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Our ride out of Belen was fairly spectacular as we headed off into the mountains following the course of a river bed. It’s amazing how the scenery knows to change after every time and we wound our way through a spectacular Valley for at least an hour. We then seem to appear on a high plane Where we had a dead straight road for at least 15 km running through a high desert landscape. The temperature is beginning to climb now and we are constantly seeing 27 or 28° every day. We

The day started with the usual wake up of hearing Tim getting ready for the day. This usually involves the bathroom, a fair amount of coughing, and the wrestling of putting his gear together. It then moves on to going outside and taking the cover off his bike. This morning was slightly different. He came back into announce that his rear tire was completely flat and that he was going to have to change the innertube. I took the opportunity to stay in bed longer. However, after

23 November 2025 I woke up fairly early, and went to take the cover off my bike. At the higher altitude it is fairly fresh in the morning, even though we know by experience it will warm up very quickly. We had decided last night to try to alter the itinerary to enable us to get onto a better schedule having lost days in Mendoza. We decided not to go over the pass into Chile but to head back to Route to 40 by a different route through the mountains and then head north to Chile

21 November 2025 We decided that we will be on the road at 9 am today. We have had to alter our itinerary, to be able to catch up the extra day that we had lost due to Bike maintenance. This involved a straight 360 km slug up Route 40 and then diverting onto route 149 towards the Chilean border to a town called Los Flores. After filling up with gas, we exited the city and got onto the single track Road heading north. 160 km north is the city of San Luis. And we stopped to get

18/19 November These two days were quite long and drawn out as the endless negotiation back-and-forth with BMW about what could and couldn’t be done to the bike it went on and on. It seems that the parts I need for my suspension I’m not available apart from direct from Germany, and then only as part of the full suspension package Costing more than €2000. We decided to get the parts we needed machines locally at a metal workshop. They came in Tuesday afternoon to take the meas

17 November We are heading into Mendoza city proper this morning. Tim on his bike, and me in another taxi. I will get there first, dump in my bags at the hotel. And head directly to BMW, as my bike is due to arrive with them this morning. This really happened as it should, and I was able to show BMW the issues and then began the painful process of trying to get it fixed. Tim dropped into the KTM dealership And secured his service for tomorrow morning , and then also dropped i

16 Novemeber 2025 Today’s update will be a short one. I am still without a bike and in a hotel in a vineyard under the Andes mountains. Today we continue to wake up early, and Tim and I went for a early walk prior to breakfast in the hotel vineyards. I have really enjoyed Tim‘s obsession with getting his steps in daily, and coupling this with normal writing it has been very good for my fitness and health. Now the question is to keep it up when I get home. We finished the walk

15 November 2025 So the truck was really nice, there were four of us in the cab. Three across the front and someone lying on the bed at the back. Someone hadn’t had a bath in awhile and the smell was interesting. With the top speed of around 50 km an hour And 670 km to suffer San Rafael it was gonna be a long night we finally got out of the Laurie park at 3 am and headed off along router 40. After about an hour and a half we pulled into some sort of shantytown on the side of

GOT the bike to choose Malal, we now had to think about how to get it fixed, or moved to BMW in Mendoza.The first order of business was to go to the local motorcycle shop whom we were reliably informed would be able to fix it. The first reaction was no way And there is no one here who can. So our next option was to try to find the parts ourselves and have a go. We managed to find the exact bolt that we needed for the suspension but upon inspection on the bike we also found t

Little did we know when we set off today what the day would bring. Today we are crossing back into Argentina via the.Pichachen Pass. This is a fairly remote board crossing that crosses around 100 km from Los Angeles. And goes around one of the volcanoes here and into Argentina over the top of the mountains. We had a good breakfast today, even got some fruit. And we set off out of the city through the rush-hour traffic having filled bikes to the brim. The road out of town was

We woke up in igloos, and had a nice breakfast and an even larger igloo with real fires. After all the rain of yesterday, we woke up to clear blue skies an amazing mountain view. Today is a straight run up the motorway to Los Angeles.The road around the lake was spectacular and filled with amazing Lakeside homes. But Tim and I thought this had very good purchasing potential. Rewrite out onto the motorway and headed to North and just kept going. Tiring volcanoes could be seen

Both of us were up early this morning, way before the hotel breakfast was going to stop. So we took a walk into town to see if we could find a coffee shop that was open. We had a couple of coffees, and walked back to the hotel just in time for breakfast. Today we are crossing back into Chile, and our original plan was to take the border crossing which enabled us to take a ferry for two hours across the lakes. However, this was going to be a long day, and the weather was not l

This morning we were up early, because we are going to change our tires at Moto rent Patagonia.Juan Zapata who owns this company, very kindly helped me seven years ago when I was here to get the tyres changed on my previous bike. We became quite good friends and have communicated and I have visited again over the years. So it’s great to be able to come back and see him and have a coffee and do the same job again. Tim and I got our bikes up on stands and remove the wheels, and

What a difference a day makes yesterday we woke up to gorgeous sunshine and today we woke up to the sound of rain on our roofs. It was coming down in buckets, as we had to load our bikes and make the 140 km move to Villa Angostura. Our tires are now six weeks old have squared off a lot and have very little tread left, and today we were carrying the new ties on the back of our bikes together with all of our usual gear. Which weighed down the back of the bike significantly and

We woke to a gorgeous morning with views over the beautiful pine trees, heading down towards the lake. Because the campsite was not open and neither was the restaurant we were on our bikes early and heading into Bariloche to find somewhere to eat. Tim had spotted somewhere the night before and so we followed the route to his restaurant. We had excellent coffee with avocado toast and media Luna with ham and cheese, then set off on a little tour around the lake District outsid

After a fairly dreadful night in the backpacker windowless hotel. Both Tim and I were up much earlier than normal and taking our bags down to our bikes. The only problem was we were locked in. And until someone came to open the hotel, we weren’t going anywhere. We finally got out and loaded our bikes and came to see what was being offered for breakfast. it was some fairly awful coffee and nothing that we thought was very edible. I ended up with a very small piece of apple cak

5th November 2025 We had eaten and packed the bags by 9 am and were on the road again. Today we had 80 km north on route seven, again through incredible alpine pastures flanked by to Snow capped Mountains with the rivers running through the valleys and crossing Orange metal bridges that this part of southern Chile is famous for. We then turned right onto the road to Puyuapi.This is a dirt road that winds its way through the Andrs and head back towards Argentina.. We skirted a

4th November 2025 Woke up to the sound of bird song this morning. The hotel is on the outskirts of town and they set with a wonderful gardens and it was here that the birds seemed extremely happy. I’met Tim for breakfast for the usual selection of scrambled egg ,breads and cold cuts. And then we packed our bags jumped on the bikes and headed out of town. Today we were heading directly north en route seven and the scenery as we passed through the valleys and hillsides of th

3 Nov 2025 Tim was up early as always, and as we were sharing a two bedroom mezzanine apartment that for me I was up as well. I went outside as Tim likes to do Bike maintenance prior to the Sunrising so that he has lots to talk about over breakfast. The subjects are often tyres, chain cleaner and chain lube. Or where to buy water for the day. These are the three main priorities on this trip. The scenery take second place the location stake third place at any other sort of con

1st November 2025 Breakfast started at eight so we were there promptly on time. Today we are crossing the border back into Chile at Paso Bali. This is one of the more remote areas of the chilli Argentine border and it does not see very much traffic the road out of town headed back towards Route 40 but we turned off after 7 km and headed north on a properly unpaved road through a landscape very hard to describe mountainous desert like with lakes and endless views to the mounta