Since leaving La Paz I’ve run into several difficulties. For example, in Bolivia, a lot of gas stations do not sell to foreigners. The gas stations that do sell to foreigners do so at a much higher rate than the government subsidized rate for the locals. This was extremely frustrating and caused me to use my backup fuel can at least once.
Problems followed me as I entered Argentina. I unknowingly entered Argentina during one of the busiest tourist holidays of the year and many people were traveling. That compounded with corruption and an upcoming election led to several gas stations being completely out of gas. I used my spare fuel can to barely make to a gas station that still had gas. Even then I had to wait in line for over an hour just to fill my tank. Soon after this, I realized the ATMs only exchange at the “official” government rate of 350 Argentinian pesos to 1 USD. Exchanging on the black market yielded me approximately 935 Argentinian pesos to 1 USD. Just another further complication in trying to navigate the political landscape.
Things took a turn for the worse the morning after a 14-hour hard ride the day before. The bike wouldn’t start. The oil level was super low. After filling it and getting some help from the mechanic above I got it pop started. It felt a little off, but it was running and the more I rode it around the more oil got spread throughout the engine components and the better it sounded. I thought I was in the clear. But after only a couple hours of riding I had lost most of my oil out of the air box bleeder hose. I filled and pop started it one more time to get myself out of the middle of nowhere and to a town with a mechanic. The mechanics there knew right away that it was probably an issue with the piston. If that was the case it would explain oil getting past a damaged piston. Not what I wanted to hear… I knew this could be trouble.
I was pretty frustrated when the mechanic didn’t show up until 1pm because he was apparently arguing with the local police to get his own personal motorcycle unimpounded. As soon as he returned from that he promptly went on a 2 hour lunch. I was pretty mad. I just sat at this shop all day and finally by 7pm we got the motor head off and found the cylinder and piston were indeed damaged. They would need to be replaced. Unfortunately for me, my motorcycle isn’t sold in Argentina. However, there is another Honda, the CBR300, which shares the same cylinder and piston. He ordered these parts off of what I would compare to a cross between Amazon and eBay. It’s a pretty common website in a lot of South American countries. He apparently didn’t have an account for this website and had to have his friend or ex-wife or something order the parts for him. He told me the parts would take 4 or so days to get here. Not ideal, but at least I’m getting the parts. On the day the parts are supposed to show up they don’t… The mechanic makes some calls and we wait one more day, which is infuriating to me because I don’t have a lot of free time. The next morning he tells me the parts don’t exist because they are out of stock in Argentina. I was fuming. If he actually had an account for this website he could have ordered the parts himself and likely would have found this out before waiting for the delivery date to pass.
Essentially back at square one with a bunch of burned time I immediately packed up my backpack and grabbed the damaged cylinder and piston and hopped on a night bus to Buenos Aires. I arrived at 6:30am and immediately started walking to get myself in the vicinity of all the biggest motorcycle shops to begin my search when they opened. I didn’t have a lot of luck. One shop said they might be able to replace it and they drove me to a machine shop to get their opinion. It was far from a sure thing and it would be about a week until it could get completed. I kept searching for the new replacement parts in the meantime. No luck! It seems they don’t exist in Argentina and Argentina is notorious for a long and frustrating import process. Part dealers were quoting 30-60 days, which I don’t have, to get me the parts I needed. Eventually, I settled on a racing shop that seemed to think they could repair my damaged cylinder and then modify a piston from a local Honda XRE300 to use on my Honda CRF300L. They seemed pretty smart and they spoke English which helped figure out a plan. They called my mechanic back at the breakdown location and ran him through the plan and ensured he would be able to properly adjust the engine to receive the modified piston. Sounds like it might just work! So I left the damaged parts with them so they could immediately start working on it. In the meantime, I continued to search and came up empty-handed on finding new parts. Waiting it is…
While this isn’t the solution or timing I wanted, I have to admit I wouldn’t have ever come to Buenos Aires if it wasn’t for this. Buenos Aires has been a wonderful break from the hard traveling and quick pace on the motorcycle. I’ve met some interesting characters at my hostel ($10 a night) here. I met a Jewish Brazilian who speaks 10 languages and is going to medical school here. I met a Russian who was a sniper in the reserves but deserted when the war with Ukraine broke out. Some very worldly and cultured conversations about what is going on in the world right now. It’s been interesting to hear about the election happening here as well. It’s like watching an alternate reality unfolding as I put myself in the Argentinian’s shoes.
While I have been waiting for the parts to be repaired I have been thinking a lot about how to make some lemonade out of all these recent lemons. I decided to go to a soccer game at the famous La Bombonera stadium in Buenos Aires and I couldn’t have made a better decision.
Tickets normally cost around $160 for foreigners trying to go since the tickets are only available to club members and are always sold out. I figured I would see if I could find myself a deal. I found a couple options online, but I ended up haggling a Facebook marketplace guy down to $60. When I went to pickup the ticket it turned out to just be this young kid. He was being really weird at McDonalds, where we met, about the ticket. He wanted to be very inconspicuous and said the fans want to rob him for the ticket and honestly I thought he was fun of crap, but I grabbed the ticket and gave it a quick look, and from my very limited knowledge it seemed legit. It was a plastic card with the game information printed on it which matched up form what I had seen on the internet. So I gave him the money and grabbed the ticket and left. I should have looked at the card more closely, but I’ll admit I bought into his inconspicuous behavior. Then I rode the bus back to the hostel. At the hostel, I looked at the ticket and realized the year on it had been scratched and was written poorly in ink a 3 over where it probably used to say 2022. I’m assuming I bought last year’s ticket…
After buying a $6 jersey from a street vendor I went to the game anyway and the old ticket got me past all the different police checkpoints on the way into the stadium. Then when I had to actually scan the ticket for the ticket takers the ticket predictably failed. I showed it to the ticket takers and they told me what I already knew… that it was fake.
So I stood around for a while thinking they might take pity on me and one lady tried, but they couldn’t do anything so I decided I would sneak in. Everything was completely barbed wire all around. I suppose the locals here are probably more desperate to watch their home team than me. I gave up pretty quickly on sneaking in. I decided I would wander around to all the different entries and try my luck at each one. At the next one I approached, I scanned again and showed them I got scammed and they felt bad, but still, they couldn’t do anything. I wasn’t going to give up. So I just stood there because if I left I definitely wasn’t going to go to the game. I stood there long enough for the ticket takers who saw my fake ticket to bond with me. Then some dude came along and had an extra ticket and the ticket takers immediately yelled for me and the dude with the extra ticket scanned me in all the way into the fan section!!
The fan section was absolutely wild! A much different sporting experience than I’ve ever experienced. The fans were singing and bouncing up and down and taking their shirts off. People were shoving and pushing each other in good fun. It was hilarious to just people-watch! The area was actually pretty bad for actually watching the game. I had a lot of fun despite the 0-0 score because the atmosphere was just that fun! At the end, I met a drunk friend group and I took a photo with a girl from their group. They were a lot of fun. What an absolutely wild experience! First, I wasn’t even supposed to be in Buenos Aires and then I bought a fake ticket and I still got in and had this amazing experience! God must watch me sometimes and think, “This idiot…” and then bless me anyway!
We will see what happens next. I’m praying the motorcycle repaired part longshot works out and I can take it easy and finish out the final leg of this journey and make it home for Thanksgiving! God is good!