Non spicy Chile

KS-Monday

Title pretty much says it all.  Things have been a bit bland lately.  We left Santiago on Sunday morning, with pretty much no traffic as we rolled out of the city.  Morning gas/oil stop and we headed on down the Pan American Highway 5. Our goal for the day was Concepcion where we had been setup with a free hotel room/s by our good friend Maruico Thanks Again, it was awesome!  The ride down was a little over 500k, but since the road here is exactly like the interstate highway back home, it was no problem to make it into town on time.

After checking into our separate rooms, and enjoying an awesome high flow shower, we decided to walk across the road o find dinner at the mall.  Yep, you heard me right, we actually went to the mall on purpose.  Mainly because there was supposed to be a TGI Fridays there, and we've been having a hankering for familiar food from home.  This was not to be the case, after wandering around the mall, even looking at maps, it was not to be found.  So we settled for Pizza Hut pizza, and a whopper from Burger King at the mall food court.  When we left, we were no longer hungry so I guess it was mission accomplished. 

This morning we loaded up and headed out to the gas station,, add gas, add oil, twist throttle, pay toll, add gas, add oil,  twist throttle, repeat.  The views were almost exactly like riding through southern Virginia, same road, gas stations, etc.   Only differences were the toll booths that I think are way too close together, and gas prices are in pesos but much higher than home.  A gallon of gas here is running around $4.50+ a gallon, and oil is about $7 a quart.  With the miles we've been running, were almost burning through our predicted daily budget, just on petroleum products alone!  Add in food and a place to stay, lets just say were offsetting the cheaper days we had up north.   We've got to get out of this country.

Which leads us up to tonight, camped out in a city campground in Osorno , sitting at a picnic table.  Just finished a dinner of tuna/rice for me, and ramen/sausage for Chip.  Living the luxurious life out here on the road.  Tomorrow we hope to cross into Argentina, and we mean hope. Insurance is required there, and we have not been able to find solid information on where to get it.  We spent this morning checking 5 different insurance companies with no luck.  Been helped out with a couple online places, but they're only for residents of Chile.  Information on this stuff is hard to find, if you don't believe me, sit with one other person and using your cell phones set on super slow, try to find a place to buy insurance for motorcycle travelers in Argentina.  So tomorrow we will check as many places as we dare here in town before heading into the mountains towards the border.  There are/may be places to buy insurance about 40 miles inside Argentina, if they will sell it to us, and the border guards let us through.  Again, there are other people who do this, but crossing different borders, coming from different countries, and so on.  I haven't even bothered checking my insurance company back home, since their coverage ended as soon as we crossed out of Texas.  We'll see what tomorrow brings.

So that's is,  pretty boring.  Only interesting things I saw today were several vehicles with sitting on the axle with wheels missing.  A tractor trailer with duals pulled off that might have fell off the jack, a car with a wheel off, sitting on the hub with no jack,  and a tractor pulling a discbine with a wheel gone, again sitting on the axle.  Mush be a lugnut thief on the loose down here.  So,  there you have it, just another couple boring days on the road, taking that little blue dot on Google maps, and trying to push it as far south as we can.  Maybe we'll have a better story next time, but for now, I'm going to crawl in my tent and see what tomorrow brings.