Escape From Rufino

STILL AT VILLA CAÑAS after the eclipse, mañana soon became a whole week-long, in which time I had adjusted the valves on the bike twice, the first time the gap was a little loose and the adjustment resulted in a tippity tippity sound during an excursion to the pueblo. I needed to bend the tips of the feeler gauges in able to get a cleaner angle into the tappets for more accurate measurement. That did the trick. The tippity tippity sound had gone and the valves were presumably opening and closing when they should. I wouldn’t have known any difference without doing it myself.

I’d leave tomorrow, the 10th of July and took one last lukewarm shower to clean up after some last-minute bike maintenance and one last valve check.

10th July 1pm I knocked on the door of the Balneario gatehouse to pay the bill. 100 pesos which was under £2 at the time. Not bad, 20p a day – I was probably using more than that in electric and WiFi. 19⁰C made for a warm day, considering it was winter, and I was already cooking up a good layer of sweat under my jacket.

Packed up and raring to go, I sped off up the lane away from the fanfare of the parakeets to soon come to a sputtering halt 500 metres later. I’d forgotten to turn on the fuel cock after replacing the fuel tank: that and leaving the side stand down while riding away are my most frequent oversights.

Fueling up at Venado Tuerto, I turned left toward Rufino on Ruta 33, much more pleasant now the sun wasn’t beaming into my eyes. The roadside trees flickered stroboscopic sunlight across the road. It was quite hypnotic and reminded me of riding down country roads in Spring back in the UK.

I passed a man pushing a motorcycle down the opposite side of the road, I cruised by wondering if I should stop and help before hanging a U-turn about a quarter of a mile away and coasting back. Flags on his chopper-like moto suggested he was from Uruguay. He’d lost a link out of his chain and the chain had come off. He’d recovered the chain off the road but lost the link. We each tried fitting his spare link squeezing hard with pliers but it was just a hair too narrow to bring the grooves clear enough to secure the clip. Cell signal was nonexistent. I wondered whether I had a spare link buried and bound up in my luggage. I was reluctant to unbind it all to find out I hadn’t and took a few more tries with the undersized link and pliers.  A Gaucho rode up and chatted with the Uruguayan in Spanish and phoned his friend to bring his pickup and they would drive into Rufino to a Suzuki dealer in the town to sort it out.

I said I would follow and exchange contact details and we shook oily hands but the pickup roared off into the distance way past my top speed. I wouldn’t have liked to have been in the back of that truck holding a motorbike steady.

later I found three chain links in my spares – would they have fitted? I don’t know. I’d missed a chance at being the hero, trumped by a gaucho and his mate with a truck.

I’d lost the Uruguayan so I eagerly made my way to the leafy Parque Municipal de Rufino near central Rufino ready to camp in verdant tranquillity. The place was buzzing with noisy mopeds and noisier teenagers. The iOverlander review must have been written by motorhomers as pitching a tent was far too visible on the expansive lawns and was asking for urban-type trouble.

Plan B took me to the Deisel Rufino Las 40 truck stop on the junction of Ruta 7. A vast and dirty place littered with old tyres on a busy roundabout and with a broad aroma of an oil refinery – although I didn’t see or know of one nearby. This place was rough and noisy and I felt a dark vibe with it so, at that moment, as dusk began to fall, I formed a Plan C: bailout west of Rufino to find somewhere away from the town just off Ruta 7. Nothing obvious was marked on the map and I would just have to use my eyes in the gloom.

Ruta 7 was fast and busy with trucks and buses. Darkness was falling fast and oncoming the headlights blinded me – too much for my 35watt bulb. To each side stretched endless wire fences keeping cattle off the roads and campers out of the fields – nowhere to pitch a tent and I had no choice but to press on in the dark. 

A railway crossing – no, too rough and which might still be active. I passed a couple of farm tracks before a promising left turn tempted me off this arterial route. I pulled to the side of the road to wait for a gap in the traffic before hooking a U-turn back and escaping this noisy highway. 

In the blackness surrounding the dim circle painted by my headlamp beam, I followed the yellow ribbon of gravel slowly passing a couple of oncoming pickups. To my left, I noticed a black silhouette of tall trees against the charcoal grey sky a couple of hundred metres away with a single track lane leading to them.

I turned left and arrived at a copse of Eucalyptus at the entrance to an open field. This should do just nicely. I couldn’t see anything in the knee-high grass but the ground beneath my feet felt crunchy with Eucalyptus bark. Pitching a tent would be out of the question and I broke out the hammock. I’d be unlucky if it rained as I’d had nothing but sunshine ever since the eclipse.

A cool breeze crept through the trees. Its persistence across me dangling in Winter’s breath between the tree trunks would be enough to chill me to the bone and I broke out every blanket and sleeping bag and wedged the camping mattress in the hammock for insulating the main vulnerability: compression of the underlayers by body weight which overcomes any insulating properties that blankets and feathers normally provide..

Headlights approached from down the track and I switched my head-torch off so as not to give my position away and the pickup drove on by without hesitation.

I was far away enough from Ruta 7 not to hear the traffic and only the rustle of the eucalyptus canopy in the night breeze. It already felt cold and it was still early and I buried myself in the hammock. My face was cold so I put my helmet on to keep my head and face warm and improve the neck angle lying in the hammock without a pillow.

I was comfortable but still cold from the constant breeze. I dozed on and off all through the long night until the grey damp dawn loomed over the fields. My top layers were soaked with dew and I arose early for generating some warmth by packing away. Next to the copse lay a row of cylindrical hay bails on short grass. A tent here would have been perfect but I hadn’t seen them in the dark.

My first hammock camp under the stars was OK other than for the cold. I was hungry but I was keen to get moving and instead gulped down half a pint of water.

Packed away, there was no sign anyone had been here and I motored away down the lane, nicely warmed up by the morning’s activity.

Problem. I hadn’t noticed on the way in but a wire gate was blocking my exit and locked with a padlock and chain. My heart sank. I had strayed onto a farm and the only vehicle I had seen was probably the farmer leaving for home. I turned around and rode up the lane to explore other exits only to find gates into more fields and cattle staring at me with curiosity. I could see Ruta 7 in the distance but too many fields between me and it. Nearby was what looked like a work area, a few shovels and buckets but no hacksaw or anything that might help my escape.

I returned to the gate and looked around. A truck drove by and we gave each other a friendly wave. How long before the farmer returned I wondered, and what would his reaction be? I looked at the fences along the neighbouring field. The field was open at the end near the trees If there was a break in the fence, I could ride across the ploughed field like Steve McQueen in the Great Escape. No breaks and thick with weeds. No chance.

Looking at the other end of the gate revealed a strong possibility. The gate was secured by two long eye bolts and square nuts. I fished out my adjustable spanner and removed the nuts but the bolts were stuck fast in the wooden fence post. Hammering the bolt was just damaging the threads. They wouldn’t budge.

Back at the locked gate, the chain was secured to a ratchet with a lever to tension the wire gate after it was locked. I started tensioning the gate heaving on the lever and all of a sudden, pop. the top bolt sprung out. That was all I needed. The gate lay almost flat on the floor. By standing on the wires I was able to push the bike over them. I was home free.

My fear now was that the farmer would turn up and see the state of his gate so I set about releasing all the tension across the gate and knocking the bolt back in. It was harder than it looked. A lot of twisting and hammering finally got a couple of screwthreads showing. The nut was hard to start due to the mangled threads but a bit of coaxing got it to bite and turn to pull the bolt through to its original position: 6 threads showing. The lower bolt hadn’t moved so it was easy to spin the nut back on finger tight plus half a turn.

Retensioning the chain with the ratchet had the gate looking unmolested. Well, not quite. Eagle eyes could see bare steel on the screw threads where there had been rust, plus the moon-dust surface of the entrance betrayed my footsteps… Tire tracks and dozens of walking boot prints told the whole story. I would have been surprised if the farmer hadn’t noticed these blatant clues but at least he hadn’t had to arrive to a hacksawed padlock with a note saying sorry.

I felt euphoric riding back towards Ruta 7, more than making up for the despair of the early obstacle to my departure. I was so pleased that I hadn’t had to sit there waiting for hours or days for a (possibly) angry farmer, although I’ve yet to meet one still as South America appears to be the friendliest continent on the planet.

A simple oversight in the dark, not noticing the gate and mistaking the private lane for a public road. One of the reasons I don’t like riding after sunset.