In and Out of Santiago...Quickly

We pulled into Santiago around 2PM. Santiago is a big city with a downtown area that rivals any modern sophisticated large urban center in the world. It is picturesque, with plenty of quaint shops, cultural areas and attractive common areas. We would have to leave checking out the city for later. Our first priority was to find a hotel and then get the motorcycles in for some maintenance. We found a really nice area in the downtown area with cobblestone streets and a number of reasonable price hotels. We stayed at the Hotel Plaza Londres. I highly recommend the hotel and the area. The area was close to the main plaza but far enough away to avoid the crowds. It is very quaint, quiet and within easy walking distance to Museums and, shop.

After we checked in we went to the dealership to check on getting the motorcycles serviced, new tires and a battery for Chris. We were greeted by a friendly service manager that told us we could have everything done if we could bring the motorcycles in by 8AM tomorrow. A great relief to us was that they had the rear Continental brand knobbie tires we wanted. The TKC80s we put on in Lima still had some life in them but it was clear they were not going to last to Ushuaia and for sure not the 2000 miles of asphalt back up to Buenos Aires. It all sounded too easy and too good to be true. Little did we know…..

We arrived at the dealership at 8AM. The service orders were promptly written up. We asked about the price of replacing the front tires. The quote for the fronts was fair so we said sure, replace the fronts also. With confidence that we were in good hands we walked to a restaurant a few blocks from the dealership that had real coffee and some sinful pastries. To really boost our spirits we discovered the place also had wifi. It was the kind of café that Starbucks has patterned itself after. It had outdoor tables adjoining a little park area to add to the atmosphere.

As we walked up we spotted a brand new MVAgusta and a beaming owner. After talking to the owner in Spanish, his lady friend, in perfect English, assured us the owner already knew he had a cool motorcycle and we didn’t need to repeatedly tell him.

Chris, after enjoying his double coffee, walked back up to the dealership to retrieve his computer. Our first sign of trouble was the motorcycles where still sitting in the place where we parked them an hour and a half ago. We wondered why they insisted we get the motorcycles there at 8AM only to have them sit out in the sun.

After killing most of the day at the café, we walked back to the dealership only to discover the motorcycles were being worked on but not done. Long story short they did not have the tires we needed and did not plan to solve the problem today because it was their closing time. So while they were closing up shop they found it easy to just ignoring our pleas to help get us underway today. All we got was manana-tomorrow. We resigned ourselves to our faith and unceremoniously caught a cab back to the hotel for the night with a promise that the motorcycles would be ready by 11AM tomorrow. What a day. We spent a total of 10 hours hanging around a dealership to get 2 hours worth of work not done. The following day we returned to the dealership. Of course 11AM came and went. By 1PM we were leaving the dealership and on our way out of Santiago with new tires, fresh oil and a real battery for Chris.