Riding Ruta 40

Trying to cross an international border on a motorbike can be stressful. There’s voluminous paperwork one must have in order and zero tolerance for errors; one misplaced, incorrectly stamped or misdated document is all it takes to get rejected. But in South America where corruption is rife, all the paperwork in the world may not give you a green light unless palms are greased first.

- Ian Lloyd Neubauer

So, you can appreciate my trepidation as I leave squeaky clean Chile, one of the least corrupt countries in the world, and approach Argentina—a country where “payoffs, kickbacks and government corruption are considered part of everyday life,” according to the New York Times.

But I’ve got a secret weapon: My mother is Argentinian and I have a good grip on the Spanish language. As I present my paperwork at Paso Rodolfo Roballos, a remote border crossing in the middle of nowhere 2,250 kilometers southwest of the capital, Buenos Aires, I make small talk with border officials about how I’m returning to my mother’s land, about the beautiful scenery, about motorbikes, the weather... anything to prove my Latin credentials. Whether or not the chit chat has any impact is impossible to say. But after a final cursory glance at my passport, the man who holds my fate in his hands stamps it and wishes me a safe voyage before adding, as an afterthought, that I should take care in the wind.

The wind? I ask myself as I get back on the bike and charge like Che Guevara onto a mustard-colored plateau punctuated by sheer-edged tabletop mountains. It’s like a scene from a Roadrunner cartoon if not for the glaciated ring of mountains surrounding the lowlands—an imposing amphitheatre of stone and ice cut straight out of