The Americas 2013

Happy Birthday Dale!!!!

So the day of departure has finally arrived and we managed to leave the hotel at 08h00….smack bang in the middle of peak hour Buenos Aires traffic!!

Saying goodbye to our ladies!!

As mentioned yesterday, we made a last minute decision to change our destination for today. We were originally going to ride from Buenos Aires to Mar del Plata, about a 415km ride, but have decided instead to ride to Sierra de la Ventana (about a 600km ride) as it not only enables us to bank a day and split the 800km ride from Comodoro Rivadavia to Rio Gallegos on Monday into 2 days without affecting our schedule but according to Sandra and Javier from Dakar Motos also gives us a more beautiful ride and authentic Argentine experience.

Our ride for the day versus Mar Del Plata on the south east corner of this photo.

The first 100km was really spent navigating traffic out of BA and its surrounds, thereafter, and for about 400km, the landscape was much like the freestate…flat, beautiful and scented. The last 100km towards Sierra de la Ventana becomes a bit more mountainous and twisty which I was grateful for because the long, flat, straight stretches were becoming treacherous for my heavy eyelids!

Flat and scented like the freestate….

We are spending the night in a quaint little place called hotel Atero where a room costs 200 pesos, (about R300) for the night including breakfast, parking and wifi. Its clean, comfortable and the shower and aircon work well. Argentinean meat is always a treat so dinner was steak, again!!

Tomorrow we head for Las Grutas, a 525km ride to the town next door to San Antonio Oeste which was our destination for Friday night.