Bikes Liberated

An early start this morning after a great sleep (needed it after the previous 24 hours) Taxi with Sandra to the Airport to get our bikes out of Customs and importation. Monday was a holiday so the place was very busy. Lots of offices visited, lots of paperwork, lots of stamps and lots of hanging around waiting, things go slowly in Buenos Aires so luckily we had Sandra to keep us right and do most of the waiting. If it had been the UK I'd have been going mad but its South America so its the way it is. A graet moment when we saw the crated bikes but that was only half way through the process, still lots of waiting, customs etc etc.

Woo Hoo our bikes!!

 

By the way for those of you in Europe it was at this point around 32 - 35 Degrees C , can you remember temperatures like this?

Eventually after much bill paying, and forms that was it, ready to roll, while the customs guy and Sandra were doing their thing we put the mirrors back on and blew the tyres up again (they let air out for the flight) Thanks to Sandra it was not the stressful experience it could have been and I'd recommend using her, money well spent, especially for me with my tendency to explode quickly!

Sandra and our bikes in Dakar Motos

 

 

We set off through the traffic to the first petrol station to fill up, we must have taken half an hour, great to see good employment schemes, a person for each set of pumps and still 5 times slower than in the UK but hey, the weathers nice, we're not in a hurry, whats the rush. I took a wrong turn and headed towards the city centre, oops, not a great idea, managed to get back on track but not before experiencing the traffic from hell, we ended up at a paybooth in the midst of chaos horns tooting everywhere, and then the barriers were lifted and we were all through for free, Javier later told me that in Argentina if there are more than 10 cars waiting they are entitled to protest by blowing their horns and have the barriers lifted and get through for free. I thought it was a great idea, can't see it happening in Europe though.

We made it back to Dakar Motos, around 40 miles with the detour!, our first miles in a new continent. Tomorrow we plan to chill, visit the centre (by train) extend our insurance for the neighbouring countries (a green card type of scheme) and see what there is to see. The only other thing of note is that the Argentinian mosquitos are enjoying my blood, more lumps on my body than elephant mans head!!

Relaxing in our Kitchen/ Bedroom/ Lounge/ Garage