Having picked the bike up out of the gravel I pull the clutch in and hit the starter button. Nothing. The kill switch is on, the bike is in neutral. Try again. The bike won't start. I'm on the Carretera Austral, probably one of the remotest roads in the Americas, and the bike chooses to let me down for the first time. Oh good.
I'd left Esquel after arriving at 9pm the previous evening and a night in a smelly hotel. I had the choice of following Ruta 40 on the Argentine side of the Andes, or crossing back into Chile and taking the much tougher Carretera Austral, but I chose Chile because my guide book assured me that Ruta 40 was just mile after mile of pampas. A little before the frontier I passed the tiny Welsh enclave of Trevellin, but resisted the temptation to stop for traditional Welsh tea!! After Trevellin the road became gravel, and I knew it would stay that way for 500Km or so. Crossing the border again was painless, at Argentine customs they warned me about the spare tyres I was carrying, I have absolutely no clue what the guy was on about but I was in a hurry so assured him I completely understood, and thanks very much ;) I assumed he was telling me I might have to pay import tax on them in Chile, but he could just as easily have been asking if I thought Frankie Goes To Hollywood should make a comeback tour :)
The bike was searched again going into Chile, they seem really keen on stamping out drugs. No fancy x ray machines at the tiny border post, but they had a sniffer dog. I'd heard they even take a dim view of tea bags, but mine made it through unmolested. I got a little lost coming into Chile and almost made it all the way back to Argentina, before finding a signpost and heading towards the Carretera Austral. The gravel was easier with the new tyres, but still really tough on me. My hands started to go numb with vibration, and my back muscles started to knot with effort. Several times before I even made the Carretera Austral I thought I was going over in deep gravel, but the tyres allowed me to throw the bike around more and letting it slide about became easier.
Turning onto Ruta 7, the Carretera Austral, was kind of a small milestone as I'd read so much about it, and also because the bike passed the 20,000 mile mark for the trip (since Vancouver). Built by General Pinochet as a kind of exercise in making sure Argentina didn't misappropriate parts of Chile, the road linked many villages and gave them all a new lease of life. The scenery makes it one of the most amazing tourist routes anywhere - if you can handle the gravel.
I stopped for fuel and ice cream in La Junta, and enjoyed not being shaken around for the first time in hours. I was hoping to make the next town and had plenty of afternoon left, so after a leisurely chat with a schoolkid called Constanza, who's Dad was CYCLING the Carretera Austral, I got back on the bike and headed south. I got to some roadworks about a mile outside of town and followed a diversion sign up a deep gravel road, which was closed at the top. Some clown had obviously reversed the sign, so I went to turn around and yet again, dropped the bike in the gravel. And that was the end of that.
I couldn't pick the bike up as it was on a slope covered in gravel. After a couple of tries a young local lad came to the rescue and we righted the bike. Petrol was everywhere from the full tank. And the starter wouldn't work. I tried a couple of bump starts and nothing. I tried changing the ignition fuse, the extent of my mechanical skills. Nothing. Finally I tried percussive maintenance, the last resort of the inept, and a good thumping later, nothing.
I decided I would have to walk back into La Junta, and look for an hotel and a mechanic. There was a signpost for an hotel in 1Km so I thought I would try there first.
I checked into the hotel I'd seen and must have looked a state from trudging all the way back into town in the baking heat, with all my gear on, because the lady hotelier gave me a cold can of beer on the house. Then she ran me in her car down to pick up my heavy bag off the bike. She explained that her husband had a flatbed truck and we could get the bike when he returned home later.
After a couple of hours the husband, Alan, had managed to round up a few employees and we all went down with the flatbed and a plank to load the bike. Four of us got the bike on the truck and then ran it down to the town mechanic. By this stage it was gone 6pm but the mechanic was still ok to work on Red 5. His "shop" was a shed with no front, and it was surrounded by rusting junk and old car parts. He seemed to know his stuff though, and while he took the left side of the bike apart I made myself useful and helped his wife open jam jars ;)
It was getting dark by the time the guy found the issue - the clutch has a kill switch and is required to be pulled in to start the motor. The cable of the switch was out, and simply replacing it fixed the issue. The bike roared into life. I'd explained to the hoteliers that I had no cash and they had told the mechanic they would pay him. I could then settle with them on VISA. As I was about to leave the garage, some friends of the mechanic spotted the heat rash on my leg and wouldn't let me leave until they'd dressed the wound. So there I was, tired and hardly able to stand straight, balanced on one leg having a bandage applied by the lady while her husband found his camera and took pictures, much to the general amusement of everyone :) That'll teach me to wear shorts.
It never ceases to surprise me just how things have a way of working out. Solutions always seem to present themselves in the end - someone is always there to lend a hand.
Frase.
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