That fully expected day, finally arrived. We loaded the bikes and the baggage in the trailer, we said good bye to family, friends and girlfriends, we checked out if there was anything missing, and left behind the pave and the city, towards Mendoza province, located near the Andes mountains range in Argentina.
We were going to a border town called Bardas Blancas, where Paso Pehuenche starts crossing through the Andes towards Chile, far 1300 km from Buenos Aires our starting point.
We were there to start the "Andes Challenge", a mountain bike cross of the "cordillera de los andes", a very demanding and ambicious bike tour.
After an eighteen hours trip, we arrived on saturday´s morning and after setting up the bikes we started the first and easiest stage to Las Loicas town, a tinny border village and last argentinian point of civilization.
This first stage was easy and hided us the fact that the following days were going to be really hard.
Around 6 p.m. we reached Nino Hernandez's "puesto" a local rancher, who allowed the support team, to set up the camp. The place was amaizing; a green valley, where "Chico" river runs, coming from high in the mountains and the remaining snow from the winter, were part of the scene.
This first afternoon was used to adapt us to the surroundings and the altitude, and to set to know each other. Drawing towards evening we prepared our equipment and dedicated the remaing time before dinner, to service the bikes.
Our first dinner together was "chivo asado" an excellent local goat barbacue, very typical from this side of the country.
The day after, the challenge started. We had breakfast, joking about everybody's biking strength while uphilling, and then the departure moment arrived. After stretching, a very important ritual we repeated before and after cycling during the whole trip, the Andes Challenge really began.
The first stage distance was about 40 km and joined "Las Loicas" to a solitary place called "La Veranada de Sepúlveda", going through the Argentine customhouse that happily delayed us an hour and 25 minutes: no comments.
The path was a hard uphill with a strong facing wind, that forced us to give our maximum effort. We helped ourselves supporting and encouraging each other not to quit.
We stopped many times to catch our breath and we seized the opportunity to refill the water bottles from snow melt and to take some pictures.
The Paso Pehuenche is dry and very windy, therefore that second ride was really hard, but the place's beauty and everybodys die-hard cycling spirit, made nobody quit until we covered the first twenty k. of the first stage where lunch was set.
After a nice rest, we faced and did the last twenty k. that were even harder, due to the uphill's increase, keeping us from exceed in a 7 km/h speed average.
While we where climbing, local geography was showing its own changes. Finally we arrived to see the incredible and imposing Cerro Campanario (4049 metres height), in the middle of the lonely mountain range, breathing pure air and watching an unique and amazing landscape.
We arrived in the afternoon at the camp, at 2300 metres over the sea level, with the last energy we had, embracing ourselves, shouting, aplausing, showing our happiness to nature and congratulating each other for that first battle we won.
After the celebration, we attacked like war convicts every piece of food we found. That was the coldest night (zero degrees) that didn't intimidate us, while we were talking about the first day's experiences around the fire and sharing the excellent Chileans and Argentinians wines made in the Andes.
We woke up to the third Andes Challenge day and everybody was feeling the effort made day´s before, but the air we breathed and the landscape surrounding pushed us to start over again. We had breakfast and we began cycling the 44k. uphill planned to "Campanario" valley in Chilean territory.
This third stage was hard enough too, because adding to natural fatigue, we had to breath over 2500 metres height, cycle in an uphill steep dirt path and face an untiring wind coming from the Pacific Ocean.
To avoid deshydratation we had to stop to refill water from the mountain, cereal bars were also very good, and it was necessary to cover our skin because finding shade to protect ourselves from the strong summer sun was really impossible.
I think this was the most critical time in the challenge, endless hours while we were riding in silence, we had only one attraction: we knew that late in the afternoon the downhill was supposed to begin. Suddenly we arrived at the lonely Argentinian and Chilean border in the highest part of the Challenge: 2560 metres over the sea. This place was incredible for the loneliness we found: nobody in thousands of kilometers around. Only we found some guardians in the sky: a few condors seizing the strong thermic uphill current.
A little bit later we found the Maule lagoon, giant blue water mirror in the middle of that very dry landscape, and we decided to lunch and rest and some, the brave ones, decided to take a cold bath.
Finding the lagoon was fully pleasant, because there was the begining of our desired downhill. It's really difficult to transmit what you can feel in such a place, with the mountain on your left and the dangerous violent fall on your right running over 40 km/h on a wide path. It's difficult too to convince the bikers to reduce speed, after hours and hours cycling uphills, they see the downhill like "oasis". Therefore they go with the madness reflected in their faces and this crazy look put a few meters ahead without realizing the risk they are running.
As team leaders we saw latent danger so we applied the extreme rules: ride on the mountain side, not overcome the guide and maintain some distance between each biker.
At least, and after a frenetic downhill reaching through speedzone computers over 60 km/h, we arrived to the "Retén de Carabineros", the first Chilean border position, where did customs and inmigration.
We had a warm reception and after that we continued riding. We passed near the "Condors slope" and "The White Monks", amaizing rock sculpture systems.
The path was still incredible, driving our ride on a wonderful downhill and running near a very deep violent fall over one hundred and fifty meters.
The road became dangerous, so rules got tight. For the record: never forget to use your helmet. We arrived at camp almost in the evening fully excited from the downhill and cheering the ones that were showing up.
We ate dry grapes, nuits, almonds excellent for energy and muscle recovery, while we were relating to each other our day's experiences. The Challenge was growing day by day.
We repared a few damaged bikes and due to the water's temperature we hardly took a bath.
It wasn't midnight and there was nobody up and about. Rolling over the following stage, the landscape started to change again leaving the high mountainous dry climate to find humidity and green valleys on the Chilean side of the mountains.
The lonely tamaracks we found slowly became deep forests. The Maule river, that finishes it's course in the Pacific Ocean, was deep blue and danced in rapids and amaizing waterfalls.
After lunch and while some were sleeping under a nice shade others went to take a refreshing shower under a natural cascade.
We started riding again and passed the second Chilean border control called "La Mina", we passed "Perquín", "Armerillos" name that comes from the arrows the pre-Columbian locals used 300 years ago, and we arrived at "Las Garzas", where the camp was set up.
It was impossible to continue drinking water from rivers because we were reaching the civilization-pollution. That riding day was one of the hardest, contrary to what we were hoping, because the road was very damaged and it was full of big stones that obstruct the ride. We tested our "die-hard cyclists spirit" and we had success with the great suspension fork's job.
During the afternoon we reached the pavement and our bodies thanked God for that: every part was aching and we felt the sharpness of our saddles. Guess which part of the body said Ohh god!! now holidays starts for me too!! After a few kilometres on the road we reached the camp in Lago Colbún, an incredible paradise in Chilean mountains, where we had a free afternoon to swim, play soccer, relax and lay on the sun.
The last riding day we had to go over 60 kilometres and we did them at an amaizing average. Until reaching "Talca", 7ºRegion's main capital, we were intercepted by the "Carabineros" the local police that kindly escorted us towards Hotel Plaza, our destination point. That was the Andes Challenge end so we celebrated until late at night. Local T.V. inteviewed some part of the crew and later we saw the Andes Challenge "heroes" on T.V. in the hotel. Afterwards we went to "Santiago de Chile" and we stayed in "Mendoza", Argentina where we saw the Mount Aconcagua, the biggest in America and we seized the last adventure touch: rafting from 2 to 4 degree, but that's another story.

Mariano D'Alessandro

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