Una bocha o dos? One scoop or two?

For some reason it was cheaper—not just a better value, but fewer pesos—to buy two scoops instead of one. We had made it to Argentina the evening before and it was the first time we had spent so many hours within a country without having the opportunity to speak to a single local soul beyond Customs and Immigration. That first night, we had slept by a stream among tall grasses and terrible gnats. As we descended in elevation the next morning, the air grew scorchingly hot. When we finally arrived to the town of Fiambalá, it was sometime after noon. The gas station did not accept credit cards or Chilean pesos, and we had arrived without Argentinian cash. But the currency exchange house was closed and the banks were all closed for siesta. Fortunately, the Banco Nacional de la Republica was just around the corner, it had an ATM, it hadn’t yet been depleted of its cash supply for the day, and if our fuel reserve tapped out on the way there or back, we wouldn’t have to push Horace too far.

It was the longest siesta we had encountered in over a year of travel and 12 countries; 13 including the four hours we spent in Honduras. We had spent the last four hours lounging in the town square of Fiambalá, sharing a milkshake from an ice cream shop called Grido. We didn’t yet know that Grido would become a primary source of nutrition for us, or that even the smallest, sleepiest towns in Argentina would have their own Grido. Two white-haired men sat within the air-conditioned shop conversing over quart-sized ice cream sundaes, which had to have contained at least tres bochas. It was the only establishment open during the siesta, which strategically opened its doors just as citizens shuttered the doors of their own businesses, left their offices, and returned home for the mid-day meal and a rest in the oppressive heat. Throughout our time in the country, we would be hard pressed to accomplish anything we needed to accomplish after 1:30 p.m.

While stranded at the plaza, we marveled at the public restrooms supplied with toilet paper, soap, hot water, and spotty-but-free WiFi. By 6 p.m., folks were just beginning to stir and shopkeepers were just beginning to consider opening their doors again. I wasn’t yet aware of this rhythm, though, as I knocked on the wooden door of a carnicería in the town of Tinogasta. The butcher shop’s selection of meats visible through the window was covered with a waxed cloth, and the proprietress who answered the door seemed surprised to be receiving a customer. She kindly offered to serve me from the doorway if I would only tell her what I fancied.

Lo que animas, was the exact phrase she used. What excites me. She regarded me with gentle concern—for never in the history of this country, it seemed, had anyone tarried over the question of meat. I’m sorry, I fumbled. Could I look at what you have? I hardly ever cook beef, and I’m not familiar with the cuts.

Where are you from? came a man’s voice from inside the shop.

I peered over the woman’s shoulder and saw a middle aged gentleman rousing himself from a wicker chair behind the glass case.

España, the woman called over her shoulder, seemingly exasperated by such a dumb question. I laughed out loud—honestly, I was more than a little flattered. When confronted with the imperfections and idiosyncrasies of my Spanish, and with my dark hair and dark eyes, locals never seemed to entertain the possibility that I might be a non-native speaker. It was unthinkable to them that a Latina would not speak Spanish completely fluently. Thus, my unusual word choices or faltering were always excused by the axiom—seemingly universally-held by the locals we met—that the manners of speaking Spanish in every other Spanish-speaking country were crazy, and that one should be prepared to encounter any number of linguistic oddities when confronting the diversity of fellow Latinos.

California, I told them. I pushed up my helmet, which was sliding down my forehead, and indicated the size of our tiny titanium sauté pan with my hands. Do you have anything about this size and that won’t use up too much fuel to cook?

Ah! Now, look here, said the butchers with excitement, talking over one another. You want bife.

It would prove a vitally important term for us over the next few weeks. Bife, though a thin and cheap cut, was also ridiculously tender and flavorful. As the butcher handed over my paper-wrapped bundle, his approval of our vagabond dinner plan was obvious—mere parody of the sacred Argentine ritual of parilla though it was. But it seemed to me our official welcome to the country.

✻

It was high summer in the southern hemisphere, and all around us was the color of rich, red clay. The Rioja province. The air blasting our faces from the road was as hot as a brick oven, and it remained stiflingly hot until about 4 a.m., when dew began to fall. As we rode past endless, red valleys; parrots rose from vineyards in noisy, dark clouds, and gnarled old heads of sunflowers continued steadfastly guarding their scraggly corn crops from insects. Abandoned adobe homes baked on, year after year after year, and nobody seemed to care whether they would be taken by this year’s high summer floods or the next.

That first day, I pinged into Nathan’s helmet. Was that an ostrich?!

It was indeed the smaller cousin of the African bird, which Darwin had named the “Lesser Rhea” and which were called ñandu by Argentinians, who use the Guaraní word. When sensing our approach, the ñandu would turn their tails and break into an ungainly, lolloping run, their voluminous plumage bouncing and swishing behind them like the petticoats of Looney Toons can-can dancers.

Once, I saw a Patagonian mara standing stock-still at the shoulder of the road. It looked like a tiny deer with the head of a guinea pig and pointed, rabbit-like ears, and I later learned that they are increasingly rare in those northern steppes. I did my best to inform Nathan of what he had likely missed. I beeped into his helmet over the intercom. I just saw something!…I have no idea what it was!

Once, we slept in a field near crusty, millenia-old lava flows and a recently-abandoned shepherd hut. The hut was empty except for a makeshift grill and a complete goat vertebrae, still toting a horned, un-skinned skull, which had been flung into a corner. It was on the same night that I first saw the milky way. We sat up in the quiet of each brittle, gnarled tree; in the chirping of each beetle.

✻

The sky darkened ominously over the foothills of the Andes to our right and the Sierra Velasco to our left. Bife, aromatic vegetables, boxed wine, and a complimentary orange, a friendly token of welcome—and sometimes, a cheeky acknowledgment that we hadn’t haggled, or hadn’t haggled hard enough—in tow, we selected an expired vineyard for our rest. Lightening danced along the mountaintops on either side of us, but it seemed far, far away. And when the rain began to fall in earnest, the storm didn’t worry us, though we retreated to our tent to chop our crudité.

We had stripped down to our underwear in our sticky, oppressively close quarters. The rain pounded down harder and harder, and the lightening grew brighter and more wondrous. Our campsite was hardly the highest monument on the plain, but the lightening hedged around us tighter and tighter. We were hungry, having sweated away our energy stores and were tired of waiting for the rain to dwindle. At long last, we guiltily lit our camp stove under the rain flap of our tent, despite the manufacturer’s safety warnings.

Even the Texan among us had to concede that it was the best beef we had eaten in years—it was tender enough to cut with our titanium sporks and had cost less than $2 per portion. And the liter of boxed wine, which had cost us about 60 cents, was leagues better than any two-buck-chuck we had purchased in the states. It was a contradictory experience—while we luxuriated in an undeniably delicious meal, we were slimy with sweat and squirming under the constant siege of fire ants seeking refuge from the storm inside our tent. And though we did our best to remain calm, it soon became clear that the storm had chosen us to be its eye.

It was all around us. Every 10-15 seconds, the color and texture of Nathan’s face surged up out of the darkness. We turned off our solar lantern to conserve power in case the situation worsened. There was nowhere to go, and nothing to do but acknowledge that we were scared. Each clap sounded like the ax of God cracking into the Tree of Life, cleaving into the pulp of the universe. The orange walls of our tent flickered to life, as if we sat within a single, neon bulb in the night. Would we be struck? Would our camp be washed away?

How many storms had we weathered together? Memories of 60-naut winds slamming into the drafty cabin of the little, wooden fish boat upon which we lived, the Famiglia Santa, came flooding back. It was our last winter on that boat that had nearly undone us. And it had also propelled us here. When the Bay Bridge to the east swayed in the turbulence, we could hear it moaning like a grieving, old dog. It’s one of many sounds I’ll never forget.

Storms, it seems, have always chased our life together. And in that moment somewhere outside of Tinogasta, there was no one I’d rather have had so close; no one whose steady intake of breath I’d rather tease out from beneath the roaring of the sky. What else could we do, then, but make the most of each other’s company?

✻

We spent our first six nights in the country sleeping in fields. Our nighttime company was a panoply of scourges of the earth. Giant wasps the size of baby birds crawled out of unseen burrows in the ground, their blue-black exoskeletons and fiery orange wings glinting like plastic in our lantern light. Once, we slept in 500 year old adobe ruins, which we selected under the impression that they would shelter us from the dry, dust-choked wind. But the mud walls themselves simply eroded into the gusts and settled on our unsleeping bodies in fine layers, sifted by the mesh ventilation panels of our tent.

We were hounded by scorpions, mosquitoes, and yellow jackets. On one afternoon, we found a low creek hidden among spotted hills. We peeled off our clothes and reveled in the chance to wash them and bathe our perspiration-filmed bodies. The air was dry enough that our garments, strapped to the top of our luggage, would be dry by the time we selected a campsite. However, clouds of biting gnats mercilessly descended on our bare behinds, sticking to our wet skin and cutting our revelries short.

✻

That’s a lot of agua colorada!

When we woke the next morning, our campsite appeared completely untouched. We steered our way out of the dead bramble and followed the rain-smoothed, linoleum-like earthen track back to the main road—that is, to the place where the main road had been the evening before. It had been washed out completely, gouged deeply in places where large stones had been shoved away by the flash flood. Road workers and policemen were already on the scene, placing no entry signs and clearing away branches and toppled, low stone walls. They regarded us in bewilderment as we slowly picked our way out of the now-restricted area. Further back, toward Tinogasta, families who had planned day trips at the nearby reservoir waited all along the shoulder and asked us if we knew when the maintenance machines were supposed to show up. But no one seemed surprised in the least—apparently this kind of thing happened often. Still, we were overcome with gratitude. We had been lucky.

Back in town, we stood next to Horace outside a grocery store just off the main square, and a passerby was moved to the point of exclamation at the state Nathan’s boots, pants, and bike, which were powder-coated in dried, chalky, brick-colored mud. The stuff was like paint, composed of such fine, silty pigments that it didn’t flake off or crumble the way other mud did. (Little did we know that a few, hidden splotches would survive power washing and make it all the way back to Los Angeles, California.)

✻

Once, a gaucho wished us a very formal good day as we headed into the only restaurant in town together. He hung his straw hat on the back of his chair with care, adjusted his bolo tie and neckerchief, and ordered a Coca-Cola. The coke sloshed and frothed into his glass as he poured it with shaky Parkinson’s hands.

The script for ordering a meal had become apparent to us by this point, and, as always, I took great satisfaction in noting its nuances. The idea was that a restaurant was not to be thought of as a place for strangers to waltz in and out of, to do something of such great importance as eating, in a state of uncertainty and unfamiliarity. You had to behave as if you had entered into the home of someone who knew you, and that a meal was going to be prepared especially for you.

What are you thinking you’d like to eat? The waitress asked us, after exchanging the usual greetings and acting pleasantly surprised that we were hungry. The dining room was still hung with Christmas tinsel, though it was now the end of January. A stage with a microphone and a disco ball hanging above it lay un-composed at the back of the room, and a grey cat preened itself on one of the wooden chairs. When we asked what the options were, the lady of the house answered, Well, if you like meatballs and mashed potatoes, or gnocchi bolognese—if those excite you—then let us make that for you. A huge basket of french bread and butter would be whisked out to the table, followed by plates obscured by heaps of mashed potatoes and mountains of meatballs. Restaurants were no places for stinginess or modesty. Coffee was served afterwards, unless you requested that it be served before, which we always did. But, by golly, by the end of the meal, you could hardly be considered a stranger eating food at a place for strangers.

✻

Though the mid-day temperature reached well over 100 degrees, our days weren’t comfortless. In fact, despite the heat and the insects, we lived a pretty sweet life. Gas stations here, like the YPFs, were luxuriously comfortable places to stop and recharge our bodies, minds, machine, and electronic devices. Almost all gas stations were equipped as rest stops for motorists, and many of those situated in small towns serve as the primary hubs for residents to socialize over a warm beverage and pastries. The mart attendants were properly trained baristas, and we could always count on a merienda, a light refreshment of espresso and medialunas—sweetened mini-croissants—or pasteles—flaky empananadas filled with candied sweet potato and poached in honey—or tortitas—small, dense cakes made of cornmeal—to lift our spirits. And when our hunger was sated, we cleansed our palates with complimentary glasses of sparkling mineral water. We could fill up our water stores with free, potable tap water and wash our faces in the clean restrooms, chill out in the air conditioning, charge our phones, and, more often than not, access WiFi.

When we arrived in the city of Mendoza, located in the heart of Argentina’s wine region, we were ready for a day or two of cosmopolitanism and material comforts, like showers. We had carried new bearings for Horace, since realizing our current ones were shot, since Antofagosta, Chile, and the steering column also needed adjusting. It had been a long time since we had required accommodation in such a cosmopolitan destination, and it was well after midnight when we flung ourselves down, freshly showered and yet sweating anew, (Horace tucked safely within a locked garage) onto 2 separate beds in a fully occupied, 10-person dormitory. Two standing fans whirred in the odiferous darkness.

Given all our talk about no longer caring for urban life, we settled into Mendoza with remarkable ease. In that time, we strolled the city’s wide avenues—built to permit access for foot traffic and emergency services when an earthquake hit—lined with a variety of robustly green trees and irrigation canals. We ate at one of the many buffets, or tenedores libres—free forks—as they are commonly called. And while we waited much longer than we expected for our mechanical work to be completed, and while it took several returns to the office of vehicle insurance to have our application processed and bearing the correct name of the vehicle owner—No, ‘Bathaniel Shart’ is not his name. Yes, I think it does matter—the trees continuously shaded us in the heat of the day, and we napped on the lush grass lawns of the city's many public parks. We ate ice cream cones from Grido during siesta and steak and red wine for dinner. European and South American tourists lounged in the garden of our hostel, smoking cigarettes and strumming acoustic guitars. Over sidewalk cappuccinos, we agreed that Mendoza was the most beautiful city we had ever visited and that it was a city made for lovers.

✻

We had reached the mirador, or lookout point, of Cañon de Atuel with the funny feeling that something was “off” with Horace. Or, perhaps “something” and “off" aren’t quite the right words. Nathan felt that the bike felt incredibly wriggly and wobbly on the twisty road up to the grand vista. We wondered if the frame had cracked again. Once we reached the top, we climbed off the bike to inspect the frame, while couples and families drinking yerba mate gazed out over the cliffs.

Oh no! Nathan exclaimed.

Nine of the twelve bolts securing the front end of the bike were loose to the touch. In fact, the only component keeping our front wheel attached to the forks was the brake caliper. The highly experienced and respected mechanic, who had come highly recommend by several people we new personally and whom we had come to befriend, had neglected to tighten them. Nathan was enraged. I was numb. One hundred fifty miles on a wobbling axel. It was a miracle that none of the bolts had rattled off completely. But how much damage this had inflicted on our front end, we had no clue. Ruta 40, the formidably long highway connecting northern Argentina to the southern-most tip of the continent, was notoriously difficult and lay directly ahead of us. It was a route where gale-force winds and exceptionally loose gravel bowled over even the most experienced solo riders. And, now, it appeared that our two-up rig would be even more compromised.

It was an accident, we knew. Once we had cell service and were able to text the mechanic, he apologized profusely and berated himself for the carelessness. Another customer had barged into the shop with a question, he realized, just as he had preliminarily assembled the front end. By the time he was able to return to his work, he had completely forgotten that he hadn’t tightened our bolts.

We went to bed hungry that night. Our camp stove simply would not light, even after completely disassembling it, cleaning it, and trying out multiple types of fuel, and all the food we had purchased earlier that day required cooking. Aside from the wine, that is. Even the Oreos we had been looking forward to in greedy anticipation had failed us—they were stale and didn’t taste nearly as chocolate-y as they did back home. I popped an Aleve for my menstrual cramps, crawled into the tent, and shut my eyes.

It was 3 a.m. I awoke in horror to a trail of ants marching across my face toward the open packet of Oreos which Nathan had stuffed into the tent pocket next to my head. I had been swatting my face in my half-sleep, telling myself that I was just imagining the prickly, creepy-crawly sensation. A car stereo still blared into the night, and a group of giggly revelers had meandered over to a cluster of rocks right next to our tent. We had no idea what difficulties lay in store for us the next day. But ready or not—Ruta 40, we were coming.