It was a long day down twisty roads. In the morning, as we were descending the mountains, a pickup truck in front of Vadim was passing the one-lane bridge. The truck almost passed the bridge when an Indian in an old Ford truck in the opposite lane aggressively wanted to get on the bridge as well and pass it. The truck in front of Vadim stopped and seeing that the Indian was proceeding with his plan to get on the bridge started to back up without seeing Vadim behind him. The result was the truck ran into Vadim’s front wheel with his bumper. Vadim started honking and revving the engine as the guy in the truck still did not seem to notice Vadim behind him. It was a scary scene. Vadim inspected the front wheel with Gintaras and no mechanical problems were identified. As we mounted onto our motorcycle, a large tourist bus crossed that same bridge and started turning and scratching the side case of Gintaras. Gintaras was fast enough to move his motorcycle from the road to avoid the aggressiveness of the bus driver that did not even to stop or slow down. This was the first part of our day.
In the afternoon, we got stopped by police and were requested to present the insurance. We did not have the Argentian insurance. So, we presented the Virginia insurance card to see if it will fly. It worked for Vadim but not for Gintaras as his card expired 10/31/2010. We tried to convince the police that the insurance policy was renewed automatically. The cop did not believe us and started filling out the paperwork to take Gintaras to the Policia Station. Vadim pulled out his IPhone and logged into Gintaras online insurance account and showed the cop that the insurance was good through 10/31/2011. The cop wanted to see the paper card which we did not have. Vadim told the cop that he was unreasonable to take us to the police and that we are ready to go to the police station ourselves. 45 minutes later the cop gave the license and motorcycle permit back to Gintaras and we were on our way without any further troubles.
As we entered one segment of the road, it felt extremely hot. No doubt – it was 102F. 85mph on our motorcycles did not help with cooling us off. It felt like a hair blower pointed at us at all times. It was miserable!
Later because of heavy traffic, Gintaras got stuck behind and had to go through the toll booth by himself when he realized he had no money. A kind man at the toll booth gave him 2,000 pesos ($0.50) to go through the toll road. At the end of the day we were rewarded by the beauty of Cafayate. It felt good to be in this nice town.
Routes taken: RN 40, RN 57, RN 60
Miles ridden: 439 miles (702 km)
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