Sit comfortably, it's a long day that I'll tell you. For an extraordinary story, extraordinary narration: we take François' point of view.
We are 148km from Bardas Blancas, the next village in good standing. We'll go through the hamlet of Ranquil Norte at 25km and will have at least 60km of bad track after it. We have enough food for 2 days but hope to find a pick-up to take us there as soon as possible. A river flows at the bottom of the valley, we should be able to find water for the second day.
4km
after Barrancas we cross the Rio Barrancas, enter the province of
Mendoza and start to climb a hill that will end a little after Ranquil Norte. Bad news, the rio is very muddy, we can hardly take enough water in case of second day in the valley. As the days before, the temperature rises fast despite our departure at 8am. There are very few cars on the road, so we arrive at Ranquil Norte on our own. After a visit to the tourist office and filling the bottles, we take our lunch in the shade of trees.
Ouch
the gray horseflies of our first day of pampas are back, Floriane is stung
on the finger, I crush one or two, she fetches the insect spray, then
everything accelerates. Floriane panics and doesn't feel well: her ears are clogged and hurt, she feels her throat swell. It doesn't look good at all, I ask her to take her bike to get down
very quickly to the health center in the middle of the village while I
pack.
As in the health center of Chorriaca the nurse was not in the premises, Floriane goes to the tourist office in front of it. Surprised, she cannot speak, her mouth is too swollen, she pronounces a slobbered and choked "allergy!". The woman at the tourist office realizes very quickly that there is a problem and runs to find the nurse. She arrives very quickly and takes Floriane to the health center.
Meanwhile, I'm just arriving in the center of the village. A car driver informs me that my wife is in the health center. Floriane's bicycle is in front of the tourist office, I put mine in the same place and run to the health center.
Aparté: Floriane has a rare gift: her veins are very thin and hidden. Most nurses cannot sting her, the most experienced need several tries.
When I arrive, the nurse tries in vain to sting her with adrenaline. Floriane cannot really speak, I will need to translate the little I understand. So I run to fetch our French-Spanish dictionary. In the meantime the nurse ended up stinging her in the bottom. The nurse is now giving her oxygen, Floriane has trouble breathing. I'm going to get our anti-allergy pills, the health center has only weak ones. The nurse is delighted to recognize one of our pill and wishes to give it to Floriane. Small problem, she cannot swallow anything, not even water. The nurse dilutes the drug and tries again to sting Floriane to give it intravenously. She cannot do it, even with a very thick needle. She checks that her vital signs are fine, everything is OK. Floriane stopped swelling, the worst is behind us.
The ambulance driver arrives at the wheel of his vehicle. We are told that Floriane will be taken to the nearest hospital in Barrancas, the village where we come from. I put our bikes in the healther center, grab the most important papers before boarding with Floriane in the ambulance.
20 minutes later we arrive at the Barrancas hospital. Four nurses and a doctor come to take care of Floriane. The nurses try to sting her to give her an anti-allergy as well as physiological saline. After the failure of a first, the one that seems the most skilled gets started. Floriane moans, they aren't go softly. The nurse finally gets the needle in.
The ambulance leaves with the first nurse. We are informed that we'll have to hitchhike to return to Ranquil
Norte once Floriane will be better, unless the police take us there.
Floriane is driven to a room to stay under observation for a few hours. We both take the opportunity to rest, we realize some pressure. After the nap, Floriane arrives again to speak more or less clearly and to drink slowly. We are reassured.
We are informed that the police won't be able to take us to Ranquil Norte, the village is not in the same administrative area. We'll have to hitchhike. After 2.5 hours in the hospital, the doctor comes back to see us, he draws a sad face, he had to expect Floriane to be back to normal. We are happy that she has already deflated a bit. Despite his disappointment, the doctor informs us that we'll be driven back to Ranquil Norte.
Our driver is the director of the hospital. He also informs us that the track between Ranquil Norte and the next village is in very bad condition because of recent storms. In addition, the path is full of mosquitoes and horseflies.
Back in the village, we collect our bikes and ask where to stay. We cannot buy food here and would prefer to go to the next village. We agree with our possible landlady: we will hitchhike in the middle of the village for 2 hours, if we don't find a lift, she would pick us up.
It is 17:00, we are sitting in front of the bus stop to hitchhike. I finish my lunch and Floriane manages to eat something, great victory. After 1h40 of hitchhiking, we're losing hope but a pickup driver stops. He agrees to take us to Bardas Blancas, 122km from here. We take the bike and luggage and we are on the way. Very quickly we arrive to the section of dirt road. The track is in very bad condition, recent thunderstorms have either dug furrows in the road or covered the road with mudslides. At the worst of the track, large mud pools cover the road, the cars come out all repainted. We are happy not to be on our bikes.
On the road we cross a place that the driver wants to show us. It's a narrow and deep canyon of volcanic rock at the bottom of which flows an agitated river. It's very impressive and we're grateful to the driver for leading us there despite the late hour. Despite the poor track we drive very fast, the new pickup cushioned very well shocks and vibrations. We go even faster once we reach the asphalt.
On the way we learn that his final destination is Malargüe, 60km after Bardas Blancas, therefore he agrees to take us there, a boon for us. We arrive at 21:30 not far from Malargüe Camping. We warmly thank our driver before settling comfortably in Hostel Kathmandu for 2 nights. Tonight we celebrate the survival of Floriane at the restaurant!
The next day is rest and recovery. Floriane isn't quite deflated when she woke up but can speak normally. We take advantage of the good internet connection to catch up with November's road book. In the afternoon, Floriane is no longer swollen, back to normal.
