Buenos Aires - Best online resources for buying a bike in BA

[CameraTraveler]

Buenos Aires - Best online resources for buying a bike in BA

I will be spending roughly a month in Buenos Aires and then 3 more months thru out Chile, Peru and Brazil.

I'm from California. Here if you want to find a bike online Craigslist, Ebay, Autotrader.com all have a huge selection but when I try them for Buenos Aires there are nearly no bikes to chose from.

I'm hoping there is another/larger source out there for people looking to buy a bike in Buenos Aires. Please help.

Ps. Hopefully this isn't asking too much but it might influence the answer you give - I would really prefer to buy a sidecar if possible.

Thanks ahead of time!

[TravellingStrom]

It is hard to buy as a foreign national a bike in Argentina, so I doubt there is any such source, unless it is a dealer.

Your best bet would be to try and buy from another traveller, preferably one from your own country, who is selling the bike down south. It has been done many times before and if you put an advert on here, or look for those selling, there is sure to be something around.

Cheers
TS

[TravellingStrom]

waterfox, Well, the first one is a rental company, which is not what he is asking about.

The second has no English translation, so it does not seem to be set up for foreigners in the first place, so I doubt it would be much use for a potential overseas buyer.

Maybe you can interprete the sit and let us know if they do sell to non residents?

TS

[CameraTraveler]

Some guys over at ADVrider forum had this to say:

Hi CameraTraveler,

Wifi skype calls and internet access are the shizzle. Much faster than third world cellular data. The advantage of wifi is that it is free and pervasive. Sure you could get a prepaid sim for Argentina at:

Argentina SIM Card - Prepaid cell phone service for travelers

But cellular data transmission rates would be glacially slow compared to wifi. And it is EXPENSIVE. 10.00/megabyte for the above plan. (Which is cheaper than the cellular roaming charges you would have to pay if you use your ATT Iphone sim. Currently 15.00/meg for data international roaming).

And when you get to Chile it is useless and you need to get another phone sim or cellular laptop modem from a Chilean carrier.

I used an Ipod touch to email and post ride reports on a recent trip to Panama and back this spring. Many others use inexpensive netbooks for posting ride reports and uploading pictures to the internet and making skype calls home. In every country you can find wireless internet even in unexpectedly out of the way places. It was fast and it was free. I would just walk around, even in rural Honduras in the little town next to the Copan Ruins until I got a free wifi hotspot and stand in the street and type away. Even in the jungle in southern Costa Rica there was a guesthouse with satelite internet access and wireless router where I stayed for a week for ten bucks a night. If the wifi was password protected I would ask for the password at the cafe or nice hotel I was walking by if I was in a town and they would write it down on a piece of paper. In fact I am typing this and sending it to you on a wifi connection from my nice neighbor across the street. He wrote down his password and let me use his wireless router since the signal comes in over at my house. I am gone alot riding around the world and don't want to pay for internet access I don't use.

Also, there are internet cafes and places with internet access all over the place for 1.00/hour or so. At least there were all over Central America. I had to stop at the Darien gap 30 miles short of South America but I imagine it is much the same there. I am heading to South America next winter, but am offering some suggestions until someone who has a better answer chimes in.

If you are camping in the boonies and there isn't any wifi in a small town nearby, there probably aren't any cell towers around for cell phone service or usb cellular modems for your laptop either I should think. Or places to plug in your laptop and cellphone to recharge the batteries.

Camping half the time in South America sounds nice on paper, but if you can stay in a nice place in a small village in Peru or Bolivia or whereever with breakfast served and wifi for under ten bucks while charging up your internet devices, the camping generally tends to play a more minor role in ones travels. And of course, part of the fun of travel is meeting interesting people in hostels and out of the way guesthouses out in the boonies.

Just some thoughts.

---------

When I was riding down south I didn’t feel like camping until Chile. The areas in Argentina and Chile that I wanted to camp had no cell coverage. In Patagonia, outside of the towns, you’ll not find any cell coverage either. In the towns there is always a place to get wifi (unless a large earthquake happens to hit Chile) and hostels are so cheap, with free wifi, that it doesn’t make sense (to me) to camp in a town.

If you must have access all the time then I would start looking into sat phones with data plans.

[CameraTraveler]

Great info here. Looks like the general consensus is don't expect to be able to connect out in the boonies so I'll do my work before and after riding/staying in those areas.

So WiFi is the way to go. It can be a real pain stopping and opening up a laptop again and again just to see if there is a strong/open signal so I found a few stand alone wireless detectors that one might be able to just strap on the bike next to the gps.

http://www.travelgearblog.com/archiv...10-review.html

http://www.markertek.com/Computer-Re...ing/HS10.xhtml

ThinkGeek :: Digital WiFi Detector

[silentboarder69]

Dakar-motos in Buenos Aires pretty much always have ex traveller bikes for sale, or know of people selling.

They don`t always reply to emails, you may want to send the same email with subject line in capitals, and send about five of them at once to catch their attention. Or call them. Sandra and Xavier.

[MikeS]

The OP appears to be asking two different things here (buying bikes and internet availability in South America) or am I missing something? I remember Xfiltrate posted a very detailed piece on buying in Argentina recently but it would definitely simplest to buy a US registered bike from someone finishing their trip in BA.

http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...+south+america

Re the other query, I'm sure Ted and others will agree that in S America, there are more than enough internet cafes in any place you'll come across that there's no real need to lug laptops about with you if you really don't have to (unlike the US where its mainly wi-fi and hardly any internet cafes)

Originally Posted by CameraTraveler

Great info here. Looks like the general consensus is don't expect to be able to connect out in the boonies so I'll do my work before and after riding/staying in those areas.

So WiFi is the way to go. It can be a real pain stopping and opening up a laptop again and again just to see if there is a strong/open signal so I found a few stand alone wireless detectors that one might be able to just strap on the bike next to the gps.

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