Buenos Aires: The "Journey for Hope" is over.......

I spent the next three days edging ever closer to Buenos Aires. The deserts of Peru and Chile were exchanged for lush, green farmlands, with roads so straight and long (very long) you`d think the Romans had engineered them. For three days I rode across country not too dissimilar to Lincolnshire in England, flat terrain as far as the eye could see.

From Mendoza I went to San Luis, then Rio Cuarto and Venado Tuerto before ending up in the little town of San Antonio de Areco. I hadn`t even planned to stop there, but I decided 170 miles was far enough for a day and it would put me within a couple of hours of Buenos Aires. As soon as I entered the town I knew it was a good place to stay. It had a good feel to it.

I was waiting at a traffic light when a car pulled up beside me and the driver wound down his window to ask me about the bike, when the lights changed he wished me good luck and drove off. Two minutes later I pulled over at a corner to get my bearings when another man approached me also interested in the bike and my trip. This turned out to be Santiago, the son of the car driver Oscar who had spoken to me earlier!

They were both really interested in my journey and since they both spoke good English we had a brief conversation. It turned out that Santiago knew Northampton because he had been there to watch rugby games when Frederico Mendez (a great Argentinian player) used to play for the club! A small world! I explained I was looking for a hotel,

“No problem. Let me make a call”, Santiago said.

“I`ve found a good hotel for you, follow us”

He took me to a place I would never have found and it was better and cheaper than most of the hotels I had used up to now,

“Thanks very much for your help”

“That`s O.K. Would you like to join us for dinner tonight if you`re not too tired?”

“His wife is a cordon bleu cook”, added Oscar.

“I`d love to!” I replied, relishing the prospect of some good, authentic home cooking.

“I`ll pick you up later so you don`t have to ride in the dark”

I spent the rest of the day wandering around the town and relaxing watching some U.S sitcoms. At about 9.20 p.m. (yes I know, I would normally be in bed!) Santiago picked me up and drove me to his beautiful, big old house in the town. Santiago`s wife Paula had cooked a beautiful meal and in the company of their friends, Enrique, Florencia, Juan and Ema I enjoyed the best food and wine of the whole trip. Luckily everyone spoke good English so I didn`t have to stretch my limited Spanish. It was such a great night and after many weeks on my own it was a real joy to be in such hospitable, kind and generous company. Santiago dropped me back at my hotel in the early hours of the next morning and promised to return with his daughters before I set off so they could see the bike.

Once again I reflected on the synchronicity of the events that had led me to meeting such amazing people. San Antonio de Areco wasn`t even in my plans! A few short hours later, I was up with the bike packed up and ready to go when Santiago arrived with two of his daughters to say goodbye. Apparently he had been regaling them with stories of my bear encounters on the roads in Alaska and Canada! Waving goodbye and with the possibility of meeting up in the city for a drink later, I set off for Buenos Aires and officially the end of my journey.

I had arranged to meet up with Sandra and Javier who run Dakar Motos and were going to help me with the shipping arrangements to get the bike back to the U.K. My next challenge was going to be finding their location in the city without the aid of a GPS or even a proper map of the city. I`d looked on Google maps and had a reasonable idea of the rough location and decided to trust my navigational abilities, after all, I`d come this far and always managed to find my way eventually. Two hours later I`d reached an area within a couple of kilometers of their garage when I stopped to ask a local rider if he knew the street, sadly he didn`t, nor did his friend he phoned to help out, but we happened to be parked across the road from a taxi driver, so I just paid the taxi to lead me the last few minutes which saved me a lot of time and got me to Dakar Motos more or less on schedule.

Sandra had arranged for me to take my bike to the airport the next Tuesday to deal with the customs and prepare the bike for shipping, so my plan was to stay at Dakar Motos until then where I could keep the bike secure in their garage. They also have 4 bunk beds where weary overland motorcyclists can stay and if necessary do maintenance on their bikes before moving on. It seems that everyone who rides down through South America usually ends up at Dakar Motos!

I shared the bunk room with two other riders, Ralph and Carol from Canada. They`d just got back from Ushuaia and were waiting to head back home. After a cup of coffee, I met with Sandra who explained the two stage plan to me:

1. Tuesday ride to the airport, meet my contact there. Have the necessary paperwork for customs (bike documents plus photocopies, passport plus photocopies, temporary import document plus photocopies). Remove wing mirrors and windshield, let air out of tyres, drain the petrol, disconnect the battery and prepare the bike for being crated.

2. Wednesday go back into the city to the shipping company`s headquarters where they will tell me exact cost of shipping (based upon the volume of the crate). Then I have to go to the local bank and pay cash (only!) into their account get a receipt and come back to exchange the receipt for the air way bill. Simple really!

I spent the next couple of days attempting to get used to sleeping in a bunk bed again, sweating profusely and being savagely attacked and eaten by the worst mosquitoes I`d encountered on the whole trip! In the meantime, I took a couple of trips into the city to look around and orientate myself. Dakar Motos is about a 15 minute train ride from the centre. I also wanted to find a centrally located hotel to stay in for the last two nights before flying home, and locate the one bank that would give me money on my credit card as the ATM`s were refusing to accept it.

On the tuesday morning I was eager to get going and complete the final few miles of the journey. Although a technicality, I didn`t feel I`d actually finished the trip until I had no more riding to do which meant getting to the airport and strapping the bike on to the pallet! I got some directions from Javier about the route to the airport and was told it would be about 25 km. I was carefully monitoring the petrol consumption because I didn`t want to have too much in and have to drain the tank at the airport and at the same time I didn`t want to run out of gas on the way!

As it turned out, it was much further than I thought, in fact a lot further, 25km turned into nearly 30 miles! I ran with the petrol warning light on the whole way and breathed a sigh of relief when the signs for the airport came into view.

The process at the airport was fairly straightforward but time consuming. It took me an hour to get to the airport, 3 hours sorting the bike and dealing with the customs and another 2 hours to get back (having mistakenly taken the slow bus) stopping at every bus stop in Buenos Aires and the surrounding area! Everything was now almost complete with only the bank to deal with the following day, so that night I went out to celebrate with a kind donation from my friends Tim and Kris who had suggested when I get to Buenos Aires I should celebrate with a good meal and a nice bottle of wine. It was such a generous offer how could I refuse! I managed to find the perfect restaurant (waiters wearing aprons and table cloths on the table!) and had a half bottle of superb cabernet sauvignon and a steak dinner. Perfect!

That night I lay in bed with the ceiling fan cranked up to maximum (to keep the mosquitoes a bay) but sleep still evaded me. My head was a maelstrom of thoughts and emotions. I kept running through the events of the past eight months, and I wondered how long it would take to assimilate the experiences I had been through. I was very excited about my imminent return and at the same time I was finding it hard to believe it was over. It didn`t seem possible that in a matter of days I would be back in the U.K.

After 8 months, more than 19,000 miles, 15 countries and 29 border crossings, the "Journey for Hope" has finally come to an end.........