So in the coming months we will actually be cycling from Libya to the Mediterranean Sea, crossing it to Greece, from where we will cycle through former Yugoslavia, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland and Germany to finally arrive in Denmark. ๐

We created an upside down map to make this story clear, hopefully. If not… whatever, it’s a long way south ๐
We always thought that the south of Patagonia was very deep south, but it is actually just as far too the south as Denmark is to the north, seen from the equator.
Because it is quite a long piece, we will divide the blogs from Argentina and Chile into several stories. This blog is about Northern Argentina where we will pick up the famous Ruta 40 and tells till city of Mendoza.
Enjoy reading.

It was already getting dark when we entered the migration office. They where still open so we pushed all our stuff through an X-ray machine, got our passports stamped and here we are… Argentina.

Because it was already late we checked in at a nearby cheap hostel. The entrance was through a small shop. The room was freezing cold, the TV in the room only showed some grey contours from what a movie or show could be but the shower where hot.

The highest point of this part of the route, 3780 above sealevel. Can’t remember the exact year but is was definitely time for cookies.

When we checked our map before we started this road we saw also a traintrack. But this track had big gaps in it on certain places . Now we know why; the traintrack just stops so now and than.

Sergio, a trucker from Brazil. Drives between Southern Brazil and Northern Chile in a week time. He asked us if we needed fresh water from Brazil. How can we say no?

In a ditch on the side of the road drinking wine and waiting for the sun going down so we can put up our tent in the dark, hidden for the traffic.

Anne and Sergio from Brazil with 3 year old Jamil in the trailer. They are cycling from Brazil to Mexico.

And we thought we have hard times sometimes. Pffff… this is really hardcore, deep respect on these steep mountain passes.

The first kilometers on the famous Route 40. One of the longest roads in the world. We “just” have to cycle 4338km to hit the border of Tierra del Fuego from where it’s another 600km to Ushuaia.

No towns at all in the area, no light pollution so millions of stars at night. @ ISO3200 | 10mm | f/4.0 | 30sec

Most funny guy we met on the road so far. We bumped into him at a gasstation and had a fascinating conversation about the Big Bang, The end of the universe and everything in between.

At the top we met Veronica from Chile. Cycling just by her own around South America, making money by being a street artist.

We were running out of food and the next town for buckle up food again was a few days cycling ahead of us. We were thinking what to eat at night, a car stopped, a guy jumped out and did give us two huge sandwiches with schnitzels and fresh veggies. Is that karma out what? ?

We couldn’t find petrol for our stove nearby so we tried it with alcohol but our MSR stove didn’t burn on it. So we build our own stove out of two Coca Cola cans. The cooking was much slower than usual but it worked ๐
After a few days Mendoza we cycled further to the south to cross the border into Chile, a bit south of San Martin de Los Andes. The next blog will show hard winds, long gravel roads and beautiful National Parks.
Stay Tuned.
Kim & Arjan
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