a 12 hour hitchhiking adventure, some fluroscent pants and Daisy!!!!

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Happy new year!!! Apologises for not getting in touch sooner but unlike what a lot of people think this travelling melarky is very busy!!! Anyway I hope you all had a brilliant xmas and a very good new year and welcome to 2009!!!

We´ve now made it all the way down to the very south of argentina and the ´end of the road´ as the argentinian tourist board likes to put it. I debated jumping on a boat to antartica but sadly the cheap boat broke the week before (wonder why it was cheap??) and 5 star luxury travel was out of the budget. Anyway made do with some hiking instead in some stunning mountains and then decided to jump on the road again. Unfortunately lack of forward (or infact any) planning meant all the buses were fully booked until the end of the week and having to get up at 4am to check we decided we couldn´t be bothered and would get up at 10am have a leisurely breakfast and then try to hitchhike to chile!!! (Don´t worry pops I´m still alive and well!)
Well I think we looked professional. we went on another rubbish hunt and came up with a board on which we wrote ´visiting argentina from australia - hello´ (no one is ever impressed when I say I´m from england so I´ve given up) - in our best spanish! All went well as we got our first 2 lifts before we´d even finished making the sign! And so began 12 hours of interesting time spent attempting to talk broken very bad spanish to every kind hearted soul that picked us up (an impressive feat I feel when between us we only know about 20 words!!. We still don´t know what we chatted about with the first guy (but he seemed happy), got played bad 90´s disco hits by one truck driver (I could name nearly all of ther them!), and finally got left in the midle of no where by the last trucker. The lesson I think we both learn´t from this is always check where your lift is going before you get in!! Anyway so we ended up in literally the middle of no where at 9.30pm at night on this cross road where there were no traffic and it was about -3 degrees. Brilliant!! Having finally accepted the possibility of spending the night in a drainage ditch just to escape the cold and wind we couldn´t believe it when a car appeared in the middle of no where. I think we must of made a strange picture - 2 backpackers in the middle of no where at 10pm at night trying to hitch anywhere (that wasn´t a drainage ditch!). Amazingly they were going to our destination and so we merrily rocked in there at 11pm at night!! 12 hour hitch but we´d made it. Sadly all the hotels in town were full so we ended up sleeping in the spare room of some lady in one of the hotel bars who took pity on us, and as she couldn´t speak any english and we no spanish so it was an interesting 24 hours!

Anyway no worries pops there will be no more hitchhiking stupidity because for christmas me and aaron bought each other half a shiny new bright yellow motorbike called daisy (i think she was cheap because she was yellow!) Anyway so far we´ve made it 1000km on her throughtout the bottom of chile and back into argentina. Its interesting going. Patagonia is stunning but 120km winds and walking at 50 degree angles is not uncommon and so poor daisy she may be young but she´s got a hard life. Most people we meet who are doing similar motorbike tours have a 650cc bike at least each. I think the sight of 2 westerners on 1 250cc motorbike complete with 7 million bags tyed on everywhere and a pair of huge fluroescent padded trousers on (which clash beautifully with daisy) and our matching helmets is something of an unusual site. Yesterday the customs officails came out to have a laugh and wave us off as we entered argentina again!

We´re heading north again now crossing between argentina and chile and going to put daisy to the test on some moutain highways!! Wish us luck! Hope your all ok and big love

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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Comments

[Sue Clark]

Welcome back
Good to have your witty travel comments again - have missed you while you've been in UK. Sue

[Sallie Traffic]

WE WANT PHOTOS!!
Hola from Blighty! Happy New Year to you too! Glad all is well. Cant wait to see some pics of you two... and Daisy of course!! Alls good here. I met Boycie from Only Fools n Horses last weekend!! tAKE CARE OUT THERE!! Sal xxxxxxxxxxx (Mark says hi too!!)