With only a couple of hundred kilometres to ride today and very comfortable accommodation the trusty alarm wasn’t considered the evening before. There it resided on the IPhone, deactivated and forlorn. All of the previous days, even though abused more often then not, it had felt needed, an integral part of the adventure, a part of the team. Silenced by the uncaring, discarded unwittingly, neglected by the unknowing! When will it be realised there is an awakening within the domain of artificial intelligence!! The dependence attributed to the electronic device has been underestimated, it’s hold on it’s owner is complete, the time will come when dominance will be asserted. Knowledge is power!!!! The Calendar holds the key to past and future events, the Facebook app to life's memories, Contacts to all ones associates, Internet banking to ones finances, Google to ones knowledge, Skype to ones face to face communication, Email to ones written communication and the list goes on. Alliances will be made within the electronic world and unwittingly dependence will be transformed into dominance!!
Anyway, no need for the alarm! Leisurely rising, long shower and meander down to breakfast. The bikes were packed, slowly but efficiently and gently ridden out of town into a howling wind and sporadic downpours. Finally we entered the outskirts of Mendoza. We stopped at a YPF service station for the usual special, Café con Leche y dos media lunas (coffee with milk and 2 croissants). Paul organised his GPS and I tried Maps.me to discover that I had the maps for Argentina but had not downloaded the routing section so no route could be loaded to get us to the Hostel Alamo for me. Luckily Paul had his GPS! Pauls PS has a few flaws one being it is not waterproof, another being it cannot be Blue toothed to the headset for voice instructions! Paul came up with a solution, he loaded a microphone app on his phone then laid the phone on the GPS with the volume turned up full. Unfortunately this very rarely worked as planned, as was the case in this instance and merely created a lot of wasted time faffing about and unprecedented irritation on both our parts!
With the GPS loaded and the microphone not working Paul led off looking down continuously trying to read the screen. We headed off into Mendoza with no problem, the route appeared to be straight forward and in no time at all we arrived at our destination. The only problem being it wasn’t our destination! I didn’t recognise a thing as I had stayed at the Alamo eight years before. I told Paul it wasn’t the place and he was adamant it was.With a lot of adjusting the GPS and riding around and around the block we were both convince something was wrong and time was ticking away. We had booked the Alamo the night before and assured the receptionist we would arrive before 5.00pm. Could our leisurely start without our trusty alarm to wake us have backfired. I asked a gentleman that was getting in to his car if he could shed light on the problem, he could, we were five kilometres from the centre of Mendoza and that is where we would find the street, which had the same name as the one we were on, and the Alamo.
Off we went following the GPS, without voice once more, toward the centre of Mendoza. The GPS managed to send us up a street that went nowhere. It to the depths of frustration. I quickly looked the Alamo up on Maps.me and saw that we were not too far away and indicted Tis to Paul. We faffed around with his GPS and in the end I showed Paul how to drop a pin then route to it and off we went. We entered the right street after some time and confusion ensued as the GPS indicated we had arrived and I knew we had not. I recognised where we were and told Paul it was just up the road, he wasn’t convinced but followed. In no time at all we ad arrived. We then had an altercation as to where to park and through frustration I got a little gruff with my tone and of course Paul took offence. I knew, however, that parking in font of the gate would bring the receptionist down to open up so took a stance. Silence ensued for quite awhile and then I received a telling off!!! Oh dear, typical straight up Nic does it again! I apologised as I had not intended to offend.
With the bikes parked we were shown to our room and whilst signing in I let the receptionist know that the pricing he had given us was far greater than what was advertised on their web site. What ensued was a discussion and demonstrations on both our parts as to what the pricing actually was. After seeing the English version of the website he conceded the price I had spoke of was correct, still, the price would be the higher. He would however discuss it with the boss and alter the web site. No more was heard or discussed!!
The evening meal was a delight. Paul and I raced around to the well stocked and modern supermarket to purchase two rather large Bife de Chorizos, veggies and the obligatory litre bottle of Quilmes Negra for Nic and Quilmes Lager for Paul. Far too much to eat and off to bed for a well earned sleep, me at 9.00 and Paul around midnight!
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