Argentinian wine makers, bolivan drug barons,a tale of suspension and one big mission!!

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So thank you for the moans of lack of contact and yes i am that rubbish!! But ive been busy!!!

In my last blog i think daisy had just turned 5! Well that was a month ago and now she is 14!!! Yes in the last month we have driven 9000 km. Now my plan was to impress you all with researched facts like that is the distance from london to moscow but i forgot!! However my arse can assure you its a very long way!!!!

So what has happened. Well the day after i last was on the net we went on that vineyard tour!!! Hmm never a good idea!! We started at about 1pm in the blazing heat on rubbish hire bikes that got as far as maybe 2km before aarons seat broke and he had to sit on the luggage rack for thr next 10km (que a grump but he did insist on the one that looked that coolest!) Anyway 7 or 8 vineyards later and a lot of rubbish wine (yes stuff off the shelf was better) we were a little merry and couldnt be bothered to ride back. So what a better way to finish a vineyard tour than at a vineyard bar complete with a bottle. Neitherless to say we ended up staying well past closing, chatting to the owner before he took us back to town, to his house to meet his other winemaker friend and then out for diner!! Obviously there was more of their wine here before at about 1am and 11 hours of red wine i do not remember getting home!!

After the joys of that and with the worlds biggest handover we rode to santiago in chile (que the 2 of us stood in this huge customs line at the border for several hours without the power of speech and a nice headache!). Anyway santiago was cool and then we headed to the coast and north. This took us to the atacama desert which we thought looking on the map was quite small and would be cool!! Never one to research anything though we soon found out that the atacama desert is actually pretty huge and that deserts are not actually that cool to ride through - there is after all just a lot of sand, no shade and nothing to look at!

Having almost lost the will to live we finally reached Antofagasta (big city on the coast) where we decided to treat daisy to a new back tyre - hers being basically bald! All went well and we spent a few days camping whilst we waited for the tyre. Now i realise none of you are that interested in the mechanical ins and outs of motorbikes (Which will soon be my new mastermind speciality subject) but we got the tyre on daisy and it started eating away at the airbox amongst otherthings (which aparrently is not good!). Que a mechanical mission which involved too much time in mechanics with a spanish dictionary and lots of grease! Apparently we had broken her suspension (very expensive!).

It was around this time that we decided being in south america we should actually go to rio for carnival (you only live once!) however sadly rio was in about 2 weeks and we were on the pacific sea in chile. Rio is on the atlantic coast on the otherside of the continent (just for all you non geography buffs)! So nothing to do but forget the suspension, move the tyre and set off in the direction of bolivia (the country everyone warns you not to drive in) with a broken suspension!

Bolivia was amazing and i cant wait to go back in a few months but not somewhere to drive at night!!! We had a few interesting days up mountain passes in the rain dodging crazy bus drivers and camping in disused buildings (oh its all class here!) but you could have a 3 course meal for 75p (if you pick out the meat!) and the countryside is amazing! We drove over the high andes and crossed passes of 5000m (get in daisy) before decending into rainforests and plateaus - stunning!

Stopped off at a town to sort daisy and our washing out and here we met some more helpful locals!! We literally pulled up outside this hotel and these 2 local motorcycle guys turn up wanting to know the usual and if we had any problems. So to cut a long story short within 20 minutes we were following one of these guys around the city to his mechanic in the hope of fixing her suspension. What i nice surprise when they told us it wasnt broken but they could help us. So leaving daisy there we both squeezed on thios guys bike (yes 3 grown adults on 1 bike is cozy) before he topok us back to his HUGE house gave us beer and dinner and introduced us to his family. After many more beers and some karoke he drove us home!! The next day up he shows at our hotel and takes us out for dinner and then th next day spends all morning taking Aaron round various offices so we can put daisy on the train! Now here is a very rich guy, who cant speak a word of english doing all this for no reason at all. AAron gets thinking and comes up with the only conclusion (bolivia is the worlds largest producer of cocaine and this guy is rich and very friendly!!) We spent an interesting day trying to work out where you could stash cocaine in a bike and what we should do!! By this time i had got completely paronoid (thank you aaron!) and so we did the best thing we could - bought him a bottle of tequila and thanked him a lot then left town croissing our fingers no one would remove daisy and her tyres once we were over the border!!

Sadly we took the wrong road and ended up driving daisy and here new high suspension (so she now looks like an off road bike and you have to vault to get on her!) an extra 450km out of our way on horrendous roads in the rain! 60km from good road - daisys suspension broke again bang in the middle of no where!!Que us getting picked up by 4 local farmers and spending another 4 hours in their workshop fixing her (yes it had still not broken - but lives on!). Hitting the road again we eventually made it over the border a day late and so far cocaine free!!!

We then did some killer days (my bottom may never be the same) before pulling into rio on carinval eve! However slightly disappointing when you pull into the city of the biggest party in the world and there is no one about and everything is dead!! What can you do but spend 4 hours trying to find a hotel and then go to bed dissapointed! Imagine our surprise when we discover the next day that we were actually a day early and carnival starts tomorrow!! We made it though and spent 3 very drunken nights finding lots of people but no dancing and enjoying rio (yes we did make it to the parade - very impressive) before our livers insisted on us leaving the city and escaping to the health of the countryside!

So i am off beer for a little while and plan to enjoy the beaches of brazil as we head up the coast to french guinea. Hopefully ill have a bit more time to keep you posted now so the next entry will be less of a book!

Thanks for all the e-mails keep them comig and ill get round to replying slowly

huge love

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Comments

[James Bonsall]

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Just 'cos I'm a geek. 9000 km is equal to journeying from London to somewhere between North and South Korea (as the crow flys). Go Daisy!