Getting ready to roll!

Golden Bay is where Joe, Simon and I were brought up. Its a small rural community surrounded by two National parks in the top of the South Island (New Zealand) . Its where we learnt to ride.

We have been planning this trip to South America for over a year. After much deliberation Joe and I have bought bikes specifically for this trip. After getting all the modifications completed our bikes are nearly ready to be shipped off.

My brother Simon now lives in Dawson City in the Yukon - Canada where he is gold mining with his wife Lil.

 The plan has changed a few times, but we have finally decided to start in Santiago- Chile go south to Ushuaia-Cape Horn, then back up to Peru taking in the best of off road scenery. We have tents and camping equipment.

Joe has travelled around Australia by motorcycle and is the most experienced of us when it comes to Adventure riding.

I started to learn Spanish going to a few night classes. Its not that easy, so I have a guide book and CD to listen to. Hopefully my Spanish will get better as we go along.

    This is photo of Joe's Suzuki DR650 and my Yamaha Tenere in the background. We rode out from Nelson to Port Ligar in the Marlborough sounds. A beautiful day. We loaded our bikes up with some of the gear we are going to take to South America. Lots of winding gravel roads and beautiful scenery.

This was also an opportunity to see how Joe's hand was standing up to riding after he injured his elbow in Chile in July whilst building mountain bike trails. Joe has nerve damage in his right hand hand and cannot open his fingers out properly yet.

We intend to ship our bikes out of Christchurch around the 1st October 2011. We anticipate it will take 6 weeks for the bikes to get to Valparaiso in Chile. We will meet up with Simon my brother around the 25th November. Simon will ship his bike from Canada to arrive at the same time.