Santiago To Viña Del Mar

The next step was Santiago, a 500 km day … was not looking forward to TMK on KTM doing lots of KM.

Was easy enough and felt like going home, our mission was to get sorted, get our pallet, pack down Maya and complete all the formalities.

Also in between on the 7th of May was Ellen’s birthday. She was lucky to have 4 birthdays during the trip. We headed out to town and find a nice cevechi for lunch. In the evening Ellen made nice Sashimi for tea, we had our seafood fix that day.

The plan was to then head over to Viña del Mar and meet up with Jaime again.

In Viña we made our washing trip to the Copec which is the Chilean gas station that has washing facilities, NZ customs being strict she had to be done properly.

At the station there was 5 cars in front of us, perfect, gave me time to tear Maya down to her undies and give her the royal clean for NZ customs.

We moved up in the queue, slowly stripping Maya down, the car in front of us got in and started, only one minute in it all came to a halt, by this time I had the panniers, seat, tools out, tank was off so she was sitting there like a naked 450.

Turns out the machine shit itself leaving the car in front covered in soap and Maya completely stripped, 5 or so cars behind us as well… ya fuckin shitting me.

The Copec guys walked over with cones, placed them down and said “No Funcional” …. yeah no shit.

We had to put everything back on Maya then ride 3 km up the road, find another car wash and strip her all down again FFS, what a disaster of a session.

Finally we got to our turn, banged our coins in switched it on and started with the “hot and soap wash” ….well we got the soap and some cold water ….couldn't bloody believe it.

We asked the guys and they said hot water is not working ….we said but you still charge for it ….. yeah, and that was it.

I was NOT putting her back together then doing it all again so we persisted with our kerosine/detergent cleaner soap and cold water, it took a lot longer with others waiting behind us, if anyone had got grumpy at me they would have had a nice soapy wash.

We finally got it complete in the end which was the main thing but it was annoying to have to do it all twice with the bike then have to pay for shit you don't get.

On a better note we got our pallet,  bought a hand saw and a crow bar and proceeded to make our BMW sponsored pallet fit Maya, with much toing and frowing about size (yes size does matter) we decided to chop her down to size knowing the cost of shipping was on the m3.

Jaime and I trying to look intelligent

IMG_8502 by Ellen Delis, on Flickr

Front wheel off, yeap better but not good enough, back wheel out as well so she was sitting on her bashplate, that bought the big girl down to size.

IMG_8512 by Ellen Delis, on Flickr

We placed the back wheel up under the wheel arch and everything fitted nicely so that is what we configured the pallet to do, cut it to width and length and dropped half the weight off it …things were working well.

Jaime and I now looking intelligent

IMG_8516 by Ellen Delis, on Flickr

Getting the addy for the trucking company Jaimes friend Piero offered to drop the pallet at the yard, this was bloody awesome to say the least and made life easy for us.

Delivery by none other than an AMG Mercedes (and quite nice I have to say)

IMG_8520 by Ellen Delis, on Flickr

We rode behind them on Maya to the yard, unloaded the pallet and proceeded to strip Maya down per plan.

IMG_8526 by Ellen Delis, on Flickr

Much to the amusement and amazement of the forklift dudes we reduced her from Arnieschwarzenmaya overgrown trail bike to a little short pile on a pallet.

IMG_8556 by Ellen Delis, on Flickr

All done and dusted (we thought) we left the yard after completing our mission.

We were supposed to have given all the docs to the trucking company and they take care of it, we did this, provided scanned notarised/legalised copies (which they requested) then sent the original to Santiago where they had requested them to be sent.

The guy we were dealing with turned out to be an extremely unhelpful wanker not knowing his job and it turned into a hell mission.

First he said we were all good and done, then he rings later says we are not done, then he asked for the originals which we said we sent them to Santiago (at his request), I will add at this point we had EVERYTHING complete and in hand while at his yard, we started the bike pack down at about 9.45 am and finished at 1.00 pm, the dickhead sends us an email asking the colour of our bike and wanting the original papers, we were in his yard, no computer, no wifi and 100 meters from his office.

Anyway, long story short Jaime our savvier took control, he was calmer than me cos I wanted to kill the incompetent dick, seems that he and custom were having issues and we got caught in the middle, finally the afternoon we are leaving we got an email stating Maya was cleared and loaded, we still struggle with what the issue was as the had EVERYTHING given to them 4 times.

Whoa …had grey hairs … gonna save me a haircut next time cos most will fall out I reckon.

All done and dusted we have everything crammed into two cardboard boxes including 2 bottles of Flore de Caña rum to take home. Total weight of everything including all our shit and tool was 40kg.

Our last night in Viña del Mar with Jaime, good times marred knowing we won't see him for a while

An insurmountable amount of thanks to you Jaime, heart of gold, good bastid supreme, motohead meca and moto mate for life

Cheers Andi