El Bolson

Free trade they call it, fair and reasonable pricing for goods and services, we soon discovered that means extremely fair for the vendor and a rook for the people.

Some prices exceeding Europe pricing like a simple icecream, I don’t know how long they can hide behind that charade before someone says ” WTF how much”?

Determined to see the better side of El Bolson we applied for a couchsurf and he replied promptly with a yes … perfect. .... the local zone ALWAYS much better.

Carlos had a small yard so we could look at Maya, turns out he was a little over 200 meters away so we pushed everything around there.

Getting sorted first we then attacking Maya to try and sort the dreaded and unwanted noise.

We removed the tank, checked a few items and discovered the rear hydraulic cam tensioner had died, a coincidence or not, I do not know?

Replacing that (cos I had a spare) we sealed everything back up, the noise was better but still there, as it warmed up it got worse.

P1240618 by twomotokiwis, on Flickr

It can stay like that until I do some more research, by this time I was very deflated, going home on my mind, will Maya get us there?, will she blow up?, will the end of our trip be boredom waiting for the organized finish line, will an arsehole Argie smack us off the road?

My head hurt, to be fair I was upset and angry, I wanted to kill someone or something cos everything had turned to shit.

I had a cement pill and got on with it and told myself of the beautiful place we were in with great company, although part of the family Maya is a machine and like humans all get sick at some stage so at the age of 90 (000) she clicked over on the way I had to cut her some slack, not her fault the rogue rock did its thing.

Given she has never left us on the side of the road or in a bad place and had waited until El Bolson to get a in cavity her teeth wasn’t too bad to be fair so one would have to say we are lucky to have it happen there.

On some positive notes I forgot to mention a cool guy we met at the hostel (non Israeli) who rocked in on XT660R.

We talked about stickers and we give him a TMK sticker which he has said he had seen so was happy to meet us, we gave him one for his bike, gratefully received

IMG_7945 by twomotokiwis, on Flickr

He saw our blog with our windy tree picture and showed us a sticker he had bought, I was gutted now knowing you can get the sticker cos I think it is cool even tho there are no palm trees in Patagonia.

A n y w a y long story short he had a spare and gave it to us, he took the honours and put it on our case, the tree even blowing the correct way

Onya dude, really made my day and being at a bit of a low this was the travel spirit I needed, little things mean a lot.

IMG_7943 by twomotokiwis, on Flickr