Mendoza Wineries

January 22, 2014

Today we left the lake... but not after going swimming again.   We headed towards Mendoza.  We grabbed some more groceries and started looking for a motorcycle shop. Kyle´s front bearings have over 20,000km and have some play in them.  We found a shop but they were closing!  In Argentina shops close from 2:00 to 5:00pm.  It´s really annoying!   After talking to the owner for a few minutes he let us borrow a hammer and punch.  We changed the bearings in the street in about 15 min.  We left the tools inside the open window of the shop.

Hard at work! 

Endless vinyards with the snowcapped Andes behind.  Mendoza, Argentina. 

Grapes.  Harvest is typically in March.

We randomly found Mevi Vineyards.

We started with a wine tasting.

Trevor deciding which three he would try.  You decide by placing the empty glass on the flavor/ kind you want to try.

One of the family members giving us a tour.  It was in Spanish...  Luckily the girl on the right was working at the vineyard for the summer and spoke perfect english and translated for us.  All the grapes are harvested in one week and put into these vats.  Then after tons of testing they are bottled or placed in oak barrels.  It was interesting.

Oak barrels for the reserve stock.   The barrels are made from french or American Oak and cost $400-$800 USD.  They can only be used for 2 years!

Tons and tons of bottles of wine.

Into Argentina

January 20, 2014 Valparaiso, Chile to just across the Argentina border in the Andes. 250km.


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Crazy switchbacks climbing the Chile side. 

Chile imigration... We waiting in line for awhile (over an hour) until we realized we didnt need to do anything here.  We met Gary here.  Gary was on his way home back to Toronto after taking a 7 day horse expedition over the Andes.   Turns out he works for CN and knows Phils dad.  Small world.

Waiting in line for the Argentina Customs etc.   Another hour. 

Finally near the front.  Turns out Trevor burnt his Chile bike papers while he was cleaning out some old papers from other border crossings.  Whoops!  We played dumb and managed to get our bikes through with little problem. 

When we first pulled up we got a sheet with one stamp on it..... Random.

By the end there were 5 stamps!  We passed it to the policeman on the wayout.  He didnt need to look at the rest of our papers which was nice.

Camping spot off the highway, in a dry riverbed. 

It was extremely windy.  Tested the limits of our cheap tents.

Trevor opted to sleep without the tent under the open sky. Tons of stars!

January 21, 2014
Today we drove a short way to the small touristy town of Uspallata.  We grabbed some groceries, tried to get some Argentina pesos from the bank machine and used the internet for a while.  No luck on the peso´s but we converted our few leftover Chile pesos.

Later on in the afternoon we found this sweet lake/camping spot away from everyone. After a bit of offroad riding we camped on the cliff.  It was great to swim after sweating uncontrollably for most of the day.

Cliff jumping

The french judge gives this a 9/10

Stew for supper!

Dinner with a view...

Blasting south through Chile.

January 16, 2014 Antofagasta to beach camping just outside of Chanaral, Chile.  400km.


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We stayed up late last night and hit the road around 2:00pm!  Honey jacks may have played a roll in the late start.

We passed the famous hand in the desert. There wasn't much else to see today.  Tons of uninhabitated desert.   

Halfway through the day we filled up at the only gas station we saw in 200km. Fast going but extremely boring riding.

We had a supper of mashed potatoes and leftover bbq meat.  MMM.  The days are getting longer and we had sometime to relax before it got dark.

January 18, 2014  Chanaral to a Beach outside of La Serana, Chile 600km ish,

We continued blasting south on the Panamerica Highway.

Around lunch we stopped in the beautiful town of La Serena.  We grabbed some groceries at Walmart and picked up two front tires.  Kyle's front tire has the two large holes and Trevor's (replaced in Nicaragua) is wearing unevenly. 

Later that evening we changed them while cooking supper on the beach.

January 19, 2014 La Serena to Valparaiso, Chile.

A motorcross race just outside of Valparaiso

All of the Dakar vehicles packed up and ready to ship.

Pulled out of town and started picking random roads that felt like they were heading north east.

Found a nice spot to camp away from a construction road and had good fire! (doesnt happen very often)

The next morning we checked the valves on the bikes and headed towards the border for Argentina!

Another day in Antofagasta with a great Canadian host!

January 15, 2014 Antofagasta, Chile


Vic welcomed us into his home for a place to stay and hang out today. He planned an awesome bbq dinner for tonight.

We packed up our stuff and picked up our laundry then we went to the beach  for awhile.  Later me met Vic at his shop when he was done work for the day.

We followed Vic as he blasted through traffic on his KTM.  So light and fast.  We stopped by the Suzuki dealership to buy some air-filter oil and chain oil.

Soon we were back at his house and had the charcoal BBQ going! Heaps of food! Yum!

Later on Vic took us up to a mountain above the city to check out some abandoned mining caves.  Our bikes are parked inside the mountain.  Very cool.  We all ended up staying up late talking...  Honey Jack... mmmm.

We had an amazing time with you Vic.  Thank you soo much!   See ya in Canada!

Antofagasta Chile, Back to the Pacific Coast!

January 14, 2014 Calama to Antofagasta, Chile. 215km.


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We made the uneventful drive to Antofagasta.    We spent a couple hours trying to find a cheap hotel/ hostel with bike parking.  We ended up finding a small family run place for about $50 a night.  Its pretty bad but we couldn't find anything else cheaper.  Next we headed out to find some internet and get some laundry done.  The places we found were around $30 for a load of laundry so one of the ladies at our hotel offered to do it for us (by hand) for about $8.

The next morning we made oatmeal in the hotel room haha.

Then we set out to find a good place to watch the Dakar.  By looking at the map we figured they would head south into town by the coast. 

We found nothing but desert and a flat tire for Kyle.  This time the front.  This tire is originally Trevors and the previous slice reopened apart from a new hole.  So we removed the tubliss system and put a standard tube in for now.  We will have find another tire in coming days as we dont trust this one. 

We headed back to town and found people watching the bikes come in.  They were forcing people to walk up the hills to watch as it was dangerous to drive vehicles up the racetrack.  When the police asked us if we from the Dakar we without skipping a beat said yes and were able to drive up the hill on the edges more or less. The bikes were ripping!

There we met fellow Canadian Vic Lew from BC.  He is working in Antofagasta and has a sweet 2013 KTM 500 four stroke.  The following photos are from Vic.

The Monster Energy Team had 11 AWD Mini's in the Race.  The last two year they won the car category.  This one caught a tiny bit of air!

Toyota Hillux race truck drifting a corner.

Red Bull race truck in the fullsize class. Huge trucks!

 One of the spectators doing an insane dune hill climb in his jeep. 

Throughout the afternoon Vic made a couple of phone calls and managed to get 2 extra bivouac tickets.  Bivouac is the french name for the exclusive pit area for the Dakar.  Here fans can walk around and meet the racers. Tickets generally cost $500 each+.  We were ecstatic!  This was one of Kyle's dreams!  We spent the next couple hours wandering through checking out the sights. 

Repairs and tear down after a long day of riding.

Each team had a supply truck with tons of spare parts.  Teams were allowed one spare engine per car and three transmissions. 

Tires..... On bikes they put on new tires daily.  Due to import laws all old tires must stay with the team and leave the country.  We could have used some of those old tires!

Monster Energy Mini Section

Not all teams had huge sponsorships.  This team's supply truck looked like it ran in some of the original Dakar Races in Africa.  Definitely some history here.  It was an air cooled diesel!

A garage on wheels. 

Massages for the riders!

Lots of Russian, Cech and French teams.

Navigation is done with paper rollers.  Eg. 3.6km then take hard right.  Which rolls with the odometer.

Then we found a team with a Canadian driver (team is made up of Americans, Canadians and Mexicans).  The team is mostly made up of retired car enthusiasts who now live in Cabo, Mexico.  More information here: http://www.marathonrally.com/news/dakar_rally_2014_el_martillo_team_of_canadians_mexicans_americans.23805.0.html

Its their first time to the Dakar and first time using this brand new car!  They have completed (and won) several races in Baja.  They were doing well now but had a rough start in earlier stages.  In the first two days they went through four clutches (two of which were changed on the field by the drivers) We wished them all the best!

What an sweet day, one that we will not soon forget!

After leaving the race we headed over to Vic's work (shop) to clean our air filters and have a few beers. Vic has a sweet Jeep Tj with a turbocharger!  Kyle and Vic had to talk Jeep for awhile.

What an amazing day!