"How do you keep so fit, just sitting on a motorbike all day?"

"No idea, madam. I put it down to my strict diet regime of caffeine, nicotine and alcohol."
There are two types of road in Argentina - paved and unpaved.

There are two types of paved road - excellent and awful.

There are three types of pothole on the awful paved roads - pothole, POTHOLE, and "Where'd that truck go?"

The unpaved roads are ripio - gravel.

There are two types of gravel - large ball-bearings and small ball-bearings. Both are slithery and lethal with the strong blustery wind (which is what did for me back in April). Sometimes the ripio has been graded, which means that the ball-bearings are spread evenly across the width of the road to a depth of up to two inches. So one prays for an ungraded section so that one can ride in a compacted tyre track. However, this means appalling corrugations and bits falling off the bike regularly. It also wreaks havoc with my shoulder.

Yesterday it took me six hours to ride the 108 miles from Rio Mayo in Argentina to Coyhaique, all on ripio. The border crossing only took about half an hour altogether as the officials on both sides had nothing else to do (they get an average of three vehicles a day). What bliss to get to the Chilean side where the dirt is nicely compacted and there's NO GRAVEL.

And what a welcome from Francisco and Fabiola, not to mention Hortensia (the maid) who immediately sat me down in front of a huge bowl of warming stew.

So I have to do a few repairs (courtesy of the aforementioned Argentinian ripio), and a major service as I've now done over 30,000 miles. I managed to get a new pair of tyres fitted the other day when I was passing through San Rafael on the way from Mendoza to Zapala, so they should be OK for a while now.