Off-road and camping for beginners
As beautiful as Valle Las Trancas was, it was literally a dead end and we had to go back to Chillán and follow Ruta 5, the old Panamericana, south. Halfway between Los Angeles and Chillán we stopped for lunch next to the Salto del Laja, a beautiful huge horseshoe-shaped waterfall.
Los Angeles was the last major city before we headed east to the National Park and border crossing, so we went to a larger supermarket to buy fresh vegetables and fruits, and filled up our bikes at the gas station. At this gas station we also took the decision to give up on our scavenger hunt for a Chiletur road map. To explain the story, I need to elaborate a bit.
The gas stations most common in Chile are those of Copec. This company also distributes travel maps and guidebooks of Chile called Chiletur. Their maps are very popular and perfect for motorcyclists, as they do a good job of showing the types and differences of roads, such as paved or gravel, and the further south you go, the worse cell phone reception gets and you can't fully rely on offline digital maps.
Unfortunately, they are so popular that we haven't been able to buy one for hundreds of miles. On every highway we've traveled since San Antonio, and in every town we've passed through, we've stopped at a Copec station and asked for the map. It even happened that the employees of a gas station in a particular town would send us to another Copec station in the same town, and when we got there, they would send us back again saying that the other station had one.
Many times we took several detours to add more Copec gas stations to our route and lost a lot of time that way. It was impossible, we could not get any, they were all sold out.
At our last lodging in Valle Las Trancas, the friendly owner lent us her 3-year-old Chiletur Sur map, which we photographed in its entirety. And since Los Angeles was the last major Chilean city for a while, we agreed that the photos of the Chiletur map would suffice.
With all our tasks finished in Los Angeles we headed east to the campsite in the National Park Laguna del Laja.
Parque Nacional Laguna del Laja
Day 35-37 (08.-10.12.22):
As we approached the park and saw the huge Antuco volcano in the distance, we were already speechless and fascinated by the landscape of lava fields that had more resemblance to the moon than the earth.
As usual, we were a bit late and when we passed the national park entrance, it was already closed for the night. Luckily, we could still enter and rode to the campsite. It was a lovely campsite, where all camping lots were provided with a separate sink and power sockets. And when welcoming us the campsite operator gave us two cold beer as welcome presents, we were over the moon after the hot day and the long ride.
We could still set up our tent in the light, but cooking food was already in semi-darkness. Fortunately, it was not our first time camping and we still were able to conjure up a delicious vegetable pan with our gasoline stove and then go to bed/our sleeping bag.
One revelation from the night was that we had to improve our pillow setup, just lying on a pile of clothes as a pillow does not work anymore when you are around 40 years old.
After breakfast we asked the campsite operator for a recommendation for an easy hike. One of the most popular trails was the Sendero Sierra Velluda, which passes a hanging glacier but ends in endless lava fields with no paved trails.
Since it was quite hot that day and it was already past noon, we decided to take the trails to the waterfalls of Torbellino and Las Chilcas instead, which went through forests and an overall greener vegetation zone.
It was a beautiful hike and we returned to our campsite early enough to prepare dinner in the light.
The next day we packed up our things and headed for the Argentine border. The entire route until the border was unpaved, but with compact soil. We had a lot of fun riding and enjoyed the beautiful scenery with the turquoise waters of Laguna del Laja which gave the park its name, and the volcanoes in our back.
We took many photos and some drone videos, so we reached the Chilean border control in the late afternoon. We were curious and excited as we experienced our first border crossing on land. The exit from Chile was quick and easy, we didn't spend much time in border control and then found ourselves in no-man's land between Chile and Argentina.
What we didn't expect was the long distance between the Chilean and Argentine border control, usually there is less than 1 km between exit and entry. In this case it was about 25 km distance.
That doesn't sound like much, but the road and the ground we were driving on became more challenging, from compact soil to sand dunes.
One of them surprised me: when I went into it with my little experience on sand, my bike threw me off. Nothing happened, our bikes are perfectly prepared to have a closer contact with the ground and also our protective clothing is the best (thanks to Touratech!), the only thing that was hurt was my pride. But for this reason we went even slower afterwards and took more than an hour for 25 km.
Upon arrival in Argentina, it was much drier overall and the vegetation was less green.
Since Helge is publishing a blog entry about border crossings in general, I won't give too much away. Just so much, entering Argentina included a brief moment of shock and we were more than relieved when we reached El Cholar (Day 37-38, 10-11.12.22), our overnight stop, more than 2 hours later.
At the beginning of the day we kept the option open to continue to Chos Malal, but we were exhausted and decided to realize the missing 60 km the next day. The total distance of the day was 130km and we had experienced our lowest speed average, which was very important for further route planning.
There was only one accommodation option in El Cholar, which we gratefully accepted, and fortunately they also served food. We were a bit surprised that the only two meals were homemade pasta, but later we learned that due to the Italian ancestry of many Argentine families, pasta, pizza and ice-cream are often a delicious option in Argentina. We combined the pasta with 1L of beer, 1.5L of Fanta and 0.5L of water to rehydrate ourselves.
The next day we drove to Chos Malal (days 38-39, 11-12-22), a small town - but larger than El Cholar - further east, where we had a wonderful encounter with a local family.
We had looked around for accommodations before we arrived, but again, some were no longer existing, they were fully booked or too expensive. The information in our guidebook was mostly pre-pandemic, not everything was up to date, and we had internet in Argentina only in the hostels so far.
As we went in circles and down a one way street in the wrong direction a women informed us about our misbehavior over the fence standing in her garden. As we seemed quite lost, she asked if she could help us and we started to talk.
She gave us several hostel recommendations, but since we were not able to remember them, she offered driving with us. She and her approximately 9-10 years old son drove in her car in front of us, making a tour from one hostel to the next.
Quote: "If you don't like it or if it is too expensive, we go to the next, and if you do not like that or it is too expensive, we go to the next!"
Even before we started our tour through the town, she also offered us to take a shower in her house to be able to search for a place more comfortably. Incredibly lovely.
The third hostel she showed us was a good deal and even had an ice cream parlor nearby that was popular with the locals. We thanked her heartfully for the amazing help and the first thing we did after we showered and got changed, was to buy an ice-cream.
We went for a stroll around the city and decided to spend only one night. Chos Malal is a good spot for exploring the hot springs and geysers further north, but since we preferred to continue south we packed our things the next day, took some sweet pastries from the ice cream parlor/bakery as provisions for the road and headed to the Lake District of Argentina.
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