4-8-10 Rio Chico Gangster Camp, Argentina

It was obvious we weren’t in Chile anymore as our little hotel was nicely heated and owned by a friendly old lady, something we haven’t had for quite some time. We found a log cabin-styled restaurant where I had a early birthday dinner of pumpkin soup, empanadas of beef and corn, a chorizo followed by a mushroom smothered steak with a syrah and a lager for good measure.

We took off the next morning to make up for the 3 hours scenic detour we made to the north the day before.  We pulled into the dusty little town of Bajo Caracoles for a break as it was the only place for miles around. There's nothing out here, no cars for half an hour is the norm. The previous day while lost we saw nobody for about 4 hours.

I ate some birthday quiche though they called it a ‘torta’, as well as a pizza of sorts. I chatted with the gas station owner who recommended we bed down near Rio Chico as it was a pretty area and would be quiet and 'muy tranquilo'.

We also came to find out that two riders had been killed in the previous month on the Ruta 40. A Brazilian guy crashed an hundred clicks back a few weeks ago as well as a young American who crashed not far from town the previous week. Another reminder to be careful out on the road.

After topping off the tanks to their fullest we hit the dusty road again which we've gotten good at riding. Mark rides in the lead as his bike can take bad bumps/rocks/holes, better than mine. I watch his back tire from about 20 yards off to see if it bounces or does anything abnormal, if it does, then I pay more attention. Often times his rear will fish-tail for a few repetitions signaling sand or gravel in which case I slow down with my rear brake and downshift a gear then accelerate upon hitting the loose material which pulls me through it just fine.

Wind hasn't been much of a problem for us though this section of road is known to be one of the windiest around. There was a slight breeze blowing form our right which was appreciated as it blew the dust kicked up by Mark's tires away from the road so I could see better.

We hit pavement a few times where I took the lead as my bike has better brakes and can withstand hitting critters (as well as Peruvians I found out) better than Mark’s bike. I dodged two armadillos out here. Had no idea they existed down here. Thought they were 'Made in Texas'.

It was getting slightly dark and we crossed the Rio Chico and pulled off to a little abandoned building with no roof and 'No Pasar' spray painted on the side of it.
"Looks like a good spot for a gangster camp" Mark said.

We poked around a bit then rode out to the river where we saw what might be a better spot down the way a kilometer or so.

We found a dense little thicket of willows next to a bridge that was well hidden from the road and didn't have 'No Pasar' written anywhere.

We only had a little firewood left (yes, I've been carrying firewood with me, that does sound a bit strange, I know. It's small pieces, about the diameter of a baseball bat that burn hot for a really long time, great for cooking) so I decided to make an 'Indian fire' with what we had left. This consists of building a small teepee of our good pieces of wood which we then tucked a bunch of wood shavings under. I lit the teepee and let it burn for about 10 minutes before taking each log down from teepee arrangement and laid each one flat on the ground with just their burning ends touching, like a wagon wheel. This concentrates the fire and doesn't burn the wood too fast and also provides a good spot to put a pot of water. As they burn, you tap the ends inward towards the hot coals.

We finished our raviolis and were contently sipping our wine. We each had a 'manly juice box' which had no straw nor spout on it, so a corner was cut off for drinking. Mid sip I heard a diesel truck pull onto the bridge which was 50 feet away from us, on the other side of the willows. We saw a spotlight shine out into the area to our left, then we heard a few rounds crack off from a semiautomatic rifle. Mark and I both dropped to our chests in the dirt. I shoved a pannier in front of a our little fire to block the glow as Mark sloshed some water on it killing the flames. We retreated behind my bike and each took out our knives and grabbed a chunk of firewood for clubbing purposes. We could hear talking coming from the bridge and a few more rounds fired off.
"I've got a tourniquet and some puncture-wound compound in the top of my pack' Mark whispered. "Damnit, I wish I had a gun" (Mark did tours in Iraq and Afghanistan with the Army and is used to being shot at, but not without the ability to return fire).

By this time I had to pee. Bad. Real bad. The occasional round would go off, most of which were directed off the other side of the bridge.  We were still laying on our chests, behind my bike when I decided that I had to relieve myself and did so in a logical manner, like a dog.

The truck drove off, with the spotlight sweeping the wide pampas grass flats but no more shots were heard.
The night was clear and cold with a great view of the stars as there's no light pollution down here.  We heard tons of little critters running around our campsite in the dark as well, one of which ran over of my head which was covered by my sleeping bag.

This morning we woke up and checked over by the bridge where we found a huge pile of ostrich feathers. We think it was ostrich poachers who were shooting last night but don't really know.

4-7-10 Los Antiguos, Argentina

Somewhat lost, but in a good place nonetheless. We took a wrong fork in the road not long after crossing into Argentina from Chile. Looking at our map we saw a fork and thought we should take the left one. Looking back, we shouldn’t have taken it, the proper fork on the map was a few more kilometers off. We saw a sign for Los Antiguos and couldn’t find it on the map as it was much farther north than we were looking, on the shores of Lago Buenos Aires.


The road wasn’t bad, though. Freshly graded in some parts, nasty in others. We didn’t see a single car since crossing into Argentina to when we hit Los Antiguos about a hundred miles away. We saw a good variety of animals- condors, armadillos, ostriches, alpacas and sheep by the hundred. I came around a corner to find a large alpaca on the road that was hemmed in by a cliff face and a river. He saw me and took off running down the road in front of me, legs flailing all about. Alpacas run like uncoordinated girls. I stayed about 20 feet off his rump, not wanting stress him too much and he eventually stumbled off the road and let me pass.

Later on I was riding along when I heard what sounded like steam hissing out of the bike. I did a sweeping glance over my gauges and all looked proper so I pulled over to see what was the matter. Upon stopping, I noticed a mess of twisted fence wire had become entangled in my crash bar and right boot and was dragging on the ground. Luckily it didn’t get caught in the rear wheel as well or I might be looking for a peg-leg and a trike.

4-6-10 Cochran, Chile

We decided to ride to Cochran, which was about 20 clicks south of the start of the road that would lead us to Argentina. A little backtracking would be necessary, but we thought it would be worthwhile as we were hoping for a good hostel with wifi and some good food. We found a little hospedaje run by a sour old lady and dropped off our stuff before running over to the local library which had fewer books than my own collection. There they had the only computers in town, three of them. I checked just a few emails as it was slow. There’s no WIFI in this town either. It’s hard to imagine a life without easy internet access. It might have a few perks, but not many.


Next we shot over to the grocery store. We were hungry. Very hungry. We hadn’t seen a grocery store since Puerto Montt and were happy to see real food again. It was big general store that had old-fashioned irons meant to be heated on a stove, Stihl chainsaws, Taurus revolvers, dutch ovens, 35mm film, cassette tapes, stoves, sides of beef, frozen chicken parts and lots of canned goods. Hot dogs were four bucks for a package of 8! Pan was cheap, a dollar for about a dozen hamburger bun sized pieces.

We wanted to cook something that would allow us to take advantage of the kitchen as we had one at our disposal back at the hospedaje. We found two bottles of Tabasco sauce and went wild. Hadn’t had a good spicy sweat since somewhere in Central America, can’t really recall where. Down here it’s all Aji, a non-spicy pepper that the locals think is devilishly hot. It is not.

We threw 8 dollars of Tabasco in the cart, several packages of pasta and sauce, some hot dogs as there was no chorizo available, cookies, eggs, juice, milk. We were going to eat well.

We pulled up to the inefficient line and were about 6 people deep. We waited for the checker to return as she’d disappeared for a while. Not sure what she was doing. There was a sacker standing all by her lonesome that probably could have done what the checker was off doing, who knows. Finally she returned and started working again.

We opened a bag of cookies and ate them all since we hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. Coconut crème. I think they were good, don’t really know as I wasn’t concerned with the taste.

‘They take visa here, right?’ Mark asked

‘Yeah, I think I saw a sign out front’

We gave each other a bit of a nervous look.

“I’ll go check” I said

Sure enough, no VISA sign.

I asked the sacker if they took tarjetas de credito. ‘Oh, no’ she said in a condescending tone. Mark had been watching me from about twenty feet off as I asked her and he must have seen the look on my face as he had a horrified look on his when I glanced over him. I instantly burst out laughing.

We were pretty shocked that they didn’t take credit cards as virtually every place this size does, especially since it was the largest store in town. We were low on efectivo, not having near enough to cover our feast so we pushed the cart to the back of the store, threw more than enough coins in the empty cookie bag and walked out to the bikes still hungry. We rode to a papas fritas stand and ordered 1000 pesos of papas, a package of mustard and two of ketchup. Very good fries. Next we found another grocery store that was not unnecessarily packed and got a few essentials. Juice and pasta basically. We went home and had a meager but hot meal.

We met a guy from Wheatridge, Colorado at the little hospedaje. He was a divorced doctor looking for a piece of land down south. He said it was surprisingly expensive. He had exactly the same feeling of the average Peruvian and also of the Chileans which we have become to see as rather Peruvian in nature. He thought they drank ‘mate’ in order to stay occupied and avoid doing productive things. He was also put off by their rudeness at times.

The next morning we woke up seeing our breath under the half foot of blankets piled up on our beds. We walked out to our delectable breakfast which the owner provided. I had asked her the night before what breakfast consisted of. Her answer, “Café, café con leche, te, te con leche, pan, pan tostado, mantequilla y marmelada.”

She said it all with such enthusiasm as if it was a secret family recipe. This is the typical breakfast down here in Chile unfortunately.

Breakfast is one of the things I miss most about home, and I’m not a huge breakfast eater typically. Dennys, IHOP and Waffle House all sound pretty good at the moment.

It was coldest in our room, but only slightly warmer in the little dining room area next to it. She had a heater going in the kitchen which was next to the dining room, separated by a closed door. Don’t want that heat to get to the guests now. Mark wore his blanked over his shoulders to breakfast. She had a stove in the dining room but it wasn’t burning despite a mountainous woodpile outside. Mark debated burning his passport for a little warmth.

We ate all five pieces of bread provided and guzzled the hot water which we flavored with instant coffee. I asked for more hot water but was denied. Mark and I both saw the humor in this batty old woman and decided to leave as soon as possible.

Mark wearing his blanket into the dining room infuriated the old lady.

‘Why is the blanket out here!?”

‘Um, because it is freezing’ I replied, stating the obvious.

‘We almost died from the cold last night, I think it’s warmer outside than in here’

(evil look from old lady)

‘Do you not have cold in the USA?’

‘It is much colder in the USA, but we use ‘califaccion’ (heat)’

Yep, it’s time to go.

4-3-10 Carretera Austral, Chile

We caught an overnight ferry from the town of Puerto Montt, Chile to the ghost town of Chaiten where we started riding the Carretera Austral. This is a famous highway along the coast of Chile that is about 500 miles long but only serves around 100,000 people. It is said to be very similar to Alaska in both population density, the type of people, and the scenery.


The ferry ride wasn’t that bad. Airplane style seating. We were cramped for half the night then a lot of people got off somewhere so Mark and I sprawled out and fell asleep. We woke up the next morning early and took a few pictures when the light was good then went back to sleep. We were later woken up and told that we had to leave as we were in port and our bikes were the last onboard and thus were the first to get off.

The town of Chaiten was eerie. It was condemned by the government after a volcano erupted in 2008 which still has a huge plume of steam and smoke coming out the top of it. The volcanic ash released during the eruption and subsequent pyroclastic flows diverted a river through the center of town and deposited an enormous amount of sediment in their little bay.

We hit dirt about 20 miles outside of town and quickly met Frank, a guy from Papua New Guinnea who has been riding a 2001 BMW F650GS for 8 years around the world. Yikes. He told us of 3 Kiwi guys our age who were further on down the road that we might see.

There aren’t regular stores out here for the most part, most stores are not much more than a living room or front porch of a family’s home. We stopped at one that had a little wooden sign saying, “PAN” and sure enough, an old lady inside had a large basket of fresh bread, basically the size of hamburger buns. We bought a dozen. I asked her if she had any firewood we could buy as everything seemed to be pretty well soaked. She went out back and filled a garbage bag full of freshly split dry wood and dragged it out to us before charging us about a dollar which we were happy to pay. I lashed on the pile of wood to my bike and we set off down the road again in search of a campsite.

Forty minutes later we came upon another little store built onto a home which advertised hot coffee so we stopped, but they didn’t have any coffee. They did have some beer and eggs which we gladly took off the lady's hands. We tucked the eggs into Marks luggage carefully and he then jammed the 6-pack into the chest of his motorcycle jacket as we wouldn’t be going far.

A few more miles down the dirt road I slowed down to look at a potential campsite when I hit a bump that jarred loose a piece of wood from my bike. It fell in the road directly in the path of Mark who hit it with his front tire, jumpin the bike into the air which and then lost his balance and fell off the left side of the bike, landing on his chest. It would have been an unremarkable crash except for the beer he had tucked in his jacket. He let out some loud moans while thrashing around in the dirt, unzipped his jacket and dumped the beers onto the road. No broken ribs, beers or eggs.

There weren’t many spots available for camping as much of it seemed to be fenced off with old wire and logs to keep the cattle in. We did, however, find a little spot near a bridge that wasn’t fenced off. We jumped the bikes off the road and tucked them into some trees and set up our ‘Gangster Camp’ as Mark calls it. It seems to be a somewhat fitting name as we have very little in the way of traditional camping equipment. We’ve got sleeping bags and pads which are a luxury. For a tent we have a piece of plastic we bought back in Argentina. Not a tarp, even, just a big piece of plastic and a length of rope. Cooking is done in various tin cans, the best of which I’ve bent into somewhat of a tea pot. Bowls have been fashioned out of tuna cans. Beer cans are also used widely in gangster camp for cooking operations as there often times seem to be empty ones around. Wine glasses are skillfully made from ripping off the top of a can as well. Oh the class! Our whole mess kit goes in a plastic bag which I tie onto the back of my bike which swings around and jingles quite a bit on the bumps.

I also forgot to mention the hot water heater I’ve created for the bike. It all goes back to when I was sick on the catamaran in the Caribbean. To occupy myself while sick I thought-up a little contraption to capture the heat from the right exhaust header of the bike. It is now finished after gathering parts from five countries. The basic concept is that I have a water reservoir, about 1.5 liters, that has two copper tubes coming out the bottom of it. One tube is short, about 8” and leads directly to a valve. The other hose is about 8 feet long and leads to my exhaust header which it is wrapped around perhaps a dozen times before running to the valve as well. When the reservoir is filled and the bike is running, the hot water will naturally rise up out of the coils around the header as cold water drops down towards the valve where it comes in contact with the hot pipe and is thus heated and rises back into the can. Starting with a cold bike and cold water I can scald my finger in less than 10 minutes. Might need to sell this little contraption to BMW for release on their 2012 models.

Maybe 4 cars passed us the rest of the evening. Had some good chorizos, red wine and bread tonight.

The weather was superb, couldn’t have been better. Cool in the shade and warm in the sun with clear skies which seem to be coveted here. The road is in pretty good shape which we were happy about as we really had no idea what we were getting into. The sun is always low in the sky which makes riding on dirt easier. The low sun casts shadows of even the slightest undulations and irregularities in the road which alert us to potential hazards. The shadows of tire tracks running parallel with the road are the most disconcerting as they are a sign of sand or silt. Likewise washboards are easily seen as are the random rogue rocks that stick up out of the path. With the sun directly overhead no shadows are cast which gives the same feeling of having flat light while skiing.

On account of the equally good weather this morning, April 4, we had a lazy start. I got the fire going again and we cooked up a two sausages and some scrambled eggs in a beer can that turned out fantastic. Also had some mate and chamomile tea as well as coffee and cappuccino. We like our hot beverages.

Around 11am we saw three yellow dirt bikes coming our way, it was the Kiwis that Frank had told us about. Great guys who we exchanged a lot of info with.

We hit the road about 1pm and rode for perhaps 20 minutes to the town of La Junta where we fueled up and ate some cheese, bananas, crouton-like crackers, coffee cookies, apples and trail mix. We also bought some 'CHILE PATAGONIA' stickers.

3-30-10 Gangster camping near Barrancas, Argentina

So, we DID manage to get out of that dinky little town last night where there was no gas. I went and asked everyone I could find, everyone, if they had any gas, er 'nafta' (not sure if that has any relation to north american free...?) So, finally saw a little moto shop in town. The guy sold us 20 liters of racing fuel, 103 octane I believe, which wasn't much more expensive than normal nafta. It was enough to get us out of town and down the road.
After an hour on the road it was getting hot and we were next to a huge river so we decided to go for a dip. Oh so nice! We stripped down and waded out into the river. It took a lot of willpower to fall backwards into the glacial melt but felt great once we got used to it. We dried off on some rocks and gave our cheeks some color as well.
We found some little spot south of Barrancas, just off the highway. We rounded up some sticks and made a little fire and cooked 10 hotdogs on a flat rock which provided some gritty sand for flavor. We watched The Gate Keeper on my laptop which I placed on my aluminum top box which doubled as a superb entertainment center for the night.

We apparently were in some ant preserve of sorts, they were everywhere! They kept to themselves for the most part though I did awake with a bleeding bite on my forehead.

3-29-10 Cholo Malas, Argentina

So I'm in some little hostel in the town of Cholomatas or chotomalas, someting like that. I don't really know. We're in a bit of a predicament at the moment. 'No hay nafta'! Nafta es gasolina aqui en Argentina. So yeah, there is no gas at either station here in town and we are low on fuel. The next station a few hours south is dry as well. So here we wait on the truck to arrive. It *might* arrive tonight. Then again, it might not. This is kinda fun though, as it forces us to take a break that we usually wouldn't and see different stuff, even if it's just a typical small town in Argentina. No tourists here.
So yesterday we got a terribly late start, don't wake up till 10 am. I guess it's due to the time change but even still, we go to sleep at midnight and expect to wake up at 8 but we just don't. We walked about a mile in search of breakfast which was hard as the few restaurants that we found didn't serve 'desayuno' which seems to be par for down here. Breakfast is bread and coffee or mate, not enough to keep our American hearts a-pumpin.

We got out of town circa 1pm and rode for a while through a volcanic flow area, tons of black lumpy rock por todos lados and a huge river as that we crossed frequently. The road was dirt and rough and gravelly at times.

We were having some trouble with this gravel and I was getting tired of it surprising me and getting me all 'puckered up' which is kinda fun, but not always appreciated. I decided that I would learn how to beat the gravel and made a point to ride directly into the deep stuff, zig-zagging back and forth, mocking it. Yes, I faultered some an almost crashed a few times, but I learned quick too. Not a master of it yet but no longer a novice.

Riding dirt is rather counterintuitive to riding street. Let me explain...when riding a motorcycle, if you want to go to the left, turn the bars to the right. This then makes the bike lean to the left, and thus turn to the left, it's called 'countersteering'. It's the very same on a bicycle. At low speed, however, say 0-2 mph you can steer directly, meaning steer left, go left without leaning. So the problem with dirt is when you hit deep gravel or sand that turns your front tire into a rudder and pushes the bike wherever it wants essentially. The only remedy to fix this is to accelerate out of it and steer directly where you want to go. Steering directly on pavement would make you flip over on your side, but being that we're in gravel, the bike kinda slides around underneath and thankfully does not flip.  Countersteering causes the bike to 'lowside' or slide sideways, resulting in a crash. It's an unnerving feeling when hitting this gravel, though, as my initial instinct tells me to slow down and steer normal, but in reality, I should speed up and steer abnormally, or directly.

3-24-10 Mendoza, Argentinaaaaahhhhhh

Had a bit of a confusing morning as we just realized that there is a 2 hr time difference from Chile to here. However... we have a feeling that this time difference was also present in Chile as well, we just didn't know it as time doesn't really matter much to us. We get up when it starts getting light and stop riding when it starts getting dark. In short, we missed our little shuttle out to the vineyards and had to arrange another.


Had a long day riding my bicycle between vineyards and have worked up a sizable hunger that ony a steak the size of my chest can satisfy. Obviously, red wine will be used to wash it down.
We rode quite a ways, maybe 15 miles along various back roads between vineyards, wine museums of other things of viticulture importance. I was particularly impressed with some enormous wine casks made of oak, perhaps 12’ in diameter and equally tall. Would make a great starting point for an unique study or library or perhaps a wine cellar.
Wine wasn’t the only draw in the location where we were. Numerous artesian-style confectionary delights were at hands. Small cheese and chocolate factories were to be enjoyed. We also hit a small distillery where we had a variety of blended liquors, coffee flavor, ducle de leche, rose hips and pomegranate were all superb, the absinthe was lethal though served in proper style with sugar and water. I doubt there are many repeat bottle buyers of absinthe.
We rode to a ‘beer garden’ which in the center of a vast field, all by itself. There was a breezy tent set up with a few couches underneath. Mark and I were enjoying some porters when an Israeli guy at an adjacent sofa said, “You ride a BMW, right?” I agreed somewhat suspiciously of this. “Are you at our hostel?” I inquired. “No, I remember seeing you in Antigua, Guatemala a few months ago, you used to sit in the same seat in the corner café by the plaza and you always parked your bike out front” “Yep, that was me”
En route to the beer garden, I had sprung a flat rear tire a few miles out which slowed me down considerably. The kind hostess offered to call us a taxi to get us back to the city and offered to bring our bicycles back to the rental shop which we gladly took her up on.
So dinner here is just as they do it in Spain, LAAAAAAAAAAATE. We didn't know it yesterday but we ate around 10pm thinking it was just 8 pm which worked fine for us. Dessert is typically served circa midnight.
We are really enjoying Argentina, this place is amazing. All the perks of Europe minus the crazy prices AND they speak Spanish! Lots of fun stuff to do, adventurous stuff, wine tasting, amazing countryside, good food, nice people. I will spend more time here in the future.

3-22-10 Rodeo, Argentina

(Sorry for the delay in posts, been out camping for a while. We're on track to hit the bottom of South America in about a week, weather permitting)

Had a stellar ride today from La Serena, Chile to Rodeo, Argentina through the Andes. We set out after a large breakfast of bread and marmalade at our German-owned hostel and pointed the bikes east. After an hour we started climbing up the huge valley which was lined with vineyards and olive trees by the thousand. The road continued on until we hit the Chilean customs office at about 6k ft elevation. There, we signed out of Chile and were in no-man’s land until hitting the Argentina customs office some 4 hours off. In between was quite the ride. We had heard that it was a high altitude pass and that it was cold at the top but were unsure exactly what that would mean to us. The road was narrow and full of gravel, slowing us down to around 15 mph for most of the ride. We started seeing glaciers above us, then below us and were hit with a little snow squall.


We hit the top of the pass which was over 15,000 feet around 2pm. I was thoroughly bundled up with my heated vest on and was fine except for my hands when I took them out of my gloves, they were instantly cold. I’ve never felt anything like it, but they started throbbing excruciatingly and didn’t stop when I put my gloves back on and grabbed my heated grips. My hands stayed like this until I dropped below 11k feet.

Mark was not doing well at the top. He was a little slow in answering questions and had a glazed look in his eyes. He’d had trouble at 11.5k feet a week before so it was no surprise that he wasn’t doing too well at our current elevation. I had him follow me closely for an hour or so, winding back and forth on the narrow cut in the mountain until we decided we needed a break for some water and bananas. Mark’s bike had virtually no power at this elevation. He has a smallish motor. Mine was dogging up high and his only has 20% of the displacement mine does, making him go at jogging pace for quite some time. Probably for the best though as his reactions weren’t all that crisp. Neither were mine. I had a hard time fastening my helmet even though I seemed fine mentally. I would multiply the numbers on the odometer to keep my mind thinking and I seemed to be doing fine, no slower than usual.

We hit pavement after about 90 miles of steep gravel and were quite content to be on it, despite it having lots of patches and torn-up spots. We made it to a military checkpoint then aduana some 36kms later. We are now at Rodeo, Argentina. OK little spot for Mark’s birthday. Had some pretty good sandwiches for $6 as well as a liter beer for about a third that.

3-19-10 Tocopilla, Chile

Mark was looking at the map in the morning when we saw that the road we'd be taking would skirt along the lenght of a decent-sized salar (salt flat of sorts). This was also the same area that the Paris Dakar Rally was run this year. They stopped doing it from Paris to Dakar as there were angry spear chucking locals en route...The map was poor but we could see that there was a dirt road leading off from our main road about 40 miles from the end of Iquique, where we were staying and thought it would be fun to check out.
We got some water and topped off the bikes and set our odometers to zero so we'd know where the turn was. Sure enough, at 40 miles, there was some random, unmarked road leading into the hills. There were some semi trucks on it with loads of salt from a salt mine down the way. On the tight corners there were always little piles of salt from it spilling out of the truck.
We made it to the salt mine where I asked a trucker how to get through the salar. He kinda paused and said that it was a hard road with lots of bumps. No problem, right? So he pointed us to the proper little track (as there were many) and we set off. The little track was just that, a set of tracks from a few previous 4-wheeled vehicles that skirted along the edge of the salar. Up little hills and down little valleys. Nothing too difficult. We then hit a section of 'bug dust' or 'moon dust' as we call it in the mining indurstry. It's bascially really fine, powdery dirt/sand, the consistency of powdered sugar. So, we both cut through it just fine, but I wanted to go ride through it again as it's kinda fun. Well, some might have called that poor judgement. I hit the powder going faster than I had the first time and the front of the bike got a little squirelly. The dust is deep and the tires sink in to the point that your wheel works like a rudder on a boat almost, strange feeling. In short, I got tossed off the bike. I humped the bike back to vertical and putted out of the bug dust, turned around and repeated the same process, crash and all, this time pinching my foot betweent he earth and my pannier. No damage to bike, sore foot.
We then kept riding and were a little uneasy as to the random little roads leading here and there as we didn't exactly know where to go. Mark's GPS had conveniently stopped working not long ago so we had to rely on our MAN-STINCTS, which were flowing strong this day (not to be confused with Man-Stinks). Basically, there was the ocean, then just inland was the main road heading south, just inland of that was a mountain range, and we were on the more inland side of that mountain range. We knew we had to go west to get out so we tried to go west when possible, which was not often.
We started getting into the foothills above the salar, just under the mountins and had a great overlook of the salar which looks like coral. Lots of big chunks of salt that are all weathered and, well, coral looking.
We thought we were going just fine and would pop over the mountain range when the trail dove towards the salar again, leading me down the steepest hill I've ever been on with that bike. I putted down nice and slow and didn't fall once.  Mark did great as well.
Just a few minutes later we realized we'd kinda dropped off into a bowl, and to get out, we'd have to ride up something as steep as what we'd just ridden down. Riding across the salar isn't an option as the salt chunks are the size of basketballs and are sharp.
I must say, it felt great to be out there. Yes, we were somewhat lost, but I knew I'd find a way out. I always do. We had some water with us, not a lot, and we knew the general direction we needed to go, we just didn't know how to get there. It was one of those times when I was bouncing between being in and out of my comfort zone. I knew I'd look back on it and smile at the time, and yes, I'm smiling about it now.
We found a few spots with steep shutes leading up little ravines to higer elevation and, hopefully, salvation.
The shute we chose had a slight bend to it, hooking to the left then right and had some larger rocks on it. Mark went first as his bike is lighter with better tires. He snaked his way up it and made it without incident.
Next was my turn. I started a ways off from the base of the shute, revved the engine a few times and dropped the clutch, launching forward and shooting a rooster-tail of dust behind me. The back tire started fishtailing a bit but I was able to stay on. About a third of the way up the ramp the front tire hit a grapefruit-sized rock, bouncing the tire into the air. When the tire landed back on the ground I was pitched sideways off the bike, which same to rest on its left side, still running. Mark slid down the hill and helped me stand it up before riding it down again. I chose a slightly different path this time and was able to get some good speed coming up the ramp until the rear end started sliding around, and I crashed in the same manner as I had in Panama, with the bike swinging around and coming to rest perpendicular to the slope.
I tried it again, a different approach yet. This time I started off going slow and was able to slide my way about half-way up before starting to spin and slide again. I was able to keep the bike upright when Mark came over and pushed on the back of the bike as I crawled it up the slope. I made up the steepest part of the shute then accelerated before jumping up onto a little plateau at the top. What a great feeling.
The trail kinda ended at the top so we took off over the rolling dirt-dunes in the general direction needed before hooking up with another little track in what was almost a slot-canyon, really narrow with banked turns everywhere which was really fun until I rode a little too fast on one, ascended the side of the canyon then fell back into the canyon with my bike upside down. It took us about 5 minutes to get the bike stood back up again but we eventually made it.
We kept going until we hit a little trail that was carved into a cliff overlooking the ocean. We could see the main highway beneath us several thousand feet, all we had to do was creep down a steep rocky trail for a few miles before hitting the bottom, we'd made it, so happy to be back at sea-level.

That night we wanted to camp out so we rode to the next town where we found a pirate-like ship in a playground, we thought it would be a good place to hole up where when we saw a circus tent set up nearby with midgets so we asked them if they thought it would be fine if we slept in the boat but were told that there were a lot of drunks around. We then inquired if we could sleep in the circus tent, but they said they'd be working all night taking it down so we hit the road. We found a little road next to some army base of sorts, threw down our bags and fell asleep looking at the stars.