I've had a wonderful find. Castrol GTX is newly available here in SAE25W60 grade. Bloody wonderful.Oscar and Nancy have been wonderful. They found me a hotel room (Viedma is full at this time of year), and The Old Dear is comfortably ensconced in Oscar's workshop. Oscar has straightened the topbox and welded the pannier frame, so the only other thing is to have the right-hand panner repaired (yet again). Did loads of stuff yesterday like oil/filter change, tappets etc. in extremely comfortable surroundings, lubricated by a rather decent Malbec (not sure of the grade).

Chino (Africa Twin, Ecuador) is around, as is Balam (KLR, Mexico) and various other local bods with and without BMs, including an ex-police R60/5 in jolly nice nick. Not to mention that lovely Julian who gave me the dead sheep. Claudio at the casa de cambio recognised the Horizons Unlimited logo so I got a slightly better rate for my left-over Chilean pesos - he has several bikes, according to Oscar.

Chino has quizzed me very closely about road states in Patagonia and marked up his map - another guy with bad experiences on ripio.

I've also managed to organise myself a new GPS in Buenos Aires - the more-or-less latest upgrade of the Map76 I have (for the anoraks, I'm getting a Map76CS as the CSx isn't available in Argentina yet). Roger's suggestion that I prise open the dead thing and see what can be done has hit a bit of a brick wall as it so far refuses to yield up its secrets. I may have to resort to a Brummagem screwdriver. Still, I can't make it any deader than it already is.

The only thing I haven't yet arranged is a new System 4 (or similar) helmet, as the BMW dealer in B.A. has yet to honour me with a reply to my eamil enquiry. I'd really like a 4 (or Evo or 5) for the convertability - I mostly ride open-face with goggles, as you may have seen in the pix, but it's nice to have the full-face option for filthy weather.

The only other thing I have to organise is tyres, and Oscar knows exactly where I can get Metzelers or Pirellis so that isn't a problem. I'm rather disappointed that the back tyre has only lasted about 5,000 miles, but the combination of appalling ripio and the very straight roads really does tyres in.