Argentina Hates Bridges and I need to eat more often

Not sure what it is all about. Peru is a pretty poor country and their roads have bridges. Bolivia seemed to build rather nice spans over running water. But Argentina... I guess all their bridge engineers decided to leave for Europe.

View Route in northern Argentina in a larger map

Since entering Argentina we have had to drive through so many rivers that I have completely lost count. We came in over the Paso Jamo from Chile and decided we were going to make a right turn at Susques and head down the famed Route 40. This road travels the entire North/ South distance of Argentina, about half on dirt.
February and March are the wet season and 2011 is a particularly wet one. People we have talked to say this reminds them of the ol' 1986 wet season which apparently was quite wet.

It seems like with every river we encounter just gets a little deeper and swifter. The video shows us driving down a road that just turned into a river. It wasn't so deep and was actually better driving than the road had been, but I am always nervous for the hidden hole or boulder.

Our bikes do pretty well in the water. The air intake for the engine is about 3 feet off the ground so one would have to be in really deep water (or lay the bike down in shallow water) to get water in the engine and so we have always plugged along when crossing rivers that even trucks couldn't cross.

Until we came to the one near Hualfin. This one was deep... and fast. No one except the real yahoos in their 4x4's were getting across. There was a highway crew there with giant front loaders and graders but they were just sort of driving in circles not quite sure what to do about the situation.

I contemplated just punching it across, but thought twice when the "Jefe" told us that we couldn't cross because he said so.
A local told us there might be a better crossing a little further upriver. Just then, a motorcyclists from France (Charles- his blog is here- in French) showed up and we all took off to look for a way to access the river upstream.

A few failed attempts on rocky roads that led to nowhere left us scratching our heads on how to proceed. Charles swore he saw a road that would take him to the river via a sandy wash. I was just getting hungry and grumpy and started to become convinced that too much messing around like this was going to ruin our bikes. I just wanted to go back to Haulfin, drink some beer and deal with this in the morning (it was getting late). Megan got the binoculars out and looked around. We decided to split up. Charles would go down the sandy wash, we would follow a hunch on one more road, and hopefully it would all somehow work out in the end. At this point, I was code red on my blood sugar level but refused to eat anything.

As we were attempting to turn the bikes around on a very rocky road, I dropped Megan's bike on a hill and went tumbling down it. I threw a bit of a fit, discovered I indeed hadn't broken my arm but had broken the clutch lever on her bike. Megan force fed me some dry bread. This picture was taken right in midst of it all. See how happy I am... and how happy Megan is with me?
After some food and some bickering in the heat, we heard Charles' cries from down in the sandy wash. He was very very stuck in the mud and needed us to help him get his bike back to us. Welcoming a distraction from the clusterf*** we were in, we walked down to him and with a little effort we got his bike rolling again.
Not able to drive Megan's bike (because of a lack of clutch lever) we weighed the options. I could attempt to JB Weld the lever back together. We could attach our vise grips to the cable and just pull when we needed a clutch... Or we could use a spare clutch lever if we had one. We didn't. But Charles had a Honda one. And guess what? It fit perfectly.

Back on the road and with some smiles we decided to go back to the main crossing and see if we could somehow get our bikes across. It would be dark in an hour, the next town was about 50km away (of what we thought would be washboard sandy/ dirt road) but we should try to cross anyway.
When we got back to the crossing, there was more heavy machinery but the situation seemed about the same. If only we could load our bikes into the front of a big front loader.

Megan set off to see what she could do. First she smooth talked the Jefe. He said that we would need to find a private vehicle to put our bikes in because his company (which I think was hired to make the road passable) couldn't except the liability. Then she started talking to the drivers. After what must have been some serious diplomatic discussions (Charles and I just stood back and watched) they agreed to take us across in a front loader.

In we went, one at a time and across the river, amassing on the other bank sometime around dark. I've always wanted to ride in the scoop of a big front loader and now I have. It is pretty much as cool as you might imagine it to be. I felt like a real prince up there.
We tipped the driver, loaded up our bikes, grabbed a backpacker from Montreal named Natalie and headed off for Belen. As luck would have it, the road turned to perfect pavement and we made quick time to the next town where I could finally get that beer I had been wanting.