Day 15: Soldiering on

Ray's injury hasn't improved overnight and he now realizes that the coming hours will determine the fate of the expedition. "I've had lots of little injuries in the past", Ray explains to me as we drive to our start. "It's par for the course on expeditions. This one seems worse somehow."

We start the day with a mellow walk/run in hopes of easing into the effort and loosening up the leg but even at such a moderate pace Ray rests often and finally needs to stop at kilometer 17.

This is do or die time now. He's in significant pain and recognizes that unless he can continue running, the Expreso De Los Andes expedition will be over.

We take an hour rest. Ray stretches and massages the injured area, he eats a little, drinks a liter of Gatorade and says to me: "Kev, let's give it one more go"

We're stopped at the edge of an Argentinian provincial border and it's only a few meters before we cross territorial lines. The San Luis province we've been traveling through has upgraded their section of the Buenos Aires Highway #7 - the highway we've been following across the continent - creating a separated 4-lane road to accommodate the large volume of traffic and adding a wide paved shoulder for safety. The Cordoba province we're entering has made no such effort.

Within in minutes we realize that the heavy volume of trucks and cars that have barely been contained on San Luis's dual carriageway is now being funneled into a narrow, rutted two-lane road with no shoulder - a rural country road masquerading as Cordoba's transcontinental highway.

We begin running down the left edge of our new highway, facing down on-coming traffic in a game of chicken, hoping vehicles will drift into the opposite side of the road to give us passage but knowing full well we have the overgrown shoulder if they don't. We're so focused on what's bearing down upon us that we forget totally about what's creeping up from behind. A sharp honk, a blast of wind and a metallic blur to our right brings home the reality - vehicles are passing from behind us as well.

It's all very sobering. Ray's injury quickly drops off our radar as more pressing concerns are at hand, most notably - mortality.

But salvation is close at hand. Our intended route is not on this section of road but rather on the old Buenos Aires highway that runs parallel to highway #7 just a few kilometers north. Our dance with eternity ends an hour later as we connect with our new track, an old cart road - sandy, bumpy and exactly what we were waiting for.

The morning has taken its toll and we decide to walk the final four kilometers to our lunch spot. The heat of the day is building and the berms on either side of our track keep the burning air absolutely still, only the crescendo of a cicada's buzz breaking the silence.

Lunch is set up against the walls of old, seemingly derelict neoclassical brink building in the tiny village of Pauno. Like the town itself, the paint peeled walls of this structure suggest another era, another time. The world has moved ahead but this sleepy little Argentinian community remains much as it was a century ago.

This is what we've been waiting for all along. We had a taste of it in the old Andes but lost it heading out of Mendoza last week. We're finally off the highway and running through the countryside. Amazingly Ray's leg is feeling better and my injuries are feeing better too. The afternoon isn't without incident - we need to use an active railroad line for 16kms, we're forced to go without resupply for over two hours and we finish in the dark without headlamps - but we're in great spirits nonetheless. We manage a very respectable 58kms on the day and are looking forward to the week ahead. We're exactly where we want to be.