travellingbennetts

We’ve all heard, and in some aligned citizen cases participated in the chant; “USA! USA! USA!”. The Ultimate South America perhaps deserves the chant, although we will be disappointed if it does turn out to be ultimate even when applied to trundling about the continent. Shaped a bit like a Sea Horse with Thyroid Elephantitus, circumnavigating could be applied to travelling around many shapes, but not South America. But all that is in the future…..

Big trips start with a transition period between leaving the home and getting onto the motorcycle on the first day of riding. Lots of things can go badly wrong during the transition period – flights delayed or cancelled, baggage ending up in the wrong hemisphere or remaining in one’s own hemisphere 20 metres from your bag drop location, visa problems, and the biggie – motorcycle transport disasters. The start of the trip is organised around assuming these almost inevitable crises are inevitable, so at least 4 days are factored in for getting the team and accoutrement aligned.

We can’t complain too much about how this one went down. Flights and baggage and pick-up at Santiago – tick. The big one – collecting the bikes from a secret facility near Valparaiso, tick. Four of us did the trip; we handed over documents, stood around for a couple of hours whinging about the cold and getting acquainted, then were escorted into the facility to get the bikes. Reasonably seamless after nearly 3 months; connected the batteries and Cindy’s Senora Tigre started first try, Storm Boy followed after a few more starter button pushes. Paperwork handed to someone who looked a bit confused, maybe actually a member of the cleaning staff, and it was off to find fuel. Remembering to ride on the right-hand side of the road we made it safely back in Santiago, an initial observation being that unlike South East QLD drivers, Chilean drivers and riders stay in the correct lane for their speed and use their hazard lights to warn those behind that traffic is slowing down.

So the following day it was time to get out in the field on tour day -2. The Hop-on Hop-off (HOHO) bus was the answer.

For those unfamiliar with HOHOs, they are absolutely the best way to see cities, apart from Venice where the HOHO went head-first into the Grand Canal on its inaugural trip. Luckily everyone died so TripAdvisor didn’t register any bad reviews. HOHOs take a route through their city, stopping at all the attractions, allowing patrons to get off, and then get back on a later bus. A key to the HOHO concept is that totally ignorant tourists totally ignorant of the city can easily find where to HO, an essential precursor to HO. Santiago HOHO doesn’t do this at all well, in fact only Stop No.1 of the 10 is signed. Finding the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail are less of a challenge for the Santiago Stops 2 to 10 HOHO bus crowd.

For the rare punter that actually finds a Santiago HOHO stop, boundless joy awaits, and we actually found Stop No.9 mainly because lots of HOHO staff were sitting waiting for one. Once on, feelings akin to scaling Everest without oxygen (or pants) thrust themselves to the fore. Let’s just sit on until enough innocent bystanders have noticed our amazing achievement, including those at the official Stop No.1. By No.3 we’d reached the interesting bit – The Cerro San Christobal and the imposing statue of the Virgin Mary. Cable car up, we decided to put the fun back in funicular railway and take that down after resting in the shade of the Big Virgin for a bit.

Down into Bellavista for a lunch, just as we were paying we saw a HOHO go past, and with a bit of running we H’d back O. The main centre of Santiago with government buildings and narrow streets was the next part of the route, mainly notable for displaying the HOHO driver’s skills at getting through without hitting anyone or anything. The graffiti in the older parts of town is all over everyone and everything, during previous trips we’d never come down here so can’t say if it is better or worse. We weren’t inspired to get off at any other of the unmarked stops until our original HO Stop No.9 where we H’dO.

That evening was the group assembly drinks. After the mandatory Pisco Sours, not realising that a Pisco Sour Catedral means a bloody huge one, a few other mandatory beers and wines were had with the Tour Leaders Juan Carlos Torres (Ride Leader on a BMW F850GS) and Juan Farias (Support Vehicle Driver) and the rest of the tourers. Juan Carlos is henceforth known as JC to avoid the obvious Juanfusion. The rest of the group in no particular order:

• Peter, Suzuki 650 V-Strom, Australia
• Mick, BMW R1250GS Bumblebee edition, Australia
• David and Roisin, BMW R1250GSA HP edition, Australia
• Paul and Allana, BMW R1200GS, Australia
• Scott and Gina, BMW hire bike due to major shipment dramas, USA
• Rex and Sally, Triumph Tiger 800XC, Australia
• Gabrielle, Australia
• Cindy, Triumph Tiger 900 GT Pro Senora Tigre edition, Australia
• Duncan, Triumph Tiger 900 Rally Pro Storm Boy edition, Australia

Day -1 plan was wine, after packing all our stuff and getting ready to move to the official tour Intercontinental Hotel. We were joined by Paul who is free-ranging without Allana supervision until Buenos Aires. We were picked up from the hotel and driven via the dusty suburban roads to the southern outskirts winery of Concha y Toro. Started in 1883 by Melchor Concha y Toro, the 7^th Marquis of Concha Casa. Marquis Concha y Toro loosely translates to Marquis Surf ‘n Turf back in Australia, so of course he had to develop a white and red wine industry in keeping with the family name menu options. We were horribly early for our “don’t understand any talk but English” tour, but the grounds are huge and so there could be lots of strolling about and admiring.

The tour started with the history with a proper stroll around the enormous house and about the enormous grounds, which mainly produce Cabernet Sauvignon grapes. A highlight was the small plantings of 12 varieties of white wine grapes and 12 varieties of reds, and the opportunity to wander amongst the vines sample the grapes. The white wine grapes are certainly more closely aligned with table grapes, and the Gewürztraminer received the prize for the most delicious probably due to the highest azucar content. After tastings where we received a free tasting glass highly unlikely to make it unbroken for 100 days, and a cellar tour, it was into the gift shop/bottlo, where some Carmeneres were purchased by people whose decision-making skills were highly compromised.

Back into the old hotel, it was time to move all the baggage. Out of 4 bags with a combined weight of 65 kg (feels like 374 kg according to the Weatherzone App), only 1 has wheels. The baggage moving techniques developed for 2 bags in Africa were for a physically much younger person, but the mental person is the same age as then so it still works OK. Loaded with 2 bags, helmet, and backpack, the Intercontinental Hotel feels-like-death-but-that’s-an-exaggeration march began. Of course we got to the big intersection 1 second too late so just had to stand there feeling the spine compressing until we got a green 2 minutes later (feels like 3 hours according to the Weatherzone App), and pushed into the lobby of the hotel with the bellboys sprinkling holy water on me, their new deity. Back to the old hotel for the remainder, at least this involved wheels so the spine had mainly decompressed at the sweaty check-in. The rest of the day was focussed on spine stretching because I clearly remembered being 6’1”, optimising the packing, stuffing the Concha y Toro wine glasses with toilet paper padding, and getting ready for Day 1.

We had the bikes, we had our stuff, and now it was about to get real.