What a beautiful day… Again… it just did not stop to be amazing! This geographic landscape around Atacama is just WOW!!!! Today I made my way to Argentina and tried to reach Salta, a quite large distance of 600 km to bridge. I wanted to give it a try… not so sure if the roads would be good or not. Fingers crossed 🙂
First thing I did in the morning was to refill my bike with petrol since I was not too sure when the next petrol station would come. After driving for about 30 minutes I suddenly realised that my bike computer indicated that my tank was only half full. I could not believe it!!! Usually I always check if the bike is completely full but this time I somehow did not. Perfect…
However, I was not bothered to drive back and lose time since I really wanted to make it to Salta. I filled up the bike with one of my spare containers and had a driving range of a bit more than 420 km. This should hopefully work out, I thought.
I continued my ride and I was amazed by the landscape and I loved the deep blue sky which appears to be visible at altitudes above 4’000 m. I passed snow capped volcanoes, amazing ice left overs at the side of the road and was fascinated by the beautiful structures.
Not a couple of minutes later more spectacular landscapes with salt desserts, deep blue mountain lakes and beautifully intense colours everywhere. I had difficulties not to stop everywhere, lol.
At the border of Chile I met a super cool guy from Buenos Aires with his Ducati Multistrada on his way to Salta. What a coincidence! We decided to ride together for a while which was my luck since the next gas station only accepted Argentinean Pesos. And of course I only had Dollars and Chilean Pesos which they did not accept and the machine for credit cards did not work. I would have been totally lost if Belisario would not be there. He even wanted to invite me but I promised to withdraw cash in the next town.
After a pretty long waiting time at the border and pretty unfriendly border officers we started our adventure.
The roads were beautiful and we could increase our average speed to around 140 km/h while making significant progress. When the roads started to get curvy again, Belisario had a huge advantage with his smooth road tires compared to my Enduro ones. I could not keep the pace and we decided to separate again in order for him to make his appointment in Salta.
Even with reduced speed I made it to Salta as well at the end of the day and was happy to find a nice accommodation.
