Five days left. As most of the equipment is in the bike box. Not much left to do.

Anyway as we travel together on one bike the major issue of the transport is the restriction of the luggage. As south America has a wide variety of climate zones we have to be prepared for minus 15 °C as well as windy rain and warm dry desert climate. With the spare parts, a tent, sleeping bags and cooking equipment the available space for clothe is restricted. So we looked for some advices how to save space:

http://www.spiegel.de/reise/fernweh/0,1518,788939,00.html

So we took a saw and shorten our toothbrushes and cut our sleeping bags in the middle. ;-)

As Germans sometimes are a little more focused on the negative side of what could happen, we discussed what could happen when I travel alone in the rural areas of the north of Chile. The first idea was to rent a satellite telephone. Not taking into account that while the trip the Rallye Dakar is taking place. http://www.dakar.com/index_DAKde.html There are no phones available for a reasonable price. After a little search in the forums I found the following little gadget:

http://www.findmespot.eu/gm/

It works through a satellite system and needs no GSM signal. The funny thing is that you could join my trip.

http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=07AQTaukgGxYeruVpgTSp2qDMl7rz8zO7
I will update my location whenever possible.

Some nice pictures of the area we will visit could be found here:

http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-58241.html