Tuesday – DakarMotos, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Yep still here, but my last day at DM
So I learnt another lesson about South America today and it was an unpleasant experience. The post system got me again. I spent the day sorting through everything I had and made some harsh decisions about what I could bring home and what had to stay. I managed to sell the stove to Marcus, he wanted one and I did not need the hassle of a dangerous goods situation. I also sold the front crash bar soft saddlebags to Phillipe, although they would have been nice to keep, hopefully I can replicate them back home. I laid everything out, and with the weight limits imposed by the airlines, tried to take as much on board as possible. They did allow a generous 44kg in two stowed luggage bags, as well as 10kg carry on, in the end I managed to make up one box of maximum size allowed and this was most of the heavy stuff to be sent back to Brisbane. Now came the tricky part, carrying a heavy box 12 blocks to the train station, then another 500m to the post office where once again I was confronted by the KGB dragon!
This was where I came unstuck. The list of stuff I had packed which had been translated by Julian into Spanish was not needed, nor wanted, she wanted to look inside, which is why the box cannot be sealed. OK, she did a cursory inspection and that part was good, whew. Now, the box had the manufacturers name on it and this was printed on the outside in quite large letters, apparently this is not good. The outside has to be plain and brown and lucky there was an English speaking chap there who explained this to me. This was not her conditions, but the actual post office rules. Now it starts to get messy, it seems I have to get rid of the box, or wrap it in brown paper, fine do you have some brown paper for me to buy. No, we don’t but if you go back across to the bus station you can get some there. Hmm, not good, but OK off I go and it took me ages to find out where the packing area is and there are 10 booths all accepting packages to be bussed around the country. After a lot of butchered conversations with a lot of people at each of these counters, it turns out they do not sell brown paper!!!!! 😡 So I was led on a wild goose chase, but it turns out they will wrap it for me, but that is no good because if it is wrapped off site, the dragon will want it opened again to see what is in it, catch 22!!! So, back I go and explain about the no paper, but they are adamant, that box will not get posted the way it is! OK, next step, grab the dragons knife and cut my wrists, no, I mean cut the box down the side and tip everything out on the floor, turn the box inside out and grab some tape and tape it back together, repack it and use one of my tie downs to help keep the box together, not ideal but it will have to do. Bloody idiots, if they expect you to use brown paper, why not sell the damm stuff, they would get their money back! Needless to say, after a 3 hour marathon the box was weighed, it was under weight and I forked out a lot of money but it got posted home, and hopefully it will arrive within the next 8 days!
Now that I was rid of that, I had some free time, but not as much as I would have liked, but I went for a walk up to the main drag looking for an electrical store to buy some headphones for my iPod and for the Skype on the pute.
I spotted the old tart in the plumage and tried to get her photo, but she was not interested until I forked out 1peso, about 25c 🙂 Now, she is one of the best adverts for a sex shop I have ever seen, cos you would have to get something from there just to get excited 😉
I still never got a smile out of her though 🙂 I found the shop after a while( the electrical shop not the sex shop) and bought some phones before heading back for the last supper, this time cooked up by Marcus, not a bad feed at all, but not as good as mine of course 😉
Another quiet night, I had been real slack on the blog front, so I tried to get motivated, but with no bike I did not feel the urgency, strange that, but there you go. Tomorrow I was heading to a B&B near the airport, because on the Thursday morning I had to be up at about 4am.
Day –0 miles and km
Trip – 54,042 miles and 86,972 km
Cheers
TravellingStrom
WORLD 
TravellingStrom 