Got the bike back. Mario took me to the dealer first thing to collect the correct battery, charged overnight. Back to the airport, shoehorned battery in, connected everything up, put my clothes off, signed the last bits of paper and off I went into Santiago.

During the day the traffic is moderately dense (especially the women in Chelsea Tractors) and fairly placid in an Italian sort of way. Then suddenly, at around 7:30pm, the density trebles and it all goes *completely* bonkers. The main drag (Avenida Libertador Bernardo O´Higgins) has 10 lanes, five each side. Three on each side are theoretically reserved for buses but this doesn´t seem to be enforced. The divider between the three bus lanes and the other two is a series of concrete blocks about 6 inches high which, although painted yellow, are less than visible and seriously need to be avoided.

Although Chileño driving is very polite, the parking leaves a little to be desired

This is the first country since Russia where I´ve had to ride on the right (apart from Laos and Cambodia where one´s road positioning was pretty flexible). People don´t seem to realise how much of the world apart from the UK still drives on the left - on my route it´s been Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia.

So, having made sure the bike´s OK I returned to the hotel and beetled off to a pavement cafe for a spot of lunch. I´m a pretty careful soul, but clearly not careful enough as I managed to have my bag stolen. So that´s all the credit cards (the two I normally stash in the bike I´d removed for shipping and hadn´t replaced); passport (that´s the worst as it´s my most precious historical document); phone; digital camera (luckily the only pix I´ve not uploaded aren´t really that interesting); driving licence (but I have an International Permit);
various odds and sods worthless to anyone else. So, Credit Card Sentinel have stopped all the cards, chums in the UK are trying to persuade Vodafone to stop the phone, I have dollars stashed in the bike so I do at least have money until I can sort something in the morning, and I have a crime number from the Carabineros. I go to the British Embassy in the morning to get a new passport (there´s a photocopy in the bike and I have a bunch of appropriate photos with me).

All this means I´m here in Santiago UFN as I have to wait for the passport and for the replacement plastic to arrive from the UK - they get sent to my substitute address, my friends Don and Pauline, who will FedEx them out to me.

As I said, the only thing which *really* pisses me off is the passport - no use to anyone else but has lots of interesting stamps and annotations from the various countries I´ve been through on this and previous trips. Utterly irreplaceable.