South America 2008

All right!

No more waiting. We’ve been patient for weeks with DHL only to have a quote for shipping our bikes down to Santiago go from $2,500 to $9,000 one way. We’ve had too many freight forwarders tell us they’ll call us back… they never do. How hard can it be to get a couple of used motorcycles from Los Angeles to Lima, Peru or to Santiago, Chile? Not easy enough or not cheap enough.

If you want something done, do it yourself!

We’re taking matters into our own hands: Tomorrow morning we’re getting on our bikes and we’re riding out of here.

We’ll go south from Huntington Beach to glorious Tijuana and from there to the tip of Cabo where we’ll take the ferry to Mazatlán and through Guatemala and then just south somewhere… The plan is to get to Panama City and from there get a boat to Colombia and then just get as far south as we can in the time we have.

Next post should have some photos from Baja California at the very least!

The plan and the route is new, our spirits remain the same. Wish us luck… really… wish us luck!

Just posting a couple of pictures of the bikes at the warehouse ready to be crated… I hope the next time we see them we’re in Santiago, Chile.

The bikes will go by truck to Miami where they will clear customs and fly to Santiago. We plan to go to Santiago a few days before the bikes arrive to play tourists. When we get them out of customs at the airport we’ll head east for Buenos Aires.

…any day now…

And by the way… just so you guys don’t worry too much about us on our trip, we’ve watched hours and hours of Man Vs Wild and Survivorman so we feel fit to handle any situation. It’ll be sort of like this I think:

http://www.nbc.com/Last_Call_with_Carson_Daly/video/#mea=142136

I’ve packed and re-packed and it looks like all the gear I need will fit in the bags and on me.I’ve tested the gear at night in the SoCal mountains with temperatures in the low 40’s and it held up fine.

We’ve had the bikes looked over and mounted the last hardware we need. Thanks to David at 2 Wheel Workshop in Long Beach! Excellent job!

It’s raining and cold here and it’s 85 in Santiago.

We’re ready to go!

But! We’re waiting for word from DHL who will be shipping our bikes about some paperwork. It’s frustrating. We may crate the bikes tonight or tomorrow to get them going to Miami while we wait for final confirmation from Santiago for import and from Lima for export back to the US.

All the gear that’s supposed to fit on the bike and me:

This is a rough drawing of our planned loop. I’ve spent some time adding way-points and tracks to the GPS using the Mapsource software and the Smellybiker worldmap. The Smellybiker worldmap is very good in some places and worse than the maps that came with the GPS in other places. The map doesn’t support routing so we have to go by tracks and way-points.

I thought I’d set up this blog where we can keep in touch with people as we travel through South America.

It’s starting to dawn on me that we’re actually doing this and I don’t know if I’m ready (or if I’ll ever be) but I’ll find out when we twist the throttle on our way out of Lima in about three weeks.

Now, what are we doing again?

When Andy asked me early last year if I’d go on a motorcycle trip through South America I said “yes” without really thinking much about it… and now it’s too late to turn back

So we bought motorcycles and equipment, planned the route, arranged for shipping the bikes from California to Lima and we’re almost ready to go. It’s still a bit unbelievable to me but it’s slowly sinking in.

Wish us luck!