The first day of our stay in La Junta was nice weather and one reason for staying in La Junta was that we had booked a time slot at the thermal baths “El Sauce” which are ~20 km outside of La Junta for the only nice day before the rain. There are 3 time slots per day and we could only get the last one of the day from 5-8pm. This turned out perfect anyway as we got a sleep in and Andrew did not feel too good in the morning having irregular heart beat again and just low of energy. I had a headache but ventured out to the grocery store to get some essentials we needed (apples, bananas, avocados, cereal, milk, and bread) and took a few pictures of the town, the church, the park and the local fire station which had a MAN truck.

We did some cloth washing and then headed off to the thermal baths in the late afternoon. It was another gravel road along the river Río Palena which had all kinds of surprises in store for us – in addition to the usual potholes, corrugations, and deep gravel, we also encountered a herd of young cattle in the middle of the road, sheep that escaped from a paddock and goats 😂

The driveway to the private property was 3 km long and a single lane track with one large puddle to cross and up steep hills but otherwise the road was in good condition and our bikes were unloaded and lighter than when we travel with all our gear on it.

We arrived at the property about twenty minutes before our time slot and ate an apple and enjoyed the views and serenity before heading in. We were greeted by a fair haired guy covered in tattoos who showed us to the thermal baths which were in a beautiful bush setting. He explained that there was the cold river on the outside and the enclosed 4 pools which were at 39 degrees Celsius and on the other side were the hot springs which come out of the ground at 80 degrees and not to stick our hands in there😉👍. He also said he could make it hotter if we wanted to later and that he only expected one other couple, so we could choose which pool we wanted. We chose the first one that still had some sunlight coming through the trees. I asked the guy if he spoke German as I heard the Germanic accent in his English – he looked surprised but said yes he speaks German and he is from Süd Tirol (South Tyrol) which used to be part of Austria and now belongs to Italy but people still learn and speak German there. So we communicated in German for a bit as he seemed to be happy to speak his mother tongue.

We got out of our motorcycle gear and hopped into the warm water – it was very relaxing and after a while it felt quite warm and I got out and entered the 8 degrees waters of the cold stream before returning to the warm water. I alternated between the cold river and the hot pool frequently but Andrew stayed in the warm pool just sitting outside and only sticking his legs in when he got too hot. We both really enjoyed the relaxing warm water and stayed until 7:00pm in the water and we left one of our stickers on the window. We really wanted to leave in time to not have to ride home on that gravel road in the dark.

We made it back into town on nightfall and went to a nice pizza restaurant where they had lots of different “Spritzes” not just the Aperol Spritz which my Mum likes.

The rest of our stay was too wet to do anything and we had an entire day of torrential rainfall with >60mm of rain falling in 24 hours. A couple from Argentina (Ilio and Natalia) both riding on one Triumph Tiger 900 also stayed Saturday in the motel and they gave us lots of tips about where to go in Northern Argentina – hopefully we will make it there as we are spending a lot longer in the Southern parts of Chile than we had anticipated partially due to the rain which we are avoiding to ride in when it is ridiculously wet.