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TRAVEL FEATURE - PATAGONIA MICHAEL SCHELLER
DASH TO THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD
There ’ s a strong correlation between being interested in motorcycle travel and wanting to ride to Ushuaia , the southernmost city in the world . For one , being on the same latitude as Scandinavia on the northern side of the scale , the months you ’ d want to explore this part of the world would be December to March . Pushing the trip to the extremes of this time window means skipping the crowds a bit , although “ crowds ” is relative in a place about as scarcely populated as Australia .
It was the end of the Southern- Hemispherean summer and towards the end of March 2023 , that we , a German lawyer and a German engineer , one in between jobs and one without a permanent job for a long time were meeting in Santiago de Chile to hopefully explore Patagonia together . One was lacking a motorbike , the other lacking a motorbike that didn ’ t need a gearbox overhaul , and so we needed two motorbikes as soon as possible in order to make the most out of the three weeks that we had before one was headed back to Germany . Expecting a fair bit of bureaucracy and thanks to a lucky coincidence , we found a lovely Chilean guy who would just lend us two of his motorbikes — trusty thumpers — a 2009 and a 2014 KLR650 for this trip . Two poders ( powers of attourney ) and a few hours of TLC later , in order to be able to cross borders and get the Japanese ladies ready for the trip , we were sitting on the highway south from Santiago de Chile .
When travelling Patagonia , one has to choose between the Carretera Austral on the Chilean side and the Ruta 40 (“ Ruta cuarenta ”) on the Argentinan side , both equally beautiful but quite different in terms of landscape . Chile and Argentina are bordered by the Cordillera de los Andes alias Andes mountain
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