So. Ruta 40. My wayward journey.
I woke up in Ranquil Norte with sore arms. I guess I put some real upper body effort into controlling my bike on the gravel the day before.
Slowly, slowly, I packed up my camp. I wasn’t really in the mood to keep going, but Ranquil Norte was basically a collection of houses and a few stray dogs, and wasn’t the most appealing place for a day off.
It was nice to be back on the pavement. I felt like I could actually bike again. The ride started out with a lot of downhill cruising, and I started to feel more optimistic. The land stretched out on all sides of me, with rolling hills and colourful mountains in the distance. At one point, a tiny fox-like animal popped up and ran across the road ahead of me. I passed through Barrancas, and although the store was closed, the tourist info centre was more than happy to top off my water.
But then it got really, really, really hot.
And then I got really, really, really slow.
My bike was making a weird noise. Actually, it was making multiple weird noises. Creaks, groans, and squeaks. An odd metallic twang. The bike was not alright.
I dismounted and did a quick inspection. Somehow, my front wheel had come wildly out of alignment, to the point where it was intermittently rubbing on the fork of my bike. And because the wheel was so off-centre, the brakes were rubbing like crazy. Between these two issues, it was amazing I was making any forward progress at all.
I did a quick adjustment and was able to reset my wheel somewhat, but not all the way. And as soon as I started biking, it started to make its way back to its crooked position.
Great. In the desert with a broken bicycle. All part of the plan, obviously.
I was a few kilometres out of Buta Ranquil, so I kept going. It seemed better than standing on the side of the road.
Buta Ranquil turned out to be a cute town with colourful buildings, a lot of horses, and men wearing fancy outfits (I later learned there was a horse festival that weekend, so if you ever visit Buta Ranquil don’t be disappointed by the lack of horses and fancy men). I saw a sign for the campground, so I followed it. I saw another sign, so I followed that. I kept following the signs and I just kept finding more signs, and I still hadn’t found a campground. I was now on the very edge of town, staring down a dirt road, which was sort of giving me flashbacks to the day before.
A truck pulled up. “Camping??” Crowed a woman inside.
“Sí,” I said tiredly.
And then she jumped out, tossed my bike in the back of her truck, gestured for me to get in, and took off the down the road with me bumping along beside her.
“It is my son’s campground,” she said in Spanish. “Where are you from?”
“Canada.”
“Sola?” (Alone?)
“Sí, estoy sola,” I answered, never totally certain if I was using the right form of ‘I am,’ since Spanish has two.
We pulled into a farmyard in a cloud of dust, and a very large man appeared. She explained the situation in rapid Spanish as he lifted my heavily laden bicycle out of the truck with ease. The woman drove off as quickly as she had arrived, and the man and his wife sat me down and gave me water with ice. A series of children appeared, all of whom looked exactly like their father, who apparently has very strong genes.
Nicole, the wife, decided I should camp right beside their house because then the wifi signal would reach my tent, and she figured I should talk to my family. I set up my tent, took a shower, and proceeded to meet a wide variety of baby animals – puppies, kittens, chicks, and a calf named Hermanito. Then, exhausted by the day’s events, I promptly fell asleep.
In the morning, the family invited me to have breakfast with them, which turned out to be burning hot coffee, cheese-and-mayonnaise sandwiches, and packaged cupcakes (listen up, trendy brunch restaurants – a new classic combo is on the scene). I asked if there was a bus to Chos Malal, the closest town with a bike mechanic.
“Not until Monday,” they told me.
It was Saturday.
And thus began my first foray into fully intentional hitchhiking.
I rode my creaking bike back to the highway. I set myself up in the dusty parking lot of the tourist info centre. I tried to plaster a trustworthy sort of expression on my face. And then after a few minutes I went into the tourist centre and asked if maybe there was a bus that day to Chos Malal after all.
Sadly, there was not. But the woman who worked there gave me more water, the wifi password, and said if I couldn’t find a ride I could sleep in the info centre for free.
So I put on some sunscreen and went back outside. And within ten minutes, I found myself in the truck of Romero, a dentist from Buta Ranquil who didn’t really care for the horse festival and had decided to get out of town for the day.
We had a halting conversation about our families, our jobs, and our dogs. Romero thinks Buenos Aires is very pretty but has too many people. He likes the wide open land and quietness of Buta Ranquil. He has lived there all his life, except when he went to dental school in the city.
Upon arriving in Chos Malal, we found the bike shop to be closed. The other bike shop was also closed. They would reopen on Monday. So Romero took me to a tiny hostel and I settled in for a longer-than-expected stay.
The only other people at the hostel were an Argentinian family. They greeted me and the owner said something about them in Spanish, but I didn’t really understand. Then the owner went away and the family disappeared and I had the hostel and its speedy wifi all to myself.
Chos Malal is quite nice, if not exciting. I went to the supermarket and bought a staggering amount of fruit, which I then proceeded to eat with great enthusiasm (I’d mostly had crackers, cookies, and instant noodles for several days in a row). After wandering aimlessly for a few hours, I went back to the hostel to study my maps while eating empanadas (Argentinian empanadas are better than Chilean ones because they don’t insist on putting olives in them).
Around 11, I went to bed. There was no sign of the Argentinian family, or their stuff, so I assumed that the Spanish I hadn’t understood earlier was informing me that they were leaving and their stay at the hostel was over. I was the only person there, so I locked the door and went to sleep.
A few hours later, in the middle of the night, I was awakened by a sharp rapping on my window. There was a stranger outside, telling me to open the door.
“No!” I said, because I do not make a habit of opening doors for strangers in the middle of the night. Perhaps this was the moment people are always referring to when they ask me if my world-travelling antics are safe.
But as I became a little more awake, I realized the person outside was still there. And she sounded tired, not like she wanted to rob the hostel. “Open the door,” she said again in Spanish.
“¿Tu eres la familia?” I said – you are the family? I probably said it wrong, but it was close enough that she assured me that they were indeed the family and they would like to come inside and go to bed. So I sheepishly unlocked the door, and we all went to bed. The next day, I apologized using Google Translate. So hopefully all is forgiven, but I’m not sure, because my Spanish is still pretty wacky.
After an almost excessive amount of R & R, I finally got my bike fixed. But nothing in life is ever simple, so by the time my bike was in working condition, Chos Malal and the surrounding area were firmly in a heat wave. Temperatures of at least 36 degrees Celsius were projected for every day of that week.
Have you ever biked in a desert during a heat wave, with hundreds of kilometres between towns, no shade, and no water sources?
Me neither. And I wasn’t about to start.
I’m stubborn but not stupid, so with a sigh of resignation, I bought a bus ticket to a town about 400 kilometres south – San Martin de Los Andes. Buying a bus ticket felt like inching just a little bit closer to giving up. I asked myself that universal, age-old philosophical question – are buses part of a bike trip? Humanity has long pondered this, and the answer is still unclear. But at least I wouldn’t die of dehydration before seeing a single Patagonian lake.
So at 7am on the morning of my departure, I rode my now fully functional bicycle to the bus terminal. The driver happily loaded it into the luggage compartment, taking care not to damage the rear derailleur. I climbed aboard, and we headed off down Ruta 40 toward Zapala, where I would have to change buses.
When we arrived in Zapala, I collected my bike and walked confidently into the ticketing office. The next leg of the trip was with a different company. I walked up to their window, asked for a ticket to San Martin de Los Andes, and-
“No bicicletas,” the ticketing agent said in a bored tone.
And in that moment, every word of Spanish I had ever known took flight from my mind. I didn’t know what to say, or what to do, or what interpretive dance to perform in a situation like this. It was 200 kilometres to the next town. It was 37 degrees.
Several people in line turned to me and said “no bicicletas!” while gesturing emphatically to a sign that also said “no bicicletas.” I didn’t know how to tell them that yes, I understood my bike could not go on this bus. I just didn’t know what to do instead.
The ticket agent wrote down “Via Cargo. 12 de Julio” on a piece of paper and handed it to me. But the office labeled Via Cargo was boarded up! And what did the 12th of July have to do with anything?
So I did what any strong, confident woman would do in a situation like this: I sat down on a bench in the bus station and started to cry.
Ruta 40 had so far felt like an unmitigated disaster. Broken bikes, unrideable roads, and uncooperative bus companies. And before that, Paso Vergara – a challenge I chose myself but couldn’t overcome. On top of everything, I hadn’t met anyone who could speak fluent English since I left Santiago almost two weeks ago, and my Spanish was still toddler-level. I was all alone in rural Argentina, and I didn’t know what to do.
But Argentina has taught me many things, and one of these things is that Argentinians are immeasurably kind and generous. So after about a minute of crying, a nice lady came to my rescue. She fetched the Bus Station Inspector, who patiently spoke with me using Google Translate. Once she understood the problem, she burst into action.
Before I knew it, I was bumping across town in the other Station Inspector’s Fiat. My bike was hanging out of the trunk of the tiny car, held in place by a single strap that simultaneously kept the trunk from flying open and prevented my bike from sliding onto the road. Marcella, my newly appointed chauffeur, was smiling at me and telling me not to be sad as she continuously stalled the car halfway through intersections.
We turned onto a street called Julio and pulled up at number 12. It was the main office of Via Cargo, and the paper I’d been given back at the bus station suddenly made sense – it was an address. We rolled the bike inside, and I paid $20 to ship it to San Martin de Los Andes. They wrapped it in black plastic and off it went, on a journey of its own. I guess my bike is also a solo traveller now.
Marcella took me back to the bus station and handed me off to the original Station Inspector, who helped me buy a bus ticket. Ticket in hand, I sat on one of my bags and waited for my chariot to arrive.
As the hours dragged on, it became apparent that the bus was not on time. People kept coming up to me and assuring me that the bus was still coming, just late. Even the initially indifferent ticket agent made sure I knew. They probably didn’t want me to start crying again.
The bus finally pulled into the lot, an hour and a half behind schedule. I stowed my bags beneath, and climbed aboard. We rolled onto the highway, still on Ruta 40. And so my journey continued, a bike trip with no bike, through a landscape that looked suspiciously like Saskatchewan.
It seemed like I’d reached my quota of “things that can go wrong in one week.” So those are some famous last words for you, I guess.
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