We dropped off our rented equipment, said goodbye to Jonathan and Njnke ,
discovered that the Argentinean banks had stolen roughly £1000 from our bank account (a formal enquiry is currently being carried out by our bank in the UK) and jumped on our 4am bus to Punta Arenas.
The 15 hrs journey started under the pouring rain,
which eventually turned into snow.
Now, if this is summer over here we wonder how winter must look like.....
After Rio Grande the weather improved massively, however the road turned into gravel.
The border crossing took ages as they had to check all the passengers on the bus (this is when you really miss the bike).
Eventually we reached the Strait of Magellan when the road turned back into asphalt.
In the meantime they were broadcasting various movies on the bus and we have to say that their choice was to say the least debatable.
They started with Disney cartoons and ended with horror splatters.......
At 7pm we got to Punta Arenas where we grabbed a quick bite, and went straight to bed as the following morning we had another 4am alarm as our flight to Santiago was leaving at 6am.
The view from the plane is stunning as we fly above the Andes and look down at the glaciers.
Back in the Chilean capital at lunch time we are welcomed by 30 degrees in the shade. Only few days ago we were at -10 in the Antarctic sea.
Finally after 6 weeks this was the moment of truth.
We went back at the BMW garage straight away and met the chief mechanic.
We were somehow pleased not to see around their head of sales.
That guy had in fact been our point of contact over the last few weeks and yet he failed constantly in replying to our emails and calls and give us any meaningful updates on the state of the bike, to the point that we were still unsure if the bike was ready.
The chief mechanic reassured us immediately and gave us his word that everything was in good shape.
As I inspected the bike carefully I noticed immediately that they had not fixed the scratches on the front suspensions caused by the pick up truck cable but most importantly they had replaced our seat with an older one with different colours!!
I showed a picture of the bike from the mobile to the chief mechanic who could not believe his eyes.
They took the bike back in the garage in search of our seat while we sat on the sofa in the showroom.
At that point the chief of sales showed up.
With a big smile he came straight to say hello and played it friendly.
“Hi, how are you, how was your trip to ALASKA?.......”
...................
ALASKA?!!!!!!
Where do they find these people?
IT’S ANTARCTICA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And it is only 18,000 kms south of ALASKA.
By the way thank you for not replying to any of our emails. Can you now stop this pointless small talk and go and find our seat?
Eventually they found our seat (or one that at least looks exactly like ours) so that we could leave wishing never to see them again.
It is a great feeling to be back on the saddle after such a long break, now we can finally carry on our trip as it meant to be.
But before we do that we need to rest a little bit, back for one last night at Casa Bonita.
Pic 8 Elena and Bibi-May next to the Casa Bonita Xmas tree
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