The Motorcycle Diaries: Prelude

At 3 am and a day delayed my airplane finally touches down in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The airline in Colombia had decided to cancel my ticket without telling me about it (causing me to rush around Cartagena in pursuit of a new ticket without advance notice). I had purposely chosen to travel from Panama to Colombia by boat (to avoid flying), so this flight across the South American continent definitely represented a break in the continuous footprints I have left from Mexico to Colombia so far. The purpose of the trip, a motorcycle tour through South Argentina, also represents a completely new medium of travel for me. In other words, the wheels of the TACA airplane touching down symbolize a new chapter in my travels, not only of new landscapes and people but a new mode of transportation.

Luckily my Mexican friend Saul happened to be in Buenos Aires (on a temporary work assignment) and invited me to stay with him. His apartment was located in a beautiful part of town (Barrio Norte), which I took advantage of using every free minute to stroll through the charming streets, discovering some of the infinite number of cafes, boutiques, restaurants, markets, stores and life in the street. I had been to Buenos Aires 3 years earlier and was excited to find out that Buenos Aires is indeed as beautiful as my memories recalled.

Unfortunately not too much “free time” was disposable because the object was to prepare for the motorcycle trip and leave as soon as possible. Initially my Argentinean friend Luis had planned a trip on motorcycles through the south of the continent and included 5 people who had shown interest. When it was finally time to go only two people remained (Rafael, a Mexican living in Kansas City, USA and myself.) Unfortunately, Luis, the architect of the trip, was unable to go. He had asked a friend of his, Sergio (a local Buenos Aires mechanic) to purchase the bikes for us and fix them up. Thus the first item on my agenda after arriving was to get in contact with him and take a look at my new girlfriend (who would hopefully accompany me loyally for the duration of the adventure).

I had never met Sergio before, but that did not seem to matter, he treated me like an old friend immediately inviting me to his house to meet with Rafael and test drive the bike (at the time of writing I am still searching for an appropriate name for the bike). Sergio and his family were amazingly hospitable, creating a gigantic Argentinean barbeque (again I had to abandon my vegetarian principles) and reminding me why I love traveling in Latin America (although thousands of miles apart, I have encountered similar friendliness and genuineness in Latinos from Mexico to Argentina). After we had filled our bellies with tasty Argentinean meat and our minds with dreams of the Patagonian Mountains, it was finally time to test drive the bike: a 1992 Kawasaki Tengai 650 cm3 dual purpose bike. She looked beautiful, almost like new. Sergio had outdone himself. All of you that know me are aware that I am not really a motorcycle expert. In fact, I only recently acquired a driver’s license in preparation for the trip but in the past year of traveling have not practiced at all. In other words, I have little to no experience (but isn’t that what makes an adventure). What better place to reacquaint myself with riding a motorcycle than the streets of Buenos Aires where its law-abiding citizens make trafficking a dream (or nightmare rather). After almost getting hit several times, I quickly learned that yield or stop signs are transparent to the Argentinean eyes. Traffic lights, one-way streets and speed limits seem not to exist either (although they were very visible to me). In other words, I quickly discovered that I better put my eyes in all directions and not trust anything in the streets of Buenos Aires. I had just recovered from the shock of traffic when suddenly a police car appeared and gestured for me to pull over (“Wow, is my driving that bad,” I thought to myself). Once I had stopped, two very excited and nervous officers jumped out of the car yelling at me to get off the bike immediately (since they both had placed their hands on their pistols I assumed they were serious). After showing them my international driver’s license and telling them I was from Germany and preparing for a motorcycle trip, they started to relax. It turns out, the reason they pulled me over is because this type of bike is very popular among local thieves and they had suspected that it was stolen. With enough excitement for one day, I returned to Sergio’s house.