Dramas and amazing hospitality heading out from Mendoza to Rodeo

Monday the 20th, and a mixture of excitement and sorrow. 

Sorrow because Dom has to leave the tour. With Hugo, he has treated the assembled crew with very fine wine at the restaurant the night before in Mendoza. James has settled in with Nigel. Hugo has joined Ham in his Lagonda and Joe with Chris in the Silver Ghost. Each car and new crew has been road tested with a day trip to Uspallata up Routa 7 yesterday. A beautiful winding journey in to the hills of sandy scrub and rocky outcrops, slowed only by convoys of lorries despite the fiesta weekend. Chris is struggling with the heat and hot slow climbs, forcing a couple of stops roadside - overheated fuel and dodgy carburettor not letting sufficient fuel through. Or is it?

 

Joy at heading North from Mendoza, destination Rodeo. Hard yards on the famous Ruta Nacional 40 first, making good distance through the plain. On the way, San Juan is surprising with brand new wineries, light industry, football stadium, and a skate park! Ham can’t control his excitement and has a dribbly cheesy ham melt. 

 

Serendipity (Waze taking one of two choices for us) leads Chris to turn up the winding mountainous Routa 149 to Rodeo. Nigel and Hugo sweep ahead. It’s hot. Despite the dry run the day before, the heat starts to take it toll with the cars having to climb and wind. Ham and Chris tag team support for each other. Ham's radiator is topping 100 degrees and belches out water, and onboard supplies soon run dry. Chris to the rescue with extra water. Chris’ overheating fuel and miss-regulating carburettor are forcing the Rolls to slow involuntarily as insufficient fuel gets to the engine. It is distracting work, and Joe is no help, to such a degree that no-one is keeping an eye on the fuel tank. We limp on, needing the spare gerry. No mobile coverage means we are driving blind. As the Rolls Royce reaches the top of the pass, it runs out of fuel. With Ham and James' Lagonda shadowing behind, the Rolls makes it 10km down the sweeping road to the valley floor stopping helpfully in no shade. Ham’s 5 litre can saves the day, with much fiddling of technical engine bits. His Lagonda is still overheating at every chance - radiator boiling over. Perhaps that is rusty bits blocking some tubes in the radiator? No means to fix right now.

With all comms down, Nigel and Hugo are oblivious. They have forged ahead to Rodeo, heading to the lake. While the others sweat it out, they relax with cervesa and empanadas admiring the view - essentially a lot of kite and windsurfing activity. It's a good hour and a half before the tail group catch up. Happy reunion in a beach bar. Much interest and many photos from the fiesta holiday makers. Nigel loses his exhaust in the excitement.

 

Being fiesta there had been no room at the beach club inn. Chris had begged 6 (or 3?!) beds from a rather out of the way hostel. Dani wasn’t quite sure what to make of her new guests at first, but with her friends Monica and Danielle, had soon remade and split beds to sleep six. What to eat and drink?  Slightly unsure of Dani’s offer, Chris and James headed to town with our three hosts to buy steak, potatoes, salad, wine and beer. The nature of hospitality soon became clear with the girls cooking supper with toothless Luis tending the wood fired BBQ for slowed cooked flank. Delicious. The evening got suitably silly after several jugs of Argentina’s unofficial national drink fernet and coke (slightly evil), and rock and roll and ceroc demonstrations from Nigel and Joe.  The only person who shouldn’t have fallen out of bed was Ham. But he did, blaming the ridge on his sofa bed.  

 

We had learned quite a bit about the area. A lot of mining. Current and prospective. Copper, Lithium. Clearly miners stayed at the hostel too. James was in his element with the whip antennas - the pickups using the short wave radio to direct mining machinery. Oh, for a whip antenna on our way to Rodeo.

One of the aerials on a truck came lose and struck a young man who was taken to see his doctor. The concerned doctor examined the young man and quietly pronounced that "this was one of the worst cases of van-aerial disease he had come across!" (credit James Mcmaster, joke from his prep school days!)

A wonderful if slightly bizarre evening, with great Argentine hospitality at the fore.