The Lake District - The Tango and The Wind Riders Biker Meet.

'Taking it easy in Bariloche'

El Bolson is lovely. Not only because it's warm enough to take the thermal linings out of our bike trousers, and I'm down to only one pair of thermals underneath those, but it is very pretty. It's a bit of a hippy town and it never ceases to amaze me that they sell the same things at these markets all over the world and all of the vendors have the same hippy look about them. One good thing about this market though, was the fresh fruit. We could feel the vitamins kick in as soon as we'd finished our freshly pured strawberry and banana smoothies. It had been a while.
After siesta, I locate a bike shop with a tyre in stock for my rear wheel. Mike's not so lucky and the moto mechanico wants to charge him a fortune for the fork seals he busted on a pothole.

Heading up to Bariloche in search of a cheaper mechanico, we notice that there are loads of bikes on the roads. Ok, so once again they're lovely roads, but we haven't seen many bikes for quite a while and these ones are large i.e. the same engine size as mine if not bigger.

After a bit of looking around town and the best Lemon Meringue Pie, we've located a club that teaches the Tango. Classes don't kick off until 10:30pm so we head out for beer, the micro brewery type, and pizza. Donning our best kit, oil stained cargos and our cleanest, out of shape t-shirts, we hit the dance floor. Once we've stopped laughing, we start to move our oversized, akward feet somewhat in time the the music. Fortunately Mike is pretty good at counting the beat, the Tango is in something weird like 6/8 time. Not the easiest for me to follow. Eventually the few other people in the club can't bear to watch us destroy their national dance and Mike get's led off by a girl who actually knows what she's doing and I get swept around the dance floor by 'Harold Bishop', who manages to teach me a thing or two, and possibly made me look not half bad, even with my motorycling boots on. Patricia, our teacher had almost given up, but after a short break, she has Mike back up Tangoing around the room - with all of the leg flinging thrown in too.

All the dancing was a bit too much for me and Mike founds out the next morning that there is a Biker meet on that afternoon. Following the Circuito Chico route for 64km out of Bariloche then down to a campsite for beer and music. I'm usually not too keen on large gatherings of bikes, especially the leather chap wearing kind but figure it might be a bit of a laugh. So off we follow. I'm Mike's 'Chica', being lasy going pillion for the day. We're a bit late but catch them half way round the circuit. They leave as soon as we arrive but we don't let that put us off. Stopping for a bit of tourist stuff, we head off down to the campsite later in the afternoon. I know why I've never been to one of these meets before and I know never to go again, but god it was funny. There was so much testosterone flying around. Tug-o-wars and beer games. Who can rev their engine the loudest, you get the picture. They did have a great and cheap (no tourist prices for the local bikers) asado though.
The highlight of the evening though had to be the band. Jesus they were awful. Leather clad, tone deaf and playing air guitar, the lead singer had it all. We had to leave before they worked out we were laughing at them rather than having a jolly ol' time.

'Looks like Mike wants to join the Wind Riders'