A FEW MORE PHOTOS & A FEW LAST WORDS.

THE TIGRE DELTA just north of Buenos Aires

AS ABOVE

TIERRA DEL FUEGO NATIONAL PARK, where the road ends.

AS ABOVE. Its wild, isolated & quite spectacular.

And heavily forested too.

We went thru THE GARIBALDI PASS, just out of Ushuaia on the road north. That's snow on the roadside.

AS ABOVE. Tricky, not to mention cold!

WAITING TO CROSS THE STRAITS OF MAGELLAN, separating Tierra Del Fuego from the South American mainland. The Sir Douglas Mawson lookalike is me, but the conditions were fairly Antarctic.

The magnificent LAGO ARGENTINO , between El Calafate & El Chalten.

ONTO THE GRAVEL AGAIN, Ruta 40, north of Tres Lagos. It gets worse.......a lot worse!

BUSH MECHANICS! An improvised clutch lever after a drop on the gravel. It actually worked. (No, its not mine!)



LANIN VOLCANO, on the border between San Martin de los Andes (Argentina) & Pucon (Chile). Yes, it's active ..........better keep moving!

A BIT CLOSER. The foliage is a so called Monkey Puzzle Tree.

PART OF THE SANTIAGO SKYLINE. The smog blots out what would otherwise be a spectacular mountain backdrop.

PLAZA BAQUEDANO, Central Santiago

ONE OF THE MANY CATHEDRALS, Santiago.

TERRAZA NEPTUNO, Cerro Santa Lucia, Central Santiago.

Ever wonder what the Third Reich did with all the leftover uniforms? Now you know!

CROSSING THE ANDES THE EASY WAY. Flying back to Buenos Aires from Santiago.

AS ABOVE.

Its been a hectic 3 weeks, covering a bit over 3,000 km by road. When we started in Ushuaia, it looked as though we were going to cop really bad weather, but I think we got lucky. It had been snowing the day before we arrived, & it was raining on arrival. The wind was stiff enough to be a concern, & it made the riding tough, but it could have been much worse, apparently. There was snow on the ground in a mountain pass on the first ride day from Ushuaia, so that's a first for me. Fortunately, the weather steadily improved as we moved north.

As a group, we have seen some spectacularly rugged & isolated scenery, ridden through some of the most remote & challenging parts of the planet, had some fantastic rides, honed our skills, enjoyed the cameraderie of similar minded adventurers, met a lot of very friendly & hospitable locals along the way and, best of all, had a lot of fun doing it. What more could anybody want? Just more, that's what! So there will probably be a next time, at least I hope so. Thanks for sharing this great experience with me. Hasta Luego, Mike.

BEWARE, THERE ARE LLAMAS !!!!

Well, they´re guanacos actually, a little smaller than llamas. There are plenty of them out on the plains, but they are a bit flighty, & usually bolt before you can get too close- fortunately, as they are bigger than goats.

Before we get to the infamous Ruta 40, here is a shot of a waterfall/glacial lake in Torres del Paine NP, Chile, followed by a refuel stop in the backblocks. The hose comes out of a hole in the back of a dilapidated shack, but what the heck, its petrol.

Got to a place called El Chalten, dominated by a massive granite spike called Mt Fitzroy.

However, I am more likely to remember the place for the massive dose of gastro I got at no extra charge after dinner in a local restaurant. After spending a night in/on the bog, I did not eat for 36 hours, & had to spend 2 days in the support vehicle, thus missing out on a big section of Ruta 40. However, I did get a good look at the countryside, usually as I ran out of the 4WD a few times to find a bush & then to add my personal contribution to the local ecology (too much information?). It is an unbelievably windswept & desolate part of the world, but like OZ, its got its own special grandeur, & there are usually snow peaked mountains on the distant horizons which add to the overall vibe. I was fit enough to ride the next day, which happened to be the longext ride day of the trip. It started with 130 km of murder- deep gravel, corrugations, & sand, 350 km of bitumen, with large sections of side detours which were worse than the road they were replacing! We had a savage wind in places, but apparently we got it relatively easy, nowhere near the full fury that can be unleashed. It was probably the toughest ride I have ever done, its tough on the bike, & tough on the rider. It was not unexpected, but I was not in A1 shape to start with, & I´m very satisfied with my effort.

RUTA 40. ITS A TOUGH GIG !!!

Ruta 40 is being upgraded with large sections under total replacement (theyre replacing it with a road!). When it is finally finished, it will be just another road, but right now, it is deservedly the stuff of legend. We have seen many other bikes, either tour groups or individuals in twos or threes. Its BMW Central down here.

Some of the towns are amazingly backwards. Here is the main street of Rio Majo, note the extensive reconstruction program in full swing.

When we got up as far as Esquel, a pleasant ski resort town, the country started to improve, with forested mountains, & lots of wildflowers. It is now starting to look quite alpine. Yesterday, we had a great ride on good roads to reach Bariloche, an even more European looking town on a large lake. This is our accomodation on the outskirts. Neat, huh? Just like Bavaria.

On the downside, my bike now has a damaged headstem bearing, making it quite hard to ride, & the guys dont have a spare, so thats a bummer as we have even more good roads to ride on tomorrow. Such is life! But overall I like the F650, its got everything you need, its light & responsive, it handles the rough stuff comfortably & predictably, & on the bitumen, I love the way it howls when you wring its neck in 3rd & 4th. Its back into Chile tomorrow (19Dec) to Pucon via the 7 Lakes area, should be another scenery overload. I´ll post more photos when I can. See you all soon.

FIN DEL MUNDO (end of the world)

Hello readers, Sorry about the delay in posting, access to reliable internet has been a problem. A quick summary so far. I arrived in Buenos Aries a bit of a jet lagged wreck, compounded by a reaction to my yellow fever shots. I had a bit of a look round town, & while it is a lot like Europe in the visual sense, there is also some in your face third world evident-people fossicking thru garbage, slums, lack of footpaths, general grot etc. However, the food is amazing. These people eat like there is no tomorrow. Red meat is the go, & the portion size is about half a cow. Here are 2 photos of crowd control South American style. This lot complete with water cannon & baseball bats were waiting in a city square for a bunch of protesters.

Anyway, after a night out to meet the rest of the group on the tour, we flew down to Ushuaia, where it was cold, windy & raining. We went out for a quick ride, to get used to the bikes, & each other. There are 5 Aussies, an American & a Brit in the riding group, & 3 Compass guys to show us the way. We headed for the end of the Pan Amarican Highway, literally the end of the road at the bottom of Tierra Del Fuego.


This is one of the ultimate goals, the holy grail, for serious motorcycle travellers, so it feels weird starting from here, but thats what we did. We have been doing some long days, 3-400 km, over a mix of road types. Sofar the dirt has been mostly ok, but the big problem is the wind. It is absolutely unbelievable. It can literally blow you right off the road. I have never, ever ridden in conditions like this, cranked over about 20 degrees just to go in a straight line! Its tough & its uncomfortable, & its also cold. There is a lot of snow around in parts. We are all wearing every bit of clothing we own. Enough complaining. There are vast open spaces down here, & in that sense, its a lot like Australia, altho the vegetatiuon & wildlife are very different. We crossed into Chile, then took a ferry across the Straights of Magellan. The Torres del Paine national park in Chile was very, very spectacular.

We crossed back into Argentina, & moved on to a place called El Calafate. From there we went 80km up to the Perito Moreno glacier. This thing is absolutely gigantic, about 5 km wide & 60 m high. You dont need to wait long for a chunk to break off, its very fast for a glacier, and you can hear it creaking & cracking continously. We saw a lump the size of a block of flats break off & hit the water at the front like a bomb! This photo only shows a small part of the front edge of the glacier.

We are about to head into a remote region of Patagonia, for what we think will be 4 days of hard going over the worst roads we are likely to meet. Gotta go, more later.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

Welcome back listeners. You could be forgiven for thinking that nothing has happened in the 14 months since I last put a post on this blogsite. And you'd be right! Well, not much anyway. Some riding in Oz, the east coast & the centre, and a quick non-bike trip to Borneo, and oh yes, I bought a new bike (KLR650), to go where I'm not prepared to take the BM. But since having had a big serve of adventure in 08, I have never stopped scheming about what I was going to do next. I have decided to act on my half baked plan to visit South America. This will be a short trip of only 3 weeks to Argentina & Chile through Compass Expeditions, & I'm thinking of it as an exploratory foray which will influence what I do afterwards. So this time, its pay the money, hire a bike & let them do the worrying, while the other punters & I do the riding. I arrive in Buenos Aries on 30 November. After a couple of days sightseeing, the group flies to Ushuaia, where we collect the bikes (BMW F650 GS), then head north, criss crossing the border between the two countries on our way up to Santiago. I then fly back to BsAs to connect with my flight back to Oz, arriving back in Adelaide at 10.30 pm on Christmas Eve. That's the plan --- let's see how it unfolds!