Peninsula Valdes, Penguins and Elephant seals

Day 8 ( 372 km)

     Received a meager breakfast and decided to go to Peninsula Valdes, a mere 150 km away. Paid the entrance fee of $ 14.00 US and took the only narrow road to the Iberia inside the park, which is enormously big area, probably 4000 sq/km.

   

The first wild live, we saw, was a Guanaco standing on the side of the road and soon reached the visitor centre and asked around were to go. It seems the penguins, seals and orcas are all around the coastline this time of the year, so after leaving the visitor centre , we continued to the only village 25 km down the road, called Puerto Piramides, checked into a basic hotel and took all the bags of the motorcycles, fueled up again and after a snack went to the other side of the park 80 km away on a unpaved road made out of “ripio” , this is a common type of road here in South America and will see plenty of this further south and in the Andes


.      It is one of these roads, if you drive less as 40 km, you will have a hard time staying on the bike, because the front wheel is searching the whole time for balance on the hard packed road with loose gravel and sometimes sand, once you get 80 km+ speed the bikes feel better, but I guess if you wipe out it hurts more, especially if you encounter some thick gravel patches. 

Elephants could have been on the side of the road and I would not have seen them, all I was doing, was focusing on the road in front of me, so I would not fall. Anyway on the end of the day we did 200km on ripio without falling and tomorrow have to tide up every bolt and have to start taken some ibuproven in the future to get the sourness out of my body!

 

                                                        

      So reaching the first spotting side an hour later, all we saw was Magellan penguins and some other spots nearby, hundreds of Elephant seals. They were all over the coastline. After the first beer, the road became better and could keep up with Scotty on this ripio. After 2 to 3 hours of driving, we reached the hotel, got the dust out of me and strolled into town to get some food and beer

Going South, 2500 km to go!

Day 7 (536 km)

        Left the hotel 9 am on a quite Sunday morning and within no time hit Route 22 west towards Bariloche 800 km away. This road was an almost straight road and after 160 km, we finally made a left turn and from now on it was all going to be south till Ushuaia another 2500km!  This day was completed different then Yesterday and all the extra clothes we put on this morning for the cold, soon we had to take them off, the sun was burning, no clouds and no rain, but 50 km wind, so we were most of the time paying attention, not to be blown off the road and the more south, the harder the winds blows, up to 100 km an hour or more! We still were doing 100+ km p/h and after a lunch stop in the middle of nowhere, we stopped in Sierra Grande, a dusty small town around 4 pm.



 All the scenery in the last 2 days is almost the same with most of it unusable for agriculture or anything else; there are almost no trees anymore, just dust and low shrubs. There are no people living between the small towns and these towns are all more as 100 km apart, so we decided to fill up with gas before I run into trouble, I use about 20 to 25% more gas as Scotty and I do not want to talk about my oil consumption yet, We just found some on sale here $ 4.00 a liter 20/50 Mobil 4 stroke for motorcycles and we bought the store empty! We have to wait to get some food and beers till 8:30 this evening, because all is closed till then. Anyway we did 1000 km so far and the moto’s are still running good and are getting our confidence little by little back, Scotty has to change his already in a few minutes, due to the fact he changed pistons, rings and cylinder, I just burn it, so we still using the same amount or actually he uses more!

        

On the road again!

Day 6 (467 km)

The 2 mechanics

My bike in pieces!

     Yesterday, they finished Scotty’s bike and then they took care of mine, did the regular maintenance changed my brakes, fixed my dashboard lights, installed my new odometer cable and found an oil leak behind the sprocket and had to replace a seal. A few hours later all was fixed and we followed with the 2 moto’s our friends car to his house and start packing all the luggage we had and this was way more as in the past and most of it was spare parts and all was heavy. After all bags were mounted, we took the family out for dinner and around 10 pm we walked to the hotel and called it the night.

Sacked and packed

    This next morning he picked us up and brought us back to his house and after a final inspection we took off and were excited that finally the trip begun and hoped it would all work out today.

    We thanked Hernan for all the work he did for us the last 3 days, actually the last 7 months and we would have been lost without him. So we took off a little after nine and were heading for Bahia Blanco a more or less 500 km west from us and somehow were concerned, if the bikes would hold up and after an half an hour my moto cut off and had to go on the side and saw quickly one of the fuel lines was not attached good and after a few minutes, we continued to be stopped by the first police check and he wanted to see our reflecting jackets and insurance! both we didn't have and 15 minutes later we continued, because they give up and did not understand our Spanish and he got confused.

   The weather was nice but a lot of breeze and cool temperatures, made us chilly on the bike and had to add layer of clothes and the road was flat with on both side pastures and hardly anybody living here, there are maybe 3 or 4  small towns and stopped for lunch half way in Tres Arroyos.

Filled up gas and continued. Clouds showed up and soon it even started to get colder and in one cigarette brake I noticed my oil was already low and some oil residue fumes came out the exhaust, bought some oil and hope this problem will disappear by it self, but will figure this out tomorrow.

 Reached Bahia Blanca in a drizzle rain and went for the first hotel we saw on the outskirts of town and ended up having made the right choice. the $30.00 value gave us a clean room, with hot water, the bikes in the courtyard covered and out of the rain, slow WiFi and could leave all our luggage downstairs in a storage room. After a hot bath, drove into town and had some dinner and headed back early to prepare for tomorrow. planning to take Route 3 south and still have to another 2500 km and I am sure it will be colder, 

Mar del Plata, a few days!

Day 3,4 & 5 (0 km)

   After arriving in Buenos Aires, Argentina, we had a little dispute with customs with the amount and tires we brought into the country, what is prohibited to bring in and can only done by Fedex or UPS. I told him we do not have them in Honduras and after a while not "understanding" each other, he let us go, mumbling to his colleagues and on the outside there was the bus terminal and carried us throughout the night to Mar del Plata and arrived their 5:30 am and Hernan, our friend was waiting on us and a few minutes dropped us off in the hotel, which had a good value for the $ 25.00 we paid and we will not need A/C anymore this trip and the weather was cool, but good. After settled in a few hours later we delivered all the new parts to the mechanic and started to rebuilt Scotty's engine and after explaining them which parts we wanted to get replaced, we left on my moto and of course 3 minutes later we had a flat tire and flashbacks came back to me from the previous trip in Bolivia.

     I walked the motorcycle back to the shop, took the wheel of and went across the street, where a place was what repairs tires and saw that the problem was that the valve had let a go from the tire, because of rust or tension. Good thing was I had a new inner tire and soon installed the tire and were back on our way to the hotel to take it easy after the 48 hour of travel to Mar del Plata

    Later that evening we paid one more visit to the shop and saw that the were making progress and so far no complications. Later that evening a good "Parrilla" dinner in an outside restaurant, which had heated gas lamps to keep guests warm. It gets pretty cool in the night, probably around 14/15 degrees Celcius with a lot of breeze. People eat late here and when we left around midnight, the place was loaded with people!

    Next day went back twice to the shop and later that day the moto was running on our second return, meanwhile we decided to buy both a new set of tires, because somewhere in this trip tires were due and might well get it in Mar del Plata and found some good Michelin tires. The $ 250.00 charge for front and back was not unreasonable and were glad we did this, what was one worry less for us. Checked our luggage out @ Hernan's house to see what we all got and hoping that we tomorrow evening can load the bikes at his house and leave Saturday to Bahia Blanca, what is 500 km west on paved road.

   That evening went back to the same restaurant and had another good steak and tried all the different beer they had in liters! Wartsteiner, Miller and Elsbeck.

Third time to South America and this time Ushuaia!

Day 1 & 2 (0 km)

  We left our Motorcycles parked in Mar del Plata with a friend in Argentina, so we are flying back to get reunited and bringing lots of spare parts to get Scotty's bike fixed again.




So I left on Sunday Utila already for La Ceiba to do some banking in the Mega Plaza and all banks were open except the one I needed "Bac Bamer" known as Credomatic, but still, it felt good to be on the main land, because you never know for sure on departure day, the weather might turn bad and then there is no ferry, so leaving a day early puts me on ease and it feels like the trip started. 


    There were some big National Partido parades in the streets of La Ceiba, with hundreds of cars and I watched all the blue colors, noise and flags passing by from the balcony of the hotel. Walking around in this parade with a red shirt would get you killed in 5 minutes or less and Ceiba has all ready a pretty good record without having a parade ( As you can see there are no pedestrians on the side walks)

    Later this evening my wife Shirley is coming over and we will do some shopping in the Mall and we will have a good meal in Applebees with some Miller Lite and after bringing her back to the ferry in La Ceiba the next morning, I will be heading for the airport.

     My first plane is leaving Monday 11:15 from La Ceiba to the capital Tegucigalpa. that is , if they let us on board, Airlines here are famous to apply any written rule such as immigration requirement in final country and of course we only have a one way ticket. I made some fake ones from an Expedia.com email I received years ago and photo shopped, copy and paste relevant data on the computer and choose an airline, they are not partners with, so I could show them a confirmed reservation in La Ceiba at the TACA counter that I have a ticket to get out of Argentina in the case they ask for one! It usually works, but will find out tomorrow. 

    In Tegus we have a 5 hour lay over and will notify our banks not to block our credit cards, by specifying which countries we are going to visit. Credomatic likes to block cards if travelling outside the country! Then @ 5 pm a short flight to Salvador and then around 9 pm a 2 hour flight to Panama, where we will spend the first night in walking distance from the airport, in a nearby hotel with A/C,. We know this hotel from our previous trips and there is cold beer in the refrigerator by the reception, so we can not get wrong! In Panama we will be 12 hours and leave next day noon for a 7 hour flight to Buenos Aires, Argentina.