Leg 20 : The Packing Has Started !!!! Only 13 Days Before We Fly

I think these 2 tyres I have to take with me will be the last I will be  putting onto DadAss before the end of our adventure, which is in sight, we have a straight run down to Ushuaia at the bottom of Argentina, only 8400km to go,  if we don’t zig-zag too much, which we no doubt will as there is a Wine Region to the East and lots of good Beef and Lamb to eat down the centre of Argentina, so I can see us crossing the Andes in search of good food and wine.

I am keen to end our KTM World Tour at the bottom of South America, but already I have heard Rocky planting the seed in our heads to ride back up and finish the trip in Brazil on Copa Cabana Beach ?????

Quick Fact : We have been riding on Hidenau K 60 Scout Tyres for the entire time, I once got 20 000km on my back tyre and eventually the canvas was coming through. I had a spare tyre with me but we were far north in Norway and could not find a place to help us put it on the rim, eventually we stopped at a Tyre Fitment Centre and the owner said he could help us in 2 days and we need to make a reservation as several RV’s were ahead of us, he had obviously not done business with South Africans and before he could finish his coffee Pie and Tex had removed several of our bikes wheels and rolled them into the workshop flashing cash to be allowed to fit our own tyres onto the rims just using their machine.

Back to Hidenau, I always ran it on the back wheel but the front tyre is VERY noisy, so on some occasions I rather fitted a Pirelli on the front.

We will return to Quito in Ecuador and then spend some time getting the bikes serviced and new tyres fitted before we can get going, (we also have a little trip back to the Colombian Border.) The majority of this leg will be spent in Peru and there are several Tourist Must See stops we will go and see before popping over the border into Bolivia to put the bikes in storage in La Paz which is in the very North of Bolivia.

We needed two visas for this trip, one for Bolivia but we also need to go back into Colombia and then re-enter Ecuador and get some Paper-work we could not get last time due to the State of Emergency they had there in February. The whole process to get a visa for Colombia is more painful than childbirth and I can’t understand how they get any tourists from South Africa. We learnt some lessons the last time when we applied for our 1st visa for the February trip that you can’t be married and can’t have children as the on-line application goes into a Freeze Mode if you click on “Married” or “Children”, we also knew that the double payment was going to be excrusiatingly-painful, far more painful than a pair of pliers applied to the scrotum area, (as the payment has to be made by Credit Card direct into the Colombian Governments Account and our banks keep on blocking the transactions as they think it is some criminal activity on your card,) but we were not prepared for the new drama with regards to the Passport Photo we had to up-load, a new photo, not the same as the previous visa, but this was not communicated to us.

Eventually we had to get access to a real person (and not a robot A.I. Psycho)  that works in the embassy via the person she has lunch with which works in the same building for another company. Eventually we all got an interview with said human inside the embassy after jumping and lubricating some hoops. More pain followed and more on-line forms. More come-backs about the photo which has to be 4cm x 6cm and the file had to be the exact size of 300kb, not to be confused with the photo for Bolivian Visa which is only 3cm x 3cm and only 150kb size file. (One of us got this wrong and is still without his visa.)

We are flying a different route this time and will no longer go via Europe via USA to South America, this time we are taking short-cut via Brazil. Sadly we can only take 1 piece of luggage, so inside this Taxi Bag below (also known as a China Bag) I still have to fit my Pannier Bag with my clothes, not sure how I am going to do that, but my Hand Luggage is going to be full with chargers, computer, toiletries and files with paperwork etc.

Hope you enjoy the ride with us.

When I push Post now I am hoping all the changes and up-grades made to this Website is working well and this Post appears where it should and gets saved and categorised as planned????  We now also know that the up-loading of photos to appear on this Blog is working fine and things looks ready to go…..Fingers Crossed.

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Fleisch