Chile Forum

Hi All,

I'm a traveler from Australia, in the process of getting my motorcycle (shipped over to Valparaiso from Sydney) through customs at the moment, and the plan will be to ride the length of the Americas, starting in Chile and heading south towards Patagonia, Argentina, and Tierra del Fuego before turning around and heading back up north.

I've already been traveling around the continent (Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil) for around 3 months now and am slowly picking up Castellano although it seems much harder here in Chile.

I will be posting up some questions/topics on riding around Chile, so any fellow motorcyclists feel free to chime in and berate me for my n00bishness!

I was going to post a link to my blog on tumblr and my twitter account but just read the thread about newbies getting banned for posting links too early in their forum career here so I might wait a bit before I announce it to all and sundry.

slojo wrote:Hi All,

I'm a traveler from Australia, in the process of getting my motorcycle (shipped over to Valparaiso from Sydney) through customs at the moment, and the plan will be to ride the length of the Americas, starting in Chile and heading south towards Patagonia, Argentina, and Tierra del Fuego before turning around and heading back up north.

Bienvenido al foto. So your travels so far have been by other than motorbike?

There are several riders on the foro. Some have replaced their doohickeys and some have not (that's a KLR joke). Some have ridden their bikes up to 4800 metres and higher in the mud and snow in Perú and Ecuador. Some have smacked their bikes into low-flying vultures and some haven't just yet or would prefer not to repeat the trick for a larger audience.

When you get down to planning your time and routes in southern Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, send me a PM and I'll help you avoid the bad stuff and see more of the good stuff or maybe we can just make everything more soggy and difficult. I'm half Kiwi but it's the other half you need to watch out for. I am also a bike-tour guide and have my own KLRs for guided rental. Also access to an excellent mechanic, who used to wrench for Carlo de Gavardo. If you don't know, you must quickly learn. Think Paris-Dakar.

BTW, you have heard of Ruta 40 -- it is being paved and it's no longer much of an adventure - certainly not what it was in the seventies. Pretty soon even the Hardly Davidson posers will be riding there.



Old "Melinka" ferry ship, no longer being used to cross the Straits of Magellan. This was a 2009 trip in this picture but I first used the Melinka back in the 1970s to get to and from Tierra del Fuego.



One of my clients a few years ago in Torres del Paine

Welcome to the foro. Where in Aus are you from?

Patx, your moto fotos never fail to make me smile!

Tombi wrote:

Patx, your moto fotos never fail to make me smile!

You'd smile even more if you were riding pillion, darlin' !

(except on bloody awful Tierra del Fuego days like this one)

Patagoniax: You and I need to become much better acquainted! Lol!
I was born in Nueva Zelanda and actually hold dual citizenship so I'm kinda half Kiwi too! I've been traveling by more conventional means up til now, e.g. bus, plane, foot, etc.
Awesome photos too!

Tombi: I was living in Sydney before I packed up and headed over here. Currently in Santiago.

slojo wrote:Patagoniax: You and I need to become much better acquainted! Lol!
I was born in Nueva Zelanda and actually hold dual citizenship so I'm kinda half Kiwi too! I've been traveling by more conventional means up til now, e.g. bus, plane, foot, etc.

Find your way down here alive and I'll shout you a couple of local brews. We have a microbrewery in Natales now.

Me Mum was from the farm country north of Wanganui. This is me at right on a trip to Wellington.... it was not long after WWII and not many newer autos in the country. Ha ha maybe better to have more motorbike fotos...

Send me your trip plans and I'll try to insert some ideas.



Here we go... KLR practice in southern Patagonia



And Tierra del Fuego between San Sebastián and Porvenir

I've seen the wire mesh screens they have over bus windshields in the Torres area. Also experienced the spray of gravel including 2" chunks when they pass going the other direction. Also winds that can blow a bus over on its side.
How do bikers deal with that stuff?

slojo, PM me if/when you make it to the northern half of Chile. I'm in Copiapo and can point you in the direction of a few things in this part of the world, should you be interested. The Atacama Desert might not sound all that inviting, but that wouldn't be correct. Remember that the Dakar Rally passes through here in early January.

Safe travels.

passport wrote:I've seen the wire mesh screens they have over bus windshields in the Torres area. Also experienced the spray of gravel including 2" chunks when they pass going the other direction. Also winds that can blow a bus over on its side.
How do bikers deal with that stuff?

There are few situations that cannot be adequately addressed by the proper application of sufficient throttle and body-English.

ryanar wrote:slojo, PM me if/when you make it to the northern half of Chile. I'm in Copiapo and can point you in the direction of a few things in this part of the world, should you be interested.

Watch that ryanar's counsel, mate, ya know he hasn't changed his doohickey.

patagoniax wrote:

ryanar wrote:he hasn't changed his doohickey.

I, on the other hand, regularly change my Kawasaki KLR 650 counterbalancer idler shaft adjustment lever, so...

Tombi wrote:

patagoniax wrote:

ryanar wrote:he hasn't changed his doohickey.

I, on the other hand, regularly change my Kawasaki KLR 650 counterbalancer idler shaft adjustment lever, so...

As well you should, at least once -- doesn't need to be more than that if you replace it with a decent one. Good on you. Now just remember the 5000 km adjustment interval. And don't forget to use the better spring, perhaps the newer torsional type. Because the OEM spring is as bad as the adjuster doohickey.



Here is the set of "special tools" that Samuel made up to do a shadetree doohickey replacement:




Remember Glen Heggstad, the "striking viking" KLR rider who was captured by FARC rebels in Colombia few years ago? When he got away, and got a second KLR down here, he managed to forget to do the proper doohickey adjustment on his way north from Tierra del Fuego, and the engine did some unkind things when the balancer chain got loose.

Visor down....