After having breakfast in a petrol station and checking my email I realised I needed to buy a front tyre as I wasn’t going to get it further south. Having just missed morning hours I had to wait until after the three hours siesta so I headed to the Petroleum Museum where I had my own guided tour including the seat used for crowing the Petroleum Queen.

As I was waiting to pull into the road a truck backed into me with a bang wiping out me and the bike. He kindly got the pannier holder welded but later on I kept on finding bits of my bike that were broke. The panniers are about two inches out, my right indicator light fell off and I have serious body shakes in traffic. Another bike hit mine and I was shaking for an hour after.

Peninsula Valdés is famous for it’s whale watching. I was a bit worried I was too late in the season but with a bit of patience we got to see a couple of Southern Right Whales pass right under the boat.

Our first day was spent riding around the peninsula on the gravel trail where I was out front in the lead, up on the pegs showing the fellows a bit of my bmw off road training course abilities.

After the meetup I joined up with Nick and Paul to ride down to Peninsula Valdés. It was a pretty boring ride and I actually fell asleep and came off onto the gravel for the first time which had my heart racing.

The weekend finished with an Asado and promises to meet up on the road. Lovely bunch of people. Thanks to Oscar and Nancy for organising!

The next day we rode to see the sea lions which I am a bit over now. But I did spend all my time trying to get a photo of the parrots flying from the wingside up.

I must admit that when I got the meet up it was a bit underwhelming as I was originally going to start my trip with the meet up in Dec 2006 now three years later I was ending my trip here. Most of the people were in couples so I was a little bit lonely. My heros were the German family with the two teenagers on the back and the German couple were he was in a wheel chair.

I headed out of Buenos Aires at 5am to ride down to the Horizons Unlimited meet up in Viedma. It took me 12 hours to do the 600miles (1000km) through the rain and sand.

I got back into Buenos Aires and I had to go and pick up my bike from Karl’s parents who had it in their garage (thanks Karl) and then sat outside Dakar Motors for five hours waiting for Ken and Carol to return from the hospital as they had an accident when their front tyre burst due to the nut on the valve having been tightened too much. I quickly loosened up mine. Having a burst tyre is my worst nightmare. In Brazil a truck blew it’s front left tyre right in front of me as I was passing it on a double lane up hill and a metal spinning waste basket size thing shot out of the tyre a couple of meters in front of me.