Leaving South America

Final days winding down my life in South America.  Gee whiz, since the time I arrived Cartagena, Colombia in January 2012, all the way down to Ushuaia, Argentina.. and everything in between, there have been the highest of highs (5,903 meters to be exact!) and the lowest of lows.

The time has come to prepare the bike for shipping to Auckland, New Zealand.  I've given myself two weeks here in Buenos Aires.  Not because I need two weeks to prepare the bike, but it's just for me to settle, to reflect on the last 14 months and to savor the last bits of this amazing continent in style.

Looking around, it's still all about Eva Peron (Evita) here.. even though she's been gone since 1952! She made quite an impact on the country in her short life, then died at the age of 33. If you want to learn more about her, click on the link of her name highlighted above.

The view from my little temporary home near Avenida de Mayo. I'm not usually a city girl, but I love being right here in the heart of it all.

While I'm out here on my balcony taking photos, I can't help but to take one last photo of my favorite jeans.  I've been sewing them and sewing them and even this morning, the material has become so thin, they keep tearing for no good reason.  Seriously, I'm just sitting at the table on the computer, I look down and watch the leg split again right above my last sewing job. What the heck, I didn't even move!! I did get my money's worth, so I'll be leaving these behind.  One last thing to carry on the airplane when I move on.  I'll miss these jeans!

I do have a very important job to take care of before delivering my bike to the airlines for shipping.  I didn't have the mechanics here fix the problem from Uruguay, but thankfully they agreed to let me store the bike at their shop. It's much safer than downtown Buenos Aires, and an ideal place to come in each day for the supersize cleaning job I need to do.  After crossing 48 borders, the country of New Zealand will be the first one who will not allow that bike through unless it's clean and spotless.  They have very serious quarantine rules. So to avoid extra costs on the other end, I take to cleaning my bike with a tootbrush.. seriously!

For three days in a row, I took the 40 minute train ride out to the suburb where my bike lives. 

Three years of dirt needs to be removed!

 Gee whiz, can you imagine if you have to do this at every border in the world!??

Every time I think I've got it perfect, I see another speck of dried dust in a corner.. ugh!

And then the train ride back home, I seem to hit rush hour no matter what time I go..

If I wasn't working on the bike,  I'd wander about Buenos Aires and see tango tango tango.. everywhere tango. Night and day, there is a true passion in the city for this dance.

This couple wasn't dressed up.  If I'm right, they were just out for a Sunday stroll when the music hit them.. They did one dance and then walked on!  I thought that was very cool...  In my imagination, they've been married since they were 18 years old and the passion still lives..!

I was sort of wishing I was the girl in the photo above...he looks like the perfect man to tango with!!!

I put this next tourist attraction off for most of my stay.. I eventually wandered in to the cemetary on one of my last days. I knew it was popular but it didn't appeal to me at first until I thought, why not. Everyone must want to come here for a reason.  And I found out why.  It truly is quite an impressive cemetary!

I didn't take a tour.  I just wandered about making up my own stories to the gorgeous sculptures here.  On this first one, it looked like to me that the man wanted to stay and is holding on to dear Earth.  But the Angel says, "No, no! You've got to go that way... UP!" ;-)

Big money spent on the plots here.  This modern marble structure had quite an eery Angel of Death.

This next one was my favorite.  What a beautiful sculpture of the young girl who died along with her beloved dog.

 The dog's name is Sabu. "Faithful friend to Liliana"

 Time ran out??

If I had to pick, the one above suited me.  Just a rock in a natural setting.. perfect!

Okay!  That will conclude your tiny tour of Buenos Aires! It's kind of weird to include so many photos of a cemetary in a blog post.. but I think of all the hard work and money put into the place, I might as well share. And to go even deeper into thought, it sort of represents the end of my time in South America.

We've packed the bike into to the truck to be delivered to the airline warehouse, where the plan is for the bike to take a lovely flight with Emirates to Auckland! And for me...well?  I should probably explain how this all worked out.

I've been researching the costs for quite some time on how to get myself and my motorcycle across the ocean to New Zealand or Australia.  Each time I tried to work it out myself or with helpers, the cost was coming up to about $5000 USD... !!!!  It was a real worry for this much money going out on my next transfer as you can imagine.

I think it was Mark who suggested I check my frequent flier miles as he was using his for the same reason.  I checked and thank goodness I have enough!  However, I can't just fly Buenos Aires to Auckland on one frequent flier ticket, the connections didn't work that way.  Lots and lots of playing around on websites, I figured out that it was cheaper to fly to the United States first, then New Zealand.  The next challenge, I couldn't use my FF miles to Auckland, only to Sydney, Australia!  Logistics!!!

But the flight from Sydney to Auckland is cheap.. So final conclusion, I'm going Argentina to USA (and taking a few days to visit my family.. that's going to work out well!) And from Indiana, I will fly to Washington DC (East) then DC to San Francisco.. to Sydney, eventually reaching Auckland for a grand total of $200 USD! Thank the Lord for Frequent Flier Miles!!

And for the bike?  The fees and charges added up to around $1450 USD for the size and weight of my bike.  They do NOT allow you to send personal items along with the bike, so I'll have to carry everything myself on my own flight.  Anyway, the black market is crazy for United States dollars in bills, so I was able to exchange my emergency money on the black market for such a good price, that it brought the price of my motorcycle shipping down to just under $900 USD.  Woo hoo!!  So my $5000 trip has been officially reduced to $1100 total for both.  I am happy with THAT result!

Dear ol' Tony get's a shrink wrap job at the airport.  I might borrow the idea, maybe to lose some weight myself!

Ciao, Tony.. Thanks for getting me this far, and see you in New Zealand.......

Beeyooteeful Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego

For three days riding a couple thousand kilometers in one of the windiest places on earth, I was beyond lucky to arrive without any wind, no struggles, nice and warm air.. unheard of!

I didn't expect that luck to last even one day more, so when the wind picked up on my 2nd night in the campground, I was like, "there you are!!".  It's a good thing Gabby left, because this is what I woke up to!

I shouldn't say woke up, because I  was awake most of the night battling the wind.  I kept unzipping the tent and trying to figure out in the dark what I should do with the bike.  I moved it like 3 times, and thought I had it right. I thought about laying it down on the ground and be done with it, but I worried myself that if laying horizontal for too long would cause some other damage or problem to the bike, especially with my recently!.Somewhere between 4 and 5 AM, I must have finally slept through the roaring noise. When I opened my tent one last time with  a bit of daylight, the bike was down.  I didn't hear it fall!  Either from lack of sleep or it went with the sound of crashing trees right across from me, I don't know. I did hear the crashing trees, most familiar with that sound.  I remember throwing my arms over my head and hoping for the best!  I do admit I considered putting my helmet on to try to sleep.  That tree crashed close enough to me confirming I should have done exactly that! There were some great suggestions from facebook friends hat I should have just laid my bike down to begin with (I knew it!) or lean it against a tree.  I did even better after that.  There were two trees growing closely together.  I could park it between them which will hold up the bike no matter what direction the wind might blow. The family that own the campground have a large building with kitchen, etc.  When I walked in that morning, they say, "You're alive!!"  The son, Gaston, calls me Julia (Hoolia)  He doesn't know why, he just thinks I look like a Julia.  I'm okay with that since it's my most gorgeous nieces name, so Julia (Hoolia) it is!  They say, "Julia, next time the weather is like that you come inside the building for the night to be safe."

Here is where I'll be camping for a while, Rio Pipos.  I need to wait on James who is in Punta Arenas, Chile which is 430 kilometers away to wait for his BMW parts to arrive from England.  It's going to take awhile.  He keeps saying 5 days express post, but I've been down that road. There is no 5 days about it! South American customs, no matter which country, would never allow a package to arrive that easy..NEVER!! So I settle in.

Finally a nice weather day, thought I'd go and ride around Ushuaia, just because I can.  Also I need a hardware store since most of the bolts to my panniers are missing from the rugged gravel ride south, so it might be worth replacing those today too!

I got a kick out of the trees below.  How they grew through the strong winds is interesting, and proof you need to be tough to survive at the bottom of the world!

I do like it here. Most riders get their "badge", have their celebratory drinks, a photo, and leave the next day.  I can't help to keep thinking that out of all the places in the world I get to call home for a while, it's at the very tippy bottom of the world, Ushuaia.

Every morning I walked into this building to have my breakfast and work on the internet.. blog of course!  Ruben always had something for me.  A piece of chocolate, fruit salad, one day even a big slice of cake!  And then he takes to flying his little remote control helicopter around the room, with me being his target practice.  This truly was completely entertaining and he's quite good at it!  He flies it up through the rafters, around big lights to land on my little desk.

This is Argentina, they make good food.  Usually an asado (lots of meat on the supersize indoor grill) is happening, today is empanada day. Quite a big project from one woman, Maria.  So she puts her husband to work!

Focus, Ruben, Focus!! He can't... ;-)))

They are such a close family. Four sons, wives and grandchildren stop by every single day.

You couldn't ask for a better Grandpa...

One day, number 4 son, Gaston came in and asked, "Julia, my brother and I are going on a hike today, would you like to come?"  Si!! Yes!!!  Anything to get out of here and do something different!

I had no idea where we are going, doesn't really matter. We just left!

We drove down the road for bit in the car, parked it and this is the beginning of the trail.. Looks freakin' good to me!!

We came across several of these very impressive beaver dams.  Beavers are introduced species here and actually cause a lot of damage.  But you have to admit, that's a pretty cool house!

The melting glacier above supplies this beautiful lake.

We hiked to this point, the goal for Gaston, his brother and friend.  Here we will stop and eat our lunch.  How's this for a little lunch break!!??  I love my life!!

The color of this glacial water is striking.  I remember similar colors in the water around Lake Louise, near Banff, Canada.

Laguna Esmeralda

After lunch, you can always count on the wind picking up, especially around the mountains.. And boy did it ever!

We took a different path to the car and walked through a property that does dog sled tours.. in the winter of course!  For now it looks like they remain tied to a pole with a barrel house.

Thanks Gaston for inviting for this awesome hike.  A true highlight of my time in Ushuaia!

A couple days later I got a surprise visit from none other than James!

That sucker had returned the day before from Punta Arenas by bus, fixed his motorcycle which was stored in town and then came out to see us.  What a surprise!  I guess I can now start making plans for my future, I was starting to think I would be living in Ushuaia forever!

James had asked me long ago to wait making the obligatory ride to the official end of the road until he was here.  So today we can finally, finally, finally after my break down and his break down make it to the end of the road.. woo hoo!!

Some lazy views as we ride through National Park Tierra del Fuego.

I'll just stay here..

Here we are.. no riding south of here unless we continue via icebergs to Antarctica! ;-)

I finally got my scout badge.. The famous photo at the end of the road.  The southern most point on the planet we can ride a motorcycle.

I'm so happy we have two functioning motorcycles.  This means my time at the bottom of the world is perfectly complete. What a ride!!!

Adios Ushuaia!