Nick's South America Tour 2018

Missive #7, Tue, Mar 20th to Thur, Mar 29th, 2018 Day 52, Tue, Mar 20th Chalten Suites Hotel, El Chalten 0 km We finished off yesterday detouring 580 long km to this not bad little town called Rio Gallegos on the Atlantic coast. Spike, none the worst for wear and Paul arrived well ahead of the gang and found a nice and functional hotel right downtown. They had to drive around a bit to find it. Linda and I who had spent all day in the truck comped Jairo his room. I think my single was 75 bucks. The facilities, food, bar, bank machine nearby and undercover parking was perfect for our group arriving unannounced.  One of the funny idiosyncrasies around here is the key locks. Every hotel has the same damn clumsy system. The key looks like a flat anchor and you only have a fifty percent chance of putting it in right. Then you have to wiggle it around in its loose hole to try to engage the loose locking contraption inside. When you finally engage the device you then have to turn it at least t

Missive #6, Fri, Mar 9th to Mon, Mar 19th, 2018 Day 41, Fri, Mar 9th Hotel Crown Plaza, Santiago, 0 km A slow day in Santiago working on the mail out of Missive #5 and going for a walkabout in this nice, large city of 7 mm plus. We met in the lounge at 7 pm to say goodbye to Debbie, Harrison and Bob, most unfortunate. Debbie it turns out has an upcoming gall bladder operation as a result of tests done here. Understandably she wants to have this done in Seattle so Harrison wants to go home with her. Bob has a continuing right eye sight problem. He burst a small blood vessel in the high altitude of Bolivia and without proper depth perception has been unable to ride for the past few weeks. As a result of a thorough check up with an ophthalmologist here in Santiago and in consultation with his specialist at home in Maryland he has decided to cut his trip short and head home too. So we are down from on original 12 plus Helge to 9 and 7 bikes for the last third of the trip heading south thro