EUROPE TO SOUTH AMERICA

The time has finally come to emerge from my blog-writing-hibernation and be productive again, what a shame... haha! Rewind a couple of months now and I was organising the shipment of my motorbike from Germany to Chile. The process was quite simple, in that through a facebook group I came in contact with Stefan, a man that lives near Frankfurt (wow convenient!) who operates motorcycle tours. He just happened to be shipping his family’s bikes and a car to South America and had extra space for a tag-along such as myself. In his fee it even included an agent on the other end to sort out customs (that was well worth it). So I dropped the bike of at his place and said my farewells, teary eyed I knew I’d see her again... but still goodbye for now.

This was how I left her, all the packing was done for me... yeah yeah I'm a princess.

Backpacking around Europe in the meantime was also fun, a holiday from the travels (it really is a tough life I swear!). I met more great people, caught up with friends from home and spent a lot of time on buses! After a while I realised I wasn’t getting that kick that I enjoy so much from travel and missed my tent and own method of transport... queue my bicycle adventure. Man that was a great experience but now I missed my motorbike even more!

The Europe map...

After Sandy’s birthday in Lisbon I flew to Barcelona and did a Spanish course for a week before returning to Germany. Here winter was well and truly on its way, only a few more weeks until the bike arrives in Chile... patience.

Nutella owl, tasted even better than it looked!

On the 1^st of December I hopped on my plane to the Dominican Republic, caught the connection to Panama City, aaaaand then caught another flight to Santiago de Chile. 28 hours of pure excitement.

Things to note: When transiting the Dominican Republic you have to go through immigration (avoid the 10 USD tourist card by explaining that it’s a transit, if you keep quiet you will have to pay). And no they do not speak English. A taxi from Santiago airport into the city centre costs around 50 USD whereas there is a bus running every 15 minutes for 2 USD (with luggage compartments).

Sunset over the Chilean coastline, amazing flying over the Andes.

The next day I caught the bus to Vina del mar (120 km outside of Santiago) which is the beach town next to the port in Valparaiso. Could not believe that it cost less than 5 bucks... everything else in Chile is expensive! After organising a sim card, camping gas, etc etc I made my way to the agent in Valpo. I won’t mention any names because he had a "good relationship" with customs and bam I had my bike within 2 hours, amazing! Besides the fuel having gone bad in the carb it was running great albeit after a spluttery, stalling first 25 km. On a side note everyone here has been extremely friendly even though we can’t understand each other!

Vina del Mar, it's nice being on the coast again!

My bike at the warehouse, everything went really smoothly.

There we have it, on the 5^th of December I was on the road heading North. The roads were long, straight and pretty much immaculate. Ocean views for most of the first 450 km to La Serena. Continuing North I passed through over 1000 KM of desert-scapes over plains up to and over 3000 m elevation. Hot days and cold nights I camped in the desert, totally alone... just me and the stars. On the 333^rd day of the trip I reached San Pedro de Atacama, a small town in the moon-like landscape of the Atacama Desert.

Riding along the famous Panamericana heading North.

Riding through the flowering desert, the camera just couldn't capture the 'purple-ness'.

Somewhere along the road taking a detour for lunch...

Back at the coast, the weather was great and the scenery even better!

Road works on the main road meant plenty of detours through small villages on the coast.

Back on Ruta 5 heading inland.

Starting to look for a place the spend the night...

Found one!

Foggy morning after a very cold night in the desert.

Hand in the desert, gotta get the typical tourist shot whilst I'm here!

Dreamy scenery but the highway drone was getting a bit old.

Up at 3700 m on my way to San Pedro de Atacama.

Arrived! The Atacama desert has 340 clear days a year, how insane is that!

Over the next few days the plan was to visit the usual tourist sites in the area, eg. Valle de la Luna / Muerte, Geysers de Tatio. However at the hostel I met another biker, Freddy from the UK riding an old (and sexy) R75 BMW, who asked if I wanted to join him on the off-road laguna route to Bolivia. I said yes, packed my things and off we went with petrol, food and water for the next 3 days of riding through this spectacular, desolate region.

So windy and bright at the immigration office!

Laguna Verde, almost as beautiful as my donkey!

Freddy reckons all roads lead to Uyuni, we shall see!

Well above 4000 m the bikes were struggling but the scenery was incredible.

Amazing camp location for the first night, or so we thought...

After being moved on from our idyllic camping spot we both had the most horrendous sleeps of our lives at over 4400 m above sea level. Head-aches and waking up breathless being the worst of the altitude sickness. In the morning we woke up to find all of our water frozen and Freddy’s bike struggling to start in the cold – coldest and highest I’ve ever camped at!

The parking lot the rangers made us move to, hot springs in the background.

On-wards to Laguna Colorado!

Customs was a bit of a wild goose chase as well in terms of actually finding the place, the route we were taking doesn’t exactly follow an ‘easy’ road. The customs house was at 5008 m and I felt quite ditsy, forgetting my bike papers on the chair and I just had that general drunk feeling... quite hilarious to try do serious paperwork in that state. Still we covered a lot of distance this day through some very sandy areas but nothing unmanageable for our mighty steeds. Wild camp that night at around 4100 m, luckily by now we had acclimatized.

Perfect weather to get a nice sunburn!

Flamingos everywhere!

Llamas grazing... wonder what they taste like (chewy).

That nights sheltered campsite, noodles and bread with some nice tunes before an early night.

Sunset over our campsite.

After the best sleep I’ve ever had in a tent it was back on the road for the final 167 km to Uyuni. The road got progressively better until it was just a gravel road with pot holes... that meant quick progress and we found a hostel with a courtyard for the bikes. First thing was first, a victory lunch to celebrate arriving back in ‘civilisation’... that meant a large pizza with beers, so delicious after days of stale bread and noodles! After that the bikes received some tender love and care before I finished this blog. Tomorrow it’s on to the Salar de Uyuni and then up to La Paz... South America has been absolutely stunning so far and Spanish is definitely very fun!