We’ve touched down in Santiago and are at the start point for our journey North to Alaska!
The journey here was long! We had a super early flight out of Cape Town so we decided to sleep at the airport the night before and we touched down in Santiago at about 3 in the morning so we slept there too. These extra bits made the total journey nearly 38 hours long!
After a couple of days sleeping we’ve been spending the last week exploring Santiago and planning the next leg of the trip. It’s looking like it will be another 12,500 miles on the road which will be around 6 more months in the sidecar. On route we’ll pass through another 13 countries and there will be some serious challenges. The first of which will be our journey through the Atacama desert and across the Andes in to Bolivia. Here we’ll face the driest true desert on the planet and some serious altitude. It depends on the route we opt to take but there’s a possibility that we may climb as high as 5,000 metres above sea level – that’s nose bleed territory and we’ve got no idea how the scooter will handle the lack of oxygen…
First though, we need to get the sidecar back and put the roof back on. In true fashion the vehicle is having trouble getting here – it’s still in South Africa! It ended up getting road freighted from Cape Town to Johannesburg to keep the costs down but ironically, the lorry it was on broke down! It’s now finally made it to Jo’burg and should be flying here later today and then because we picked Chile – it should (should!!) be easy to get through customs but who knows. Hopefully we’ll be on the road sometime next week but if history repeats itself we could yet be another week or so in Santiago.
It’s looking like we’ll be here in Santiago for another week or so. It’s not quite what we wished for but we’re certainly not complaining! The food is delicious, the people are fantastic and if this is what the rest of South America is going to be like then we cannot wait to get started on that long road north!
Post on the board