We are finally on our way to our newest adventure. After a fairly ridiculous commitment of time, effort and money we have packed our two bicycles and 4 large duffle bags. You may recall from earlier trips, we are anticipatory about our bikes making it to Buenos Aires. On our trip to Russia the bikes were lost for several weeks necessitating the purchase of new bikes and gear in St. Petersburg, Russia before our visas ran out. Our bikes arrived late to Inuvik, Northern Territories, Canada on our trip to the arctic but thankfully showed up before the ride was to start. But we have done what we can to pack them well and label the boxes profusely, so…fingers-crossed!

Our adventure began earlier than we anticipated this week when we realized that Hurricane Ian was poised to hit Florida on Wednesday, the day that we had connections through Miami on our way to Buenos Aires. Hours were spent searching for flights and talking with the airline before we managed to book directly to Buenos Aires from Dallas/Fort Worth on a non-stop. Whew. We had to push back our departure by one day but that was a small price to pay to avoid a hurricane and flight cancellations. Sure enough, the flight we were to be on to Miami yesterday was cancelled. Dodged that bullet! We are sitting in the airport right now so we’re not out of the woods until we land tomorrow morning but it looks promising!

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I thought perhaps you would be interested in seeing what a day’s route looks like. Since this blog is about adventure, I selected one of the most demanding days of the first section of the tour. This route starts in Mendoza, Argentina on the east side of the Andes Mountains. It is a place that may be recognizable to the wine drinkers in the group as the source of fabulous Malbec wines, the quintessential wine of Argentina. The route heads up into the Andes Mountains to Uspallata, Argentina, a 65 mile (104km) ride with 8,147 ft (2483m) of elevation gain.

The image above is the route map from Ride With GPS, the app used to give us our routes. The is SAE (South American Epic) 22- ride 16. The satellite map shows the route with the elevation profile below. The hatched areas on the profile indicate unpaved road. You can see that we will climb to approximately 10,000ft (3048m) and then descend to camp at approximately 6,700 ft (2042m). We will be near the base of Aconcagua, the highest peak in the Andes Mountains at 23,000ft (7000m) above sea level.

Looks fabulous! Looks daunting! Wish us luck and strong legs!

Will touch base from Argentina. Thanks for coming along!