March 4, 2016

This road truly seems to go on forever.

If you’ve ever driven through the King Ranch in South Texas, or up Highway 395 between Victorville, California and Ridgecrest, then you know the feeling of driving a long, straight two-lane road with nothing but desert scrub in either direction as far as the eye can see. Now, instead of that long, straight road going a hundred or even two hundred miles, imagine it going for 1,800 miles. In other words, if you left Raymondville, Texas (near the Mexican border) and drove north through the King Ranch, the scenery wouldn’t change until you got to, say, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. That’s the same distance. With a few dots in the road along the way for towns, but for the most part, nothing and nobody. Yep, Argentina is a big country.

Thankfully there are occasional detours to places that are a little more interesting.

 

 

 

 

 

Only 771 more miles to Buenos Aires!

 

March 6, 2016

Just south of Bahia Blanca the scenery finally begins to change. Things start looking greener. Trees appear. I spend the night on the coast in a public park called Balneario Maldonado. A nice older couple manage the campground, and it’s just me and a guy from Buenos Aires staying there. 

In the morning I pack up late, taking my time. The weather is good — clear skies and temperatures in the upper 60s and low 70s — and my days are getting shorter, both in mileage and in daylight. Today is my last “long” day in South America: 245 miles to Azul. 

South of Tres Arroyos I pass a couple on a Kawasaki KLR on the side of the road. They look like they are in need of help, so I turn around and ask. They are from Buenos Aires, and have been to Ushuaia and are headed home. It seems the KLR has stopped charging and died. He has a small set of home-made jumper cables, and I offer to try to jump the KLR from my XT250. We succeed in killing my battery as well, which is tiny and the KLR is really dead. Fortunately my bike push starts easily and I’m able to get it going again. No such luck for the KLR. I offer to give him (or her) a ride to the YPF service station 15km up the road in search of a new battery, but he insists on waiting for a car to stop that hopefully will be able to jump-start the KLR. They thank me profusely, but I feel bad as I ride away leaving them on the side of the road. 

I pull into that YPF station several minutes later for fuel, and there are a half dozen other bikes there already. They are the Fuser biker club from Punta Alta (just north of Bahia Blanca), and are returning home from a weekend ride. They stand there bug-eyed while I discuss riding my 250 from Texas to Ushuaia and now to Buenos Aires. You can almost see the wheels turning. Most of them are on 250s, with a 400 and a 600 thrown in. Suddenly their world seems to be getting bigger. They can imagine traveling further on their 250s. We sit down and have lunch together in the fast food restaurant at the station, and, as usual, have a conversation in Spanish only. It’s getting easier, but can still be exhausting, probably for them as well, since I have to ask them to repeat several sentences. 

After lunch and trading stickers, I head north and they head south. The landscape continues to get greener. Crops appear; corn, soybeans, sunflowers, olives. 

 

For seven months, I’ve been riding with a Sena bluetooth headset on the side of my helmet, but I haven’t used it once. I used it constantly in the States, but in Mexico, Central America, and especially Peru, I didn’t want any distractions taking my attention away from the other drivers. Now, on Ruta 3, I finally feel comfortable that I can listen to music in my helmet again. It seems appropriate to listen to Gotan Project as I make my last days towards Buenos Aires.

As I pull into the campground in Azul, I am approached immediately by a gentleman in a new motorhome. He invites me over for a maté (tea), and wants to discuss travel. Hector and Olinda are from Buenos Aires and have just purchased their motorhome. They are clearly excited about traveling.

 “Oly” wants to take it to Central America and Mexico. We have a spirited conversation about getting the motorhome around the Darien Gap to Panama, and she begins to make a list of places to see in each country, asking questions about my route. They are not computer-literate, so I pull out my Michelin World Map that I have traced my route on with a black Sharpie, and we talk about where I’ve been, and why I chose to go where I did (and didn’t) go. This couple speaks absolutely zero English. I spend a good two hours with them before I even get the tent off the bike. It’s fun, but at the same time, exhausting. Hector gives me a tour of the motorhome. I am actually amazed at how much space there is and how nice it is considering it’s built in a Mercedes Benz Sprinter. It has a bathroom, and double bed, a nice kitchen with a fold-down dinette, and lots of storage. I tell them that next time I’m doing this trip in their motorhome. 

With all of the time spent talking with others, it’s been a long day. I finally get the tent pitched, and cook the last of my pasta for dinner.

 

Two hundred and sixty miles left to Buenos Aires. I’ll take two more days to do it, just to make it easy.

March 11, 2016

Before I could allow myself to do any serious sight-seeing in this city, I needed to get to work: I had a list of items to be done on the bike before taking it to the airport for it’s first flight.

 

 

Back at the apartment, I removed the fuel tank and swapped out the fuel pump and fuel filter. As noted earlier, there’s nothing wrong with the fuel pump, but unfortunately the in-tank fuel filter is part of the fuel pump and only comes as an assembly.

I also replaced the mirror that was broken when the bike was dropped off the worklift in Punta Arenas. I removed my GPS, its’ mounting dock and associated wiring for shipping, and installed a new air filter.

At this point, the bike is ready to ship. I’ll cover those details Tuesday when it goes to the shipper.

March 13, 2016

With the bike prepped and ready to deliver to the shipper on Tuesday, I have a few days to relax, wash gear, pack everything, and see the sights.

This is a very lively city, with tons of sidewalk cafes and beautiful parks. Today I walked about six miles in one direction, then caught a cab home at the end of my tour.

From the apartment, I walked to Plaza Serrano, a small park surrounded by bistros and sidewalk bars and cafes. Being Saturday, the park was covered with arts and crafts vendors selling their wares, while others continued to assemble more booths for Sunday’s large event. I stopped at a nearby cafe for a couple of empanadas and a smoothie, then continued walking northeast.

 

 

My route took me past the Buenos Aires Zoo. Beautiful place…I might even go back and pay to go in. But for free, from the sidewalk, I saw flamingoes, giraffes, and hippos. For a moment I couldn’t help but think about the expense of shipping to and from Africa, versus walking past the zoo here and seeing the same animals.

Yeah, I know….I’m going to Africa.

 

 

Past the zoo, I walked through several more large, shaded parks. In the corner of one, near Plaza Italia, is the Jardin Japones, or Japanese Garden.

Eventually I made my way to the Cementerio del Recoleta. This huge cemetery in the middle of Buenos Aires is absolutely incredible. Well worth the price of admission, which by the way is nothing. Nada. Free.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next up was Calle Defensa, a street in the San Telmo district that is lined with flea market vendors on Sundays. Probably a kilometer of them. With a few side streets joining in with vendors as well. It ends at Plaza de Mayo, which is also filled with vendors.

 

This guy was quite entertaining as well:

 

 

 

 

 

March 16, 2016

Never let it be said that I am not capable of doing some really stupid stuff. Yesterday is just my latest shining example.

Yesterday (Tuesday) was supposed to be “shipping day”: the day I took the bike to the airport and delivered it to the shipper. I had a 10:30am appointment at the cargo terminal. It takes just under an hour to get to the airport from where I am staying in Palermo, and I needed to get just a little gas before heading that way so I wouldn’t run out (the bike is supposed to have less than two liters of fuel in it when it goes on the plane).

I made sure the bike was sorted, packed and ready to go the night before. Tuesday morning I left about 9am, and rode a block to the gas station where I bought exactly two liters of fuel, figuring I would burn about a liter on the way to the airport.

After getting fuel, I pushed the bike off to the side, out of the way, and pulled out my waterproof zip-lock pouch with all of my documents in it. I looked at the information from the shipping broker, DakarMotos, which had the GPS coordinates of the cargo area on it, and entered the coordinates into the Maps.Me app on my phone. The route came up, I slid the pouch into my tank bag, put my gloves on, and set off for the airport.

About two miles up the road, I stopped at a stoplight. A cab pulled up behind me, honking furiously. I looked back, and the cab driver was pointing behind him and yelling something at me, but with all of the traffic noise I couldn’t hear him. I assumed I must have run a red light or cut him off in traffic, so I simply waved at him and when the light turned green, I took off.

About a half mile later, I looked down and noticed my tank bag was open. And my document pouch was gone. Massive panic immediately took over. The pouch contained the original title to my bike, my Argentina temporary import certificate, my Argentina reciprocity fee document, the shipping paperwork for the bike, and a bunch of other stuff that I can’t even remember.

I spun an illegal U-turn in the middle of an eight lane busy avenue and started splitting lanes as fast as I could to get back to where the cab driver had been honking at me. I rode in the gutter, between cars, around trucks and buses. When I got back to the street where the cab driver waved me down, I rode slowly up and down the street all the way back to the gas station, several times, looking for my documents. I kept thinking someone would see me and yell at me, waving my documents. No such luck.

Dejected, I went back to the apartment, and set off on foot to walk the entire route. I spent another two hours walking both sides of the street, looking on cars, in windows of buildings, in trash cans, everywhere I could think, with no success. Eventually, I began to accept that my documents were gone, and I was stuck in Argentina. I wasn’t sure how long it would take to get a replacement title from the US, and a new temporary import document from the Argentina Customs offices, or if that was even possible. Fortunately, I had two pieces of good news: first, I had the original Texas registration for the bike in a different pouch at the apartment, and I thought I might be able to use it in lieu of the title at Customs. Second, Sandra and Javier at DakarMotos had photocopies of my temporary import certificate, which I hoped would make it easier to get a replacement original.

I contacted Sandra, and after a long discussion with the airport Customs officials, she suggested I file a report with the local police, and get an affidavit from them advising that I had lost the documents. So after a couple of hours at the police station, and the help of Sandra’s daughter-in-law acting as translator, I walked out with the affidavit.

Meanwhile, my brother in Texas was working on getting a certified copy of my title from the Texas DMV. I was somewhat shocked to learn that I could send him an email and he could take it to the DMV and they would give him a copy of my title. For all the difficulties I usually suffer at the DMV, this seemed way too easy. Perhaps they felt sorry for me? Nah, it’s still the DMV.

I went to bed with the bike still in the garage…it should have been on a plane or at least in the cargo area at the airport. I couldn’t help but think of all the things that had to be addressed now: besides documents, there was local logistics (I had to be out of the apartment by Friday morning, as new renters were moving in, and now I had two large roller bags with all my stuff packed in them that wouldn’t fit on the bike); travel logistics (I was going to miss my flight Thursday night, and I wouldn’t arrive in Cape Town when I was supposed to, so my hotel reservation needed to be changed or canceled); and bike logistics (what if I exceeded my time limit in Argentina waiting on documents? I had no document to allow me to exit the country with the bike and then return to start the clock over).

It’s amazing how quickly the stress level can rise after months of virtually no stress. Eventually I took a deep breath, sat down and made my “to do” list, and got to work.

Sandra and Javier are experts at shipping bikes into and out of Argentina, and I was not the first person they had dealt with who for one reason or another didn’t have a full set of documents. After exchanging a few texts, Sandra agreed (for a small “Stupidity Fee”) to meet me at the airport Wednesday morning with the remaining copies of my documents that she had, along with the registration and police affidavit that I had, to see if we could convince Customs to accept what we had and allow me to ship the bike.

After four hours, and another hand-written statement explaining what had happened, I was allowed to take the bike into the freight warehouse and put it on the pallet. Things were once again moving forward!

Before putting the bike on the pallet, I rolled it onto a freight scale. The fully loaded bike, with everything except my camping gear, weighs 174.5 kg, or 384 pounds. For reference, an unloaded BMW 1200GS weighs 260kg, or 573 pounds dry, and a stock KLR650 with no luggage weighs just more than my fully loaded bike, at 176 kg claimed dry weight.

 

And finally some good news: since my bike is considerably smaller than the typical 1200cc adventure bike, the shipping cost turned out to be 20% less than I was originally quoted. So even with the Stupidity Fee it turned out to be less than I had budgeted.

One more day in South America, then a very long flight to South Africa.