[Somewhere in the Andes 500 km north of Mendoza hugging the border between Argentina and Chile]
13-15 October (Brasilia, Brazil to Puerto Iguazu, Argentina)
I left you all several months ago in Brasilia while I waited for my bike to get repaired. Lots has happened since then. This post is particularly long but it’s also the last one. So I hope you enjoy reading some of the more unusual things that I encountered along the way. For those who are just going to skim through it all (I don’t blame you, it's a lot to read), make sure you read the last paragraph of this post as I’ve tried to summarize what I have learned along the way. So now on to the story…
[The harvest season in full swing south of Brasilia]
After saying farewell to the incredibly friendly staff at the BMW dealership in Brasilia, I was back on the road headed straight towards the border with Argentina with Betsy—the name I finally bestowed upon my fair stead—purring along nicely. I was several days behind schedule and needed to make it up quickly as I had a doctor’s appointment in Buenos Aires in four days. The next stop was Iguazu Falls, views of which are shared by both Brazil and Argentina. I hit some seriously heavy rains about four hours from the falls and realized I was going to have to spend the night somewhere near the border. The rains were so strong that the water was up to my knees at times when crossing low points along the highway. At the border of Brazil and Argentina the border officials just waved me through on both sides without asking to see anything other than my passport—so much for my concerns about not having legal paperwork for my motorcycle in Brazil. I eventually arrived safely, albeit drenched to the bone, in Puerto Iguazu after a 28 hour drive from Brasilia which was interrupted only by a short four hour rest in my bivy sack away from the lit side of the road somewhere. I found probably the best run hostel I’ve ever stayed in just outside the main town. While there, I met a British girl who happened to be roommates with one of the girls I had worked next to during the summer. Just another one of the many small world encounters I have become all too accustomed to at this point. The next morning I headed to the falls to check out what all the buzz was about. There are a few pictures below that utterly fail to give a fair representation of what the experience was really like.
[Garganta del Diablo, Iguazu Falls, Argentina]
15-16 October (Puerto Iguazu, Argentina to Buenos Aires, Argentina)
[Downtown Buenos Aires]
After spending a mere half day exploring the falls, I was back on the road with a compass bearing to Buenos Aires. Around midnight I decided to finally stop driving and once again found a spot off the side of the road protected from the elements, i.e. next to what I hoped was an abandoned home, and set up my bivy sack (a one-person tent for a snuggly fit sleeping bag) for some badly needed shut-eye. The next day I drove another ten hours and was about 50km away from the Buenos Aires city limits when my mind wandered onto the fact that I hadn’t tightened the drive chain since crossing the Amazon. I thought to myself, “Well, it’s made it this far, I’ll just tightened it up after my doctor’s appointment in an hour.” Not more than two minutes later the chain came off. Depending on a number of factors, this can either cause no damage at all or can destroy the sprockets and damage the engine casing. In my case, the chain doubled up on itself within a very tight enclosure requiring me to devise an improvised pulley mechanism attached to a nearby telephone pole with which I was able to gain enough pulling power to extract the chain from the recesses of the motorcycle. This whole process delayed my arrival in Buenos Aires by three hours causing me to miss my appointment with the orthopedic surgeon. Frustrated at the untimely delay yet happy to have finally arrived in a place where I could call home for a while, I made my way to a friend’s apartment with whom I would stay until I could find a place of my own.
16 October - 2 December (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
[Puerto Madero, Buenos Aires]
I would call Buenos Aires home for the next month and a half where I completed a portion of my MBA on exchange at Argentina’s IAE. My arrival had been much anticipated by the other Argentinean students who had been tracking my journey southward and warmly welcomed me with an abundance of red wine and Argentinean beef. It’s hard to summarize my short stay in Buenos Aires in anything less than a book. Let it just be said that I fell in love with all that is Buenos Aires. My days and nights were filled with watching Argentinean theater, full banquet dinner’s, nights dancing till 6 a.m., playing blackjack with a group of crazy Mexicans till the wee hours of the morning every Tuesday, ludicrously blasphemous Halloween parties, and grilling three-dollar 20-oz steaks and drinking four-dollar bottles of red wine with new friends. I’ll let the pictures below do the talking.
[Random shots with friends]
[Halloween party. I'm dressed as a pregnant nun]
[Transvestites at the Gay Pride Parade. I was not able to sleep well that night]
[The trials of public transportation sometimes]
[Polo tournament]
[Friends at the polo field with us]
[The sweet old lady next door who did my laundry every week]
2-4 December (Buenos Aires to Calafate, Argentina)
[On Route 3 south of Buenos Aires]
I left Buenos Aires on 2 Dec with a soft plan of visiting a number of sites along the way to and from Ushuaia—southernmost city in the world located on Tierra del Fuego. I had nine days to drive the largely unpaved 6,600 km there and back in order to return in time for the final day of classes in Buenos Aires. I got a late start on the 2nd after installing the replacement parts on the BMW from the accident in Guyana a few months back. I didn’t arrive in Comodoro Rivadavia—a coastal city on the eastern side of Argentina—till the evening of the 3rd after an excruciatingly boring and straight drive down. After leaving Comodoro Rivadavia I had entered the pampa region and the drive became more scenic, albeit still perfectly flat and straight, with abandoned rusted out cars along the side of the roads and herds of Guanaco appearing everywhere.
The strong winds I had been hearing about started to build up but had yet to have a strong effect on the drive. Several hundred miles before reaching Calafate I had my first encounter with the dirt and gravel roads which would characterize the next 1500 km of the trip down to Tierra del Fuego.
The first 200km was very soft shifty dirt which limited my speed to around 30 km/hr and made me wonder if I would ever make it to Ushuaia in time. In six hours I had only passed one person driving a bulldozer. The arctic clouds of crystalline ice and deep blue skies were mesmerizing and I enjoyed every minute of the white knuckle drive.
[Guanaco. Took me an hour, low crawling through brush, to sneak up on this herd and get a picture. You can see them here just becoming aware of my presence from the shutter noise off the camera.]
[Dead cattle carcass by the side of the road being fed on my a hawk]
[Lost on some dirt road that unexpectedly led to a mine]
[Route 3]
[The Eastern coastline near Comodore Rivadavia]
[The Eastern coastline near Comodore Rivadavia]
[Route 40. Runs from the very north of Argentina to the very south (~5000km)]
[Clouds on a desolate gravel road approaching Calafate]
[River of glacier water leading from Calafate]
[Darwinian law. The result when your the guanaco who cannot jump as high as your other guanaco friends]
As soon I arrived in the touristy town of Calafate, I met up with my Mexican friends from Buenos Aires who had flown in several hours prior. We spent the night sharing stories over a bottle of red wine while they educated me on Mexican cartoons of an adult nature.
4-5 December (Calafate, Argentina to Cerro Sombrero, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina)
[Perito Moreno Glacier, near Calafate]
The next morning I said adieu to my friends who were going on an all-day boat trip to various parts of the glacier while I drove straight to the Perito Moreno glacier and spent half the day exploring on my own. I spent an hour with my camera poised to get a picture of a chunk of glacier ice falling into the water and was nicely rewarded with the shot below. It’s hard to get a good perspective from the picture but imagine that the glacier wall is a five or six story building high.
After taking a short boat trip for an up-close and personal glimpse of the ice wall, I started making my way down to Tierra del Fuego. I arrive at the Straights of Magellan around 11pm, which is shortly after nightfall in these lower latitudes, and crossed the straights via a ferry at night. After driving just a few meters on Tierra del Fuego, a welcoming gust of wind in the range of 150 kph hit me from the right, nearly slamming my bike and I into the side of a tractor trailing waiting to drive onto the ferry. Clearly the winds on the mainland were nothing more than a light appetizer for what awaited me on this Land of Fire. An hour after driving a straight line while leaned over at about 30 degrees from the winds, I arrived at the first little village where I laid up for the night in the only hotel after allowing my fingers and toes to unthaw by the fire. My last thought before falling asleep was my wishing to have brought more cold weather clothes.
[Sheep on Tierra del Fuego]
5-6 December (Cerro Sombrero, Tierra del Fuego to Ushuaia, Argentina)
[Scenery along the dirt road through Tierra del Fuego]
There are no roosters on Tierra del Fuego to wake one up in the morning—which is probably a good thing considered they would all be blown away. Instead the wind picks up to a breezy 100-130 kph which then causes the decibel level in one’s room to approach 100 dB. This has the equivalent effect. In the morning—after putting on every piece of clothing I had brought with me: 3 pairs of sock, long underwear, pants, windproof bottoms, 3 polypro upper thermals, 2 jackets, 3 layers of gloves—I prepared myself for what would be my arrival to my trip’s goal, Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world. I had no idea what to expect but was just really excited to finally get there.
[Small dirt road on Tierra del Fuego]
I had taken a small dirt road recommended by the hotel owner who said that the main road was full of potholes from all the heavy vehicles transiting. It was on this small dirt road that I came across Suzukisan—a Japanese fella who had begun his journey on bicycle from Anchorage, Alaska almost 4 years ago!! We both stopped and shared a snack together before continuing on. His face was like leather after all those years in the sun but he had a deeply spiritual smile on his face that only comes from seeing the world the way one wants to. It would still take Suzukisan another three days to cover the same distance I would in the following six hours—due mainly to the winds.
[Video of Suzukisan pedaling away with the wind at his back for once!! 4 years of riding… now that’s an adventure!!!]
After crossing briefly in and out of the Chilean part of Tierra del Fuego, I stopped at a gas station about 100 km from Ushuaia. As I was pulling in, I spotted two other motorcyclists by their bikes who looked like they were waiting for something. After filling up, one of the guys came up to me and asked me if my name was Dennis. Somewhat taken off guard, I responded with a cautious ‘yes’ while thinking 'who the hell are you?'. I then remembered that when I was in Calafate I had been approached by a quirky looking big pot bellied man from Ushuaia who claimed to be the president of the Ushuaia motorcycle club. After a few minutes of the usual friendly questioning, we had parted ways but not before he had told me to not be too surprised if I was greeted by some of his motorcyclist friends before arriving in Ushuaia. Now back at the gas station, after a few seconds of reflection I realized that this was my personal welcoming committee. And what a pleasant surprise it was. These two guys gave me the locals’ escort into Ushuaia through the back country roads which offered spectacular views that I would have missed had I stuck to the main route. In my mind I had envisioned Tierra del Fuego to be this flat colorless desolate place with little signs of life.
The drive into Ushuaia and its surroundings completely mismatched with my expectations—and in a good way. The scenery very much reminded me of my undergrad days in Boulder, Colorado where I spent many memorable weekends exploring the Rocky Mountains. The only difference was that Ushuaia had a beautiful coastline to boot, and instead of Rocky Mountain oysters, you had yourself a tasty Argentinean asado for dinner (for those of you not from the U.S., rocky mountain oysters are not what you think they are).
My two new friends spent the greater part of the day unselfishly taking me to their favorite places around Ushuaia where I really got to appreciate the beauty of the place. I have say that it’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been to.
The fact that my expectations were so low going in might have something to do with my overly high regard for the place, but there was an absolute abundance of wildlife around every bend that it would have been hard for anyone not to feel the same way. After exchanging emails and parting ways with my new Argentinean friends, I found myself a cozy hostel in the center of town and got some rest for the long drive I had ahead of me the next day.
[The approach into Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego]
[Lapataia National Park, Tierra del Fuego]
The fact that my expectations were so low going in might have something to do with my overly high regard for the place, but there was an absolute abundance of wildlife around every bend that it would have been hard for anyone not to feel the same way. After exchanging emails and parting ways with my new Argentinean friends, I found myself a cozy hostel in the center of town and got some rest for the long drive I had ahead of me the next day.
[Video of the drive into Ushuaia with one of my escorts ahead of me]
[The end of road with my personal motorcycle escorts. One cannot drive any further south than here]
6-7 December (Ushuaia, Argentina to Puerto Natales, Chile)
[Old ship wreckage on the coast by the Straights of Magellan]
After leaving Ushuaia in the middle of a light rain, I had to backtrack back to the place where I crossed the Straights of Magellan at night but this time I got to see everything in the day. It was then that I noticed the large minefield next to the ferry loading area.
[Ferry taken to cross the Straights of Magellan]
The guards were getting a bit nervous watching me walk around the perimeter taking pictures. Not sure if it was because either they thought I might be suicidal or if they secretly knew that the perimeter boundaries had only been an approximated demarcation. Another possibility is that they were afraid that I might be doing some reconnaissance for one of the many terror groups intending to invade Tierra del Fuego and do bad things to all 5 of its inhabitants. Either way, they asked me to move away from the minefield. I couldn’t help but be reminded of the time I was travelling around the Balkans, Sarajevo specifically, and had gone out to explore the city by way of my favorite method, i.e. going for a run around town and getting myself intentionally lost. At some point I found myself running down a wooden trail in the hills Sarajevo when all of a sudden I hear a voice screaming some unintelligible gibberish. I turn to look where this gibberish is coming from and see that it’s emanating from a little old woman frantically waving her arms and yelling at me from about 50 meters away. Almost at that very instant, I remembered reading somewhere long ago that the hills of Sarajevo had been heavily mined by the Serbs during the famous siege of the city in the 90s. And much like in Laos and Cambodia still today, many of these unmarked mine fields had yet to be cleared resulting in many farmers—and probably some tourists—losing their lives each year. The woman then started very heatedly pointing to a sign nearby which, without my even having to look at, stated “Danger Mine Area”. In the midst of my runners’ high, I had unknowingly pranced into an unmarked mine field. I quickly glanced around and realized that the trail I had been running down had not been made by men but by animals such as deer and the like. It had luckily rained the night before so I was able to clearly see my footprints on the matted down grass and mud trail that I had just run down. I thought to myself, how did I get down here without seeing a sign of some sort? I slowly made my way back up the trail by retracing my steps, literally. The old woman saw what I was doing and followed me till I reached my entry into the minefield about 100 meters back. The woman then pointed to a place on two trees where there use to be signs hanging and which I figure tourists had decided to steal because they look cool or something. Anyhow, back on Tierra del Fuego, nothing nearly that exciting happened to me as I crossed back across the straights in the ferry.
[An example of how strong the wind was on Tierra del Fuego. Note the billboard which translates to "The Falkland Islands are Argentinean"]
Once off Tierra del Fuego, I made my way westward toward the Chilean border and the famed Torres del Paine National Park. The road skirted the coast for an hour or so and eventually reminded me that I had yet to have a picture taken of me and the bike on a desolate beach somewhere. Foolishly tossing all care to wind, I turned off the road onto the sand and headed straight for the water’s edge a few hundred meters away. I got within fifty meters when the sand got very wet, from the receding tide, and cause my bike to bog down with no chance of moving.
[My bike stuck in the sand on a desolate beach overlooking the Straights of Magellan, Argentina]
All I wanted was a quick picture on a desolate beach with ol' Betsy and what I got instead was a three hours, sweat drenching experience trying to get my bike out of the wet sand. The whole ‘desolate’ part quickly turned into a bad idea when I realized that nobody, really n-o-b-o-d-y, was going to be coming around any time soon to help me get unstuck from my predicament. After removing everything possible from the bike to make it as light as possible, which still wasn’t enough to get the bike to move, I then had to used my duffel sack to collect several hundred kilos of small rocks and dry wood from several hundred meters away and then literally construct a 50m long trench made from these materials over which the motorcycle would be able to gain traction and get out of the sand. It was a lot easier to get into that situation than it was to get out. Promise not to make that same mistake again. Anyhow, after I was finally back on the road, dying of hunger and smelling like four day old garbage, I drove another six hours till I got to Puerto Natales, Chile, the gateway town into Torres del Paine. Some of you who have been carefully reading this blog would have noticed that I crossed the border between Argentina and Chile several times in the process of getting in and out of Tierra del Fuego but failed to even mention it, which is quite uncharacteristic of my writing style as I tend to take great pleasure in describing in great detail the pains associated with border crossings. Well, it gives me great pleasure to say that no such colorful diatribe is necessary this time as both Argentina and Chile have the most efficient paperwork system out of all the countries visited on this trip. I spent no more than 10 minutes at any of the border stations and had nearly shed tears of joy when the border guards first told that I was free to go on my way after having only taken up a few minutes of my time writing down my motorcycle’s information. Back to Puerto Natales, I wish I had had more time to explore this quaint little town. It’s a place that still lacks many of the telltale symptoms of a place struck with tourismitis (inflammation of the skin caused by an excessive quantity of tourist in a given area) yet blessed with a beautiful natural setting and a colorful town center.
[Entering Torres del Paine, Chile]
[Flamingoes seen on the Chilean part of Tierra del Fuego]
The next morning I was up early and on the road by 6am in order to get as much in of Torres del Paine while still making it as far back into Argentina as possible as I was already falling well behind my intended position. In contrast to Ushuaia, I had some very high expectations of Torres del Paine, which is probably why I was not as impressed as I was with Lapataia National Park near Ushuaia, i.e. [Expectation of Experience – Actual Experience = Level of Satisfaction]. That’s not to say that it wasn’t a splendidly beautiful place, I was probably just too rushed to get to really appreciate it all. One thing I found annoying was the fact that there were Guanaco everywhere. It wasn’t their actual presence that annoyed me. It was the fact that they were so accustomed to vehicles and people that they would barely even take note when you got within what should be their normal comfort zone. I remembered that several days prior I spent a good hour low crawling my way through thorny brush in order to get a close shot of a herd of Guanaco, while here at Torres del Paine the Guanaco practically come right up to you and pose like they were trying out for the Next Top Guanaco contest—utterly despicable. Aside from that, as you can see from the pictures below, the place really is worth spending a week or so exploring.
[Series of pictures in Torres del Paine National Park, Chile]
After only getting to spend the better part of the day exploring Torres del Paine, I made my way back to the border with Argentina where I once again crossed without a hassle. This time the only delay I experienced was due to the fact that it was a catholic holiday in Argentina and at the border there so happened to be a holy site where the holy Virgin Mary had appeared to someone which now meant that it became a site of pilgrimage for many Argentineans who would walk 25 miles every year on that day to arrive at that very site on the border. Because these walkers were making their way in at the same time I was at the border, the police had blocked the road until the majority of the walkers were through. I attempted to patiently observe as these people, who clearly led very sedentary lifestyles, struggled with the last few hundred meters of their plight. Their harsh glances of sanctimonious hatred aimed at me indicated that they didn’t quite appreciated my words of ‘encouragement’ as I snapped into drill instructor mode and tried to motivate them up the hill like I had the sailors in my old military unit. After that briefly amusing interlude at the border, I was able to make it northward a few hundred kilometers on the famed Argentinean Route 40—the equivalent of the America’s Route 66—before the sun set.
Ruta 40 is still mostly all gravel and loads of fun to drive on even if it meant I was traveling at half the speed as normal. When I arrived in the small town with no name and maybe 200 inhabitants, I found the only hospedaje around which unfortunately was full but where the owner directed me to the town’s common camping area where I could set up my tent. But before that I needed get something to eat.
[Scenes of life (or lack thereof) along Route 40]
[Near the town where I camped for the night]
I stopped at one of the many typical restaurants which double as the owners’ home. These places now represent a place of comfort for me. They have that homely feel that is often missing from purpose-built restaurants. The kind of place where you walk in, sit down and wait for the multifunctional owner/cook/waiter/bartender/drinking partner to tell you what your options are. No menu, no wine list. Your options are limited which greatly simplifies the decision making process. Usually these consist of a chicken or beef platter. There are never any substitutes or side dishes. You get what you get. Nothing more, and usually less—especially if you arrive close to the end of the standard meal times. And if you don’t like it, I guess you can go out and hunt for your dinner yourself because that’s typically the only alternative. Vegetarians are openly mocked and vegans are drawn and quartered as meat is considered a way of life in Argentina and the rest of South America for that matter. That night I had a tasty meal of grilled lamb and roasted vegetables and shared a bottle of cheap red wine with the farmer sitting across from me who couldn't quite grasp the concept of someone driving down from the U.S. as he kept asking how exactly I had come to his little village.
After dinner, I headed over to the camping area and found fifteen or so locals, only men, sitting around a campfire drinking beers and being typically Argentinean-style rambunctious. I would have preferred to have been there alone so as not to have to set up the security devices I carried with me to prevent theft of my gear while I was sleeping, but I was too tired to care and saw an opportunity to mix with the people. Obviously through the exchange semester I had met many Argentineans during my stay in Buenos Aires, but they had been mainly from the privileged class of society and I had yet to have an opportunity to see and hear how the working class worked and played. This was my chance so I jumped right on it. After expeditiously setting up camp nearby, I walked over and introduced myself. It turned out that these guys had just won a soccer game on a field nearby and were celebrating their victory with Quilmes—the national beer brand. After a few minutes of banter I spotted the local general store across the way and briefly excused myself to go get something. I walked into the store and bought two bottles of fernet, a popular type of liquor in Italy and Argentina similar to Jaegermeister, along with several liters of Coke. My strategy was simple. I needed to befriend these young Argentineans to mitigate the risk of theft at night as I hoped that their better conscious would prevent them from stealing from someone with whom they had shared a few drinks with. This strategy of course had the added benefit of easily making friends with these guys and potentially hearing about what really matters to them instead of the characteristically veiled and reserved speech often thrown out by the locals when talking to extranjeros. Their eyes visibly lit up when they saw me arrive with the fernet and begin pouring everyone drinks. The leader of the group, a healthily-built bearded 30-year old wearing an Iron Maiden T-shirt nicknamed “SuperEd” (pictured in the videa below with a large knife in his hand), announced that my generosity called for a celebration. Within 60 seconds SuperEd had dispatched several of his minions to purchase half a lamb from his cousin the butcher, while several others were sent out to collect firewood and ‘borrow’ potatoes from the field across the way. All this was going on while one of the younger kids found a metal conical plate which had come off a farmer’s plow that was to be used as an improvised grill. Thirty minutes later everyone had reunited and we had a full-blown asado underway.
[Video of spontaneous asado with my new Argentinean friends]
After many hours of conversation with SuperEd and several bottles of fernet later, I was knackered and ready to hit the sack.
10-12 December (Somewhere on Route 40, Argentina to Buenos Aires, Argentina)
[A brief 50km stretch of asphalt along Route 40. A well-needed respite from the gravel]
The next morning I awoke with a mild headache, broke camp, and headed out for another very long day of riding. The crisp morning air did me good and within minutes I was over my fernet hangover. Sometime that morning while cruising along the gravel road which makes up the thousands and thousands of kilometers of Route 40, my engine stalled without warning. I saw the ‘low oil pressure’ red lamp of death light up and thought “this cannot be good”. Once again I was in the middle of nowhere with only the random ostrich and guanaco to keep me company—and even they wouldn't get too close. After attempting to put the sidestand down in order to get off the bike, I realized what had happened. The sidestand was already in the “down” position. This could only mean one thing: the two large retaining springs which allow the sidestand to extend and retract had broken off. And as most of you probably don’t know, modern motorcycles come with a safety switch on the sidestand which shuts off the engine when the sidestand is put down. I spent the next hour or so unsuccessfully scouring the gravel for these springs. I needed to improvise something. I somehow needed to devise a way to hold the sidestand up while still allowing me to easily put it down once I had stopped moving. If I used zip ties or anything non-elastic to hold it in place, then I would have a hell of a time getting it back down every time I came to a standstill. While going through everything I had in my repair kit thinking to myself that I was figuratively screwed, I remembered that before the trip I had thrown into my backpack a handful of heavy duty rubber bands which I use to pack my skydiving parachute while thinking that they might come in handy someday. Well that day had come. I took only one of these rubber bands and it fit perfectly where the springs had been. I couldn’t believe my luck. What could have been a very painful ordeal in getting new springs and someone to weld them back on turned out to have a very simple solution. That original rubber band ended up making it over 15,000 km across the entire continent and some very rough terrain until I reached my final destination in Colombia a month later.
[TBA: Picture of the famous savior rubber band from underneath the bike]
After the rubber band incident, I drove another four hours where I came across the next lonely dusty gas station. A few minutes after I arrived, two other off-road vehicles arrived from the other direction. One contained an elderly German couple who were clearly travelling the world in their converted truck/camper and the other had a friendly younger Italian couple who were touring western Argentina. While sipping on my café con leche and talking to the Italian fellow outside, we both saw the elderly German woman collapse on the ground after stepping out of her vehicle. Everyone including the gas station attendant rushed over to attend to the woman. I immediately began a medical assessment as my emergency medical training instinctively kicked in but then quickly realized that the Italian fella was actually a doctor. Eventually the woman’s husband came running over and was visibly shaken from seeing his wife unconscious. He didn’t speak a word of English or Spanish so I began getting a medical history from him in German. The Italian doctor didn’t speak German or Spanish and only little English, while the gas station owner only spoke Spanish and he was the only one who could direct us to the nearest medical clinic or hospital which turned out to be 150 km away. I was clearly going to have to be the translator. While I translated back and forth the Italian’s wife pulled up their truck so that we could load the woman into the back and transport her. She had regained consciousness but was very hazy and mumbling gibberish. I spent the next few hours in the back of the truck with the Italian doctor while we drove down the bumpy gravel road to the hospital in Perrito Morreno. It turned out that the woman had suffered a mild heart attack but was fortunately going to make it. After parting ways with the German couple at the hospital, I got a ride back to my bike with the Italians. At this point half the day was shot and I was only able to make it another 300km before having to stop for the night. I was not up for another night in a bivy sack as I badly needed a shower and a change of clothes so I searched for the nearest hotel in this town.
As luck would have it, I drove into a hotel parking lot with a dozen other BMW motorcyclists there. The motorcycle group was made up of all wealthy Argentineans on a short five day tour of the area. They traveled in luxury with a support vehicle following them with all their luggage and other wholly unnecessary accoutrements. Along the way they had picked up a Canadian motorcyclist who like me had been traveling for many months and on a much smaller budget. The young Canadian's name was Alex (pictured below) and we instantly bonded, finding temporary refuge with each other in a sea of overly pompous Argentineans who spent the evening trying to prove to each other whose penis was larger, figuratively speaking of course. Eventually they turned their attention to me and my future riding plans and attempted to explain to me quite arrogantly how I should proceed, along with what I should and should not do. Well at this point I had had about enough of watching them talk down to the waiter who had been furiously and with great futility trying to please these Argentineans. My friend Alex was having his hotel room and dinner paid for by these guys so he couldn’t very well speak up even though I could tell from the look on his face that he wanted say something. Well, I had no such social handcuffs on me that evening. As tactfully as possible, I made it clear to them that it wouldn’t behoove me to take advice from the type of motorcyclists who didn’t even know how to unpack their luggage without the help of their support vehicle driver. I then went on to describe to them the differences in risk profiles between riders like them who require a support vehicle, on-hand physician and chef while Alex and me were happy with a more shoestring, survivalist mode of traveling. And even though I appreciated their words of advice, we were people cut from a different cloth and therefore followed a different set of rules. This threw them off as I don’t think that anyone hadn’t ever implied that they were soft. However, the evening finished off amicably enough as Alex and I kept mostly to ourselves sharing route tips and experiences. After I told him that I would need to pull a 24+ hour drive in order to make it back to Buenos Aires in time for the final day of classes which I absolutely could not miss, he shared with me his secret weapon against exhaustion while riding: coca leaves. I had never chewed coca leaves before but remembered hearing my father, who grew up in Peru, talk about the Incas in Cusco chewing coca to overcome exhaustion and thirst during long hikes. Alex had picked up a bag of coca leaves while traveling through Bolivia and still had some left. He kindly gave me a pocketful of leaves for the next day’s drive and with that we said good night.
[A popular method of walking your dog in Argentina (there is another dog on the other side as well)]
[Picture of Alex and I somewhere in Argentina]
The next morning I got up mentally prepared for the long day and night ahead. It was 6 a.m. and I needed to be in Buenos Aires by 9 a.m. the following day. About 600km of gravel and another 1800km of pavement separated me from my destination. After throwing back a café con leche and giving the bike a once over, I was back on the road.
Fast forward 26.5 hours to 7:30 a.m. the next morning and I was still driving with only 10km to go. I had run out of coca leaves around 4 a.m. and was starting to feel the effects of the all night drive. I stopped at a toll booth and it was then that the bike died on me. This was really the last thing I needed. Fortunately I had driven that toll road a hundred times going to and from class and I knew that the only BMW motorcycle dealership in Buenos Aires was just 5km up the road. I spent the next hour or so tearing the bike apart right there on the side of the road trying to figure out what the source of the problem was but couldn’t seem to figure it out. By now it was 8:30 a.m. and class started in 30 minutes. If I missed that class I would fail the course. I had asked one of the toll booth attendants to call me a tow truck but it was getting late and the truck had never shown up. I had two options: push the bike 5km to the dealership and then catch a taxi to class or leave the bike there and catch a taxi to class. Well, I knew Betsy wouldn’t appreciate it much if I just abandoned her, so I went with the first option of pushing her to the dealership and an hour later I was finally there covered in dirt and drenched in sweat. The bike mechanic recognized me and quickly went to work. It turned out that all the hard riding had caused a loose electrical connection around the battery which just needed to be tightened down. Within 30 minutes I was back on my way. By now it was 10:30 and if I hurried I could still catch the last hour of class and hopefully still pass the course with the strict attendance policy. It wasn’t just the last day of class for that course but for the entire MBA course there, so when I walked in with helmet still in hand and mud caked riding trousers, I was greeted with loud cheering and dancing all around. The class as such had never really taken place. Instead the day was being used as an end of year celebration. All that rush across half the continent for nothing.
[Route 40. At the end of the clip you can see two ostriches running off at full speed]
Fast forward 26.5 hours to 7:30 a.m. the next morning and I was still driving with only 10km to go. I had run out of coca leaves around 4 a.m. and was starting to feel the effects of the all night drive. I stopped at a toll booth and it was then that the bike died on me. This was really the last thing I needed. Fortunately I had driven that toll road a hundred times going to and from class and I knew that the only BMW motorcycle dealership in Buenos Aires was just 5km up the road. I spent the next hour or so tearing the bike apart right there on the side of the road trying to figure out what the source of the problem was but couldn’t seem to figure it out. By now it was 8:30 a.m. and class started in 30 minutes. If I missed that class I would fail the course. I had asked one of the toll booth attendants to call me a tow truck but it was getting late and the truck had never shown up. I had two options: push the bike 5km to the dealership and then catch a taxi to class or leave the bike there and catch a taxi to class. Well, I knew Betsy wouldn’t appreciate it much if I just abandoned her, so I went with the first option of pushing her to the dealership and an hour later I was finally there covered in dirt and drenched in sweat. The bike mechanic recognized me and quickly went to work. It turned out that all the hard riding had caused a loose electrical connection around the battery which just needed to be tightened down. Within 30 minutes I was back on my way. By now it was 10:30 and if I hurried I could still catch the last hour of class and hopefully still pass the course with the strict attendance policy. It wasn’t just the last day of class for that course but for the entire MBA course there, so when I walked in with helmet still in hand and mud caked riding trousers, I was greeted with loud cheering and dancing all around. The class as such had never really taken place. Instead the day was being used as an end of year celebration. All that rush across half the continent for nothing.
12-14 December (Buenos Aires to Mendoza, Argentina)
After a near solid 24 hours of bacchanalian celebration with red bull intoxicated friends, I was really to leave Buenos Aires yet again. While making my last round of farewells, I dropped off Betsy to get a badly needed professional servicing. A few hours later I was back on the road with final destination unknown. Well, not entirely unknown. I needed to be in Lima for a friend’s wedding on the 19th but after that I was still undecided between celebrating the New Year in Rio de Janeiro or Cali, Colombia; but all that could be decided later on. For now I headed westwards towards the setting sun with Mendoza far off into the horizon. After barely getting a few hundred kilometers out of Buenos Aires, evening’s darkness had overrun the skyline and the sleep deprivation was finally conquering me. Luckily for me, just at that moment when my eyelids felt like the weight of steel curtails, bright casino lights appeared in the midst of empty farmlands. I had found a place to sleep. After getting settled in and a quick bit to eat, I consciously made the mistake of taking a quick stroll around the blackjack and roulette tables. I was absolutely exhausted but I nevertheless told myself that if there were spots available then I would only play until I lost 20 pesos and nothing more. Well, there was a spot and so I sat down and bet the 20 pesos on one hand. Unfortunately I won that hand, and the next, and then next, etc. Prognosis: I wasn’t going anywhere for a while. The guy gambling next to me was a very emotional middle-aged gentleman who looked like a local. His name was Alberto and he was the sort that has a roller coaster of emotions after every hand. It surprised me that he was betting 100 to 200 pesos a hand but didn't seem to have a clue when to stay and when to hit. He was a 'gut feeling' sort of gambler whereas I on the other hand make my decisions based on pure statistics. I had memorized the odds for every dealer-player combination long ago and have for years played purely by the book. A few times I couldn't help but hide my shock at some of the bets he was making and he picked up on my weak attempts at hiding my dismay. He and I started talking and very quickly became friends. He was having the gambling night of his life. He had started with 100 pesos and from what I gathered from his pile of chips, was now somewhere around 10,000 pesos—about 3,500 USD. He knew that his small fortune was pure luck and wanted to learn how I was playing. An hour or two of playing and coaching later and he was close to 20,000 pesos while I was at 800 pesos—which wasn’t bad considering I was only making 20 pesos bets per hand. By the time we both walked away from the table it was 3 a.m. and now I felt like a walking zombie. Alberto was overly thankful and gave me 1000 pesos chip as a tip for the help. I refused to accept his generosity as friends are meant to help friends, but in the end he forced me to accept. We went to the bar to have a few drinks and decompress after all that card playing and I eventually got to bed by 5 a.m.
A few hours later and with far less sleep than my body was begging for, I was back on the road. The remainder of the day was an uneventful ride to Mendoza. Around sunset I arrived at the hotel just in time to meet my good friend Drew along with several other people who had flown out from Buenos Aires to do some wine tasting the next day.
14-17 December (Mendoza, Argentina to Chile)
[Mendoza vineyards]
[Wine tasting with my friend Drew]
The next morning Drew and I were up early, ready for a great day of wine tasting. My plan was to join them till noon after which point I would start heading north to make the eventual traverse across the Andes. In theory my plan was sound but knew that after a few glasses of wine, my plan might start to change. While my friends rode bicycles that they had rented for the excursion, I was following along on the motorcycle. And sure enough, by noon I realized that I would need another few hours to allow my liver to process the grape juice before getting back on the bike. As a side note, for those thinking of making a trip to Mendoza, the best winery on the trip in my opinion was a small little vineyard called Carmelo Patti. Eventually around 4pm, I said my farewells and started the long ride north. This time I actually had a deadline. I needed to be at a formal pre-wedding lunch in Lima by 2pm on 18 December for a fellow MBA student and friend from London whose wedding was being attended by over 40 London Business School students who were flying in from all over the world.
[Having my tires changed before the cross over the Andes into Chile]
That evening I was only able to make it several hundred kilometers north of Mendoza on Route 40 before having to set camp for the night. The road was improving but it was still a combination of pavement and gravel and I didn’t want to take any unnecessary risk of driving on that shifty terrain at night. I was told that the path where I was planning on crossing the Andes was pure dirt and very desolate with very few buildings or people along the way. I had seen pictures of landscapes on the Argentina-Chile frontier and was very excited for the upcoming drive.
The next day I was up early to take a freezing cold camp bath in the icy waters of river next to where I had set up my bivy sack. That day’s drive was a true highlight of the trip. The raw beauty and isolation of that mountain range imbued me with such a sense of being alive that lasted the whole day. The pictures below do a poor job of getting that feeling across however; these will hopefully give you a small sense of what the crossing was like.
[Crossing the Andes]
After arriving on the Chilean side and another beautifully smooth fifteen minute border crossing, I spent the next two days literally racing north across the various Chilean deserts in an attempt to make it to Lima in time for the wedding. The Chilean coast is littered with hundreds of small fishing villages which serve up some of the best seafood dishes I’ve ever come across. The coastal highway reminded me of Highway 1 in Northern California around Big Sur and Monterey, with every twist and turn having a several hundred meter cliff drop on the other side. A beautifully relaxing drive when I wasn't avoiding the thousands of trucks trying to run me off the road.
[Fishing villages along the Chilean coast]
17-20 December (Chile to Lima, Peru)
[A lone tree in the middle of the Chilean desert]
From the time I left Argentina until I arrived in Lima four days later, I had camped off the side of the road somewhere, and was starting to feel and smell a bit weathered. Along the way I had gotten far from the main road and just started driving over the empty vast Chilean terrain. The sand and dirt was relatively hard packed which made for a comfortable drive.
Using just my compass and a little help from the sun, I drove across thousands of kilometers of desert only going back to main road to fill up with gas from time to time. This off-the-beaten-path part of the trip provided me with several unexpected finds along the way which really enriched the trip for me. At one point I came across a sand cemetery in the middle of nowhere.
[Crossing the Chilean desert]
[Cemetery of sand far south of the Atacama desert, Chile]
On my third day in Chile, I came across an abandoned village. I suspect that it was formerly built to house miners but as the pictures indicated, had been abandoned many years ago. I spent a star filled night staring up at the sky in one of these ceiling-less adobe ruins.
[Ruins of an abandoned village in the Chilean desert]
[Train crossing somewhere in the desert]
It was now the morning of the 17th and I needed to be sitting at a formal lunch in Lima, almost 2000 km away from where I was, by 2pm the next day. I had given the groom, Juan Antonio, my word that I would be there on time and I wasn't planning on letting him down. What this meant was that I was going to have to drive all day and all night without stopping in order to make it on time. I was out of coca leaves so I was going to have to rely on just coffee and red bull to keep me going. After coming to this realization, I took a quick two hour nap off the side of the road and then drove the 2000 km in 24 hours to arrive in Lima just in time for the lunch to start. I didn’t have time to go to a hotel and get cleaned up so I just drove straight to the restaurant. After convincing the restaurant's security guards to let me in as they could not believe that someone who looked like I did could possibly be a paying customer, I carried my exhausted, sand and sweat covered self into a dining room full of cocktails dresses and suits where nobody expected my arrival and was warmly greeted by dozens of good friends whom I hadn’t seen in over four months.
[TBA: How I looked after driving 24 hours and arriving in Lima]
The next two days were spent living it up in Lima at Juan Antonio’s wedding. I hadn’t realized how much I had missed being with the people I had developed very close relationships with over the previous year in London.
[TBA: Pictures from Juan Antonio's wedding in Lima]
20-25 December (Lima to Cusco to Ollantaytambo to Machu Picchu to Cusco to Lima)
[Traditional Peruvian dress]
My parents arrived in Lima the morning after the wedding. My father is originally from Lima, Peru but had left his native land in the 1960s at the ripe age of 20 to go chase the American dream. Since then, his new life in the U.S.—and all the obstacles that it ultimately throws in the way—had prevented him from returning. Being the disruptive offspring that I pride myself on, I eventually convinced them both that if they wanted to see me for the holidays, then they would have to come down to Peru where I would be. They eventually took me up on the offer used it as an excuse to plan an extensive two week trek across all the major highlights Peru has to offer. I would join them for the Christmas leg where we met in Lima, flew to Cusco, and from there took a three day tour to Machu Picchu and back. Our time in Cusco was particularly exciting for my father as we were able to visit an aunt of his that he hadn’t seen in over fifty years as well as seeing the home where my grandfather grew up which is now a museum in Cusco.
[Scenes of Cusco]
Needless to say the trip to Ollantaytambo and Machu Picchu was spectacular, not least because it was a first time visit for all of us, but also because many of the places we visited represented an important part of my family’s cultural heritage which I had never before even been aware of. Below are some pictures highlighting the trip to Machu Picchu and back.
[Video of my mom playing a traditional Peruvian drinking game where you try and toss a coin in a metal frog's mouth. She ended up beating everyone there.]
[Cuy (English: Guinea pig). A traditional Peruvian meal]
26-27 December (Lima to Arequipa, Peru)
The day after Christmas I was back on the road, but this time heading back south to Bolivia where I intended to cross near Lake Titicaca. I was having to retrace my steps back to Arequipa where I would then cut up and across the Andes once again. I was comfortably cruising down the coastal road about 15km away from a small town called Ocoña when I had one of those random thoughts pop into my mind. I realized that I hadn't had a flat tire this entire time and that I only had two weeks to go. It was a truly portentous thought as no more thirty seconds later I felt my rear tire start to feel like a squishy sponge, indicative that I had in fact a flat tire. My first thought thereafter was a long continuously running multi-syllabic expletive consisting of various languages, which had it been an actual word would have taken as long to sound out as this German word: Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft.
But I was not to fret, I had prepared for just this situation. After unloading the bike and pulling out my tire repair kit and tools, I made the most disheartening discovery that both of the rubber cement tubes I had packed in the two separate kits, had exploded quite some time ago without my noticing. I was staring at two large globs of dried rubber cement wondering to myself how I was going get out of this situation without losing an obscene about of time in the process. I still had another option. I had brought spare inner tubes along and had only intended to use the patch kits as backups. When I started inflating my spare tube to make sure it was still sound, I discovered that there was a huge gash in it, apparently caused by the thousands of miles of rubbing up against the head of a bolt on my camp stove. Things were not looking good. Unfortunately there wasn’t any other option other than going to the next village down the road and hoping that they had a tire repair shop—luckily tire repair shops in South America are as common as a cell phone shops in Japan, so it was really just a matter of getting to the next village. Let’s remember that I was in a coastal desert environment. I needed to run to the next village which I hoped was only about 15km away but couldn’t leave all my gear out in the open lest I wish to have it stolen by the next passing vehicle. There weren't any trees or obvious hiding spots around so I was going to have to bury my bags in the sand. Down a small hill I spotted the ruins of what was once a tiny home made of stone and adobe. Behind these ruins I found a good area where I could easily bury my bags without too much trouble while being hidden from the road. After dragging my bags down behind the building, I started digging with my hands. It didn’t take long before I started pulling out oddly familiar bones. First a rib bone, then a femur, and then some spinal cord bones. I attempted to convince myself that these bones could belong to a variety of animals found in Peru but there remained a dark persistent thought in the back of my mind. I kept digging and a few minutes later pulled out the final definitive piece of evidence I needed to verify what I hoped would not be true: a human mandible bone. With the base of the teeth still in place and small patches of black mold removing the final traces of organic matter, I had confirmation that this was a burial ground for what was once a living person. I instinctively scanned my surroundings to see if anyone was observing me. Could this have been someone murdered and buried here? If so, why was it such a shallow burial? Why were the bones scattered across such a relatively large area? Should I notify the authorities? I had a dozen questions flying through my head. Eventually I decided to finish burying my luggage—no reason to find another place—and get out of there as quickly as possible. I was not ready to involve myself in some investigation that could have led to some investigation regarding who knows what. I just grabbed the punctured inner tube and started running down the road to the next town. Three hours later I was back to that same spot with a freshly patched inner tube after hitching a ride back to my motorcycle with a friendly local farmer. My bags were still in the ground but so was a suspiciously parked car about 200m from where my motorcycle was. I could see that there were four people in the car. They seemed to be just sitting there observing me put the tire back on the motorcycle. I waited for them to do something because I didn’t want to go down to retrieve my bags until they were out of sight. Eventually they must have gotten bored and just drove away. After undigging my bags from their bone-ridden hiding place, I was back on the road after a three hour delay and with a mandible bone in my backpack.
[Picture of ruins behind which I found a human skeleton in the sand]
[Some of the bones I dug up while burying my bags]
After many hundred kilometers I had arrived in Arequipa where I spent the evening wandering the small alleys and exploring the city at night.
27-28 December (Arequipa, Peru to La Paz, Bolivia)
[Puno, Peru]
After leaving Arequipa early that morning, I reached Puno by midday and continued on along the shores of Lake Titicaca taking in the beautiful scenery that surrounds that famous lake high up in the Andes.
[Local women farmers strolling down the shores of Lake Titicaca]
I reached the Peru-Bolivia border by mid-afternoon and spent a solid three hours dealing with the typical border paperwork shuffle. A photocopy here, a stamp there, $135 USD for an entry visa and I was finally in Bolivia on my way to La Paz. By this time the sun was setting and a severe thunderstorm had moved in. I spent the next two hours driving through the heavy rain until finally reaching La Paz. From a distance La Paz looks like any ordinary third world capital. But once you get closer you realize that the city lies in a deep valley where thousands of tightly packed buildings cling to the steep cliff sides making for an impressive view.
28-30 December (La Paz, Bolivia)
I spent the next two days in La Paz getting to know the city and its people while taking small daytrips out of the city on my motorcycle. Bolivian people were incredibly friendly and approachable and I had many interesting conversations with the locals. It also seems to be one of the few places that is still somewhat virgin from the tour group hordes. I saw backpackers walking around but in far fewer numbers than in many other popular destinations. I didn’t see the obscene amount tourist-catering shops selling kitschy overpriced memorabilia to the gullible tourist. All this will inevitably change as Bolivia becomes more and more popular. I was just glad to get there before the tourist-oriented metamorphosis takes place.
[Scenes of daily life in La Paz]
I was intent on heading south to the famed Uyuni Salt Flats but had a quickly deteriorating mechanical situation with the motorcycle which caused me to reconsider. Specifically, the motorcycle chain, which I had replaced before leaving Buenos Aires, had stretched far quicker than I had expected and was almost at the point where it would stretch no more. The previous chain had lasted over nearly 25,000km while this chain only had 15,000km and was about to break. The Uyuni flats were only a day’s drive away but something told me that I would barely be able to make it back to Lima as it were. And having the chain on that bike break in the middle of nowhere is not something that I would be able to have fixed anywhere. Secondly, if I turned around now, I might be able to make it back to Lima in time to celebrate the New Year with people I knew instead of camping in the middle of the Bolivian desert alone.
[Scenes from the "Most Dangerous Road in the World" between La Paz and Coroico, Bolivia]
30 December – 1 January (La Paz à Arequipa, Peru to Lima, Peru)
[On the road back to Lima for New Years]
After making the tough decision to forego the trip down to Uyuni, a place I was very much looking forward to, I headed back to Lima in the hopes of making it back in time for the New Year’s celebration. Just short of the Bolivia-Peru border near Lake Titicaca, I passed a group of motorcyclists who happened to be from Brazil. We remet at the border and passed the next three hours in the immigration office recounting stories and sharing travelling tips. At one point they pulled out a bottle of cachaça and started making us all caipirinhas in order to combat the boredom, as one does.
[The Brazilian bikes and Betsy at the border]
After the paperwork pain was over, I said goodbye to another one of these ephemeral instant friendships and was once again on Peruvian soil headed for Lima. Fast forward to the next day, 31 December, about 9pm. I was only about 100km from Lima approaching a popular area called Asia. I had been driving practically nonstop from 6am and skipped all meals in order to have a chance at making it to the party on time. I could practically smell the pisco sours and taste the ceviche as I quickly approached the city. All of a sudden without warning my back tire once again collapsed with that telltale feel of a soft sponge. Shit!! It had started to rain and I estimated to be about 20km from the nearest town. I knew it would take me at least two to three hours to fix the flat and that was assuming I could find someone at that hour who was sober enough to patch it for me. I quickly saw my evening being spent by the side of the road in the rain greeting the New Year hungry and by my lonesome self. And so it was. Held prisoner by the realities of my situation, I resigned myself to setting up camp and hiding my bike on the other side of the sand bank. There were a few small shacks around that appeared to be constructed out of scrap metal and adobe so I approached them in search of life. I saw a small woman walking around outside her little humble home and asked for permission to set up my tent in her front yard. I explained to her my situation and she confirmed my suspicion that there would be no chance of getting the tire fixed until the next day.
After crawling into my tent soaking wet and hungry, I was reminded of the time by the dim lights of the fireworks on the distant horizon. In few minutes I was asleep.
1 – 2 January (Lima, Peru)
[The two guys and their kids that helped me out on 1 January. I was looking a bit rough around the edges at this point.]
The next morning I was awoken by the sound of a 2-stoke motorcycle engine annoyingly putting away nearby. I quickly got out of my tent and ran towards the noise. The driver was a young man around the age of 20 who had obviously had a long night drinking. I explained to him my predicament, showed him my motorcycle and convinced him to give me a ride to the next town to find a tire repair shop. He had never met a foreigner before and much less one that could speak his own language so for him this was the chance of a lifetime. When we showed up at the next little village of maybe 50 adobe huts, we found that nearly the entire male population had congregated around the local minimart and were still drinking strong from the night before. Eventually I was able to convince one of them who was only three-quarters drunk, to patch the tire for me. Seeing that it would take longer than usual, I sat down nearby with my new friends who were all very curious to hear how an American had ended up in their little village and about my adventures thus far. Most of them were too inebriated to make sense of anything that I was saying but the situation from my perspective was more comical than anything else.
[The unnamed village where this all occurred]
To make a long story short—which this blog is obviously not—I was back on my bike with a newly repaired tire by 1pm that day. An hour later I was in Lima and in dire need of a meal and a shower, in that order. I had been invited to stay at the home of one of my good friends from London Business School, Luis Bas. After getting some food in my stomach, I found their home and was greeted with open arms by people who I didn’t even know. I spent the next day making necessary repairs on the bike and just relaxing a bit. I had been driving very hard the last few weeks, averaging 15-18 hour day on the road, and was getting quickly worn down.
2 – 3 January (Lima, Peru to Piura, Peru)
[Local taking a quick dip in a canal]
After my short second stay in Lima, I was back on the road with a new bike chain and my own internal battery recharged. At this point in the trip I was behind schedule and knew that I was going to have to make a strong push the last several thousand kilometers to Colombia. I had a flight leaving Bogota to take me back to Atlanta on 8 January but wanted to be in Cali, Colombia by the 4th where I was planning on leaving my motorcycle at the home of a good friend of mine from London.
On the road between Lima and Piura in the north of Peru, I was stopped by the national police on three occasions. As someone with Peruvian blood, I’m ashamed to say that Peru has the most corrupt police force encountered throughout my entire trip. Every time I was stopped, the police fabricated some story about how I had committed some infraction of some sort. The penalties of which were always some ludicrously high amount. They would then take me over to their police vehicle would they would pretend to start writing me a ticket. I had learned back in Nicaragua never to give government officials my official paperwork and instead l would give them a laminated copy of which I had five more in my bags. The police would always tell me that they intended to keep my “license” or “passport” until I paid the fine at the local municipal building. And inevitably the “municipal” building was always closed till the next week. They would then pause and look to see if I demonstrated some sign of concern which would then allow them to gauge how large of a bribe they would then be able to extract from me. I took great pleasure in giving them no indication of concern and instead always replied with excitement at being able to spend time at their wholly interesting village in the middle of nowhere and that I looked forward to meeting the fine officials at this municipal building. These police of course had no idea that they were merely holding a copy of my paperwork which meant nothing to me. They would attempt to salvage their quickly deteriorating position by attempting to explain to me how much this would delay and cost me but that all of this could be avoided if I gave them a 'donation'. I always just replied by telling them that I was a wealthy person with way too much time on his hands and that this represented an opportunity for me to learn more about the Peruvian police force, moreover, I would rather pay the fine and ensure that the money was going into the town coffer and not their pockets. I wish I could have taking a picture of their faces. I could literally see their smug countenances change into pure frustration when they realized that they were getting nothing out of me. And almost like clockwork, within a few minutes I was back on my way with a hand shake.
That night I slept in the quaint town of Piura, Peru near the border with Ecuador. This is definitely a place worth exploring but with the clock ticking, I could only stop to have dinner and sleep a few hours.
3 – 6 January (Piura, Peru to Ecuador to Cali, Colombia)
By the following morning, I had crossed over into Ecuador and was traveling up the winding mountainous roads that wind around numerous volcanoes. I calculated that at this rate I would be in Colombia by midnight. It was around 2pm I was making good headway when all of a sudden I felt an all too familiar feeling in the rear tire... another flat tire! I could not believe this. I pulled off the road and into some farmer's driveway. On the front porch were half a dozen women ranging from 5-50 years old. My appearance had already caused them to stir a bit and one of the young girls slowly made her way towards me. I ask her to call her dad for me. While the father of the girl showed up, I now expertly started the repairs. An hour later, with the friendly help of practically the entire family of twelve, all girls, I had fixed the flat (another nail by the way). The family then invited me to join them for lunch. They were so excited to talk to an American who also spoke Spanish that they had killed a rabbit and chicken and started cooking up a feast while I was still repairing the tire. It took me two hours to eat as I spent more time answering dozens of questions from all directions. It was a great experience that I never would have had, had I not had a flat tire in that exact spot. So as frustrated as I was about these flat tires, these have not failed to enrich my adventure thus far.
[The front porch of the family in Ecuador where I fortunately had a flat tire]
It was now 5pm and I was way behind schedule. I had stopped at the next tire repair shop to have my punctured tube professionally patched just in case I had another flat. Well, it was now 8pm and I was about 100km from the Colombian border. Would you believe it… another flat tire! Two in the same day! This time there was no driveway to pull into so I just repaired the tire right there on the spot. With so much practice in the last week, I had gotten my time down to just under 40 minutes compared to 3 hours it took me the first time.
By the time I had finally crossed into Colombia it was 10pm on 5 January. I was exhausted but needed to keep going if was going to have a chance of making it to Cali by noon the next day. Around 2am I finally gave in to my body’s call for sleep and found a small hiding for the motorcycle while I just collapsed between two rocks. I couldn't be bothered to set up my hammock or even take off my clothes. I was asleep within seconds of my head hitting the soft granite that was my pillow that night.
6 – 8 January (Cali, Colombia to Bogota, Colombia to USA)
I was awoken by the sun’s first rays around 6am and made my way to the nearest town for breakfast. I looked like crap and smelled like something similar but I was only hours away from the official end of the motorcycle trip and that reality of that was slowly hitting me. These months on the road since August would within hours all come to an end and I would return to my previous life in London. Those last few hours on the bike as I approached Cali felt like the first few hours only this time I was reflecting on all that I had seen and done instead of imagining all that I would see and do.
After arriving in the small town of Ginebra, Colombia just outside of Cali, I quickly found my friend Juan Camillo’s family home. I was greeted by his mother, whom I had met months earlier in Bogota, and the rest of the family. After getting cleaned up, I washed Betsy up as good as I could and put her safely in her new home where she would remain until I return at the end of the year. It was like I was saying goodbye to an old friend. I almost shed a tear. That was it. The trip was over. A few hours later I caught the overnight bus to Bogota and the next day was on a plane back to Atlanta.
Epilogue
Throughout this blog I have attempted to narrate to you, my readers, in a hopefully entertaining way, the many people, places, and experiences I encountered along this long drive across Latin America. The trip has now come to an end and I have picked up my life in London where I had previous left off albeit with a new sense of clarity and invigorated sense of mission. With every new country I visit and every new culture I familiarize myself with, I realize that my personal world is an ever shrinking one. I’ve now traveled to over 70 countries and can condense the years of observations and stories I’ve heard into a few short lines that in my experience hold true the world over: (1) citizens of each country will claim that they have the worst drivers in the world; (2) citizens of every country will claim that the citizens of their neighboring countries are in some way inferior to themselves. Now my first point is true but merely meant to be funny. While my second point has further reaching implications. The root causes of which are found globally. When people live an isolated life and don’t interact with people from other cultures and nations, they tend to develop a skewed and often incorrect view of these other people and their values. This leads to stereotypes and prejudices, and in the most extreme forms, racial hatred. It’s unfortunate but true. Fortunately the lower costs of travel have made it easier for many to avoid or overcome this false view of the world. Of course most people in Latin America don’t fall into that more fortunate category who can afford travel and it is for that reason that I constantly heard stories about how the people in the next country where liars, thieves, and murderers while the citizens of their country were the good ones. And when I would get the next country and same would be said about the people of the country I had just left. Replicate this ad nauseam and you have this same endemic problem all over the world.
This problem I described above is found alive and strong in my own native country: America. Before starting this trip and even months after it had begun, I had received dozens of emails from concerned friends and family that were worried I would be kidnapped by Colombian drug lords or killed by road bandits. This heightened unfounded sense of paranoia is a result of: (1) They themselves having never spent any time abroad and seeing reality (a week at a beach resort somewhere doesn’t count), (2) these same people believing that what they see on CNN World Report or FOX News is characteristic of everyday life abroad, (3) The self-perpetuating cycle of friends who also haven’t traveled abroad telling each other about these same ‘dangers’ they hear about and see on the television.
.JPG)
