From what I could understand from Patricio , the border had been shut for quite a while and he was telling me to be very careful of the caminos ( semi ’ s ) as there would be a lot of them waiting and very anxious to get over the border into Argentina before the next lot of snow arrived . That word a LOT proved to be an under statement .
As you usually do when it ’ s a nice day , a bit cool but sunny , riding along in the open countryside , as it is Autumn everything was brown and no leaves on the trees , I was just thinking how lucky I was to be here , wishing that the Yamaha had been sold and that this bike lived up to it ’ s reputation of being perfect for this sort of country . From Los Andes to the border was about 55kms , and you could see the mountain for miles , high and WHITE . As I got a bit closer to the range I noticed how the snow was getting deeper on the edges of the road , it had been graded off and to this point so far , it was a clear road of snow and ice , nice easy going .
A few kms along the road , I noticed a big line of semi ’ s parked up on the edge of the road , I thought straight away an accident , I pulled up , had a smoke and just looked up at the big white monster up ahead . At this point ; I had no idea of what was coming up and so I slowly worked my way along , going around and around these trucks . lucky for me there was no traffic coming down the mountain yet . This went on for about an hour , taking it slow as there were many patches of snow on the road especially on the bends and I was getting a little bit anxious as I started to see how big this mountain range really was . It was very unusual to see all the little fires burning along the edges of the road ; I thought that if there was an accident this far away from the summit , these guys must have been here for quite a while .
Please tell me that they ' re not trucks crawling up that hill ???