After acquiring my bike permit I pushed on in pouring rain to Pamplona, then again in pouring rain the next day across the 12,000 foot Berlin Pass and onto Medellin where I had been over a year before.  I pulled into Alberts place, which is now an Irish Pub and  I met up  with John.  John is a total character and one of the funniest guys I have ever met.  Here he is getting ready to take off on the road once again on the Mad Max F650 GS.

Silviu fron Caracas also stopped by on a brand spanking new KTM 990R.  He was in Bogota for work and borrowed his buddy’s new KTM to come visit us in Medellin.  You know if your buddy will let you ride his new 990, he is a good buddy.

After hanging out at Alberts in Medellin for a while, I made my way to Bogota to visit some folks whom I had met last year.  When I got to Bogota, it rained, hard, all day, everyday.

My friend Agueda, whom I met last year in Bogota.  It was really great to see her again, such a wonderful woman.  I wound up staying at her place in Bogota and got to spend quite a bit of time with her.  As a result, my Spanish improved rapidly.  At her house, no one speaks a word of English.  It’s Spanish, 24/7, and just what I needed.

Of course, it rained some more……

Despite all the rain, Bogota is an interesting city and as usual, I enjoyed my time there.

Lots of great street art too.

These guys are of course world famous.

My city tour guides, Agueda’s son Schneider on the right and his buddy Daniel on the left.  Really funny guys, a joke a minute.  They were supposed to be doing some kind of research in the library for a university class, but they decided to skip class and walk around the city with me and drink expensive coffee.  Of course Schneider was quick to tell me, “dont tell my Mom that we hung out in the city all day, because I was supposed to be at class.”

Political cartoons are pretty common around Bogota.

When the rain stopped for all of  3 hours a week, I took a little ride up to Calera, a nice tranquilo little pueblo just outside and above Bogota.  Colombia is filled with mellow little pueblos like this.

The view from above Bogota.

For Semana Santa, (Easter Week) Agueda and I got on the bike and rode all over Colombia.  It of course rained, almost all day, everyday.  Multiple roads were closed because of numerous landslides.

Hurry up and wait…..

And wait some more…..

Another picturesque little town which I have forgotten the name of.

The plaza in Villa de Leyva.

Ummm………ribs…….

We then arrived at the Desierto Tatacoa.

Its pretty cool to see the cacti and the semi arid climate here in the middle of Colombia.

I dont know if I would call it a proper desert, since it sees quite a bit of rain.  But it does have cactus and is much drier than the surrounding areas.

Then we headed back into the landslides south toward San Augustin.  A view like this was pretty common during all the rains.  Thankfully we encountered only small slides on this day and no big road closers.  However, during Semana Santa, 18 major routes were completely closed in Colombia due to landslides and there was significant flooding around the major river systems.  The whole country was pretty much a mess and tens of thousands of people were displaced from their homes.

Yet another picturesque little pueblo which I have also forgotten the name of.

San Augustin itself is super touristy.  It has some ruins which we opted to skip since it was going to cost 30 bucks to go see them.   Instead, we decided to just ride around the San Augustin area and take in the views.  It was a good call.  After Mexico, Guatemala and Peru last year, I was kind of “ruined out” anyway.  This is about a touristy as I like to get.

The scenery in Colombia never fails to impress.

We stayed at a nearby finca that had a few winged pets flying around.

Never fails to impress.  Did I already say that?  I love riding in Colombia.  This is the view on the way up from Ibague to the southern end of Parque de los Nevados.

Agueda is diggin the ride through the mountains on dirt roads.  She even refers to my bike as “tu esposa” or, “your wife.”  How funny.

From here we wanted to go on the north side of the park and go see the 15,000 foot snow capped volcanoes since Agueda had never seen snow before.  So we went from Ibague to Armenia, Pereira, Manizales to get to the north end of the park.  Another cool little hotel we stayed at in a small pueblo along the way, not far outside of Pereira.

The next day we arrived at Manizales only to discover that the main road that goes to the park was blocked just outside of town.  The police at the road block said there were 3 large landslides and they might be cleared within a week.  Bummer.  Undeterred, I asked the cop if there was an alternate route.  He said that there was, and added that it was open, but impassable even for 4X4′s and I would never make it on the bike, and to even try it would be “muy bravo.” Perfect.  Thats just to the kind of stuff I love to do.  I talked it over with Agueda, and she was game to try to too.  Agueda has no riding gear, no rain gear, but she doesn’t care, she wants to check it out.  She tells me “Vamos Vicente!” Muy brava, that girl!  She never complains about anything.

So we find the start of the alternate route, and we see that it’s a good road.  I am a little disappointed to tell you the truth.  That cop didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.

Finally, after a few miles, it starts to get fun and I’m much happier about it.  Flat footing the 990, ha!

I guess that cop wasn’t lying after all.  It actually is a little challenging, even for 4X4′s.

But the mighty KTM can handle it, even with street tires, no problema.  Actually in this kind of slop, it doesn’t matter what kind of tires you have, they all get packed with mud.  There was one spot where the rear wheel was just spinning.  I got too slow, so I had to push a little.

But I finally got it sorted.  There were around half a dozen sections like this I reckon.  Good fun!

The rest of the road was really, really fun.  More mud pits, but a nice sustained rutted up rocky and muddy two track most of the way, with big water filled holes, perfect stuff.  I taught Agueda to stand up and hold onto my waist through this stuff explaining to her how to balance on the passenger pegs and let the bike move beneath her.  She caught on quickly and actually said she was having a blast, hooting and hollering through the rough sections.  It was a really fun ride, even 2 up.  I highly recommend this over the paved highway from Manizales, but you might want to do it when its dry.

We started climbing and finally got to the entrance of the Parque de los Nevados.  Its raining, its foggy, its cold.  Agueda is soaking wet and shivering.  I’m soaked as well, but warm from all the work riding up the two track.

We arrive at the park entrance and the people there are shocked to see us.  They said that they have not seen any tourists for over a week, all of Semana Santa.  However, it’s  at the park entrance that we learn that motos are not allowed in the park.  Huh?  That’s a stupid rule, this is Colombia!  Bummer.  But the guy tells us, no problem, you can hire a car for a few bucks and you must hire a guide.  Ok, lets do it.  Then another guy chimes in and says that none of the drivers are working because there are no tourists because of all the landslides and all the cars are out of gas.  Well that’s just great.  Still, they will not let us go in with the moto.  Defeated, we leave the park, pretty bummed out about the whole thing.

So, in the fog and fading light, we decide to head for the nearest small town a couple of hours away, Murillo.  Its an incredibly scenic ride, except for the fog, and the road headed down is quite good compared to the one we took from Manizales, but not nearly as fun.

But the scenery is impressive as we descend from almost 14,000 feet.

However, for a brief minute before the oncoming dusk, the rain stopped, the fog lifted, and the clouds parted for mere seconds to reveal this.  That’s right, snow capped peaks in Colombia.  How cool is that?  Agueda was stoked as this was the first time she had ever seen snow.

Just after dark, wee got down to Murillo, a very small pueblo, and checked into the only hotel in town.  There was a huge end of Semana Santa fiesta going on and the whole town was drinking and partying in the streets.  When we rode through the festivities on the main street, people looked at us like we just stepped off of a spaceship.  We had a great time that night at the town fiesta drinking a few well deserved beers and eating meat.

The next day we headed back to Bogota and I prepared to ship the bike off to Panama.  My second visit to Colombia was every bit as fun as the first.  I said it before over a year ago and I still believe it, Colombia is motorcycle heaven.

With a heavy heart, I prepared to leave my friend Agueda and the country that I have come to love.   I bid them both a fond farewell and began the process of shipping my bike and myself around the Darien gap into Panama to begin the long journey back home.

Saludos.

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

OK, whatever.  Let’s go to Venezuela and check it out.

Border formalities were straightforward and I was checked into Venezuela inside of 30 minutes with zero hassles.  The border officials were polite and professional as well.  The first town I pulled into was Santa Elena, just a few miles from the border.  As I was wandering around town looking for a hotel, a local guy on a BMW 1200GS pulled up to me and asked me if i had a place to stay.  I told him, not yet, so he simply said, “follow me.” It turns out that this guy Mario, owns a hotel in town with nice rooms and good parking.  He gave me a discount to stay at his hotel, total cost per night…….free.  After 10 minutes of arriving, Mario told to sit down, handed me an ice cold beer, had one of his employees wash all my clothes, and had another guy washing all the jungle mud off of my bike.  Yup, it sure looks like its a highly dangerous country filled will horrible people that hate gringos and I probably should have stayed away, LOL!

Thanks so much for the great hospitality Mario!!!!

One of the main attractions of Venezuela is the Gran Sabana, a 5000 foot plateau of Mesas and countless waterfalls with scenic and safe camping.  Unfortunately, just as I started into the Gran Sabana, it started raining, and never stopped.  Looks like I brought all that fine weather with me from Brazil.  So not being keen on camping in the pouring rain for days, I decided to press on and head toward Caracas for some much needed TLC for the bike, and to meet a guy named Silviu whom I have only known from a motorcycle internet forum.

Just like normal, the bike packed full of bags draws a curious crowd.

I arrived in Caracas and Silviu hooked me up with a place to freshen up the bike.  The lone KTM around all those big BMW’s.  The guy in the pic with me owned the first and only local Super Enduro I had seen in the Americas.

I did an oil change, air filter, chain and sprockets, fresh rubber, and even installed new friction plates for the clutch.  The old ones still had plenty of life left in them after 40,000 miles, but I wanted to make sure the clutch would get me home.  Also did a little overdue welding on the crappy HB luggage rack, cleaned the clutch oil jet, replaced a bunch of missing fasteners etc, etc.

This is a rear Ironman sprocket with 40,000 miles on it compared to the new one on top.  Impressive.  In contrast, a normal steel sprocket lasts about 10,000 miles before its totally shot.

Fresh rubber is always welcome.  One thing to note is that my rear Woodys Superlace sealed rear wheel started leaking air.  Turns out that there are numerous cracks in the wheel around the spoke nipples.  So, I had to start running a tube in the rear.  The tubeless rear was nice while it lasted though.

Each day I traveled in Venezuela, I was shocked at how much money I had in my pocket at the end of the day.  Well, there is a reason for this.  Check out the gas pump.  Thats 13.5 liters for 1.3 B.  The unofficial exchange rate is 8 B to the dollar.  So, 1 B = 12 cents.  Thats about 1 penny a liter.  4 cents per gallon for gasoline.  I could fill my bike entirely for 28 cents.  Put it this way, gasoline is so cheap that at some places I would fill up my bike, try to pay the attendant, and he would just wave me away.  Too funny.

Overlooking Caracas.

After about a week in Caracas, Sliviu led me out of the city and I was on my way to Colombia.  Silviu invited me into his home, and took days off of work to help me with whatever I needed.  He drove me around town chasing down tires and parts and helped me with everything I needed to do to the bike.  What incredible hospitality!  Thanks so much hermano!

I thought it was funny when I parted ways with Silviu he told me to send him an email when I was “safe in Colombia.”  How things change.

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

Oiapoque is a small unremarkable jungle river town, but sizable enough to have several choices for hotels and plenty of eateries.

A bridge between Brazil and French Guiana has been under construction for quite a while, and was supposed to be finished in 2007, but its not even close to being complete. People told me it would be finished before the 2012 World Cup, but given how far behind schedule they are now, I wouldn’t anticipate it being finished before the 2016 World Cup.

So, after doing the usual Immigration and Customs checks out of Brazil (coordinates provided above) you have a couple of choices for crossing the river. First is a large ferry that starts running about 9 am first leaving from the Oiapoque side and will run maybe 3 crossings a day. If other vehicles want to use that ferry the same time as you, its fine because then it will only cost you about 5o Euros. However, when I was there, I was the only one wanting to get on the ferry at the time. Price? How about 200 Euros! Since there was no way in hell I was going to pay 200 Euros for a 15 minute boat ride I opted for a plan B.

Along the river in Oiapoque there will be a line of guys trying to sell you a boat trip to French Guiana in long motorized canoes. They also assured me that they were capable of taking a motorcycle. Well, lets see how that works out.

So, I negotiated a price of 40 Reais for the trip thinking wow, that’s cheap. However, when I showed up with the bike, the kids balked, saying no way were they taking me and my moto for that price. when I said moto, they must have pictured a Honda or Chinese 125. OK, fair enough. they wanted 100 Reais but we finally settled on 60 I think, or about $35.

Once over into St. Georges, French Guiana you simply have to go to the police station a few blocks from the river and get your passport stamped. It was not necessary to do any paperwork nor was in necessary to procure any kind of permit for the motorcycle, which was a nice change. However, they will tell you that you need to buy insurance when you get to Cayenne. OK, well that sounds easy enough.

Once out of St. Georges (a very small but pleasant village) the road to Cayenne is a pleasure to ride. Enjoyable pavement twisties all the way to Cayenne through scenic, uncut jungle. Before I crossed the border, The Brazilian Police warned me not to stop for anything or anyone along the road to Cayenne because it is very dangerous. I got the same warnings from the French police as well.   I didn’t have any issues at all.   I did however see a few recently stripped and burned out cars along the road, but again I don’t know what to make of the police warnings, so normal solo travel precautions apply.

I pulled into Cayenne which is a nice enough town for a few days. Everything is just like France. They use Euros, the cars have French license plates, the phone numbers are the same code as in France, TV is in French, News is from France, people speak French and are quick to remind me that for all intents and purposes, I am in France. Its France in the jungle. Even more bizarre was that the prices of everything are higher than in France. I did not expect this. The good news is that the food and wine is excellent and credit cards are accepted just about everywhere.

First order of business while in Cayenne was to procure my Suriname visa. So, I swing by the Suriname Consulate, wait in line for an hour, fill out a form, wait for another hour, go get a passport picture a few blocks away, come back, fill out another form, wait another hour, then pay $105 Euros, leave my passport and go back to the hotel. All of this takes about half a day. They gave me a receipt that had a date and time to return to collect my passport which said to come back 6 days later at 1400 hours. Usually, its only a 2 business day wait. But, I showed up just before a 4 day holiday weekend. Doh!

Now I had time to kill while waiting on my passport for 6 days. So I figured that I would try to buy this French Guiana insurance that everyone said that I needed. I must have gone to over a dozen insurance places but all I could find was a year long policy which costs 800 Euros and up. The places that used to sell 3 month policies stopped that practice several months prior and all that was available now was a 1 year policy. Needless to say, I did not spend 800 Euros on insurance.  More on that later.

I know some basic French phrases from school so I was looking forward to using that knowledge that had been rusting away in my brain for so many years. However, I found that when I tried to talk to some people in French, they would ignore me. OK, fair enough, my French sucks. At this one insurance place I told the guy over and over again, in French that I was looking for a 3 month insurance policy. He kept saying that he didnt understand. Then in English, he tells me that if I want to do anything here I must speak better French because this is France. That was the first and last English sentence he spoke to me.  Nice attitude.  So I left.

On another occasion I went to an internet place to print some stuff out. I ask the kid working there, how much it costs to print a document. He simply looked up at me and shooed me away with his hands and a scowl on his face. LOL! If I was at home I would have smacked the kid upside his head. I had several more similar incidents like this over the next week. Really strange. Anyway, there were friendly people too, but it seemed that it was about 25% chance that someone would either ignore me or just be outright rude when I tried to talk to someone or ask them a question. So different from friendly Brazil.

Since I had to wait a week for the visa, I figured that this was a perfect opportunity to go check out the Space Center and maybe do a Devil’s Island tour. While leaving Cayenne to go to the Space Center, I was stopped at a police control. The French police all speak excellent English and were without fail polite and professional. Remember, I dont have my passport, its at the Suriname Consulate. I explain this to the cop and show him a copy of my passport with the French Guiana stamp. He then tells me that I must have the original passport with me and says that I need to return to Cayenne and stay there until I get my passport back from the consulate. Well that’s just great. So plan B was to just book a tour that left from Cayenne. That seems easy enough. I go to book a tour and the first thing they want is to see my passport. Seems that I have to carry it with me on the tour. OK, well scrap that plan. So I basically sat around Cayenne and did nothing for a week. I did however manage to buy insurance for Suriname, right across the street from the Suriname consulate in Cayenne. Then, when I finally got my passport back, I just wanted out of France. no pictures, no tourist stuff, nada. ( I know, bad blogger) I simply headed for the Suriname border. Then came the problem with the insurance.

When entering French Guiana at St. Georges,  the customs people simply told me to purchase insurance in Cayenne and sent me on my way.  However, as I pulled up to ferry crossing to leave French Guiana and enter Suriname, for some strange reason, it was now essential that I have insurance in order to leave the country.  The police at the immigration control were nice enough, but they needed to see the insurance before they would allow me to leave the country.  I had anticipated this so I procured and printed out some European green card insurance that said it was good for French Guiana.  Dont ask me how I got it, because I cant tell you.

Well, I wasn’t sure that they would accept my insurance, so when I showed up, I spoke Spanish mixed with Portuguese to the French cops.  They of course spoke perfect English.  They were really confused why some white boy from the States could not understand English.  Well, the bottom line is that the insurance worked, sort of.  They told me over and over again in English that my insurance was not good enough because it didn’t specifically say it was good for France, and I would have to go back and buy some in Cayenne.  So I smiled and said muchas gracias over and over again and rode the 50 meters down to the ferry!  One cop chased me onto the ferry, and stamped my passport and told me to have a nice trip.  That was close.   I needed a break and I got lucky.  If you have insurance that is good for France, I don’t think you will have any problems leaving the country at St. Laurent.  If you are going the opposite direction and are entering at St. Laurent, make you have your French insurance in order.

The short Ferry ride to Suriname, formerly known as Dutch Guiana.

Its a quick  15 minute ferry ride from St. Laurent, French Guiana across the river to Albina, Suriname.  The ferry runs a few times a day, 1100, 1400, and 1700 departures from St. Laurent if I recall correctly, so plan accordingly.  If you miss the ferry, St. Laurent is a perfectly fine town in which to spend the night and includes several hotel options. Albina on the other hand, didn’t look like it had much going for it.

At the immigration  and customs control on the Suriname side everything was straight forward and efficient since I had already purchased my Suriname insurance in Cayenne.  Also, everyone I dealt with on the Suriname side spoke very good English, which was fortunate, because my Dutch is kinda rusty.

However, for some strange reason, the customs guy would only give me a 7 day permit for my bike.  I asked for more time, but he said, “no, 7 days is all you get.”  In other words, thanks for paying $135 bucks for a 60 day visa, now get the hell out of my country.  I think he was just in a cranky mood, and Suriname is a small enough country so 7 days it is.  I can deal with it.  I think you can get more time if you want, or extend your vehicle permit, as I felt I either caught this guy on a bad day, or he was just being difficult.

Then, this same guy warned me not to stop for any reason on the road to Paramaribo before the washed out bridge on the main road.  Again, I didn’t know what to make of this warning, as I had no problems, nor did I see the potential for thieves or other road bandits.  I elected not to stop, even for pictures, but I did encounter a slight problem on the road to Paramaribo.

As you leave the ferry crossing, the main road to Paramaribo is potholed dirt, and is pretty much devoid of traffic, so I didnt see any other cars for a couple of miles.  I was really moving, sliding around one corner, and all of a sudden I was confronted with a truck coming at me in my lane, honking, and flashing his lights.  No big deal, its South America.  This kind of thing is pretty normal and happens all the time, so I just swerved out of his way into the opposite lane.  Well, a while later I was coming around another corner and this time I was met by an SUV in my lane, moving at a high rate of speed, honking and flashing his lights at me.  Again, I swerved out of his way.   As I went a little further,  making really good time down this crappy dirt road, I started to see speed limit signs on the side of the road.  However, the signs, although facing me, were on the left side of the road.  Thats kind of bizarre I thought.   Then it finally dawned on me……..Holy crap!  They drive on the left side of the road here!   Yeah, sometimes I’m a little slow, but I catch on eventually.

Suriname has an interesting culture of people from African, East Indian, and Asian descent.  Its the smallest sovereign state in South America and has a population of roughly half a million people, most of whom live in the northern coastal region near or in the capital, Paramaribo.

Although Dutch is the official language, Suriname is one of the most multilingual countries in the world.   A form of Creole called Sranan Tongo is widely used among much of the population.  In addition you will also hear a form of Hindi called  Sarinami  as well as Javanese.  There are numerous other languages used to include Cantonese, Mandarin, and of course the Amerindian languages.  However,  English is also widely spoken, as is Portuguese, even out in the boonies,  so I was quite happy to be able to speak English once again.

You will encounter people of all colors.  There are many Dutch tourists in Paramaribo, a fact which I found curious.  As well you will meet people of African, East Indian, Amerindian, and Asian descent.

The people are generally very polite and helpful.  Trying to be respectful of whatever language people preferred, before engaging in conversation I would ask someone if they spoke English.  However my question was usually answered with a bit of an attitude like, “of course you idiot, we can all speak English here,” so from then on I switched to, “Hello, may I speak English?” and that was actually very well received and produced a smile from most folks.

Any country where you can put a license plate a 2 stoke is a good country in my opinion.

At times in Paramaribo I felt as if I was looking at buildings that were imported from Amsterdam.

Henck Arron, prime minister of Suriname when the Dutch granted independence.

After a couple of rainy days in Paramaribo I hit the road for Nieuw Nickerie on the border with Guyana.  Nieuw Nickerie is a small town with a significant population of people of East Indian descent.  I heard more Hindi being spoken than anything else.   Its a fine town for one day, but other than that there is not too much of interest except for gigantic clouds of mosquitoes that patrol the streets around dusk.  Once you see all the flooded rice fields in the area, you begin to understand the reason for all the mosquitoes.

These canals of standing water run right through town as well.  Mosquito Ranch, as I like to call it.

I didn’t realize that Fred G. Sanford lives here.

Muddy streets, plenty of mosquitoes.

However, I found Nieuw Nickerie to be an interesting place to walk around, just don’t do it at dusk or you will missing a pint of blood when you get back to your hotel.

The next morning I left town to catch the ferry to Guyana.  The South Drain Ferry departs for Moleson Creek, Guyana at 1100 hours.  You could conceivably leave Paramaribo at the crack of dawn and skip Nickerie all together in order to catch the 1100 ferry, but I never can seem to wake up that early.

While waiting for the ferry I had a chance to talk to some of the locals.  There was a school group from Georgetown which was going home after a trip to Paramaribo.  I talked to the teacher (on the right in the photo)  for quite a while.  She couldn’t get over the fact that I had ridden my motorcycle to Guyana.  As she thought about it a little longer, she asked me why in the heck I wanted to come to Guyana.  She also said that if I stayed in Georgetown a few days she was going to call the newspaper and the radio station and have me do an interview.   Then she wanted to put me on the local TV news for a few minutes as well.  I politely declined as I’m a little uncomfortable with that kind of stuff.

This is Steven.  He is 10.  He lost both of his parents last year and lives with an aunt in one of the poorer slums of Georgetown.  He was extremely curious about my motorcycle and my trip.  He is a very intelligent kid and asked me dozens of questions.  When I told him that I was visiting all the countries in America over the last year and half he couldn’t quite get his head around it.  He asked if I was writer for a motorcycle magazine or something like that.  When I told him I was just a traveler, he was amazed.  The next question went exactly like this, word for word.  “Mr. Vincent, I would like to do something like this someday.  Can you tell me how you financed your trip and if you had any opportunities to get sponsors to offset some of the costs?”  I was floored that this was coming form a 10 year old and I think my jaw dropped a little.  At that point the teacher scolded him saying “Steven you shouldn’t ask such nosy questions to strangers, its not polite.”  I assured the teacher that it was fine and told Steven that he could ask me as many questions as he liked.  I think Steven and I both walked away from our meeting with something to think about.

A pretty decent sized ferry makes the trip between Nickerie and Moleson Creek.

And into Guyana, formerly known as British Guiana.  Since I had purchased my Guyana insurance in Paramaribo, immigration and customs was quick to process me and my bike into the country.  Make sure you have a couple one dollar bills or local currency handy to pay the fee for a form that is required by the Guyana Customs.  Also, if you don’t buy insurance while in Paramaribo you can still get it when you enter Guyana, but it involves a cab ride into the nearest town to purchase the insurance, then they will process your bike into the country.  This process can take several hours, so purchasing before hand in Paramaribo would be time well spent.

Guyana has a population of about 800,000 and 90% of that population lives in the coastal region, or on about 10% of the landmass.  The remainder of the land being unspoiled forests and savanna.  English is the official language, so the ease of communication was a welcome thing, just as in Suriname.

One other thing to note is that in Guyana, they also drive on the left side of the road.  Its easy to adapt to driving on the left side, however, I found that when I was approaching roundabouts, I had to think about it for a bit before I entered them.  Also, it might not be a bad idea to tape an arrow on your windscreen as a reminder that the right side is suicide, since at times I found myself a bit, well, confused for a few seconds when starting a new day of riding.

Along the coast to Georgetown is a heavily populated agriculture area comprised of large sugar cane fields.  Georgetown itself has the reputation of being a fairly dangerous city.  However, I walked all over the city without problems, but I did it during the day.  At night in places it might not be prudent to walk around by yourself.  Normal precautions apply.

However, do not let internet and backpackers stories of danger turn you off to Guyana.  The people in Guyana were extremely friendly, warm, helpful and polite.  I was very impressed and felt welcome in their country.  In addition, they were all fascinated by an overland traveler on a motorcycle and asked numerous questions about me and my trip.  It was nice to be able to answer these questions in my native language as well.  A big thumbs up for the people in Guyana.

Although Georgetown is now seems to be in a state of disrepair and quite dirty, you can see why it was once the gem of the Caribbean.  The old structures are still intact, if a bit run down, but the streets for the most part are filled with garbage.

St. Georges Anglican Cathedral with a height of 143 feet is one of the tallest wooden churches in the world.

Generally speaking, the infrastructure in Georgetown is in a state of disrepair as well.

By order of……..  The Management.

I thought this tow truck was pretty cool.  You wreck em, we fix em.

The road from Georgetown south to Lethem on the Brazilian border has a reputation of being a terrible road.  However, I found it to be a bit nicer than BR-156 in Brazil.  Although it lacked the mud of BR-156 it sported countless large water filled potholes many of which were impossible to avoid if you were riding any faster than a jog.   The dirt starts in the town of Linden and continues south all the way to the border.  For the most part, its a wide solid surface, albeit covered in the huge water filled potholes.  Its generally a good idea to avoid these holes as some of them can be a couple of feet deep.  If you ride this road at speed, it will beat the heck out of you and your bike due to the big holes.

However, much of the road is in good shape as well.

One thing to note is that there is a police checkpoint at the village of Mabura Hill.  This check point does not have a gate, nor will anyone stop you.  However, if you fail to stop and check in with the police, they will call the check point near the Essequibo river, 60 miles further down the road and you will be required to turn around and back track 60 miles for that little oversight.  So, don’t forget to stop at Mabura Hill!

As I neared the river, I came upon what looked like large shallow puddles of water completely covering the road.   These puddles were actually water filled dips in the road and a few of them were deep enough to cause surprise and concern.  At several holes, the water was only a few inches below the intake of the bike, so use caution when going though these.

There is a another ferry crossing at the Essequibo river.  The ferry runs about every hour and motorcycles go for free.  However, if there are no cars, you will wait until a paying car shows up before the ferry will depart.  I was the only one at the ferry crossing so they wouldn’t depart for the other side of the river.  I offered to pay the price a car would pay so I could get going, but the ferry operator balked at that, saying he had to wait for a car.  Well, OK.  I thought that money was money, but apparently, rules are rules.  I wound up waiting about 2 hours, taking a nap on the deck of the ferry and trying to dry out.

After the ferry crossing you will enter the Iwokrama Rain Forest, a protected area of beautiful primary forest.  You will be required to register at a checkpoint before entering the protected area.  Also there is a lodge nearby call the Iwokrama Lodge that has camping and very expensive rooms, a restaurant, and supposedly the coldest beer in Guyana.  Unfortunately, I didn’t stop to go check out the lodge or the ice cold beer, as I was running short on daylight and was headed for Rockview Lodge, another hour or so down the road.

Beautiful ride through the forest, just amazing trees along this section.

Its possible to ride from Georgetown to Lethem in a day if you get a very early start, however I stopped at the Rockview Lodge near the Amerindian village of Annai, just as you come out of the rain forest and into the savanna.

The airstrip at Rockview.  Rockview/Annai sees a couple of flights a day from Georgetown, three days a week I believe.

The lodge has very nice rooms for 50 bucks, or you can camp or get a much cheaper room at the Oasis, a store/hostel a half a mile away on the main road, also owned by Rockview Lodge.  I decided to splurge and stay at the lodge.  The place is super tranquilo, has a beautiful park like setting on the edge of the savanna, and the food is excellent.  It is owned by a British ex-pat named Collin, whom has lived and worked in Guyana for over 40 years.  Collin is a very interesting person to talk with and also is very friendly and accommodating to moto travelers who come through and stay at his place.  He said that he rarely has overland travelers come through and is always interested to hear their travel stories.  Years ago, Collin worked for the British version of the Peace Corps, and much to his chagrin, actually helped build the airstrip at Jonestown.  He said that if he had any idea what the Peoples Temple and Jim Jones was all about, he would have never participated in the project.  I could have talked to Collin for hours.   If you come through here, I highly recommend a night or two at Rockview, or at least stop by and say hello to Collin.

Some of the very nice folks at Rockview.

Leaving Annai village and advancing further into the savanna, I got the distinct feeling that I could actually be in Africa.  I almost expected to look across the savanna and see giraffes, lions and elephants.

I think I see some zebras running around out there in the savanna.  I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I was in Africa.  After all, this part of South America was once connected with West Africa.

A quick ride from Rockview found me at the border with Brazil.  The formalities exiting Guyana were quick and straightforward.  You will then come to the Brazil immigration and customs.  Its straight forward as well, however they wanted copies of a bunch of stuff including the passport page with my new Brazil entry stamp and told me that I had to ride into the town center to make the copies.  However a very nice woman at the Brazil Fazenda (Customs) for some reason took a liking to me and said if I promised to come back and see her soon, she would make the copies for me.  I of course promised to do that.

So ends the trip through the Guianas.  From a cultural standpoint this was by far the most interesting segment of my trip through the Americas.  Why more riders don’t do this loop I have no idea, because I think it was far more interesting and fun than being stuck on a boat with backpackers for week on the Amazon river, bypassing one of the more interesting places in the Americas.

Saludos.

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

Ok, time for a Portuguese lesson.  Portuguese is very simple as they use many of same words we use in English.  For example, a picnic, in Portuguese is called a “peekie neekie.”  Just add an e or ie onto each syllable and you’re golden.  The TV sit com, Big Bang Theory, is call “Biggie Bangie Theory.”  A place in Belém called the Old School Rock bar is pronounced “Old Schoolie Hockie Bar,” in Portuguese.

So what how do you think they say “walkie talkie?”  ………………………….  Of course, they say “walk talk.”

When I rolled into Belém I stopped at a place called Moto Mania.   Its a shop owned by a very nice guy named Alex.

Alex was extremely helpful with anything I needed.  He put me in touch with a group of guys, who put me in touch with a guy that could help me get my bike to Macapá, Brazil, at the mouth of the Amazon delta.

While in Belém I took a couple rides around the area.  I was up at a little beach town north of the city, stopped for a coffee and this guy walks up to me and introduces himself as Michael Jackson, seriously.   Michael is still alive, living near Belém, but is now his skin is completely white like his hair, and has started a new business washing bikes and cars, and has not aged very well in the last few years.  He seems about 99 percent off of his rocker and very happy and friendly all the time.

Michael told me that my bike needed a wash and did such a good sales pitch that I accepted his services.   The pitch was simple.  He told me that no girls would get on the back of my bike because it was too dirty.   Sold.

Of course about 5 minutes after Michael finished washing my bike, it starts pouring down rain, again.  Well it was clean for a while.  No chicas for me I guess.

Here are another couple of characters that were from the garage where I parked my bike while in Belém.  These guys were a joke a minute, of course I never understood a single word they were saying, but they sure were funny.

This is the Belém moto crew that Alex put me in touch with, great guys.  They wouldn’t let my pay for a drink or a meal while I was with them.  These guys more or less adopted me while I was in town.  I hung around with this crew for a few days, had some laughs and learned a little more Portuguese.  I spent some time riding around town with them as well.

As I mentioned, Belém is where you need to catch a boat if you want to continue north in Brazil to the French Guiana border.  There is a ferry that goes a few times a week from Belém to Macapá but one of the local riders here, Eddie, had a much better idea.  He actually owns a river transport company and offered the space on one of his barges, for free.  How cool is that!

For some reason Eddie reminded me of Tony Soprano.  I started calling him “T” but I think the joke was kind of lost on everyone.  One of their buddies nickname was “face of pooping dog.”  That guy really did have a face like a dog pooping.  I cant even remember his real name.  Nothing was sacred with that crew.  I wasnt around long enough to get good nickname though.

So anyway, I headed off to the river docks and pulled up at Tony Soprano’s transport company.  Lots of barges around as everything headed north or inland towards Santarem goes by river barge.

I rode the bike down onto the barge.

T, in the blue shirt here, supervised the loading.

Secured and covered up.

The barge is loaded and its time for the overnight journey to Macapá on the Amazon Delta.  Free transport to Macapá, courtesy of T.  Thanks Eddie!

So ends my stay in Belém.  There are a great bunch of riders there and if you go to Moto Mania and meet Alex, he will hook you up with the local crew.  Another fantastic experience with the Brazilian riders.

Next stop, Macapá on the Amazon Delta. This is where I depart from the normal tourist route.   Most riders seem to prefer the Amazon river boats to Manaus instead of riding the obvious loop up through northern Amapá state and into the Guyanas.  Why, I do not understand because the route through the Guyanas is worthwhile.

Macapá is a rather sizable town complete with old colonial structures.

From here you can take river boats to Belém, Santarem, or all the way to Manaus.  Also, since you are now on the north side of the delta, you can take the one and only road to Oiapoque, the northernmost point of Brazil.  This was my plan. Several overland travelers have posted information about taking this route and because of their efforts I was able to glean information that would proved valuable and time saving with regard to logistical and bureaucratic obstacles.

I once again cross the Equator just outside of Macapá on my journey to the north.  I’m not exactly sure why, but I felt it was kind of a significant moment in my trip, so I lingered around the monument a while and took a few photos.

BR-156 is the road that goes from Macapá to Oiapoque.  Most of it is paved, but from Calçeone there starts a 200 km stretch of dirt that has the reputation of being quite muddy in the wet season.  When I arrived in February it was supposed to be in the middle of a “little dry season” until the end of March when the rains return.  May is the when the rains return with a vengeance and they typically dont let up until August.  If you plan on doing this route, keep that in mind.  However, It had been raining non-stop in the region for several weeks prior to my arrival so I was not expecting anything resembling dry conditions.

So, as I hit the dirt section of the route, I was greeted with scenes like this.  Deep mud is the most difficult type of terrain to negotiate on a large loaded down motorcycle.

Some parts were wetter than others and were the consistency of a soupy slop, almost knee deep in places.

However, these sections were never more than a couple hundred meters in length, and usually, staying in the deep ruts made by passing trucks would see you through.  Although, there were times when the side of the ruts were so tall that they would grab my panniers and pull me down to wallow around in the mud.  That is exactly what happened in the video clip.

The muddy sections were scattered throughout the route and would sometimes get my attention as I would come flying around a curve at 60 mph then suddenly have to execute a panic stop as one of these bogs jumped out of nowhere.

The day I did this route the rain had stopped in the mid morning, the sun came out, and things quickly started drying out, so I had encountered sections of road that were merely damp and had excellent traction. However, if it is pouring down rain while you are on this route, (which is a real probability) the whole thing will be slicker than owl droppings, and the muddy bogs could be particularly nasty. Thankfully, I hit it on a good day.

At some of the bogs, you will see trucks stuck in the mud.  When one truck gets stuck, he simply waits for another truck to come along and try to pull him out.  When the truck doing the pulling gets stuck, they both wait for a third truck to come along, then they cable all three trucks together and try pull each other through the bogs.  Its pretty good entertainment if you dont mind sitting around in the oppressive jungle heat to watch the show.

There were numerous long wooden bridges and most of them were in good condition like this one. At times bridges will wash away and you will be forced to wait while repairs are made.

After 200 kms of dirt and mud, the pavement returns for the last 50 kms into Oiapoque and the border with French Guiana.

Saludos.

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

Some friends of my parents that live in São Paulo, Roberto and Isa, had graciously offered the use of their beach house in Bailea.  I spent a wonderful couple of days relaxing on the beach in Bailea, about a hour from São Paulo.  Roberto and Isa, thanks so much for you wonderful hospitality.  It was a real treat to be able to spend some time at your great home on the beach!!!!  Muito obrigado!

After leaving Bailea, I headed up the coast to the island of Ilhabela to visit fellow rider Fernando Costa.  Fernando is a fantastic host, a super interesting person to talk with, and the nicest guy you will ever meet.

We visited various small beaches around the island by boat.  There are picturesque little secluded beaches, many accessible solely by boat.  Ilhabela is a little slice of paradise, only a 5 minute ferry ride away from the mainland, but like a different world.

Ilhabela reminds me of parts of the Hawaiian Islands.  Warm and  tropical, the lush forest spilling right down into the ocean.

We rode around the island and of course ate great seafood.

It was a fantastic travel break for me  doing absolutely nothing except going for a daily swim in the ocean, catching up on some reading, and hanging out on the beach.

After a week of beach time, I was refreshed and ready to hit the road again, north through Brazil.  Brazil is known for great beaches all along its coast, but I couldn’t imagine a better place than Ilhabela to spend some beach time in Brazil.

Muito obrigado  Fernando!  It was a real pleasure to know you and experience your wonderful hospitality.   The visit to your island was for sure one of the highlights of my trip.

After leaving Ilhabela, I headed into Rio de Janiero state to a steel mill town called Volta Redonda.  Here I met up with another rider, Raf .  Raf is from Belgium, but is much more Brazilian than European.  He speaks more languages than I can count,  and is starting up a moto tour business using Yamaha XT 660′s and Honda Falcon 400′s.

Raf is also a certified Brazilian guide, a great motorcycle rider, and he is extremely knowledgeable about off road riding in Brazil and the history of the country.  He is like a walking encyclopedia of Brazil.  On top of that, Raf is another all around super nice guy and very interesting person to talk with.

Raf took me on a few rides around Rio de Janeiro state on some great roads in beautiful country.

Raf and Mariel gave me a little demonstration of what one of the tours is like.  Great scenery, fun dirt roads, and a support vehicle following carrying all of your stuff.  He does tours exploring areas of Rio de Janeiro state, Minas Gerias, and Bahia.  I will for sure return to Brazil and join up with one of Raf’s tours.

Typical bridge.

Great riding and scenery in Rio state, and I didnt even scratch the surface.  Riding with locals is a real treat for me.  I get to tag along, not worrying about where we are, where we are going or how we are going to get there, wherever “there” may be.

The riding in Sao Paulo, Rio, Minas Gerias, and Bahia states could keep you occupied for months.  I was more than a little sad that I did not have the time to properly explore and get to know southern Brazil.  However, I will return for sure and rent one of Raf’s bikes and take a tour with him and Mariel.

We made a little excursion into Rio de Janeiro to pick up some tires.

We saw a big fire.  Well this place happens to be where all the big samba schools are housed that make the costumes and build the floats for Carnival.  I dont know how badly this fire affected Carnival in Rio though.

Rio is an absolutely beautiful city with beautiful beaches and beautiful people.  However, the crowds and all the big buildings are really not my thing.  So I was happy to go back to Volta Rodonda, which is much more my speed as far as cities go.

My time in Volta Redonda was great and the hospitality of Raf was outstanding!  Obrigado amgio!  I’ll be back for sure.

After a great week of exploring the area with Raf, it was time to hit the road northbound.  I made tracks to the north.  Next stop, the capital, Brasilia.  In Brasilia, I met up with yet another rider, Linhares.  Linhares is another great guy.  He even bought me dinner and showed me around town even though he and his wife were leaving for Miami the next day.

Brasilia lies in the plains of Brazil and is a planned city organized in two wings, north and south.  There is plenty of interesting architecture to see, and the whole place has a very modern feel to it.

Leaving Brasilia, I made a blast north to the city of Belém.  It was a couple full days of riding through the plains.  Not very interesting, but I was making miles.

Saludos.

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

After leaving Montevideo I headed to the beach town of La Paloma, Uruguay.  I met up with Javier who had kindly brought me some parts from California.  Javier owns a motorcycle shop north of Los Angeles, CA, and spends quite a bit of time with his retired parents in La Paloma, Uruguay.  He generously offered to bring whatever I needed from the States.  Thanks Javier!  So I put on a new chain and front sprocket, and did an oil change at Javier’s parents house.  Its really a special treat to have these connections when you’re on the road for so long.

Javier and his folks, really wonderful people.

Just because you leave Argentina doesn’t mean that the great asados are over.  The Beach Hostal in La Paloma put on a great asado a couple of times a week.  the meat is every bit as good as in Argentina.

Sunset in La Paloma, Uruguay.

I met some nice Brazilian girls over new years in Uruguay.

Leaving La Paloma was a tough choice, as the town is very tranquilo, and beaches are wonderful, but Javier and I decided to go into Argentina to try and get a glimpse of the Dakar Rally passing near Cordoba, Argentina.

I was a long, straight, hot and boring two day ride, but on the way to Cordoba we did meet some really nice folks in Entre Rios, Argentina.  We were in the grocery store picking up some supplies as we intended to camp that night.  When we came out, a guy was standing at our bikes, and asked us where we were going to stay.  When we replied that we didn’t know yet, he told us that he was in a moto club and they were having a big asado at his house.  He said that we should come, and he also had an extra room where we could throw down our sleeping bags for the night.  Once again, the hospitality of the Argentinian moto people impresses me yet again.  It doesn’t matter where you are from, what you are riding, or what language you speak.  If you are traveling on a moto, you are welcomed like a member of the family.  Its just incredible and I am amazed at the great hospitality of everyone I have met on my entire trip.  Meeting people this way is what its all about.

When we got to the place to try and watch the Dakar, it was a complete zoo of people, grid lock traffic,  and it was impossible to see anything.  In addition, the police blocked all access to the race course well ahead of time, so we couldn’t even sneak onto the course out in the sticks.  It was a 1500 mile trip for nothing when I should have just stayed in La Paloma, Uruguay, enjoyed that wonderful beach town some more, and then gone straight to Brazil.  Live and learn I guess.  However, meeting the folks in Entre Rios made the whole trip worthwhile for me.

The next day, Javier headed for La Serena, Chile over one of the high Andean passes, and I made the 1000 mile straight, hot pavement journey to Iguazu, home of the world famous Iguazu falls.

Much of the way through Entre Rios province I had an interesting experience, no gasoline, anywhere.  For some reason which I couldn’t quite figure out, almost all of the petrol stations were out of fuel.  Some people told me it was because of the government, others told me it was because of the January holidays, and yet others told me that this is nothing special, its always like this, welcome to Argentina.

I stopped at one station and the girl working there told me the familiar, “no hay”  (which means “there is not”) while doing the no, no finger waving thing that folks in South America are so fond of doing.  I asked her when they would have fuel and she replied that they might have some in a few days.  Wow, a few days!  So I asked her if I could stay at her house while I waited for the gas, and without missing a beat she said that she knew where I could by a bicycle to continue my travels right away without needing gasoline.

Later on, I was about to really run out of gas so I stopped in a small town and figured that I would ask some people if they would be willing to sell me a few liters of fuel.  This is how I do it in Baja, why not here too?  This didn’t take long as the first people I asked were happy to sell me 15 liters, normal price, no gouging.  Wow, that was extremely nice of them.  In Baja they would have charged me almost double the going rate to make a little profit, which I am completely OK with in these circumstances.  But here, these folks just genuinely wanted to help me out.  How cool is that?

So after going almost 300 miles with out fueling up, I got lucky and figured that further north there must be a station that had gasoline.  I did in fact find a place that had gasoline, another 100 miles up the road.  However, there was a long line, and I was hoping they still had fuel when it was my turn to fill up.

The people ahead………..

The view behind.  Por favor, can you spare a few liters for a poor moto traveler?

After 3 hours in line chatting with the other folks, it was my turn, and as it was my lucky day, they still had gas.  However, just 2 vehicles behind me, the gas was gone and it was back to, “No hay nafta.”  (there is no gasoline)  Thanks for playing, please come again.

After a couple of very pleasant overnights in small towns in Entre Rios, I arrived at Iguazu, the home of the famous Iguazu Falls.

There is the Argentina side and the Brazil side.  If you want to know which one is better, just ask people.  The Argentinians will tell you that the Argentina side is far better.  If you ask a Brazilian, well, they of course tell you that the Brazil side is the only one worth visiting.   Ah yes, the old soccer rivalry between the Argentinians and Brazilian spreads into everything else.  Ha!  Argentina had the largest complex of catwalks around the falls so I went there.  More objective tourists told me that both sides are very good, but different, and visiting both sides is worth the effort and expense.  I skipped the Brazil side but only due to the heat and crowds of the holidays.  I had enough of playing tourist by the time I left the Argentina side.

The falls are quite impressive and cover a large area.

The height and the volume of water cascading over the edge is quite a sight.

Looking up towards the part known as the Devil’s Throat.

These walkways run all through the park allowing you to get up close and personal with different sections of the falls, and of course get very wet in the process, which because of the heat this time of year is quite refreshing.

They had some boat trips going up to the falls but they were a bit expensive, about 200 bucks for an hour if I recall correctly, so I decided against it.  If you don’t mind spending the cash, it looks like it would be pretty cool.  But I’m saving my money for some other excursions later in my travels.

Niagra Falls is like a little trickle of water compared to Iguazu.

Beautiful.

Its really a magnificent place.

This is looking over to the Brazil side and over the edge into the Devil’s Throat.  This was a neat experience because you could feel the thundering of the falls in your chest, and it was awesome to be this close to that much water cascading over the edge into the abyss.

After doing the tourist thing once again, I said a fond adios to Argentina and left for Brazil.

Bem vindo a Brasil.

From the Brazil side of the falls, Foz do Iguaçu,  I made tracks for Curitiba.  Once crossing into Brazil, everything was different.  For one, they speak Portuguese.  I thought it would be at least enough like Spanish that I could communicate.  Boy was I wrong.  If I spoke Spanish, people could understand me fairly well, but when they responded in Portuguese, it was like they were speaking Russian.  It really does sound like a slavic language.  So, I pretend to understand this language that sounds like Russian, nod my head and smile a lot, and say thank you, while I have no freaking idea what people are saying to me.  However, the Brazilian people are so polite and friendly, that they talk to me anyway and patiently help me with whatever I need.  Fantastic people here in Brazil.

Another thing that is different in Brazil are the beer cans.      You know how when you open up that can of beer, look at the top, and the top is full of who knows what kind of crap stuck to the metal lip.

Apparently, they have solved this problem in Brazil.

Clean beer cans that you can drink out of without washing them off.  How cool is that.

In Curitiba, about a day’s ride from Iguaçu, I met up with fellow motorcyclist Reginalo whom hosted me at his home.  He asked how my ride was to Curitiba.  I responded that it was really fast and I made great time, but I couldn’t understand why all the cars were going so slow.  He laughed and asked me if I noticed all the speed cameras along the highway.  Uh Oh.  So that’s what those signs were about.  Not good.  I’m sure I passed around 100 of those things doing at least double the speed limit.  No wonder people were flashing their lights and honking at me the whole way, and I thought they were just being friendly.

Reginaldo took me on a great ride around the countryside.  He has done some big trips around South America on his DR 650.    He guided me on some nice dirt roads around Curitiba. and as usual, I had a fantastic time.  Nope, we are definitely not in Patagonia anymore.

Very tropical.  The heat is brutal and I am soaked in sweat in no time.

Its a beautiful landscape in southern Brazil.  Meeting local riders like Reginaldo and learning about where they live, what life is like for them, and of course riding with them is always a special experience.

Then as we were returning back home, like clockwork, every afternoon, the skies opened up and we took shelter at a gas station.

Thanks for everything Reginaldo, it was a pleasure to meet you amigo, and thank you so much for hosting me at your home and taking me riding around Curitiba.  Keep in touch.

From Curitiba I headed to São Paulo to do a big service on the bike.  It’s time for a little TLC as I had been pretty hard on the poor bike for the last, well, year and half.  A fellow rider told me to check out a shop that he was very happy with, and they would also let me do my own work on the bike.

The place is called Street Fighters, and they are mainly a sport bike shop.  However, when I pulled up with the big KTM, they were very welcoming and asked me what I needed.  I told them I wanted to work on the bike a for a few days, and have them do the suspension and I would of course pay for the use of shop space.  I wanted to do a valve check, a preventative water pump seal replacement, fork service, shock service, oil change, and some other odds and ends.  They said to roll the bike in and I could get started whenever I liked.  Of course, they washed the bike for me.  Nice.

On the washing stand.

The head mechanic, Rogerio, used to set up the suspension on the off road bikes for the Brazilian KTM team, so I figured I would have him do the fork and shock service while I did the rest of the stuff.

Rogerio.  Everyone calls him Chino, but of course he is Japanese.

The folks at Street Fighters were great, and the coolest part is that on Thursday and Friday nights around 7 pm, the shop turns into a bar full of motorcycle people.  They even have live music.

Monica races supermoto.

I met many wonderful people in São Paulo and got the bike all ready for the long journey north through Brazil.

Saludos.

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

Suffice it to say that the wind was strong.

When I would stop at gas stations, people would just stare at me.  When I passed cars on the road, they would honk and flash their lights at me.  I found out the wind was blowing at around 80 mph with higher gusts.  Now I know that everyone thought I was crazy.  Maybe I was.

After that scare  I promptly consulted the GPS for an alternate routing off of Ruta 3.  There are plenty of options that more or less follow the highway within 10 to 20 miles.  Still battling the wind, but not the terrifyingly erratic movements of oncoming traffic, I opted to stay on the ripio as much as I could.

The next day proved to be windy, but only blowing about 40 mph.  It was a nice break.  I arrive once again at the Atlantic Ocean.  I think I might be seeing quite a bit of this ocean in the future.

I stopped at a place called Punto Tombo, about 100 miles south of Puerto Madryn and camped for the night.   The next morning I got up to have a look at the penguin colony.  This is a gigantic breeding ground for Magellanic Penguins.  They migrate here every summer from southern Brazil to nest and lay their eggs.

They are literally everywhere.  I stayed here for about 4 hours just wandering around and looking at these curious flightless birds.  I felt like I was back in the Galapagos.  If you come up Ruta 3, this is a must see destination for sure.  Show up in the evening and camp in the parking lot next to the store (its free, just ask the folks living there), then get up and go in the park right when they open at 8 am, and you will have the entire place to yourself for at least several hours.

How’s this for a pair of funny looking creatures,  Penguins and Guanacos.

Busy pedestrians at lunch hour.

I was there.  And it was pretty cool.

After Puerto Tombo I headed north to Azul, then onto BsAs.  I spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at Dakar Motos.    Dakar Motos is kind of a landmark for moto travelers.  Its bascially four bunk beds in a motorcycle workshop.  The owners, Javier and Sandra were very welcoming.  Sandra brought over Christmas Eve dinner and I had dinner with the whole family.  I appreciated that gesture very much.  Many thanks to Sandra and Javier!   I’m sure BsAs is a very nice city.  I can tell you that its a huge city.  I dont like big cities too much.  So I decided to split.

After a short Christmas stay in BsAs, I caught the ferry over to Colonia, Uruguay and headed to Montevideo to take care of some business.

I had an interesting thing happen in the port as I was checking out of Argentina.  In migracion, they paged through my passport and asked to see my Argentina visa.  Huh?  They said that all U.S. citizens must get a visa and it cost USD $180.  They would not let me pass.  I pointed out that I have crossing into Argentina on 7 different occasions in the last 3 months, and not one time was I ever asked to show a visa.  I then said that I would be happy to buy this visa now, just direct me to where I could get it.  They said that they didn’t know where I could get one.  Interesting.  Finally after a hour of sitting around and letting them know that I would miss my ferry to Uruguay, they simply let me pass.  I have no idea was going on there.

While the Brazil consulate was accommodating, and efficient, the same cannot be said of US consulate.   To get new pages on my passport I had to make an appointment.  Here is the best part.  They have 2 appointments available 3 days a week for US citizens.  On top of that, I get to pay $82 USD for the privilege of getting more pages taped into my passport.  Punishment for daring to be a long term traveler I figure.

To get a Brazil Visa, I just had to fill out an online form, show up, drop off my passport, and pay the fee.   Took all of 5 minutes, literally, and you can pick up your passport with the visa the next day.  Why is it so complicated to get new pages taped in my passport?

Saludos, Vicente

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

The old Don Edmundo looks like it had seen better days…….

And on to Ruta 3 in Tierra del Fuego!

The Garibaldi pass is the last one you cross before coming to Ushuaia.  Mid December, still snowing…….  That ought to tell you something when it snows here in summer at near sea level.

And into the southern most city in the world, Ushuaia. Uh Oh, that sign is in English too. You know what that means, touristy and expensive, just like Alaska.

These guys in the mural, wearing striped suits and hammering on stuff.    I thought they sent all those guys to Australia? :-)

They normally call Ushuaia “El Fin del Mundo” or The End of the World.  I’ll let you figure out Culo del Mundo. 

Tierra del Fuego reminds me of Alaska, and Ushuaia reminds me of Anchorage.   The weather sucks pretty much all of the time, its got a port surrounded by mountains, its scenic, and its very touristy.

Cruise ships large and small come here. In fact in this photo, parked next to that great big cruise ship, is the Antarctica cruise ship that lost engine power in the Drake Passage a couple of weeks ago in very heavy seas. A huge rogue wave came completely over the bow, flooded the ship with water and flooded the engine room.

The Chilean Coast Guard (I think) evacuated the passengers and towed the ship into Ushuaia. I heard from several guys as I was wandering the docks that the Drake Passage was particularly nasty the week before.

About the same time, some people were killed in on a sailboat in the Beagle channel. I think they actually intended to try to take that 50 foot sailboat into the Drake Passage. If so, they were crazy. But unfortunately they didnt live through the experience.

I cant go any further south on the moto.  So what do I do?  Antarctica?  Head north for the 20,000 mile trip home? Ship the bike home out of BsAs?  Hang out in Brazil then ship the bike home?  So many possibilities.

I must admit that a little obscure line on my map has been whispering to me. It goes up though nastiest mud and clay roads that the Brazilian Amazon jungle can dish out, then onto French Guiana, Suriname, Guyana, and into Venezuela.  That little line is going to be a hard one to resist.  When do I have to be back at work?   I forget.

I thought of doing an Antarctica cruise as people in Ushuaia raved about them.  However, even if the cruise was horrible, if you spent $5000 to $10,000 on a cruise, you would rave about it too.  So, not really feeling it about the cruise, I opted to get back on the bike and head north on Ruta 3 towards Buenos Aires (BsAs) for short.

Not long after I left Ushuaia, I met these guys on the side of the road.  They were from a Tierra del Fuego moto club and they were heading to Cerro Sombrero, Chile for an annual club meeting and BBQ.  Guillermo asked me if I had any plans for the next couple of days.  I told him that I had none.  Then he said, “good, follow us.”  So these guys kind of adopted me from the side of the road.  Very cool, I love meeting local riders.  This type of stuff  is exactly what this trip is all about for me.

We got to the San Sebastian border crossing to Chile.  What a zoo.  I told the boys it looks just like Central America, only in the middle of nowhere and butt freezing cold.  When I came through here a week before, I was the only one there.  What happened?

The boys explained that the Argentinian holidays had just started and everyone was headed north to see relatives.  They figured that the crossing would take about 4 hours.

I dont know what happened, but after 30 minutes, we got pulled out of line and taken to an office where they processed all of our paperwork and sent us on our way. One of the guys in our group was an Argentinian federal cop, and I saw him chatting to one of the Chilean Carabineros a few minutes before.  So maybe we got the VIP treatment.  Whatever it was, it saved a butt load of time as other folks had been there for hours.

This is Guillermo and his brand spanking new Yamaha 1200 Super Ténéré with less than 600 km on the clock.  From what I understand, he owns the very first one brought into Argentina.

1200 cc fuel injected twin, shaft drive, and all the bells and whistles like a BMW 1200 GSA.  Its a heavy bike though, I think about 260 kg wet, without anything else is what he told me.  For reference, my bike wet, but, with all of my add ons, and all of the gear in the panniers, and all of my riding gear, helmet, boots, gloves everything, stacked on top of the bike, weighs in at 260 kg.  I know this when I weighed it in Panama before the trip to Colombia.

Its still a really cool bike though.   Good for Yamaha.  We need much more competition in this market.  This bike looks and feels like a very capable mile eater, and I’m sure its a bulletproof bike as most Yamahas seem to be. Too bad we will probably never see this marketed in the States. They would sell quite a few there.

Anyway, we went to the big fiesta in Cerro Sombrero, TdF, Chile.  There were a few moto clubs there.  One from Ushuaia, from Rio Grande, from Punta Arenas, Rio Gallegos, and of course, Cerro Sombrero.  As you can imagine, these moto clubs are small, so when they have a get together, they need to include other clubs to get the attendance up.  There were about 50 folks total here.  The bikes were everything from big BMW’s to Honda 250′s, Big cruisers, and even the Chinese 150 cc choppers complete with skeletons and tassels.  Everyone is friendly and gets along well.  Sure, the guys riding the same type of moto usually ride together, but it doenst matter what type of moto you have to these guys, you are still in the family.  I really like this attitude.

Of course most talk centered around motos and all thing moto.  These guys treated me like a brother and were awesome hosts.  Many of them have traveled all over South America so it was funny for me when they wanted to hear my stories about Central America and Mexico.  One of them said I was crazy for riding in Mexico.  Amazing how far reaching the sensational news media can spread their fear mongering, all the way to Tierra del Fuego.  Nice.

Well of course we had to eat.  We arrived at the meeting.  The mayor of the town spoke.  We ate, we talked about motos long into the night.  We got up the next day and did it all over again, complete with another big Parrilla.

A big shout of thanks to  Los Lobos, Motoqueros, and  Moto club 54 Sur.  I really enjoyed meeting all of you folks and thanks so much for your wonderful hospitality, and your patience with my Spanglish.  It was for sure the highlight of my trip to Tierra del Fuego!  Mil gracias!

Shortly after the fiesta, I got on a ferry across the Straights of Magellan, and said farewell to Tierra del Fuego.

And I headed north, to do battle with the wind. To really understand the winds here they have to be experienced. You can throw around 80 to 100 mph all day long, but until you get blown off the road by it, or forced off the road by a semi driver thats about to lose his rig, you cant really get your head around it.

Saludos.

Saludos, Vicente.

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

However, the scenery does not fail to impress. Another caveat is that you have to hit the right weather window.  I managed to see the towers in perfect weather, but my next 5 days would be full of rain, snow, clouds and fog so I missed many spectacular sights after the towers. I was a bit disappointed, but that’s the way it goes in Patagonia.

Nice lenticular cloud indicating very strong winds.  The Patagonia winds are fierce, and cannot be understated.

After getting a good look at the towers close up, I was impressed.  Around 15 years ago I used to do quite a bit of multi-day big wall rock climbing in Yosemite, Zion, and in the high country of the Rockies.  I used to have dreams of climbing these Patagonian towers, but I must admit, because of the wind, the cold, and the unpredictable weather, these towers look like pure suffering.  I cant imagine nailing a A5 pitch or stepping out of aiders to pull off technical free moves in this type of wind and cold, not to mention being confined to a porta-ledge (a big wall tent) for days while the wind howls and snow comes down in buckets.   My hat is off to all the folks that put up and repeat the more technical multi-day routes on these spectacular towers.  But to me, it looks like pure suffering.

This is a nice day at the towers.  The wind is only blowing about 50 mph.  That’s a good day.

Bitter cold, fierce biting winds. Not a friendly place.  This view reminds me of when I lived in Colorado, and of the times that I crested over the talus ridge for the first view of the Diamond, the east face of Longs Peak.  A nasty day on the Diamond would be considered a pretty nice day at Torres del Paine. :-)

The low valleys are a little more friendly, but the wind persists.

Instead of taking a picture of the bike, now I have to take a picture of the backpack.

OK, I’ll just shut up now and leave you with some photos………….

Despite the crowds and the weather it was still a spectacular six days of hiking. I was going to do the entire nine day circuit, but the persistent strong winds, daily rain and nightly snow took it out of me after a week.  Needless to say I was not well equipped to do a long trek is these types of conditions, so after six days and with all my stuff completely soaked including my sleeping bag, I bailed and went back to Puerto Natales.

However I will highly recommend a hike in Torres del Paine national park, its a must do trip, just dont expect a wilderness experience.

Saludos, Vicente

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

It is the mountain resort town in Argentina. As far as the town goes, think Vail, or Aspen, and you about have it right.

Very nice.

Ruta 40 is a famous, mixed dirt and pavement road that runs the length of Argentina.  I’ve heard some folks refer to it as the Route 66 of Argentina.  This is Ruta 40 ripio. In Argentina and Chile, graded gravel roads are called ripio. I like to call it the “100 mph dirt road.” I have heard folks call Ruta 40 challenging, horrible, rough, etc. I’m not sure why, because its a great big wide graded dirt road with some sections of deep gravel, mud, and big ruts from trucks. But for the most part, you can go 100 mph on this road with good suspension and few screws loose in your head. Even Rob was clipping along at 60 mph on Charley the Harley.

The author, waiting for Rob to catch up.

We crossed the border back into Chile, and almost immediately, the scenery got spectacular.

We found a pretty nice campsite for the night just outside of Futaleufú. It was a little rocky but we did manage to find a flat spot on the riverbank.

Everything is always soaked in the morning when you camp on a river, but the soothing sounds of the river at night are worth it.

It was a great camp site nonetheless.

And down the road we went…………

And onto Chile Ruta 7, AKA, the Carretera Austral. The Austral is a spectacular section of dirt road in Chile that starts at Chaiten, and ends at Villa O’Higgins.  I would ride most of the Austral, but not all the way to O’Higgins.

The Austral goes through stunning scenery and everything is bright green. It reminds me of the pacific northwest of the US, or southern BC, Canada. Being that we are at around 45 degrees south, and in a maritime climate, that makes sense.

Green everywhere, punctuated by rugged snow capped peaks.

Often times I will take a picture of something really steep, and have to say, “this is way steeper than it looks in the picture.” Well, the Chileans have a sign for that. That one in the middle means that this is way steeper than it looks in the picture, jajaja!

There is a reason for all that green along the Austral. It rains. Almost all the time. If you have good weather on the Austral, just wait a few minutes, and without fail, it will start raining.

At a gas stop along the Austral we met Mick. Mick is a crazy guy from Denmark riding around the world on a Honda 750 VFR. I thought Rob was a little nuts for taking the Harley to South America, but this guy Mick takes the cake. He said that Africa was especially challenging on the sport bike. I can only imagine. But how cool is it to see a proper sport bike complete with 100 mph speed tape holding the fairing together, metal panniers, and covered in dust? I thought it was pretty cool.

A little bit about riding with Rob. He is a good dude, total comedy.

Rob and I have parted ways, but I have really enjoyed riding with him this past couple of weeks. He is a guy that you want to have with you on a big trip.

He was riding that Harley on the gravel like he had been doing it for years. There were stretches when I moved along the ripio way faster than I should have been, yeah, yeah, I know spare me the lectures…. Anyway, after 30 or so miles I would stop and wait for Rob. Thinking that I would be waiting a long while, I would be shocked when way sooner than I expected, I would see his headlight coming!

Also, he is a guy that can roll with anything and its nothing short of amazing how he can just shrug stuff off that would cause most other folks to spontaneously combust right on the spot. In one week he lost more crap than I brought with me for the entire trip, and it didn’t even phase him.

I’m still not sure how he found his way down here. One time I asked him for his map to look at. He looked at me with a funny face and said, “Uh, I don’t have a map.”

Dude is in Patagonia and not once on his trip has he ever had a map. Now you gotta respect that. When I asked him how he did it, he said that its not all that complicated, you just keep going south and ask a few people along the way when you get lost. I have to admit, its really hard to argue with that logic. Folks obsess over maps and route planning for months. Not Rob. He doesn’t even have a map….

Headed back into Argentina, of course, without a map.

Somewhere in Patagonia, without a map. We don’t need no stinkin’ maps!

Rob’s opinion of KTM’s. Careful amigo, she bites back.

This is Rob proudly displaying the JCLS, otherwise known as the Jed Clampett Luggage System. (patent pending)

Al Jesse, eat your heart out man, because this system will be the new standard in adventure motorcycle luggage. All he needs now is a rocking chair for Granny on the top of the pile. For reference, Jed, or I mean Rob, is 6’6″ tall.

The battery on the Harley went bad and a quick call to the Harley dealer in Santiago confirmed that nearest battery that would fit the bike was at least a week or two away. So we had to improvise a little. So I hauled Rob around town in Coyhaique, Chile hunting down a suitable battery and a devising a way to put it on the bike.

6 foot 6 Rob on the back, 5 foot something me driving must have looked pretty hilarious to the locals because everywhere we went there were people pointing at us and laughing.

Rob, riding on the KTM.  See amigo, I told you she would get back at you for trying to pee on her.

After running around town, we picked up a car battery with 600 CCA, some cables, hardware, a tool box, and some beer to help us with creativity.

The owner of the place we were staying at helped us drink the beer.

Now Rob’s new battery sits in a tool box that is strapped to the passenger seat of the bike.  Somtimes, you just have to make due since you cant always get the parts you need.  I call it Baja engineering.  We got everything wired up and Rob got back on the road.

Poor Charley the Harley, he cant get a break.

We headed on down the road into more spectacular scenery.

And into some nice pavement twisties.

More stunning mountain views.  Ho hum………

Across the mountains into Argentina.

And back into the desert once again.

We meet Ruta 40 once more.  They are doing a lot of grading and paving along this section of the 40.

The 100 mph dirt road.

Complete with wild horses.

And dead Guanacos.

Straight as an arrow, and zero traffic.

After a day battling 70 mph crosswinds on the Ruta 40, we pulled into Chaltén, the home of famous rock formations known as Fitzroy and Cerro Torre.

I had a view of these majestic towers for all of 15 minutes.

Then it rained and snowed, and the infamous Patagonia wind would howl for the next two days.  Welcome to Patagonia.

Charley the Harley was not diggin the wind either.

After leaving El Chaltén the next stop was to El Calafate and the Perito Moreno glacier.  Very impressive.

Then back to the wind of Ruta 40.

After crossing once more into Chile, we arrive at Puerto Natales, the gateway town to Torres del Paine National Park.

Rob continued down to Tierra del Fuego, while I stuck around and did a week long hike in Torres del Paine.

Saludos.

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

We went down to do a little riding with some of Martyn’s buddies around Rancagua, about an hour south of Santiago.

More spectacular scenery and great riding.

Camino sinuoso.  That’s Spanish for “really fun road.”

Good stuff.

We found our way to the coast via fun dirt roads.  Wow, this reminded me of where I live in California.   I could have taken this shot about 15 minutes from my place in SD, but I didn’t.  Its amazing how much the Chilean coast reminds me of the coast of Central California.

Stopped off at the port city of Valparaiso.  I took one photo.

Martyn and I did some riding in the mountains just outside of Santiago as well.  There are several ski areas just outside of town, very scenic stuff.

More of those “camino sinuoso” things.  Whatever they are, they sure are fun.  However, when its covered with snow in the winter, I’ll bet it takes a while to get to the ski area using this road.

I had a great time in Santiago and really enjoyed my time there.  Santiago feels like Europe meets the U.S. with a Latin flavor.  Its a very nice city in which to spend some time.

Muchas gracias Martyn!

I headed south out of Santiago on the highway to the lake district.  Highway miles are a rarity for me.  But, I got a big kick out of this sign I saw on the way down.  Poor old W cant get a break anywhere.

In Temuco, I met up with Rob, a gringo loco a Harley Road King.  He rides the heck out of that Harley and its great to see someone doing big trips on a Road King.  A total crack up that Rob is.  Wait, where is his doo rag?  He’s wearing a real helmet and riding gear too?  He must be a poser.

Yup, I knew there was something not quite right about Rob when I met him, so I liked him immediately.  He is not afraid to ride that bike across the Altiplano of Bolivia.  Its impressive how well he rides that 1000 pound bike in the dirt.

The one time that someone witnessed me behind a Harley.  Careful, that madman driving the KTM is closer than he appears.

Rob and I decided that we would ride together for a while.  We hit the Chilean lake district on the way to Bariloche.

The odd couple.  You dont see these types of bikes riding together too often.

Moo.

Beautiful lakes.  Well, it is called the lake district.

I still think he needs doo rag and a German helmet to look like a proper Harley rider.   Also I asked him if he needed to find a bar to ride his bike to.

We went through some stunning scenery on the way to the Argentina border.

Typical bridge crossing.

Rob was tired.

We entered Argentina at this small crossing.

Dammit, I’m  ‘merican, lemme in!

The sign below is from Argentinean customs, and it says, “Take this, yes.”  Then, over the picture of the fossil it says, “take this, no.”  OK, so lemme get this straight.  To leave Argentina I have to take one of these beautiful women with me?  OK, I’ll do it!!!!   I still dont quite understand this public service announcement from the customs people.

……and we headed toward Bariloche.

Saludos.

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

Saludos.

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

Anyway, because of my astrophotography friend Dave, I was able to get a visit to the Las Campanas Observatory located in the Atacama desert about 100 miles northeast of La Serena, Chile.  They don’t do public visits here so it was a very big deal for me to be able to get into the site.  My timing was very lucky because it just so happened that a buddy of Dave’s had an observing run coming up and he agreed show me around the site.    I went up through the Atacama Desert to get to the observatory.

This is not your run of the mill fork in the road.  One goes to Las Campanas, and the other goes the La Silla European Southern Observatory.

The tops of those peaks in the distance is where the observatory is located.

I never thought that one of the premier observatories in the world would be down a dirt road.

The ride to Las Campanas was quite a scenic ride.

Upon arrival, I was treated with a view of the twin 6.5 meter Magellan Telescopes.  6.5 meters is the diameter of the primary mirror of the telescope.  That’s a pretty big scope, and there are two of them.

The three other domes in the distance contain a 100 inch scope, a 40 inch scope, and the small dome in the middle of the other two is the Polish Telescope.  No kidding.  I really wanted to see what a Polish Telescope looked like, but I never went in the building.  I wanted to ask the astronomers if the Polish Telescope actually made stuff look smaller, but somehow I think my incredibly stupid joke wouldn’t have produced even a chuckle.

This is the lodge where the visiting astronomers are housed.  I had a room here as well.

After I got settled in my room I was give the nickel tour by astronomers Andy and John, who work for the Carnegie Institute out of Southern California.

This is the new FourStar imaging instrument.  FourStar is a near infrared imaging instrument that is undergoing testing and will get bolted on the Baade 6.5 meter scope in January 2011.

That’s a big camera.  It contains a 4 detector array, each sensor being 2048 X 2048 pixels at a cost of……….$25,000 per chip!  That’s $100,000 worth of CCD’s at the business end of this camera, wow!   The camera and optics are housed in a vacuum, and the detector array is cooled with liquid Nitrogen to 77 degrees Kelvin, about  -320 degrees Fahrenheit, or -200 degrees Celsius.

Cooling the chips to these extreme temperatures minimizes dark current on the chip to nearly zero.  In fact, if you try and calibrate your images by subtracting a dark frame, it will actually add noise to your image.  In addition, these near infrared sensors are of course very sensitive to heat, so the arrays and the optics need to be cooled dramatically.

At this point the camera is hooked up to the liquid Nitrogen and is in the process of being cooled.  It takes 7 days to cool the sensors to 77 K, and takes 5 days to warm them back up when work needs to be done on the instrument.

Also on site is a small solar telescope, which is operated remotely, over the internet.

This is the dome that houses the 100 inch du Pont telescope.

The grain elevator like thing in the foreground of the below photo is what is called a “seeing monitor.”  It evaluates what astronomers call atmospheric seeing.    Seeing basically has to do with the steadiness of the atmosphere at the location of the telescope.  If the stars a twinkling rapidly, the seeing is bad whereas if the stars hardly twinkle at all, the seeing is good.  Dark skies are important, but the quality of the seeing (steadiness of the local air mass) is equally important.  If the atmosphere is turbulent, the resolution of objects will be poor.  But a steady atmosphere will yield images of much higher resolution, which is very important for observations.  For example, the Hubble Space Telescope produces such stunning images because it does not have to look through an atmosphere.  Generally speaking, good seeing is found at locations on a mountain with the airflow coming off of an ocean.  That’s why many professional observatories are found on islands or  mountain tops near the ocean.

The Las Campanas site is said to have the most consistent and best seeing of any observatory in the world.   Because of this, the GMT, or Giant Magellan Telescope, a 24 meter telescope will be erected at Las Campanas and will be operational by 2018.

During the imaging run that night, we had seeing as good as .4 arc seconds, which is very, very impressive.

OK, so lets go up and have a look at one of the the 6.5 meter Magellan telescopes.

This is the inside of the dome of the Baade 6.5 meter scope.  You cant look through these telescopes, they are strictly for imaging as all astronomical research these days is done by CCD imaging.  However, I believe that the 100 inch du Pont scope (an old school scope) has what they call a Coudé focus, which means that you can put an eyepiece in and look through it when its not being used for imaging.

Here I am standing underneath the primary mirror to give you a better idea of scale.  This is a big telescope.

The building between the two domes houses other cameras, or instruments.  This is another camera, cooled with liquid nitrogen of course.  However it is not a infrared sensor, so it only gets cooled to about -150 degrees C

Also in the building is this contraption. This is a mirror washer and aluminizer.  The 6.5 meter primary mirrors of these telescopes are very expensive and require maintenance once a year.  Instead of the risk and expense to send the mirrors to another place for cleaning and recoating, they do it all right in house, literally.  Each primary mirror will be washed once a year, then every second year it gets a fresh reflective coating.

This is the brain of the operation.  There are two separate computer systems for the scope.  The Mac system on the left controls the camera while the system on the right controls the telescope, dome and guide camera.  Both systems are Linux based.  I was told that they are in the process of converting everything over to the Apple computers because they said that they have less problems with the Apple hardware.  I’m not a computer geek so much of the computer speak was lost on me.  Suffice it to say that they use a lot of computer power to run this scope.

This is the telescope control room.  The guy on the left is the telescope operator.  The guy on the right is an astronomer.  So this is how it works.  The astronomer controls the camera with the computer system in front of him.  In turn, he tells the telescope operator where to point the telescope for each target.  So, the operator drives the telescope around with instructions from the astronomer, and the astronomer takes images with the camera.  I was stunned at the pointing accuracy of this big scope.  The astronomer was asking for movements as small as 0.5 arc seconds and I found it amazing that such a large telescope could be pointed so accurately.  John, the astronomer was collecting images for analyzing the redshifts of low surface brightness galaxies.  Which in layman’s terms means that he studying very dim and very distant galaxies and trying to figure out how far away they are.  Most of his targets were 25th to 27th magnitude objects, which means they are very dim.  One other thing to note is that for the first target, the guide star was 18th magnitude and the guide exposure was only 2 seconds long.  Very impressive light gathering capability and guide camera sensitivity.

Sunset at the domes.

Looking out over the Atacama desert.

Just before sunset, the telescope operator and the astronomer  settle in for a night of work.

The domes are opened early to allow the optics to cool to outside ambient temperature.

At night during the imaging runs there is not much to do but sit around, BS, eat empanadas and watch the data come in.

Spectacular skies at the Las Campanas Observatory.

It was a fantastic experience to visit this observatory and to be able to sit in on a night of imaging with the professional astronomers. Thanks to my astronomer friends Dave and John from California who were able to get me into the site, this visit has been one of the highlights of my trip.

The next day I  headed down the mountain…….

………and back to La Serena.  Notice my new touring windscreen?  250 bucks in Chile, ouch.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled not as geeky ride report.

Saludos.

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

We spent the night at a pretty lake.

Then parted ways again as I headed for Mendoza.

Mendoza is another warm, friendly city with great food, great wine and beautiful women walking around everywhere.    The wineries (bodegas) were awesome as well.

Tasting room.

This was good stuff.

I did a wine tour with some folks from the hostel.  We went to a boutique winery, got the nickle tour, then ate tons of food and sampled the various wines they had.

Sorry I dont have any other pics of Mendoza, but suffice it to say that it’s a fantastic place to visit, and if you like incredible steaks, excellent wine, and beautiful women, you might not ever leave.  I barely made it out.

Chile was calling and I had to escape and get back on the road.  On the north side of Mendoza there is a fantastic dirt road (RP-13) that takes you halfway to the Chilean border.

It can get a little steep and rocky in places, but through those sections I didn’t stop for pics.  Its not technical, but you will find yourself on the pegs and doing a little balance and clutch work through some of the steeper rocky switchbacks.

Although after about 20 miles it turns into a nice smooth road……

……..with some fun little hill climbs……

…..and some magnificent viewpoints.

Nice.

You find yourself wandering through beautiful desert canyons.

And the place start to look like a scene out of the Road Runner.

Cool.

As you near the town of Uspallata, you return to the pavement of Ruta 7, so the total dirt section is only about 60 miles, but its well worth the effort.  I understand that this route can be a little crowded on the weekends, but during the week I did not see another vehicle or human on the entire route.  Highly recommended.

Once on the pavement, you wind up riding through the Andes and the views are spectacular.  The entire ride to the Chilean border was really stunning.

You will see a couple of places on the highway with signs for aduana in Argentina, but dont stop there.  Keep going through a big long tunnel, through the Bienvenidos a Chile signs and about 6 km west of the tunnel there is Migracion and Aduana for both Argentina and Chile in the same building.  Easy peasy.

This was a fantastic section from Mendoza to Santiago.

Saludos, Vicente

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

Anyway, it conveys a little bit of what its like to ride there.

I hope you enjoy it.

Saludos.

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

San Pedro de Atacama, Chile is a tourist trap.  Its, small, its quaint, its expensive, and its full of tourists.  Not really my thing.  But, it was nice.

I dont think it could possibly get any more touristy.

Camping is almost 20 bucks a night, hotel rooms 50 to 200 bucks, meals are around 10 to 15 bucks, groceries are not much less, and I feel like I was transported to Europe.  Sticker and culture shock, not good.  It feels like I have left South America.  I’m kind of bummed out about that actually.  We are not in Bolivia anymore, that’s for sure.

But, its time to get to work.  Once I drained the coolant and oil, and removed the case cover, I had to cover the motor with foil since the wind was blowing dirt and dust all over the place.

I used my beer can stove to heat up the case to remove the old water pump bearings.  Vinny Mc Gyver.

Holger was there to help me and it was very nice to have an extra set of hands and eyes.  Besides that, Holger is quite a capable mechanic having maintained 2 BMW F650s in the field for the last 4 years.  I think he has done a couple of water pump replacements and rear suspension rebuilds as well.  So, with Holger watching me, I kept the cursing and tool throwing down to a minimum.

Anyway, its not a big deal, just inconvenient.  We had everything done and buttoned up before night fall.  Holger would cringe and wince when he saw me beat the heck out of the bearings and the new seal to get everything seated back in the case.  It was quite funny.  He said that I was hitting stuff so hard he thought I was going to crack the case cover.  He then reminded me that the nearest KTM dealer was a few hundred miles away.   If stuff doesn’t go in easily, you just use a bigger hammer or hit it harder right?  If you cant fix it with a sledge hammer, its an electrical problem.

Anyway, with the water pump fixed up and less than thrilled with our first taste of Chile, Holger, Anja, and I made a run for the border.

Stoked about life on the road.

The first Bife de Chorizo in Argentina.  Meat, its not just for breakfast.  Argentina is famous for meat.  Its incredible.  This steak melted in my mouth.  All for 8 bucks.

Testing out the pavement limits of knobby tires.

The roads were very nice.

Bummed that I have knobby tires.

But it didn’t stop me from doing some spirited riding.

More scenic dirt roads.  Ho hum.

And of course, sand.

Two tracks that lead into the end of nowhere.

Where there always an awesome place to camp.

and just stare at the southern Milky Way for hours on end.

Until the morning when its time to ride in spectacular deserts once again.

Then the pavement appears, and believe it or not, sometimes its a welcome sight.

At times I think that I was magically transported back to California or Arizona.

But the night sky reminds me once again, that I am a very long way from home.

Saludos, Vicente

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

Bolivian Migracion is a little bit interesting if you have a US Passport.  First off, they charge you $135 to enter the country.  So the smart ass migracion dude says to me, you owe $135 dollars, George Bush tax.  Ok, fine.  Then he asks me if I have a yellow fever vaccination.  Of course I say that I do.  Then he asks for the card to prove that I have one.  I tell him that I dont have the card.  He then huffs and looks disgusted.  I quickly ask him why I need to show a card, and no one else coming through needs one?

He again says, “George Bush Tax.”  When I tell him that I want my $135 bucks back, he just waves me through and looks disgusted.  Brilliant.  What a nice guy.  Welcome to Bolivia.  However, the normal people in Bolivia are friendly and helpful.  It was just that one low level bureaucrat that was a pain in the ass.  That figures.

Curious people always ask me all kinds of questions.  Where are from?  Did you ride that moto all the way here?  How much does it cost?  How fast does it go?  Do you want to sell it to me cheap?  Ha!  Its always enjoyable answering these questions.  Just a little patience and a big smile will go a long way.

The town of Copacabana on Lago Titicaca is spectacular.

The local church.

The local prayer room in the local church.

Nice town.  Touristy, but not over the top.

Leaving Copacabana I rode again with Holger and Anja.  We headed toward La Paz and upon leaving Copacabana did an interesting lake crossing.

You have to be careful where you put your tires.  How ’bout that bus?

And the first panorama of La Paz.  Cool city actually.  I spent about a week here.  I dont know why.  However, I had a good time and considered it one of the better big cities that I have visited.

Then I went to the white city, known as Sucre.

I ran into the Dutch guys again.

Steve told me that I was a hippy and needed a haircut.  I told him that a number 3 would be just fine.  However, Roel warned me not to let Steve cut my hair.  I now know why.

Fresh out of the institution, I decided to do a little route planning.

I was headed to high and cold places, so I decided to make a little camp stove out of beer cans.

It burns alcohol and will boil a liter of water in 4 minutes.  Not bad for a home made stove.

Then it was time to go buy some meat for my journey.

The pigs feet were particularly nice.

The vegetables were even better.

I was a little sad to leave friendly and warm Sucre for the cold Altiplano.

But down the road I went…….

A Vicuña, the slightly retarded cousin of the Alpaca.

Sand, sand and sand.

I’m not sure what these guys are, but they looked a little not quite right.

In the background is the first glimpse of the Salar de Uyuni.

This view of Uyuni, reminded me of Star Wars.

“Mos Eisley spaceport. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.” – — Obi Wan Kenobi

perfect………

I was less than thrilled with Mos Eisley so I decided to head to the salar.

The wind was absolutely brutal as I got out on to the salar, but I expected this……….

The Salar de Uyuni at over 4000 square miles is the largest salt flat in the world and contains around 50% to 70% of the worlds lithium reserves.  It is roughly 25 times the size of the Bonneville salt flats in the U.S.   It sits in the Bolivian altiplano at over 12,000 feet.  The average altitude of the salar varies only one meter over its entire expanse.  Because of this, the large area, and clear skies, orbiting satellites use the salar to calibrate their laser altimeters.

I learned all this from Wikipedia, so I have no idea if its true or not, but it sure sounds good.

But, the absolute coolest thing about the salar, is that its a great place to ride a motorcycle.

In the foreground in the above photo you notice what looks like a hole in the salt.  It is a hole, and you have to look out for these when you are riding.  They call them Ojos de Sal, or Eyes of Salt.

There are numerous islands on the salar.  I visited a couple, then settled down at the main island, Incahuasi to camp for the night.  There are some indigenous people that live here and cater to the Land Cruiser tours coming through.  I was going to go camp at Isla Pescado a little further northwest on the salar but it was starting to get dark and I wanted to take some pics and get camp set up before darkness fell.

My camp.

Its a good idea to set up camp at one of the islands, as the wind blows hard all night long so it provides some shelter.  Also, as remote as the chance my be, you dont want to get run over by a passing Land Cruisers in the middle of the night.  So, its good to stick to the islands.

The sun is going down and it is just starting to get cold.  And as if on cue, the wind starts to kick up to around 40 mph.  It is quite pleasant during the day before the wind picks up.  However nights are typically around -10 to -20 degrees Celsius.

The next day I got up and headed south across the salar.  The feeling you get riding the salar is hard to describe.  It really feels as if you flying in an airplane, or riding in the middle of a perfectly smooth ocean because even though you are clipping along at 80 mph+ you don’t have a sense of motion.  Its a very strange feeling on a motorcycle.

This is one of the southern exits off of the salar.  It is a wise idea to know where these exits are, and use them, or you could wind up stuck in the mud up to your axles.

After the exit, it was a couple of hours to the little village of San Juan, where I was able to buy some barrel gas and stock up on water for the day.  Many tours pass through here, so the little village is pretty well stocked with things you might need.

This village really reminds me of something out of a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western.  The whole experience of coming off the salar and into this village was quite surreal.  I half expected to see Lee Van Cleef and Eastwood come riding out of town as I heard the tune from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, playing in my head.

They had everything in this little tienda in the middle of nowhere.

After San Juan, you can cross another small salar, Chinguana, I believe it is called.  Its not small by any means, but not nearly the size of the Salar de Uyuni.

The wind is blowing again and is sometimes so strong its downright spooky.  In fact just after I took this photo, the bike blew over.

High speed run down the Salar Chinguana.  Epic.

There seemed to be only a few good exits off of this salar, but it was relatively dry, even off of the tracks.  I picked up a little two track headed to the Volcan Ollague that you can see in the distance.

Slowly but surely getting closer.  I live for this stuff.  The riding and scenery was mind blowing.

That two track I took wrapped around the back side of the volcan off the main tracks.  I’m not sure but I think that I might have crossed into Chile at a couple of points along the track.

Is this Mars?  I know I have ridden a long way, but I had no idea that I crossed 50 million miles of interplanetary space.  This is good stuff.

Behind the volcan I picked up a wide graded road for a few miles.  I think the Martians might have some big trucks they use to get around.

Then made a turn off onto another two track.

It brought me to the first of a series of small lakes that were stunning.  This was the first place I saw people.  Sadly they were humans and not Martians.  For a while, I thought I might have been the first motorcyclist to ride on Mars.

There were a couple of tours having lunch here.  I was moving pretty quickly so I started to gather up the Land Crusiers once on the main route.

I contemplated just stopping here for the night, but it was freaking cold an the wind was howling at sand blaster velocity.  No sense in sitting in the wind behind a rock, being cold and miserable all day.  Since it was only about 1 pm, I pushed on.

And the trail meanders down the valley, revealing more impressive scenery.

Crossing sections like this is fantastic.   Make your own tracks in the sand and gravel wherever you please.

Mars, this is definitely Mars.  Its butt freezing cold, the wind is howling and blowing little rocks around, and its difficult to breath.  Its Mars, no doubt about it.

Then I head off the main track again to a two track that I decided to explore, and things started to turn green.

I re-joined the main route after a while and had fun throwing the bike around the curves going through this narrow wash.

Then back into the wide open lonesome.  Moonscape.  Impressive.

Then back to Mars.

About mid afternoon I wound up at the famous Arbol de Piedra.  I took my helmet off and immediately got pelted in the face by small pebbles blown by the relentless wind.

As the afternoon wore on the wind got even more relentless as I  started to approach Laguna Colorado.

By the time you are nearing Laguna Colorado, you are up around 15,000 feet or more, and you can feel it getting colder and harder to breath.  I figured that I would stop here for the night as they actually have rooms you can stay in since the Land Cruiser tours come through here.  A lumpy bed out of the wind sounds really good to me about right now.

I pull into Camp Ende and see two very familiar looking F650′s.  Holger and Anja!  I put in 200 miles of sand, rocks and washboard this day from the salar to Laguna Colorado.  It was a big day for me, so I was tired and ready for a break.  Holger and Anja had a bit of a slower pace.  Their goal was to go about 50 miles a day in this terrain.  They had left the salar 4 days ago.  On loaded F650′s with street tires, I can understand that.

The next morning I was up and on the road again.     That stuff below is not salt, its ice.  Yeah, it gets a little chilly around here…….

Now these guys really like suffering.  They figured two weeks from the salar to San Pedro de Atacama.  They had camped well over 15,000 feet for many cold and windy nights.

I went on riding on Mars.

Then, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, you see a sign for Bolivian Aduana.  It turns out that there is a mine close by, hence the aduana office.

As I checked the bike out of Bolivia, I found it was a little hard to breath and was winded after only saying a few words to the aduana dude.  I wonder why?

After dropping a little elevation, I found myself at the Geyser Sol de la Manaña.

It didn’t put on a show at all.  Just a bunch of steam and bubbling mud.  I think it spouts off early in the morning.   It was still fun to stop by.

Shortly after the geyser, I found myself headed down to yet another lake with some hot springs.  Good place to spend the night.  That is salt blowing off a dry lake near the springs.  The winds were cranked up yet again, and would almost blow you right off the bike.  The elevation here is around 16,000 feet, so its a bit cold.

The hot springs were a welcome place to warm up and wash off the grime of the previous days.

The next day proved to be yet more spectacular scenery, and of course more sand and rocks blowing in your face.

I dare say that this is the most spectacular desert I have ever seen.  Well, it is Mars after all.

Again on the big wide open lonesome.  I never get tired of this stuff.  This has by far been the most epic stage of my South America trip.

Heaven on a motorcycle.

It never seems to end.  I am overdosed on spectacular desert scenery.

Some people beg for it to end.  I dont want it to end.

The exit to the national park. Bummer.

And on to the migracion office and out of Bolivia……..

And into Chile where the pavement starts and the magic is almost gone.  As you descend over 8000 feet  into the Atacama the scenery starts to change, and Mars becomes a distant memory, like a dream that you are having difficulty recalling.  You are back on Earth, in just another plain old common desert.

OK,  just a few words about this route.  Its epic desert riding at its best.  In my opinion, if you have the skills, this is a must do route.  You dont need great skills as  in my opinion, nothing is remotely technical, even on a big loaded bike, but you better be comfortable riding hours and hours of sand, some of which can be deep and rutted.  This route is not for those that are not confident riding in sand.

Its remote.  Its 380 miles from Uyuni to San Pedro de Atacama, Chile along the route that I took.  Except for the passing tours, you will not see another human except for the folks at Laguna Colorado, and the hot springs and a few small structures inhabited by folks that cater to the tour groups.

If you stay on the main tour route you will at least see several vehicles pass by a day, and probably many more during the high season, so you can get help if you need it.  If you wander off the tour route as I did in sections, you are really on your own.  You might not see a vehicle for many days, if at all.

Prepare for scorching sun that will burn you lobster red just minutes of uncovering your skin, -20 degrees C temps, brutally strong and cold winds, and thin air.  You want to be well acclimated to altitude before taking off on this route.

Another thing about the altitude.  When you drop your bike, picking it up can be quite taxing.  I remember picking up my bike one time at around 15,500 feet, and I had to go sit down and rest for a few minutes.  Don’t underestimate how much the cold, wind, and altitude will zap your strength.

This was the best segment of my trip, hands down, no contest.  Totally epic.

Saludos, Vicente

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

The Dutchmen and I parted ways in Junín.  They headed to Lima.  I wanted nothing to do with a big city so I stayed in the Andes and headed further south.

More of the same.  Great scenery, nice dirt roads, long drop offs, ho hum…….

I really cant get enough of this.

Great riding……….

…and realizing this is exactly why I am here.

My thoughts continue to wind along the cliffs with the river down below.

Until I pull into Ayacucho and decide to call it day.

This is a very welcoming town.  Touristy, but mostly Peruvian tourists.

I killed a few days just walking around town.

Until the mountains, cliffs and rivers called me back.  Once again on my moto, with my thoughts, spectacular riding.

Interrupted by this several times a day.  Story of my life in Peru.  I think they are in the process of paving the entire country.

Ah, back to the river………

I was getting closer to civilization and I was not too thrilled about it.

I wind up in Cuzco.

Back to life in bustling colonial tourist city.

However, there are a things that are a welcome change from the small villages in the Andes, like good food, lots of hotels to choose from, internet, and some nice bars.

Of course I had to do the tourist thing, since I was in a tourist place.

It is a spectacular setting.

Machu Picchu lawnmower.

I can see why the Incas built a sacred site here.

Amazingly rugged country.

The downside is that you get to share it with about 4000 of your closest friends.

But it does not fail to impress…….

….everywhere you look.

Impressive.

Spectacular.

It is worth the trip for sure.

OK.  Its extremely touristy.  Its expensive.  Its crowded.  Its a pain in the butt to go see.  The structures are not as impressive as those in Palenque or Tikal.  However the setting is mind blowing and its something you just have to go see.

In Cuzco I met up with Holger and Anja.  They are a German couple doing a RTW trip and this is their third year on the road.  I had met them about a year ago in Zacatecas, Mexico, and just ran into them again in Cuzco.  Really great people.  So we decided to ride together toward Puno and Lake Titicaca.

This is the great part about riding with other people, you get pictures of yourself.

A high pass on the fast road from Cuzco to Puno.

And to the shores of Lake Titicaca.

You kind of have to be a Beavis and Butthead fan to understand this next picture, Lake Titicaca and all.

I had a fantastic time in Peru.  So far, it has been the best scenery and the best riding of the trip.

Next up, ¡Bolivia!

Saludos.

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

After leaving Huanchaco I headed south a bit along the coast, then picked up a route to Huaraz that would take me along the famous Cañon del Pato, or “Duck Canyon.”

Once again, another spectacular Peruvian canyon.  This is a “do not miss” ride in Peru.

The crystal clear skies, and warm desert climate were a welcome reprieve from the eternally cloudy and chilly Peruvian coast.

Leaving the canyon, headed to Huaraz.

Here is a little video of my ride through Cañon del Pato to give you a better idea of how it looks riding on a motorcycle.

Sorry that I dont have any photos of Huaraz, but I had some kind of stomach illness and was bedridden for a couple of days so I didnt even walk around town.  When I felt better, I just wanted to ride and get out of town.  I opted to skip the spectacular mountains of the Cordillera Blanca since I was still feeling a little green, and I figured that in my condition, going up to around 15,000 feet and spending a great amount of time there would not be so much fun.

So I opted to leave Huaraz and start making my way to Cuzco, staying in the mountains the entire time and bypassing Lima, Nazca, and more boring coastal riding.

When you climb up into the mountains leaving Huaraz, a huge waving Jesus greets you as you emerge from a tunnel.

A beautiful lake at around 14,000 feet.

After a short but spectacular ride from Huaraz I found myself at the site of the Chavin ruins.  Its quite a pleasant little town with a couple of nice hotel options right on the main square.

Village laundry facilities.

Nap time.

Colorful dress of the indigenous inhabitants of the area.

The Chavin ruins are around 3000 years old, well before the Inca times.  It is thought that this place was a spiritual center of power.  As far as the scientists can figure, this town became important since it was built in a very hazardous landslide area and was left unscathed after numerous landslide events.  Hence, it was believed that the inhabitants had magical powers over nature,  so people flocked from miles around to try and learn this magic to take back to their villages.  Learning the magic of course involved paying large sums of wealth as tuition.  Then the powers were acquired by living on the site and taking large quantities of a hallucinogenic cactus, and seeing visions of the gods.  After the “schooling,” the pupils would return to their own village armed with new powers to protect it from the wrath of the gods, and then of course charge a fee for their services.  You may not believe this, but the exact same thing is going on today. Its called college.

The site was closed to visitors on this day, but the night before I had met one of the archeologists from the states that was working on the site.  He offered to give a little private tour to us which was very nice of him.

One of the psychedelic half man, half beast heads that were all over the site.

A ceremonial obelisk with the hallucinogenic  San Pedro cactus in the background.

After leaving Chavin I decided to continue south in the Andes via dirt roads.  A few days earlier I had met up with 3 Dutch guys riding 1980′s vintage Yamaha Tenere’s and I decided to ride with them for a few days.

These guys are total crack ups and a lot of fun to ride with.  They are aircraft navigators in the Dutch Navy so it was fun to talk aviation and swap flying stories.  Total characters, and given what they do for a living, I would expect nothing less.

They like to start riding around noon, and put in a good 3 to 4 hours before calling it quits, and having a beer.  In light of this, I told them that they should be riding Harleys.

The road leaving Chavin quickly returns to dirt and winds up into the mountains revealing spectacular sights.

As always, there are the ever present road closures.  This closure was due to blasting in a mining area.  The road was closed for two hours, open for one hour, and that schedule is repeated the entire day, every day.

Of course we hit the area at the start of a two hour closure, so its nap time for the Dutchmen. What’s the problem boys? Too much beer the night before?

After the mining area the road becomes fantastic pavement (no doubt built by the mining company) winding through elevations of up to 15,000 feet, and sporting spectacular scenery.

We stayed the night in a village called La Union, which resembled a garbage dump more than a village.  The next day was one lane twisty pavement into the friendly city of Huánuco.  We pulled up in the town square to look for accommodations, and within 5 minutes we had a mob around us, and two reporters from the local TV station proceeded to interview us.

Actually, in this pic the crowd is quite small.  A few minutes later, there must have been over 200 people around us when they saw the reporters interviewing us.  We wound up on the mid-day news on the following day.  Guess it was a pretty slow news day.

After Huánuco, we climbed back up to a high plateau at around 14,000 feet.

And found ourselves in the chilly, but friendly village of Junín.

Once again, after 5 minutes, a crowd had formed around us and we were suddenly looking like campaigning politicians, kissing babies and having pictures taken with peoples kids.

As luck would have it, there was a festival starting that night in Junín where we walked around the plaza de armas freezing our butts off while we drank  Maca, a tea made from an Andean medicinal plant, and listened to music and milled around talking to the local party goers.  Except for a handful of Peace Corps workers, we might have been the only gringos in town.

Given the receptions we were getting in the high mountain towns we were visiting, its apparent that they don’t get too many moto travelers coming through.  I can highly recommend a route through the Peruvian Andes,  it was a fantastic experience. To be continued.

Saludos, Vicente

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

View Northern Peru in a larger map

After crossing the border I made it to the city of Jaén for the night. The next day was a spectacular ride on pavement through beautiful canyons to the town of Chachapoyas.

Beautiful scenery.

This canyon was pretty spectacular.

Chachapoyas is a very nice little town at the end of the pavement.   There are some very comfortable hotels near the town square, good food, great climate, friendly locals.

South of Chachapoyas is where the good stuff starts.  It turns into very smooth dirt road immediately after leaving town.

I climbed up out of the valley to this high ridge line at around 13,000 feet.

Here I meet Mark.  Mark started in Alaska about a year ago and is peddling his way to Ushuaia.  This guy deserves serious respect.  By this time he had already done a huge climb out of the valley and was looking forward to a 10,000 foot descent followed by another 10,000 foot climb.  After I saw what Mark had ahead of him, I was very happy that I was not on a bicycle.

Cresting the ridge line you are treated to spectacular views of the mountains and valleys below.

The pictures dont really do this justice, but it was quite spectacular.

The road continues to wind alongside the mountains, with precarious drop offs, some are thousands of feet.  You do not want to slide off the road here.

The road continues to snake its way through the mountains.

This has been the most spectacular day of riding that I have seen on my trip so far.   Of course I am pretty happy about it.

Finally, towards the end of the day, I drop down into a valley to the town of Celendin.

Its an unremarkable town with few amenities, but there are a couple of hotels.

The road from Chachapoyas to Celendin is a must do in my opinion.  Get off the Pan Am, get in the mountains and into the good stuff.  After Celendin it is a rather unremarkable ride to the city of Cajamarca.  However, Cajamarca is a nice old colonial city with a pleasant town square, plenty of nice restaurants and decent hotels.

Main church in Cajamarca.

Another little church that overlooks the city.

Nice view from the little church.

Here is a video I took of the ride from Chachapoyas to Cajamarca. I now have a helmet cam so will be posting some videos from now on as well. I hope you enjoy them.

From Cajamarca I headed to the town of Huanchaco on the Peruvian coast. Here is a video of a little uh oh moment I had on that road. Stuff down here tends to jump out at you with little warning so you have to be on your toes at all times. This stone filled washout in the road was over a foot deep and I didnt see it in time. I hit it at about 60 mph and almost lost the bike. I was on the pegs so I had good control. If I was on the seat, or had a bike without excellent off road suspension, I probably would not have been able to hang onto it. Also of note is the tire shop conveniently located after the washout.

  At the coast I met some other riders, Tormod and Claus, from here on known as the “Mad Norwegians.” They are traveling around the world on 1937 Nimbus hacks!!!  Yup, mad Norwegians alright.  You wouldnt believe what these guys have done to keep the bikes going.  They said that the first words they learn in each new language are, machinist, and machine shop!  I can believe it!

In addition to being great mechanics and a little bit crazy, these guys are a total crack up as well.  They claimed that they learned great begging skills from locals along the way, and it helps to fund their trip.

Tormod.

Claus.

Yep, they better be Jesus’ favorite, because they are going to need all the help they can get on this trip.

Tormod insisted that I take his bike for a spin.  After a ride around the block, I cant imagine riding one of these around the world.  After that little ride, I felt like such a wimp riding my KTM.

Just a little routine maintenance, a cracked engine block on Claus’ bike.  They couldn’t do anything about it here, so they simply removed the motor, the head, the crankshaft, and took out the piston and connecting rod in the cracked cylinder, all in the hotel parking lot.  Then they headed to Lima with Claus running on 3 cylinders.

They even carried a toilet plunger with them.  I have no idea why and I didn’t want to ask.

Really fun guys to hang out with.  I hope I meet them further down the road.

Saludos.

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

One of the many trails in town.  Unfortunately, they all go up.

Nice view.

Suspension bridge.

They do a little bungee jumping off of this bridge.

Yet another church.

I left Baños headed to Cuenca.  It was a long day of riding through high elevations, sporadic rain showers and dirt roads.  I pulled into Cuenca cold, and exhausted, so stopped at the first hostel I found, which turned out to be a dump.  All the rooms surround the bar, which has the house music thumping loud until midnight, even though there was no one in the bar.  They said that they had hot water, but the shower was ice cold.  Oh well, no shower for me either.  I was too tired to move all my crap to another place.   I slept a total of 5 hours that night, then got up the next morning and promptly rode out of town.  I didn’t feel like hanging around in Cuenca as I was a bit burned out on big cities, and the experience in the El Cafecito hostel just sealed the deal for the me the get the heck out of town.  Sometimes I just get bummed out on a place and have to leave.

So I headed further south to the small hamlet of Vilcabamba, Ecuador.

Scenic riding as always in Ecuador.

I stayed at a very nice German run hostel just south of town.  In my experience, the German owned hostels tend to be well run, and very nice.  It was a very tranquilo place to chill for a few days and do nothing but walk around town.

The town church, of course.

I did meet some cool people at the hostel.  The guy on the left is my hero.  Neil is the real deal.  He has been all over the world on a motorcycle.  He goes home to the states and works for a while, then flies to some spot on the globe, buys a small thumper and rides his brains out.  He is also an avid photographer and showed me some really amazing images from South America.  He is currently riding a Falcon 400 and is headed north.  Neil is a super cool and interesting guy and I enjoyed hanging out and swapping stories with him.

The folks on the right, and in the below photo are Lars and Janni from Denmark.  They have been traveling in South America for a full year now in their VW camper and are headed north to Alaska.  Very cool people.  So us four overland travelers hung out well into the night and swapped stories of our experiences of life on the road.  Very cool stuff to bond with fellow overlanders in the middle of Ecuador.  I really enjoyed my time in Vilcabamba just chilling the days away and doing nothing but hiking and being geeky and exchanging  GPS maps and route suggestions with Lars and Janni.

I left Vilcabamba headed straight south on 100 miles of dirt road to the tiny border crossing at La Balsa, Peru.  This is a highly recommended route and crossing with a caveat………. Make sure you have some time. Iron Butt riders will not like this route.

OK, the crossing.   Its all dirt, but easy dirt road.  You don’t really even need knobby tires, well, you might during the wet season.

I ran into plenty road construction as they are grading from Vilcabamba south in anticipation of paving.  However, there are so many landslides along this route that I cant see that happening anytime soon. The construction areas will slow you down.   Twice I got stuck for over a hour waiting at a construction area.  Secondly, I had 3 front pinch flats that I had to deal with. Totally my fault for jumping whoops and flying over sharp rocks at 50 mph on a overloaded bike.   The throttle on the 990 is like a bad crack habit.

So, with the construction, plan on about 4 hours to get to the border (100 miles of dirt) if everything goes smoothly and you don’t wait too long at construction stops.

This is Fernando, road construction worker.  Cool guy.  He helped me change the tube from my first flat, number 1 of 3 that day.

At the border, Ecuadorian Migracion and Aduana were very efficient. I was checked out of Ecuador in less than 2 minutes, seriously.

Peru. Well that’s a whole nother Oprah. Seems that the Migacion girl likes to take “lunch” from 11 am to about 4 pm. So, if you show up at noon like I did, you’re pretty much not going anywhere, so kick back, have some lunch, and take nap.  Besides that, the girl has an attitude like its a big problem for her to stamp your passport.   She was allagitated that I couldn’t understand her rapid fire campesino accented Spanish and asked her to repeat herself.  Apparently, from talking to the customs guy, “she is like this all the time.”  Great.

However, after she saw I was on a bike, her attitude completely changed. “ah, me encanta tu moto, que linda….” and she smiled at me over and over again and asked me all kinds of question about my trip in nice, slow, clear Spanish of course.  I told her that she was pretty when she smiled.

Amazing what an attitude changer the bike can be for people.

The customs guy is very nice and friendly.  However, he seemed to have some difficulty doing the paperwork, so I had to politely tell him what I needed, and helped him with the numbers. Make sure that he gets all the numbers correct on your paperwork. That will take another hour or so. But, he is a very nice and mellow guy, very easy to deal with.

By the time I finished up, 5 hours after showing up at the border, it was getting dark. So, the customs dude tells me that I don’t want to go anywhere at night since there have been a lot of car jackings in the area recently. Well I figured that they wouldn’t be quick enough to catch me on the 990, so I took my chances riding to San Ignacio.  Besides that, there was really no place to spend the night at the border.

San Ignacio is about one hour away by bike, if you ride fast in the dirt, two hours if you’re slow.  It is your best bet for a hotel after your crossing. Its a friendly and tranquilo small town with about a dozen decent hostels.

If you decide to press on in the dark after San Ignacio (like I foolishly did) you will ride 60 miles of really crappy, wide graded dirt road with super deep potholes everywhere.   I had to ride at least 50 mph to float the front wheel over the holes, otherwise it was a brutal beating. Besides that, at night, I couldn’t see many of the holes, so I just pinned it and prayed.

Next large town after the pot hole route is Jaén.  Once I got a look at Jaén in the dark, I wished that I had stayed in San Ignacio.  I wound up paying 25 bucks for a hotel that turned out to be very nice with great parking, but the rest of the town is nothing special.   San Ignacio is a nicer place to stay for sure, so I would plan on a night there after your crossing.   That way, you don’t have to worry how long the Peru Migracion girl will take for lunch, so you can just chill out, wait, and enjoy the remote little hamlet of La Balsa.

After you leave Jaén, get ready for a spectacular ride through canyons to get to Chachapoyos.

Saludos, Vicente

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

After hearing so many people rave about the Galapagos Islands, I decided that I had to go see them for myself, since I was in the neighborhood.  For some strange reason which I still cant figure out, they would not let me ride my moto all over the islands.  Its too bad because the Galapagos looked like some great off-road riding. Ha ha!!  Yes, lots of rules here in in Ecuador.  So, at the last minute I booked a trip on a boat called the Samba.  Here is what our route looks like.

The boat is an 80 foot motorized yacht called the Samba and there were a total of 12 passengers and a crew of 6 on the boat.  Over the course of 8 days I must have taken over 3000 photos of birds, lizards, seals, turtles, beaches and other such stuff.  I wont bore you to death with all of the details of each island or all the pictures.  Just a few select pics and a little commentary.

The terrain, climate and general topography reminds me a bit of the Cortez side of Baja California.  The general idea is that you island hop on the boat, then take a zodiac onto land and to snorkeling spots a couple of times each day.  There are literally animals everywhere.

The animals for the most part do not fear anything, since there are very few predators that were introduced to the islands and those that were introduced years ago are slowly being eradicated.  So the result is that you can get very close to the animals and they are totally unfazed by your presence.

Bear in mind that none of my photos were taken with a telephoto lens.  I only have 17mm to 55mm zoom, so its a very widefield lens.

Albatros.

Babysitting. Maybe this is where the term comes from. :-)

We also witnessed a type of mating ritual between the birds.

A big hit with most tourists are birds called the  blue-footed Boobie.  Funny name for a funny looking bird.

I saw one doing a funny little dance where it would lift its feet up and down and sway back and forth.  I forgot the significance of this little dance, but it was funny to watch.

Bad day for the Boobie, good day for the crab.

I don’t know why I was compelled to take hundreds of pictures of these little guys, but they are colorful little buggers.

There were some beautiful beaches along the way.

Sea turtle tracks going to the nests.

And of course lots of sea turtles.

And curious little Mockingbirds.

That would get all tweaked when they discovered that you were an intruder in their territory.

The paparazzi were always in action.

They were relentless.  If those cameras were guns, all the wildlife on the Galapagos would have been decimated in only a few short days. Ha!

The big tortoises were really cool.

Dude, do you mind getting out of my face with that stupid wide angle lens on your camera?

Like the rest of the pacific ring of fire, these islands are volcanic, so there were some huge lava flows.

And some cool sink holes from some collapsed lava.

This little guy is called a lava heron, for obvious reasons.

Another cool bird.  Some kind of gull I believe.

I knew you guys wanted more Boobies.

Random beach shot.

There were some beautiful tidal pools.

Blow holes.

This one was pretty impressive with just a little swell in the water.

Of course plenty of sea lions.

We even saw them fishing.

Hey buddy give me a little break here, you’re scaring the fish away.

Sorry man, no milk for you.

Hey I think I just saw that sea lion poop.

Jeez, I cant even poop and nap in peace.

And of course, there were many, many land iguanas.

They kind of grow on you after a while.

Watch your step, thats a big-un.

And marine iguanas as well.  These guys were literally everywhere and you really had to pay attention not to step on them.

A face only a mother could love.

The good ship Samba………..

…..showed us yet more spectacular coastline.

Sei whale.

Galapagos hawk.

Heron.

The Heron got a little tweaked when that hawk landed so close to him.  He was not happy.

Flamingos.

Goat man.

Penguins!!!

more beautiful scenes……………

I was a little ambivalent about going to the islands but it turned out to be a great experience.  We also had some absolutely fantastic snorkeling with seals, sharks, turtles, and all kinds of interesting fish, but I didn’t have an underwater camera to capture any of those scenes.

Yes its touristy, yes there are many boats and many tourists, yes its expensive, but I found it to be a great experience, one of those “once in a lifetime” things.  What made it much better was that I booked a small tourist class boat rather than a large first class boat.  Being with a small group of people made for a very mellow experience.

So, two thumbs up for the Galapagos Islands.

Saludos.

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

View Equator in a larger map

As I headed down to Quito I would be crossing the equator, so naturally, a stop was in order.  In fact at a town called Cayambe, there is an equator monument.  Very cool!  I love this kind of stuff.

I had a funny feeling that if I put half of my bike in each hemisphere, it might suddenly turn into a KLR or something.

Nothing like that happened, although I did have a sudden urge to go watch a toilet flush.

Yup, the GPS says that we are on the equator.  Imagine that.

I suggested to one of the guys working at the monument that to make the monument really cool, they should install a toilet on each side of the line. For some reason, he failed to see the humor in that and didn’t even crack a smile, but mumbled something about motorcyclists. Sometimes I crack myself up.

Actually, the two guys working there were very nice. When I pulled up there was a bus load of tourists there. One of the guys told me to wait around until the bus people left, then I could ride my bike into the monument and take a photo. The guys are actually pretty stoked when you pull up on a bike. They get a lot of moto travelers here and will accommodate you with taking pictures when you pull up.

The one guy looked at my bike and said, “I like seeing those KTM adventures on long trips, I think its a good long distance bike, and besides that, I get tired of seeing BMW’s and KLR’s around here.”   Seriously, when the guy said that I had to chuckle.

Actually this monument is a solar calendar of sorts.  during the equinox, the sun rises right over that line.  Where you see the two big rocks on the opposite end mark where the sun rises during the solstices.  At the bottom of that big orange cylinder, there is a mirror.  On the equinox, at exactly mid day, the sun shines right down that tube, hits the mirror and lights up the inside of the tube with brilliant light.   Like I said, I love this stuff.

After a couple of more days in Quito I wanted to go check out one of the nearby volcanoes.  Volcan Cotopaxi, 19,400 ft,  sits 30 miles SE of Quito.  I figured it would be a nice ride up to the end of the road at 16,000 ft at the base of the volcano.  So I threw my flat repair kit in my pack, found my way out of the city,  and took off down a stone road in search of the volcano.

It was a nice ride to the park.

Ah, here we are, park entrance.

OK, so I get ready to pay my 10 dollar entry fee like a good tourist, and the guy manning the guard shack just looks at me and says, “no motos allowed in the park.”  “Really?  So if I am driving a car, a noisy truck, or bus belching out clouds of thick black diesel smoke, I can go in the park?”  “Yes,” he replied, but no motos.  Well that’s just great.  “Why?” asked him.  “Those are the rules,” he quickly replied.  I told him I thought that the rules sucked, and he agreed with me, but still would not let me in.

So, shamelessly, I tried to bribe him to let me in the park.  After all, that’s the way things usually work in most of Latin America.  I started with 5 bucks and eventually got up to 40 bucks.  That was everything I had on me, and it didn’t work.  Apparently this guy was not going to break the rules for what I had in my wallet.

However he did point me in the direction of a very nice dirt road ride back to Quito and told me that I would enjoy it very much.

So, I turned around, defeated, and headed back to Quito.  It was too cloudy to see the stupid Volcano anyway.

I only got up to 12,108 feet.

But, it was a nice ride back.

I was enjoying riding the bike in some dirt without the bags.

Cotopaxi is behind those clouds, but I never got to see anymore than this.

My quest to see a big volcano tuned into a very nice dirt road ride around the countryside.  It was a good day on the bike.

So I went back to Quito figuring that I will visit one of the other volcanoes before I leave Ecuador.

This coming week, I have a very special side trip planned that involves airplanes and boats, stay tuned.

Saludos, Vicente

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

View Colombia in a larger map

It was a fast and uneventful ride from Pereira to Cali.  It only took me two hours of breaking every traffic law in existence to get to Cali.  I stayed a few days in at the Casa Blanca Hostel owned by fellow motorcyclist  Mike from Holland.  Mike’s hostel is a great place to stay in a nice neighborhood of Cali.

Being a rider himself, Mike caters to motorcycle travelers. The secure, covered bike parking and mechanic shop two doors down is a huge bonus as well.  I put on a new chain and front sprocket, and had the mechanic Santiago mount up some LED aux lights for me.  I’m running dual 50W HID’s in the headlight mask but I wanted a little more light near the front wheel to more easily see obstacles in the road like rocks, animals, abandoned trucks, and big potholes.  I don’t choose to ride in the dark down here, but I have found myself occasionally forced into doing it, so I want all the light I can get in those situations.

I also met another rider headed north on a KLR.  Jason started his trip in Argentina and is headed home to L.A.  We exchanged some info and tips on places we had been, and spent time hanging out and trading stories.

There were also two other bikers there as well . One guy, Robert, also from L.A. was riding an 2008 Harley Road King. He is a total crack up. My hat is off to him for taking the big Harley on a trip like this, and its pretty cool to see some American Iron headed to Tierra del Fuego. There are Harley riders, and there are Harley riders. Robert is the latter. Harley riders hate looking at their 900 pound bikes from this angle.

So now begins my exit from Colombia.  The ride south out of Cali is another wonderful ride in stunning scenery.

The road to the town of Pasto winds through the mountains and takes you to around 9000 feet, where the cool climate is a nice reprieve from the heat of Cali.  Pasto sits at around 8600 feet and although the surrounding scenery is beautiful, it is a bit of an unremarkable town, but a good staging place for crossing the border into Ecuador on the following day.

It definitely has that mountain town feel to it, year round jacket weather.

I guess they dont see many travelers here because when I walked down the street, people would stop me, ask me where I was from, welcome me to their country, and ask why in the world I wanted to come to Pasto.  I continue to be impressed by the hospitality and friendliness of the Colombian people.

More churches.

I didnt really look around the city very much.  It was a travel day for me.  However the riding was spectacular, and for this day and the next, I simply soaked upevery twist and turn of the road and the outstanding scenery.

From Pasto to the border at Ipiales is yet another incredible ride.  Just as you leave Pasto you climb to almost 11,000 feet and the terrain begins to get a little more arid to where you actually start seeing cacti, and the mountains get bigger.

You can tell that you are starting to get into the Andes proper.  I really enjoyed the two days of riding from Cali to Ipiales, it was fantastic.  Caught up in the moment, I neglected my picture taking and travelogue duties, but it was the best 2 days of pavement riding I have ever done.

Adios Colombia.  I will be back on a motorcycle for sure.  What an incredible place.  I have to say that Colombia is easily my favorite country in Latin America so far.

The procedures for exiting Colombia takes all of 15 minutes.  The officials are courteous and efficient.

Entering Ecuador is simple as well, but more time consuming.  There was a line of 50 people at migracion, and only one official working.  So it took a good hour and change to get my tourist stamp.  Then over at aduana, the customs guy copped a big attitude when he saw my US passport, so he jerked me around for a good two hours before I got my import permit for the bike.

The procedure is simple and straight forward though.  I just happened to run into an ass.  After I got my permit and I was leaving customs, the other guy in the office followed me outside and apologized for his co-worker being such a jerk.  I just smiled at him and told him it was OK, and I was sorry that he had to work with him everyday.  He laughed, shook my hand, welcomed me to his country, and wished me safe travels.

I am in Ecuador.

Saludos, Vicente

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

Although the scenery is stunningly beautiful, I took absolutely zero pictures on this ride because there were few places to pull over, and trying to ride one handed while taking a picture would be a roll of the dice on this road.  There were a few places to pull over, but the last thing I wanted to do was let all the trucks pass me by since I just risked life and limb getting ahead of them in the first place.

In Medellín I would meet up with fellow rider Al, whom I know only from an internet motorcycle forum.  Al used to have a bar in Quito, Ecuador, then moved to Medellín about a year ago.   I was the first motorcyclist, and actually the very first guest to stay at Al’s new place.

Al has  just opened a hostel, complete with an Argentinian steak house downstairs.  The rooms are all very nice and have a motorcycle theme.

There is of course secure bike parking.  If you are nice to him, he even might let BMW’s park inside.

The restaurant was under construction the first half of my stay.

The grand opening was a couple of weeks later.  I ate more meat than any one human should be allowed.  The steak is incredible.

Al, sampling the goods.

Andres, a real life authentic Argentinian from Mendoza, manning the grill.

So if you find yourself in Medellín, I highly recommend a stay at Al’s place near Parque Lleras in Poblado, Medellín.

In addition there are many big bike shops within walking distance like the KTM dealer called Moto Shop.

It was a great place to do an oil change, get some new rubber, brakes, etc, and freshen everything up on the bike.  If you need anything for your bike, Colombia is the place to do it as parts are readily available for all makes and models of motos.  Get everything you need here, because further south, its not nearly as easy.

Colombia truly is motorcycle heaven.

They even washed my bike before they serviced it.

This bike is particularly useless in Colombia.  You just cant let a sport bike run here, too many tight twisties, gravel road sections, etc.

Now this bike, the 990 SM along with the 690 SM are the perfect bikes for the roads and terrain here.  If I lived here, I would probably just have a  supermoto like this, without the pizza delivery box on the back, and a dirt bike for when I wanted to go play in the dirt.

Be prepared for steeker shock though.  Because of import duties, motos in Colombia are generally twice as expensive as in the states.  A KTM 990 Adventure:  $25,000.  Although I did see a nice used 2004 950 for 20 grand!  I didn’t even want to go the BMW dealer and see how much they wanted for a new 1200 GS.  Probably close to 35 grand, maybe more.

I didn’t do a whole lot in Medellín except for relax.  Al and I took a couple of rides around the country side.  He is an ex-London dispatch rider, which means he rides like a maniac and pulls off stuff in traffic that scares the hell out of me.  I quickly figured out that I was not insane enough to follow him through some of those maneuvers.  Al would split lanes like Moses and we would blow by guys on FZ-1′s and V-Stroms like they were standing still.  All they saw was two orange blurs threading the needle through the traffic.

We took a ride up to San Somethingorother.  I forget the names of these scenic little towns, they all seem to run together.

Horse parking.

Beautiful horse.  Not sure what make and model he is though.

The church.

On one other particularly beautiful day we headed out of town about an hour to place with a big rock.  I forgot the name of the place, so I will just call it, “big ass rock.”

Yup, its big alright.  I didn’t feel like climbing all of those stairs wearing MX boots.  So I just sat in the restaurant and enjoyed the view.

The big ass rock overlooks a beautiful scene with a lake.

Then of course, like every afternoon, it starts to rain.  Every afternoon, its like a cow peeing on a flat rock.

I also took a ride around the countryside with some Colombians.  They were all on KTM’s, mostly Supermotos, and were absolutely crazy.  Being on the Adventure, there was no way I could keep up with those guys on the SM’s so I didn’t even try.  Albert did a brilliant job of holding his own with those guys, but he later admitted that he scared himself  a few times.  I think those guys were impressed that a crazy Scotsman driving an  Adventure with DS tires was right on their asses in the twisties.

During one of the breaks we took, one guy asked me why I drove so slow.  I told him that I have about 30,000 miles to go on my trip and had enough crashes already without purposely riding like my helmet was on fire.

Which brings me to another thing.  I LOVE riding in Colombia.

Basically, if you are on a big bike, there are pretty much no rules that apply to you.  Pass a line of cars and trucks over a double yellow anytime you feel lucky, pass on the right through a sidewalk, shoulder, or parking area, do wheelies through the middle of town, go as fast as you have the guts to go, split lanes between same direction and opposite direction traffic like there is a middle lane, (not recommended with panniers) blow by cops riding V- Stroms and DR 650′s like they are going in reverse, and generally ride like a hooligan.    If you did this stuff in the states you be locked up within 15 minutes and they would probably throw away the key, but this is normal riding in Colombia.  After Mexico and Central America, I thought I had seen some crazy stuff on motos, but these Colombians take it to a whole new level.  Like I said, motorcycle heaven.

The KTM mafia meets for a Sunday ride at the local gas and gulp.

We drew a little crowd everywhere we went.

Another pretty town, San Something or other.

Another road side soda stop.  You wont catch these guys riding to a Juan Valdez Cafe or barhopping on a bike.  When they go for a Sunday ride, they ride hard, all day.

We started off with about 9 bikes then we got down to 5 or so.  They were nice enough to wait for me when a turn was coming up.

Crazy Phil, a crazy gringo that left Costa Rica and came to Colombia.

The afternoon storms start to build up.

So after 220 miles of general hooliganism, we headed back to the shop, had a beer, and called it a day.  I was tired out from riding with these guys and after one beer, was ready to pack it in.

So ends my stay in Medellín.  Al and I headed to Pereira where there was going to be a big moto rally.

The ride out was great.

However it poured down rain for the next two days so without attending the rally, Al headed back to Medellín, and I continued my journey south to Cali where I have been for a few days.  Next up, Ecuador.

Al, thanks for the hospitality and showing me around the country amigo, it was greatly appreciated!

Saludos, Vicente

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

View Colombia I in a larger map

After an uneventful flight to Bogota,  I started the process to get my motorcycle through Colombian customs, AKA “DIAN”.   However, you have to do a little walking around.  The international cargo terminal is about a 15 minute walk from the passenger terminal.  However, DIAN, or customs, is at the domestic air cargo terminal (naturally) which is another 10 minute walk from the international cargo terminal.  Go figure.

Anyway, go take care of all the paperwork and get your vehicle permit over at DIAN, then walk back over to Girag (international air cargo terminal) then get the bike out.  Plan on at least 3 to 4 hours to take care of all of this as there could be delays over at DIAN and delays at Girag as well.  For example, when I was at DIAN, no one there at the time knew what to do with my paperwork, so I had to wait for them to call in someone who knew the procedures, and that alone took a couple of hours.  Once all your paperwork is done, you will wait around Girag as well since it is a constant stream of trucks getting uploaded at the docks where you need to ride your bike down the ramp and out of the building.  This will take time.

All said and done, I started the process at 11 am, and was on the road at 5 pm.  So the whole thing took six hours from the time I walked into the Girag office.  Absolutely no one in the Girag office so much as lifted a finger to help me out.  They acted like they didn’t know anything.  Who knows, maybe they didn’t actually know shit about anything.  I’ve been around air cargo joints for the better part of 2 decades, so this doesn’t really surprise me.  I had to find out what to do from one of the guys loading trucks at the docks.  One would figure that after spending almost a grand to ship the bike that the service would be a little better.  Nope, what was I thinking?  I should know better.

Just before dark I managed to free my moto from captivity, and headed toward the old historic centro of Bogota in shockingly horrible traffic to find a hotel.  It took about an hour and half to go 10 miles since I could not split lanes with the boxes on the bike.  Welcome to Bogota.

Bogota is home to some 8 million people, so its a big, crowded city.  The climate here is cool all year long.  At 8500 feet elevation, the days are in the low 70′s and the nights require a jacket.  Very nice climate.  At the west end of town at the base of some mountains is the financial district and historic centro, which is a nice place to walk around and reminds me of upscale old neighborhoods in the States.

Complete with a nice park.

Lots of motos in Bogota.  The cops ride Wee Stroms.

Even the local hotties ride.

Only a couple blocks from the upscale historic centro, things start to change a little bit.   First you notice the graffiti.  I had no idea the skinheads were down this far.

“This shit is not democracy.”   And “Yankees get out of Colombia.”  Uh Oh, the only Yankee I see around here is me!

Then the scenery starts to change a bit in another block.

A girl showing her wares at one of the numerous houses of ill repute on this street.

Hey man, I see you have plenty of BMW parts in there, but have you got a KTM front sprocket as well?

“Hey buddy, you know where I can find a…………….ah never mind.”

Anyway, I met a girl named Agueda in Bogota the first day I arrived.  I was parking the bike at the hotel and she started chatting with me.   She offered to show me around town.  She also said that she liked motorcycles and wondered if I would be able to give her a ride sometime.  Ah, now the truth comes out, I knew that it wasn’t my charm she was attracted to.  However a local tour guide sounded great to me and as a bonus, my Spanish would get quite a workout as well.

So on Friday night, she took me to the cockfights.  But first, we had a few roosters to pick up at her house.

Well come to find out,  Agueda, has a few brothers that raise fighting roosters, and they come into Bogota every weekend to try and make some money at the cockfights.

Its a much more upscale place than the ones I have been to in the little towns in Mexico.  You mean I cant bring in my guns?  Can you say, “no fun allowed here?”

Weighing in the birds on a specialized rooster scale.  I learn something everyday.  I never knew that there was actually was a scale made for the sole purpose of weighing in fighting roosters.  Life’s little surprises…….

Getting the birds stored for the fights.

The business ends of these roosters are made out of polycarbonate and taped up to the bird’s legs.  They can inflict some serious damage.

I’m not saying whether this is right or wrong, it just is what it is, and I was there.

“And in this cage, weighing in at a whopping 4.7  pounds, the undisputed heavyweight champion of the……………..”

Lets take some bets……….

This poor guy wound up getting cooked in the lobby food stand, right outside the ring.  Bad day for him.

The boys didn’t win much here.  However, they went to an after hours cockfight place where they won almost $1000 bucks.  That’s a mighty big payoff for these campesino boys.

Interesting times at the old cockfights.  This was actually one of the most tame cockfight places I have been to.  Everyone was relatively sober and a bit reserved actually.  Although it was a late night, the next day I had to rally because I was supposed to take Agueda on the bike and go up to the finca where her brother and his family live.

I picked up Agueda in the morning. As we made our way through Bogota traffic, we found that the highway was closed a bit outside of town.  There was a big bicycle race coming though so they closed off the course.  It would be a couple of hours before they opened it back up.

So we decide to walk up to the corner restaurant and have a little snack.  Man, this was some great BBQ.

The road opened up and we went on our way toward the pueblo of San Francisco, about 70 miles northwest of Bogotá.  It turns out that in San Francisco there was a big fiesta going on.  Everyone was riding their horses through town in a big parade, and drinking beer and aguardiente, which is kind of like a black licorice type of liqueur.  Very sweet, and very strong.

Everyone seemed to be having a great time.  This is what I call a “self propelled campesino boom box.”  Jeff Foxworthy would have a field day with this one.  “You might be a redneck if………….”

And of course there was some great BBQ as well.  This stuff was incredible.

How about a nice plate of………..MEAT!

The church in the town square.

Horse parking.

After enjoying the town festivities, we headed out of town behind the parade.

And out into the country side.

Down some dirt roads………

There were dangerous critters in the road.

We continued up into the hills.

………as the road winds further into the country side.

Agueda seems to be pretty happy riding on the back of the KTM.  And pretty brave as well, dirt road, no helmet, with me driving.

Finally we arrive at the finca.  The boys are pretty impressed with the size of the bike, and even more impressed that I didn’t crash numerous times getting to the finca with their sister on the back.

This is Jose.  Tough kid.  He has a really thick campesino accent.  I cant understand a word he says to me.  When he talks to me, he gets right in my face and yells at the top of his voice.  Its funnier than hell.  He figures if he yells really loudly, I will understand.  He couldn’t figure out why I  understood his sister perfectly, and I couldn’t understand him.

A few years back when he was in the Army, during a firefight with the FARC, he took 2 rounds from an AK through the hips and into the guts.  Both rounds entered and exited, but in the process did a mighty fine job of shattering his hip and churning up his intestines.  7 months and 14 operations later he would live to tell about it and make a pretty good recovery, although he still has trouble getting around.

Spending time in the cities, its easy to forget that the war is still going on.  However, when you talk to these folks, you get an idea of the hardships, pain, sacrifice, and loss that many Colombians have endured over the years, and continue to endure even now.

Here is the view from the finca.  Apparently, that is a dormant volcano in the background.  The boys said that occasionally there have been emeralds found in the quebrada (a creek drainage) next to the finca.

Here is where they make the feed for the few head of cattle they have.

It was getting about dinner time so Jose hands me a chicken and tells me to kill it.  I grab its neck and give it a good snap.

Then the boys go to work plucking and dressing the bird before they hand it off to the girls in the kitchen.

The dinner was great and we even had some left over for breakfast the next morning.

“Hey Gringo, you got any chicken for us?”

We then saddled up and headed back toward Bogotá.  A view of the pueblo of San Francisco.

Leaving the finca.

I had a fantastic weekend hanging with Agueda and her brothers and it was great experience.  In my travels, it seems that when I have a random meeting with a person, it usually turns into a special experience.  I will always remember this part of my time in Colombia.  Wonderful people.

Saludos, Vicente

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

Next you proceed to the Costa Rica side for processing. There are bus loads of people (literally off the buses) standing in lines for immigration stamps. So I stand in line for about a hour and half and finally get my tourist stamp. Then I go to an office in the same building to make copies of everything and purchase the mandatory insurance for the bike. Now I take all of that crap and go across the street to Aduana. I get to the front of the line and customs guy proceeds to make a 20 minute phone call to his girlfriend while he casually flips through a magazine. He never looks up at me. So after he takes his time on the phone and gets bored with the magazine, he looks up at me and says, “what do you want?” Nice. I just hand him my stack of paperwork. He has me fill out several forms, asks to see all of my original documents etc. Then he wants to see the VIN on the bike. Fine. On my bike under the seat is a factory sticker with the VIN number because the VIN number stamped on the frame is almost impossible to see without removing the fairings and fuel tanks.

He looks at the sticker and says, “no good, I need to see the number stamped on the frame.” I explain that its under the fairings and tanks and hand him my tool roll and tell him to have at it. Then just looks disgusted, grunts, hands me my paperwork and tells me to take it over to the warehouse. OK, great where is the warehouse? “Over there” he says as he makes a sweeping gesture with his hand. What a guy. This guy is a complete jackass. So I get on the bike and find the warehouse and proceed to stand in line with a bunch of truck drivers who all look equally unhappy about standing in line all day. When I get the to front of the line after about 30 minutes, the customs guy behind the window tells me that he does not have time to do my paperwork right now and I should come back later. Great. So I just stand next to the window and glare at him as he helps other people and truckers. After about 30 minutes of this, a very nice Nica truck driver asks me why I am still standing there. I tell him. He then starts a discussion with the customs guy and finally the guy agrees to do my paperwork to finish the process of importing the bike into Costa Rica. I thank the truck driver many times. He just smiles and says to me, “dont worry amigo, some Ticos don’t care too much for gringos but they really dont like us Nicas. That customs guy was just messing with you because he is such an asshole.” Then with a smile and a little laugh he says, “welcome to Costa Rica amigo.” So almost 4 hours after pulling up at the border, I am officially into Costa Rica. What a pain in the ass.

View CR Panama in a larger map

I high tailed it to Avellanas to Casa Kristi and got a very nice room for the night.

The next day I made tracks down the Nicoya peninsula to Mal Pais. My friend Wendy lives and works there so I spent a few days visiting her. The nearby town of Santa Teresa is kind of a sad sight. Its very touristy, expensive, and full of dirt bags, both local and foreign. There are lots of idiots selling drugs, and with that comes out of control theft and robbery. Nice place.

However Wendy’s place is out of town on a nice little beach that borders the Cabo Blanco Reserve, the first national park in Costa Rica.

There is a pretty decent left out there as well.

It was good to see my friend Wendy. However after a couple of days I was less than thrilled with Costa Rica and was ready to move south. So, I hopped the ferry over to Puntarenas.

I blew through Jaco. Wow, what happened to Jaco? Jaco used to be a really cool beach town. Now it is just a complete mess. I stopped for all of a minute to look around, then headed further south. Maybe Dominical would still be nice? Nope, wrong. Dominical is another mess of agro surfers and 20 year old idiots, both foreign and local, selling drugs by day and robbing homes and people by night. Nice. What happened to Costa Rica?

So I headed further south. I got a tip on a cool place to stay from fellow motorcyclist. About 2 miles north of Uvita, you will see a small sign on the left that says “Rancho Diandrew 4 km.” So at the sign, I make a left up the dirt road and head into the hills.

There are a few houses off the dirt road. Nice foreigner homes and there are no idiots to be seen. OK, now this is a little more like it.

Well, as it turns out, Rancho Diandrew is a great place to stay. You can rent a big tent with an air mattress for 10 bucks a night and there is a nice kitchen tent right next to it.

Or if you want a nice place, there are ”tent cabins” as well that are a little more plush. They are very much like the yurts in San Ignacio, Baja California. I stayed in a nice cabin for a night, then moved into the 10 dollar tents for the rest of the week.

Nice views of the ocean out the front porch too. There are plenty of animals around and you will seen numerous exotic birds and monkeys, maybe an anteater or two, and if you’re lucky you will get to see some big snakes as well.

This place was excellent. I stopped in for a night, and stayed a week. I would lounge around all day, hike in the jungle then go for a swim in on of the numerous swimming holes within a 30 minute walk of the house. This is a very refreshing way to spend a hot afternoon. I think all I did while I was here was lounge around in the morning and swim in the afternoon. It was really too hot to do much of anything else.

So there are in fact still some neat little off the beaten path places near the coast in Costa Rica, but you have to hunt for them. If you are coming through Costa Rica I highly recommend a stay at Rancho Diandrew.

After all my lounging around, South America was calling me, so I wanted to get moving further south, toward the very small Rio Sereno border crossing into Panama.

I climbed up into the mountains to a little town near the border called Sabalito, stopped at the gas station and asked how to get to Panama. The gas station attendant gives me very detailed directions and I find myself here. A Central American border crossing down a dirt road? I think this is gonna be good.

So I pull up to the Costa Rica office a little further down the road. There is only one official there for both Migracion and Aduana, and I am the only person using the crossing. Bingo. He checks me out of Costa Rica in about 30 seconds. Then I go about 100 meters up the road to the actual border with the Panama offices on the other side of the fence. Check this out. This is a border crossing? Excellent. I couldn’t believe my luck.

Migracion on the left, Aduana on the right. However when I walk into the first office, the guy informs me that it is lunch time and he will take care of me in about a hour or so. No problem, I just kicked back in the shade and started to relax. However, about 2 minutes later, he comes out and asks me for my paperwork. I give it to him and he comes back a couple minutes later, hands it back to me and says “welcome to Panama.” He did this on his lunch break. How cool is that? So I go over to customs to inform them that I will be back after lunch to take care of the bike import. One guy tells me not to worry, just give him the paperwork and he will take care of it now. Very cool. So I hand him all of my stuff, walk across the street and buy some cokes for everyone in the office. When I come back in five minutes, everything is finished and the folks were actually really surprised and happy that I brought them some ice cold cokes to drink. I couldn’t believe it. I was done with this border crossing during a lunch break, and in the time it took me to go buy some refreshments. Needless to say I was extremely happy about this border crossing.

I headed to Santa Catalina on the coast for some world class point surf.

Instead of world class point surf, I was sick with the flu the whole time. That pretty much sucked. So, I only took a few pictures while in Santa Catalina.

The evening thunderstorms.

The point surf.

The beach.

After a week in Santa Catalina, I headed to Panama City in search of transport to Colombia. Of course a visit to the famous Miraflores locks on the Panama Canal was in order. Some people have been less than impressed with a visit to the locks, but I found it to be a great thing to do.

I met these guys. Steve and Bruce riding KTM 950′s from Lima to L.A. They even bought me lunch at the locks.

Some pics of ships passing through. They are headed to the Pacific. In the Miraflores locks they will drop 9 meters.

Tanker and container ship.

Tugs that pull the ships through the locks.

Tug boat.

Its a good place to kill a few hours out of your day. Besides that, you stay in the air con in the restauant and drink beer while you watch the ships come though. Given that fact, I don’t see how anyone can not have a good time at the Miraflores locks.

Well, now back to finding transport to Colombia. To get from Panama to Colombia you must cross the infamous Darien Gap. The Panamerican highway ends in Panama at the town of Yaviza. There are no roads through the Darien into Colombia. The gap is a well known haunt for FARC, narco traffickers, and generally bad people. Not to mention that the jungle here is brutally unforgiving. A few people have taken motorcycles through the Darien, but they didnt ride them. They carried them over the course of weeks. I think I will pass on that one. There are three ways into Colombia. You can carry your bike thorugh the Darien. You can take boat through the San Blas islands over several days and go the Port city of Cartegena in Colombia. Or, you can fly yourself and bike from Panama City to Bogota. From research, I deduced that there were basically two boats that I would trust with my bike. The Steel Rat, and the Seeadler. I had emailed these boats almost two months before my anticipated trip to Colombia and they were full. I poked around Panama City looking for other viable boats to take but found nothing that I was keen on taking. So, I decided to pack up, ride to the airport and have the bike shipped to Bogota.

Met a guy named Chris who was coming north from Colombia. His bike just got to Panama and he was starting the ride home to the States.

Of course, as fate would have it, when I returned to my hotel in Panama City after shipping the bike off to Colombia and buying a ticket for myself on Copa Airlines, I checked my email and Ludwig from the Steel Rat had sent me an email which informed me that a spot had opened up for me on the boat. Doh!!!! It would have been a great experience, but it was just not to be I guess.

Not the way I wanted to get to Colombia………..

Just bad timing. I was pretty bummed out about it.

Saludos, Vicente

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

Clickable interactive google map.

View Puerto Cabezas in a larger map

It is pretty interesting to pull into a gas station and have the attendant say, “Greetings mon, welcome to Bilwi, where you from mon?

Anyway, the next day we had to go do some searching around for parts. The evening before, Mario had broken his subframe bolts and we also needed a replacement spare tire for the truck. So we went shopping.

Not the same size tire as the other, but it will do the trick.

The night guy at the hotel that hooked us with beer and for the night before took us around town so we could quickly chase down tire and parts.  We didn’t know his name but since he kind of looked like Mike Tyson, we just started calling him Tyson.  Well,  funny thing was that when we pulled up to the tire shop, the tire store guy says, “Hola, Tyson!  Como estás? Too funny.  Tyson pretty much seemed to know everyone in town and seemed to be a guy that could get you whatever you needed, legal or otherwise.

After we chased down what we needed, we headed to the beach for a while.   Here, each little tent had its own 5 million watt sound system, all playing different music.  Imagine listening to 5 different songs at the same time, all cranked up to 11, not so fun.

I’m still not sure what happened here.  I turned around and she jumped in my lap.  Mario, always ready with the camera, probably had something to do with it. When she jumped in my lap, he told me (in English of course) that she probably wanted me to help her get back in that dress that she was falling out of.

Being the middle of Semana Santa, I thought this beach was a bit deserted, as it was the most popular beach in town.

It was a hot day and water looked refreshing, although after seeing this, none of us really felt like swimming.

After that, we went to another more tranquilo spot for food and beer.

The next morning the girls would leave at 4:30 am as it is supposed to take about 16 hours for a car to get to Managua.  Mario, JC and I slept in and left about 8 am.  Well, Mario and I arrived at the ferry about 20 minutes after leaving the hotel, but JC was nowhere in sight.

Local river transport

You can buy breakfast right on the little river ferry, which we did while waiting for JC, because we found out from a local motorcyclist that he was headed down the wrong road to the Honduras border.

Finally, after a 3 hour solo northeastern Nicaragua tour, JC arrives and we can get moving toward Managua.

We made it to Managua after riding a couple of hours into the night dodging suicidal cheeken boose drivers and animals in the road.  100 watts of HID light is essential for night riding in Central America.  Miraculously, we pulled into the hotel 2 minutes behind the girls in the truck.  It took them 16 hours and change. It took us 10 hours on the bikes, and that was dealing with flats and taking plenty of breaks. Dirt road trips are always significantly quicker on bikes.  We have no pics of the rest of this day except from Marios phone camera.  I did have a pretty spectacular crash going through some whoops. I almost pulled it off but I got the bike crossed up on the last whoop and went down. The next day I was having a hard time walking since I banged up my ankle, knee, and hyper extended my thumb. Fernanda, wearing a frown of disapproval, just shook her head at me and said, “well Vicente, I guess no chicas for you for a while.”  Funny woman.

We went to Granada the next day and the place was packed with tourists and locals for Semana Santa.   Granada is the tourist city in Nicaragua. It has some old colonial charm, lots of neat old buildings and plenty of swanky shops and restaurants designed to relieve you from your cash.  Nevertheless, its a great place to stop and kill a day or two.

On the way we stopped at the active volcano Masaya.  You can drive right up to the cauldera and into the sulfur cloud.  Pretty cool actually.

Supposedly, the cross was put there to keep the evil spirits living in hell from coming out of the volcano and terrorizing the earth.

And finally we pull into Granada.

This is a Semana Santa procession with mock caskets of Jesus.  You see these things coming down the street by the dozen, and it goes on all week long.

Of course there are horses in the streets, after all, this is Nicaragua!

“¡Hey!  Granada is not a trash can.  It is our city.”  It was good to see this sign.  The rest of Nicaragua, or the rest of Central America for that matter, could take some lessons from this.

Hey, dont forget to honor your ancestors too!

Fernandita met a street artist that painted and sold tiles.  This guy was from near Bluefields on the Caribe coast, and was walking around working the people sitting in the outdoor restaurants. He always had a big smile on his face. He tried numerous times to paint a tile for us, and we refused every time. Then he just sat down next to us and says, “I’ll tell you what mon, I paint a tile, and if you like it you buy it from me mon.” OK, fair enough, paint away amigo.

Fer was stoked.  I crack up every time I look at this picture. Of course his sales tactic was successful.

We ate and drank and then returned to Managua for the night.  The next day my Salvadoreño family left for San Salvador.  It was a very sad day for me.  The hospitality that they showed me was incredible, and I made some life long friends.  Mario, Fernanda and the girls are fantastic people and I already miss them very much.  Muchissimo gracias!!!!!

When I left Managua I decided to make tracks toward Costa Rica.  I stopped by the volcanic island of Ometepe in the middle of Lago Nicaragua a took a “here I am shot” and went on my way.

I spent a night a little further south at the very touristy beach town of San Juan del Sur.  Although touristy, it is quite a nice tranquil beach town and worth a couple of days.  If you’re a surfer, there are many world class breaks a short drive away, although the bay has no surf. Since I was still gimping around a little bit from my crash, I couldn’t do any surfing anyway.

View SJDS in a larger map

My last Nicaraguan sunset.  The next day would involve yet another border crossing into Costa Rica.

Saludos, Vicente

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

Clickable interactive map.

View matagalpa in a larger map

On to a  dirt road toward Matagalpa

I have no idea what these guys are hauling.   They are doing a good job of sweeping the road with it though.

The ever present Central American road construction.

Good time for a mug shot………..

Then we pulled into our place for the night near Matagalpa.  Its about 4000 feet so its a nice cool climate.

It was a really cool joint with cabins and a restaurant around a pretty little lake.

The next morning we were up early to start the 300 mile journey to a place out on the Caribbean coast known as Puerto Cabezas, Bilwi.

Clickable interactive map.

View Bilwi in a larger map

We got an early start because we had a long day ahead of us.

As usual we ran into plenty of road construction.  Instead of waiting, JC decides to shoot the gap and try not to get scooped up by the backhoe.

In the morning its pretty fun riding on fast dirt roads.  We have many miles of dirt road to tic off.  Some of this road is nice, smooth, and fast.  However, much of the road is covered in sharp rocks, whoops and washouts and can be hell on tires and tubes.  Its about as tire friendly as the road from Puertecitos to Gonzaga Bay in Baja, but it goes on for 250 miles.

This road is hell for truck and bus drivers.  You will see so many trucks and buses on the side of road with various types of problems all related to rough sections and sharp rocks.  I think this guy as been driving this road for a while.  He knows what essential equipment is when you have a breakdown.

Of course we don’t always agree on the direction to take.

I’m pretty happy about the whole experience.

At least in this town its pretty obvious which way we need to go.

I’m having a good time and riding way faster and harder than I should.

This is the only route from the interior of Nicaragua directly to Puerto Cabezas, so it sees plenty of vehicle traffic and goes through many small villages.

Lots of animals on the road the whole way.

Moooooooo!

After getting plenty of air time earlier in the day on some whooped out section of road, I noticed a noise coming from the swing arm.  The metal bracket of the rear aux fuel tank had gotten badly bent on one of the jumps, had pulled the brass inserts out of the tank and was now gouging into the aluminum swing arm and rubbing on the chain.  So we had to do a little surgery on the side of the road.

Since it also pulled the threaded brass inserts out of the plastic aux tank the mounting bracket was completely useless to me.  My aux tank is now held on by bungee cords that JC had in his pack.  Pretty easy temporary field repair since JC had the bungees.

Anytime you stop near one of the villages, these big bikes always draw a crowd.  Folks just dont see many bike of this size come through so they are very interested to talk to you.  “How many cc’s?  How fast?  How heavy?  How much does it cost?  Where is it made?  You actually rode that bike all the way from the U.S.?”  Its always the same routine.  I must have answered these questions 14,327 times since I left home.

Official village bathing and clothes washing area.

Actually as hot as it was, these rivers looked pretty inviting.

We crossed lots of little bridges like this.

Cheeken Boose!!!

This guy had a rough morning.  Actually, seeing people passed out drunk is a pretty common sight in Central America.  We stopped at this little tienda for some cold sodas and the music must have been cranked up to 11.  It was so loud that you couldn’t hear yourself think.  It didn’t phase this guy though.

Here is the village school. The local school board must not have much political pull for funding.

The girls blew out a sidewall on one of the truck tires and were now without a spare.  So, we would follow them the rest of the way to Bilwi.  It was very slow going following the truck.  The last 50 miles would take us about 4 hours.  We would stop and take a break for a while to let the truck get ahead, then catch up to them and repeat until after dark.

KTM posers……..

Some of these little whoop sections were fun.

Some of the bridge crossing would prove to be interesting.  Mario barely pulled this one off.  He couldn’t see the missing planks until it was too late, so he had to pin it and pray.  He warned JC and I so we wouldn’t wind up wadded up in a ball.

This really could have turned out badly.  You can never let your guard down and get complacent when riding down here.

It was getting late and would soon get dark.  There is one river crossing that requires a ferry.  We had found out that the ferry stops running at 9 pm so we really needed to get the truck moving along so we wouldn’t miss the boat, so to speak.

We made it to the ferry with time to spare.

This turned out to be about a 14 hour day for us, so we were pretty worked by the time we hit the ferry.  This kid behind me was looking for any opportunity to grab anything off the bike.  The people here are very quick.  After the ferry it was only another 20 miles in Puerto Cabezas.   Most areas of the town are actually pretty sketchy at night.  After dark, you dont see many people out of their homes.  When we pulled in around 9 pm, the streets were deserted.  There’s probably a good reason for that.

JC is pretty worked as well.

I was damned happy to be off of that bike and into a hotel.  Once we got settled in the hotel, we were going to venture out and find something to eat and drink.  The night guard told us that under no circumstances should we be walking around outside after dark.  So he wound up calling a friend of his to round up some food and beer and bring it to the hotel for us.

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

You always see some interesting things on the road.  This truck  was probably carrying multi-colored alien dinosaur eggs or some such nonsense.

Interactive Google Map (you can zoom and pan) – Honduras Route.

View Honduras in a larger map

We got to the Honduras border at El Amatillo and I started the process of importing myself and bike into Honduras.  As I mentioned, the Honduras borders are infamous.  The customs people tend make up problems why they cannot import your vehicle and then will tell you that for 400 or 500 dollars the “problem” will go away.  Well needless to say, I had no intention of paying anything other the standard $35 import fee.  I don’t like to get fleeced, so out of principle and stubbornness, I will wait around all day if necessary to do battle with the customs people until they stop messing with me.

Mario, JC and Fernanda did not have to deal with Honduras customs because of the CA-4 agreement.  They are free to travel from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua without dealing with immigration or customs vehicle procedures.  I was hoping that I would not hold them up too long while going through the process.

So here I am with all of my paperwork getting ready to go do battle with the “Deputy Assistant to the Minister of Corrupt Border Officials,” AKA, the customs lady.

Fernanda, Julie, and Fernandita were patiently waiting for me in the shade while I went through the process.

We changed a few bucks at the border with the money changers………..

Despite all my preparations and mindset to go in ready for battle, I had absolutely no problem checking myself and my bike into Honduras.  Everything went very smoothly and a process that has taken others hundreds of dollars and a full day, took me the standard 35 bucks and all of an hour and half.  I think that because of the recent change of government in Honduras, the low level bureaucrats like these customs people could be scared for their jobs, and as a result they are on their best behavior.  That’s just a guess, but whatever the reason, the infamous El Amatillo crossing was a breeze.

We headed on down the road without any problems.  There were numerous cop stops along the way, but I just hung back behind Mario and JC and let them do all the talking.  I just kept quiet so the cops thought I was Salvadoreño, and they didn’t give me any grief at all.   In total we encountered six corrupt cop checkpoints on the way, but with the Guanaco boys running point and doing all the talking, we were waved right through after only a few seconds of discussion at each stop.

I really wanted to test my finely honed skills against these infamous corrupt cops as its has become kind of a hobby of mine.  I was trained by the best Mexico has to offer.  Since the Honduran cops have a reputation for corruption,  I was really looking forward to playing the game with those guys.   I’ll get the chance to do it on the way back north.

After the brief 80 mile section on CA-1 through Honduras, I checked out of the country easily enough at this place, very tranquilo, no problems.  The customs guy just looked disgusted and stamped my paperwork with scowl and a grunt.  Adios Honduras.

Checking into Nicaragua we changed some money once again.

And only 3 hours after leaving El Salvador I am through Honduras and into Nicaragua.  I was shocked at how smoothly it went.  People routinely spend all day long just getting through this infamous 80 mile gauntlet of corruption, but we were done before lunch.  Being with Mario and JC really helped with the cops, so I’m sure that saved a lot of time.  I was prepared for the worst and the whole thing was a non-event.  I didn’t even get any good story material out of the experience.

Welcome to Nicaragua.

Saludos, Vicente

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

Here are some pics of the race.

Lots of orange showed up.

There were the BMW 450 guys there from Guatemala.

Go Julie!!!!  Gotta love a girl that races dirt bikes.  I think she was the only girl in the race.

After all the riders left the closed portion of the course, we headed out to see the final stretch through the river bed.  Uh Oh.  We got stuck.

This stuff was like quicksand.  I remember when the bottom just dropped out of the truck and Fernanda yelled “Mario! Puuuuta!!”

We did finally manage to get the truck out with the help of a camion (big truck) and a chain.  All the digging and sticks didn’t work.

Here comes some guys up the river really flying.  Nasty stuff that gumbo river mud.

This guy took a horrible line over a half mile of river.  Not that there much better lines to choose from.

This guy was moving so fast when he hit the river that he was literally skiing the bike on top of the water.

But then he lost a little energy a few feet later and virtually sank the bike.

There were some other shenanigans as well.  This dude got his feet ripped right off the pegs from the water pressure, but he still managed to hang on.

These guys are screwed.  You cant mess around and be indecisive in river beds like this.  You have to go for it.

U-boat commanders.

U-boat commander and soon to be U-boat commander.

No! He made it!!!  Just barely though.  I thought he was screwed for sure.

All said, it was a fun day watching the race even though it was hotter than hell.  After watching these guys and having a good look at some of the course, I decided that I will take desert racing any time over this jungle river insanity.

Would you take your beautiful new Porsche to the races?  What was this guy thinking?

It was a really fun day at the races.

Saludos, Vicente

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

I thought about riding right into the church, but I don’t think that would have gone over so well.  I have to remember, I’m not in Guatemala anymore,  ” in El Salvador we have traffic laws,” blah, blah, blah.

We left Santa Ana and rode up to coffee country.

Stopped and had some coffee, and what the Salvadoreños call a quesadilla.  Its like a thin pastry, really tasty.

The mountains around coffee country.  Its nice and cool, well, cooler than San Salvador as we are about 4500 feet elevation here.

Hummm.  What is this interesting contraption sitting on the side of the road?  Looks like a bunch of boards with some wheels thrown on.  Wierd huh?  What could they possibly use these things for?

As I was contemplating the purpose of this contraption, a big pile of sticks came flying down the road at a good 50+ mph.  Whoa.  So what are these contraptions for?  Stupid gringo question.  These things are for transporting firewood of course. Duh….  It took us a while to catch this guy, he was freaking crazy, really moving.

I caught him in the curve.

Just take one more look at these wheels!  Now could you imagine, going over 50 mph on one of these things with a load of firewood behind you?

They can even ride two up with a huge stack of firewood, but these guys have some different wheels.  They appear a little safer anyway.  That is one serious Fred Flintstone machine right there.

Then the two aliens on big orange bikes continued to the town of Ataca.  Ataca is kind of like a mini Antigua.  Great artsy shops, outstanding restaurants, good coffee, and lots of tourists on the weekends.  But it’s way smaller than Antigua.  You can walk the entire town in only 30 minutes.  Nevertheless its a great place to kill a couple of days and a respite from the heat of the lowlands.

I of course had to ride right into the town square for a photo.  Damn hooligan bikers, what does this clown think he is doing?

Its a really cool little town, and if you are ever in El Salvador, you should go check it out for a day or so.

Kind of a neat little church in town as well.

Anyway, after leaving Ataco, we headed back to Santa Ana and had some lunch with a buddy of Mario’s.  I cant remember his name, but he rides a BMW R1200 GS and is taking a trip to Alaska this year.  He is going to leave from San Salvador and return in 40 days.  He is going to be busy with that limited schedule.  We had some great ceviche at this joint.  Mine came in a huge hollowed out Pineapple and was fantastic.

I think it was a good day at work for Mario.  Come to think of it, we didn’t work much, we just rode around the country, drank coffee and beer, and ate all kinds of food.  Rough job, but someone has to do it I guess.  Hey, Mario, do you need an employee?  I seem to have a lot of time on my hands right now and the paycheck is a little thin, so I could help you out with doing what we did today.

Well the next day was my 43rd birthday.  I don’t know how I let it slip.  I guess when Fernanda asked me how old I was, I told her that I was going to be 43 next week.  She didn’t forget that comment.  Anyway, low and behold, Fernanda decides to throw me a birthday party.  For those of you that don’t know me, I’m not real keen on having people go out of their way and do nice things for me.  At times I feel a little embarrassed by it.  I pleaded with Fernanda, “no, please, it’s too much, it’s only my birthday, it happens every year.”  Well she would have none of it.  She said that in El Salvador a birthday is a big deal, so we are having a birthday party, and its going to be fun, end of story.   All I could do was kick back and enjoy the hospitality.  It was really amazing.  I had just met Mario and Fernanda a week before, and now they are throwing a party for me.  Incredible people.

They invited some friends over.

Of course we hung out a bit in the garage with the other Mario  (KLR Mario, a hilarious guy to be around) and Juan Carlos (JC)

Fernanda whipped up a huge plate of Paella.  Me gusta!!!!!  Wow!!!!!

Then the cake came out, complete with a candle that kept re-lighting when I blew it out.  10 year old Fernandita got a kick out of that.  She was always laughing at me.  When I would look at her, she would laugh.  When I would say something, she would laugh.  Whenever I would do anything, she would laugh.  What would really crack her up is when she was trying teach me some Spanish and I would screw it all up.  Then she would laugh so hard she would be in tears.  Funny girl that Fernandita is.

After my big Four Oh, it was the best birthday I have ever had.  Mario and Fernanda, you guys rock!  Thank you  so much for making me feel welcome and throwing me an awesome birthday party!  Mi familia Salvadoreño es la mejor!!!  Muchissimo gracias.

Well needless to say, I didn’t feel too good the morning after my birthday.  I was drinking the same drink all night long, but it never seemed to get empty.   But I had to rally because the next evening we had to go do this………..

It was the Luis Enrique concert at the fair.  He is a very famous Salsa guy.  I still felt terrible.  At43 years old,  when I party it up, it hurts the next day, terribly.  I guess I can handle it once a year though.

Mario brought his binoculars to the concert so we could see better.

That night I met Fernanda’s friend Patricia.  Fernanda is on the left, Patricia is the right.  A smelly scuzzy biker like me doesn’t get to sit between two beautiful women very often, so I was all smiles.  Patti and I hit it off immediately.

There were a lot of pretty girls there, so of course I had to get pictures.  Mario insisted on it.

She is really cute.

I like green too.

The other cowgirls were very nice as well.

I like green.  Did I already say that?

Anyway, we all had a great time singing and dancing, and I didn’t even know any of the songs, but I had a great time.  I think we got home around 3 AM and had to get up 7 am to go to an enduro  (off road motorcycle race).  Fernanda’s older daughter was racing in the enduro that day so we had to go.  That was a little painful as well.

Saludos, Vicente.

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

It was pretty darned warm again, but can you tell I’m happy to be riding without all that damned luggage?

Hey Vinny, where the heck are you going?

We stopped off at a little mirador (viewpoint) and had some cold drinks and enjoyed the view of the city below.  It was a little hazy, but still great views.

Then we took off and headed up the hill a little more.

Did I mention that it feels good to have the bags off of the bike?

Then we rode up to Mario’s weekend getaway.  Its a little 10 acre coffee finca about 30 minutes from the center of town, but its like a whole different world.  Its got some elevation so its a bit cooler, and its so quiet that you can actually hear yourself think.  That’s a strange feeling after experiencing  all the noise of Latin America.

I’m pretty happy to be here.

We ate some fruit off the trees………

Then headed down the hill.  And yes, its a helluva a lot steeper than it looks.  I had both brakes pretty much locked up on the way down this section.

Then we headed back into town for dinner.  A perfect day of riding right around San Salvador.  I must say, I had a heck of a good time.

Saludos, Vicente

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

The basic process is that when you come to a border, or ‘frontera’ in Spanish, you must check yourself and your vehicle out of one country, then drive a few kilometers to the next checkpoint, and check yourself and your vehicle into the next country.  Sounds simple right?  Its anything but simple.

Central American overland border crossings are notorious for corrupt officials trying to fleece money out of you while you undergo a draconian process of navigating red tape and jumping through bureaucratic hoops.  Numerous copies of passports, visas, drivers license,  and vehicle registrations must be made.   After the copies are made, some of them must get a certain stamp, then copied yet again with the stamp to be turned in at yet another window so you can receive yet another piece of paper to copy and stamp.  Not to mention the whole time you are waiting in long lines in stifling heat and humidity.  Its a horribly frustrating process, even when everything goes smoothly.

If the officials in Migracion and Aduana (Immigration and Customs) are honest, it generally takes a couple of hours to check out of one country and another couple of hours to check into the next country.  Bribes are part of the game to expedite things and can be anywhere from an easy 5 bucks to a whopping $100+ depending on what you are trying to do or how bad your paperwork got screwed up at the last crossing.

In addition, at every border crossing are numerous ‘tramitadores’ or helpers.  These guys are part of that corrupt system.  They follow you around like beggars,  and insist that you will need their help to navigate the process.  For the most part 5 or 10 bucks to helper would be fine if they were honest and actually helped to speed up the process.  However, many of them can make the process excruciatingly painful, time consuming, and expensive.  Use a helper with caution, because you never know what your going to get.

As far as the notorious Central American border crossings go, the one between Guatemala and El Salvador is actually a very straightforward crossing.  However when I arrived they had a problem on the Guatemala side, no electricity.  Uh oh, this could be painful.

A couple of helpers were following me around giving advice.  These guys are persistent.  I kept telling them that I really didn’t need any help but they still hung around.  The problem came when I tried to get the bike’s customs exit stamp from Guatemala.  There was a huge line, and stack of papers a mile high.  The aduana (customs) guy explained that he couldn’t do anything until his computers came back on, and for that, they needed electricity.

OK,  no problem, I can wait.  Then one of the helpers tells me that for 40 bucks, he can get me checked out of the country  ‘in five minutes.’  Naw, thats OK, I have all day long to do this, and its still early.  I can wait.  Then about a hour later he comes back and says, “hey, I can get your stamp and get you out of here for 10 bucks.”  Well that tipped the scales.  I countered with 5 bucks, but he laughed at that.  He said no way in hell would the customs guy do it for 5 bucks.  OK, 10 bucks it is then.  Basically the 10 bucks was a bribe to the Customs guy to give me my vehicle exit stamp before the electricity and computers came back up.  What the hell, I’ll give it shot.  It told the helper that if he got my stamp, I would give him 10 bucks.  Sure enough, 5 minutes later he came back with my aduana vehicle exit stamp, no computer or electricity necessary.  See, these helpers aren’t all bad guys. :-)

Normally, they feed on your worry about how long the process will take.  I had all day, so I didn’t really care.  But with the electricity out, this was a new ball game.  I figured that 10 bucks not to sit in the heat for God knows how many more hours was worth it.  It turned out to be the best 10 bucks I have spent on the trip as you will soon see.

While at the border I ran into these folks from Canada:  Brian and Marie.  Really cool people.  Brian and Marie have ridden around the world on a BMW 1100 GS and are returning north to Canada after almost 3 years on the road.  They have been everywhere on that bike.  I wish I could have sat down with them over beers and listened to stories about their adventures, but unfortunately we were headed in opposite directions.

They warned me that in El Salvador there are traffic laws that are actually enforced.  Very strange.   Don’t screw around, don’t ride on sidewalks, don’t pass on a solid yellow line etc, etc.  Cool.  Good to know because doing all that stuff  and riding like a complete hooligan is normal in Mexico and Guatemala, and actually essential for survival.   However, after 7 months of riding like that its going to be a challenge to change my driving habits in El Salvador.  In Mexico and Guatemala you could ride 80 miles an hour doing a wheelie down a sidewalk while holding a beer in your hand and the cops would’nt even give you a second look.

Of course, not 15 minutes after I crossed the border I had a brain fart and found myself passing a truck on a solid yellow line while I was doing a little wheelie , right in front of a cop.  Shit.  I got pulled over but the cops were actually pretty cool.  They said that in El Salvador, there are traffic laws.  OK, sorry about that.  After some smiles and apologies they let me go and told me to be careful.  Of course it probably helped that when they saw me open my wallet I had all of 2 Quetzales (about 20 cents) inside, and not one single dollar bill. :-)

OK, back to the border.   With my 10 dollar bribe I got out of Guatemala quickly.  Very quickly in light of the fact that there was no electricity.  I had emailed Brian and Marie a couple of days later and found out that they waited at the border for 7 hours before they finally got through.  They were entering Guatemala which is a much more complex process than leaving, so the bribes would have been substantially more.  I guess my 10 bucks was well spent huh?

Although the process is ridiculous with numerous stamps and copies needed, the El Salvador side is straightforward as it gets, and costs almost nothing.  No fees, no banks to go to and pay, nada.  The only thing is that you have to make some copies of stuff which will cost you about a buck at the most.  There are signs everywhere in Migracion and Aduana saying that you do NOT need to hire helpers, and don’t pay attention to anyone that is trying to charge you money for anything.  In addition, there are signs reminding you that entry into El Salvador is FREE.  The border officials were honest and very helpful even though the process still sucked.  But I like this country already. :-)

All said and done including the little electricity problem on the Guatemala side it took me about 2 hours to exit Guatemala and enter El Salvador.  Hey, these Central American borders aren’t so bad right?  Apparently that’s what everyone says until they experience Honduras. :-)

And finally, I’m in El Salvador.

I’m pretty happy to be here.

Once you hit the coast, there are some great views.  Try to keep your eyes on the road.

An hour or so after the border, I pulled into the little beach town of El Tunco, got a room and kicked back with an ice cold frosty.

Not a bad view from the room either.

It feels good to be on the move once again, but I could see getting stuck here for a while as the surf is good, the people are friendly, and the women are beautiful.  I can’t really ask for much more than that.

The next day I hit San Salvador for a badly needed oil change and some other routine maintenance.  A guy on one of the internet motorcycle sites that I frequent had offered his help to me a couple of weeks prior.  Mario graciously offered the use of his garage and he actually went two the KTM dealer, bought filters and oil and had them waiting for me when I arrived.  How cool is that?  The hospitality of fellow motorcyclists around the world never ceases to amaze me.  So Mario and I kicked around most of Saturday drinking beer and spilling oil on his garage floor.  Actually I think we spilled oil first, then drank beer, despite what you are thinking.  We also met his buddy Juan Carlos and drank more beer on Sunday.  Sorry, but after all that beer ,I forgot how to operate a camera so I don’t have any pictures of that.  :-)

View from Mario’s above San Salvador

Monday we went for a little ride out near the northeastern border, and this time we both brought cameras.  We stopped at a huge bridge that was blown up by the guerrilla during the civil war.  If you go over that edge, its a long way down.  That one dude standing in the background by himself looked a bit sketchy as he was eyeballing us.

You know how you can feel when someone is sizing you up.   I figured that between the two of us we c0uld have schooled him if it came to that, but we didn’t want any trouble,  so we took off down the road.

A bridge was washed out here  few months back and this was the detour.  Here comes some clown that looks like a spaceman on a big orange bike riding right through the village laundry and bathing area.  Oh wait, that clown would be me.  :-)

And down the road we went.

We made our way north near the Honduras border and came upon this river.  I’m pretty happy to be here.

Mario is pretty happy to be here too.  He took a half day off work to show me around.  This is what he thinks about going back to work.

A little further down the river the road just ended.  This is a typical sight on dirt roads in Central America, the road simply ends into a river.

Mario told me that the guys that run this ferry will soon be out of business as the road is going to be paved, and a bridge will be built in the near future.  Progress is not good for El Salvador ferry operators or adventure bikers.

But nevertheless, we are still pretty happy to be here.

The shadows are starting to get long and the sticky heat is subsiding a bit.

It was an enjoyable afternoon of dirt roads and water crossings near the border of Honduras.  I would have never found this place on my own and  got here only because of Mario’s local knowledge.

As it started to get dark, we found the pavement, headed back toward San Salvador, and Mario had some words of wisdom for me.  He said that if we get separated going back home, do not get off the highway until you’re completely out of the city.  He said on the east side of town if you get off the highway, you will be really screwed.  I did’nt have to ask why, but its probably like getting off the freeway in south central L.A., at night, and wandering around lost with $100 bills falling out of your pocket, only worse. :-)

I was a fantastic afternoon of riding in El Salvador.  Muchas gracias Mario!!!

Saludos, Vicente

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

I convinced them to ride with me south into the scenic highlands for a few more days then cross into Mexico at La Mesilla.  So we left Peten and headed south to Coban.  The pavement out of Peten is straight and fast so you can really make some good time to Coban.

Except this one place where the road ends right into a river.   Of course there is a small ferry to take across.  Pretty cool actually.

Here is the motor.  There is a motor on each corner of the boat, or platform.

We arrive in Coban and stay at a dorm room in the Casa Acuña.

Which by the way has an incredible restaurant, probably the best in town.  If you dont stay, at least get a meal at the Casa Acuña, good groceries are to be had there.

There was some evening entertainment right outside the hotel.  I think it was a Suzuki or a Geo something or other, yikes.

The Bomberos were there right away.

Then next day I led the boys out of Coban toward Lago Atitlan.  It was very quick because since I had done this route a couple of times already, I was familiar with it, no wrong turns, in and out of towns quickly.  It sure make things a lot easier in Guatemala when you know where you are going.

Of course we had to cross the big slide area again.  This is a view looking downhill from the new road, and I assume where that small village was wiped out.  As you can see, that slide went a long way.  I dont know why I am so fascinated by this big slide and keep showing pictures and talking about it.  Maybe just because its so darned big.  I have seen some big slides before when traveling in Nepal and India, and for some reason all that earth just falling off a hill is amazing to me.

and down the road we go…….

3 up on a bicycle, tricky! But his rear tire could use some air.

We arrive at Lago Atitlan, continue down the hill to San Pedro de la Laguna and the suicide Chicken Bus corners.  Meeting a Chicken Bus on this road is exciting.  It happened to me a couple of times when I was riding with Arno, but this time there wasn’t much traffic.

I forget the name of this town on the hill, but you come right through it when you’re headed to the lake from the Pan American.

Volcan San Pedro, around 10,000 ft.

And into the town of San Pedro, dodging chickens instead of chicken buses.

Miguel is happy to be here.

Phil says, “Yo tambien!”

Raking up and drying the coffee beans.

Shoveling the beans.

Drying the beans on tarps.  Here’s something funny.  So you walk through town and see all these beans drying thinking wow, I bet that’s the good stuff that gets exported, and along comes a dog and he pees all over the drying beans.

Roasting the beans.  This stuff is safe, because its the good stuff with the dog piss that gets exported.  I can just picture the scene in a swanky Euro restaurant full of stuffy people drinking dog pee flavored coffee and commenting on how good it is.

Zoola.  Good groceries,  great place.

Killer food as well as an ideal place to lounge the days away.  I’m not sure what happened here.

One of those dangerous local San Pedro kids.  Be careful, that grin is an act, she will rob you blind in a millisecond.

The docks.  These boats here go to the town of Santiago.  The ones that go to Panajachel are a little further down the road.

Fishing boats.

You gringos better hand over everything you got on you, pronto, cause we got itchy trigger fingers amigos.  :-)

This gal sells bread and pastries and is quite persistent.  She does sell some good stuff though.

The street food in San Pedro is excellent as well.  These sausages were incredible.

But be careful, these street food stands attract some unsavory characters.  :-)

Another great visit to San Pedro, a very nice place to sit back, stare at the lake, and do nothing all day long.  We went back out to the Pan American and parted ways, where I would head back to Xela and the boys would continue to the La Mesilla crossing and back into Mexico.  According to their bosses, they have to be home by Valentine’s Day or there will be a heavy price to pay.

It was great riding with Miguel and Phil again.  They are great guys, excellent riding buddies and more fun than a barrel of monkeys.  Its good to see friends when your on the road for so long.  Gracias amigos, buen viaje.

hasta luego, Vicente

©2012 South on Two Wheels. All Rights Reserved.

There had been a huge landslide during some heavy rains several weeks before that killed dozens of people in the villages below.  A new road bed had already been cut so passing through was not a problem.

Impressive landslide…..

Another view with some sunlight on it, different day.

I made my way up through Coban for an overnight, then the next day continued north to the village of El Remate on the shores of Lake Peten Itza.  I pulled into the Casa Don David where I met up with Mike and Phil from Arizona.  I have ridden quite a bit with them in the past couple of years though Arizona, Baja, and Mainland Mexico.  It was cool to see some some familiar faces.

Mike, being his usual self.  What a clown.

Casa Don David in El Remate is a great place to stay if you are going to visit Tikal.  Its on the lake, very tranquilo, and they have  pretty decent restaurant there as well.

They do in fact, have both kinds of beer there.  The Gallo is OK, but the Moza is fantastic.  If you like Negra Modelo, you’ll love Moza.

In my best Texas accent complete with finger pointing, “I’ll tell ya’ll one damn thing, all ya’ll are really gonna like that beer.”

This guy was a fixture around the place too.  he would do this when you would walk within 10 feet of him.

Riding with these guys is a little different for me since I have riding solo for almost the last 5 months.  I am constantly asking myself,  “Where did those guys go again?  What in the heck are they doing now?”

Get used to these sights about every 15 minutes when you ride with Mike and Phil.

Yo quiero Taco Bell.  :-)

The next day we saddled up and headed to Tikal.  Here is the entrance to the park where they “check you in.”  So the guy standing next to me (Barney Fife) says, in rapid fire Spanish of course, “This is a National Park.  There is a speed limit of 45 kilometers per hour.  The parking lot is 17 kilometers from here and if you go the speed limit, it will take you 20 minutes to get there.”  OK, I get it.  So on that piece of paper he hands me is the time I entered.  So we go really slowly through the park and at the other end a guy takes that paper and writes down the time.  Well it took us 18 minutes, not 20, but the guy doesnt say a word about it, no big deal right?

So when we leave the parking lot after our visit, they write down the time again and at the gate at other end I give my paper to the guy and he goes ballistic because it took us 17 minutes, not 20.  He gets a bit miffed and starts to lecture me about how this is a national park and he is going to report us to the cops, blah, blah, blah.  He then looks at Mike and says “where is your paper?”  Mike says, “I lost it.”  then rides away.  Ha!  Well Barney Fife did call the cops and the cops just waved to us as we were leaving so I guess it all worked out in the end. Pretty funny actually, but man that guy got all wrapped around the axle about it.

I guess they have a few critters in the park.

Another pee break?  How many times can you possible go in 15 miles?  At least he’s got it down to where he doenst have to get off the bike.

There’s also other critters in the park.  I couldnt get a view of this one though.  He just didnt want to cooperate.  I told Mike to wade in the water a little bit to see if he could see the croc, but he didnt like that idea.

Colorful bird….

The Ocellated Turkey, cool.

I got ants in my pants and it makes me wanna dance.

Unfortunately I didnt see any Toucans, probably because I wanted to see one so badly.  We decided to hire a guide as you always get more out of a place like this with a guide.  He knew a lot of stuff, most of which I have already forgotten.  Or I guess more correctly, he has forgotten more stuff about this place and the jungle that I have ever heard of.

The overview of the excavated areas of Tikal.  This city was built upon elevated limestone paths, foundations and causeways, which were basically  road network throughout the city.  The guide pointed that out as we were walking one to the main temple area.

The Ceiba tree.  This thing is huge and they can grow to 250 feet tall.  Cortes hung Aztec Emperor Cuauhtemoc from a Ceiba tree in the 1500′s.  Nice guy that Cortes was.   I think he killed or enslaved everyone he came in contact with, Aztecs, Mayans, you name it.

Here is a little better perspective with Phil in the shot.

Countless structures have not even been excavated.  Anytime you see a little bump or slope in the terrain, there is something lying underneath.

A climb up one of the main temples is rewarded with a spectacular view above the jungle canopy.

Cool.