The Americas 2013

Although we were planning on spending another night in Bariloche to rest, we decided, after looking at the maps and the routes, that we still had too much distance to cover to get to Santiago and that we should push on today.

Our days ride…

The route we chose took us along the famous “Ruta dos 7 lagos” (7 lakes route) and it was beautiful and an awesome road to ride. We have ridden to a town in Chile called Pucon which sits in the shadow of the Villarrica Volcano and are spending the evening at a great little place called Hotel Malalhue that even makes its own Artisanal beer called “Khuba”.

So much Volcano Ash around these parts…Mountain tops and surrounds are covered in this grey stuff.

Today was the last of the Argentine/Chile border crossing for Leg 1 and I wont have to tackle this again until the 18th of Feb when we start leg 2. Since the 9th of January we have crossed the Argentine/Chile border a total of 11 times and we are now pretty efficient at getting in and out of there and even have the whole Spanish lingo down pat to shoot the breeze with the officials..”Ola, Buenos dias Senhor, estos son los documentos que necesita! Hazlo rápido, estamos en un apuro!”.

The Villarica Volcano in the distance…

Tomorrow we need to find a rear tyre for the KTM. It has done 8500km since new and anybody that rides KTM’s will tell you that this is an incredible feat for this tyre shredder. We only ever intended for leg 1 to be a total of 8500km but the little run around of 1000km to find a new tyre for the fat girl has left the KTM with thin rubber at the rear. Finding the right tyre size for her is proving difficult. Not even the KTM dealer in Puerto Montt where I found the tyre for the BMW could help me out on the spot so hoping that somewhere between Temuco and Chillan where we are staying tomorrow night will have something.