It’s been a while since I posted but that doesn’t mean the trip ended there. The story must go on, at least a bit longer.
From Buenos Aires, I headed along the coast towards Brazil but in order to get there I had to go through Uruguay. The idea was actually to do Uruguay and then head north back into Argentina to Foz de Iguazu in order to get the Brazilian visa. I had tried to get one in Buenos Aires but I needed 2 weeks just to wait and see someone, not to mention that the people from the embassy were not the nicest ones.
Uruguay has some nice beaches, although they can be pretty crowded. I also didn’t get lucky with the best weather as it was raining most of the time.
Close to Maldonado, I found a Kawasaki dealership so I stopped. After telling them about my trip and taking a group photo we talked a bit about the bike and a small issue I was having. You could hear a chain rattling inside the motor. It wasn’t the distribution chain as I had it changed with a new one in Buenos Aires. It had to be the balancer chain.
One of the guys there offered to wash my bike and to take a look at it the next day.
So I went a few km down and found a nice spot to camp along the beach. As it was a somewhat crowded area, I had to hide behind some bushes.
Beach view property…
… with an incredible sunset.
The next morning I went back to the shop but the guys were pretty busy so I started the work myself. The balancer chain was definitely loose but we couldn’t get the magneto wheel off to see why the chain wouldn’t tighten. My guess would be that the spring had broken or fallen off. It wasn’t the original spring though as I had changed the doohickie right before leaving. Just to show that the after market one is just as bad as the original! So I stuck my finger in there and tightened it by hand. I figured that if it lasted this way about 60k km, it will do another 30 easy before needing to be tightened again. Where was still room to tighten it at least 2 more times. The problem is that you’d have to open up the cover every time.
Some more pictures from Uruguay along the coast as I was getting closer to Brazil.
And finally I made it to Brazil. I was able to get my visa at the Southern border called Chuy. I rode up to the embassy there just to find out that I had lost the key for 3 of my 4 locks. I asked around town and after about an hour or going round and round, I found a nice gentleman with a store who was able to cut my locks. He even hooked me up with 3 new ones at no charge! Thank you once again sir! Able to get my papers out from my case, I headed back to the embassy. The gentleman working there was super nice (in contrast with the ones in Buenos Aires) and told me that my visa would be ready in less than 24hrs. Too bad I didn’t take more pictures of Uruguay, but it was raining most of the time. I believe I did the whole country in less than a week, 5 days if I remember correctly.
Calgary to Brazil on a KLR 650... 