Disaster Part 2 – Towing a bike!

The next morning we were up early and caught the bus to Pargua, we arrived just after 11 am in Pargua and found our Scooters still tied to the pole outside the convenience store.

– Marius on the promenade at Puerto Montt

We had a dog looking over them and my bike was already clearly marked as his territory, so not only did it not want to start but smelled like dog urine as well.

After untying the bikes, I again did a little silent please please please let it start, the whining noise of a Scooter starter motor filled the morning air but there was just no spark to get it going.

So we were stuck along the road more than 55 miles south of Puerto Montt, I suggested we tried and hitch a ride with a passing truck and tied both bikes but Marius effectively pointed out that we going to have a nightmare just loading the bikes on the trucks seeing that they are so high.

After some pondering I suggested we tie the bikes together and slowly make our way to Puerto Montt. Yes, that means Marius will be towing my bike behind him with a 125cc Scooter.

– Rope tied around Trip’s bike

All tied up we set off on our journey. The towing was going quite well and we eventually averaged a speed of 50km per hour, so meaning it will take us just over 4 hours to reach Puerto Montt.

We stayed mainly on the side of the road and luckily there were a lot of roadworks that diverted the traffic, we just kept going on the side of the road and on the construction surfaces. After 3 hours I was starting to lose complete feeling in my ass just as we entered Puerto Montt safely and without being stopped by the police.

The dilemma of what we going to do with our bikes dawned on us from the day we bought them, Marius suggested that we find a cliff, set it on fire and make an awesome YouTube video. Although a brilliant idea the problem was the pollution it would cause, so we decided to either just give them away or try and sell them to a local dealer.

After navigation our way through heavy city traffic we parked the scooters and went walking about trying to find a dealer that will purchase our bikes. Nobody seemed interested in them so we decided to just tie them to a light pole by a petrol station and come back the next day and try again.

All tied up, we headed down to the bus station. On our way there we walked past a small bike dealership and Marius decided to ask the guy if he would be interested in purchasing two scooters. We shortly got a nod from him after we negotiated the price and he got them for a steal.

Back up to the Petrol Station we pushed our bikes down to the dealership and left him with all our gear and keys. We now need to figure out how to transfer the ownership to the Chilean guy before we head out on Friday to Puerto Natales.

Of course, it seems like the dealership has never ever bought a bike and we eventually figured out that we need to go to a notary.

– Artisans market in Peurto Montt

The next day, Thursday we went to fetch all the paperwork including the dealers’ ID and headed to a notary. I had hand written a letter translated with Google Translate transferring the ownership of our scooters to the dealership.

When we arrived at the notary they showed Marius a piece of paper the needed and requested his official Chilean Tax ID, well, of course, it takes 6 months and is somewhere is Valparaíso. Marius completely lost his humour and almost pushed the papers down the notaries throat, all we wanted was a stamp on the piece of paper, but it seemed that there was a lot more bureaucracy to get that.

They eventually told us that we had to go to the Sii office and find out from them what we should do, well the Sii office closes at 1 pm and it was already past 3.

The next day we headed to the Sii office and they could not help us, eventually, we got a piece of paper with Marius’s temporary tax number and a stamp. Walking out of the Sii office we notice another Notary office down the street and headed in there. They were friendly and could speak a bit of English, we showed them the piece of paper I wrote and they understood perfectly what we wanted.

The lady said that she needed the bikes registration documents, yes and not the one we had but other forms. We had to go to an internet cafe, pay 2500 pesos for each form and they will download and print it for us. She was kind enough to write everything we needed down on a piece of paper.

Forms in hand we headed back into the Notary and they quickly typed a letter for us and stamped it and in a matter of hours, we were done.

All documents in hand we handed them to the dealer and left as satisfied customers, the process that we thought would take a few hours took 3 days to sort out and we actually made more money back on our bikes than anticipated, and even with one bike not starting.

Disaster successfully averted!