Friday – Santiago, Chile
Well, not a lot happened today except I got my bike back. I had wondered where it was and so I sent Paul an email and got the following response!
We are rebuilding the engine now, well be Ready at 12:00
Paul
Well that was a bit of a shock, I mean I did say if you find any other problems to go ahead and fix it, but WTF 😯 So I ended up calling him and in the meantime I got another email.
It is a joke
Bastard! It gave me a shock I can tell you 🙂 Anyway, after some blogging I went and found a bank to get cash for the repairs and I nearly needed an armored car, that is why they have such big grins on their faces 🙂
Well, it was not that bad, $600 for two new tyres, new rear brake pads, the metalwork straightened and they also found 3 big dings in the front wheel so that had to be laser straightened as well, but all in all I am happy with the new bike 🙂 Thanks Paul and team for the work and the friendly service. 🙂 Dave had a bigger bill than me as he also needed new rear bearings. After that it was back to the hotel and squeeze the bikes into the broom closet after negotiating the ramp!
I blogged all afternoon before heading out for beer later that afternoon. One thing I forgot to mention from yesterday was that near where we had beers last night and tonight, were some people holding a vigil. They had some quiet music and were watching some videos ans slide shows of people on a big screen, it was quite weird. Well, what I forgot to do was take some photos at the time, but it turns out that the building where they were holding the vigil was the detention and torture place during the Pinochet era. There were more than a 1000 people that entered those doors and were never seen again. In front of the building in the cobblestone path are plaques with the names of those that went missing, a very sad affair but they are remembered every Thursday evening.
After a few beers and a feed it was more blogging before an early night. I was planning on heading south tomorrow and I was still dithering about which way to go. There were some ferries that ply the route south which was sort of interesting, but after I found out the cost of that and after the bike bill, I knocked that on the head. I had never had the west coast of Chile in my head, so I would do a run south then see where I end up, just a normal well planned day 🙂
Day – 0 miles and 0 km
Trip – 49,884 miles and 80,281 km
Salud
TravellingStrom
WORLD 
TravellingStrom 