Southbound 650

Money Shot

2009-01-14T19:38:00.001-08:00

Okay, I now confess that my real motivation for riding all the way to Ushuaia was to take this obligatory photo in front of the Tierra del Fuego sign. Every bicyclist or motorcyclist who rides down to Tierra del Fuego gets this same shot, and if you read their blogs on the web you will see it many times over. So I took the road to the end of Ruta 3, to where it literally meets the sea, shooed away the hordes of photo snapping tourists, and asked a French guy to take my picture.

So there it is.

Now I ride north back to Buenos Aires, to ship the bike home on a cargo ship and fly home, back to the world, back to a new administration, a new family, a new house and a new state. And so, the adventure continues, in another way.

Thanks to everyone who read or looked at this blog, whether once or many times. I hope you found it interesting and worthwhile. The trip was a momentous experience for me, and I hope that whatever sort of adventure in life speaks to you, whether it involves travel or not, you find a way to follow that voice. You will be rewarded many times over.

Our love is all of God´s money - Wilco

Ride Safe.

Jesse

Parque Nacional de Tierra del Fuego

2009-01-14T19:26:00.001-08:00

You drive past the city of Ushuaia, and you come to the local national park called the Parque Nacional de Tierra del Fuego. Nice park ... you can walk up to the beagle canal, ride to the end of Route 3 (if you see the map in the picture, you will see how the road ends at the water). I did a short hike there and tried to avoid being run over by all the tour buses on the way back. Place was as busy as Grand Central Station.

Wind

2009-01-14T19:17:00.001-08:00

This is what the wind does to trees down here.

My New Friends

2009-01-14T18:36:00.005-08:00

Supposedly, it was Magellen who came up with the name Tierra del Fuego. It means land of fire, and the story is that when Magellen sailed past while searching for a trade route to China, he spotted hundreds of fires smoldering on the island. Apparently, the local people had fire, but not the knowledge of how to actually start them. So the fires they had they kept stoked indefinitely. Since it is a rather cold place and they weren´t really into clothing.

There are very few decendants of the original inhabitants left on Tierra del Fuego. But I made friends with these three in the pictures, and we went fishing for seafood down between the cruise ships in the harbor. I stayed with them for a week and feasted on whales, penguins, crabs and mussels. I brought a lighter, so they were very happy to have me.

Penguins

2009-01-14T18:13:00.001-08:00

Saw some penguins while down in Ushuaia. A bus takes you to a little estancia way outside of town, on the water. A Zodiac boat then takes you to a penguin colony on a nearby island. It is quite amazing to see them .. you walk amongst them while they stare curiously at you, as if you were just another penguin. They have absolutely no fear of humans. I think the spice of their lives takes place in the water, because all they do on land seems to be stand around, neck, and sometimes bicker. When I was there they were nesting with their chicks, who were as big as the adults were. You could tell them apart by their molting feathers. Two months old, and putting on the weight before venturing into the cold water.

Final Push to Tierra del Fuego

2009-01-14T17:30:00.001-08:00

So left Torres del Paine early in the morning for the final push to Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. Tierra del Fuego, the lunar landing of the trip, the southern-most city in the world, the end of the earth. It was so close I could taste it.

A two day´s ride from Torres del Paine, Chile. The first day I rode east for many hours through more viscious winds and light rain, and at around 7pm, made it to the ferry that crosses from the mainland to the island of Tierra del Fuego. On the other side, still on the Chilean side of the island (it is shared by Chile and Argentina) an hour later I sat staring at the gravel road ahead of me, and contemplating the darkening sky and ever increasing rain. I decided to crash for the night in a roadside hotel in a small petroleum town. Cerro Sombrero. Cool name. Expensive hotel. You can charge what you want when there is no competition. The town had a statute of men working on a petroleum oil platform in the main square.

Next morning rode south through miles and miles of sheep stations and pasture land, crossed into Argentina, and rode for many more miles and miles of sheep stations and pasture land. Towards the late afternoon the mountains began to rise into the air, and the woods and lakes suddenly appeared, and I was almost there.

After a couple of hours riding through the mountains, the sea appeared once again and I rolled into Ushuaia. You might expect that Ushuaia would be a remote wind swept barren outpost of a city, the southern equivalent of Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, but it is not. It has light manufacturing, pleasant homes, cruise ships docked down at the piers, and hordes of tourists strolling the main drag. There are boutiques, cafes, bars, restaurants, even a casino.

I was hard to believe I had actually arrived. The place itself was rather inconsequential, it was the idea of the place that was important. The end of the road. After parking the bike at a hostel, the first thing I did was find a pub to have a celebratory pint and glass of whiskey.

A fine way to end a good ride.

Torres Del Paine

2009-01-10T18:27:00.001-08:00

Torres del Paine. Beautiful place, Chile's most visited national park. There are loads of circuits to hike (most famous being what is called the "W"). They have refugios where you can sleep and eat while doing the circuits, but they are quite expensive and require advance reservations. So just showed up and camped out next to one, and spent a couple of days doing day hikes from home base. So I did a chunk of the "W", but not the entire thing. I found the hikes themselves more interesting and diverse, ecologically speaking, than the hikes in El Chalten, but the vistas at El Chalten were a bit more impressive.

Puerto Natales

2009-01-10T18:10:00.000-08:00

Left Punta Arenas early in the a.m., and headed west towards Torres del Paine. More wind. Long stretches of flat empty steppe. Got quite cold. Stopped in the town of Puerto Natales for fuel, and some coffee to warm up. Met an American guy in the coffee shop, Robert Runyard, who was running motorcycle tours in the area ... and building a house down here. Had an older but clean and well maintained KLR parked out front. Had some tasty empanadas, got some travel tips from Robert, and continued on towards Torres del Paine.

Punta Arenas, Chile

2009-01-10T17:56:00.001-08:00

After El Calafate, jammed down to Punta Arenas, back in Chile, the best (i.e., only) place to find new tire tubes in the area. Another long day of wind and desolation. Spent a day there trying to find the tubes. Successful endeavor. Nice place, on the water, pretty square with more trees then I'd seen in a while. Did a day hike in a nearby nature reserve ... then off to the famous Parque Nacional de Torres Del Paine.

More stray dogs in this town that I have seen anywhere. They seemed to have the run of the place. Oh, and they had beaver on the local menus. Took a pass on that.

El Calafate - Perito Moreno Glacier

2009-01-10T17:39:00.001-08:00

After spending a couple of days in El Chalten seeing the Fitz Roy, I rode a few hours south to El Calafate, home to the famous Perito Moreno glacier (another flat tire, in desperate need of wholesome tubes at this point). Perito Moreno, the man, was some sort of geologist cartographer who had something to do with convincing some international tribunal that this place was in Argentina, not Chile, and he seems to be a big deal down here. They named the glacier after him, as well as another town, and I think some national park as well.

The town of El Calafate was bigger than El Chalten, and even more touristy, but there is not much do here except visit the glacier. But it is magnificent, once you get past all the bus crowds. And lucky for the local travel industry, it is one of the few stable glaciers in the world, since most are in steady retreat.

El Chalten

2009-01-10T16:39:00.001-08:00

El Chalten. Home of the magnificent Fitz Roy range. A collection of dramatic cathedral spire-like granite slab mountains rising out of the flat Patagonian steppe high into the clouds. The town itself seems to have been built, and rather recently, to cater to the high end trekkers and climbers who visit to do the beautiful hikes (some hard core climbers do the spires) and then spend their evenings in the many restaurants in town, clad in the most expensive outdoor gear. Lots of outdoor gear shops, adventure tourism agencies, etc., cafes, internet shops.

Stayed at a hostel in town and did a couple of very long (ten hour) day hikes up to some impressive views. See photos. Spent NYE here, which was rather uneventful. Someone clinked my glass in a restaurant at midnight, that was the extent of my human interaction. But great, although tiring, hikes. I am a bit out of shape after sitting on the bike for a few months.

The trekkers here come from all over the world, and can be distinguished by the labels of their high end outdoor wear. The Americans in their North Face, the Argentineans in their Northland, the Italians and Germans in their own brands. Great place to visit if you like to hike (and don't mind all the fellow hikers clogging up the trails .. the place felt less remote than the Catskills at times), but just don't show up in your off brand Modell's sporting goods gear. The fashion police will through you in the local jail.

Ruta 40, Patagonia

2009-01-05T18:27:00.000-08:00

They say Ruta 40 is Argentina's Route 66. It doesn't have much in common with Route 66, though, as you do not see diners, motels, etc. But it does have a similar mystique, since it is the historic route through Argentina's own "west." A rough road that runs north/south along the Andes, a good bit of it unpaved, it is mostly forsaken for the nicely paved north south road that runs along the Atlantic coast, Ruta 3. But if you want to get a sense of the vastness of Patagonia, a gravel road extending long into the horizon is a good place to get it.

The landscape is desolate, but not unattractive, mostly flat but with some hills, mostly shrub grass that does well with the lack of rain (the Pacific moisture is trapped by the Andes on the Chilean side), populated by not much else than roaming Guanaco (which look like a cross between a deer and a llama), these weird big flightless birds that look like mini-ostriches, and occasional herds of semi feral horses. The birds, I don't know what they are called, are particularly entertaining, since when you pass by and startle them, they tend to try to outrun your vehicle ... by running straight down the road ahead of it, then doing a weird feather bunching thing. They haven't figured out that it is best to get off the road, apparently.

And the wind. Jesus. Whipping, snapping, driving, bellowing, the wind grew steadily worse as I rode south. The second day on this leg was the worst, and at times I had to slow to ten mph as I was being jerked around so much by it. Once the wind literally pushed me off the road. The rest of the time I rode with the bike angled into it, trying to stay within the car ruts so as to not wipe out on the deep gravel on the side of the tracks. The wind would be my constant companion for the next few weeks, and if you haven't been tortured by wind for days on end, you might be surprised to learn that you soon start speaking to it, or cursing at it, especially when surprised by particularly strong and sudden gusts. The driving wind combined with the gravel road made for some exhausting riding.

At one point I passed a biker from Brazil who was just standing on the road next to his bike. I asked if he was okay and he said he was waiting for a truck since he was tired of falling over. I suggested he try to ride slower and bank into the wind, and proceeded to watch him ride ten feet and fall over. He said he's only had the bike, a big V -Strom, for three months. I think it was too much for him. I gave him a sandwich and some water and suggested he hitchhike and not depend on the driver of the car that had passed him three hours before and had promised to send a truck. (I saw him later in the next town at nightfall, he'd hitched a ride in a car and was looking for a truck to go back and get his bike, which he said had fallen one too many times, cracking the handlebars.)

Day two of this was particularly grueling, and to top it off, at dusk, five kilometers away from where the pavement began again, a rock puntured my rear tire. Another change.

Bariloche to Trevelin

2009-01-05T18:20:00.001-08:00

Didn´t get as far as expected the day I left Bariloche south bound on Ruta 40, due to a late departure and another flat tire shortly out of town, but passed through some beautiful lake district country, some small touristy towns, and eventually made it to a pretty little town called Trevelin. It was founded by the Welsh, and supposedly there is still a Welsh presence there, although I could identify none of it. But I did identify a good restaurant, and had one of the best meals on this trip, a bife chorizo (steak) with mashed potatoes, a salad and a great little bottle of wine. I still remember that meal with fondness, probably because it was the best I´d eaten for some time. The hostal in Trevellin, La Casa Verde or something, was one of the nicest hostels I´ve ever been in. Felt more like a B&B, and was situated on a pretty peice of property with apple trees and a lush lawn. When I asked Carlos, the operator, to recommend a good restaurant, he looked at his watch and said it was too early for dinner ... it was nine p.m.

This part of Argentina, or South America, felt very famililiar to me. The landscape. It reminded me of home.

What was new was the wind. This day, I got my first taste of the Patagonian wind. It was bad enough on the asphalt. Being blown around. But the next day Ruta 40 would turn to gravel. Ripeo, they call it here. Basically, it is a road of gravel of differing depths. On a bike, it can feel like you are riding on marbles. And all the gravel tends to pile up high on each side of the tire tracks made by the passing cars and tracks. Which is fine when you can ride straight through on the tire tracks. But when the wind blows you around so much you cannot stay in the tracks, and you are constantly blown from hard packed dirt to deep gravel back to dirt, it is a completely exhausting experience.

Argentina (Bariloche)

2009-01-05T17:39:00.001-08:00

Bariloche is the Aspen of Argentina. In the winter anyway. In the summer, it is like an upscale Lake George.

It is where the Argentineans ski in the winter. In the summer, it is where they, and thousands of other tourists, bike, boat, relax, eat ice cream and chocolate and shop and so on. The town is nice enough, if you like touristy towns, but the surrounded area is very beautiful. Sapphire blue lakes, snow capped mountains covered in pines. Rented a bicycle and did a pretty circuit around a few lakes. Having lost my legs after being on the motorcycle for so long, the hills were quite a chore.

Shared a dorm room with some cool guys at my hostel, and ended up buying wine, beer and meat and having a bbq with them out in the backyard of the hostel. With a crew of folks they´d met on a bus up from Patagonia. Fun group of people. It was nice to hang out with people I could communicate with after a few weeks of being pretty socially isolated. So spent two nights and a day there, then headed south.

South from Santiago

2009-01-05T17:25:00.000-08:00

After leaving Valparaiso, I headed over to Santiago, Chile. A short ride of an hour and a half or two, although I stopped first at Pablo Neruda´s wonderfully quirky beach house at Isla Negra. It has the look and feel of a ship on dry land ... Neruda was a self proclaimed terrestrial sailer. He loved ships and the sea ... from the land.

In Santiago, I met up with Wade, one of the Canadian bikers Andy and I had run into up in Ecuador. We grabbed a few beers and some pizza and I crashed in his hotel room. He took off for Buenos Aires the next morning, while I scoured the city for a new rear tire and a new odometer wire (mine broke up in Peru). After a few hours riding around in Santiago´s pretty bad traffic, I had the items, although they gave me the wrong sized odometer wire so had to spend more time returning that. Then a few beers and some food on the square, and that was all she wrote for Santiago. I didn´t take a single photo of the place. A nice enough town, but it was a bit hot and too spread out for my taste.

After Santiago, I headed south on the main highway. I forget if it took one long day or two, but eventually I arrived in the town of Osorno, Chile, down in the lake district, where I spent the night of December 23rd, and in the morning, which was Christmas Eve, I swapped my old rear tire for the one I´d bought up in Santiago. This took much longer than anticipated as it was a complete pain to get the new inflexible tire onto the rim, and I ended up nicking my spare tubes in the process. The crappy patches I put on the holes would end up failing over and over until I was able to find new tubes a few weeks later. So during the next couple of weeks, I spent a lot of time by the side of the road, fixing flats, until my rear tubes all had way too many patches for comfort.

It was into the afternoon when I was done with the tire, and since there was a border crossing into Argentina ahead, and because I feared it might be difficult to find a place to stay in Bariloche, Argentina (my next stop) on Christmas eve, I decided to stay where I was for the night. Unfortunately, where I was, a decent enough hostel-residencia run by a friendly old woman, was totally empty, and so I ended up having Christmas eve dinner at an empty Chinese restaurant. At least I could find that, nothing else was open.

The next morning I headed to Argentina, passing through some pretty country with lakes and volcanos scattered throughout. The border crossing was seamless, and by the afternoon (after fixing a flat in the hot sun) I was in Bariloche. Argentina.

Valparaiso

2008-12-20T18:46:00.000-08:00

Valparaiso is a beautiful city, which exudes character and charm. It reminds me of San Francisco, at heart a blue collar port town but infused with bohemian tastes, complete with colorful Victorian homes perched on hills, countless wall murals painted

about, plus piers and seafood restaurants, cafes and tony restaurants. Instead of trolley cars, they have these old green street cars which hobble along, and also these famous staircase tram things for people too lazy to walk up the hills.

Antofagasta to La Serena

2008-12-20T18:36:00.000-08:00

Some pictures of the ride from Antofagasta down to La Serena. In between the cities the desert continues ...

Arica to Iquique

2008-12-20T18:26:00.001-08:00

I've been through the desert on a horse with no name ... miles and miles of rocks and sand, sand and rocks, then more, for hours, days really. I could say it is a pretty desert, like, say, the desert in New Mexico with flowers and cacti and sagebrush, but it's not. It's just rocks, really. Noting visible alive. But there is copper, and you pass literally hundreds of copper mines, the backbone of the Chilean economy. But then the road takes you to and then alongside the Pacific, and the contrast between the sand dunes and the open sea is quite striking. Beautiful really.

The road itself through the Atacama is stellar. Beautifully paved and straight for the most part. So makes for fast yet boring riding. Easy to fall asleep, which might explain the hundreds of roadside memorials I passed in the desert. I've never seen so many. You don't see many people or much traffic in the desert, except for lots of trucks. Probably hauling supplies for the mines.

But then when you hit civilization, as I did at Arica, and then further south at Iquique, it is like riding into places like San Diego. Palm trees, great weather, sparkling blue ocean, hotels and condos lining the boardwalks.

The difference between Chile, the most affluent South American country, and Bolivia and Peru, the poorest, is striking. Vastly greater than the difference between the USA and Mexico. Chile is basically a first world nation, it's got great roads, malls, nice cars, and the countryside and coastline, once you are out of the desert, is reminiscent of Northern California, while the cities feel European (at least Southern European), complete with walking streets and cops riding around on BMW R1200s. Gone are the llamas, the Chollos (indigenous women wearing layers of patterned skirts and Charlie Chaplin hats), the trucks belching black smoke, the garbage, the poverty.

Which makes Chile a nice place to live ... but overall, not all that interesting to ride through. Feels like riding through the states. In fact, riding north to south through Chile is a lot like riding south to north through California. You have the desert, then the cities on the sea ... Santiago is modern and spread out like Los Angeles, while Valparaiso is hilly and colorful like San Francisco. Then you have the fertile valleys with their agriculture and vineyards. And like the Sierras, you have the Andes lining the eastern border. The only big difference is that here they speak Spanish, oh wait, I guess they do in California too. The only difference then is that the Spanish in California is comprehensible.

Chile - Atacama Desert

2008-12-20T18:11:00.000-08:00

After breakfast the next morning, I said my goodbyes to Jeff (he was heading down to Sucre, Bolivia) and made my way to the border with Chile. Crossing was not much of a problem, except the border guards took my beef jerky away, and then I was in Chile. In the Atacama desert, precisely, the driest desert in the world. Lagoons with pink flamingos, snow covered volcanos, and most of all, sand and rocks. I spent the day praying my bike was finished breaking down.

La Paz to Chile

2008-12-20T17:51:00.000-08:00

My second attempt to leave La Paz was a bit of an adventure. First Jeff tried to go around a toll booth and his pannier hit a cement wall and he wiped out. Then my bike died again, and after taking it apart on the side of the road, we found the actual problem, a clearly abraded wire, which we taped up. While we were doing this, a Japanese guy who had bicycled all the way down from Calgary rode by, and so we all had coffee on the Altiplano.

Then there was a blockade at the town directly before the turnoff to Arica, Chile. Rocks were strewn about the road, and an angry mob was milling about, throwing rocks and whatever cars dared to brave the blockade. Jeff and I decided to ride through the fields and skirt the town, but the dirt path we took led us back into the middle of town and we rode through a crowd of hundreds of angry looking men. Some were friendly and told us to pass, but others shouted and pretended to throw rocks. One guy threw a soda bottle at me, but it missed. After riding through this crowd, we ended up in the middle of the town, which was safe enough, but we couldn´t leave because there were roadblocks on both edges of town. And to make things worse, the gas stations in town were not open due to the strife, so we had no place to get gas. We took to the fields again, and somehow ended up on the road to the Chilean border, which was wonderfully empty, due to the roadblock back in town.

Running low on fuel, we finally found a woman who sold gas out of her house in a little village on the way to the border crossing. We gassed up, and since it was getting late, camped out a few miles outside of town.

Death Road

2008-12-20T17:34:00.001-08:00

One good thing about having bike problems is that I got to mountain bike down the famous ¨death road¨ outside of La Paz, where hundreds have died in fiery bus accidents and such over the years. The road is full of monuments to the lost, even a number dedicated to the Israeli tourists who apparently make up a large portion of the deceased. It seems they like to get stoned before riding the road. A new road was built a few years ago, so most of the traffic is now on that road, so this old road is now mainly used by mountain bike tour companies based in La Paz. The road didn´t seem all that much worse than some of the roads we had been on in Peru, but I am sure in the rainy season, with the constant mudslides, it got quite hairy. Anyway, we survived, and my t-shirt is sitting back at the tour company shop in La Paz.

La Paz

2008-12-20T17:20:00.001-08:00

My first attempt to head to Chile from La Paz ended by the side of the road a couple of hours out of El Alto. I was finally able to talk the guy in the Toyota jumpsuit to bring the bike back to La Paz for $100 bucks. He didn´t really want to do it.

And a few pictures of La Paz.

Stuck in Bolivia

2008-12-20T17:09:00.001-08:00

Some pictures of the beautiful town I was stuck in for a couple of days while trying to find a truck to take me and the bike to La Paz. If you can get some time off work, I highly recommend spending a couple of weeks here. The local cuisine is wonderful.

South to Bolivia

2008-12-20T17:01:00.001-08:00

As I already spent a month in Bolivia in May with Pascale, my original plan was to say goodbye to Andy and head directly southwest to the Chilean Border and head south through Chile. But after studying the map for a while, I decided it wouldn´t take much longer to stick with Andy through La Paz, Bolivia, and then head to Arica, Chile from there.

So that is what I did. Which was fortunate, because my front sprocket totally wore away about 60 miles from the Bolivian border (after a pretty 8 hour ride), and Andy had to tow me across the border with a rope. We made quite a sight. So by the time we got through customs it was nightfall in a seedy border town, and I had a non functioning motorcycle. And Andy never officially got through customs because he had to pay $135 for a Bolivian visa and they didn´t like the state of his twenty dollar bills. So we grabbed a room at a flea bag hotel on the Bolivian side of the border for the night, and the next day I tried to find a truck that was willing to transport me and the bike to La Paz, where a decent motorcycle shop was located, and Andy had to go back in to Peru, to Puno, to try to find some clean $20 bills for the border crossing.

A woman who sat all day in front of a store next to the hotel told me her husband had a truck, and could take me and the bike to La Paz, but she said that he could not do it until 8 p.m. the next day. So I waited all day but the truck never showed at the appointed time. When I asked the woman why the truck hadn´t come, she tried to say that it had already come at 7 p.m., then she said it had come at 6 p.m., but it was all a lie, since I was there in front of the hotel all day long and had never seen any truck. People down here are big on promises but often fail to deliver.

Then two other guys said they could deliver the bike to La Paz in their vehicle, and showed up shortly thereafter with a Toyota Corrolla station wagon, gesturing like I should somehow put the bike in the back. It was quite funny, actually.

Then a guy who worked at the customs office said he could arrange a truck, and when I agreed, he said it would show at 9 a.m. the next morning. Of course, it never showed, and by 1 p.m. the next day I was getting agitated, and fearfull of being stuck in this shitty town forever (you can´t just open the phone book and call a tow truck down here). Andy had taken off for Copacabana earlier that morning, so I began to resign myself to another day here, going nowhere, when the old woman from the store thought to call her nephew, who showed up within five minutes with a huge truck and after some time spent getting the bike in the back (there was no ramp), he drove me to El Alto, where I was able to find another smaller truck to take the bike to the shop in La Paz.

The shop was great, and the bike was ready the next day, so I picked it up and rode it to the hotel in La Paz where I was staying. After a day off to decompress, I said goodbye to Andy and took off for Arica on an early Saturday, only to have the bike die on me a few hours out of La Paz. Same story, spent hours trying to find a truck willing to take the bike back to La Paz, and finally succeeded, ended up where I had started at six a.m. that morning, back in the La Paz hotel lobby.

With the help of Jeff, a Canadian biker I met at the hotel, we were able to (we thought) pinpoint the problem, which was an electrical short in some wires under the tank. After re-taping the wires the bike started, and so it all seemed okay. But tired of dealing with the bike, I decided to spend a day mountain biking down the famous ¨death road¨with Jeff and Andy (who had now arrived from Copa) before attempting to head to Chile again.

Cusco - Machu Picchu

2008-12-06T06:46:00.000-08:00

Made it to Cusco (what a touristy place) and Andy arrived a few hours later. We met up with the Canadian bikers again and enjoyed a delicious dinner .. something other than the chicken and fries we´ve been eating in all the little towns across Peru.

Cusco is near Machu Picchu. Everyone who travels to Peru goes to Machu Picchu. It is quite striking. The most impressive thing about it is location, location, location. It is built up on this high ridgeline between two mountains. If it were down somewhere else it would be less impressive. The other thing is the stonework. No morter was used, and they carved the stones so precisely so that they all interlocked together, sort of like a jigsaw puzzle.

The Peruvian government perpetuates the story that Macchu Picchu was built by the Incas as either a religious or trading outpost shortly before the Spanish invasion. While this is a nice tale, in truth it was built in 1911 by Colonol Harland David Sanders of Henryville, Indiana as a tribute to his deceased mother. It was funded by the sale of his chicken empire.

Ica to Cusco

2008-12-04T05:11:00.000-08:00

Trying to get to Cusco, to see Machu Picchu. A two day ride from Ica, the sandboarding spot. High road, bone numbingly cold and remote, but beautiful nonetheless. Ten hours the first day, and having met two other motorcyclists (one from Los Angeles and the other from Brazil) traveling south together, we all end up at the same hotel and have dinner together. The next morning, I leave town only to suffer another flat tire, the third in a week after none for the entire trip. But after that is taken care of, I head on to Cusco and arrive in the afternoon. Andy is behind me somewhere, having spent time in the town of Nazca to see the famous Nasca lines, which are ancient lines or walls in the desert in the shape of birds and such. You can only really appreciate them from an airplane, and not having the interest, I left that to Andy and went on ahead.

Huacachino (Ica)

2008-12-04T04:53:00.000-08:00

Okay. Then we rode down out of the mountains towards the coast and got back on the gringo trail. On which we found this little oasis town, surrounded by the largest sand dunes I have ever seen in my life. We hang out for a day, play with the talking parrot in the hotel, I fix another flat tire and try to maintain the bike´s chain, then we sign up for an exhilerating dune buggy ride slash sandboarding adventure. The dune buggy ride was more thrilling then the sandboarding, but all a fun diversion in an amusement park kind of way.

Huancavelita to Ica

2008-12-04T04:26:00.000-08:00

As I ride through the South American landscape, I am struck by the Panamerican solidarity of my Latin American brothers, who toil ceaselessly and unflinchingly in the fields and mines under the whip of the North American capitalist imperialists ... oh wait, I almost forgot that I am not Che.

But if you´ve seen the Motorcycle Diaries, the landscape we passed through on these days of riding was no less spectacular, the country still in some time not truly in the modern world, and not really still in the past. Ox drawn carts next to hydroelectrical dams. Not in one world or the other, but a strange mixture of the two. But then you go way up in the mountains, as high as you can go, and there, surrounded by herds of llama crossing an aqua blue lagoon, it seems as it might have been hundreds of years ago.

South through the Peruvian Andes

2008-11-29T14:38:00.001-08:00

Rode southwest from Huaraz to Huanuco (crappy town), crossing the Andes, then from Huanuco we rode south to Huancavelita (nice little town with incredibly friendly folks). Wonderful riding, stunning country, though rough roads and long ten and eleven hour riding days. Had no choice, nowhere to stop between towns. Now this was Peru ... mountain tops, ridgelines, old indiginous women and little boys herding sheep, cows and goats down the roads, terraced hillsides, rock strewn roads that wind up thousands of feet, only to wind back down. Not to mention tiny villages full of Peruvian attack dogs that snarl and chase the bikes through every town. They´d come in packs, five barking dogs doing their best to run you down. One bit me on the leg as I drove by so it got kicked in the face. Sorry ma, but it had it coming.

Got one of my panniers ripped off in a little wipeout, so a master welder in Huancavelita spent three hours fixing it and charged me $15 bucks. Paid him $30. This and the days after were the best part of the trip so far. This was riding.

Huaraz

2008-11-26T18:34:00.000-08:00

Okay, now this is the Peru I had imagined. We were 4,000 plus meters up in the Andes, snow capped mountains, cool mist, small mountain villages reaping maize. We stayed two nights in Huaraz, a decent sized town that is a hub for those who trek or climb in the Andes. Had dinner with the Canadians, who we found parked in the hotel where we arrived. Good times. Next day Andy and I decided to do a hike up to a local lagoon. We were pretty high up, sign said 4271 meters. Beautiful weather the way up, got poured on the way back. Road back was a bit nerve racking, full of mud and large rocks that your front wheel would skid over. Andy got a touch of altitude sickness, but recovered a few hours later down in town. Pretty country up here.

It's My Birthday, it's my Birthday ... Gonna Party like ...

2008-11-26T17:47:00.000-08:00

November 25. I turn 27. What a wonderful place to spend a birthday morning. Sleeping under the stars. We´d ended up camping next to someone even nuttier than us, a Swiss guy who was bicycling from Lima, Peru up to Quito, Ecuador. This guy had biked around the world, through Africa, most of South America, from Europe to Asia (all in stages). We passed his little tent and went back, convinced him to move to a better spot we´d found, and set up camp in the increasing darkness. He had one beer, which he generously offered to share with us.

The ride up towards Huaraz the next morning was wonderful, the best of the trip so far. A nice birthday present. It was good to be out of the desert heat, since as we rose the temperature got cooler and cooler. It took about six hours to get to Huaraz, up in the mountains, and quite a trip it was. Even met a German couple riding around South America in a VW van. I admired the dude´s style, he was sporting a cool Hawaiian.

Ride to Santa

2008-11-26T15:51:00.001-08:00

Check out these big sand dunes on the side of the road. Nobody told me the Sahara Desert was in Peru. There were even little oasis like farming villages in between the endless miles of sand. I´d been thinking llamas and tall Andean mountains, not Arabian Nights. We trucked through this to a little town a few hours south of Trujillo and turned inland, and started heading up into the mountains. The ascent was bone dry, yet spectacular, a rocky dirt road, and as an added bonus we saw the names of two Canadian bikers we´d met up in Ecuador on a police checkpoint logbook we had to sign .. they were only a few hours ahead of us. But a few hours makes a big difference, and as night fell we were still hours away from any town, so it looked like roadside camping for us. November 24.

Trujillo

2008-11-23T09:38:00.001-08:00

Trujillo was a nice town. We made it there our second day in Peru. We had a slight problem in Peru, we didn´t have a map and couldn´t find one. Trujillo being a larger city, we decided to spend the day outside the city at the nearby local beach town, and try to scrounge up a map in town the next morning. A relaxing day, was able to update the blog and work on the bike. Didn´t go in the water. It was freezing.

We were parked in front of the square in Trujillo because these two guys who worked for a local car magazine wanted to do an article on us, so they interviewed us and took some pictures in front of the main square. Then a woman asked me to hold her baby in front of our bikes ... it´s tough being a local celebrity. Oh, and we finally found a map. Took a while, but got it done.

PERU

2008-11-23T08:53:00.000-08:00

We crossed into Peru from the Ecuadoran border town of Macara ... an easy enough crossing ... but northern Peru was not particularly inviting ... dry, dusty, desolate, poor .... I felt like I was riding through Iraq, and not South America ... we rode through squalid dusty towns and a blustery desert landscape, and many of the people living on the sides of the highway were dirt poor. Actually, not even dirt poor, because they had no dirt even. I guess you could call them sand poor. People living in shacks on sand, dogs and children playing in sand, people carting around scrounged up firewood and bundles of leaves on their backs, on mules, on improvised motorcycle carts. The dry desert environment reminded me of Western India, and the poverty did as well. The wind blew sand across the highways and formed immense sand dunes on the sides of the road. We rode for miles through this, angled into the wind.

We did pass through a few nice enough towns on our first day, and the people, I have to say, were all incredibly friendly. I had been dreading dealing with the cops in Peru, because I had heard many of them were corrupt and would pull you over for no reason, make up some infraction, and demand money. In fact, we had met a Danish guy who was living in Cali, Colombia who said he´d hated riding a motorcycle through Peru because he was pulled over constantly and forced to pay the cops money. He said one day he was pulled over twenty times. And we heard many other similar stories. Because of this, we decided to avoid the Panamerican Highway north of Lima and ride through the mountains instead. While this turned out to be slow going, it also turned out to be spectacular. And it seemed to also avoid the crooked cop issue for the most part. We were pulled over on this first day ... two cops flagged us down, demanded "cash money," and said we should pay them because they were protecting the road from robbers. One turned his hand into a gun and stuck it in my side, saying roba, roba, over and over again. After playing dumb and pretending not to understand or speak Spanish for a while (which doesn´t take much effort), they suddenly smiled and said "buen viaje" and let us go ... strange. But after that, and until Cusco at least, all of the police would be friendly and polite.

So south we went.

Ecuador - Heading South

2008-11-23T07:48:00.001-08:00

Some pictures of the ride south from Banos to Peru. Took about four days ... half dirt roads, often muddy and under construction, a bridge out .. so a water crossing ... lots of road blocks while big machines worked on the road. Stayed in some small towns way off the tourist track ... and some great scenery.

Banos

2008-11-23T05:57:00.001-08:00

Banos. Pretty little town about three hours south of Quito. Nestled in a valley, you descend in altitude to get there, so it is much hotter than cool Quito.

A touristy place, this is the place to go for outdoor adventure ... rapeling down waterfalls, renting motorcycles, atvs, horses, treking, rock climbing. But only had a half day to spent here .. be a nice place to return to one day. Met an old wild man ex pat American dude, who had been there three years (and living on a sailboat on the coast for three decades before that). Had a little red bike, a 200cc chopper, with a comparment builton the back for his dog. Spent his retirement rolling around Ecuador.

Also met two Canadian bikers from Vancouver. Had dinner with them. They'd shipped their bikes to Ecuador but had had them stuck in customs for a week. Heading south as well, we might try to meet up with them again. Perhaps in southern Peru.

Quito

2008-11-23T04:30:00.000-08:00

Ah, Quito, the City of a thousand swallows. (uh, yeah, this is actually their motto.) Took me a few moments to realize they were taking about birds.

Quito. I expected a hellhole, simply because I knew nothing about Quito, and every single person we'd met on the road said they gotten mugged or pickpocketed or whatever in Quito. Actually, it is quite a beautiful city. There are two part (this seems like a constant theme in Latin America). The new part, where the big buildings are, and where most backpackers stay (this part isn't so pretty, it is more or less 60s style office towers) and then a huge historic district. Since the guide book said the new part was "incredibly" dangerous after dark, we stayed in the old part, which was great. It felt safe, cops everywhere, lots of people everywhere, lots of tourists, lots of churches, lots of historic and colonial buildings. Very beautiful. Unfortunately, Pascale only had one night there since she was flying out the next a.m. (sniffle), but we all went out for a good farewell dinner.

Up at five a.m. to go with Pascale to the airport (bye Pascale!), a Sunday, roads empty. Back to the hotel, and a nap, then tour the city with Andy. Climbed a big church, got our drink on, another nap. The place was stone cold deserted by dinner time, so we hustled around the corner for a bite (I am a bit more careful after having guns stuck in my face in Uruguay) and then to bed ... in the a.m. southbound.

Ecuador

2008-11-20T17:44:00.000-08:00

The border crossing into Ecuador was pretty smooth ... took a couple of hours, then we headed south through some suddenly arid mountain passes. You notice the difference when leaving Colombia. Ecuador is less affluent, but above that, it just looks different. Colombia felt and looked much like Central America with its foliage and lushness, while Ecuador seemed more Andean, dry, high, a bit dusty. But pretty as well. Culturally the place seemed more Andean, roadside signs advertised dinners of guinea pigs. Picture a broiled guinea pig laying on a bed or rice, big front incisors sticking out of its little mouth.

Made it to a rather nice town called Otavalo, famous for having the largest indigenious market on Saturdays ... since we got there on Thursday, we spent Friday on the bikes visiting a cool volcanic lake with two huge islands in the middle. It looked sort of like a Scandinavian fjord, cold, windswept, beautiful. Andy took a nice photo of Pascale and me standing in front of the lake, but unfortunately I look a bit effeminate in the picture due to having placed my leg behind me, so it will not be posted.

Anyway, the market. Got myself a cool Clint Eastwood style pancho, Andy got some other shit, Pascale got a bunch of gifts for those back home ... and there she was.

Pasto

2008-11-20T17:28:00.000-08:00

So, we are heading south to Ecuador, and we roll into this wonderful town around six pm. It is getting dark, and you are not supposed to ride in the dark in Colombia. We finally find the street where the hostel we are staying is supposed to be located, but it's nowhere in sight. A young woman comes up to us, clearly anxious, and keeps saying that it's very dangerous, that we have to get off the street, like now, that it's "muy peligrose." A man comes up and seconds the opinion. I can't understand all that they are saying, but what I hear is that gangs of youths are going to descend from the shadows and slit our throats. Andy is scouting down the end of the street for the hostal,
Pascale looking the other way. I think we need to get the hell out of dodge.

Then a police patrol pulls up, now a crowd is surrouding us. The jefe cop pulls out his pistol. Then puts it away ... huge commotion, but then he shows us where the hotel is, just 50 yards back, but hard to see. Poor signage. Says we have to be off the streets, that it is very dangerous. We quickly unpack and then Andy and I roar off in seach of a parking garage ... luckily we find one a few blocks away, and follow an army patrol with machine guns back towards the hostal.

But it turns out, as the hostal maiden tells us, the issue is not armed bandits, but a police enforced curfew due to riots that had broken out that day in cities all around Colombia, including Popayan, which we'd left that a.m. We'd seen nothing. The riots were due to the collapse of some huge financial pyramid scheme, in which thousands of Colombians were ripped off. They'd raided the buildings of the company that committed the scams and there was general mayhem and redistribution of computer equipment and printing paper.

So with a curfew, we couldn't leave the hostal to eat or buy food, so we ordered Chinese food over the phone (those dudes deliver in the South Bronx, why not Colombia under lockdown?) It was probably the worst Chinese food I've ever had, but better than crackers. Which we didn't have anyway.

Next day, out of Colombia into Ecuador. Evidently, just in time.

San Augustin

2008-11-20T17:03:00.001-08:00

The ride to San Augustin was loads of fun. Unfortunatly the pounding on the rocks was a bit much with two on my not so big bike, and so Pascale jumped on a bus a ways into the ride ... we just happened to pass it.

We continued on, through a few military checkpoints, some luckily sporadic rain showers (the same dirt road that takes three hours when dry can take eight hours when wet), and arrived in San Augustin in the afternoon. (Pascale a couple of hours later.) We stayed at a pretty "eco" hostel outside of town, up on a hill side. Place had hammocks, a fridge full of beer, mentally absent operators, and some nice fellow travelers with whom we spent a few night's dinner.

We also saw some ruins, which for the most part seemed to be made up of sacrificial urns and sacrificial crockpots and statues of both circumcised and uncircumcised penises. You can see from the lack of pictures that I found them fascinating. The guide, who seemed stoned, said the members of the San Augustine civilization (named after the monks who later settled the area) were never conquered by Europeans, but instead committed mass suicide upon being invaded by the Incas. I can see feeling distressed when a bunch of feather headress wearing bone nosed cats come interrupt your centuries old peaceful ways of carving big dicks out of lava rocks.

But he also said something about outer space, so I don't know. Oh yeah, he also proved intercontinental trade between Asia, Africa and South America, and demonstrated that the San Augustines had refined brain transplant practices. Sir, I'll have what he's having.

Popayan

2008-11-20T16:41:00.001-08:00

After leaving Cali, we drove south through rain soaked and soldier lined roads to the colonial city of Popayan. It is famous because all of the buildings are painted white, and supposedly is one of the prettiest Colombian Cities. I wasn't feeling it. It was nice enough, but the problem was that the main square was under construction and all the traffic on the remaining streets was deafening. It didn't help that the sidewalks were all two feet wide.

We spent a day there, hiked to the top of a hill overlooking the city, had some good meals ... but primarily the town was a launch pad for another town a half day's drive away ... San Augustin, the home of some famous ruins. The road to San Augustin is a pockmarked and rocky dirt track through some jungle, which is always fun ...

Cali

2008-11-20T16:18:00.001-08:00

Spoke too soon. Cali, in a valley, was friggin hot. The place has a new section and an old section. The new section, where we stayed, was kind of like Los Angeles, or at least Beverly Hills. Pretty rich, lots of trees, lots of nice cars and motorcycles, but you could still walk around. Not that there was anywhere really to go or see, but it was pleasant enough. And a good place to get a new rear tire (you can only find tires for big bikes in affluent places, where people can afford big bikes). Which I needed.

For a change we all went grocery shopping and ate breakfast in. Pascale started an oatmeal breakfast tradition, which was very healthy, and lasted until she left.

Cali is globally famous for its beautiful women, but I have to say I was not overly impressed. But maybe the ones you spot on the street at 4 pm are not the same ones you see doing the mamba in a club at 4 am. True for New York too, I guess. Or maybe it's because you tend not to wear your beer goggles out at 4 pm. Who knows?

Colombian women, however, have a competition where they see who can fit into the tightest clothes possible. Body issues, they have not.

So that's about it for Cali ... oh yeah, saw some churches, a market, blah blah blah.

Salento

2008-11-20T15:36:00.001-08:00

But first, we took a detour to the highlands north of Cali, to a little town called Salento, where coffee estates abound, wax palms dot the landscape, and mist coats the hills.

Cool little town. Sort of a tourist spot (for Colombians), we stayed in a charming little hostel called the Plantation House, run by a squat and gregarious Brit and his presumably Colombian wife. They have two Collies they obsess over, and I think a baby that got less attention. The Brit was funny, ask him a question and it was "right, right, right, you go this way, right, right, right."

But he set us off on a wonderful day hike through the fields and jungles of a National Park that culminated in watching dozens of humming birds from a hill station porch.

Had a couple meals (trout is big there), a couple of nights rest, and then it was really off to Cali, through more drizzly mountain roads, high passes, and Colombia was beautiful. The lushness, the heights, the wax palms, the flowers, the terra cotta roofs, the rushing waters in the crevasses. Striking.

And best of all, I liked Colombia because I wasn't dying of the heat for a change.

Bogota

2008-11-16T19:18:00.000-08:00

It has been so long since my last blog, you probably thought we'd been kidnapped by FARC and taken for an extended eco-tour of the jungle. But fortunately, not the case. Just hard to find internet time.

Been a busy few weeks .... flew into Bogota on a sunny Thursday morning in late October ... temperatures were in the 70s, and it felt good to be out of the Central American humidity. The taxi ride to the airport showed a big, clean, organized, and pretty affluent, modern city, scenically surrounded by mountains. A real city, a nice change from all the Banana Republic capitals. Could walk down wide boulevards, choose from plenty of bars and restaurants, get decent coffee. It is an attractive city, and feels safe, during the day anyway. They even shut down major roads on weekends, and turn them into bike paths. It seemed ironic that such an obviously affluent and developed place has (now increasingly "had") so much violence, but I guess if they had nothing, there would be nothing to fight over. Some beautiful museums as well ... (not going to speculate about drug money buying those Picassos).

Stayed in the Candelaria district, where most backpacker types hang out. A pretty and old historic district, which also houses some of the grand government buildings and squares. Heavily policed during the day, it gets a bit sketchy later at night when the cops go home ... met a couple of folks who were robbed there. People say ten years ago it was a war zone, but it is a quite pleasant and attractive part of the city. So spent a couple of days walking all over the city, to the new part (think Midtown) as well. The Colombians lived up to their reputation of being very friendly, and the contrast with Panama was striking.

We had to spend some time buying vests with our license plate numbers on the front and back, as that is the law for motorocyclists in Colombia (and there are lots of them), in an effort to curtail the once popular asassination technique of guy on back of motorcycle shooting politician in the head. In fact, it is illegal there for two men to ride on a motorcycle together, for this reason. You can have a woman on back though. Guess they never saw Le Femme Nikita.

But one hour in country shows that the government is making a huge effort to provide either safety or at least the perception of safety. Lots of soldiers and police that look like soldiers. Everywhere. Both in Bogota, and as we'd find out later, along the highways as well. And you are not sorry to see them, coming down a mountain pass in the mist. Or rather, you are at least happy that they are soldiers on the government payroll. People said, leather boots, Colombian Army, rubber boots, FARC. Otherwise they can look the same. Spent a lot of time looking at boots.

Halloween is a big deal in Bogota. Who knew? All the kids were in costume, trick or treating, even a good number of adults were in costume, in stores and walking down the street. Went out that night for some Halloween cheer, but being middle aged, we didn't last long.

Pascale arrived on Saturday night, and I picked her up from the airport. It was good to see her. Unfortunately, due to delays with the aviation shippers, Andy and I had to spend much of the next day getting our bikes out of the cargo terminal, but in the end got the gals free and rode back into town. Next morning, the three of us saddled up and were off to Cali.

Panama

2008-10-29T15:30:00.000-07:00

Late afternoon border crossing. Pretty easy. Only cost a couple of dollars, plus five bucks for the helper. Things are looking up.

Jumped on the Pan American highway south. From the highway, Panama seems tidy and organized, if a bit bland. Started to rain. Heavily. Darkness fell, seemingly within a few seconds. It´s like that down in the tropics. Light. Blink. Dark. We rode through some mountains, which must have been pretty, but couldn´t see very far past the road in the darkness and rain. But nowhere to stop. No hotels or towns. Finally made a city called Santiago around 8 pm, and found a hotel for the night.

From Santiago it was only a three hour drive to Panama City. Left fairly late, around eleven a.m., and after a hot boring ride (pretty flat and non discript) we arrived in Panama City. Big city. Lots of office building and residential towers. Most of it is pretty modern, with big malls and busy four lane streets ... except for an old district called Casco Viejo, which is Havanna-esque with its old colonial style buildings, some of them dilapidated. A very pretty and interesting part of town. But the guide book says it can be dangerous.

Panama is the most ethnically diverse country in Central America we have seen. There is even a sizable Chinese population. The folks here can be voted least likely to smile, however. Not the most friendly bunch ... tooth sucking receptionist at the hotel was the first person on the trip to piss me off.

Spent a day visiting the canal locks at Miraflores .... it was cool, but unfortunately, there were no ships passing at the time. Went down to Casco Viejo for some nightlife, but it was dead. The guy at the bar said it´s only busy on Thursday, Friday and Sat nights. Caught up on the blog. Watched CNN on the television. Election coverage, global depression-recession. Joe the Plumber. What an asshole.

Have to jump to Bogota, Colombia ... meeting Pascale there on Nov 1 (explains the quick pace through parts of Central America). Dropped the bikes at the air freight shipper´s office, bought tickets to Bogota. (You cannot drive to Colombia. There are no roads to Colombia from Panama. There is instead a narco trafficker, bandit and malarial mosquito infested stretch of jungle called the Darian Gap. Why no roads? Because Panama does not want there to be roads. Doesn´t want the drug smuggling problems, the Farc problems, the hoof and mouth disease.) So we have to fly the bikes to Bogota, which isn´t cheap. And follow ourselves. We leave tomorrow.

The guy who owns the shipping company was extremely friendly, and gave us a ride to the passenger terminal from the freight terminal, and then later offered us a ride back into the city. Turns out he´s Colombian. He even gave us the name of his brother, and said we can stay at his farm near Cali. Could be interesting. He says he likes living in Panema because the people are peaceful, but said they are not immediately friendly like Colombians or Mexicans. Funny, because the only Panamanian I know from back home, Jackie, is about the friendliest person I have ever met.

Anyway, Adios, Central America. Hello, Bogota.

Costa Rica

2008-10-29T14:57:00.000-07:00

If you want a relaxed non-stressfull week in the sun and sand on a one week´s vacation from up north, go to Costa Rica. But you could also go to south Florida, because it feels about the same. Rolling across the border from Nicaragua was striking. All of a sudden ... good roads, no trash, everything tidy, TGIFS and Bennigan´s restaurants along the highway. Very Americanized. Pretty affluent. But also very pretty, especially up in the hills and along the coast. People are very friendly, food is decent, feels safe, no army. Kind of a calm oasis in the storm of Central America.

"Pura Vida" is Costa Rica´s national slogan, it means ¨hang loose" or something like that, but to me it literally means "live pure," which doesn´t make much sense. This is no granola mecca.

Because Costa Rica is so Americanized (and expensive), it doesn´t feel very exotic and therefore does not appeal all that much to backpackers. But in their place are loads of surfers, who hang at the various beach towns up and down the coasts (they also like Nicaragua). And then there are loads of retirees and other expats, so no loss for English speaking company.

When we got across the border from Nicaragua, it was dark, so we gunned to to the nearest town with hotels, a place called Liberia. Unlike it´s namesake in Africa, the place was in good shape, with fine restaurants and sidewalks and all your modern convienences. Had to pay $48 for a hotel room, which is extremely expensive compared to what we´d been previously paying.

The next morning I rode to a beach town called Playa Tamarindo (known as Tamagringo), full of surfers and gringo vacationers. Stayed at a hostel run by a Swedish guy and his Swiss girlfriend. The beach was better for surfing than swimming, and the water was brown from all the storms, so didn´t go in, but hung around for a day soaking up the sun. The town was not very relaxing though, due to all the construction of new hotels and residences (building a twenty story hotel on a street that is not even paved seems weird to me), so I hightailed it out of there the next morning and rode up to meet Andy at Monteverde, where he´d gone. Monteverde is up in the mountains, and is famous for its cloud forests. Visiting a cloud forest in the rainy season is great if you like rain, and since the road up there was dirt, getting there was another mud stained adventure. But I made it. Even worked in a little zip lining adventure while there. In the pouring rain. Zip lining was invented by scientists to study the forest canopy, the idea was to inch along these wires in the trees and observe birds and such. Now it is purely a thrill ride, you zip through the forest at 40 mph for hundreds of yards. It was fun, but couldn´t see much due to all the fog and rain in my eyes.

Costa Rica is so efficient and accomodating that when you are pulled over for speeding, the cops spare you the trouble of having to buy a stamp and mail in payment and all that, and subtlely alert you to the fact that they kindly accept payment in US dollars on the spot. In a negotiable amount. Which I am sure they turn in later on. I thought that was very eco conscious, since it spares the paper waste of writing a ticket.

The next morning we rode out of the mountains and down to my friend Rob´s place on the outskirts of San Jose. Long ride. Rob is from Southern California, but is teaching school down in Costa Rica, and he kindly put us up for a couple of nights at his place. A welcome respite from travelling. Got to use his shower and much needed laundry facilities (been smelling like homeless people, or wet dogs, after days and days in the rain and dampness). Rob took us out to some great local restaurants and bars, and we also visited a friend of his who lives up in the hills over San Jose, and we had beers while overlooking the city lights down below. Spent a day there doing some necessary errands .. had to visit the embassy to get some new visa pages for my passport since it was entirely full (I was able to vote there ... so yes, I did my part), got a haircut, worked on the bike. After two nights there and a great breakfast, we took off south bound ... thanks Rob for the hospitalidad! Forgot to take a pix of your place though .... and watch out for the muffin tops ...

Spent the next night at a laid back surfer beach called Dominical, where the surfers sleep in their cars by the beach (we opted for a $20 room), then after breakfast hit the road. A few hours south, Panama.

Nicaragua

2008-10-26T22:57:00.000-07:00

The Nicaraguan border was a total pain in the ass. Totally confusing, no signs, no sense, no directions, no idea. Had to hire a "tramitador" (a self appointed "helper") to walk through the process. You pay five bucks or so per bike, they pay a bit to the officials to speed things up, and that is the racket. Took some time to get through, and some of the fees were a bit suspicious, but finally we made it. But it was getting dark, so we rode into the Nicaraguan hills chasing the last of the daylight.

The country near the Honduran border was quite stunning, especially with the sun setting over it all. Lots of hills and rivers and forested canopies. But in the towns something was a bit unnerving about Nicaragua. Too many people milling about aimlessly on the roadways. Seemed very crowded after Honduras, where there was often no one on the roads. Loads of trash everywhere. Little kids flashing gang signs as you ride by. Lots and lots of young people (70 percent of the population is under 30), and most with nothing to do but stand there by the road and yell and whistle as we went by, so the place felt a bit lord of the fly.

Got dark quickly so found a hotel in the outskirts of a non descript town. Nothing much around it, so ate dinner at a restaurant next door, then made a late night dash on the bikes to find some ice cream. The motorcycle travellers´ moto is "never ride at night," but we didn´t go far. Found a place, actually, but also attracted quite a crowd of teens and young adults who stood around the bike and openly gawked as we got off the bikes. A little uncomfortable, the high level of attention the bikes attracted in Nicaragua. Nicaraguans are invade your personal space kind of people. Hadn´t been that way anywhere else in Central America. So ate up, gunned it back to the hotel and lights out for the night.

The next morning we rose early in order to make it to the town of Granada, one of Nicaragua´s charming colonial cities. Thought we´d spend two nights there, but we arrived earlier in the day than expected, and it was hot and dustry, and after all the colonial towns in Mexico the place didn´t seem so enticing, although pleasant enough I suppose. So we ate lunch there and then decided to head south and stay at a Nicaraguan beach instead. We rode south (after seeing the famous Lake Nicaragua for about two minutes), but when we got to the beach in the afternoon the water was all brown and silty from the runoff due to the rains, and the beach town itself seemed a bit shabby. So being only thirty miles from the Costa Rican border, we decided to make time and head south.

Nicaragua, at least the part we rode through, looked like what I had imagined all of Central America to look like. Sort of pretty, but flat and very hot, crappy towns with litter and bare dirt lots lining the streets, lots of stray dogs, lots of plantations growing cane, bananas and such things. Quite a bit of industry along the panamerican highway.

Getting out of Nicaragua was even more of a hassle than getting in, and took about two hours and now two "helpers", one for leaving Guatemala, and one for getting into Costa Rica. It was dark when we entered Costa Rica, but the roads were in good condition so we headed south towards a decent sized border town in which to spent the night.

Honduras

2008-10-26T22:25:00.000-07:00

Honduras is a very beautiful country, especially the Northwestern part. Breathtaking really. Although mountainous, not quite as steep and rugged as Guatemala. Softer and gentler to the eye. More flowers and all kinds of interesting vegetation. And it is cattle country, so lots of old weathered dudes in cowboy hats ride around on fine horses. With machetes, but it´s cool, these guys are working.

What is nice about Honduras is that they believe in roofs. Whether tile or tin, roofs look better than the average Guatemalan look of cement and rebar sticking up into the air. Maybe that was the difference. And Honduras, the countryside anyway (don´t go to the cities, a very different story), is for the most part very tidy and clean, not much garbage, and most of the houses have lots of pretty colorful flowers planted in front. The place seems to be doing a bit better economically than Guatemala, judging from the better quality of the houses and the lack of trash, and the people were friendly in a laid back way, often waving as the bikes went by. Overall, it seems a pleasant and picturesque place. Perhaps not much for the average tourist to do, apart from the Mayan ruins at Copan or the diving up at the Bay Islands, but a very pretty and laid back place to ride through.

The ride to the Honduran border from Antigua was uneventful. Wet. Lots of trucks. Got lost for two hours in Managua. No signs in central america. You are on a road. It turns into two roads. No signs. You pick one. You end up in a maze of roads with no signs. Ask directions. They don´t know either, but feel bad disappointing so they make shit up or guess. It is always the same, "go straight and then turn right" .... When we finally got there, the border crossing was not bad at all, took about an hour. It was an enclosed border crossing area and the folks milling about were pretty good about telling you where you had to go.

Rolled into a pretty Honduran town called Copan Ruinas a bit before dark. It´s about ten kilometers past the border from Guatemala. Touristy town, because it is next to the famous Copan ruins, Mayan ruins, which is why we went to that town. The rain picked up that evening, and by the time we´d had dinner it was torrential .. literally ran back to the hotel. Rivers of rain were flowing down the town´s steep cobblestone streets.

Spent the next morning at the Mayan ruins, which are interesting, although my attention span for such things is limited. More interesting was the three hour horse ride in the hills a horse guide guy there talked us into. We rode past a overflowing river, up past some tobacco fields, to a small indiginous village where the children were very friendly as they played in the heavy rain. By the time we got back to town we were both soaked and chilled, so we picked up some rum to warm up with back at the hotel. That night had dinner and some beers with a couple from England where were travelling around the world. Nice folks.

The next morning we headed south towards Nicaragua. We hoped to make it close to the border with one day´s drive, but we chose the wrong roads and that plan ground to a halt due to the heavy rains and mud. Like Hitler´s army, we got bogged down, and did maybe half of the distance we expected to. It was like the game slip and slide, we each slid out on the bikes in the slick mud at least once, and had the bikes slide out under us on the slick steep downhills. One of Andy´s panniers came off when he took a tumble after hitting a big rock that was concealed in the mud. It was funny at first, then became increasingly frustrating. Night began to fall and we were in the middle of nowhere, so started thinking about parking the bikes in the bushes and sleeping in tents by the side of the road, but luckily the pavement started up again, so we were able to make it to a town (not a very pleasant one) with hotels by dark.

The next morning, we awoke to dark and rainy skies, and sucked it up and headed south. The rain was off an on, and we made the Nicaraguan border in the late afternoon.

Stuck in Antigua

2008-10-26T21:44:00.000-07:00

While Andy spent five days laboring away in an intensive language class (okay, it was four hours a day), I whiled away some time updating this blog and loafing around the town. Sufficiently bored by the third day, I finally motivated and signed up for an evening hike up the volcano called Pacaya. For ten bucks, a minibus picks you up and drives you out to the volcano, which is about two hours away, then the adventure begins. First you are swarmed by little kids who try to sell you flashlights and walking sticks, then you are mobbed by teens who want to sell you horse "taxis," for those too out of shape to walk up the volcano, and once you are past them, then you start the climb. It is about 2km or so up, but not a particularly hard climb, and at the top it turns from heavily vegetated to a black lava moonscape, with billows of white smoke pouring out of the very top of the volcano. Then you walk up even higher, in the quickly fading daylight, and come to an actual red hot lava flow. Quite fascinating to be a couple of feet from lava. From something that would incinerate you instantly. I do not think the US National Park Service would let you stand closer than half a mile away, but this is Guatemala so they let you climb all over the hot rocks abutting the lava. And they even have a guy with a twelve gauge shotgun accompany the hikers, in case of a lava overflow .. er, bandidos. And then they even have a tourist from England who chooses to wear flip flops on a hike up a volcano and therefore holds everyone up on the way back down as she slides uncontrollably down the loose volcano pebbles.

The next day I mountain biked down a dormant volcano. It was very technical and I ate it a couple of times, but the hardest part was going up ... a bit out of shape after sitting on a bike for weeks. The ride ended comically because the guide blew a tire, and ended up running down the mountain after me.

The last day in Antigua, Andy and I decided to take a bus to the Lake Atitlan area ... it is a huge lake surrounded by big volcanos, very pretty and all that, and we took a little ferry boat to visit some of the towns that line the lake. They are indiginous towns where the locals still dress in traditional brightly woven fabrics and speak whatever language they have been speaking for thousands of years. But after being hounded through village after village by little children imploring me to buy woven fabrics and hand carved trinkets, I lost interest in their ancient ways and decided to kill time waiting for the boat back to the bus by drinking a few beers by the waterfront.

Oh, I forgot to mention a wonderful Canadian Thanksgiving dinner that we were invited to ... it took place in the hills overlooking Antigua at a hostal run by some actual in the flesh Canadians. So we met some folks, including a woman from SF who has been there for a year trying to adopt a baby, and an assortment of other folks. Many Canadian. The turkey was delicious, but the best thing was the views of the city and the volcanos that ring it. Canadians are a very nice people, but not particulary funny, except for the famous comedians on tv. In other words, my jokes fell flat. So maybe I´m not funny.

The day after the lake tour we saddled up to head to the border with Honduras. As luck would have it, after five beautiful and sunny days in Antigua, it began to pour the moment we started to ride. It would rain heavily, off and on, for the next few weeks.

Ahh, Guatemala. I see why the backpackers love it. It is truly quite striking, topography wise, and is heavily indiginous, about 50 percent Mayan, so is interesting culturally, and is poor enough and has enough smoke belching chicken buses to make folks feel they are on a legitimate undeveloped world adventure. (Backpackers seem to only feel a place is "real" if it is poor.) It is ironic, then, that most folks tend to pass right through all the typical trash strewn ugly poverty stricken cities in any given country and park themselves at the few gringofied tourist spots, which, granted, are touristy for a reason ... because they are very pretty and have things like ... toilets. Point being is that I am not sure if they truly dig Gualtemala, or just dig the idea of being in Guatemala.

So, okay, I didn´t love the place as much as most people say they do. Many of the people were very very friendly (mostly those doing alright), but many others looked overworked and despondent, as they marched through the omnipresent mud to where ever they had to march to. And all the guns and guards everywhere, and the machetes that seem to be de-rigour Guatemalan male adornments, sort of like man bags in Chelsea, made me apprehensive. Like for intance you are standing by the side of the road, having a coke, and three guys with machetes approach. Are they going to chop you to death, or are they fixing to chop some tall grass and leaves? While they seem to stick to chopping weeds, the question does present itself. But the reason for the guns and crime is obvious. There are lots of very poor people in the country, but also some very rich one (one guy showed us a picture of his helicopter landing pad at his spread in the country). So you see the intrinsic problem.

But with volcanos to climb, beaches to surf, and hilly roads to bike, the country beckons to the adventerous and active. As for us, it was time to head to Honduras.

Guatemala

2008-10-11T16:42:00.001-07:00

We crossed the border into Guatemala at a town called La Hermosilla. The border crossing was a bit confusing at first, because all of the official buildings are obscured by all the vending stands and stalls that line the main road into Guatemala. The place bustles with currency changers and such. But getting through was much easier than expected. First you meet a guy with an insecticide can on his back who sprays your bike. Then tells you you have to pay for it in one particular building. Then you hit the immigration building to get the passport stamped, then the customs building to get the vehicle permit, which also includes a trip to a bank to pay the fee. We met some Christian missionary types from Texas while there who were heading down to Honduras for some project in a big pick up. Otherwise thankfully uneventful.

Guatemala looks like what the United States will look like in about twenty years if we keep electing Republicans. You have the rich elite, a bunch of which we ran into on the road south. They were riding north on expensive BMW bikes to a BMW convention being held up in Guanajuato, Mexico, and we stopped when we saw them by the side of the road and had a warm greeting. These guys were very friendly, spoke great English, and were pretty European in appearance. Then you have the local Mayans wearing dirty skirts and hustling cords of firewood around on their backs. Then you have the roads, which are a complete mess, have paved, half gravel or dirt, all a work in progress. And many landslides that cover parts of the road everywhere (actually, I think they are still rebuilding from a hurricane a few years ago). Roads so potholed and bumpy that Andy busted a fork seal on his bike on the way down. And crime. There have been reports of other bikers getting jacked here, and you can tell it is a dangerous place by all the armed guards standing in front of every bank or place of importance, and the private security everywhere, wearing body armor and carrying assault shotguns. Then the towns, littered with garbage and half constructed, grey and drab, each one looking like the last. To be fair, judging a country from the highway is like judging the USA from driving down I 95, so that is just what I saw after crossing the border. On the positive side, the verdant and misty mountains are very beautiful and the people friendly.

The first night we stopped in the second largest city, Qetzltenango (sp?), which like many older latin american cities has an attractive center with colonial style buildings. It was a nice place, with a foreign presence due to all the language schools. The first night there was spent mostly on the toilet due to an intestinal issue, and the next morning we rode for a few hours down the Pan American highway to Antigua. If the Pan American highway sounds like a big interstate, it is not, and the riding was quite adventurous. Chicken buses (elaborately painted old school buses that are the main mode of transport here for most people) belching black smoke (Mexico seems to no longer have many chicken buses, they ride around in fancy buses much better than Greyhound offers), rutted roads, sections full of mud and dirt, construction everywhere. We made it to Antigua by afternoon and took some time finding a hotel where we could stash the bikes.

As the Lonely Planet guidebook says, Antigua is like a Guatemalan town that was taken over by Scandinavians for a few years and put into great shape. It is a very pretty town, scenically located between three volcanos, full of buildings hundreds of years old (another Unesco world heritage site), and pretty churches. Loads of tourists (foreign and domestic), language schools and fine restaurants. In short, a really nice place, but not very representative of most of the country, as far as I have seen. We are here for about five days, since Andy wants to take a Spanish language course in town. I would do the same, but figure that if eight years of taking Spanish in school cannot get me fluent, another five days will not do the trick. So maybe I will climb a volcano, do some reading, go visit the famous Lake Atitlan nearby or do some day trips. I would like to see more of the country, since everyone raves about it, so I think there is something I must be missing.

Chiapas

2008-10-11T10:13:00.000-07:00

It was a two day ride from the beach to San Cristobal in Chiapas. For the most part a hot uninspiring ride though some drab run down Pacific coast towns. One nice thing about Mexico is that even the modest poured concrete homes you pass in the small towns you ride through tend to be painted with vivid colors, which brightens things up. These towns we rode through seemed depressed and demoralized, with garbage strewn by the way side and the grey concrete structures unpainted, rebar sticking out of the roofs. Spent a night in a roadside hotel in a town whose name I will never remember, and then the next day rose back up into the mountains once again as we entered Chiapas.

Chiapas is beautiful, with pine covered mountain slopes and healthy fields of maize planted between the stands of trees. The temperatures dropped as we rose to about 8000 feet in elevation, and rode through a few hours of mist and rain until we reached San Cristobal. Chiapas may be the poorest state in Mexico, but San Cristobal is a pretty fancy town, with wine bars and nice restaurants and a big backpacker scene. It seems its proximity to Central America makes it cool enough for the gringo backpackers to visit. (Most of Mexico seems to be off the backpacker map, perhaps it isn´t gritty enough.) Spent a day visiting some very impressive Mayan ruins, a few hours out of San Cristobal, and the countryside of Chiapas was striking all the way. The most exciting thing was an impromptu tollbooth set up by some locals in a town we went through. They had set up planks with nails in them and laid them across the road, and demanded five dollars from each vehicle passing through before they would remove them with ropes. And all the townsfolk were lined up on the side of the road cheering on the action. But they were pretty organized, and even gave us a receipt (a time notation of a flyer saying something in Spanish about needing to fund local programs) so we didn´t have to pay coming back. Then back that afternoon to San Cristobal where we saw some music in a bar and met up with the biker couple we´d met futher north.

We are at the end of the road in Mexico, as the frontier with Guatemala is a few hours south of San Cristobal. Riding through Mexico was a true pleasure, it is a scenic mountainous country with warm people and good food, with many interesting cultures, ranging from the pickup truck driving cowboy nortenos up in Sonora-Chihuahia to the indigenous decendants of mayans down in Chiapas, and much else in between. Of course, just like there are many different Americas, there are many different Mexicos (I saw on the news the other day that Mexico has the highest kidnapping rate in the world), and the country certainly has its problems, as the constant police and military roadblocks evidence, but the Mexico that I saw, that I rode through, was a phenomonally beautiful country populated by relaxed and friendly people, and that is the Mexico that I will remember forever.

Next stop, Guatemala.

Guanajuato to Zipolite

2008-10-05T07:54:00.000-07:00

Took a day trip from Guanajuato to San Miguel De Allende. San Miguel is a pretty colonial city that happens to be one of the top 50 retirement spots in the world. So there were plenty of old Americans hanging around. That gives it things like English language bookstores andCajun restaurants and oyster bars. But the place feels a bit Disney-esque, more like Santa Fe, NM, than Mexico. I spotted the NY Times Week in Review in a restaurant. The local police rode around on horses and were dressed up colonial style, i.e., as doormen. And there was a surprise indigenous parade, feathers and headdresses and all, which was cool until it became apparent it was part of the tourist show. One plus of all the tourism and retirees is that there are English language bookstores, so Andy was able to pick up a Lonely Planet to replace the one lost a few weeks back. Unfortunately, he proceeded to lose the new one within two hours. I think he may have partied too much back in college.

We rode down from Guanujauto to a gem of a town called Patzcuaro. It was supposed to have a lot in the way of indigenous handicrafts, but we didn´t see any of that. It was a fairly boring ride down, for the most part, as we skirted Mexico City it was a non descript flat landscape, mixed with industry, housing and farms. But as we rose up into the hills again, the temperatures dropped and and the conifers appeared. Patzcuaro has beautiful squares, friendly people, and interesting markets. I bought a yogurt and fruit cup from a woman in the market who told me she had lived for 8 years in Ontario, California. I´ve met many people here who used to live in the states. They all tend to start speaking to you in English. They have returned for various reasons. The woman in the market told me she returned to take care of her aging parents and their family business. A hotel clerk returned because his fiance couldn´t get a visa. As for "Nacho," the gold toothed and tattood gas station attendant, I suspect his relocation was less than voluntary.

There is a huge brown tarantula living in the cowling of my bike. It crawls out on occasion when I am riding, and I am fearful of being stung to death while on the road. I have tried to flick it off when it crawls over the speedometer, but am concerned about getting bitten through my glove. He´d better depart soon, though, because they spray insecticide at the border.

There are more dead dogs on the road as you go south. Not sure if that is because there is more traffic, or the dogs get less intelligent as you go southward.

Speed limits in Mexico are absurdly low. Like 45 mph on a major highway. But they are completely disregarded by everyone, unless a police car happens to be in the vicinity. You tend not to see too many cops while riding, as they cluster mostly at roadblocks outside of cities or at the borders between states. So it´s not like the USA, where they are always waiting in the bushes to give you a ticket. Instead, people pretty much drive as fast or slow as they please here. The real speed limit is how fast you can drive over the omnipresent "topes," or speed bumps. They are everywhere, on every road, sometimes marked and sometimes not. If you don´t pay attention they can jolt you into the air. So cars are constantly slamming on the brakes and then speeding up. It is not a very economical system of speed control, but it is effective.

Overall, Mexicans are very good drivers, better than drivers in the USA, and they are also very polite drivers. For instance, they often put on their left turn signals when you are riding behind them. That means it is safe to pass. Except when it means they are making a left turn.

I´ll skip through the next series of cities pretty quickly. As I said, Patzcuaro was charming. It took a long day to drive south from there to Taxco, which is another mining city (the prettiest cities are all built next to silver mines, as the wealth paid for the nice buildings) full of silver shops. Unless you like shopping for silver there isn´t much to do there. But nearby is an immense cave that we visited, the biggest I have ever seen. We walked into what was like a natural gothic cathedral, with a cavern ceiling hundreds of feet high, stalagmites and stalactites everywhere, and walking 2km into it. The guide said you could walk another nine miles into it if you so wanted.

From Taxco it was Oaxaca, a bustling yet touristy city, where we heard some hot jazz and were hounded by trinket sellers frustrated by too few tourists in the off season. The city has interesting markets and much culture ... we went to a showing at an art gallery, and there are many fine restaurants. From Oaxaca we had a beautiful day´s riding over fog and mist covered mountains to the coast, specifically a little hippie beach town hangout called Zippolite. It is full of stoners, a few backpackers, and empty restaurants. But the beach is beautiful and it is nice to take it easy for a day. After a day´s vacation from our vacation, we head to Chiapas, home of subcommandante Marcos and his friends.

Copper Canyon to Guanajuato

2008-09-27T08:08:00.000-07:00

We finally found the canyons ... we were told that there was an outstanding view from a small outpòst called Divisadero, so we rode there and it was true. The canyons were very impressive and beautiful, but although supposedly bigger in area and in some places deeper than the Grand Canyon, I have to say they do not pack the same punch as the Grand Canyon, precisely because they are more spread out over a larger area, while the Grand Canyon looks like one huge hole in the ground. Also, the Grand Canyon is more interesting geogology-wise and more panoramic in color, since it is mostly bare rock, while the copper canyons are wooded.

From Divisadero we rode for a day though some more stunning high country, at times around 8,000 feet, and it was cool with threatening rain. We were trying to reach Hidalgo Del Parral by nightfall, since the motto is "never ride at night." The bike seems to lose some power at high altitudes, but nothing alarming. Due to a lengthy search at a military checkpoint (the constant police and military roadblocks have, so far, been the only drag about Mexico) night fell upon us and although we hustled to Parral it was around 8 pm when we arrived. Andy had lost his Lonely Planet (i.e., no city maps), so after riding around the city lost for an good chunk of time we found a hotel and crashed for the night. We had dinner at a tacqueria which was decent. Parral is a nice enough town with some interesting churches. But not amazing.

The next morning, after fixing a flat tire on Andy´s bike, we rode to Durango. Another pretty ride, and were forced to stay at a relatively expensive hotel since that was all we could find. Durango is an attractive city, or at least the center is, with a beautiful square. It felt good to be in a bigger city after being in more remote areas, although it started pouring so was difficult to enjoy the evening, which ended up consisting of eating tacos and trying to email my bank about my lost atm card.

We rode south from Durango to Zacatecas, which is a beautiful city with cobble stone streets, impressive churches, lush gardens, and a gondola ride to the nearest hillside. Due to the continuing rain, we parked it there for a day, and the friendly hostal owner where we stayed took a bunch of the visitors out to a local night time fair, where there were rock bands, dozens of wandering mariachi bands, and plenty of police. The police down here seem to rove around in gangs, and you rarely see them by themselves. We met and had drinks with a couple (English and Ukrainian) were were riding their huge BMW bike down to Argentina as well. There are more nuts in this world ... We have run into them a few times since, and may ride through Central America with the English guy (while his wife has to fly from Mexico to Ecuador due to her Ukrainian visa issues).

We left Zacatecas and endured a slog of a ride (not so pretty anymore, as we encroach upon Mexico City area sprawl) down to Guanajuato, which is even prettier than Zacatecas. It is a old mining town in the hills north of Mexico City, and looks somewhat like San Francisco, as the houses are colorful and the streets steep. Many of the streets are pedestrian only, and to drive around the city you have to go through a network of old tunnels that are built under the city. It is quite bizarre. It is quite a touristy place (mostly Mexican tourists), and very romantic, with lots of fountains and gardens and outdoor cafes and eateries. Unfortunately, I have to spend the time here on man dates with Andy ... Andy has now taken off for a nearby City called Leon to get his tires swapped, and we need to figure out how to go down through the rest of Mexico. We have decided to skip the confusion of Mexico City, in part because due to traffic congestion and car pollution they limit driving to certain days based on whether your licence plate ends in an even or odd number. I have an even number, and Andy has odd, so that makes things difficult.

The Sierras

2008-09-21T15:39:00.000-07:00

To get to Copper Canyon from Bahia Kino on the coast you pretty much ride east back through Hermosillo and up into the Sierras that separate the state of Sonora from the state of Chihuahua. Once we made it back through Hermosillo (getting briefly lost again in town), the road ascended into the Sonoran high country. It was beautiful. Impressive peaks and canyons covered with lush arid tropical vegetation gave way to temperate forests and then pine covered peaks. The roads were twisty and of uneven quality, ranging from excellent to stretches filled with small avalanches from the mountainsides, and sometimes covered with potholes the size of washtubs. The odd horse, cow and donkey often lurked behind the blind curves.

We spent the first night in a small mountain village of about 600 souls. After eating in a family run restaurant (basically someone´s home), we decided to attend the small Mexican traveling circus that had happened to set up shop in the village. With the restaurant owner´s nine year old son in tow (he scrounged a ticket off of us), we paid for the tickets and sat in the rickety benches. It was a one tent affair, the walls being a truck trailer on one side, and RVs on the other. The performers seemed to all be related. Let´s just say they weren´t quite ready for Vegas. They were in the it´s so bad it´s good category. Dancers that forgot steps, acrobats that did little more than handstands, the only clown serving popcorn at intermission with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. A little kid send out into the ring in a spongebob square pants suit to dance to canned music ... it was great. The highlight was Andy being "volunteered" to be the knife throwers target. It made a strange sight, to see a tow headed gringo standing before the board with arms spread wide. Luckily the knife thrower's aim was true.

The next day the ride continued, with the scenery even more spectacular. By sunset we´d made it to the town of Creel, which is a touristy town for people visiting Copper Canyon (a series of canyons that together are bigger in area and deeper than the Grand Canyon of Arizona). The following day we made the unwise decision to sign of for a van tour of the area´s attractions, and a few hours later were dazed from looking at one rock formation after the other. The tour´s main focus seemed to be the tables of trinkets set out for sale by the Canyon´s indiginous inhabitants, who do wear very pretty and colorful dresses. The women anyway. The men dress like cowboys. It seems the canyons are a bit south of here and we have spent a day reviewing merely the opening acts.

We have decided to skip town and try to find the elusive canyons on our own. We plan to head south on a road that on the map anyway seems to cut right through a good chunk of the canyons. We expect the roads to be marginal and unpaved, and the availability of gas uncertain. It should be interesting. We need to head south anyway, and our next major stop will be Durango.

Sonora, Mexico (Land of Butterflies)

2008-09-21T15:23:00.000-07:00

After spending a couple of days in Tucson, AZ, getting new tires mounted, I crossed the border into Mexico at Nogales on the morning of Wednesday, September 17. I´d logged more than 4,000 miles getting there. I always find border towns a bit sketchy, but Nogales seemed all right as I rode through. Certainly less hectic than the crossing at Tijuana I´d been through before. Getting a tourist card and a vehicle permit were pretty straightforward and easy, and I crossed south into the Sonoran Landscape.

What I first noticed was that Sonora was more lush than the Arizona desert above it, and easier on the eye. The second thing I noticed were all the butterflies flittering across the road and over the fields. I´ve never seen so many butterflies in one place in my life. Pretty yellow ones, dramatically purple ones, etc. I tried my best to avoid hitting them, but that proved somewhat difficult as they tend to haphazardly fly around in front of you. I even got a couple fluttering inside my helmet visor, which was a bit hairy.

I made the Sonoran capital of Hermosillo by afternoon, and after some time spent there riding around lost due to construction on the highway, found my way to the road to Bahia Kino, a resort town on the coast where I aimed to meet up with my riding partner Andy. Andy had ridden his Suzuki V-Strom from New York also, but via a different and longer route. I arrived at Bahia Kino at sundown, and greeted an anxious Andy, who had been told that the drive down from Tucson was a four hour trip. It was not. We celebrated meeting up by having a few beers by the pool and enjoying a seafood dinner. We decided to call Andy´s ride the Batbike, since it is black and full of sharp angles and looks like something batman would ride.

Bahia Kino is a pretty seaside town, although it was completely dead as the daytime temperatures hovered around 100 degrees. The town caters to snowbirds from the US and Canada, but it was still too hot for them and not cold enough up north. I enjoyed a dip in the gulf and watched even more butterflies skim over the water, and also saw more pelicans than I´ve ever seen before, cruising up and down the bay in long formations.

After a day in Bahia Kino, it was time to move on. Next stop, Copper Canyon.

Canada and the USA

2008-09-18T11:40:00.002-07:00

After cruising north through New York´s Adirondacks, I arrived at the border of the biggest blue state, Canada, to find the Maple leaf flag flapping in the wind. An hour or so later I found myself riding around Montreal, trying to find the highway to Ottawa. Montreal looked inviting, a fine day, lots of people on bikes and sitting in cafes. Part of me wanted to stop and spend some time there, but I rode into the night and found myself at a RV camp somewhere in Quebec. All there I had contact with spoke French, and very little English, and it felt like Europe, with the campground having a disco, grill, video arcade, and French speaking people riding around on go carts. Not the camping experience I am used to. It was hot and muggy and the mosquitos where overwhelming, so I spent the night reading in the tent.

I awoke on Saturday to a pouring rain, which was to last, off and on, until I reached Minnesota, with temperatures dropping from the 80s to the high forties and low fifties. I left Quebec and cruised past Ottawa and past the surrounding farms until the landscape changed to mixed hardwood and evergreen woods, with mossy lakes and a countoured landscape. Ontario was quite pretty up there, made even more northerly and remote feeling by the mist and rain. When I arrived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan via Sault Saint Marie, the rain was still in force and followed me though the flat hardwoods of the U.P. I was even caught in a hailstorm. From Michigan I crossed Wisconson, Minnesota (not seeing any of the famed 10,000 lakes .. what´s up with that?), beautiful South Dakota, Wyoming, heading down through the Colorado Rockies into New Mexico and then Arizona. A couple of days were spent in the shady side of Tucson getting my worn stock tires swapped out. The motel next door was actually called the "No-Tell Motel," so you can guess the scene. But the price of the flea bag where I crashed was just right. And then, on the morning of September 17th, I arrived at the border with Mexico at Nogales.

The ride (north and) south through Canada and the U.S. was beautiful (mostly). My favorite parts? Hitting the open rangeland of western South Dakota and seeing the big sky open up. The Black Hills of South Dakota were spiritually moving and full of wildife, and the Rockies of Colorado were of course picture postcard perfect, in an Alps kind of way. Arizona was a bit hot, dry and dusty for my liking, but up in the high country it was quite pretty, and offered me the site of a black bear running down the road of a mountainous forest road. And of course, Picture Rocks National Park in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan was quite amazing ... to ride through hundreds of miles through woodlands only to come out on what looks like the ocean, with shorebirds and sandy beaches, created a stunning contrast.

The Start

2008-09-18T11:40:00.001-07:00

After many months of planning, research and getting the bike for the trip in order, and right on the heels of an eventful summer spent partly in South America, I said my goodbyes to my mother and my girlfriend Pascale and rode my Kawasaki KLR out into the bright sunshine of an early September Catskill morning.

It was a beautiful late summer day, and while I soaked up the sunshine, the swaying trees and green pastures of the area, I felt a mixture of excitement and dread. Excitement at the unknown adventures ahead, dread due to the same unknown miseries potentially ahead. I pressed ahead, ironically bearing due north on Route 30 out of Prattsville, NY, even though my final destination is as far south as a person can ride in this hemisphere. While I may or may not get there, I will do the best I can.

SOUTHBOUND 650

2008-09-18T11:40:00.000-07:00

Have you ever gotten the urge to get on your bike and ride it all the way to the very tip of South America? What? No? Well I did, for many reasons, the most basic being that it seemed like one hell of an adventure. But while most people wouldn´t chose to do this sort of thing, hopefully you might find this sort of a journey interesting, and so, even though I am not much of a blogger, I thought to create one to share the trip with those friends and family back home. I´ll try to keep it short and snappy, knowing full well that busy New Yorkers (most of you) have about a ten second attention span. At least check out the pictures ....