Greetings All

I hope everyone had a festive New Year celebration, as I said in my previous post we had something of a quiet New Years eve and speaking to other travellers they also experienced something similar in the city where they were.

Anyway the good news is I have a shiny new credit card, I don’t know what part of South America they were originally trying to deliver it but after more long phone calls to Mastercard and Fedex (Skype is wonderful) I changed the delivery address to my new hotel and then two later it turned up at the old hotel.

Communication is a wonderful thing.

Armed with my new card I can start the journey north. The original cunning plan was to go to the Torres del Paine National park via Puerto Natales to see the spectacular eroded mountains in the park and that was about all I could do as most of the other places in the park are only accessible on multi day hiking trips and I did not feel like taking Kitty in my backpack. The photo below shows the mascot for Puerto Natales, I have no idea what it is, how big it is or even if it exists today. All I know is that it was everywhere around the town and if it was life size I didn’t want to meet it on dark night (or even a well lit day).

But even this modest trip was doomed to failure as it had been lousy weather all the way from Punta Arenas and it continued to get even worse the closer I got to the park so with rain, low cloud, freezing temps and very slick muddy roads I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and turned around to go to the Argentine border instead.

The rest of the day was spent doing the routine border crossing bureaucracy and then heading up to El Calafate on more gravel roads before heading across to the coast and up to Buenos Aires.

The next days plans were also changed as well. Ruta 5 is the main road running south west from El Calafate to Rio Gallegos (I had already travelled this way on the way down Ushuaia) from Rio Gallegos then I would need to take Ruta 3 which would take me north along the coast but I don’t really like to travel along roads where I been before and I saw that Ruta 9 went directly west to the coast, great a shortcut!

I knew that is road was gravel so I would not be able to go as fast as the other way but a new road is a new adventure.  This looked like a good plan as it would save me at least 250km.

When I got to the turn off for Ruta 9 and for reasons I still don’t understand something felt wrong about it, I don’t know why I just had a vibe that said it would be a bad career move for me. So again discretion triumphed over valour out and I took the long way round. I think there are times when you have to trust your feelings and other times when in the words of Sir Humphrey you can make a courageous decision, this was not one of those times. That said I wish that the timing for my vibe was a bit better I still could have saved a lot of travel time by going to Rio Gallegos directly 🙂

From Rio Gallegos to Buenos Aires is around 2500 km. The road travels through Patagonia into the Pampas of Argentina, the surrounding countryside is flat, the road is straight and the winds blow constantly from the west. It’s both very dull and sometimes very exciting, occasionally an extra strong gust of wind will appear from nowhere and try to shove you across the road into the dirt.

There is no railway through Patagonia so all goods travel by road. There are many big semi trailer trucks going up and down Ruta 3 and for some reason the combination of the westerly crosswind and passing an oncoming large truck makes for a really brutal wind blast from the truck. More than I’ve experienced in other other parts of the world.

It gets even more exciting when several trucks are travelling together nose to tail, like a road train. The only way I can describe the resulting wind blast is that it’s like being surrounded by a large number of people armed with cricket bats who have a violent five second free for all at my helmet.

Travelling in Oz on this sort of road I can do up to 1000 km per day no problem but with the winds here even travelling half that distance leaves you exhausted at the end of the day. I met Brian (?) from Ohio (?), he’d bought a 125cc bike in Chile and we’d both ridden a similar itinerary. He was getting blown around far more than I was, this is one of the few times where the extra bulk of Battlestar Kitty gave me an advantage.

One other hazard are the Lamas (Guanaco) along the way, I know a British couple who after successfully getting to Ushuaia were travelling along this same road to finish their trip in Buenos Aires when they hit a lama that ran in front of them. Hitting a full grown lama at 80kph is bad news for everyone, broken bones, broken bike and a broken (surprised) lama.

I can completely understand how it could happen, the lamas are mostly brown’ish in colour and are often just to the side of the road and they are perfectly camouflaged, especially when they have their head down grazing. When there is a crosswind (i.e all the time) your focus is on the road ahead and not the surrounding countryside and while most of the time they will run away from the sound of the traffic, sometimes there is a genius who does the opposite. I had one run across the road right in front of me less than 100 metres away, he was a big bugger as well.

Darren and Emma had the misfortune of having a lama encounter of the third kind something I was very happy to avoid.

You might remember in an earlier post how a group of school kids took a fancy to our bikes? I had stopped along the coast line at one point for a rest and a photo opportunity. It must be a popular spot as a bus pulled up and everyone else started snapping photos as well.

When I turned around I discovered the children had gotten older, and yes they all took turns for a photo op.

After a few days of travelling I stayed at Puerto Madryn for a few days for a rest and to pay visit to the nearby Valdes Peninsula.

About 60 km south of Puerto Madryn the road was blocked by a group of protesters. I never found out what they were protesting about and the police seemed to be happy to let them sit there for how ever long. I checked my trusty GPS and maps I saw there was a bypass road, so time for plan B and I did a U-turn. I did wonder why the locals were not doing the same thing and I found out why. The bypass road went through the local garbage dump and the road itself was terrible with patches of loose deep gravel. Fat Kitty was being tested. It was a long detour (aren’t they all?) but we made it.

Puerto Madryn is a reasonably large city so it was the usual fun and games to find a place to stay for myself and fat Kitty especially now since it’s the local holiday season. Luckily I found the Hostel Trapalanda near the centre of town and they were very accommodating.  I ended up parking Kitty in the hostel lounge. We had to rearrange half the furniture so I could ride Kitty though the fire door into the lounge and then do the same when I needed to leave each morning.

I was overdue for an oil change so I found a local bike shop where I got that done and after a couple of very hot days went for ride to the Valdes Peninsula. The peninsula is a nature reserve where there are colonies of penguins, sea lions, fur seals and elephant seals along the coastline and depending on the time of the year migrating whales are seen. Also it’s one of the places that Orcas can be seen beaching themselves in an attempt to have a penguin or seal lunch.

The peninsula does not have a lot of tourist infrastructure (good) and as a result the roads in the area are all gravel (bad) sometimes very deep gravel (very bad). Later in the day I managed to drop Kitty as I slowed down to park on the side of the road.

Repeat to self one hundred times….

“Pay attention on sandy roads”

“Pay attention on sandy roads”

Repeat until remembered………

I hate sand.

The rest of the day was spent travelling to the different animal colonies around the peninsula. The Elephant seal colony was amazing. Again the photos I took just don’t capture the atmosphere. The bull seals are continually bellowing to each other to as a warning to the other males keep away from their harems (the noise they make is even louder than Hans snoring, I didn’t think that was possible 🙂 )

Every so often a brief fight would break out between the bulls or sometime between a bull and one of the females. In some of the photos you can see some blood on back of one of the females. She wanted to go one way but bull had different ideas so he picked her up in his jaws and threw her away in completely different direction. The strength of those jaws is frightening considering a fully grown cow can weigh up to 900 kg.

After Puerto Madryn it was back to Ruta 3 onto Buenos Aires, the countryside remained flat but now was farmed with crops or livestock whereas further south the wild lamas outnumbered any farm stock.The other big difference is now there are trees although not what you might expect to be in this part of the world.

Both here and in Chile I’ve seen large areas where eucalyptus trees have been planted. The Beloved and I had talked before how we had seen eucalyptus trees in different parts of the worlds in our travels (India, USA, Israel, Egypt, etc). We had a theory about how the salesman who was originally tasked with selling eucalyptus to the world got bored and went onto having a very successful second career selling refrigerators to Eskimos.

I timed my arrival into Buenos Aires so that it would be on a Sunday when the traffic would be at it’s lowest. We’ve always said that the best parts of our trip is not the places we had visited, but the people we met and travelling into Buenos Aires was a classic example of that.

The road from La Plata to Buenos Aires is a motorway and while I would normally avoid motorways today was an exception. On the way I was passed by a couple of guys on smaller bikes, I followed them onto the pay station so I could copy what they would do (sometimes it’s free, sometimes you pay, sometimes motorcycles have to use a special lane). I was pleasantly surprised when they called out to me that they were paying for my road toll. We stopped and had a chat. It turned out that Marcelo and Horacio were part of motorcycle web forum  and they were heading into Buenos Aires for an informal lunch meeting in one of the parks near the water, Parrilla (bbq) was on the menu. Would I like to come along? Sounded like a good idea so I did.

The web forum was the Suzuki 125 club of Argentina. There are various versions of 125cc Suzuki motorcycles in Argentina including the GN125. Carolyn had a GN250 to learn on so it was nice to see it’s cousins.

They were a really great bunch of people and I had a very pleasant afternoon so a big thank you to everyone.

After lunch we went for a brief visit to the La Boca area, this is a tourist area of Buenos Aires with hundreds of restaurants, tourist shops and street performers. As we were wandering around carrying our crash helmets and other bike gear I had to laugh as I heard one tourist say “They must be part of the Dakar rally”. Fail.

After that we parted company and I went hunting for a place to stay. For a few days I stayed in the Palermo area in a hotel but now I’m nearby in a nice cheap hostel (How cheap? the hostel costs less that the garage where I had to store the bike.) and Kitty is safely tucked up downstairs ready for me to do some maintenance.

To be honest I haven’t done a lot since I’ve been here, in the first few days Buenos Aires was going through a heat wave so I wasn’t to enthused about doing to much apart from chasing up some parts for bike maintenance and finding out who was able to do the other work I needed to be done. For the next seven paragraphs I’ll be talking in bike speak so for the non bike people feel free to jump ahead.

So far on the trip I’ve done just over 10,000 km and I needed a new rear tyre. I now have a new Michelin Anakee that replaces the old Continental TKC80. The front tyre is still good as I had to replace that down in Ushuaia. The other job I had to have done is have the rear shock absorber rebuilt as I discovered in Puerto Madryn that it was leaking oil. This was sort of a surprise as I had it rebuilt just before leaving Oz but then again it has taken something of a pounding over the last couple of months.

The good news is that I found the Ohlins distributor for Argentina nearby and Leo was able to do a rebuild in a couple of hours so it’s all good on the shock front.

Finally, new oil is good oil. Fortunately my cheap accommodation has Kitty parking under the building so I’ve been able to do the normal bike service which has answered a Kitty question.

Kitty had started to leak oil from around the oil filter, embarrassingly enough oil to leave a the occasional puddle in the morning. Have you ever tried to find nappies for motorcycle?

When I finally changed the oil filter I discovered why. The idiot who did the last oil change time reassembled the oil filter seals incorrectly.

Before you ask, I was the idiot. New rule, don’t do bike maintenance at 3 am in the morning, this won’t be an easy rule to keep.

New oil, filters, spark plug checks and carburettor tweaks and Kitty is ready for road again.

I mentioned at the end of my last post that my new (and supposedly highly reliable) starter motor had developed an intermittent fault down south. It seems (so far) that this fault only happens in very cold weather and I think is due to a dodgy starter solenoid. I was lucky to find a replacement solenoid in Buenos Aires so that has been changed and fixed (I hope).

While I’ve been in Buenos Aires I met Ed and Elisa. I knew of Ed through posts in Horizons Unlimited and he was very helpful in helping source bits and pieces before I arrived.

I met Ed and the lovely Elisa with the lovely Carolina at a Fish and Chip restaurant run by the lovely Susan an Irish expat and her Argentinian husband. It was a very international evening (fish and chips, Oz, Argentina, USA, Spain). Ed and Elisa were planning to start the ride up to their ranch in Arizona in a few days and as part of that trip they were making a series of short videos that would be sent to a school they were associated with in Arizona so the students could practice listening to conversational Spanish.

They were making a new video on Saturday about maté, the national drink, it’s a bit like tea but has a much stronger social history associated with it. The talent for the video would be the lovely Elisa interviewing the lovely Veronica. (I was beginning to see a theme with the ladies that Ed was fortunate enough to associate with)

The videos can be seen on their blog.

A few days later Ed and the lovely Elisa started their motorcycle journey North, I hope to meet up with them before they cross into Central America, again a big thank you to you both for your hospitality.

While I’ve been riding around Buenos Aires sorting out bits and pieces for the bike I can definitely say that the spirit of Fangio is alive and well in Buenos Aires, he also rides motorbikes as well.

Riding around can get quite exciting at times. There are a few unwritten road rules, some of which I still haven’t figured out. The first rule is simple, go fast. Any time you leave space in front, the guy behind will pass you to fill the spot, not usually a problem but something to be aware of.

Buenos Aires has some magnificent wide boulevards through the city however driving in only one lane is not a very popular idea and changing lanes can get exciting as the two wheeled Fangios can appear out of no where to scare the hell out you.

Something which can make life a bit more exciting is the quaint idea of being in the left lane if you want to turn left (ditto for right) whereas I’m used to idea being a rule, here it’s more a guideline, a very loose guideline. The safest approach is to assume that the guy in the far right lane will turn left at the next intersection, assume the worst and be pleasantly surprised when it doesn’t happen.

Very often people on bikes don’t bother to wear their helmets but carry them on their arm. I guess it’s important to protect your left elbow.

The other trick I haven’t figured out yet is that at some intersections (not all) there is a 2-3 pre green light (which looks exactly like red) and if you don’t move through this pre green the people behind get a bit grumpy and many horns are blown.

There are a few other local customs that take a bit of getting used to but I haven’t aged too much while being here.

Anyway that’s all for now. In a couple of days I’m going to get on a ferry to Uruguay spend a couple of days in Monte Video and head north in Brazil.

Stop Press.

I just had an email from Hans and Stefan and they are “near” my location, sort of. As part of their journey Hans and Stefan followed part of the Dakar races, there they met Antonio, Johannes and Diego who invited them to visit them in their home town of Esperanza.

We have decided to meet at the town square of Esperanza about 500 km north of Buenos Aires. It’s just a day trip for me so off I go.

It’s not an exciting days travel, the highlight was wondering what happened to the roads that were supposed to join onto this bridge.

Sure enough when I arrived in Esperanza I found their bikes parked and they were enjoying a cleansing cerveza with Johannes and his father.

I was a hot ride so I had to join them as well.

I think Esperanza is a fairly quiet town, so anything out of the ordinary is newsworthy including when some guys on big bikes arrive in town and soon we had a local TV crew appear and wanted to interview us. They were a bit disappointed about our lack of Spanish skills but Johannes fielded their questions and everyone was happy. I have a great Spanish voice for newspapers.

It must have been a very quiet day for news as we were about to leave and a second crew turned up and we did the same thing all over again.

We picked up a copy of the interview from the local station the next day, I have to admit being curious about how our stories were translated. For the TV people out there they were using Edius to edit the stories.

That night we stayed at Antonio’s house and he cooked up up a magnificent asado (bbq) with much cerveza and many people attending, it was a great night.

The next day we went to the local aerodrome as we had been offered a joy flight around the area. I initially thought it was a good idea and agreed but thinking about it on the day I realised I don’t have a good track record with light aircraft, other people on board getting sick, severe air turbulence and memorably, landing gear problems on one flight made me reconsider joining Hans and Stefan. I bravely decided to take photos and it meant that some one else could take my place.

That’s how I rationalise it and I’m sticking to that story

Carlos, the pilot had several planes including an acrobatic plane that he was willing to fly and I have to admit I was really tempted to take him up on his offer as I have always wanted to go up in one of those planes (well a military fighter actually) but I suspected I would need the worlds largest air sick bag and we didn’t have one handy. I know that I’ll regret not going but there are always other opportunities (?).

In the end Hans, Stefan and Maira went on the flight.

The next day we parted company. Hans, Stefan, Johannes and Antonio were going to Cordoba and I was planning to head into Uruguay.

It was great to see Hans and Stefan again. After Cordoba they are heading back to Valparaiso, Chile as their trip is coming to an end. Also a big thank you to everyone in Esperanza for your hospitality. As I’ve said before the highlights of these trips are the people you meet.

Ok that’s all for now until next time, all the best

Ian J

As a bonus extra here are a few extra random photos