March 13 2012
Perito Moreno Glacier- El Calafate Argentina
Today were rode into The Glacier National Park in Argentina with our friends Simon, MC, Jason, Angela, and Bode. It was a nice change of pace to actually sit back in the VW bus and have someone else drive for a change. The ride was about an hour of beautiful scenery. We decided to have all the girls in one bus and the boys in another. The Moreno Glacier flows to the valley floor where it meet the lake. We stayed here at the glacier all day long until the park closed. You never get tired of watching a 90 foot wall of ice come crashing down into the lake. For sure it was one of the most spectacular thing that we have ever seen. Just another one of those moments when you really feel small in this giant planet we call earth. Everyone should witness this sometime in their lives.
March 15 2012
El Calafate Argentina-Torres del Paine area Chile
167 miles mostly dirt.
Today the caravan was up and moving again. We have heard that the short cut way of hwy. 40 was suppose to be one of the worst sections of road in all of Argentina. So of course we must go that way and check it out for ourselves because its hard to take anyone's advice as everyone has a different view on things. As it turns out it is actually one of the best dirt roads that we have been on in quite a long time. If not the best one of the whole trip. Goes to show you that you have to go and see for yourself and not really listen to other. We are usually pretty good at doing this so it wasn't to far out of the norm for us. We stopped for lunch at a small river for a lunch break. Simon tried his luck at fishing while I made a hot dog cooker out of an empty beer can that I strapped to my muffler.(Thanks for the idea Kris).
Now it was time to cross the boarder back over into Chile. This was a very small boarder on a very windy dirt road. It was the smoothest boarder crossing ever for us. It went so fast for all of us it was kind of a surprise. After the boarder we headed towards Torres del Paine park. We stopped short of the park because we found a great camping spot on a lake with an awesome view of the peaks.
March 16 2012
Torres del Paine national park Chile
23 miles o dirt
Today we woke up to heavy clouds,light rain, and never without our friend the WIND. Our plan of hiking in the park was out today and it was time to find some kind of a shelter out of the rain and wind. We entered the park and went to a camp ground with a shelter to pitch our tent under out of the weather.
March 17 2012
Torres del Paine park
This morning we woke up to a beautiful blue bird day. These days seem to be few and far between anymore and we decided to take full advantage of the day and go for a hike. Simon,MC, and Camille and I drove to the other side of the park for our hike. We hiked just about what seemed like all day. 18 kms towards the famous spires of Patagonia. The walk was beautiful, but as some may know I'm not much a walker and it was a little farther than I usually like to go. This is the end of the busy season here and I still could not believe how many people we passed on the trail. At least 100. I would really hate to be here here during the busy season. No wonder the trail is so wide here. None the less it was a wonderful day and good to get out and get some exercise and fresh mountain air.
March 18 2012
Torres del Paine- Puerto Natales, Chile
100 miles of windy dirt roads
We pulled into town today and saw that one of the buses had a flat tire again due to the rough rocky road. The spare was already used due to a blowout on a rough road a couple of days earlier. All the tire shops were closed because it is Sunday. The other bus we are with stayed behind to do some fishing. So now we don’t have a tire or a way to get one fixed. So Paul and I decide to drive a around and look for a room close by. As we were looking around we were being chased by a lot of dogs. I Gunned the shooting star to try and scare off the dogs and then heard an explosion. I got off my bike and saw oil all in places oil should not be. We pushed the bike towards the gas station to the bus with the flat tire. We had to push the bike up a hill to a hotel room and started pulling it apart. We found chunks of metal missing from the top engine cover. We pulled that off and saw that one of the screws was missing from the valves and the other two valves had completely broken off with some pieces missing down in the engine. We are now trying to figure out if this is a fixable problem. Being that there or few if any other KLR 250 down here it is hard to get parts. We will see in a couple of days.
March 19 2012
Today we went around town to find out the bad news about our shooting start. The valve rocker is so different than all the others that the part is not available here in Puerto Natales, or maybe not at all here in Chile. Klr’s are not a common bike down here and klr 250’s are even more rare. He also says there is no shop around here to get a new one machined. The mechanic says you should be on a Honda. We will try and get the “falling star down to the next city which is 100 miles away. Punta Arenas is a city of a few hundred thousand people and we may have better luck there. If nothing works out there for us we may continue 2 up on the White Rabbit for the last 250 miles to Ushuaia”the end of the World”
I hope the White Rabbit holds out! too bad about the Shooting Star - I know you'll miss it, Camel! Love you guys!!! -Ellen
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