Coffee to Mate - Seattle 3 Ride South America

More to come soon....we leave in one week!

A friend pointed out to me that "Coffee to Mate" makes no sense. So here's the explanation: "Mate" is prounouced "Mah-teh" and is a hot tea-like beverage that is common in Argentina and Chile. Since we're from Seattle and coffee is the beverage of choice here, we thought "Mate" was a nice parallel for what we will find in Chile and Argentina.

Welcome to the forum and look forward to seeing some pictures. I'm leaving in just over 2 weeks for Central America.

Cheers

11/29 - Battery<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o>
Part of shipping the motorcycle is disconnecting the battery and taping the terminals. The two DR650’s are pretty quick. The DRZ400 with happy trails racks took a bit longer. Here are the pictures we took to prove to the shipping company that the terminals were disconnected. They haven’t asked yet for proof.<o></o>
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My hand on my wife’s bike…<o></o>
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Her hand on my bike…<o></o>
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We&#8217;re starting our adventure from Seattle. We had zero luck getting a freight handler to ship out of Seattle. Since we heard that Air Canada is motorcycle friendly we called them and they gave us the name of a shipper in Vancouver. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o>
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The following photo is a picture of the last motorcycle being unloaded off the trailer.<o></o>
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The crates are custom and made in my garage. They&#8217;re made out of 1 1/8 inch angle bar on the bottom and 1 inch angle bar on the top. They are not stacked on the plane (or in the warehouse) so the top is only for putting light boxes on top in the plane (the cost reduction is well worth the effort). If anyone wants to know how to build on of these, let me know and I&#8217;ll send you my plans.<o></o>
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Like normal getting into Canada was super easy. I was a bit nervous carrying three motorcycles in crates, but it turned out the border agent also owned a DR650 and was planning his own adventure. If you reading this border guard, thanks for being understanding. <o></o>
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Here&#8217;s a picture of all the bikes in the warehouse. We attached extra tires and gas cans to the crate. They will be wrapped in plastic by the shipper so they&#8217;re not quite done here&#8230;<o></o>
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We leave this coming Sunday, December 9<SUP>th</SUP> to begin our six week adventure. We will be riding from Santiago, Chile south to Tierra del Fuego (we expect a highlight road to be highway 7), then north up to east coast to Buenos Aires, Argentina and then straight west back to Santiago, Chile.
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There are three of us on this trip. My husband and I each ride DR650s and our friend is on a DRZ400. We haven&#8217;t made specific plans for how far to ride each day or exactly where we&#8217;ll stop to sleep. We&#8217;ve packed camping gear and expect to use a combination of campsites and hotels as we can find them. If anyone has recommendations, we&#8217;d be glad to hear them. <o></o>
Just the planning of this trip has been quite the adventure. We live in Seattle, Wash. but found that the best way to get the bikes to Santiago is air ship them on Air Canada out of Vancouver, British Columbia. We will be shipping them home using the RORO boat option from Santiago back to the Port of Seattle. It is more expensive to ship via air but the confidence that the bikes will arrive the day we want them made up for the extra cost.
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All that&#8217;s left now is for us to pack up our panniers and top cases, finish up one last week of work, and get on the plane! <o></o>
I have one item I still need to purchase. I&#8217;m the girl on the trip. I decided that I get to bring one luxury item with me to make sure everyone knows that I&#8217;m a girl beneath all the motorcycle gear &#8211;so I am going to purchase a bright shade of lipstick and wear it constantly. Jurry is still out on if it makes me look feminine or more like a clown. :)


There is so much more I can talk about when it comes to trip planning but don't want to just go on and on unless someone is interested. If anyone wants to know about the following, pipe-up and I'll write up what I've figured out:

• Bike Insurance, Emergency Medical Insurance,the perfect FirstAid Kit, crating the bikes for shipping, the packing list, Farkles, getting time off work (ha!), communicators, bike gear for women, plans for communicating with family while on the trip, crossing the canadian border with the bikes on a trailer

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I'm toying with the idea , good for you on making the jump!! If I may ask what are the shipping rates by boat and air? Can't wait to read the rest of the adventure

I'm the third party in this escapade, My name is Nivs.

Thiis is how this thing started. Poodle Love and his better half, MissOrganized have been street riding buddies of mine for 4 or 5 years. A couple of years ago, Poodle Love tells me he had purchased a KLR650.

"What the hell is that"?, I ask him.

"I want to start doing some adventure riding, you know, get away from the streets we see all the time, see more nature, experience some adventure" was his response. Whatever.

Well, both MissOrganized and I ended up with DRZ400's.

Fast forward to late spring of 2012: I call up Poodle Love.

Me: "Hey PL, I got a question for you".

PL: "Ya.....?

Me: 'Are you the kind of guy who talks about taking epic motorcycle trips, or the kind of guy who takes epic motorcycle trips"?

PL: -long pause- "FYYFF"!

Me: "I'll assume that means that you are gonna walk the walk"?

PL: 'Hell yeah I'm in.

Me:


From there on out it was just Itinerary, destination, organization, other participants and providence, which meant that the likelyhood of this actually getting pulled off was very low.

Fortunately, we had a date with destiny, and her name was MissOrganized (and she didn't order the lobster).

More soon.

Excellent. Let's hear more about this.

at some point would like to hear about Bike Insurance, Emergency Medical Insurance,and the perfect FirstAid Kit.

thanks and have fun

Hey you three,

I'm in and following along.
This is being posted "real time" from the road, correct?
I traveled through Chile and Argentina about 10 years ago. It was fantastic! Lots of wide open spaces. Nice people. Fun food. Easy traveling. Lots of places I went there that made me think, "This is what the American West must have been like 100 years ago". Frontier!
You'll see lots of places that will make you want to tear up your return ticket.
Have a blast and travel safely. Enjoy the mate!

Rob

I'm still waiting on the final quote for Air Shipping but it won't be more than $1900, possibly a bit less. However, the shipper told me today that we managed to make our crates the most "compact" that he's seen so that will save us money. We aren't shipping our panniers on the bikes (we will carry them with us as checked baggage when we fly) and we removed the handlebars which decreased the overall volume of the crate. (see pictures in one of the other posts on this thread). You pay mostly by volume so the more compact the crate, the better. You also are responsible for providing/making the crate for shipping. This can be a big pain and stressor. Thankfully my husband knows how to do some metal work so we were able to manage it ourselves. (wood creates are not the best idea because some customs agents will turn away wood product entering their country)

Boat shipping is going to be around $1500 because there will be 7 bikes sharing a 40 ft. container. Cost completely depends on the numbers of bikes sharing the container. The shipper we're using can do either 4 bikes in the 20 ft container or up to 8 in a 40 foot and it just so happens he's got four bikes already in Santiago who want to ship back to Seattle around the same time we're ready. Therefore, the $1500 per bike.

Air shipping is certainly more expensive but you don't have to find other bikes to ship with you to make it economical and you can be quite certain that your bike will arrive on the day you requested. This was important to me since we have a specific six week window for this trip and wasting a week waiting for bike arrival wasn't what we wanted to do. You need to make the reservation with the shipper 3-4 weeks prior to shipping but you don't need to get your bike to them until the week prior.

Boat shipping means you need to make reservations fairly early (because you're likely coordinating with other travelers). Boat shipping also just takes longer. For example, in order for our bikes to arrive around the 10th of December, we would have had to have the bikes ready to ship by the first of November. If you're boat shipping, you need a lot more time to plan than we had. If you're able to be flexible with your time and are planning well in advance boat shipping is likely the most economical and easiest way to get it done because you also don't need crates if you're doing RORO (Roll on Roll off). You'll just need to provide a few good straps.

Our intention is to update "real time" but we don't know yet how often we will have access to the internet. I'm hopeful that internet cafes are plentiful so that we can update regularly and in 'real time.'

Do you have any tips or "don't miss" recommendations? Would love to hear them if you've got them.

Bike Insurance: I searched high and low for bike insurance options for the countries we will be in (Chile and Argentina). I asked my own insurance company, called a few competitors, even emailed an insurance agent in Argentina asking if he could assist and the answers all came back as "no" or even more annoying "Why would you want insurance for those countries?"

Then I found motorcycleexpress and they work with underwriters to provide the exact motorcycle insurance coverage we needed. They don't cover all countries so be super careful that you're getting coverage where you need it. It's not cheap either -- right around $500 per bike for two months of coverage. If you've taken a motorcycle safety course you can save 5-10%. It takes about 10 business days once you submit your application. The application requires a pretty simple form to fill out, a credit card number, copies of: passport, driver license, title, and registration.

Medical Evacuation Insurance: I"m still not sure if this was worth it or not but for my own peace of mind I decided to go for it. I found this also through Motorcycleexpress. If you read the fine print on the application form it makes it sound like they don't cover incidents that occur due to motorcycle riding but after extensive conversations with the underwriters I learned (and got written proof) that they don't cover incidents that occur due to motorcycle racing but if you're using motorcycles as a mode of transportation they do provide coverage. Application form is online and very simple. For both my husband and I together it cost $101 for 3 months of coverage. I wanted this insurance just for the extreme covereage. I guess there's no way to know how well it really works unless, god forbid, you need it. But it feels good to me to have it in my pocket. We also are using the GPS SPOT device which comes with some SOS service options.

The Perfect First Aid Kit: I spoke with my doctor and local pharmacist to find out what would be in a good first aid kit. Then I found the REI Backpacker Plus kit ($47) which included nearly everything they recommended and was small and compact. I added a few things to it in the extra bottles they supply: more generic painkiller, some benedryl, an inhaler, our prescription for Cipro (for travelers stomach issues), some decongestant pills and a bottle of iodine water purification pills. We've all taken Typhoid medication already and luckily we won't be dealing with Malaria zones. I feel really confident that we have everything we might need and the REI kit also includes a little booklet that explains what to do if you actually need to use any of the stuff in the kit. The size and quality is perfect for us. Also -- you can go to your local pharmacist and many of them will provide "travel consultations" which means you tell them where you're going and they'll recommend what shots you need, what medication you should take with you and they can even write the prescriptions for you. The service costs about $50 but is cheaper that a doctor visit.

We dropped of our bikes 3 days ago for shipping. Today I hear from an unrelated source that Chile requires proof that "Thermal Fogging with Pyrocide 100" has been done on used vehicles that enter the country. Our shipper isn't familiar with the requirement nor are they equipped to handle it. I guess this is the first of our "Hmmmm....how will we deal with that issue, I wonder?" The adventure truly has begun!

Hopefully it doesn't delay us clearing customs by too much time or cost a ton of money. Anyone have prior experience with this? I'll update after we arrive with how we work it out.

Best wishes for a fantastic adventure! I love doing a good Fly N Ride, but I've never flown the bike. Also, thank you for providing all the deatiled information.


Cheers,

miss O, thanks for the info, cheers

Thank you so much for all the info, it will be helpful for lots of folks. Just to clarify $1900 per bike? Yikes

I learned today that Air Canada often fumigates before they leave Vancouver, and if they don't then the cargo haul is fumigated when the plane lands in Santiago so I guess this is no big deal. That's good.

Yes, that is per bike, one way. Pricey! As my husband keeps reminding me "We are not going on this trip to save money. Would your rather save the money and not have this adventure? Of course not!"

Looking forward to the adventure. I'm sure you'll have a great time! Patagonia is so amazingly beautiful.