I’ve never had a new car or a new bike before so I haven’t had to deal with all the stuff involved with warranties and servicing etc. So no better way to learn all that stuff than in spanish. I had to get the bike serviced after the first 1000kms or one month. I had the 1000kms done in a week and took it in on the Saturday to get it serviced as organised. It happened to be on the weekend when Colombia was playing Argentina in the Copa America and they said to come back on Monday. They also said I should arrive at 6:00am to get in first. I arrived at 7:00am and was second in line. By the time they opened at 8:00am there was a bit of a queue. Including a few cops with their police bikes.

It was an interesting process. Once inside you take a number from the ticket machine which allocates the order of work. Fortunately, the first guy grabbed me a ticket as I had no idea what was going on and if he hadn’t, I would have ended up at the back of the queue. You leave your bike in a busy narrow passageway that leads to the workshop and then give all your details to a guy in a tiny office. You then go and sit in the waiting room which was a long skinny airconned room with big windows that look directly out into the workshop. you can see the windows under the Honda sign. I can’t imagine that happening in Australia.

You get to see the guys wander in and chat about the sad loss to Argentina and slowly get into working mode on the bikes. It was quite good to watch the young guy doing my bike. He appeared to do a good job and a lot more things than I was expecting. He even pulled both axels out and greased them. It was a good learning experience for me. I felt good about getting my bike done in this workshop as they seem to do all the police bikes and they are the same bike that I have.

After a while you get called back to the little office and given some paperwork and sent to the pay window. It is just a small counter with a one-way glass screen and a little half round opening about the size of half a bread and butter plate. If you bend over and peer in the hole you can see a woman at the desk. The payment is for the oil and filters you need for the service. Once you get your stamped receipt you take that back to the other guy and then the mechanic comes in and is given the stuff you just paid for. You then go back to the waiting room and watch him continue. The whole process was just over an hour.

I then left Honda and went up the road to another place I had discovered on Friday. They are basically a motorbike accessory shop called Motos Top, that sell all sorts of gear and accessories and then fit it for you if you want. They have four bays at the front of the shop with people doing bike mods. I wanted a different carry rack added to my bike so I could fit my panniers that I had brought with me from the States.

The guy had to cut down a larger rack with a grinder to make it fit and then drill new holes and find longer bolts. He did a better job than I could have. I was really impressed. It took him about two hours and when I went to pay, they said it was “on the house”. I tipped him $20 which he was happy about, but I was even happier because modifying and setting this rack up without all my tools would have been really difficult.

While I was there another guy on a Honda 300 rocked up to get a new tyre. Actually he was American so it was a new tire. He’d just driven down from the States over 6 weeks and was on his way south like me. We chatted for a while and will potentially run into each other somewhere along the way. I took a photo of his luggage set up. It was similar to mine but a different brand and hopefully mine won’t be as overloaded as his was.

My luggage system is a Mosko Moto Reckless 80. It’s supposed to fit easily to any bike. I figure it’s got hang on for 50,000kms so I wanted to give it the best chance I could of success. My over engineering brain struggled with the simplicity of it all. There was some assembly involved so I went back to the shaded breezy parking area of my original accommodation and set it up there. It only took a couple of hours in the end and most of that was just me overthinking everything. The new rack they fitted really sorted most of the initial worries that I had. I’ll be taking it on a 1500km test ride tomorrow and see how it all goes.