17th December Puerto pilamedres – Trewel 99 miles

Now this whole trip is an Adventure so you cannot expect each day to be such and today we were striking camp and moving 100 miles down towards the South, a generally average day. Well we topped up with water and money and most importantly gas and headed off. We must have travelled at least 2 miles when on, brightly illuminated, came the red triangle on my dashboard and a battery symbol. Now I have just had the seat off to check my 2 way radio, have I trapped a wire or what. Now, not unusually here, it is blowing a hooley, so we decide to move on to the next town, Puerto Madryn to check this all out. By the time we reach the visitor centre I have all sorts running through my mind including, what if a wire is trapped and the bike catches fire, I pull into the visitor centre and Martin follows me in.
Let’s just check this out, I say, so out come the tools and we set about finding the fault. First comes the electronic analysis, and then the lets take this off and see, you can tell we were very systematic and analytical. Long story short the alternator belt was shot, not only was it shot, it was shredded. So off came the covers and there was the belt in a poor state. On further examination there was also a Yale key sticking through a small gap, and that is what had shredded the belt. What, how and lots of other questions crossed our mind. I am sure it is not my key and the only explanation we can come up with is that at sometime this key has been dropped and has lodged itself somewhere and after our 140 mile off road ride yesterday, this has shaken through this small gap and could not travel further as a keyring held it in position. This not only shredded the belt but the shredded bits also jammed the alternator. Well we managed to pick those out and recovered the key, easier said than done, and thanks to Martins foresight we had a spare belt, now to fit it. It is very tight and we think there was mention of a special tool, out with the Haynes manual, yep you definitely need a special tool. No you don’t, you need will and determination and an inventive mind. Two and a half hours later and we are done and back on the road.
Then the simple bit, the ride to Trewel, find a hotel with secure parking, this was interesting because it would seem that Martin had written down, ‘a secure apartment’, which is what we were shown, but we got there eventually. Amazingly Frank, our German friend also turned up at the same hotle, what are the odds of that, this is a large town, but having seen our bikes in the garage he took the room next door.
So a potentially uneventful day turned out, well fine in the end, but the middle............