26th March
Mother’s Day. The postman managed to get my Mother’s Day cards to me - even in Argentina.
We had a dip in the pool
And chilled out in the hammock
We needed to plan what our next step was going to be.
Mont Ojos de Salado was the most obvious choice now, it is the second highest mountain in the Andes.
It was halfway between the Argentinian and Chilean borders.
We needed to buy a new tyre for the trailer and some provisions for a couple of nights at Ojos.
There was a refugio at the first base camp there.
There are in fact 3 refugios on Ojos. The first one, Refugio Murray is at 4,530. It’s just after Laguna Verde with the pink flamingos.
Having made the plan to go to Ojos, we went back to the main square to people watch.
Tinogasta had really grown on us by now. This was our third visit and we had figured out how everything worked. The main square was where everyone gathered.
The kids rode around the square on their motorbikes and mopeds. Round and round.
Then they’d swap places and ride around again. The girls posing for the boys and the boys for the girls.
As the evening wore on, the cars would come out too and circle the square. Windows down, one arm out, music playing.
Round and round they’d go. Then, when it got dark, we could see the leds on the bikes, in the rear mudguards or under the chains. Red ones or green ones. Jim decided he wanted orange ones, to match the bike, you know.
27th March
We packed up and left Tinogasta for the last time.
The road north was very quiet. There are 2 graveyards in Fiambalá. One in the town and another on the outskirts.
One for the rich and one for the poor.
The customs guy had told us that they have maybe 100 cars a day on their busiest days in the summer, but at this time of year there were only about 10 cars a day going through.
The road on the Argentinian side was so easy to drive, mostly straight, wide well surfaced roads.
We arrived at the border well before 5pm. The border crossing was very straightforward.
It only took about half an hour. The tarmac ended very soon after the border crossing and the gravel road began. Then the horrible ruts began. It took just over an hour to get to the turn off for Mont Ojos.
We got to the Refugio and had a look around. It was quite big, there was a room with a big table and some shelves, several bedrooms downstairs and then a dorm room upstairs and another bedroom.
The mattresses were in a bad way, but we put our mattresses on top and figured they’d be more comfortable and warm than being in a tent on the side of the mountain.
We left the trailer with the bikes on them in the garage and drove up to the second refugio, Refugio Atacama, 5,300m.
It was 22km away and it took us 40 minutes to get there in the jeep. There were some climbers there who told us that we didn’t need a permit to go up the mountain which was good news. We went back to Refugio Murray and when we got back there were 2 climbers there.
They told us that we might need a permit! We all cooked dinner and sat around chatting all evening.
We were wrong about it being warmer in the Refugio than in a tent. It was freezing! This was the coldest night we had spent up the mountains.
28th March
After a bad night’s sleep, waking up cold many times during the night. We went out onto the balcony to boil the water and have breakfast as it was just too cold inside. While it was cold out, the sun was shining so that warmed us up.
The plan was that the boys were going to do a recci, come back with an idea of what the mountain was like and make a plan for the next day.
Then Séamus said that I should go with Kev and Jim and he’d stay at the Refugio.
I wasn’t really keen but I knew that if I didn’t go that day I probably wouldn’t get the chance tomorrow.
I was really, really nervous as I knew what the terrain was like.
There was deep, deep sand and many, many rocks! We set off early and after about 10 minutes I started to relax a little.
Jim was in front, so I followed his lead. I knew there was a big really deep sandy bit as we had got stuck in it the day before in the jeep.
We knew where it was and managed to avoid it. But there was still a lot of sand around and I was really struggling with it.
We made it to Refugio Atacama, the climbers were still there.
There was some bad wind forecast for the rest of the week, but they were heading up to Refugio Tejos that day.
It was only about 3km away but was 500m higher.
We wished them well and off we went. Then we came to some penitents.
We couldn’t get past these penitents, so we had to go back a small bit and up over a ridge.
We stopped and had a few biscuits. It’s really hard eating at this altitude.
The next kilometre was some of the scariest riding I’ve ever done.
There was a really steep hill, with deep sand and twisty turns with high drop offs at the side.
We came over the brow of the hill and down a little valley to another climb. We got to Refugio Tejos, 5839m.
We got off and went inside to have a look. It was much smaller than where we had slept last night.
There was a bunk room with 6/8 bunks in it and a small sitting area.
We didn’t stop for long, we got back on the bikes and started the last ascent. Up and hill, flat for a small bit, then up another hill.
At the top, there was a wide strip of ice, with big rocks strewn across it, followed by a steep climb, not very far, but deep, sandy gravel with football sized rocks all over the place.
I have to admit, I did lose my sense of humour here a bit.
I got off the bike and pushed it over this bit as I was afraid to ride it.
The boys couldn’t help, I had to do it alone.
Once I got past the rock field, it was just deep sandy gravel, which is a lot less scary when there are no rocks in it. I couldn’t go much farther, we were nearly at the top of the peak we were on, so the best I could do was go as far as I could and hope it was high enough. I rode another 50/60m and then got stuck in some sand. I looked at the gps and it said 5918m. I had broken the world record! Highest altitude on a motorbike(female).
I had my flag in my bag, so Kev got it out and we got some pictures and a video, woo woo woo!
https://recordsetter.com/world-record/highest-altitude-reached-riding-motorcycle-female/51962
The ride back nearly worse as I knew exactly what I’d just come up.
Deep, sandy ruts going downhill are no fun at all.
We got back down to Refugio Tejos and Kev and Jim went off a different way to do a bit of a recce to see if they could get higher going a different way.
I sat in the sun, but was actually quite cold as the wind was fierce. They were only gone for about 10 minutes and they came back and said they’d taken a load of pictures that they could inspect later for a route.
So, we started back down the worst bit of the whole trip. I think I only fell off twice, didn’t hurt myself, didn’t even hurt my pride!
We passed the climbers walking up to Refugio Tejos.
It’s got to be really hard walking uphill in that altitude.
We struggled to eat and breath, never mind walk miles. We managed to avoid the big sandy bit by going through another rock field.
It took such concentration that I forgot to be afraid. After that it was fairly straightforward, reasonably flat so easier to stand for the sandy bits. Riding in and out had taken about 5 and a half hours.
When we got back Séamus said that he’d been thinking about it and that we should go to the border and cross back into Chile.
It was 24 hours since we had left Argentina and we had no permission to be here, we didn’t even know if we needed permission.
We decided it would be better to go to the border and come back, than to stay another night.
We left all our food in the refugio as you can’t bring food into Chile.
We would go over the border and on to Copiapó for the night and then maybe come back and tell them at the border that we were going to Ojos and the boys could go for another ride.
It was about 5pm when we left the refugio.
When we got to the border there was no electricity, they weren’t expecting us and they didn’t really know what to do without electricity.
No one spoke English, so we were guessing a lot of what they were telling us.
They stamped the passport and came out and inspected all the luggage.
They didn’t find the contraband irish teabags.
The road surface was absolutely dreadful after the border. It was about 175km to Copiapó but it took almost 3 hours.
We went back to the same hotel we had stayed in on our way to Argentina and booked in.
We were all exhausted. I think it was a combination of a bad night’s sleep, the excitement and stress of the day and the long journey in the car.
We went to a Chinese for dinner and it was definitely closer to dodgy than not.
29th March
Because we had stayed in this hotel before, we knew where everything was and how it all worked and we all connected automatically to the wifi.
We were going to decide over breakfast whether we were going back to Ojos or not.
Having looked at the photos and chatted back and forth we decided we were finished on the mountains.
It wasn’t an easy decision as although all of us felt it, nobody wanted to be the first to say it.
Having made that decision we then had to decide where we were going to go and what we were going to do as we still had 2 weeks til our flights home. Many people had suggested Bahia Inglesa as a place to go to chill out and relax so we left for there after breakfast.
We found a lovely hotel, with a fabulous view, right on the sea front.
It was fabulous. So nice that we booked a second night here.
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