Day 393 Puerto San Julian to Comodoro Rivadavia 458km

Today marks the beginning of our last week of riding, just 6 more days to ride together after today, sad but true.

Yesterday’s Blog was done under immense pressure. The guys were hungry and wanted to go out to find some food. Then Peens discovered a Laundry where we could take our clothes to be washed. Hunger pains were replaced by the survival urge to smell better, and so “The Race To The Laundry” was born. The lady promised to have all our clothes washed and dried and folded before 19h00. So we decided not to go to a restaurant yet, but have some peanuts and beer in the foyer of our hotel. We spoke to a very nice lady, the owner or manager of the Bahia Hotel where we stayed, and she enlightened us that the animal I have been calling an Alpaca in my Blogs was actually the ugly cousin from the opposite side of the Gene-Pool of the Alpaca and is called a Guanaco. See below, there are Llamas, then Alpacas and then this 3rd wild specie, the other two are domesticated.

Then this lady saw we did not eat lunch and brought us a snack platter with smoked Guanaco, some of its liver I think, and Smoked Oysters with a selection of bread, lovely!!!!!

My mind was not so much on writing the Blog yesterday but rather entering the Race to the Laundry and trying to taste what a Guanaco tastes like. So I forgot to Sign Off and I am also told my A.I. Buddy also auto corrected some of my words to another word with another meaning. I want to say something bad about this “A.I.-friend” of mine, but decided to keep quiet and be nice to it so that it can remember that I never insulted it when they take over the world one day and then spare my life.

We had a lovely meal last night at the only decent restaurant that was open on a Monday night. I am starting to crave vegetables, the salads here are not great (lettuce, tomato and onion, with grated carrots.) So last night I ordered a big steak and asked if it can come with vegetables. The request was lost in translation and it did arrive covered in Red Peppers, Green Peppers and Yellow Peppers, all sautéed together with some onions. I guess it is technically correct and these are classed as vegetables, but unfortunately the type of vegetable that makes you float to the ceiling like the Hindenberg before dawn. What happened to our Green and Gold vegetables from back home (spinach and butternut.) I will kill for a carrot and some beans tonight when we try again to get a meal with some real vegetables.

The two injured 990 KTM’s left 2 hours before the rest of the healthy KTM’s as Tex was going to nurse his bike over 400km using a soft throttle hand to see if the back sprocket will make it.

Today’s road was more flat, drier and straighter than the road we traveled the last 3 days. And I was almost blown off the bike when I stopped to take this photo, so decided not to take any more photos to show you how boring the road was.

I can report that the good-news was that because it is so dry now, we hardly saw any Guanaco’s next to the road, but, sadly the very strong wind pounced on us and the fight was on to keep the bikes pointing in the right direction and keeping the side with the rubber at the bottom. Eventually we reached the Atlantic Ocean again and rode next to it for about 100km’s.

The group was split up and for most of the day it was only Rocky, Millsy, Peens and I fighting shoulder to shoulder against the wind like Lebanese Street Fighters. We stopped for lunch at a very sad industrial town which we suspect is where they have many oil wells (saw many Donkey Heads pumping oil,) and maybe oil-fields off shore. We stopped on the beach front at a Food Truck which served a great Hamburger. Note the beach “Sand.”

Note Rocky still wearing his Rain Jacket to block the wind, the temperature never went over 20 degrees and the sun never came out behind the clouds.

This statue in the main road which looked like it had stepped out of an Episode of Land Man was another clue that this was an oil town :

Millsy confessed that he does not import any of these valves to South Africa but then again, he has enough containers arriving daily, no space for such valves in any case.

I found another old Mercedes to renovate:

Along the way we saw several other Adventure Bikers on their way to Ushuaia, some more ambitious than others, this guy might discover some challenges along the road on his “Low Rider.” I sincerely hope the guys going down will ride up in Chile, it is so much prettier there than here on route 3. We spent some time of route 40 in Argentina, but the Good Stuffs is in Chile.

In the oil-town we were  putting in some fuel and these two bikes pulled up in the line next to us:

Above is how it should look, below is a guy who is riding on a “work in progress” and in time, if he works hard enough, his bike will also look like the one above:

Finally we joined up with Tex and Pie :

This KTM Dealer is very small and focuses on KTM Dirt Bikes and Polaris quad bikes. They did not have a set of chain & sprockets for Tex, but they scratched around and found a 2nd hand one that was not from a KTM 990 but it could do the job and there were enough left of the teeth to make it to Buenos Aires from where they are shipping their bikes back to Texas.

This is what was left from Tex’s “Teeth’, and note Tex’s teeth as he smiles like a man that got lucky.

Pie on the other hand did find two new tyres, but when he heard how much they wanted to charge him to fit it he got upset and stormed out. Remember I told you about the curse of being skilled and technical, you know you can do something and then you decide you would rather do it yourself. I get this, but these guys are also Fast To Anger and then logic flies out of the window, so instead of just buying the tyres and then we fit them tomorrow along the road, (we have all the tools, ) there is a whole new challenge developing, can Tex’s old tyre he threw away make it on Pie’s bike to Buenos Aires. In Pie’s defense, the strong wind is helping him as he is never riding on the middle of the tyre, it is always on the side of the tyre thanks to all the wind. I hope the wind direction changes soon so that the other side can also be used. Watch This Space, more news and photos to follow in due course. I am the last to point fingers, in Norway the canvas started coming through on my back tyre when there was no rubber left, so lets see, fingers crossed for Pie.

Dog found this map and is showing from where to where did we ride, and that was after 1st going via Florida Keys, New York, Nova Scotia, the Great Lakes, and then down:

We will continue to head North tomorrow, see below how far we have already gone North, we are well past El Calafate from where we started this leg. We have about another 2000km to do on this Leg.

I am all Lonely Van Benoni in the hotel room. The problem with Tex and Pie’s bike has spurred on our other highly technical but slow to worry member of the team, Peens, who is busy as I type to adjust his, Rocky and my chains, he is re-setting my “Service Error Message” that comes on everyone I start it, as the bike is pleading for a service, but it had one in Lima Peru and is actually still OK, it is just a way KTM makes you spend more money.

I know it was a boring blog, but hey, you dont want tm to lie and make stuffs up do you? So if I am having a bad day so will you. Some days you are the Wind Screen, some days you are the Bug. Today we were the Bug, tomorrow might be better. Lets hope. We are heading to a very special town, I dont want to say too much, but just to keep you hanging on my lips I will give you 2 words: Whales and Orcas.

Hope you will saddle-up with me again tomorrow and soldier on in spirit with us, against the wind.

XXXXXX

Fleisch

PS : Is jy nou happy Kylie, Pappa het net 2 vingers en die brain is al oud.