So we started this trip with no idea whether selling the bikes at the end would be straightforward or not, but always with the option to sell them back to the agent who helped us buy them (Andes Adventure Bikes), albeit at a very low price.

We paid about 4M CLP for the bikes, including the agents fees, local insurances, registration, our Chilean taxation registration, and the notarised documents we’d need to cross borders. The agent offered us 1.5M for them at the end, or could resell them for us with a 300k commission.

That offer was pretty low, so we thought we’d just advertise them ourselves and see how we went. So a few weeks ago we put an ad on Facebook marketplace, and one on the Horizons Unlimited’s buyers and sellers forum for South America.

We looked at other ads for the same bikes, and put ours below asking price, around 2.4M hoping for a quick sale. The Facebook ad response was a bit crazy, we had several people wanting to see them every day even though we still weren’t finished with them, so it was a bit if a juggle.

In the end though, a pilot from the US called Brett contacted me through Horizons, and offered to buy both of them for 2.25M ea, sight unseen, and paid a decent deposit a couple of days later.

Both bikes are in great condition, with barely a mark on them so we probably could have gotten a little more than that, but Brett bought them using a buyers agent who did all the paperwork for us, organised the notary, paid the transfer taxes and he paid us directly in AUD. So it was super easy.

We weren’t looking forward to dealing with the inevitable low ballers and tyre kickers you get on Marketplace, so we’re pretty pleased it’s been so hassle free.

Sally saying goodbye.

Brett had been really nice to deal with as well, so we spent some time cleaning and polishing, I serviced both bikes, put new headstem bearings in them, removed the lowering kit from Sally’s, and checked them over before dropping them off at the buyer’s agent.

All in all it really couldn’t have gone much better. Aside from servicing, the only time I needed to touch the bikes during our travels was to adjust the chains, and to put a headlight globe in mine.

(This is the workshop as Casa Mate Hostal where we prepared the bikes before the trip, and tidied them up at the end.)

The cost of having the bikes worked out at around AUD$27 per day, which is a fraction of the cost of renting, and less than half the cost of shipping two bikes both ways.

I guess it’s still a lot of money, but we rented one bike in NZ last year for just 4 days for about $1000. These cost us about $2900 for 3 months.

While it was good to get them sold, it’s tinged with the sadness that comes at the end of a great trip, now we need to find something to do with ourselves for the last couple of weeks before we go home… (Yes I do hear the miniature violin playing).

But it’s buses from here on in, which is pretty sucky when you’re used to riding 🙁

Today we’re at Valparaiso, a port town 2hrs from Santiago, tomorrow Vina del Mar, and from there we’re going to try for a small town just north of La Serena to go diving.

xo