Originally Posted by M_A_X

I plan to ride some of Chile and Argentinia with my father next January and February. It's most likely his last chance to go for a big ride before his back problems become too bad to make such a trip possible. Originally we were planning to do it once he retires in 3 years, but as it stands right now he might not be able to ride at all in 3 years, so we better do it as fast as possible.

I am 26, I have travelled the world for about two years, most recently I drove a 150cc bike 15.000km troughout south east asia (you can have a look at our experience here: South East Asia on Motorbikes ). I speak decent Spanish.

My dad is 61, he has been riding motorbikes his whole life, but never outside Europe. We know roughly where we want to go, and (think that we) have the necessary budget, the big question is how to get the bikes.


It would be GREAT if you HUBB members could help us out here! Anything that takes us across the Andes will do, so 250cc up to 750cc is our range. It should be sturdy and easily repairable.
As it stands, our options to get some motorbikes are:

-Rent them:
But it seems crazy expensive. The best option we found so far is charging about 5000 Dollars for two bikes for 4 weeks. Are there any decent renting options? Does a HUBB member rent out his bikes? we could provide a decent security payment just as long as the daily charge is low.

-Buy them:
There is a great sticky here about buying bikes in Santiago, but even in the best conditions it seems to take at least a week before we could get started, same thing goes for selling them for a decent price. We have only about 8 weeks, being stuck in Santiago for 2 weeks would take away a lot of our time.

-have them bought for us:
a) A good friend of mine lives in Iguazu, Brazil. He could buy two bikes for us and "hand them to us" for the time we ride. afterwards he would sell them. I guess the big question here is how easily we could take his bikes out of Brasil, into Argentinia and Chile. Would they have to be in our name?

b) I met an architect from Chile a couple of days ago here in Europe. He is a fellow biker and invited me to come and ride with him. Such a nice person! I could ask him to find two bikes for us, but it might be a bit much to ask, given that i hardly know him.

This is so important to us, I am more than grateful for any response leading us in the right direction. Go HUBB!