PassonRoballo to Cochrane

1st November 2025

Breakfast started at eight so we were there promptly on time. Today we are crossing the border back into Chile at Paso Bali. This is one of the more remote areas of the chilli Argentine border and it does not see very much traffic the road out of town headed back towards Route 40 but we turned off after 7 km and headed north on a properly unpaved road through a landscape very hard to describe mountainous desert like with lakes and endless views to the mountains .

it Was one of those days that’s extremely hard to put into words we rode on empty roads and did not pass a car in three hours. The land landscape changed from Luna to mountainous to multicoloured rocks to sand and back again. .

We reach the Argentine border just as the border guards were changing their shifts and the suitcases were outside waiting to be collected and the new border guards delivered. I do not know how long they stay on their posts but it has to be one of the loneliest jobs that I’ve ever seen. But possibly very rewarding because where you are is so out of touch from the real world and surrounded by amazing scenery. We did our paperwork and headed through no man’s land the five or 6 km to the Chilean border. Was it by magic and as is quite normal. The scenery knows to change to something completely different. Here we find Greenfields with trees and mountains, which are snowcapped. This border has no Wi-Fi or connection with the outside world so everything is done in triplicate by paperwork so the process was long and slightly boring. .

Once we cleared and had said goodbye to the local animals, we headed into a river Valley surrounded by steep slopes on the other side with snow cap hills and a huge alluvial floodplain. It was quite amazing. We continued along this road for approximately 70 km before reaching a little place where we could stop and have coffee and a sandwich.

After this, we finally arrived at Route seven which is the Catera Austral, which is the main road north to south in the southern part of Chile. We headed south to Cochrane. Which is the largest town in the southern part of Chile. And spent the night in a guest house. As always finding a place to eat was not easy. But we found an incredible roadside van run by a man that had lived in Detroit for three years and he was making burgers which were so good. So Tim and I sat and ate burgers and fries and headed home for a restful evening.