Day 4 – Flight to Mendoza

Left our beautiful B&B at 9.30 with a new driver. Squeezed our bike boxes into Buddha’s van and had a most hair raising 1 ½ hour drive into Buenos Aires. Weaving in and out of traffic at speed, creating a new fifth lane on the four lane highway, getting lost, asking for directions from traffic stopped at lights, horn blaring and hands waving! Got there in one piece and had our bags removed from the car by a waiting porter who managed to fit both our bike boxes and bags on one trolley and wheel it at speed to the checking in desks. Only trouble was we had stay put to pay our driver and say our goodbyes. Ran into the airport to locate our keen porter and found him at the right desk patiently waiting our arrival. He seemed  happy with his tip, hopefully it was worth the hernia. Paid the extra 30kg weight for our bikes and waited for our flight.

All our luggage arrived unscathed at Mendoza and we set about re-building the bikes just outside the airport entrance where there was some descent shade. After an hour a woman approached and asked if we were cycling into town. When we confirmed this she frowned and advised us to get a cab as 2 cyclist had been robbed last week. We thanked her and heeded her advice. The taxi was a large hatchback but the driver seemed unphased with the task of fitting 2 bikes, 2 people and a pile of luggage into it! After 15 minutes we arrived at the campsite which appeared well fortified with barbed wire and big padlocked wooden gates! The taxi driver shouted through the fence and a woman rattled her way over with a huge bunch of keys. She showed me to a very ‘tranquillo’ pitch and we got sorted. Our search for a shop ended at a hut selling crackers, jam and bananas. It’s amazing what you can do with such limited ingredients. We made some tasty 'jammy banana crackers' and washed it down with warm water. At 10.00pm an adjacent hidden fun fair cranked into life behind the trees..... next to our 'tranquilo' pitch. The main attraction was a neon lit slide (one of those huge 1970’s multi-lane wavy constructions that you ride on mats and race with your friends!) which literally towered behind our tent. The combined noise of screaming, clattering metal stairs and what sounded like running welding repairs to the structure was excrutiating. At midnight we quickly realized that the locals start their evenings at late to make the most of the cool temperatures…so children stay up very late. We sat outside beneath a lantern, which hung over our pitch, and waited for the temperature and noise levels to recede to levels conducive to sleeping.


The noisy campsite