Plan B evolves

Date: 19/04
City: Esquel, Argentina
Kilometres ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometre: 40450
Street: n/a
Weather: sunny/cloudy, warm

Today I planned to bring Sigrid’s bike back, which shouldn’t be a problem with the paper work from the notary. So I took the bus to Fualeufu in the morning to where I returned the crutches to the hospital and got Sigrid bike ready. To my surprise the bike wouldn’t start, the battery was flat!
Great! And I had all the tools and my jumper lead on my bike in Argentina!
Betina wasn’t going to be back for another three hours, so I removed the side cover and the seat and walked to the next car workshop. I told them about my problem. Imagine this: Asking for a jump start with my low level of spanish language mastery. We managed to communicate with a lot of gestures and laughing on both sides and the mechanics told me that they would come to my rescue in five minutes. When they arrived, we started the bike and I turned the idle up so the bike wouldn’t stop running. On the right are my heroes; the guys from the workshop.

Now I rode to the border, which was only a couple of minutes from the hostel, so I had to let the bike idle when I was doing the paper work for migration and customs. Some of the guys looked at me a bit strange, leaving my bike running. But when I attempted to explain that the battery was flat, it resulted in nearly the same amount of laughing as at the workshop. But they understood. I guess I have to improve on my sign language 😛

Anyway, what they did not understand was that I was moving Sigrid’s bike over the border and that the number plate didn’t had any numbers – it is SIGRID.  It all threw them completely and it took quite a while before everything got resolved. The gravel road started from the Argentinian border, this time it was not raining and the views were great.

Back in Esquel I went straight to the trucking company and tried to find out if they can ship the bike to Buenos Aires to Dakar Moto instead of their warehouse. Had I mentioned my skill level of Spanish? It started with me talking to only one girl and by the end there were three people involved… I must admit they were very patient :D.
All three where smiling at the end, I’m not sure if it was smiling at my leaving, or being happy 😛

Then I organized a new fashion item for Sigrid which she can’t live without. That is to say I got hold of Sigrid’s air boot, which will make it possible to ride as a pillion a bit later on.

Then we started to reorganize our luggage to consolidate everything that we need onto one bike. So all the camping gear will stay with Sigrids bike, but after the experience with the flat battery I’ll keep all the tools and most of the spare parts for the bike. Then we parked Sigrid’s bike at Negros place and we all went out for a pizza. Negros son, Jenaro, came as well, he had the terrible task to translate between Negro and us. He was very patient and did a marvelous job, so we had a great evening.

Tomorrow we will start our trial run, me on my Motorbike and Sigrid on the bus to Bariloche.

 

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