Roads along the way...

My bike still looks pretty good after a wash, over 60 000 kms on the clock!

Good old classic Argentinean car.

Argentina as the best gas stations in the world! I wish our own country Canada or USA could have the same...
WIFI, good espresso, good food, full service, showers, cheap gas, even sells wine! - what more can you ask for. OH and some of them yo can camp in the back!
Argentinean gas stations is what i will miss the most.

Must of been a soccer game that day! or just an Argentinean way to save labor money?

A visit at Casa de Che Guevara in Alta Gracia.

The route map.
In 1948, Guevara entered the University of Buenos Aires to study medicine. But in 1951, he took a year off from studies to embark on a trip traversing South America by motorcycle with his friend Alberto Granado, with the final goal of spending a few weeks volunteering at the San Pablo Leper colony in Peru, on the banks of the Amazon River. On the way to Machu Picchu high in the Andes, he was struck by the crushing poverty of the remote rural areas, where peasant farmers worked small plots of land owned by wealthy landlords.
Later on his journey, Guevara was especially impressed by the camaraderie among those living in a Leper Colony, stating "The highest forms of human solidarity and loyalty arise among such lonely and desperate people." Guevara used notes taken during this trip to write an account entitled The Motorcycle Diaries, which later became a New York Times best-seller and was adapted into a 2004 award-winning film of the same name.
By trip's end, he came to view Latin America not as collection of separate nations, but as a single entity requiring a continent-wide liberation strategy. His conception of a borderless, united Hispanic America sharing a common 'Latino' heritage was a theme that prominently recurred during his later revolutionary activities. Upon returning to Argentina, he completed his studies and received his medical degree in June 1953, making him officially "Dr. Ernesto Guevara." Guevara later remarked that through his travels of Latin America, he came in "close contact with poverty, hunger and disease" along with the "inability to treat a child because of lack of money" and "stupefaction provoked by the continual hunger and punishment" that leads a father to "accept the loss of a son as an unimportant accident." It was these experiences which Guevara cites as convincing him that in order to "help these people", he needed to leave the realm of medicine, and consider the political arena of armed struggle.

Che at age 22 - 1951.

The kitchen.

Front of the house in Alta Gracia near Cordoba.

Lot more simple packing then me... his only bag!

Nice tires!

The Motorcycle!
Guevara travelled 8,000 kilometres (5,000 mi) across South America on a 1939 Norton 500 cc, named *La Poderosa* -The Mighty One -

Earthquake madness...

Right place at the right time is right!
I arrived back to Bariloche after an epic ride up Carretera Austral, Chile. Lost most of my clothes while riding too fast on the ripio road. My side dry bag had been getting loose on the rack after a bungy snapped. Next thing you know, I have a weird smell coming from my bike. It was my patagonia organic clothes burning away on the muffler.
Arriving in Bariloche with one t-shirt, shopping was on my list, so I spent the day walking around to find a new t shirt.
It was nice to be back in * La Bolsa del Deporte* #1 hostel up to date! Felt like coming home, great coffee, best crepes with Dulce de Leche... yummi. I need to relax a few days after my epic journey of Patagonia winds and rough roads.
The next day was spent putting grease all over my new shirt while doing an oil change and welding repairs - once again my rack got killed on the Ripio. (bad road)
I heard the crazy news on tv about a major earthquake at 8.8 on scale! occurred off the coast of the Maule Region of Chile on February 27, at 03:34 in the morning. I couldn't believe I was there 2 days before! in Chile, riding from Island of Chiloe. It was a sad thing to see the damage of tsunami's hitting the coast line. I rode down that coast exactly 3 months before! what if it would of happen while I was sleeping in my tent, next to the ocean! at the exact target spot.
I just couldn't believe ... The same thing had happen to me in Thailand 2003 while I was camping on Chicken Island for xmas with a bunch of friends... year after, same day, exact same spot the Island got hit with a Tsunami.
Better be at the right place at the right time!

All tunned up, greased up. I was ready to hit the road northbound Ruta 40 towards Cordoba, over 1800 kms. One city I had yet been too, so why not check it out. The 3 day mission to get there was long. Long distance of flat roads across the Pampas. I felt like I was driving across Canada in the middle of the prairies for 3 days! - Same same but different.
Cordoba is a nice city. Beautiful architecture, fairly tranquilo for a city. Great place for too much ice cream And near by the house of * Che Guevara * - an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat, military theorist, and major figure of the Cuban Revolution.
A visiting to his house and to see the original motorcycle of the * Motorcycle Diaries * was a must do~

Down the Ripio road...