Chile
6th & 7th JANUARY

Flights all went fine. We took off on Thursday the 6 th January at 10 pm. On the 7th January we landed in three countries in South America. The first leg of the flight was to Buenos Aires in Argentina with a stop for 50 minutes in Sao Paulo in Brazil. This leg of the flight lasted for 16 hours. We changed planes in Buenos Aires and then flew across Argentina and the Andes to Santiago in Chile. On arrival we put the bikes on a local mini-bus service to the city centre. We arrived mid-day and after settling into the hotel, we had to spend some time in the afternoon sorting out the damage to my bike. The damage was not too serious with a broken front mudguard which could be fixed with zip-ties and tape, but the damage to my front brake involved a missing nut securing the straddle cable. Finding the right nut involved a very fast and interesting taxi ride through busy city traffic to a bike shop.

8th January

Because of the busy Santiago traffic and concerns about the tunnel on route to our next destination of Los Andes we decided to take a mini-bus for the bikes and ourselves. This was arranged through our hotel receptionist knowing a friendly local mini-bus driver. On arrival at Los Andes we took a short local ride along the valley including some lanes but navigation proved difficult at times due to the inadequate scale of my map. 31 miles was covered and 800 feet of climbing. Temperature today was 33C with unbroken sunshine. Tomorrow we tackel the 40 mile climb of the pass over the Andes to the Argentine border at 3100 metres. This will be an out and back ride.

Sorry no pictures while in Chile as my device is a dual band and North and South America require tri-band. I will add some pictures on Chile when we get to New Zealand.