Got sun on my face
Sleeping rough on the road
I'll tell you all about it
When I get home
Gonna roll up the sidewalk
Gonna need letting up
Comin' round to meet you
The long way up
We're gonna ride 13,000 miles through 13 countries.
From Ushuaia, in and out of Argentina and Chile, to the Atacama Desert,
heading up to La Paz before we cross Lake Titicaca,
continuing along the Andes to Colombia, over to Panama,
through Central America and Mexico, arriving in Los Angeles 100 days later.
We're gonna give these guys video cameras,
and they're also gonna have cameras with microphones on their crash helmets
so they can film themselves as they're riding along.
Is this a road? Oh, my God!
A third motorcycle will travel with them,
and on it will be Claudio, our cameraman.
In addition, Russ and I will travel in two electric pickup trucks,
along with cameramen Jimmy,
Anthony and Taylor, who will also help with logistics.
We'll be filming the guys from the vehicles,
linking up with them at borders,
but otherwise, the motorcycles will be on their own.
We're crossing over into Chile and then going up into the Andes
and heading up into the mountains a bit more.
Sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep.
Wow, look at this. God, there must be hundreds of sheep here.
They're very-- got very pooey bums, all of these little fellas.
I like sheep.
At least they're pretty.
Feels good right now, you know.
I feel like the first ten days of the trip were quite difficult.
We started with a huge learning curve with the electric of the bikes.
Yesterday, we were like, "Can't do it. We can't do it."
And then, today, we're like, "Okay, this is great!"
We realized that the cold really does affect the bikes.
Apparently, batteries are a bit like humans.
You know, they work perfectly well around 37 degrees.
I mean, you can imagine if we could do 140 to 150 miles on one charge?
Now, that would be incredible.
So far, we've traveled over 1,000 miles
from Ushuaia to here in Perito Moreno.
Next, we'll cross over to Chile and ride along western Andes to Chaitén
before catching a ferry to Puerto Montt.
Now that we've got the bikes working,
we can actually relax a bit more
and get to meet the locals, which is what these trips are all about.
Hello, my name is Ewan.
How are you?
Benjamin?
And dance, and dance!
Break it down. Come on, get down. Let's see some moves.
Yep. Good, good. Yep. Yep.
A bit of a floss!
Very nicely done!
I was a drummer in a pipe band.
-You were, weren't you? -Rock bands and stuff.
Well, a rock band.
All right!
-Bye! -Bye!
Well, here we are. Paso Internacional.
Certainly the most dramatic border crossing I've ever done.
We're into Chile, and it's absolutely spectacular!
The scenery. Oh, my God!
You've got these mountains and you've got that lake.
It's just magical.
Chile, man. Things have just stepped up a bit.
I love Chile, and I've got this distant family link there.
My great-great-great-grandfather went to Chile to help build the railroads.
He was an engineer.
So, I've got this little Chilean chink
in my otherwise pretty fully Scottish ancestry.
So, apparently, it's Independence Week,
is where they got their independence from the Spanish,
and that's why all the flags are out.
The people take their holidays at the beginning of spring.
So, it should be getting really lively over this next week.
In 1818, the Chilean people overthrew 300 years of Spanish rule.
And ever since, they've spent the third week of September
celebrating their independence.
So, we picked a good time to be here.
That says...
I wish I knew some Spanish, but can we please park our bikes...
Okay, let's try it.
-It's not open. -It's not open?
There's a bad start.
It's 'cause of the holidays.
And everything's shut.
There's someone sitting there having dinner.
Yeah. But the door's locked. It's shut.
There's a guy coming here.
-Hola. -Hola.
Press the buzzer. You know.
Ring the bell.
Of course.
-Oh. Yes. -Oh! Gracias.
There's our salad in the middle.
And chimichurri.
-Chimichurri? -Si.
Si.
Thank you.
Thank you. No, no, great. Thank you very much.
-Love the little smattering of a salad. -Yeah.
You know-- We probably won't eat it.
It's a salad for three.
This is amazing. Is this lamb?
I don't know what it is.
-It's meat. Meat. -Is that meat? It's meat.
I don't know what it is. My mouth is so on fire
from all the chimichurri stuff. I don't know what it is.
It's really suddenly kicked in. The nose is starting to run--
You know, I'm doing a lot of-- Just trying to cool the tongue down.
I've tried to get a little bit-- Oh, God, she's got more, look.
-She's giving us more. -Gracias.
My mouth is on fire.
It's stunning today.
This is kind of what I was hoping for.
This has been the most amazing
motorcycle riding road maybe I've ever been on
other than the roads in Scotland.
This road is just paradise!
I overdid it with the chimichurri sauce at lunchtime today at Yusseff's.
So I've just been paying the price for that.
Oh, dear.
It is absolutely hammering it down.
Listen to that.
It's just hilarious, the whole thing.
Gotta get to this boat tomorrow morning to carry on.
And it's just not gonna...
Oh, my God.
So, Ewan, what you feel like?
I feel like--
I don't wanna say now.
But I wanna film this.
This little look.
What? What's wrong with my look?
-Is it nice? -No, it's nice. Just a little--
Is my hair okay?
-Like a little granny look. -Little granny look.
It's so cold.
This is the first time we've had rain,
and we're riding out on these dirt roads, which should be fascinating.
I'm soaked.
Straight in the eye! It's horrible.
I'm sorry to laugh. That was priceless!
I left my helmet out in the damp
and it's got quite wet in the foam under here.
So, when I'm riding along, it tends to steam up,
-even though it's got-- -Sorry, mate.
-Even though it's got double-- -Sorry. No. Excuse me, mate.
-So, even though it's got double-- -Sorry, I gotta get through.
Double glazing on it...
You'll maybe care enough to 360 on one of those days.
-Just if you're up for it? -What?
What did you say?
I'm just trying not to steam up, you know?
-Was watching School of Rock, Jack Black. -Yeah.
And he does a lot of that.
And it's so-- It's like really not rock and roll
but it's so cool when he does it.
Could someone deal with all the scheisse down here?
It's probably not good to leave that lying in the rain.
-Thanks, Ewan. -We have a team for that.
Have the charging department come in.
Can they get past makeup?
-I don't know. -They're a bit stuck in.
There's catering, makeup, wardrobe, and then the chargers. So...
Who knows?
Just heading off with the crew, and we are heading towards the ferry.
It's starting to rain quite heavily again now.
It's always a struggle riding in the rain. Visibility is poor.
And, of course, you can't ride very fast,
which isn't great when you're trying to catch a ferry.
My brake lever's hanging there. Look. The bolt sort of rattled out of there.
So I could've caught that somewhere and it could've thrown me off.
I think I'll just cable tie it up just in case I get it caught.
Like this.
I very rarely use the brake, to be honest.
There you go.
Okay, let's go, 'cause I'm so desperate to get there.
These ferries leave once a day.
So, if you miss this, then you miss it.
You know, you gotta wait another day, and we don't have days to waste.
There it is.
Wow.
Beauty, mate, beauty.
God. That was a wet and windy ride.
The prevailing feeling was, "Are we there yet?"
With limited places to charge the bikes
on the next long stretch of road.
So, we've decided to take this ferry. It's gonna cross the Gulf of Ancud,
and it's gonna take about nine hours to get us to Puerto Montt.
So, it's a double tap.
None of the instructions said to just double tap.
-Well... -Unless I've read them properly.
No, no. You didn't read them at all.
That's what's the problem. Not that you didn't--
Not that they didn't say it, but you didn't read them.
It's like a marriage, this. Like a marriage for three months.
Maybe... So, in Peru, we should go for counseling, probably, somewhere.
Do a little marriage counseling session in the middle.
So, when you say...
those certain-- in a certain way, I find that hurtful.
-That makes you feel... -It makes me feel...
You know...
that we don't talk enough and that you're not expressing your true feelings.
Okay. I hear you.
And I will bear that in mind.
And if I feel that I wanna say something, I will address that.
And try not to do that 'cause I don't want you to feel that way.
-Okay. -And when you say, you know, anything...
It makes me feel like...
like I'm undervalued.
And that makes me feel undervalued.
-And so I-- -Never.
I would never. You are never undervalued. Ever.
Every morning when we are coming to breakfast,
you're there. It's a ray of sunshine. Really.
And I feel the same way.
Okay, there we go. That's so much better, huh?
-So, that'll be $5,000, please. -Yes.
Thank you very much.
-Yeah, so it's here. Here. -It's Independence Day.
-Here? -Yeah.
We've got word that there's an Independence party going on
in some car park near central Puerto Montt.
Okay, perfect.
It looks like they've just thrown up some tents
and put some music on.
And they're really letting their hair down.
Hola. How are you?
-What? -Ewan. Nice to meet you.
What's your name?
Ewan.
-Ewan? -Ewan.
-Ewan?
-Ewan. -Yeah. Nice to meet you.
There was some great dancing and were some spectacularly drunk people,
but in a very friendly sort of way. Wasn't, like, aggressive drunk.
It's like this is candy floss with 36% alcohol.
But in water.
With ice cream.
This is a South American empanada which is based upon--
which is based on the Scottish pie.
Oh, my God.
Bye, girls!
It was fun. I have to say I enjoyed it.
It feels special to be in Chile at this time of year.
Today we'll cross the border back into Argentina
and ride on to Aluminé.
This is no-man's-land between the Chilean and Argentinean border.
Yeah, we're just climbing up and up and up.
And it's not doing our battery life any good.
We're off the grid out here, and the Rivian battery is low.
I wanna ask this man...
-Yes? -...if he would drop his trailer
and tow our vehicles 15 minutes out and 15 minutes back.
-Okay? Is that okay? -Okay.
Thank you. That's cool.
Yeah, I'm good to go when he is.
Towing the Rivian quickly adds charge to the battery.
It's a pretty neat trick to get us right back out on the road.
This guy came in for his empanadas,
and we managed to persuade him to tow an electric car.
It's a good idea that Dave had, charging up behind the rig.
You've got a motor on each corner of the vehicle
which normally drives each wheel.
But when you pull the car along,
it turns that motion into electricity that goes back in the battery.
And by tow-charging, we can get about 80% of a full battery in about an hour.
We're a little tight and we are, as you know, in the middle of nowhere.
This town is our last stop...
before we get to where we're heading, and that's 150 kilometers away
and we probably don't have enough to get there.
We haven't quite got into the charging rhythm on the trip yet,
but we're getting creative about how we charge 'em up quicker
to allow us to keep the expedition going. And this is a fun way of doing it.
Gracias, señor!
The cars have been behaving really well
considering they're loaded with all of our filming equipment
and the electrics on board are all prototypes.
Wow, look at that snow. There's so much of it. Oh, my God!
Look at it all.
Ewan disappears occasionally with all the steam.
I remember riding in the snow once with my dad.
We went for a motorcycle ride up in the Sierras.
Up near Lake Tahoe.
And I think when we got near Lake Tahoe, there was some snow.
But not as much as this.
But again, the Harleys are just fantastic, just totally holding their own.
I mean, the roads are wet. They're not icy.
They're a bit pothole-y here and there, but the bikes are just soaking it all up.
-What are we doing? -It's incredible, isn't it?
What are we doing?
Let's go for a motorbike ride in the snow.
Yeah. I mean, it's just madness, isn't it? We're 4,100 feet.
Okay.
It's been amazing crossing the Andes in the snow,
and it's been very special to film.
But it's also just been great fun to be here.
We've loved Chile actually, I'd say.
It's been spectacular. Patagonia has everything.
Yes, I'm getting you.
Okay.
One second.
We must've dropped a few thousand feet down through the Andes.
So there's barely any snow now.
Look at this bit of sun. The sun is dappling through the trees.
Feels warmer, which is good.
It's nice that it's not so freezing cold today.
Okay, here we go. Argentinean border crossing.
It's like a gateway to Patagonia,
but we're heading out of Patagonia today, really.
So in the end, we went to a campsite.
-Ewan McGregor? -Yes. Ewan. Yeah.
-Ewan? Oh, my goodness! -Yes. Yeah.
-No way. -Yeah. Charlie Boorman.
-What's your name? -Martin.
-You're from? -Poland. Yeah. I'm a cyclist.
And where are you heading? South? Or North?
North. We're just sick of the cold.
Before him, I didn't cycle.
-Yeah. -I wasn't a cyclist or traveler.
-Nothing. -No.
I used to have such a normal life.
I was a teacher. I had a car.
I didn't do any sports too.
Where did you guys meet? You met in...
-Turkey. -Turkey.
A really small town I live in Turkey,
and they look at life like this.
-Yeah, yeah. -Really closed minded.
I was on the way to cycle around the world.
I didn't want him to go.
I was thinking about his eyes.
His beautiful eyes.
But you gave up your school and all.
What did your parents and family say?
I packed my backpack, and I said,
"I'm going to work in Istanbul as a teacher."
And I didn't tell them.
Wow. Still can't believe you didn't tell your parents.
-We will. -All in good time.
-Maybe tell them when you get back. -Yeah.
This couple kind of lifted my spirits a bit.
We all have our own lives.
And you've gotta live your life and do what you think is best.
And she was brave enough to do that.
And she broke out. And she's with this guy that she loves,
having this amazing adventure.
Their love story was so lovely.
The when she talks about his-- falling in love with his blue eyes,
her face lights up. Oh, my God, it was so nice to see!
She was just so in love. It was perfect.
It's a hotel but in summer.
We were hoping to stay. Maybe have some food...
-Okay? -...and sleep, but it's not possible?
-No, I think it's not. -Okay.
We barged in and there was this nice lady,
Solano, and her daughter.
The place is not open for business yet.
I don't think that they really want us here, do they?
-Nah, it's gonna be fine-- -I think we can get there.
-Come, I'll show you. -Okay.
They're not ready. They are--
It's okay, we can sleep in our sleeping bags.
-Yeah. -Yeah.
-Sure. -It's okay? Yeah?
Great. Gracias.
That's fantastic.
Hey, cat.
What on earth are you doing on my bike?
I mean, we can eat our camp food, or we can just have these.
Charley, mushroom or chicken?
Yeah, I'm happy with both.
This is real. This is real living.
There is something incredibly remote about here, isn't there?
Yeah.
Just waking up here to the early morning.
And look at this. This is just...
beautiful.
Problem is, if we get to here, it's 92 miles.
Then in order to get up to here, we'd have to charge pretty much...
all day.
The breaks between where we wanna get to are just a little far apart.
There's a little town there. La Lajas. And that is...
127 miles.
Would be brilliant if we could get some miles under our belts.
We want to pick up the pace and increase our daily mileage.
The plan for the next couple of days is to ride through northwest of Argentina,
passing Las Lajas, and then on to Barrancas,
and with any luck, finding somewhere to camp.
Charley was speaking to the guy who owns the place here,
and instead of going blindly north, we're gonna take another route,
which we wouldn't have instinctually taken based on the map.
It's quicker, shorter, and there's this huge switchback
all the way up this hill, so that should be fun.
Came up all these twisties.
Up over here is...
Claudio von Planta, drone pilot to the stars.
Claudio's our cameraman who's filmed all our trips.
And he's riding on a petrol Harley-Davidson.
Claudio, what seems to be the situation here?
What is that?
-What goes in here? -It's--
It's empty!
It's proving to be a bit of a liability this motorcycle of yours, no?
I mean, I don't know if you got the memo about Long Way Up
but this was an electric enterprise.
I mean, we've still got miles and miles to go on ours.
What does this say here?
Forty-nine miles.
And we are struggling on the fuel front.
If you don't mind, Claudio, we'd like to keep getting on the road.
We've got plenty of electricity and Claudio is possibly gonna run out.
Bizarre.
This is actually the first time we've broken down,
and we're right in the middle of nowhere.
I'm in park. I can't get into drive otherwise.
Put it in neutral, and put--
I can't get anywhere.
Something's jammed the brakes on Dave's car,
so they're permanently locked on.
The wheel won't move, so we ain't going anywhere.
They're just not popping off.
We're hearing it.
Let me have a go with a screwdriver.
-Can you get in there? -Oh, no. No.
This is Zapala, ladies and gentlemen.
There's some sort of fuel crisis.
Look at this queue over here of people waiting for fuel.
And again, the irony is that we're gonna get held up
waiting for petrol for Claudio, not for electricity for us,
which is quite funny.
So, look, if you could see here, they've just got a delivery of fuel.
None of the petrol stations in town have fuel.
And there's a queue. And you can see the queue,
it goes all the way down here.
And this lady in front here has been waiting for five hours for fuel.
Welcome to Zapala!
Either we wait and get some fuel,
or we stay here in town and wait till tomorrow
when all the panic is over.
We're kind of in a conundrum of not quite sure what to do.
Hold on one sec, guys, before you do anything.
What do you wanna do? We're forcing it back out
so we can make that rotate again.
I know it needs to get fixed,
but can we just try electronically before we take it apart?
We both know she's a prototype, not a production vehicle.
She probably just needs a minute.
The hope is that effectively, by rebooting the car's computer,
it will let the brake off.
I asked a guy who gave me the charger what--
what was happening. He said this is just what it's always like here.
It's always like this.
We just take it for granted, don't we?
You can turn up to any petrol station and there's always petrol there.
You don't have to think about it. But in other places in the world,
like here, it's not the case.
We've heard a bit about this when we've spoken to other people,
about how difficult times have been here.
People don't have money in their pockets and don't have food in their fridge.
Or petrol in their petrol stations.
I just saw a guy on a moped filling up a little jerrican.
So I ran over with Claudio's jerrican
and got them to share it with me.
So, basically, I just added it onto his, and just gave them the 200.
So he now has a jerrican of stuff.
Did you also have an ice cream?
I had an ice cream.
Didn't ask me.
Actually didn't ask me either, if we wanted an ice cream.
We're fueled up.
We're ready to go. Okay. See you in Las Lajas.
Yeah, I just wanna reset properly, okay?
Dave, what about you toggle it down--
Just pull the two toggles down for 45 seconds, see if that does it.
Come on, baby.
Come on now.
Green.
It's in drive.
It's looking good.
Empanadas, here we come.
Thank you, everybody. We seem to be rolling out, rolling along.
The boys are a long way ahead of us now,
but at least we're back on the road.
What a day! Today we did 137.6 miles,
and we have ten miles left in the tank. So, that is 147 miles.
These bikes definitely work better in the heat.
And I reckon we can safely say, without a charge, we have 130 miles.
Pretty good, 130 miles.
That wasn't the case when we were further south in the cold at all.
So, it's been a bit of a game changer these last couple of days.
The weather is beautiful. I think it's gonna be warm.
No thermals on today. Jeans, t-shirt, normal socks.
The woolly thermals are going into retirement, maybe...
Maybe for the entire trip now. Who knows? We don't know.
But we'll see.
But for now,
let's thank you for your service, woolly thermals.
Thank you for your service.
These warmer weathers have allowed us to ride a bit quicker.
And it's left us time to stop and actually meet people.
"I am descendant of our Mapuche community."
Mapuche? Mapuche? Mapuche?
-Mapuche. -Mapuche.
"Because I am Mapuche language, I'm descendant of a Mapuche community."
That's really nice. It's nice to meet you.
We shared a dream with my dad.
Three years ago my dad made us an offer,
so his grandchildren wouldn't have to live on benefits.
"Together, with my husband, they undertook a family project
to sell meals and to sell homemade bread, everything related to homemade."
But it seems very difficult around here to make some kind of living,
so your story about these people here is a huge success story, isn't it?
Yeah. It's amazing, yeah. I mean, there's not many places
like this in this town that we've seen.
They're the Machu tribe.
They would have been around here 600, 500 BC.
From what I've read, there's quite a lot in Chile as well,
and they were treated quite badly.
We can go and visit one of these tribes. It's just up the road.
So, we'll go and find this little town with the Mapuche people.
The Mapuche indigenous people have lived in this region for nearly three centuries.
In the 1800s, Spanish invaders took control
of their once thriving cattle and salt trade,
and their community fell into poverty and has never really fully recovered.
Here we are in this town of Mapuche people.
Yeah, it's really-- looks like it's really well put together, doesn't it?
Good community. Strong.
That looks like a town hall or something over there.
-Hola. -Hola.
My name is Samuel.
-Samuel. -Samuel.
Samuel, I'm Charley. Charley.
-Ewan. -Ewan. Nice to meet you.
-It's possible to go to the school? Yeah? -Si.
-Buenos días. -Buenos días.
Look how lovely it is.
All this stuff. The kids must've made all these,
the little hanging things. It's beautiful here, actually.
-Hola. Buenos días. -Hola.
-I'm Ewan. Charley. -Charley.
This is such a pleasant, cheerful place.
It's so nice, the colors on the wall,
-and everything. It's great. -It's fantastic.
-Isn't it lovely? -Yeah.
How do you say "children"?
-How many "children"? -Niños.
Sixty-Four.
It's a bilingual school. Spanish and Mapuche. Mapudingun.
In Mapuche, say, "buenos días."
Marr marri, pichiqueche.
Marr Marri, Pichiqueche.
Marr Marri is "good morning",
pichiqueche "children."
Marr marri...
"Pi-chi-que-que-che."
"Che." This means, "How are you?"
God, I'm really at school now. I feel like we're in the right place.
You're a very good teacher.
We're getting a lesson. Yeah.
So nice.
Gracias. Thank you very much.
-Thank you for showing around. Yes. -Have a safe trip.
-Yes. See you later-- -Goodbye.
This is what I love about these trips.
Learning about the cultures and seeing how people keep their traditions alive.
This great guy there still smiles
and he drops his glasses. Claudio stood on his glasses by accident and broke them.
-He's not gonna forget us coming. -No, he certainly won't.
He's been so lovely, and we've just broken his glasses.
He's probably had those for forever, as well.
All right, let's...
For you. For you. We would like you to--
-No, no, no. -Please, please, please.
For the glasses.
We don't expect accidents. They just happen.
The souls you meet on a trip like this, they just warm your heart.
This is Chos Malal, which, in Mapuche, means "yellow rock,"
after the surrounding hills.
Come on. Come on, sir.
-Buenos días. -Buenos días, Atilio.
-Buenos días. Hola. -Hola.
I'm Ewan. Charley.
Nice to meet you.
He's a singer. He's also a breeder of chivito.
-Goats? -Yeah, goats.
And does he write songs specifically for gauchos? For horsemen?
Because I'm a huge admirer of the intelligence and creativity
of countrymen.
And would he sing a song for us? Here? Now?
Yes. My pleasure.
From a peach tin
Natural peach
Like a good muleteer
I made a gourd for my maté tea
So I can off-load my packhorse
And make myself a resting place
And with my gourd
I'll sit and enjoy my maté tea
I pray to God and to the Virgin
To follow me wherever I go
And that in my bag I always have
Ñaco, ham and bread
A bit of tobacco and
Some maté to drink
-Cómo estás? -Hey!
A bit of tobacco and
Some maté to drink
The sun is shining.
The temperature's up a little bit.
I'm just hoping this next bit we can get a bit more rough and ready,
we can camp a little bit.
I'm just desperate to sleep in a tent.
I'm desperate to get my, sort of, camp on. I wanna get my camp on.
We've arrived at our campsite.
I'm not sure it's quite the campsite that we had in our imagination
as we were driving down here.
Basically just a yard that's used for dumping building materials,
and they put a sign up saying "camping."
But as for the camping during this trip,
I've never opened this tent before.
Out. Okay, so that's that.
I've forgotten how much I love camping.
How's it going, Charley?
Yeah, it's going really well, actually, yeah.
Are you up already?
-I didn't wanna say anything. -Oh, God.
Charley's fuming over here.
What's this?
-Ewan, I'm in trouble. -Why?
Well, I really don't know what I'm doing.
No way is this a two-man tent.
Look, it's tiny. Unless I'm putting it up wrong.
No. But you had these peg out. Look.
-Yeah. -Pull that corner.
There you go. Look. That is a two-man tent.
-That's two-man? -Yeah.
No, that's not too bad.
I really liked sleeping in my tent last night. It was fun.
A good feeling when everything you need is on that bike.
It's difficult to believe that we were freezing cold.
And now we're in the baking desert.
Today, we ride 130 miles across the desert to Malargüe.
It's super remote out there with only one town along the way,
so hopefully we can make it on one charge.
Otherwise we'll end up stuck in the desert at night
when it drops below freezing.
God, it must be tough living out here.
So barren and dry.
That beautiful farmstead looks like it could've been hundreds of years ago.
It was totally an ancient way of life.
I hope this bridge is safe.
I don't really like the heights.
Don't know if you guys feel the same way, but whenever I do this...
I do just wanna jump.
I just wanna go.
There's still a fair bit to go to Malargüe,
and this B & B's the first place we've seen for miles,
so hopefully we can get a charge here.
Hi, I'm Luz.
He's Enzo.
Luz and Enzo.
Shall we go over there?
It's okay?
-Come in. Yeah. -Go in. Go in.
Wow, it's really cool. It's a beautiful place.
-It's incredible, isn't it? -The stone for the garlic, look.
-Look at that. -That's you guys.
Charcoal.
Charcoal. It's lovely.
Look at this bench. Look.
-It's homemade. -Look, it's just all made of...
-Everything is homemade. -It's like my place.
-My benches. -It is like your benches.
-But it's knocked up with whatever. -We can just sit here and...
-and rest up. And drink beer. -And drink beer.
Our entire building system is sustainable.
Brilliant.
You created it? Yeah.
-Wow, that's incredible. -Amazing.
-Can we see more? -Sure.
Can we see?
-The solar panels. -Exactly.
Look. It's just all car batteries. So amazing.
Look at all that. That's all familiar.
Eight thousand watts.
Very clever. Very similar to Ewan's.
And it's not that complicated, really.
I mean, I couldn't build it, but still.
Somebody could build it, that knew what they were doing.
During the day, we manage everything with solar panels.
At night, you have the wind. During the day, you have the sun.
So the ideal is to combine both.
This is the future. This really is the future.
They didn't have on-grid power like we thought they might have,
and we felt like if we plugged into their system,
the bikes just wouldn't charge.
So, we decided to move on to try and make it to the next town.
But the problem is, is that there's not a lot in between some of these towns.
It's a bit of a boneshaker, this road.
And then every now and again,
your front wheel goes into that deeper gravel
and it gives you a little heart-stopper.
God, thank goodness we're here. That was a tough road.
We've put a couple of hours' worth of charge into the bikes,
and then we decided to take off.
We've got 30 miles left to go to Malargüe, and it's getting late.
We don't wanna get stuck here at night. It's freezing already.
We've got a bit of a headwind, Charley,
chewing through my battery life here a little bit.
Try that for ten minutes and just see how it changes.
It's not that far away.
I'm not gonna get there, I don't think.
But there's gonna come a point where we're not gonna make it back
and we're not gonna make it there, and then I'm stuck.
See here.
See, they've got power coming in.
See, from there. I don't know. We may as well ask.
We need to put a proper charge on the bikes.
We saw this little farm, and so we've come in here.
Yeah, okay.
It's not showing a time till full yet, which isn't a good sign.
-Did it alter yours? -Mine is saying 42 hours.
Yeah, it's not gonna work.
The power here-- it's just not strong enough.
Gracias. Ciao.
Gracias.
Oh, well.
We're just not gonna make it, so we're gonna turn back
and go to Bardas Blancas.
I was just dreaming we were gonna make it to that town,
and then hot showers, Wi-Fi...
I can't remember how this goes.
I've lost another pair of sunglasses today.
Maybe we left them at that farm.
But if we did, that little kid's got a pair of nice sunglasses, so that's cool.
The little boy that was looking at us through the window.
I didn't sleep great last night with all the trucks going by,
but anyway, I'm up. It's just about 6:45.
And let's go and see if the bikes charged.
Ninety-nine percent.
It's the charging dance
It's the charging spin
It's the charging dance and the charging spin
This, I think, is the septic system for all the buildings around here.
I just walked over there
when coming back to check the bike's charge, and it's--
That's the pong I'm smelling. And this is the septic system...
and this is my tent.
Septic.
Tent.
So here we go again.
I love camping, but it's time to move on.
-Are you happy at 55? -Yeah, 55's fine.
We're gonna ride to San Juan, and then to this town called Villa Union,
and then we're gonna try and do our longest daily trip yet,
200 miles to the town of Belén,
taking us near the end of the journey through Argentina.
The sun is shining. With any luck, we're gonna push up our mileage.
So, I think it's here that we decided to turn around yesterday.
It was here that I realized we weren't gonna get there.
And...
possibly here that I left my sunglasses.
Let me see if I can just see them lying on the deck.
What you looking for?
Your glasses?
Get the hell out-- No!
No!
Great!
Oh, man, what a result!
It's a shame for the wee boy, but still.
That is superb.
Okay. Wicked.
Holy shit.
Wow, that is quite spooky.
Wow!
Just stunning. There's no one around.
They must've made a James Bond film here, surely.
We've got a tunnel, and a...
-James Bond. -James Bond.
And all of this, look.
-Mr. Bond. Yes. -It's so James Bondy here.
This amazing dam.
I'm just reminded that my dad worked, when he was a teenager,
when he was 17 or 18, he worked building a dam above Crieff.
Above where I grew up and where I come from,
the town of Crieff in Scotland.
I'm just looking at this thinking, what an undertaking.
What an amazing feat to create something like this.
It's incredible what we can achieve.
Off on the road again.
Try and do a 200-mile day today. Get to Belén.
Let's see what happens, man. It's an adventure.
It's funny. It's all a bit of ups and downs and stuff.
I'm feeling pretty good today, I must say.
Spiritually-wise, I'm feeling great.
This is great.
Like a motorcycle road from your dreams, really.
I think we're coming out of this little valley now.
We could try and charge the bikes in here.
It looks like some sort of electrical shop.
What's your name?
-Vanessa. -Vanessa.
Nice to meet you, Vanessa.
-Hola. -Hola.
-Hi. -How are you?
Nice to meet you.
What's lovely about this situation is we just turned up here,
and we thought it looked like a stereo shop or something,
like there was a place down here where they put stereos in cars,
so we thought they'd have good power, and we just rode in.
And it turns out it's just their garage. It's just their house right in the back.
It's nothing to do with the stereo shop. And yet they let us plug in.
They gave us lunch.
It's such a laugh. And we didn't-- They don't know us from Adam.
God Almighty. We literally just rocked up, total strangers,
and now we're siphoning their electricity and eating their food.
Eating their food.
-Island. The Island. -He's onto me, look. He's onto me.
He's, sort of, half onto me and half not onto me.
-Yeah? -He's not trusting his instincts.
Trust your instincts.
Stretch out your feelings. Use the Force.
He's onto me.
The thing I will always remember about this country,
always remember about this country, are the people.
Just amazing, the people. Just amazing.
Friendly, couldn't do enough for you, open doors,
no one ever said, "No." It's just a really cool part of the world.
So, I'll be sad to leave it.
We've done 97.8 miles.
Looking good.
Yeah, at the moment it's all going exactly how we'd like it to go.
Are we nearly there yet?
This is what it's like doing a 200-mile day. Driving in the dark.
Streetlights. Streetlights! Belén.
Boom.
Happy to be in old Belén town.
Yeah.
So we'll have done 215 miles or something today.
It is another extraordinary day.
Yeah, that was a great day.
Well done, Charley.
Yeah, we figured it out.
I really enjoy the unknown of it all.
Just coming across the people we come across,
and the places we come across.
It's been wonderful so far.
Charley.
It's amazing to have crossed Patagonia and the lowlands of Argentina.
What a privilege to have seen that.
Amazing place to be and ride across on our bikes.
But now a new challenge:
We're gonna climb to the extreme heights of the Andes,
and the real risks of high altitude.