The Start of our South American Journey

-- Story by Erin --

We've been here in South America for just over 2 weeks, and we're getting settled in quite nicely.  We have many wonderful family-friends, and we've met some great motorcycle people too!  On arriving in Buenos Aires airport we were met by Éva and Gyözö with bunches of flowers in their hands.  Both Hungarian immigrants, Éva is an old friend of Chris' father, and she has gone out of her way to make us feel "at home".  Her son Andres and his family have also made us feel at home and very welcome.

We've been enjoying the new culture, language (our Spanish is rapidly improving), the great meat, and cervesas.   I think we've managed to put on a few extra pounds in the last couple of weeks from all this rich food!

The culture in Buenos Aires is quite rich as well.  This is the home of the Tango, that sexy Latin dance, and the city has more museums than any other big city in the world.  Too bad we are not museum fans, but there is plenty of beautiful European-style architecture, small narrow streets to wander around and everyone is friendly.  This is also the home of Eva Perón, the famous wife of President Perón (1946), actress and patron saint to the poor and homeless.  Eva Perón is buried in an unceremonious-looking mausoleum in the city's Cemetery of the Recoleta.  There are literally streets and alley's separating family mausoleums of every architectural style imaginable.  It is often called a miniature city.

Although the weather has been mostly cloudy we managed to steal a beautiful day and go boating with Andres and his wife Marcela in the Tigre district.  Just north of the town is the delta of the Río Paraná with its innumerable canals, holiday homes and restaurants on the banks of this beautiful area.  Many people live year-round in this area and have to travel by waterbuses to get around.  There are even floating supermarkets that ply the canals every day.

On October 6th, we bought tickets (US$20 each) to see Eric Clapton in one of the many 80,000 capacity soccer stadiums.  The stadium was only about half-full, but the fans were certainly in spirit, cheering throughout the performance "Olayyyyy, olay olay olay, Clap-ton, Clap-ton!"  This is to be his last world tour, and we thought it only fitting to make it part of our world tour.

Gabriel and his wife Claudia are among the friends we've met since we arrived.  They arranged for a barbecue at their home and invited us along to meet some friends from their motorcycle club, the Gargulas (means gargoyles in Portuguese).  The club is actually headquartered in Brazil and the Argentine members of the club travel to Brazil regularly for meetings and rallies.  Of course that night we ate wonderful Argentine meats and salads and they gave us advice on where to go in Brazil.  Although our Spanish is not so good we managed to communicate just fine.  At the end of the night there were hugs all around, as if we had known these people for years.

The bikes have still not arrived, and it's not clear when they will.  There are only 2 flights per week from NZ to South America, and there's a problem with cargo space.  Goods that normally fly from Japan to Argentina normally fly via Los Angeles.  After Sept 11th, air cargo to the states is restricted, so they're sending it down to Sydney (which is where the NZ-BA flight originates), and taking all the space on the plane.  Qantas keeps promising we'll get the bikes "next week", and we're frankly getting a little perturbed.

In an effort to do something pro-active, we took a ferry 45km across the river to Uruguay, and spent a few days in a small historical town called Colonia and the capital city of Montevideo.