No photos this time.
The only electrical item I have that can't be charged from the bike
is my camera. Leaving Bahia Blanca, I tried to take a picture of
Rogier and Anna and their bike and the battery was flat.
Had a rest day in Bahia
Blanca. Had to move from the hostel to a hotel but that was easy
thanks to Rogier and his excellent Spanish. Found a mechanic to take
a look at the bike and left it, gear and all, with him. Thus
allowing me to attend to some cultural activities, i.e. drinking beer
and eating.
I'd asked the guy to
change my speedometer cable, try and do something with the rear shock
and do me an oil change. The cable wasn't an issue, I was carrying a
spare. He was unable to change the oil because, apparently, he was
unable to find anywhere selling any on a Saturday.
The rear shock has
become quite a problem though. As weight is added to the bike, the
rear end compresses. When on the stand, the bike soon gets to
vertical and then tips over. The final straw was bundling up my bike
gear and strapping it on the back, the bike promptly tipped over onto
Rogier's Kawasaki (sorry Rogier).
The mechanic said (or
at least I think he said) that the rear shock was finished. He
jacked it up but the back end is still very soft. With all the
weight I'm carrying, the bike now falls over to the left when it's
left on the stand. In a desperate attempt to loose some weight, I
put a post on the HUBB offering the knobbly tyres I've been carrying
away for free. It took all of 30 minutes for someone to turn up and
take them, I'm now owed a beer by someone in Rio Gallegos.
The day on the road
started well, good weather, not too hot, no rain and the scenery
slowly changing as I go south through Argentina. Looking back at
pictures from a few days ago, it's amazing how much the scenery has
changed since Buenos Aires, unfortunately I don't have any pictures
to show. Argentina is a vast country. It took over two days to get
out of Buenos Aires, that's London to Inverness distance.
Sometime around my
second fag break, I noticed some oil on the back tyre. Burying my
head in the sand, hoping the problem would go away and not wanting to
take all my gear off the bike to strip it down; at the side of the
road, in 35 degree sun, with no shade, I kept moving. At each stop
the problem seemed to be getting worse and although I did buy a litre
of oil, I didn't do anything to solve the problem. I was riding
along paranoid about what to do with a seized engine though.
Getting into San
Antonio Oueste there was no room in any of the inns. Eventually, and
with the help of a very nice girl on the desk of one of the hotels
and my somewhat inadequate Spanish phrase book (Just what exactly is
the Spanish for “rear shock” and “bike handling like a bag of
spanners”?) I was directed to a campsite on the beach. Turned up,
paid the fee, grabbed a beer to drink while putting the tent up and
had a look at the state of the bike.
The screw top of the
oil reservoir was loose. That was all that was wrong. I'd maybe
lost a quarter litre of oil and that's it. A quick top up and job's
a good 'un.
A couple of Argentinian
lads wanted to chat on the campsite but all I wanted to do was eat
and sleep. I think they thought I had snubbed them but that's really
not the case.
I started crashing out
when it started to get dark but people kept arriving (it was a
holiday you know), starting up fires for barbecues and then at some
point the music came on. It seemed like it was on all night but I
don't remember them turning it off so I must have been drifting in
and out of sleep through it.
Took about and hour and
a half to take my tent down and pack the bike in the wind and then
about 4 hours on to Puerto Madryn. Checked into a random hostel from
Lonely Planet, put the bike in the yard and chilled out.
I'll probably be here a
couple of days. I want to find another mechanic tomorrow to get a
second opinion on my rear shock and I'd quite like a run round the
nature reserve; see the penguins, sea lions, killer whales etc but I
can't make the decision where to go next until I sort the shock.
Sending goods into
Argentina is an utter ball ache with a 100% import tax so it's a lot
easier to do it to Chile. My choices are south down Ruta 3 and then
back (possibly by a 4 day boat journey through the Chilean fjords) or
west to Chile to collect a new shock
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