Mendoza, BMW and the Dakar Rally.

Since arriving in Mendoza rather battered and bruised on the back of a pick-up truck, I have seen in the new year in true Argentinean fashion, that is not going to bed until the sun is well and truly up. I have now been here for 3 months and still cant get my head around there life style. All shops and businesses open at around 9am, close at 1pm, re-open at 5pm and close again at 8 or 9pm. You don't eat before 10 or 11pm, sometimes later, and when your diet is mainly beef, you feel like you have a lead weight in your stomach at 1am.

Now if you want to go to a bar after dinner, don't bother to get there before 2am, as you will be the only one there and this is not a Saturday night, this is every night. Now I don't know if you have tried sleeping during the day, I.E. a siesta, but I just cant do it, it throws me totally out of sync, I can live with it because I'm basically doing not a lot, but God knows how there all do it and get up for work. Still "work" is a subjective word in these parts.

The "work" ethic is something that I am having a big issue with, even the local BMW dealer, usually the epitome of efficiency, is a disorganised bunch of amateurs, that make some of the awful dealers back in the UK look like a picture of professionalism. It took them a whole week to organise an estimate of the damage, even when this simple task was complete there had managed to miss off items that I knew need to be replaced. Worse was yet to come when there priced up all the items, a total of £3000! And that is just the items I need to get the old girl back on the road, let alone all the other items that are just cosmetically damaged. This did little for my mood and frankly started to make my question how viable it was to continue the journey. It was a Saturday afternoon and I couldn't do anything until Monday and check with the UK for comparable prices.

Monday came and I was still in the balance as of what direction to take, I could ship the bike back to the UK , but really I had no idea of what to do from here, for me the journey by bike is everything. The thought of trying to get buses, planes or any other mass transport just seems so dull and uninteresting. So it was with considerable relief that I managed to secure all the parts that I needed, some new some used, fro the much more agreeable figure of £600. Only one rather large hurdle to cross and that's Argentina's rather over zealous customs department, that could possible either hold up the package, or charge me a horrendous sum for import duty.

I have however done my best to avoids this with the production of , lets just say a suitable adjusted invoice. You can take the boy out of Essex, but you can take the Essex out of the boy. So fingers and legs crossed, the parts should be arriving on Wednesday 21st, then the job of repairing starts, including some items that need and engineers favourite tool, a very large hammer, to put back in to place. When complete, the bike will be functional, but will without doubt look very well run in, to say the least.

So you ask what have I been doing with all this time I have in one place? Well apart from running around town trying to get mechanics to pull there finger out and mucho telephono calls to the UK, the answer is not a lot. I have been enjoying myself without a doubt, as the hostel I am laid up in is extremely social, which mainly involves lots of cooking in the evening, followed by quite a lot of beer or wine, sometimes both. But I look at this as medicinal, the wine is good for the heart and its so God`am hot here that you need something cold to drink, just to quench your thirst. Poor arguments I agree, but in the absence of any better excuse it will have to do.

There are of course exertion during the day, to such destinations as Maipu, pronounced My-poo, toilet humor, us Brits are famous for this it would seem. The reason to visit this area is it is were the best vineyards are. You while away your day cycling from one winery to the next, tasting (drinking) there produce. Its a highly social day, especially when you get around 10 people together, trying to get to the next stop without falling off your bike, something that I am doing my best to at the moment.

The reverse side of this consumption is that I have also joined a gym and am practising my yoga in the park, which raises a few eyebrows with the locals, who on the whole are not to athletic. Its good to do some exercise after riding all those miles and to feel your body move.

The other distraction that has rolled in to town has been the Dakar Rally, for the first time being held outside of Africa. I have always wanted to see the rally and have watch much of its coverage when back in the UK, so it seemed an idea opportunity to catch a glimpse of this rolling juggernaut of a motor-sport event. The bikes, cars, quads and trucks rolled in to town on the 7th January, unfortunately the course is kept secret until the day before, specifically to prevent people going out and watching the vehicles, which at first seems strange, but as there is no real course, rather just a set of check points, the vehicles are driving all over the place. So to avoid unnecessary accidents, people are encouraged to stay away from where the vehicles will race and just watch them roll in to the check points or destinations.

I was in reality quite disappointed with it as a spectacle, it is without doubt a TV event and the only way to truly see what is happening would be to follow the leaders in a helicopter as the TV crews do, which of course is totally impractical. It was however good to see the cars and bikes that you have just watched on TV, roll in and and out of town, cheered on by the very enthusiastic crowds, who up until this year had scarcely herd of the event.

Since writing the above I have just found out that customs in BA have indeed help my part, but it is proving impossible to find out why. The best I can gather is that they want me to prove that I am not intending to resell the parts and that there are indeed for me, so I presume there want picture or to see the bike, the other reason I am being told is that it my in-fact be illegal to import secondhand parts. The main problem stems from customs being willing to speak on the phone, in-fact they never answer it and that FedEx seem to be either unable or unwilling to speak to them on my behalf, strange being that they are in the same building at BA airport.

So after much harassment and nearly six hours of phone calls I have managed to persuade FedEx to deliver the parts to the customs office in Mendoza, were at least I can talk face to face with someone and hopefully using a mixture of charm and palm greasing I should be able to elicit my parts in the coming week. If I am unable, then I will have to start looking at the hard facts of where I go from here. I will update you all as soon as I know.

Ciao for now.