Fortunately, the checking-in clerks at Heathrow, Sau-Paulo and Buenos Aires all looked horrified when we approached, looking like homeless people going on holiday, so they dealt with us very quickly. (NB - taking a bike to pieces, sellotaping it into a smaller but equally heavy and cumbersome shape, then carrying it in a rubbish cardboard box, knocking over every child and old person you pass ... is not fun)
All in all though, the whole journey all went incredibly smoothly apart from the last ten minutes when we got caught in an enormous electrical storm just outside our destination airport (Salta). We stopped being impressed by the 'extraordinary colour' of the clouds when they started flashing, and the plane went a bit wobbly. Pilot did a sharp u-turn and we got chased by lightning for 200 miles in the wrong direction until he found a safe place to land. This meant being left in the wrong place, and our first night's accommodation was Tucaman airport's floor. Then the airport's power failed, hence the complete darkness surrounding the boxed bike above. Saved us a night's accommodation though.
Finally got to Salta the following day and put the bikes back together. True to form, we had a few 'spare bits' left over. Only limited damage to the bikes from the 3 separate flights; bent front racks on the panorama, and a few scrathes and loose nuts on both (bikes, not us).
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