20 April 2016: Brooooom brooom

So excited! We cleared the bikes today! It was easy!! I was looking for the catch right up until we rode away!!!! But let me start at the beginning…

We both crashed last night as we were just shattered. Until about 2 am! We were woken up by the vigorous and extremely loud….err….night time ‘exercising’ of our neighbours!

They seemed to be having a great time but we just wanted to sleep!!!

We eventually fell asleep again and woke up at 10am. I jumped out of bed and started packing everything up because I wanted to get the bikes. NOW!!! But I had to prod Channy into gear as she was bleary eyed and wanted sleep, or coffee, or to poke my eyes out. We finally got into a taxi and off we went to the shipping company.

I was expecting this to be a lengthy process with lots of back and forth between buildings and questions and fees. But I was dead wrong! The receiving company handed us our paperwork, pointed us in the direction of the Customs building, about a 2 minute walk away, and off we went.

The customs staff were incredibly friendly and told us they would need to inspect the bikes for soil and to allow them a couple of hours to get it all done. No problem! In the meantime we went into a place called Tim Hortons and Chantelle had her demon quenching coffee and we had something to eat. A couple of hours and $45 dollars later we had our clearance! So easy!

I went and grabbed a jerry can to get some fuel from the servo and some lovely man filled it and wouldn’t let me pay! I love Canadians! You guys rock!!

We handed the papers and $107 over to the shipper and they presented us with two BMW 1200GS boxes….

The forklift driver opened the lid and got very excited at the sight of the bike inside. ‘Nice bike” he said with a big smile!

Once he had bought the boxes outside we tore into them! It was so good to see our girls and you couldn’t have smacked the smiles off of our faces with a dead fish!

Then Scarlet was introduced to the forklift driver and he invited her to have a drive on the forklift.

Once freed we packed our gear onto them and headed out into the traffic. Which is on the wrong side of the road over here! I have only been on the wrong side once so far, and that was on a back alley! Whoops!

We were in peak hour traffic by this time and we were finally on our way! First stop tonight is a new hotel. We are celebrating and splurging a little. Tomorrow we start on the budget side of the trip.

Tomorrow…Vancouver Island!!