Day 129: The Love Hotel

Argentina is not crying for us but we were crying over Argentinian Patagonia (remember Evita?). Riding through Argentinian Patagonia means riding for an entire or several days through flat, dry, uninhabited, treeless, windy, straight as an arrow terrain. Towns and gas stations are at long distances with nothing in between but guanacos and rheas (looks like and is related to the ostrich). Every day or two of riding through this terrain we arrived at some beautiful or interesting destination. Bruce said it is like riding through all of the visually uninspiring areas of the high plains of the western US to arrive at some spectacular place like Yosemite.

One of the first gorgeous sights we saw after leaving Cory and fam was when we came to the town called El Chalten. It was a cool funky town with a culture that felt like Leadville (as Cory put it and we agree). This town sits within a short day hike from the Fitz Roy Massive and Cerro Torre. Keeping in mind that Bruce is a climber and a mountaineer, he said this is one of the most impressive mountain landscapes he has ever seen. These peaks are world renowned and on the bucket list of many world-class, elite mountaineers. We did a 15-mile hike past these peaks.

Bruce is steri-penning water from a lake for drinking. We used our steri-pen this whole trip for sterilizing tap water for drinking. It worked great. We were able to avoid constantly buying bottled water.

Next, we ventured back over to the Atlantic coast of Argentina Patagonia. We ambled among the Magellan penguins.

Then on to Valdes Peninsula where we hoped to see Orca whales, but it wasn’t meant to be. We did see more penguins, sea lions, elephant seals and armadillos. The ripio road (gravel road) on the peninsula was so deep with gravel that we took the bike back to the hotel and got a taxi to take us about 75 miles around the peninsula. Armadillos are adorable!!

It is amazing what human ingenuity and love for our pets can do. This little guy's back legs were useless. But he got around great with this cart. He was seriously patrolling the street in front of his house and barking ferociously at anyone who came near his territory.

Several of our adventure rider friends we met on our trip have talked very highly about “love motels”. We’ve seen these motels in a variety of countries. Some outright call themselves love motels and others use a name that is a variant on this theme. Apparently, they are typically rented by the hour but they can also be rented overnight. We arrived at 7pm one night in a town where we couldn’t find any other hotels with vacancy (other than really nasty places) except one hotel called “El Secreto Hotel Intimo – Adults Only.” It was rated 9.1 on Booking.com (which is a very good rating!). It turned out to be one of the best rooms we’ve had this entire 4 ½ month trip and it was one of the cheapest prices we’ve paid in Argentina and Chile for a hotel.

The El Secreto Hotel Intimo – Adults Only was hilarious! Everything is about secrecy. Although there is a door from the interior hotel hallway into the room, we couldn’t get out the door from the room to enter the hallway….there was no door handle. The only way we could enter or leave our room was through our private one-car garage. The room was US quality, high grade finishes and hi-tech. It was huge and had a hot tub in the room. Not to say we haven’t had other rooms with hot tubs, but this is the first one that worked! The mirror on the ceiling above the bed was great for watching tv from two angles! And the photo above the bed with two naked people engaged in certain activity was very inspirational. We could order drinks and food through the phone and then it was delivered through a box in the wall from an unseen person in the hallway. And service was fast! When the food was delivered, a programmed soft voice came on over a speaker in the room telling us (in Spanish) that food was in our box. When we first arrived into our room, the tv was already turned on with hardcore porn (in English)….thankfully, we were finally able to figure out how to get regular tv. Can’t believe we waited this long to try out a love hotel!! The only complaint is that wifi wasn’t the best…..guess people have other activities in mind when staying here than being on their computers.

Argentina and Chile have blown out our budget. We haven’t done the numbers yet but we suspect that we have spent more money in these two countries on hotels, food and gas than we did all of the other countries combined. Everything is priced at US prices but without US quality control.

Our last days in Argentina were spent in Mendoza which is considered to be the most charming city in Argentina. We will remember Mendoza for its wide streets shaded by large Sycamore trees and its good food. It’s most important annual festival was happening, so we were able to see the parade celebrations.

The morning we left Mendoza we had a full day of riding (including another border crossing) to get back to Santiago, Chile. When we attempted to leave our hotel we discovered the gate behind which our bikes were parked was broken…….in the shut position of course. So we couldn’t get our bikes out. Our hotel dude called another "dude" (this was the official word used by our hotel dude). We waited for that other dude to come. He couldn’t fix it. So a third "dude with a toolbox" was called. We waited for that dude to come. Finally, after about two hours the gate was opened and we could leave.
We have now returned to Santiago, Chile. Our last few days are being spent here. We have a lovely little apartment here in Santiago with a great city view (when the smog isn’t too bad).

We had our first personal safety situation on our entire trip here in Santiago. We were trying to walk to the trendy restaurant area from our apartment and ended up in a bad part of town. While looking at the GPS on our cell phone to try to figure out where to go, some guy ran up and tried to grab it out of our hands. Luckily, we had a good grip on the phone for the very reason that we had read about people who will run and grab, so he wasn’t able to get it and he ran off. It was a little disturbing to say the least. Yet, it is interesting to us that this is the only incident we have had in all of Latin America for over 4 months. It is also interesting the one incident happened in Santiago which is supposed to be one of the safest cities…..and we walked everywhere in every city we have been in. We are taking cabs here on out in Santiago! They have Uber.

Our bikes have been crated and are in the customs warehouse ready to be put on a plane to Los Angeles where we will pick them up and make the final ride home.

We feel a little shocked that the trip is pretty much all over!