh... Yeah. Maybe it's nice to have a break. I feel a little bit like... A little bummed. But heck, maybe it is good rest. And we're gonna go explore the desert a little bit tomorrow. And just camp and chill and hang out. And wait for all that snow to melt.