Riding through three days of SOLID rain I slipped into the Chile’s capital , Santiago. The mode change in driving was severe , definitely every man for himself, with any displays of courtesy or caution greeted with blasting horns and screetching tires...

Still, I spent a relaxing week in Santiago, seeing the sights and catching a few movies including the incredibly toilet-fodder-ending Lord of the Rings. ( My fault – never read the book. ) At 15.000 km’s I treated the F650 to a full service at WBM BMW. Touch wood, the bike hasn’t missed a beat since replacing the water pump in Buenos Aires, and more and more I think I made the right choice of bike – quite a relaxing thought with at least 20,000 km’s waiting for me.

I celebrated St Paddys day in one of Santiago’s Irish pubs with an Australian guy from my hostal – would you believe they’d run out of Guinness ! – humph !

At the Argentina / Chile border I met a Brasilian 737 Pilot on his Honda 250 – Marcelo . I had to laugh when I saw the gear packed on his bike, or rather stacked. After loosing his plastic panniers on those notorious corrugations, he’d resorted to the elastic netting tower approach. It looked exactly like the 'How not to' picture in Chris Scott’s Adventure Motorcycling handbook. Even Marcelo had to laugh. We rode together across the border and a rather weird downhill tunnel at an altitude of 4,000 metres, and on to Mendoza.

Marcelo and his steed

Mendoza was a refreshing change to ‘back-water’ Chile, and a great highlight to top off the 9 Peso all-you-can-eat restaurant was Parapenting with Tato, a former Chilean Hang Gliding champ. When he put that chute into a series of spins the g-force was just incredible…

There was of course an even bigger highlight – I had the honour to meet Chris and Erin Ratay ( www.ultimatejourney.com ) , a fun loving whacky couple 2 years into a RTW trip on a pair of BMW F650’s. We swapped tricks and tales over lunch with another F650 rider, Annet from Germany. Having been through New Zealand, Chris gave me a Kiwi Motorcycle rider sticker which now rightly rests in the middle of my windscreen.

Chris, Erin, Annet and me in Mendoza

Onwards from Mendoza I traveled to Tilcara, but not before getting stopped by three roadblocks within 20 minutes south of Rosaria de La Frontera. The blockades were trees and burning tyres laid down by some obviously hard done by locals, and only a donation would see the way cleared. I got real nervous having to dig into my wallet – especially when 8 guys surrounded me. I managed to get through two more without paying anything, but I never expected that kind of stuff in Argentina !

In Tilcara I was lucky enough to get my timing right for a local religious festival. The murals made from flowers were quite stunning, but the cacophony the locals produced on their pan flutes and drums would turn anyone to Britney Spears.

At 2,000 metres Tilcara was a smart step to start the process of aclimatization to the coming high altitudes of Bolivia, and thankfully that gave me no problems. The local ‘helper’ for easing the effects of altitude is chewing coca leaves with a dash of Sodium Bicarb. As the t-shirts say however, Coca leaves ain’t Cocaine – and all I could sense was a green tea taste and a numb mouth. The funny thing was how I got the leaves – from a German mother of two after she’d spotted my Munich license plates. Couldn’t believe it….

While my bike is fuel injected and theoretically less susceptible to the altitude, the lack of Oxygen showed approaching 4,000 metres, as I realized I had the throttle twisted to the max on more than one occasion. Have to admit I was kinda bummed when bunch of Porsches blasted by. Still – despite the warnings of a kind hearted pub-owner in Argentina – it seems like Bolivia won’t be a problem.