It’s now been one year since returning from my North American trip and I have now set August 2012 for the South American leg, and again planning a 6 month trip visiting Chile – Argentina – Bolivia – Peru – Ecuador – Colombia.
I hope to have my partner Gus with me this time, he has to get re-accredited for his motorcycle licence and yesterday he passed the second stage of the 6 part licence in NSW, so now he has a minimum 3 months riding on ‘L’ plates until stage 4 and another course and test to get his Provisional licence.
We have had the pleasure of hosting Kevin and Lorraine from the UK who are currently two years into their RTW ride on BMW R1200GS. They spent many months touring the same countries we plan to visit, so having them visit has helped a lot of our trip preparation. They are ‘transiting’ Australia as their bike ships from the USA to Malaysia for their next leg through Asia and the Sub-Continent.
Another mutual traveller Adam Lewis (www.shortwayround.co.uk) has been a great source of knowledge and I have taken a lot of his advice for this next leg. Most importantly has been the bike of choice and we are switching from German to Japanese machinery to ‘simplify’ touring in a generally second world continent. So goodbye BMW and hello Kawasaki – a brand I am more familiar with and far easy to service and repair and bringing a much better pedigree for reliability. If we were going for a longer period I would certainly consider the Suzuki DR650 which is a sensational RTW bike, but value for money the KLR is a better choice and ‘off the shelf’ you don’t have much to modify.
Check my mate Mic's KLR... last year in Alaska ! ("everything except the kitchen sink")
We have made contact with two dealers in Santiago Chile and they only need three weeks notice to get everything organised. I was thinking as late as last night of shipping both my F800GS bikes from USA and AU, but shipping is such a drag, full of surprises, additional costs and un-necessary grief. The biggest benefit here would be the fuel injected engine for the high altitudes, but from Adam’s experience it does not appear to be too much an issue.
Awesome. Just freakin’ awesome.
Makes me want to go get a bike licence.
Good luck with the planning and the trip.