Argentina - BRIDGET THE MIDGET

Mendoza to Santiago

3rd June 200914th March 2020 By roychinnorNo Comments

After a quick check of all Bridget’s fluids and filling her with fuel we left Mendoza a little after 8:30am. The plan for the day was to travel the 250 miles leaving behind Argentina and entering Chile. In between are the Andes Mountains. I was still felling fairly high after the previous days paragliding experience so I thought that there might be a risk that whatever today brought would be overshadowed. I need not have worried. I got my first glimpse of the Andes as I drove south from Mendoza on Route 7. We turned west towards Uspallata and the mountain range stretched out before us. In nature my two great loves are mountains and deserts, so the sight of what was to come really thrilled me. Having already on this journey experienced the foothills of the Himalayas and on previous journeys visited the Alps, the Andes and Rockies are the only two major ranges that I learnt about at school that...

Just One Of Life’s Little Ambitions

31st May 200910th March 2020 By roychinnorNo Comments

The day started in darkness. The hotel had a power break just as I awoke and I had to dress in darkness. So with my pants on my head and my sweat shirt inside out I went down for breakfast. After breakfast I went for a run to try to keep at least some semblance of fitness. I was collected from the hotel at 14:00 and we then proceeded to pick-up two guys from the USA staying just down the road from me. Then we headed off to the north of Mendoza. There we found a range of mountains up to around 3,000 feet high. We joined another party of lunatics and headed, in two 4x4 utility trucks, up one of the mountains. The track was very steep and strewn with boulders. Eventually we arrived at the launch area where our paragliding equipment was laid out. Yes, at last I had found somewhere that I could try paragliding without having to go through various...

Road to Mendoza

30th May 200910th March 2020 By roychinnorNo Comments

Day 1 of the third leg and I’m really quite pleased. We left the hotel at around 8:00am joining the morning rush hour which is always a good initiation into driving in a new country. I have found that often the most difficult part of the journeys is getting on the correct road out of cities. You obviously have to watch the traffic at the same time as trying to spot signs and safely execute manoeuvres, so I was particularly pleased that our exit from Buenos Aires was fairly straight-forward. All I had to do was locate Highway 7 and follow it. The road conditions are generally good and the standard of driving is reasonable. I had forgotten that I still need to run-in the engine since its re-build and so we drove along at between 45 -50 mph so as not to exceed 3,000 rpm. We covered 400 miles in Perth before leaving and so we only have to do this...

Customs Cleared

27th May 200910th March 2020 By roychinnorNo Comments

When I left the shipping agents this morning they were frantically phoning every auto-insurance agent they could find to try and get me insurance to drive in Argentina. This is not a legal requirement in every country I have visited but until now when I have had to take out cover then there has normally been companies at the border area. However, here it is not so easy. There have been two main reasons for refusal, the first being that the car is too old (don’t tell Bridget she would be upset), and the second being that she is not registered in Argentina. However the agents finally found a company that would cover it and by good fortune the cover is also valid in Chile, so I shouldn’t need to do this again in a weeks time. To those residents of Buenos Aires that have started to believe that Bridget the Midget is nothing more than a figment of my imagination...

Something in the Air?

22nd May 200910th March 2020 By roychinnorNo Comments

It has been an interesting sort of day. First of all there was a guard changing ceremony at the memorial to the fallen during the 1982 dispute over the Falkland Islands. I then strolled back to the Paseo de los Granaderos memorial statue in Plaza San Martin. I was sitting on a bench minding my own business when a movement off to my right caught my attention. There was a young man that had dropped to one knee in-front of a young lady. He reached up and took her hand and it was immediately obvious that he was proposing and the response was equally obvious. I left them to it for a few minutes and then when they were calming down I walked over and asked if they spoke English. It transpired they are an American couple and my observations were correct. I congratulated them, wished them luck for their future and then asked them to do it all over again....