Our journey comes to an end…..the last post

One of the peculiarities of travelling by bike is that one is bound to your travel companion. There is very little opportunity to indulge in complete isolation immersed in thought or contemplation. Daily travels while on the road always require a degree of concentration both from the pillion and clearly more from the driver. The downtime is spent visiting sites or indulging in the magic that is the foreign location. As we head back to the real world and plunge head first into mainstream life, we reflect on our journey.
The bike is packed and wrapped, our tickets are confirmed and we while away the last afternoon in Buenos Aires in our apartment in the classy suburb of Palermo.

I feel that a trip comes to the end when you think back on a famous spot you visited and struggle to contextualise it and recall instantaneously the immediate detail. For example, perito Moreno glacier…….Uhm, down south in Argentina, but what was the name of that place we camped?? No disrespect for our colleagues travelling for over a year! I look forward to re-running drives, visits, campsites and stories in time to come when the good times seem to take on an enhanced shimmer and the bad-times wash away leaving a gentle rememberance in their wake. Selecting the best of the best pictures to print and collate into a printed album for the occasional perusal when the mainstream feels a bit turbulent.

We have spent 9months of our life on the back of a motorbike, cape to Cairo included, fallen off at least 10 times (not once on this trip though!), seen two completely different continents and experienced wildly different adventures.
We have been blessed by meeting wonderful fellow travellers both touring on and off the bike and look forward to maintaining relationships over the years to come.
This whole trip would not even have been possible if Andy Cluver, my father-in-law, was not kind enough to ‘loan’ us his bike. I doubt there are many fathers or father-in-laws out there who are, one, willing to loan their BMWs and two, for the purpose of dragging their daughters across a continent where the advice we received before leaving home was to take out hostage recovery insurance! Whatever your beverage, please raise your glass to the amazing man who is my father in law!!! Thank you so much for this incredible and generous opportunity. The steed has had a private professional wash already and she is due for her post trip service when are back prior to her return to her rightful owner 🙂

This is a continent that has demanded a second visit not only due to its size, but it’s people, sights and diverse climates creating environments that are unrecognisable in different seasons.

Some of our firsts that come to mind;
– pillion riding a mighty GS 1200
– catching a mammoth trout
– touching a manatee
– seeing a real live toucan
– ice-climbing
– driving on salt plains
– driving in a snow-storm
– cracking a rib from a bad cough
– hot-wiring a BMW
– tasting a Pisco sours……….

We have made a short trailer of some of the things that we have experienced and soon we hope to put together a short video of our entire journey.

We have so enjoyed writing this blog and sharing it with our family and friends. Thank you so much for all the comments and visits to the site. We hope you enjoyed it!

Greetings from the southamerica2up team!

The sea brown trout…

Our beautiful planet sky

The Amazon team, Peru

Sunset, Valparaiso, Chile

Nasca lines, Peru

Upsala Glacier, Agentina

The Amazon. Peru

Tiwanaku, Bolivia

Snow riding, Rio Turbio, Argentina

Torres del Paine, Chile

Navimag, Chile

Easter Island, Chile

Easter Island, Chile

El Chalten, Argentina

Baileys on ice on the glacier

The 2-up team, Salt Plains, Bolivia