there are no deadlines or route, destiny takes them

He Motorhome Rest for a while, parked in the Plaza on Roca Street, almost on the corner of Bahía Blanca. He needed it. It has traveled around 45 thousand kilometers. And those to come…

The thing is that although “here there are no deadlines, there is no route,” as the adventurous man explains, the ambitious final destination is nothing less than Alaska. “If they invite us to go to some nice, attractive place that another motorist or local person recommends, we go. So, for example, the other day we went to Lake Pellegrini, in Cinco Saltos,” he says, while she sips some delicious mate in the kitchen-dining room.

And to think that “we haven’t taken a vacation in a while” and they have already been traveling the country and the world for “more than a year” with the vehicle that until not so long ago transported company personnel on a daily basis.

“I am fulfilling a dream, the dream of my life, and I encourage people to imitate us. We had visits in Neuquén, where we also stopped for a few days, from future motorcyclists. A girl asked us, is 1 million pesos enough for you to walk all month? and I answered yes, ‘you have plenty of money!’ We don’t have to spend energy or water, we have to pay for the gas…” Juan lists and argues.

An incredible life change

He is the man who one day got tired of dealing with the stress that his job caused him and said enough was enough. And he found in his partner an indispensable ally for this beautiful experience.

“It was about gaining quality of life. It had passenger transportation, it served factories in Olavarría. I was having a bad time at work, it stressed me out a lot. So it doesn’t mean that I say to Claudia ‘what if we go to tour America?’, thinking that she was going to run me away. But she said yes and that’s when I came up with Alaska and she also accepted haha. The idea, of course, was to go out without leaving anything pending, without having to pay attention to the phone, to be able to forget about the routine,” he captures with his captivating story while the LMC team savors some snacks offered by the rodanteros for the particular snack.

In order to pay for the endless excursion, “we sell mates, knives, incense burners, Claudia makes bracelets for the children with the initials of their names, rainbows to decorate the houses, painted fabric hearts. With that we pay the expenses of the trip, fuel, food, vehicle insurance, telephones, if the gas needs to be replenished…”, say the traveling Buenos Aires residents.

Thus, the Sprinter, which was already key as a work tool (minibus), became even more indispensable for this stage of their lives. “I used this vehicle to work, I kept the oldest one. It had 21 seats, one day we took everything out, it was bare and the next day we started assembling the motorhome. It is a house, all small but a house nonetheless, with a bathroom, the same refrigerator as my home, kitchen and countertop, air conditioning, heating, we close the closet with curtains, we have gas detectors, water tank levels, the boiler, etc. . It is a mobile studio apartment, the design was my idea, we started doing it and Daniel, a neighboring carpenter, advised us and then he did a spectacular job,” highlights the man, much more relaxed than before.

Claudia wears a Route 40 t-shirt. And she also reveals her work and personal history. “I was in gastronomy, I took care of grandmothers, I worked in poultry, I dedicated myself to taking care of my granddaughters. I have 4 daughters and 8 granddaughters, he -through Juan- has 1 daughter. The families support, they know that we are happy like this”, she celebrates and offers another piece of cake.

The dream trip

Naturally, the trip began in the place of origin of both, Olavarría. “From there we went to the Atlantic Coast, as we had not had a vacation in a long time… It was at the end of March, we were alone on the beach because it was already cold. We walked through Claromecó, Necochea, Pinamar and went up to Entre Ríos. From there to Misiones, we returned to Olavarría to renew our driver’s license and continued our journey towards Ushuaia on route 3. We then went up route 40, went to Chile and took the Austral route. Finally we came to the Alto Valle,” Juan summarizes the endless journey and Claudia takes the opportunity to go to the Chino supermarket to buy something for dinner.

Delighted with their current destination, they explain what brought them to the area: “A town like Villa Paranacito, Entre Ríos, caught our attention, we stayed there for 9 days. The people treated us very well but like in Fernández Oro nowhere haha. We arrived a week ago, occasionally. We wanted to visit small cities, little towns, we like them more than big cities and on the way along Route 22 we were introduced to Oro. We went through Cipolletti to visit and we also walked through Neuquén. But it was not programmed, the idea is to visit natural places such as lagoons, such as Jordan Island.”

In a few days, the neighbors made him feel all their usual warmth, their quality as hosts and some “asked us to stay.”

“The people were loving from the first moment we arrived. They pass by here and tell us, ‘whatever you need, they want to wash clothes, they want to carry water… We are amazed, a boy passed by on a motorcycle, ‘at your service, my dad is also a motorcyclist.’ The lady from the other block, Silvia, a wheeler, also came and invited us to drink mate and then to stay on her land to sleep and we spent the nights there for safety. She treated us like a 10. We are getting fond of the city but our goal is Alaska. We are not going to deny that we are already getting Gold, we were also comfortable in Neuquén, but here it is calmer,” admits Juancito while a couple of boys play ball in the green space behind.

“We didn’t get anything to sell on the first day, because the neighbors came and wanted to buy something from us. They brought us gifts, apples, eggs… We took away a beautiful souvenir from Oro. In Chile, a couple also gave us a great welcome, we don’t forget those things,” the woman reinforces her gratitude.

And when it comes to reviewing an anecdote, they remember when “in Chile our hydraulic steering pump broke and some Cordoban motorists that we met in this unique environment in which we made many friends helped us. They, the people from Cordoba, were in Esquel and they bought the pump from us, there was just one from Esquel in Chile near us and they sent it to us. Incredible”.

By the way, they are sharing experiences on social networks (“Somos Australes on Instagram and now a new project on YouTube, on Facebook Australes Juan and Claudia”). Juan edits and uploads videos, communication is somehow familiar to him because he knew how to work “as a radio operator and also as a DJ.”

Now he sets the pace on the road with the Motorhome and a luxury companion. The story of these travelers is worth Gold…