[Above: Buenos Aires, Argentina, at night ]
(Photo by Neil Dana)

Journal by Nancy Olson

This morning, we awoke in time to have ourselves and our luggage ready to jump into a hired van that was standing ready to take us from our Palace Hotel in Azul to our hotel in Buenos Aires.

After quite a bit of bickering with the driver, who was incapable of achieving efficiency in packing, we finally realized that our weight problem (he had said eight people, plus all of our baggage, were too heavy for his van, and that we would need another) would go away if we offered him an additional 20 pesos.

We all packed in just fine and had a comfortable ride to Buenos Aires. On the way, we brainstormed ways of meeting our Feb. fundraising goal of $25,000. The bottom line is, we need to compel more people to go to our website and donate. The question is, how? It's a question we will be trying to answer during the final 5 months of our expedition.

When we arrived in Buenos Aires, I busied myself in the quest to find affordable airfare to Australia. As we were making our marathon drive from Ushuaia to Azul, I decided I will fly to Australia with my Santa Cruz mountain bike to cycle the east coast, from Cairns to Brisbane, while our vehicles are in transit. Other team members are heading for Brazil (Adam, Colin, Neil, Justin) or staying in B.A. (Todd and Baggarlys). More on all that in a future update.

As it turns out, flights to Oz are super-expensive, and I'm feeling a little discouraged about my big plan. I will still carry it out, however, as I have already fallen in love with the notion of biking 1100 miles down Australia's beautiful coastline.

G'day, ya'll,

Nancy

Logbook for February 19th, Day 111
Start: Zarate, Argentina
S: 34*05.879
W: 59*01.341
Finish: Buenos Aires, Argentina
S: 34*33.000
W: 58*30.000
Mileage: N/A
Notes: We met our van at 10:00 a.m. and somehow managed to get everybody and everything inside of it. During the hour-long drive, we had a brainstorming meeting to try to find ways of reaching our fundraising goals. There's a lot of work for us to do, yet. We arrived at our hotel in downtown Buenos Aires in time for Justin and the film guys, Colin, Neil, and Adam, to go to the Brazilian embassy to apply for visas so they can go to Carnival. We got settled into our hotel and did a little exploring in the city. (N.O.)

Help support our cause: The LONGITUDE Expedition is the longest journey ever attempted with a focus on Parkinson's Disease. The Drive Around the World team aims to raise money for Parkinson’s Disease research by driving four certified pre-owned Land Rover Discoverys around the globe following lines of longitude. Readers are encouraged to pledge small amounts of money per expedition-kilometer via a pledge form that can be found on our Parkinson’s page by clicking here. 100% of donations received go directly to Parkinson's research and all who donate $10 or more will be entered into a raffle to win an expedition-equipped Land Rover Discovery.