Northern Argentina - Jujuy, Salta & Fiambala

Most of our time in the border town of La Quiaca was spent on the thrilling task of trying to obtain bike insurance.

Upon asking a couple of locals we were directed to an unmarked door in a shabby corner building, where we could apparently get insurance. We thought they were having us on as we stepped over a grubby dog into what felt like the front room of someone's home, but believe it or not tucked in the corner was a very pretty lady who indeed could offer us moto insurance.

We gave her all the necessary info and after an hour or so of plugging it all into her relic of a computer suddenly she looked a bit concerned. She told us that because they had never insured a bike this old before, she didn't know if it would be possible, and we would have to wait until 10am next morning when she would hear from head-office in Buenos Aires.

Border crossings and insurance hadn't made for the most enjoyable or straight-forward day so we retreated to our very civilised hostel and put it all to the back of our minds. As requested we returned in the morning to the insurance place, where they now needed to take photos of the bike to send to head office to see if they could insure us. Three hours later, we were handed our policy. Not ideal, but far preferable than having waited that long and then been told it wasn't possible!

We were finally free to explore Argentina, so we head south to Jujuy, descending from the altiplano through vivid multi-coloured rock formations. Upon exploring the city (pronounced HooHooey) we begun to realise just how different Argentina was to the other South American countries we'd visited. For want of a better word, it was a lot more 'civilised' than anywhere we'd been for a very long time, with a bit of a European feel, and this feeling was further cemented upon heading further south to Salta, where it felt more like we were having a weekend away in Barcelona than exploring the South America that we'd come to know.

Salta Architecture

Trying to be Civilised

But we certainly weren't complaining - it was nice to feel a bit more at home for the first time in so many months, particularly after feeling like we'd pretty much been on another planet for the last few weeks. For Tom's birthday we treated ourselves to a wonderful Argentinian steak and far too much Malbec, before heading towards on of the infamous Andean border crossings to Chile.

Route 40 started a little bit disappointingly as we head south out of Salta but soon turned stunning as we entered a landscape full of red looming cliffs and more multi-coloured mountain-sides. We sailed through vineyard after vineyard, stopping off in the beautiful Cafayate for some lunch (later wishing we'd stayed here - we'd definitely recommend spending a night or two if you're going this way).

We spent the night in Santa Maria, a pretty nothing-y town where the cheapest hotel we could find (after visiting each one at least once over a period of two hours) was US$40 - the most we'd ever spent on a hotel room and one of our least remarkable stays. We realised that this increase in cost was becoming a common theme in Argentina, and while our other hotels had at least been pleasant, this increased cost of accommodation was leaving us little to no budget to do anything other than sleep, refuel the bike and eat a minimal amount...

We then head to Fiambala, the last town before the border at Paso de San Francisco, where we planned to spend the night before heading out early for a massive day's ride into Chile.

Cruising across the plains five kilometres from the town we were making excellent time, and started discussing whether we should push on and head for a hotel that was in the middle of nowhere near the border to make tomorrow less intense.

However, as we were discussing it (ie shouting at each other through the wind as we drove along) we felt the rear of the bike sink, and upon pulling over our fears were confirmed - our first puncture.

Not bad going really - thirteen countries and over 12,000 kilometres, but we had so wanted to manage the whole trip with no puncture. Alas it had happened, and with 5km being too far to ride with two of us and a flat tyre, we had no choice but to change it at the side of the road, where the fierce winds were whipping sand everywhere. But Tom had it done in half an hour, and feeling very pleased with ourselves for being so organised and having spare inner-tube and mini-compressor with us, we head into town.

We stopped off at a cashpoint as we had only enough left for half a tank of fuel. However unbeknownst to us, the town's ATMs were notorious for either not working, or having no money in them. So after an hour of trying the three of the town's ATMs multiple times we found ourselves with no money and needing to pay for accommodation, dinner and fuel. And of course nowhere accepted Visa.

To cut a long story short we got chatting to a local chap named Johnson on the side of the road, and managed to explain our predicament. He told us that if we went to see his friend who worked in the pharmacy and said that he had sent us, that she would probably be able to put our card through her machine and give us cash. We just had to wait half an hour for it to reopen at 6pm.

Sure enough Gabriela pulled through, so we could finally go and find a place to stay and have some supper. We filled our tank, plus an extra seven litres in two other containers (as there is no fuel between Fiambala and the first town in Chile, nearly 500km away) and settled in to prepare for our thirteenth border crossing.

#argentina #fiambala #puncture #salta