Across Americas - Discovering the New World on a motorcycle
 

Hi, we are Alex and Andreea and we are traveling to Argentina on our motorcycle Gunnar, a Suzuki DL650.

Our trip started 2 months ago in Montreal and we've been to Alaska and now are heading South.
For some reason we did not start a Ride Tale here (figuring that there are many others which are more interesting than ours). But we thought that at least we should dare post some pictures from the H.U. meeting in British Columbia.

So here it goes, as written on our blog:

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For around 4 days, we wouldn’t move our motorcycle much from it’s parking lot but still we would get to reach far away places by following the stories of others.
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-C...0/DSC_0206.JPG We are not the only ones planning not to move the motorcycle for a while

Right, I will start by confessing something that probably will turn away the male have of our audience (after the female have of the audience probably fled already after reading that this post will be about a motorcyclists meeting). OK so this motorcyclists meeting didn’t had “interesting” ingredients as “almost-naked-female-passengers” or wet T-shirts contest or rock concerts with lots of booze.
So hopping that not everybody is gone, I should continue saying that Horizons Unlimited Meeting is basically a pretext for long traveling motorcyclists and other overlanders to meet and exchange ideas, stories and pictures. Hmmm still it was my first motorcycle meeting so I was quite curious how it will go…
During the day there are presentations about the journeys, places and people meet on the way.
Also there are sessions with useful information organized for the newbes (like me). For example how to change your tire. Or how to fix a flat.
One session that I was really looking for: how to pack light. Life in 12 kilos… yeah right… we are so far away from that. yet…
And beyond all the presentations the most useful part for me was that I got the chance to meet all these people who were like-minded. I could tell the guy next to me that I am planning to go to Argentina and he wouldn’t think I am crazy. If anything, probably he would even give me some advice as he was already on a similar trip. That is just awesome.
In the “parking lot’ there were all kinds of contests happening. Like “slow riding”:
The atmosphere is relaxed and you basically could talk with anyone, exchanging ideas about bike modding, camping gear, what works what does not. And you had the chance to take a lot of pictures. Which I did.
There is a monster lurking :

Hope you enjoyed it!

Great to hear you enjoyed it! You two were a HUGE help, very much appreciated!

Looking froward to hearing more about your travels, stay in touch, and keep posting,

all the best, Grant

The New World III.1 – Bienvenidos a México!
 

For some time now, our journey took us in Mexico and so the third part of our trip started. I am thinking to start posting here with regularity the episodes from now on in the hope that the words, or at least the pictures would provide some "let's go" inspiration to others as well :)

For those that would like to read also the first parts of the story, I arranged the posts on our website:

Part I: Getting across Canada and exploring Alaska
Part II: Going South through Canada and the United States. The above episode from H.U. Meeting in Nakusp is also from this part

For the more "online socializing inclined" of us, we can connect, like and comment on Facebook as well.

See you soon with the first posts from Mexico

Bienvenidos a México!: 1-3 Octomber
Route:
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The morning cool air is hiting my face but I am not closing my visor. We are heading for Douglas and I feel like before a big exam. You learned and you feel prepared to pass the exam. But still, the teacher is quite crazy so you never know. Well, we have all the documents we should be OK and pass. But still… “the teacher”…
Douglas, the last U.S. town in our journey. We stop to fill up with gas (bad idea since “on the other side” the gas is cheaper), we buy water, some stuff to eat… hehe, as if we were getting ready to go in the desert. OK, we are ready, where do we go?
For Mexico, make a right turn. Really, that simple? We say good bye to the United States. And say “Hello Mexico!”
We stop at the first customs checkpoint, where a young lady, in a too tight uniform (by my humble opinion) is asking us something in a very crisp but rushed Spanish. Ohhh I guess it is time to see if all those hours of Spanish audio books on Alaska Highway will pay of. “Perdon seniora, no entiendo Espaniol muy bien, puede repetir?”
OK, that’s better. You want to know if we have visas. Oh yeah we have them, from Naco. And why are we here then? Well because they told us that you might help us with a motorcycle permit. OK, I park the bike in the back parking lot, leave Andreea to guard the bike and go inside while praying that when I’ll be back I would still find both the bike and wife. Inside I find 3 offices. At the first one a customs officer is working. The other two are unattended as the two ladies assigned to them are busy watching a movie on a TV. I get in line at the only desk where somebody was doing something and smile. Great, already feels much more like home.
When my turn comes, I am out of luck again. The VIN number is not recognized here neither. “Problem!” Cual problem, no problem por favor! The guy is willing to help but doesn’t know what to do. So he goes for the jefe! The boss comes, has a look over the papers and says “fill up the VIN by hand and let them go”. Once we have the green light from the jefe, it is all downhill. I am out in no time with the permit and free to roam in Mexico!
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Immediately we feel that the World has changed all around us. Houses lively colored but build in a certain disorder, as the architect intended to match the chaos on the streets.
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Anything with a motor here is put to good use, no mater how old. And everything with a motor can carry people. No matter the safety measures.
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The streets belong to everyone
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From the septic Canada and United States, where everything has a place and and order, we are thrown in this big pot of passionate but dangerous living. Parts of this new movie we are in seem familiar from back home, but still, everything seems so new.
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Adam told us that the road signs in Latin America are more or less for decorative purposes. Still, newbes as we are, we try to follow the speed limitation signs. Bad idea. Even dangerous idea as some trucks pass us in a swift and crazy manner. Imagine driving with 25 miles/h in a 25 miles/h zone and big trucks passing inches of you with 55 miles/h. We quickly adapt and follow the rule (and the speed) of the traffic.
Everything is different. After a long time, we travel with all our senses alert! The times when my passenger was sleeping in the back are long gone. Now, everybody with eyes on the road!
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We take a short break for hydration and we notice the huge crickets that are all over the road. Oh, so these were the “things” that kept hitting us while moving.
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God knows why they prefer the asphalt but the were everywhere.
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And a lot of them where dying due to the traffic.
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And where are dead things there are also vultures…
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And these birds are very little respect or fear for humans and for cars. They take of at the very last moment and if one is not careful it might run into them.
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We continue through mountain small villages. Before entering Mexico, a lot of people warned us about the potential dangers of some places especially near the borders.
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We are positive thinking and optimist people. But we do not want to be foolish people so we decided to heed the warnings and stop as little as possible in the border areas. We do however observe very interesting details from the places we pass through.
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Come lunch time and we turn out to be much as the vultures. The hunger wins over the fear and we decide to stop in a small restaurant. A nice old man greats us. OK, seems fine. We are happy!
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We find out pretty fast that our Spanish is not yet sophisticated enough to… order anything else than tacos. The guy tries to explain what he has and since we didn’t understand much he does an amazing thing. He takes us both in the kitchen, and shows what is in the pots on the burner. Ha! Imagine that happening in the U.S. !
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We order some stuff by pointing to different pots and then, while waiting for the food, we figure to go out and take a bottle of water from the motorcycle. When we came, we were the only ones there and we parked just in front of the restaurant. When I went out now I had a shock seeing a big army truck parked just near Gunnar.
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Suddenly all the stories with drugs, drug gangs and the fight against them becomes very fresh in our minds. After we finish eating we leave wishing good luck to the soldiers.
The drugs and the drug cartels who produce, transport and distribute their product are a very real thing for these parts of the world. But the majority of the Mexicans are honest, hard-working and full of life people, who are trying to go on with their lives, navigating through these battles and struggling to keep a sense of normality. We hope to meet only these guys.
On the side of the road we see also a lot of horses. And it seems that here their are still used as a viable means of transportation.
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We salute the other riders, with big smiles!
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Our goal for the day was the small village of Banamichi, Sonora, where Tom was waiting for us. Tom is an American in love with Mexico and he decided to move with his wife here, building a hotel in the mountains. It was hard work but the place looks amazing as you will see later on. Reaching Banamichi is quite easy and the roads are by no means “secondary”. Still, Tom told us that we might have “three or four wet crossings”. Hmm I wonder what those might be?
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Well, why to go through all the trouble of building a bridge when you could just let the water cross over the road? Luckily the monsoon season was over so most of the crossings were dry. But not all of them…
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So we get the “chance” to get our feet wet.
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We reach “Los Arcos” as the evening sets in.
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The stop at Tom’s was exactly what we needed after a very intense first day in Mexico. The place is a oasis of peace and quiet and we liked it so much that we decided to stay one more day.
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I get a haircut, Andreea gets a massage which proves to be a very professional one. She deserves it after 3 months on the motorcycle. We relax in the purest Latin meaning of the word.
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Time goes by fast when you are not doing anything and soon we have to say good bye to Tom and Lynn.
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Tom rides with us for a while to make sure that we are on the right path (in fact I think it was just a pretext to go out there and have some fun on the mountain roads, eh Tom?) Then we shake hands and we say good bye. See you somewhere, someday! Thanks for everything!
We had lots of conflicting thoughts before entering Mexico. Good friends, having the best of intentions and basing their worries on real facts, told us to think really well if we want to go there. And, especially once in Mexico, we totally understand the worries. The struggles between “good and evil” as well as between “evil and evil” are very real. In what measure they might affect a tourist visit and if it is worth the trip, this is to be decided by each and everyone who considers going.
We chose to dare and continue our journey. And we hope to stay safe and enjoy the wonderful things the Latin part of the New World has to offer.
Feliz viaje, dear traveler, where ever you might be!
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Next time we are enjoying remote mountain roads but end up forced to stop unexpectedly. Stay tuned!

Roaming through Sierra Madre mountains: 4-6 September
As after 2 days spent at Tom’s hotel in Banamichi, we were feeling relaxed and somewho more accustomed with the idea that we are in Mexico now, it was time to press on and start exploring. The first major destination was Barranca del Cobre (Copper Canyon) which, ironically, it is said to be bigger than the… “Grand Canyon”. But as that target was quite far away, we were planning to explore and enjoy the Northern part of Mexico in Sonora and Chiuhuahua.
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Not to wide, not to much traveled by other cars and very winding, these rodes prove to be full of surprises. Of the first one we were warned by Tom. “be careful, the road has no bears”
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Haha, no bears on the road. My my, but that is excellent. Of course, a joke made by a very persistent Mexican ( almost all the signs on route 20 were like this) based on the similarity between “SINUOSO” (winding) -> “SIN OSO” (without bear). Still, joking aside, the other part of the warning is very well founded: “extreme caution” was necessary as after almost every corner a new surprise was awaiting. Like turkey vultures flying out from the pavement in the very last minute.
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Or the encounter with a veritable legend of our childhood: The Road Runner!
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The real one might be small but he is as fast as the ones from the cartoons. Andreea just managed to take the above shot before he disappeared in the bushes. We smile in our helmets thinking that maybe we should also expect to see The Coyote setting a trap near by. But we see no one. Literally, we found ourselves surrounded by green and blue and no trace of humans around.
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Strange feeling. The only prove that other humans have been here is the patch of tarmac and it’s yellow lines. But even the road is not in the best of conditions. First we see more and more stones on the drivable area.
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The tarmac seems to fade away, and the road turning into a two track.
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And on the side of the road, we see the marks of time, passing over that which was once alive.
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We stop further away, near a gorge, from where our eyes can roam far away.
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Around us is complete silence. It is hot. The feeling that we are very alone in a desolated place settles in. We are in Mexico, we are on a remote place in the mountains and we have no idea where the road will take us and where the evening will find us. Strangely enough, these thoughts do not trouble us. Rather they just make us very aware and we realize that this journey is really happening. This day is real!
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I turn the key and Gunnar’s engine starts to hum, it’s sound like a redemption. We leave that place, leaving our thoughts behind. I feel Andreea in the back and I am glad that I’m not doing this trip alone. Sharing this with someone is so much better. The curves come one after the other and soon enough, we find the first sign of “civilization” afte a long time. And what a “sign”, a big semi-truck. On this road!!
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I had no idea what was the driving doing with that big thing on such a bad and remote road. But sure enough it was quite hard to pass him. We manage with some help from the truck’s driver and we are “free” again.
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And speaking of help, while back in the U.S. Adam told me that most of the mexican truck drivers are nice enough to let you know when you can pass them. “Oh they do the same in Romania” I tell Adam. “Really, in Romania the drivers signal left when you can pass them?” hmmm that doesn’t sound right. “No, they signal RIGHT when it is safe to pass”. Turn out, that the “system” in Mexico is totally inverted from the one in Europe.
Sure, one might wonder, how could you distinguish a left signal meaning “you can pass me” from a left signal meaning “I will pass something”. Well, you are right, it is not easy and it is confusing. But fear not, the Mexicans have came up with an efficient solution: most of the times, they do not signal when they want to pass. In this way you avoid the above confusion. Hmmm…
We leave behind the truck but we go in some traffic. A traffic of a different kind than the one from big city.
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A sight very similar to what we were used to find on Romanian roads. So we are not very surprised. But on the other hand, we were not at all used to this:
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In the small mountain village there were some games going on and horse racing. So everybody was coming out with what he had best in the… uhmm stables.
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And the ones who were not racing were out for a relaxing ride with their girls.
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We don’t stay too long in that place as we thought to cover some more ground. So, onwards on National Route 16 which connects Hermasillo to Chihuahua, we meet the real Mexican traffic. Lots of trucks crawling with 5 miles per hour uphill. And then… probably trying to recuperate downhill as they were speeding way too much and taking corners using both lanes of the road. That must bee the reason for this kind of signs:
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-H...0/DSC_0428.JPG
For your security keep the right of the road. Yeah cool, I am trying to do that but it would be nice if the trucks would do the same. Otherwise, a pity as the roud would be such a nice ride. Way better scenery and curves than ruta 20 from earlier, and better pavement that allows some speed. But the incoming traffic does not allow much fun and demands great care. Just in a few days we had the opportunity to find out that what was happening on Ruta 16 was just “kid’s play”. Bat that is for another story. For now we make progress as god as possible.
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And we are happy when we turn right out of Ruta 16 and take another mountain road that would get us to San Juanito and then Creel. This one is in very good condition, paved, no rocks and even better, no traffic. So we start to have fun. And then everything changes. I feel that something is wrong in the back so we stop only to discover a flat tire. Hmmm, and this time is in the middle of nowhere. I would better be able to fix this. I drive a little more trying to find at least a resemblance of flat and straight road so I will not be a hazard for the traffic. Take out the flat repair kit and… what I find in the wheel is not too positive news.
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Ohooo that doesn’t look good. I was “hopping” for a nail but instead… a quite big piece of metal from some sort of gear was stuck in our tire. And the hole left behind is more like a knife cut. One patch string is not covering it. I am trying with two of them.
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Patching as good as I can, starting the compressor and watching as the pressure needle is slowly moving to the 20 PSI area. I stop the air compressor and a dreaded “sssshhhh” sounds feels the space. The air is escaping from the tire. This is not good… In the mean time we stop a passing car and we ask the mexican where would be the nearest tire repair shop. Well San Juanito is the closest and it is some 30 miles away. He was just going up the mountain to take a phone call (there is no cell reception where we are) and offers to take Andreea with him, to make some calls and maybe find something. We agree to that and as was trying to repair the tire again, a troubling thought comes to mind: I just let Andreea leave with a mexican stranger, in the middle of nowhere and I didn’t even remembered the car’s license plate. Arghhh one problem is more than enough, I do not need other dark thoughts. I am sure the guy is OK and nothing else bad will happen. And indeed they return and the guy proves to be very nice and helpful. They couldn’t reach anybody in San Juanito, but he offers to put the bike in his truck and drive us to the town. Unfortunately this is not possible as the truck is too small (ah where are the huge American trucks when you need one?:) ) and also we couldn’t possible lift the bike in just 3 people.
So we say thank you to our nice Mexican friend and let him go take his phone calls. I just finished trying a new patch and this times there is no “sssssshhhh” sound. We quickly gather all our things and head for the town. We soon pass our Mexican friend who was on the phone and he waves us for good luck.
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The miles are passing by so slowly and soon, much too soon, I feel again the back is smooshy. The tire is not holding air. We stop again and assess our situation. If I would not be able to fix the tire we will need a car to take us to the next town. We are prepared to stop the very next car that will pass by (as they are not so many anyway) and ask them to take Andreea to go in San Juanito. There she would try to find a ride for the bike and also, stay at a motel over night (as it was getting late) while I will stay with the bike and if no help would come in good time, I would camp on the side of the road. Not a very pleasant thought. In the mean time I have nothing else to do than try again to repair the tire.
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A new try. With lots of hopes and prays we turn on the air compressor and again the needle is slowly crawling to 34 PSI. I stop the compressor and this time there is no “ssssshhhh”. The tire seems to hold. I doulbe check with whatter and there are no bubbles. Full of hopes we start our ride again. One eye on the road and one eye on the odometer which was much too slowly turning mile after mile. 20 miles left, 15 miles left. I stop to check the pressure and it reads 37 PSI. That means there is too little air in the tire to begin with (but I already knew that) but it also means that we are not dropping air. This is good. We continue and finally we reach San Juanito just as the last sun light was fading away for the day. It is too late to find a repair shop now. We just look for a motel with secure parking and internet to settle in before the night comes.
We write an update on advrider and there as well, a lot of friends come with very good advice, list of tire shops in Chihuahua and encouragements. We feel better as we don’t feel alone. Also I talk with some Mexicans who were staying at the same hotel and ask them about good Desponchadas that I could go to in the morning and they are so helpful as well. One of them takes me in his car and drives to the nearest one just to show me the way.
In the morning we split up. I am going to the tire repair shop trying to have a more permanent fix to the hole in the tire. And Andreea stays at the model and tries to find a suitable replacement tire in Chihuahua. And she is in for another excellent experience as when the owner of the model finds out about the problem not only he lets her use the phone with no charge, but he and his sun take turns making the calls themselves speaking in Spanish, helping Andreea communicating with the motorcycle shops.
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In the mean time Cesar, an advrider from Chihuahua is doing the same from his home and also sends us a message that we could stay at him if we come to Chihuahua. Unfortunately it seems there is not even one single tire in our dimensions in Chihuahua. We would have to go there and wait for one to come.
In the mean time I manage to have a guy applying a patch from the interior of the tire. And he said to me that I could go on riding like this. Nevertheless, I feel a little bit uneasy as we do have a lot of weight on the bike.
I return at the model and talk with Andreea about what we should do next. Despite all the troubles in the last 24 hours we had in fact every reason to be optimistic and grateful. Yes we were stranded on some remote road in the mountains but then… the Mexican driver who stopped and tried to help, being able to reach San Juanito, all the friends who responded online, Cesar from Chihuahua who was so nice to offer his home to us, the Mexican workers who took me with their car and showed me where the tire repair shop was, the motel owners helping Andreea with the phone calls, all of these were such clear examples of human goodness, and these is the feeling that we want and we chose to take away from this experience. Mexico proved to be harder then expected in our first days here. But we like it and we hope to be able to go on.
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Next time we find out how the story of the flat tire will end and we meet a crazy guy in a crazy place. Stay tuned!
The map of the route covered by this story:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-O....14%2520PM.jpg

80 kilometers. That’s all we had to go to get to Creel the day before when we had the flat tire. We managed to ride with my patch work for 50 km to San Juanito. Now that the tire was patched “professionally” on the inside we were at the crossroads and didn’t know which way to go from here. 1. We go 200 km NE to Chihuahua where we called but couldn’t manage to get the tire we need. 2. We continue our planned route with the patched tire and reach Durango at one point, also a big city, 500 km South from here.
We choose the second option. If the patch would last 200 km, it would last also 500 and going South we had more chances to find a new tire. And this way we get also to see Barranca del Cobre. We look once more at the sky and the clouds. The snickers were quietly watching us. We did the right thing.
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-C...0/DSC_0498.JPGSo we leave San Juanito and…. 30 kilometres later we are in Creel.
Creel is a “Pueblo Magico” which means that it has been selected by the Mexican government to promote traditional values and tourism.
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There are a lot of Indians in the village.
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And the stores are ready to offer their customers the latest in fashion.
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But as you get away from the 2 or 3 “main” streets you find the other side of the place: dust, trash and people who love to party…. no matter where.
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There is a mix of old and new, of Mexicans and Indians, of “almost clean” and “not so clean”, narrow streets, shops with everything you can think of, everything is colored.
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We are looking for a place to stay, trying to find our way through all this. But first we find a…. Canadian named Blake. He is on his way to Argentina also. Also by motorcycle, a Kawasaki KLR650. And he just got to Creel and was looking for a place to stay. We join forces to find the cheapest place. Blake is negotiating with the owner of a “villa” trying to find a safe place for our motorcycles. We want to congratulate him for his Spanish when he confesses he was born in Guatemala and Spanish is his main language. That explains it!
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We park our bikes under some arches and we go together to explore the village.
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We see the statue of Christ up on a hill, silently watching over the community and decide to get closer.
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We are looking at Him in complete silence. A year ago all this wasn’t even a thought. Now we are here watching the white clouds waltzing their way. I sometimes think that it’s a wonder that we are here. I wonder what will be next?
Blake turns his gaze towards the village.
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This guy likes to climb. He did it before on really tall structures. He is a very nice guy and we get along well. We decide to go see the canyon together tomorrow. The short ride without luggage to the park’s entrance is most enjoyable. Blake is also having fun.
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We get to the entrance and we are surprised to see that there is no one there, no other tourists, just us. A small pay booth and a guard giving us the entrance ticket that is around 2 dollars. It’s ironic but we think it’s a lot. It’s not fair to think this way, we remembered how much was the entrance at the Grand Canyon.
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As compared to US where the attraction points are well highlighted here there are very few signs. And the map is only drawn on a wall. That’s all.
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As we were enjoying the views we passed by the road that was supposed to take us to the view point. We turn around and we are amazed. The Grand Canyon is… small!
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Grand Canyon might be more imposing because it’s red and there is no vegetation. But standing on the rim of the Copper Canyon…. everything else seems insignificant.
You pass at your own risk and there is nobody stopping you.
There is even a cable cart taking you to an edge of the canyon. Blake’s Spanish proves helpful again as he negotiates a free ride with the owner of the cable cart.
We can see the houses of Tarahumara Indians hanging from the cliffs. se vad casele indienilur tarahumara, agatate de stanci.
We get on the edge and admire the views. Some army guys are enjoying the views also. We realized that we got used to seeing army men in different places in Mexico. They went with the same cable cart as we did but I didn’t even noticed them.
We are somehow in the heart of the canyon surrounded by steep edges.
An Indian young woman sells hand made baskets in a “corner”.
I ask permission to take a photo and surprisingly she agrees.
This picture demonstrates that there are people meant to be in certain places. Or places meant for certain people.
We will find our place someday. Or the place will find us. Until then, the road is ours!
The route map for this post:

View Larger Map
Next time we venture in our first large city in Mexico. Then we ride to the ocean on a very dangerous road . Stay tuned!

Of people, cars and cities: 8-10 Octomber
We say “goodbye” to Blake after 2 days spent near Barranca del Cobre. He wanted to go to the bottom of the canyon and visit one of the Tarahumara Indian villages down there and we had to move on. The plan was to reach the ocean, the Pacific Ocean. But we were still in the mountains so we still had a ling way to go. So for now we are enjoying the mountain views on one of the routes recommended by Cesar.
The views remind us of Utah and Arizona. But things are different. People here don’t always go by car. Some of them are walking great distances.
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And if they do use a car, they don’t really obey the maximum number of passengers allowed by design…
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But what would be life with just work and no fun? Let’s not forget to relax. Mexicans know how to party. Road signs showing the directions for certain destinations may not be that present where you would need them but we found a sign for “fiesta”. Should we take a left?
The map of trip covered by this post:

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Next time we are riding on a crazy road and we are crossing a line. Stay tuned!

Crossing the line: October 11

I find a Suzuki moto shop the next day. Talk to the owner and manage to negotiate for the new tire for the old one and some extra money. We are now ready for some kilometers. From Durango we want to go to the ocean, at Mazatlan. There are not so many kilometers but we have to cross the mountains through a place called “Espinazo del diablo”. We were told it’s one of the most spectacular but also dangerous roads in the world. We start in the morning, prepared for a long day. Sun rise guiding our way on the curves.
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We have breakfast in a small kitchen by the side of the road. I only wanted to warm up. Our limbs were kind of frozen.
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The federal government is building a new road from Durango to Mazatlan, a payed shorter highway that will go straight through the mountains, with lots of bridges and tunnels. It is not ready yet. So far everyone has to use the old road although at times they go in parallel. The funny thing is that the new “highway” it’s only a two-lane road.
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Instead of having one road with 4 lanes where you can easily pass the slower vehicles, you get 2 roads, a paid one, partially finished and a “libre” one where sometimes you get this:
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It’s really really hard to pass other cars. And sometimes you can also have surprises, like trucks breaking down in the middle of the curve, uphill.
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The road is spectacular. Hanging from the cliffs, going up to 2400 meters and the views are impressive.
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But it’s also very dangerous. It happened not only once that I had to hit on the breaks hard to barely avoid the trucks that were entirely on our lane.
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There is no picture that can express what we felt when we saw a few tones truck coming our way, in our lane, speeding and having nowhere to pull over on right side. I got used to hitting the breaks before every left curve, just in case, without seeing if there is something coming from behind the cliff but always expecting to see a truck. And if there was a truck , there was a good chance it wasn’t on his lane.
And so the ride was a constant fun. If there was no truck, there could still be animals. A cute veal for instance….
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It probably felt threatened and trapped between the pavement and the cliff therefore decided in the last second to run on the other side of the road.
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Therefore, low speed, eyes wide open and increased attention. And even so…. you can still get extra surprises. Parts of the road were under construction and traffic from both sides was using one lane. There were floggers directing the traffic. We got to one of those working areas and we weren’t stopped by any flagger. So we went on slowly.
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As we advanced we saw cars coming from the other direction on the same lane, the only lane!! Obviously either us or them were supposed to be stopped by the flaggers but they somehow misscomunicate. In this kind of situation you follow the “big guy goes first” rule. So we had to pull over fast on the lane under construction and sit this one out.
You cannot get bored on this road. Yes, it’a a spectacular road but I wouldn’t do it again unless I really had to. Therefore we are very happy when we begin our descent to the Pacific Ocean. Once we are on the West side of the mountains the climate changes completely. We are in tropical climate for the first time.
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Lush forests, big colored butterflies and…. damp. Very damp. We get wet instantly.
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The side of the road is very interesting, we see all sort of flowers hanging from the trees. We hear crickets and birds from behind the green canopy.
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We didn’t do our research before leaving for Mazatlan so we didn’t realize that we were to cross a very important line. We reached the tropics. Actually just one: Tropic of Cancer!
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Right there, in the heart of the forest, by the small sign “Tropico de Cancer” I realized how far away from home we are. A thought that came out of nowhere. I’ve never been so far South before on Planet Earth. We stop. Romanian traditional costumes also reached the tropics.
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I didn’t realize how much change a simple mountain crossing would bring. We don’t really care about traffic anymore, we are busy looking around and admiring. We follow a car that was carrying fruits (what else?) and here we are in Mazatlan.
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We get lost in the city and end up in a plaza where people were staying in a huge line. We didn’t find out what it was for but my attemp to mengle with Gunnar between the 125 and 180 cc motorcycles failed completely.
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We find a place to regroup under palm trees with cold lemonade. Only now we realize how tiring the road was. We left early in the morning, rode the crazy road with infamous name and now we couldn’t find enough energy to look for accommodation. I stall a little bit longer in the shadows.
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We search for hotels on the internet but don’t find anything cheap. Mazatlan is a touristic place, where lots of Americans spend their vacation. That’s a good thing for the local businesses but not so good for two travellers coming a long way and going far away, looking for cheaper places to stay. I finally realize there is a solution. Mazatlan is a pretty large resort so there is a big change to find here one of the hotels from ICH or Hilton chain. If there is one, then it’s probably very expensive. But on the other hand I used to work for more than one year away from home. And back in the corporate days those hotels were my hone away from home. I still have some fidelity points left from that period. Yes, it’s been a long and complicated day, so let’s spoil ourselves. We find Crowne Plaza hotel. It’s not in the city but it’s right on the beach. Excellent! We reboot instantly thinking that we could soon be on the beach. We book a room using fidelity points and head there. Geting on the boulevard by the beach we end up in the middle of the party.
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Many pick-ups, driving slowly with high volume speakers, balloons and people dancing and cheering. We don’t understand what they are celebrating and what is going on. But, does it matter? We join them, it’s fiesta time, let’s party!
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We don’t usually drink Coca-Cola…. but we apreciate the… refreshing… presentation! Same thing with the TelCel truck!
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Disclaimer: the pictures above are taken by the wife. I am completely innocent, paying attention to the… traffic only! Ahem…
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We pass the party parade and reach our destination. This long day started at 1900 meters on a mountain plateau, continued up to 2400 meters, finding our way through insanely driven trucks, animals jumping in front of us, dust, construction works, then we changed the climate completely passing into the tropical zone and ended up on a beach by the Pacific Ocean. What a day!
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Route map of this post:Harta traseului din aceast episod:
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Next time we are heading to Mexico City. This city’s population is bigger than the whole Romania. Stay tunned!

Hello Im kevin from montevideo uruguay me and my father we travelled all across southamerica many times also we have a workshop I if want to visit there is no problem also we are offering bike storage in uruguay customs give you one year to leave the bike anything contact at lemes54@hotmail.com ride safely

Hey kevin, thank you for posting! In fact we might go into Uruguay when we will go Norgh from Argentinga. So let's keep in touch, I will write you a PM once getting close the S.A.

Right now we are in Guatemala and managed to find some quite time and some stable internet for the next post. Hope you will enjoy it.

Mexico City and beyond: 12 – 17 of October
When you are traveling for such a long time with a limited budget, like we are, you come to appreciate the simple things: having clean sheets on the bed (oh… having a bed is also a good start), having hot(ish) water and so on. The hotel where we were staying for 2 nights, thanks to the fidelity points, was way above our basic needs, being probably a destination for more luxuriant vacations. For example it has a very nice jacuzzi, set up just in front of the window, with a nice view to the ocean. Being the travelers that we are… we put the thing to some good, albeit rather questionable, use…
I know, probably the designers of the place had in mind a rather more romantic use of the jacuzzi involving soft music, bubble bath and some sipped champagne while viewing the sunset. But hey, we had to adapt to a more stringent reality of acute lack of clean t-shirts…
After 2 days spent there, we felt it was time to move on. While most of the guys who are doing a similar trip with us chose to go by the coast from there on, we decided to go inland in order to avoid the Acapulco area and also because we had an invitation in Mexico City. So we turn towards Guadalajara and we see on the side of the road a lot of places where you could buy “camarones” (shrimp)
A little further away we also see how the camarones are being dried. Dumped from a big truck on a thin fabric, directly on the side of the road.
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We are getting close to Guadalajara, a big city and that it shows. On the road panels we see the sign of “western capitalism” right up there, side by side with directions and distances to different cities.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-l.../s640/uli4.JPG Photo credit to Alejandra and Uli

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-8.../s640/uli1.JPG Photo credit to Alejandra and Uli

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-7.../s640/uli2.JPG Photo courtesy of Alejandra and Uli


View Larger Map
Next time we are, literally, in the jungle. And we find out how much Andreea likes the monkeys. Stay tuned!

High in the mountains and back to the ocean: October 18
I know I promised you a story about jungle and monkeys but to get there we have to make another stop at the ocean. We leave Oaxaca dreaming about the beaches while others go to school dreaming about… vacation. School is almost ending here, soon the kids will be on…. summer vacation.
We crossed many military checkpoints since we travel in Mexico. Most of the time they didn’t stop us and once the soldiers were more curious about my motorcycle’s power than our documents or luggage. We see a military checkpoint and this time we can feel it that we are in an area with more foreigners. There is a sign explaining in English what these checkpoints are all about.
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Next we make to the jungle and closer to Guatemala border!ata viitoare reusim sa ajungem in jungla si ne apropiem de granita cu Guatemala!

Thanks for sharing your trip with us! Really enjoying your tale. Do you have a blog? The links that seem to indicate that you do, don't go to a website. Travel safely!

Hi Roger!

Yeah, we have a blog as well:
Micadu International
or on FB: www.facebook.com/micadu.ro

Hope you will enjoy it!

Nice pictures. Please, share a lot more during your trip. I am sure a lot of people on the HUBB are just as much interested in your travel stories as I am.

Great fotos. Thanks for sharing!

Ride on, enjoy and keep on posting!!!

:clap::mchappy::thumbup1:

Between the past and the present: 19-22 October
We are still far away from the border but we feel we are getting closer. The easiest (fastest) way would have been to continue on the Pacific coast to Guatemala. As we weren’t in a hurry we decided to head north first, entering the old Mayan empire territory.
We still have to ride for a while to get there. On some paved roads…
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…and on others less paved
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And the only constant is the temperature…. a high temperature. No wonder everyone is trying to cool off the best they can. And at noon, it is siesta time…
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We manage to refrain ourselves from turning right on one of those small roads that seem to lead on a deserted beach. Maybe we should have done it, we weren’t in a hurry. We get on top of a hill and we can see in the distance endless beaches tucked in between thick vegetation and the blue waters of the ocean.
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We admire the ocean one last time (in Mexico) and head to the green mountains. We are developing a new traveling rhythm but we still have to learn how to properly relax. This time we avoided the beaches because we had no cash and decided to look for an ATM first. Ah, what a “pragmatic” excuse. We have no time to regret the beaches left behind though as we get to enjoy the beauty ahead.
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And the road wants to keep up with the scenery as well. Good pavement, well marked, going up in the mountains. Sometimes having a tall vegetation green wall on both sides and sometimes steep cliffs on one side.
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We are then reminded that human footprint on the lands is not always a positive one.
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Garbage has a strong impact in these places where nature has so much to offer. But who is to blame? People from here who produce trash and throw it in the nature or maybe the companies that commercially invaded their lives, selling them things they didn’t need, without offering them an efficient method to get rid of the trash? It’s an endless debate but a real problem that should be looked into from both sides.
And ironic enough, just a few meters down the road, we see the government solution for the situation: “Let’s scare them with big fines”!
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So if you throw away trash you get fined, a 90 minimum salaries fee. That’s great, but I seriously doubt that this is really enforced or that it could be enforced for that matter (who would have here the actual money to pay such a fine?) And if they are not affected by it, they don’t really care about it.
These people live a harsh life, from another time, somehow forgotten by the new “always on the run” society living in the “civilized” cities. So it might be easy to judge but it might be rush and even useless.
There are no supermarkets here. There are no malls or other useful places where you can buy the “strict necessities” in life. But you can buy boiled or fried corn, right from the side of the road.
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And how about walking all day long carrying with your head a load sometimes equal with your own weight? Would you still be willing to go to the next trash bin to throw our garbage?
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Oh… and I forgot to mention, the nearest trash bin is… uhmm probably miles away!
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We reach the village, more than 2600 meters altitude and we have a look around.
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There are no big commercial establishments but this doesn’t mean that there is no capitalist life of unstoppable consumerism. Of course this Mayan descendants need Coca Cola on a daily basis as well as many other plastic wrapped products. Plastic that ends up on the streets where ironically puddles mirror the beautiful traditional costumes worn by girls and ladies.
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And even here, in the isolated village, one can connect to the wonders of internet. We wouldn’t want a day to pass without Facebook (and yes, that’s self irony).
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But people adapt to always changing reality, combining -sometimes in a pleasant, sometimes in a weird manner- the traditional past with present of jeans and printed T-shirts.
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Most of the people wave back as we wave them. But some are not shy to show their despise towards (what they think) we represent. If only it would be just that -a calculated and conscious response- and not just a lack of good education and lots of stupidity…
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But who knows? We continue onwards through people animals and corn fields.
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Bare feet on a roll of barbwire. When us, the grownups, forget, children can remind us, even just symbolically, that we can and we should overcome artificial barriers. We don’t know who this girl is but we will take this image with us…
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The last place in Mexico we wanted to stop for a while was Palenque, an old Mayan city, now an archaeological site that can be visited. The narrow road winds its way restlessly, descending from the mountains and getting deeper and deeper into the jungle. Vegetation changes again.
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And as we were riding and enjoying the views we were forced to sudden stop. In front of us a group of people was blocking the road. Some people were skillfully manipulating 2 wooden boards with nails that they were putting in the middle of the street. You had to stop, and then other gentlemen were approaching you and telling things and asking for money. I evaluate the situation and realize that the good thing is we are not alone on the road. There is a full bus in front of us, also stopped. And on the other side two cars are greeted the same way.
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Still…. I don’t feel at ease. This is not right… Andreea becomes all quiet in the back. One of the “gentlemen” approaches us. He is holding a jar and asking for money. He is speaking pretty fast so I don’t really understand what he is asking money for. But I decide I don’t want to give him anything and I tell him that in Romanian. He doesn’t hear neither Spanish nor English so he gets confused but repeats his request one more time but less convinced. I repeat in Romanian that I don’t understand what he is saying, I am from Romania, I don’t know Spanish nor English and I don’t want to give him any money. Of course the man only hears some nonsense words and decides we are good to go. He leaves puzzled. The bus in front is allowed to pass and I try to take this opportunity when there is no board with nails on the road to cross also. It’s not working. The wooden board is pushed back on the road and I have to break fast. The guy manipulating the board seems starts to talk with your guy and luckily they decide that we are nice guys and we should be allowed to pass. We speed up and few meters away everything seems to go back to normal.
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We are quiet, thinking about what happened. Definitely these people weren’t the “bad guys” from Mexico we were warned about. They were probably some people in the village in big trouble and needing some help. The wooden board with nails was just a brutal way of convincing the people always in a hurry to stop and listen to their problems. And help them with some money, of course. Maybe we got scared and we weren’t supposed to. These kind of actions are not rare in Mexico. Something similar happened to us in Oaxaca. Just that there were no nails on the road over there, just a human shield. The feeling of insecurity stays with us for a while. I guess you cannot feel otherwise when you are stopped by men with macetas, using boards with nails. A brand new VW Golf 5 driven by the man in a suit passed us. For sure he was stopped just like us. Now he was talking on the phone, relaxed. Nothing out of ordinary for him. What a difference. I keep thinking what would have been the reaction if something like this would have happened in Europe. Call the police, hand out fines, tv news crew, everything. Here, just another day. It was OK that we weren’t alone. We thank God we are alive and continue our journey to Palenque. We avoid the city and find a place to sleep in the jungle, in a bungalow, close to the Mayan ruins. There is an unbelievable noise outside, there are lots of birds and animals hidden in the dense vegetation. Like in a movies I was watching as a kid.
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I park the motorcycle in the howling of the monkeys and call an end to a too long day.
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We go to bed after Andreea gets rid of a big spider hanging above our bed. Hmmm I thought we are sleeping in a bungalow and not in a hammock so that we could avoid such “creatures”. Never mind, all is good! The sleep comes with the the rain drops and a question: Will we exit Mexico tomorrow?
The map for this post:
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Next time we try to exit Mexico and we find out that it is not that easy. Stay tuned!

Great pics :clap::clap::clap:, looking forward to see the ones from Guatemala .

Ride safe ,

Julio

@GuateRider: hey Julio, I hear you are enjoying Mexico too! Have safe rides! We are really getting lazy with our progress. We just exited Guatemala yesterday... after 3 weeks spent there. Great times! Soon we will have to speed up for the boat.

But... here it is the story about how we entered Guatemala :)
In Guatemala: October 22-23

This is it! After more than 3 weeks in Mexico and with the initial moto insurance running out 3 days ago, we felt that it was time to hit the road so we wake up in Palenque with the clear target: Guatemala!
From Palenque to Guatemala it is not very far. You need to reach a small town called Tenosique and then onwards to El Ceibo a relatively new border crossing that is not very well known nor it is very used.
We found out about it from Alex si Dagmar, our friends from Mexico City. But the funny thing was that when trying to find more details about it while on the road we were getting very diverse answers. First of all it does not exist on our Mexico GPS map or Paper Map. Also Google Maps doesn’t know it. And when we were asking people around Palenque we were getting answers ranging from “There is no road that goes there, only a boat crossing” to “there is a road but it is in a very bad condition, you have to cross a river and then you are on the Guatemalan side. Passing over the mere existence of the place (of which we knew from Alex and Dagmar but we just could not pin point it’s location) we had another problem: when entering Mexico with a foreign vehicle you have to make a bank deposit (400 dollars in our case) that you get back when you exit your vehicle from Mexico. There is a separate entity dealing with this procedure called Banjercito. Apparently not all the border crossings have a Banjercito office so you cannot exit everywhere. Or you can do exit wherever you want and make a 400 dollars donation (your deposit) to the Mexican government. We learn from HUBB and AdvRider that there is a Banjercito in El Ceibo but it is closed on Monday. And today is…. Monday, exactly! http://micadu.ro/en/wp-includes/imag...icon_smile.gif The post was from 2010 so maybe things have changed until now.
We decide to go to border and see if we get into Guatemala or not. We meet a few police and army checkpoints along the way. We ask about the Banjercito and they all confirm that there is one and it’s open. Let’s go then, maybe we can cross. Guatemala feels so close!
At one of the Mexican checkpoints we see the wooden board with nails again that brings us bad memories. So this “tool” is used by the army also, in emergency cases. Luckily it was just sitting there, on the side of the road.
The isolated and less known border crossing is almost deserted. We park in front of the frontier building and we are the only ones there. A man approaches us and tells us where to go. Ah, that’s good, it’s means we can cross today. We start preparing our documents when another man shows up and tells the first one: “Hombre, they cannot cross today, the Banjercito is closed”. Ah, we were so close! We take a sneak peak of Guatemala and promise to come back tomorrow. For now, Mexico, here we come! Again!
We go back 50 kilometers to Tenosique. At least the road is nice. Very nice.
After a few unsuccessful trials we find a hotel. It’s clean, it has internet and we have time to write another post for Micadu (probably one about Northern Mexico) and we wait for Tuesday to come….
Next day we go back to the border and everything goes well. Banjercito is open, we take care of the formalities for the motorcycle and then we get our exit stamps for Mexico on the passports. We are in “no man’s land” and head towards Guatemala.
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On the other side we park the motorcycle in front of the Guatemalan frontier building. We are the only foreigners there. Only locals seem to know about this border crossing. And because the border is isolated there is no commercial traffic. Perfect, no trucks! We hope to have an easy crossing. And since we are in another country, we take down the little Mexican flag that we received from Tom in Banamici. Two border guys notice what we are doing and ask us what’s with the flag. We tell them that we carry the Romanian flag and the flag of country we are passing through, if we have it. In Mexico we had this small one. Now we have to find one with Guatemala. The border guy smiles to us, he has an idea. He tells something really fast to his colleague and comes back with a Guatemalan flag as big as our panier. He even has scotch tape, so the two men immediately start working on our motorcycle.
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Andreea stays with the moto as I try to figure out the bureaucratic flow. First I need some stamps on our passports so we can be allowed in Guatemala. Meanwhile, at the motorcycle….
Then I have to go to another building and start the procedure for Gunnar’s temporary import in Guatemala.
Meanwhile, back at the motorcycle….
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-x...0/DSC_0402.JPG
To finish the formalities I have to make some copies of the documents that they just issued. There is no copy machine at the border so I have to take a tuc-tuc (madly driven by a child) and go look for a copy machine in the nearby village.
Meanwhile, at the motorcycle…
I come back from the village with the copies and after I get some more stamps I have to go to a bank and pay some tax. You cannot pay with the credit card at the bank and I don’t have too many pesos left so it’s time to start looking for the dollars I kept well hidden “just in case”.
Meanwhile, at the motorcycle…
Basically, whenever I was going out of a building and running to the other one I was taking a look at Gunnar and saw that something else was going on there. But everything was OK and they were all respectful and nice with Andreea who got a cold drink and was invited to rest in the shadows. Meanwhile I was running around with documents from one office to the other. Oh well, everyone is having fun, their own way.
One hour and something later we are ready! I was reading all sort of unpleasant stories about border crossings in Central America. For us crossing into Guatemala was a real pleasure. Everyone was friendly and, being such a small border crossing, we ended up knowing everyone and everyone knew who we were and where we were going. We shake hands with the border men and they wish us safe travels in Guatemala. This is is! We are leaving!
We are in a less populated area. And full of contrasts. Normally we were supposed to be in a jungle, and the places where nature was on her own were luxuriant green.
But other places the jungle was just a memory:
Massive deforestations. Here you cannot say “you cannot see the forest from the trees”. No matter how hard we tried to imagine things were not how they were supposed to be. And we were to find out the next day about an old practice, thousands of years old. One that was probably the main cause for the decline of a civilization.
But before meeting the Mayan civilization from thousands of years ago we see the marks of a more recent one, from 2012.
A sad and strong contrast with the clean nature surrounding us.
We feel like we saw this before. We feel like this picture of trash thrown away all over the place is uselessly repeating. We promised ourselves before leaving that we will remember the world as it is. I don’t claim to be a photo-journalist but still I cannot only show the “beautiful” pictures, the ones that look good in the magazine. The New World is fascinating in all its forms.
We see the first settlements in Guatemala. We are in an area that was strongly affected by the Civil War that lasted over 30 years and ended not so long ago, in 1996. There are modest villages with barely no infrastructure, except the main road that passes them by.
Everything is closer to the ground. The ground that seems to be the main source for survival, ironically unsustainably used but many times strictly necessary on short term.
We pass the few villages we meet along the way and get closer to the place where we want to stop for the night. Lake Peten, in Northern part of Guatemala is famous for being one of the cores of Mayan civilization, the city of Tikal being probably one of the greatest ever built by the Mayans.We stop on Flores Island, a place that is mainly touristic. What a difference between the villages we just passed and this tourism oriented place.You can tell where you are from the marks left by the big commercial chains.
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-T...0/DSC_0485.JPG
We barely find a hotel not made for foreign tourists (without North American price levels and not especting dollars instead of quetzals- nation currency of Guatemala). There is big bustle and the tuc-tucs are flying around carrying tourists and locals.
We manage to find a quiet place, park the motorcycle inside the hotel (again) and try to get used to the new location.
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-u...0/DSC_0194.JPG
Today was a special day. The first day in a new country is a little bit weird, you are in between two different worlds, still trying to adjust to the new “rules”.
We enjoy the sunset over Lake Peten and our thoughts fly back to the last weeks.
Mexico was supposed to be just a short chapter of our journey. A gate to Central America, a place that many people avoid and even more fear, a place we had to cross. It turned out to be more than this and we would love to go back. And now Guatemala! A country we barely new anything about before coming here. Over the lake, hidden in the dense jungle, there is Tikal, the old Mayan city full of mysteries and answers in the same time, echoing the life of an empire that flourished thousands of years ago, with scientific and technological performances hard to explain for those times and that suddenly disappeared without a clear cause.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-q...0/DSC_0032.JPGWondering what we will see tomorrow? Stay tuned!
The road we took is not on Google Maps so the map for this post is shown on Google totally wrong. The route was Palenque-Tenosique-Flores, without the Southern detour.

View Larger Map

Thanks for posting details on your crossing at El Ceibo. We've been getting lots of questions about it lately. I'll pass along your post to others, very helpful!

If you make it further south, stop in Antigua, Guatemala (definitely a popular spot to relax a few days) and visit us in Moto Cafe. Good to share some stories with fellow motorcyclists, join us for a ride, or just have a beer!

Always great to meet other riders.

Moto Cafe
6a Calle Oriente #14
Antigua, Guatemala
14°33'19.50"N
90°43'52.43"W

Safe travels!

Chris

Hi Chris!

I've posted a little bit more details about El Ceibo crossing here:
http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...7-2#post397756

Hopefully it will be of some use to others that want to take that crossing. We can highly recommend it!

We would have loved to meet in Antigua, but sadly we already passed it. We are now in El Salvador, but the postings in the Ride Tale are way behind as writing is done only when we have internet and we can easily distracted by things like riding, nice beaches, surfing and other very "bad things" :D

No worries, safe travels and keep up the adventures! Thanks for passing along the link.

Tikal: 24th of October
With the head on the window, I try to get some sleep. That is not going to well for me as the small bus is bouncing on the bumpy road. It is 5 AM and it is way to early for me.
But everybody does it. There are tens of hotels and hostels in Flores during season all of them full with tourists. And all of them go to visit Tikal. It is after all one of the biggest Mayan sites discovered and we thought we might as well “play tourist” for one day as well. So… here we are, in the small buss, with other 6 foreigners and a guide, on our way to an old Mayan city.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-H...0/DSC_0017.JPG
Now Tikal is a National Park in Guatemala. But it used to be a flourishing Mayan city, an epicenter of their civilization. At it’s peak, it is estimated that it had a population of over 100000 people living on a radius of more than 7 miles. Now the place is home of just a few archeologists and other researchers. Fortunately they do not wake up that early so the paths in the jungle are still silent.
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-U...0/DSC_0155.JPG
I haven’t seen the pyramids in Egypt. The Mayan ones appear to be generally smaller and they are solid, there are no inner chambers
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-I...0/DSC_0013.JPG
And if the ones in Egypt are known to be tombs for the Pharaohs, the ones here served different purposes, they were ment to help men be closer to divinity by performing different religious ceremonies. The interesting thing is that while the Egyptians knew the concept of the wheel the Mayans did not. They knew how to make “round” things from stone (their altars are like this) but they did not used the wheel as a method of transport stuff. Then how did they managed with these huge blocks of stones? There are many theories (some of them involving Extra-terrestrial beings) but maybe a simple, albeit gloomy answer is much more “down to earth”: slaves. Many many slaves.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-q...0/DSC_0032.JPG
From our guide, Gonzales, we find out a lot of interesting details about the life back then. He speaks good English and he is not avoiding more sensible topics. Maybe now one can marvel at the architecture and ingenuity but the truth remains that on a lot of these temples there were human sacrifices. We can only imagine the priest climbing the stairs followed by the lucky person who was climbing them for the last time in his life.
The gloomy sky and the musky jungle add to the atmosphere that surrounds us. Beating hearts, taken from living bodies, bloody offerings to feared gods.

If you're heading south from Tikal towards Rio Dulce, a really cool little detour is to check out Las Conchas - waterfalls, caves, hikes, eco-lodge. My friend has a place there, here's his website to get an idea:

Oasis Chiyu

If you go, tell Felipe that Moto Chris from Antigua sent you and he'll treat you well. One of my favorite spots in Guatemala. A few teaser pics:

https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.n...24163687_n.jpg

https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.n...28110098_n.jpg

https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.n...96523922_n.jpg

a great trip
 

How long are you travelling for? Great intersting trip so far, take care, and much luck with the rest of your travelling.

Hey Chris, unfortunately we missed the waterfalls. But they look really nice. Well maybe next time (because I really hope this will not be our last time in Central America! these countries are so nice!)

Allchin: we've started on 10th of July from Montreal. We can hardly believe that it has been more than 4 months now... It is a dream. A very real one.

A lot of the first stories are on our blog (Part I and Part II) as we've started to post here on HUBB only after we entered Mexico (thinking that for the majority of people here, North America is like the back yard so the stories wouldn't be so interesting...)

The other Guatemala: 26-28 Octomber
Flores got us puzzled. Nature and its proximity to the impressive Mayan ruins made it a wonderful place but it’s hard to relax when you are welcomed and treated in the most touristy possible way. We could give many examples, unfortunately, but there is no use to mention them here. It’s enough to say that you need some time to get used to the fact that to many of the people there you are just a walking dollar. And once you realize this you can either get annoyed and start looking for “justice” that might be really hard to find anyway or enjoy the most you can under the given circumstances. I admit that I had a lot of “fun” all the time when at the same neighbourhood store and the same vendor, products had totally different price every time I stopped by. It’s a shame I couldn’t film the dialogues we had every time. The good part is that if you don’t get angry and are always relaxed when approaching them about it, the local “slicks” get pretty confused. It’s a shame that the location is so beautiful, a coquette island on an of lake that mirrors the jungle and sunsets…
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-H...0/DSC_0197.JPG
And still, Guatemala cannot be only this. There must be something more beyond the “touristy places”. We feel we have to leave Flores and discover the Other Guatemala, one that gives us back a name and identity different than Benjamin Franklin. Therefore we plot a route that will take us South of the country, towards Course de Guatemala, Antigua and Lake Atitlan. Gunnar barely starts rolling and I sense us feeling better. After 3 days of sitting in one place, we missed being back in the saddle. On the side of the road the people are out working. Some cut the grass with their machetes…
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-2...0/DSC_0206.JPG
… some do their laundry.
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-4...0/DSC_0318.JPG
We reach Sayakche, where we have to take a “ferry” to cross the river. I think this is our second river crossing on this trip, after more the 30.000 km and 4 months into the trip
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-5...0/DSC_0223.JPG
Luckily we get a spot on the first one, next to other local motorcycles. We have a few moments to relax and watch the way people live on both sides of the river.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-I...0/DSC_0231.JPG
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-e...0/DSC_0232.JPG
It’s also interesting where they put the engines of our “ferry”: they are in 4 barrels strapped on the corners of the ferry. This way the engine can spin freely 180 degrees. Simple and ingenous.
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-T...0/DSC_0247.JPG
On the other side we are greeted by the mountains and a lot of green. What a beautiful day!
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Guatemala is called “The country of eternal spring” and it’s not hard to figure out why. Everything around us is bright green! We notice something else: there are very few cars on this road, one of the main ones in Guatemala. And the few cars we meet are functional ones. Trucks and buses. No small vehicles. Here’s an example, “Rapido del Norte” speeding in the opposite direction.
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We pass small cities and they are all the same: noisy, agitated and full of life. People going from one place to another.
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You can find and you can buy everything on the side of the road. I feel like I landed in an oriental bazar.
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Everything calms down once we are out of the small cities. We meet fewer people, travellung by bus or by… foot.
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People, especially women, wear their traditional clothes. And they do it every day not just during the holidays. Statistics say that more than 40% of the population of Guatemala is Mayan, living in the hills and mountainous area and belonging to more tribes (over 15), each having their own dialect, costumes and traditions. A fascinating world. And somehow it doesn’t feel weird to see the beautiful girls carrying things on their heads, the way they do it for hundreds of years.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-Y...0/DSC_0282.JPG
We stop on the side of the road to buy some oranges and we don’t feel the “mercantile pressure” anymore. Things seem to be normal here. We get our oranges that we pay with a few coins (probably the price for locals not for foreigners) and we get smiles also. It hard to tell though what’s behind those smiles. People here have been through a terrible civil war that ended not long ago. The war started in 1960 and ended in 1996 with a peace armistice that many considered a wonder. All this horrible war took place in these mountains that now seem so serene.
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-J...0/DSC_0436.JPG
One of the reasons it started was due to big differences between the richness of the elite and the poor majority of the population, forced to work the lands that were no longer theirs but owned by the big corporations from other countries. The fight was tough and many innocent civilians were involved. Many of them are still trying to rebuild their life.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-1...0/DSC_0315.JPG
Just recently more information was reveled on the genocide committed by the government army troops (apparently more than 200 000 Mayans and peasants were killed) and on the involvement of foreign agencies (US) that were defending the interests of the corporations owning profitable businesses in Guatemala. For example, United Fruit Company- from US, of course- owned 42% of the Guatemalan land, that’s right, the fertile one, without paying any kind of tax for this thanks to the “settlement” made with the country’s “democratic” leaders. No wonder US was trying to keep unchanged the status quo of the matter opposing what they called a “communist” movement.
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Things are not that simple, of course, there is never only black and white and what I wrote here are just a few pieces found out while travelling in Guatemala. But for sure many of the things that happened made no sense and should not have taken place. 36 years of blind fight, years of hardship for most of the population, forced to live in a country trapped between an ugly past and a never coming future. If you have some time it is worth to learn more about these events. They are unfortunately more actual that we would like. Just change some of the actors and… but I digress!
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I would like to have the same approach as some of the people I’ve talked to on this topic. I noticed not only the reluctance to talk about what happened but also optimism and pride about what will happen from now on. They might be coming from a dark place but more important is that it’s all clear now. Now they can rest peacefully looking towards a future where they hope the sun will rise.
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This seemed to me a healthy attitude. Maybe more spread among the older ones while the young ones have a “hot blood”. But I think sometimes is better to channel your energy on what you cn do from now on.
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We were glad the ugly times seem to have came to past and today two Romanian travellers can freely discover Guatemala.
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And children are now busy handling kites instead of guns.
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As for us, we enjoyed discovering Guatemala day by day, “the other Guatemala” where it is easier to interact with the locals based on honesty and not on a currency. Whether it is dollar or something else.
We spent lazy afternoons in old Antigua,
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-a...0/DSC_0707.JPG
eating chocolate in the same room it has been produced.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-I...0/DSC_0715.JPG
Then we went to San Pedro la Laguna, a village set between Lake Atitlan and San Pedro volcano, “racing” (and losing) with the famous “Chicken buses” (old American school buses, now transformed into commuting buses).
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-8...0/DSC_0750.JPG
And to get to San Pedro we left behind the 4 lanes intercontinental road for more narrow roads that lost their pavement at a certain point but not the traffic, heavy one, from the opposite direction…
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Or… coming the same way as us…
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hmm should we try to pass? Luckily we are on a motorcycle and we can squeeze through!
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-8...0/DSC_0794.JPG
But its worth it to pass the big bus. The landscape just opens up and we have a great view on Lake Atitlan, guarded by a fortress of volcanoes. Wonderful!
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-h...0/DSC_0803.JPG
In San Pedro we found a place to stay towards the end of the village where we decided to spend a week. Our own bungalow with a hammock, view of the volcano and beautiful garden. Yeah, it is time to spend more time in one place.
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It was end of October and we found out that the first available boat to cross the Darien Gap was only on the 8th of December. Late… very late but we couldn’t find a spot for Gunnar earlier. We book the 8th of December.
This means we will have a whole month, November, to explore Central America.
But this also means that we will have less time to reach the South of Argentina, in Ushuaia, if we want to get there before winter.
And this also means that our plan to get back home on the 4th of February is no longer feasable. With God’s help, our trip will take more than 7 months.
And a new thought starts to take shape. What if Ushuaia is not our last stop? Can’t we just go further? Hmmmm…
Here’s the route map for this post:
View Larger Map
Next time we meet old friends and try to solve a very “serious” issue: where to find a quiet place by the ocean to spend a few days out of the remaining ones until the 8th of December? Stay stunned!

Hola Alex ,
good to see that you enjoyed my country and great pictures as usual :clap::clap::clap:

But please take a history lesson before you start writing so much romantic bullshit about our recent history !!!
It was never a civil war , it was officially declared as a "Conflicto interno armado " , an intern armed dispute . Why that ? Because the civilian population was never more then an innocent victim and bystander .

No doubt about that atrocities have been committed on BOTH sides, but let's get one fact straight : Violence was started by the terrorist criminals from the guerrilla, while the army had the constitutional obligation to defend our national territory .
The terrorist were trained and equipped by foreign countries, two of the most bloody dictatorships of modern history : Sovjet Union and Cuba .
Being from Romania you should know what the USSR has been doing to small countries all over the world .

Unlike in other countries, in Guatemala the civilian population took never part in the armed dispute , they just ended up in the line of fire between the terrorists and the army . If they sold food to one of the two parties involved, then later on the other one would come and retaliate for the alleged alliance with the enemy ...
A lot of innocent civilians had to leave their villages and hide in the mountains, or leave the country . All those astronomical numbers of alleged victims are not documented and made up by one part of the so called international community, a bunch of overpaid burocrats who make a good living from the human suffering all over the third world .

I have personally witnessed atrocities committed by the terrorists, I had good friends tortured and killed by the terrorists . They kidnapped and killed several ambassadors (Germany, US) they kidnapped many good hardworking Guatemalans for randsom , they killed journalists,...

It was not a Robin Hood story, the poor against the rich . We were just unfortunate enough to be located in a strategically interesting position for the communist super power of that time .

Once again , I do not deny that atrocities and crimes have been committed on BOTH sides , I do not defend or excuse everything the US has done in my country .
But it just makes me sick to the bones when people omite to see that all this was started and provocate by the terrorists and not by the army.
Without our army defending our constitution and territory , Guatemala might have become another Nicaragua, a country that has been ruined and that is still run by a criminal dictator .

I know that you are genuinely interested in our history, so do yourself a favor and research on both sides . I would be more then happy to suggest you a few books, written by Guatemalans , about the origin , causes etc. of our internal armed dispute .

I hope I didn't get to emotional about this , but it is a very sensitive issue to me.

Keep on enjoying your journey and keep the great pictures coming !

Julio

Hey Julio,

I think it goes without saying that I am not by any length a specialist at this matter. What I wrote was just a result of stories that I've been told by local people that we've talked with in Flores and then in San Pedro and I think in both cases the people were "normal" (not involved on any side). That's why I was also saying that further reading should be done and is quite interesting.
In the end, it holds no title of authority of the matter, it just depicts an example of the image that the conflict has for the "outsiders" (like me). And it is up to the Guatemalans how they want that image to be.

That's why it was very interesting to me to read your post (and it is normal to be an emotional involvement as you were part of it all) so I would like to know more. If you have any links with further readings, that you consider pertinent, I would be interested.

I never wanted to imply that only one of the sides did bad things. My story was intended to reflect the effects that the war (or internal struggle) had on normal people (on both sides). Do be honest I do not care that much about "hard core" aspects of any sides. "Communism" or "democratic capitalism" or any other "paradigm" taken to its extremes will only create monsters, one more uglier than the other.

I tend to stay out of politics and just try to understand the reasoning behind some actions. And these are rarely the official ones. Or better said, almost all the time there is something more than the official story.

Goodbye Guatemala: October 28 – November 13
San Pedro la Laguna is one of the many villages, smaller or larger, on the shores of Lake Atitlan. We stopped there for a week, we decided that it is a good place to wait for a new motorcycle chain and sprockets that were supposed to arrive via courier from the States. And indeed what a setting! The lake, the deepest one in Central America, is basically guarded by volcanoes!
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-0...0/DSC_0048.JPG
A bungalow outside the city center of the village, in a quiet area with a view of the above mountain and close to the lake makes life switch gears and slow down in the heat of the dry season debut. Days go by slowly and lazy. Our main occupation is walking the narrow streets, going to the market and learning a little bit of Spanish (good opportunity to learn more interesting things about Guatemala from my Mayan teacher). After my previous posting, Julio, a Guatemalan friend, drew my attention that I might have a too romantic image of the internal war that Guatemala struggled with for 36 years. Maybe he is right, maybe it is easy to get an incomplete picture when you look at things from the outside. But I don’t think there is anything romantic about armed conflicts. And I confess war is one of the things I fear the most. Apart from “who started” and “who was right” there will always remain the horrible actions taken by both parties. I think that now it is more important that Guatemala is moving forward and leave all this behind. I hope from all my heart that they will succeed and we are happy to see places, like Lake Atitlan, which was a scene of the conflict, are now calm, quiet and inviting for tourists to take a walk to discover the details hidden on the narrow streets.
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And the small village is full of bright colored surprises. For instance, the 3 wheeled Tuc- Tucs, used as taxis. Normally they are red-white and look like this:
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-q...0/DSC_0382.JPG
But who says you need a super expensive car to tune it properly? Here’s a real work of art, way above the tuned Romanian cars.
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-e...0/DSC_0931.JPG
Well, if you really want to go for a ride in a tuc- tuc, at least do it with a properly pimped one! We didn’t go for a ride with it, probability the guy was really popular and had lots of orders. We prefer walking anyway when we are not on the motorcycle. And when you are walking you notice more details that you wouldn’t have seen otherwise.
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-E...0/DSC_0929.JPG Working hands!

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/--...0/DSC_0954.JPG I am dizzy! There is too much people here!

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-c...0/DSC_0960.JPG You only do the laundry in the family!

Do you remember our Vancouver visit when we spent a few days with Mihaela and Traian? And there was a car in their back yard ready to go to South America also? Well, the guys kept their promise and one of the days we were in San Pedro they showed up! 4×4 and same passion for long travels! Now that’s one tricked up car! They even have a tent on the roof that can unfold right there, high and mighty!
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-W...0/DSC_0009.JPG
And because world is not that big, we meet Bogdan just like that, on the street, another Romanian traveling the opposite direction, backpacking from South to North. Only from one bus to the other, and more flexible than all of us, no car, no motorcycle to worry about. The next few days… San Pedro was now speaking Romanian. What were the chances for 5 Romanian travelers to meet in a small village in Guatemala? We were happy and spend a lot of hours talking…
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We say “goodbye” to the guys. Bogdan was going up North, as last part of his journey and Traian and Razvan had to hurry down South. They want to get to Ushuaia and back in 6 months. We shake hands and promise to meet again, if possible, somewhere in South America. As they come back up and we go down. Until then… safe trip, guys!
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We stay some more in San Pedro and we are there when Guatemala, as well as many other Latin countries, celebrate Dia de los Muertos. There are interesting customs but we were intrigued by the high degree of mixture between the Mayan traditions and the “newer” rules brought in by the catholic religion. And indeed, many of the locals either Catholics or protestants kept their old traditions from one generation to the other.
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The lake is a wonder also. It’s an endorheic volcanic lake with no link to the sea so water is not going anywhere. So when it rains a lot the water level increases significantly. That is why today many of the places that were once “by the lake” are now part of it.
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Nothing was spared, old shops and hotels are now abandoned structures or in the best case, parking for the boats.
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Internet you say? Sure we have, we even have wifi, right in the middle of the lake….
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We take a boat for a short ride on the lake, to the neighbour village, Santiago Atitlan. The newly built deck sits above the old streets. We can see the old benches and fences under the water. It is a little bit strange.
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Once we are on the boat we admire the landscape created by the lake and we understand why Atitlan is compared with Lake Como in Italy.
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And maybe even better! As Lake Como is not surrounded by volcanoes like Lake Atitlan.
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We think, though, that the lake is a little bit “overused”. There are many areas where water is really dirty. Lots of trash is thrown into the lake and for sure there are sewage systems from the villages that end up in the lake also.
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And in the same lake women do their laundry or give the children a bath. Detergent, soap, shampoo, all into the lake (and the water of the lake is not going anywhere….).
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And day by day fishermen paddle their boats to catch some fish in the same lake. This makes a pretty picture if you take your mind off what’s in those waters.
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We leave San Pedro after a quiet and pleasant period we spent there. We considered ourselves lucky for being able to see the things behind the “touristic” curtain. Andres and his dog, Chato are waiting for us in Guatemala City, we are supposed to stay with them in the capital. We will also meet Richard there who is helping us with the spare parts for the motorcycle. We feel lucky again to meet people that we connect to on the spot. Not too many words, not too many explanations.
Andres and Richard prove to be extraordinary people. Without trying to flatter no one I confess that we spent more days than planned with Andres, because of his way of making people people feel welcomed. OK, I confess, it’s Chato’s “fault” also, for being the dog with the most “effiecient” puppy eyes I’ve ever seen.
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Richard shows us the city and it’s surroundings and helps us with the spare parts we need. And when it’s time to go we accompanies us outside the city to make sure we don’t take the wrong road.
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We leave Guatemala City – a city that many tourists avoid- with new friends, a very positive impression of the city and warm memories. We’re sorry that Luisa and Julio are not home yet to meet them too. But we are excited about their trip and wish them to get home safe, whenever that will be!
As for us…. we still have some time to spend in Central America, the boat that will take us from Panama to Columbia is leaving in a month. We don’t feel any pressure to leave Guatemala and as we like it here we decide to find a quiet place by the ocean to spend few more days. Richard told us about a place place like that. A small hostel, in a fishermen village, not yet on the touristic “radar” reachable only via a sandy road. That doesn’t sound to good for me, a beginner on a loaded motorcycle. But let’s try it.
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Doesn’t seem that bad. But from time to time there is someone strongly pulling my handlebars and the motorcycle becomes unstable. There are places where the sand gets deeper. Hmmm, this is not fun at all. We are not going that fast but all of the sudden we end up….in the sand. And there you go, my first motorcycle fall while riding…. first one with Gunnar… after 50 000 km, in deep sand. We are fine and the motorcycle too but it really gets to me. We hurry up to pick it up and forget to take a picture…. But we take one with it standing. Sand was deep enough to keep the loaded motorcycle free standing without the side stand.
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OK, we get the sand off our clothes and Gunnar and ride on. We dance through the sand the whole 12 km but without other incidents.
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And get to a place… looking right out of an exotic postcard. Few huts built on wooden pillons, close to the beach, all facing the ocean (ours will be the first one on the right).
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Reed roofs, hammocks by the beach. Great waves, deserted beach.
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It’s great. For the following week we were to stay close to the ocean, moving one time from these hammocks to other ones few kilometers South East, in Monterrico. We were planning to cross into El Salvador in a few days. But for now… we are trapped on the beaches with volcanic sand, where crabs and turtles walk freely and sunsets are spectacular each time. There couldn’t have been a better way to say “goodbye” to Guatemala. Time stood still with us….
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Route map for this story:
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Next time we find the courage to leave Guatemala and we press onwards to explore El Salvador and Honduras. Stay tunned!

El Salvador: 13-16 November
We wake up very early. Mainly because we want to be few steps ahead of the heat…. once it gets hotter we might delay again our departure with “just one more day” and go back in the hammocks. We even have a theory about it. Many of the foreigners that now have businesses here by the beach, were at the beginning tourists like us, just visiting. Then they stayed “just one more day” until they became… locals. As for us… we still have a long way to go to reach Argentina so we don’t give in! It’s 7 AM and we are outside our room with luggage and everything. It’s already hot!!! On the hallway, our neighbor looks at us motionless, as if he is feeling sorry for us that we will get into the sun soon.
But after 3 days it was time to move, yet again, and start the next chapter of our journey.

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Next time we meet Honduran roads and on them other travelers that are heading to South America. Stay tuned!

Nice trip you got going.

In Honduras I would recommend to stay in Comayagua . It is not far from Tegu and it is easy to find cheap/secure accommodations and you can even take the public transportation to do some sight seeing around.

If you have the time available, do what ever possible to make it to The bay Islands (Roatan). Its an experience that you will not regret or ever forget.

I just got back from, Bucharest, Constansa, Bacau....you guys have a fun country jeiger.

Enjoy!!!:thumbup1:

Hey maluk, the ride tale is a little behind so we already passed Honduras in reality. Unfortunately we did not had time to go to the islands. But we had a great time in Honduras and the country was very interesting. That will be in the next story. But until then.... we have something special for 1st of December.

1st of December is the national day of Romania. We are far away from home but since we started, we never felt alone. We met friends along the way that made us feel at home and made us wanting to discover more.

So, for our National Day, we thought to kindly ask some of them to send a message for Romania. And… they did! Canada, Alaska, USA, Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, Venezuela and many onthers teamed up to wish. “La multi ani Romania”.

The movie that follows is the result of their excellent acting talents and my lousy editing talents (first time when I try making a movie) So here we go:

La Multi Ani Romania - English version - YouTube

Later edit: seems I am not able to embed the youtube movie here, so only the link :(

Hi,

That was a very neat video!

Have you crossed the Darien Gap yet? if so, what was the experience like?

Enjoy your trip!

Best wishes. :thumbup1:

Hi Maluk,

no, we have not crossed yet the Darien Gap. We are getting ready to do so, hopefully on 8th of December. Now we just entered Panama.
I will of course share the experience of the crossing. I have hopes that it will be very nice.

Honduras: 16 – 18 November
I must admit that when I was planning this trip I didn’t really like the idea of going through Honduras. I didn’t know too much about the country. But I think that most of the people that are on a similar trip try to pass Honduras in one day. If you stick to the main road, PanAmerican highway, there are only 140 km from El Salvator Honduras border and Honduras- Nicaragua border. If you manage to cross the first border early, 140 km later you are already in Nicaragua. But we don’t want to use the PanAmerican border crossings. And then, why not spend one more day in Honduras? Therefore our plan is to go up North from El Salvador, crossing into Honduras through a less transited border (already a habit).
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Nicaragua: 18-23 November

Crossing into Nicaragua is easy. Almost too easy. We are not asked for any extra copies while exiting Honduras.In 10 minutes we are on the Nicaraguan side and everything runs smoothly. Here we get a bonus that we didn’t receive in the other countries, our tires get “cleaned” with a special solution.
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While we are waiting for all the formalities for importing the motorcycle to be completed we notice a big and…. pink billboard right at the entrance in the country.
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The billboard is huge and we are curious to know who is the gentleman in the image. Oh well, is the president, Daniel Ortega. Dedicated socialist, member of the Sandinist party, already on his 2nd mandate and hoping for a 3rd one (but needs to make some “adjustments” in the Constitution for this). But thinks are never simple.
Lonely Planet says that Nicaragua was an area deeply affected by conflicts and oppressions and it’s history was influenced by a lot of external factors. And seems to be true if we think about the Spanish influence (indisputably present in the whole Latin America) and all the way to the American influence (baseball is the national sport in Nicaragua – same as Panama-, brought here by the American soldiers during the military presence in the country).
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Leaving the history and politics aside we get to meet the Nicaragua of 2012 and the first impression is very good. From the road that is paved and in an excellent condition (although supposed to be a road to a secondary border crossing I couldn’t believe my eyes how good it was) to the villages that seem more organized and… cleaner. It’s a beautiful day, one of those days when everything is exactly how it’s supposed to be. Motorcycle is running smoothly, from behind the girl’s hands are holding you tight and you are so happy to be on the road. We are listening to music, some of the songs coming from you in “the Music Mailbox“
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And we realize that Nicaragua is the place to go shopping if you are in need for a hammock! By the side of the road we see nicely colored hammocks, with all kind of adornments.
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Our first destination is Leon. A traditional city seen as pertaining to the liberals is one of the “heritage” cities of Nicaragua. The other one is Granada and it is located around 100 kilometers to the East, on the shores of lake Nicaragua, historically one of the cities belonging to the conservative party. The interesting part is that for many years these two cities “battled for supremacy”on the political scene (and not only). Eventually, it was decided that the capital should be Managua, a city located in between the two so that both parties should be satisfied. Leon is now one of the main attractions in Nicaragua.
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We didn’t like the city that much. Maybe because the main square was being renovated and therefore closed. Maybe because the hotels were too expensive and it is not that clean. We stayed there only two nights. And we enjoyed it because we got to meet other travelers like us. Some coming from Argentina and going to Canada and some that were planning to pass also through South America.
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Travelers that got together in a restaurant to talk about places like Patagonia or Canada.
We didn’t actually stay in the city the day we were in Leon. We decided to join a group that was heading to the nearby volcano for ashboarding. If we decide to do a touristy thing let’s do something that involves adrenaline. It is an extraordinary experience. Here are just a few pictures from the trip to the volcano and from the volcano. I also have some videos and I am hoping to get some time soon to edit them. Cerro Nero volcano dominates the green valley with it’s darkness.
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It is still active and there is still the possibility of an eruption. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-w...0/IMG_0587.JPG
When we get at the bottom of the volcano we take our boards and protection suits and start climbing. It takes us around one hour to reach the crater.
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Smells like sulfur on top. And there is steam coming out of the crater. And we can see other smoking volcanoes in the distance.
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We put on our protection suits- there are just some orange overalls that look like prisoners’ uniforms in the American movies- and get ready for “boarding” on the dark ash.
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I took my motorcycle helmet with me since it was the only place I could put my Action Cam. All the others have goggles.
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We only have one picture from the actual boarding and we have it from the organizers. You didn’t have time to take pictures otherwise as you had to keep your balance and yourself on the board.
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You can reach pretty high speed when you get down. The record is something over 90 km/h. I will show you more interesting captures from the boarding when I manage to edit the videos. By then, let’s take some time to relax in the sunset, we experienced some intense sensations. Cheers!
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From Leon we went to Managua, the capital of Nicaragua. We were invited there by Salvador’s family, a passionate motorcycle traveler just like us and they were very hospitable and kind. Salvador is now traveling through Asia but his mother was an excellent host and we enjoyed two quiet and relaxed days. Actually, we relaxed doing stuff as one of the two days we went to a nearby farm where we could admire exquisite horses.
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And not only did we have the chance to admire and caress them but we were invited to ride a beautiful horse of noble breed. Andreea told me that I looked like a small kid and had a smile as big as my face. Wouldn’t you be the same way?
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Reyna took really good care of us and we are very grateful for that but it’s time to get back on the road. Next destination is Granada, considered the oldest Spanish settlement in Nicaragua.
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We find a pretty cheap hotel (good thing we’re off-season) and since there is no other parking spot, we are allowed to bring Gunnar inside with us.
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I put him in a corner of the reception area where, poor guy, will have to watch telenovelas with the receptionist the whole night.
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The city is sitting on the shores of the interesting lake Nicaragua: it is the widest lake in Central America and even since the XIX century it was considered a suitable place to create a crossing between Atlantic and Pacific. A place of strategic importance wanted by many countries. In 1914, US signed an agreement with the Nicaraguan government of that time that granted them sole rights for building a canal between Atlantic and Pacific. The agreement was advertised in the country as a huge success and seen as a huge source of income once the canal would have been completed. Until today absolutely nothing has been done for this construction…. Hmmm, I wonder if that had anything to do with the detail of who built and owned the Panama Canal...


Maybe not having this canal is a bad thing for the economy of Nicaragua but the good part is that their waters remained peaceful and unpolluted by the big cargo ships. And Granada was saved from industrialization and went on being a beautiful colonial city, good place for receiving tourists.
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We walked for a while on the narrow streets and ended up in a coffee shop maintained by people with disabilities. It is called “Café de las Sonrisas” and all the time we spent there we only saw people smiling. There is also a hammocks factory there where these people are offered a chance to work and integrate in the community. We should never ever forget how grateful and happy we should be for everything we have and for being healthy.
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Here we discover the largest hammocks we’ve seen so far. Lovely, brightly colored and the most comfortable, according to Andreea.
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We leave Granada behind and head to the border crossing between Nicaragua and Costa Rica.
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Theoretically, you only have one option if you travel by motorcycle and want to cross from Nicaragua to Costa Rica: the border crossing on the PanAmerican highway. It’s the only official option. But… while in Leon, we learn from Chloe and Chris that there might be another crossing, a smaller one, East of Lake Nicaragua, on a less traveled road. Hmm, this is interesting. We decide to see how this border crossing works. It turned out to be an interesting choice from many points of view!
Our trip in Nicaragua proved to be too short for the things we wanted to see and do. It is a beautiful country that deserves more time.
Route map for this story:

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Next time we find out how adventurous the border crossing was and how we managed to cross into Costa Rica! Stay tuned!

Oh yes… we made it. We crossed the Darien Gap and made it (by the time you read this) in Columbia. We are still in Central America with the story. Who knows, maybe I will have some time, before taking the motorcycle out of customs here in Columbia, and get a little bit closer to present day with the blog…. So… let’s see how it was in Costa Rica:
Costa Rica: November 24 – December 02
Here we are, heading again to a border we didn’t know too much about. We knew that there is a very small border post and you need a boat to cross a river between San Carlos, Nicaragua and Los Chiles, Costa Rica. Nothing special so far, the only problem was what kind of boats are available for the crossing and, once we get to Costa Rica, where we could buy a compulsory insurance for the motorcycle. These were the thoughts that kept us busy all the way to San Carlos… a place so isolated that seemed to be at the end of the world. We get there and try to find the port and the customs, not before saying “hello” once more to…. mister president!
We ask about the boats and insurance we need to buy for the motorcycle in Costa Rica and we are told that it is possible. Once we get there we should just ask where is the place where they issue insurance. Goood, as for the boat, there will be one just now, at 13:00, big enough to carry your motorcycle. So we are invited to proceed with our papers. The border officials are nice, everything seems to go perfect. We ask again about the papers we have to make on the other side and we are assured it will be ok. Hmmmm, ok then, let’s leave Nicaragua.
We park the motorcycle on the peer…. and I see for the first time the boat “big enough” to carry a motorcycle. A tiny passenger boat that had a fairly flat area in front. That was it. Compared to what we were seeing now, the boat that we used to cross the river in Guatemala seemed now a real ferry!
We have the papers ready so the dancing began. We anyway didn’t want to go back as we had to make a detour of a few hundred kilometers. Let’s put the motorcycle on the boat then.
Now we have to put it on the boat. Gunnar is pretty low and not doing very well. But the shield is doing the job and we manage to get on the boat. Now we have to tie it well. Esthetics is not important.
And that is it… we are on the little boat and the motorcycle is on it also. We just have to tie it up very well, we would want our motorcycle to start dancing on the “huge” surface it had just for itself…
And we go. We say “goodbye” to Nicaragua. We enjoyed it and would have liked to stay longer, with or without pink campaign posters. Goodbye, Nicaragua, hope everything works out for you!
The boat ride is more than one hour long. I keep one eye on the motorcycle to make sure it doesn’t move…
…an the other on the landscape. I feel like home, in the Danube Delta!
We are getting closer to the Costa Rica border and… getting off the boat doesn’t seem to be easier.
Unfortunately we only have two pictures from getting off the boat. One with both wheels in the boat and another with both wheels on land. Andreea confessed that in between she was unable to do anything, not even breathing. She told me that there were a few “delicate” moments when I was trying to get the motorcycle off the boat and the latter was going away from the shore while my wheels were one outside the boat, on the shore and the other in the boat. Hmmmm, maybe it is better I didn’t realize that.
After some zig-zaging on the ramp I get to the street level and I feel we deserve to celebrate this victory while the locals were looking at us like we just landed from an UFO. Probably it’s because of the jacket….
Unfortunately we don’t get to enjoy our victory too much. The guy from the Costa Rica aduana gives us bad news: “you cannot buy motorcycle insurance in Los Chiles.” “OK, then where can we buy insurance?” “Ah, in Quesada, a city nearby, only 90 kilometers away.” “Hmmm, fine, I will go there then. “Since the motorcycle cannot be used (cannot leave the customs without papers), where can I take the bus?” “The bus station is in the central market but it’s no use to go now, the INS office is open until 15:00 (it was 14:00). Well, tomorrow then? No, not tomorrow, agency is closed during the weekend (it was Friday). And just like that we were getting one defeat after the other. I was really wondering at ne point what would happen if I come up with another solution. And there we have it, the longest border crossing and that was not because of bureaucracy or too many people trying to cross the border but because you cannot buy a stupid insurance.
That’s ok, all we can do now is relax in Los Chile. We even find a hotel with acceptable rates and manage to convince the border official to let us take the motorcycle out of customs, promising we won’t take it out of the city. Days go by peacefully in this city that looks more like an American suburb.
It’s Monday, 5 AM and I am up, my bus leaves at 6:00, I am in Quesada at 7:45 AM and at 8:00 I am one of the first customers of the insurance agency. 9:00 I am back in the bus and 3 hours later I am back in Los Chiles. I decide to go straight to the customs and do the papers. The border official already saw the motorcycle anyway. I go there, he recognizes me, tells me everything is ok, I just need to go make some copies (of course) around the corner. I go. I am at the second copy of the 4 when I see the border official. He tells me he is sorry but he has to leave for one hour. I am staring at him not knowing what to say. I cannot believe it. I was waiting for 3 days in that place, now I have all my papers and he wouldn’t want to postpone his lunch for 3 minutes until I make my copies and leave the place. I was so close to tell him what I feel from the bottom of my heart. I also knew that me making a scene will only delay the process. So I wish him to enjoy his meal and I go have lunch. One hour later we are in front of the customs with the motorcycle and our luggage all ready to go.
We are finally on the road in Costa Rica. And we discover a beautiful country, tidy and, from what we can see, also clean. And we also discover… the rain! It’s time to try out my new rain suit that I bought in a supermarket in US.
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Our first stop is only 110 kilometers away, La Fortuna (70 of the 110 kilometers I already did twice that day by bus). We get to La Fortuna and rain follows us, we meet Paul there. We spend one day there admiring the Arenal volcano. It is still (very) active so you are not alowed to climb it. WHile we were there we didn’t see any eruption.
We enjoyed the sun and the nature’s green (no wonder after so much rain).
The next day we ride with Paul to the Caribbean coast. The route is very nice but we cannot see much because of the rain. It rains a lot but luckily our rain gear do their job.
We pass many bananas plantations. Chiquita, Dole and other familiar “brands”. I will now think of Costa Rica whenever I will see them in the markets…
Ah, no more bananas you say? It’s ok, we also have…. pineapple. http://micadu.ro/en/wp-includes/imag...icon_smile.gif
Caribbean sea is an exotic destination and a place we haven’t seen before. The weather is bad but I can only think about fine sand beaches, guarded by palm trees and blue waters. You know, like the movies. But all we get is dark sky and heavy rain. After Port de Limon we randomly choose a village (used to be fishing village not it’s a touristic one) where we were supposed to stay for a few days hoping for better weather. Instead of porch with a sea view we get something more… “domestic” and very very… wet.
After only one night Paul decides to leave and search for the sun somewhere else, across the border, in Panama. We decide to give this place (and the weather) one more chance and visit Cahuita National Park. And that was a good decision indeed. We barely see the sun but we are happy it doesn’t rain either so we can enjoy the luxuriant setting.
Everything around is like in a pirates movie. Fortunately we don’t meet them but all kind of animals, from the small but hard-working ants
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… to the slow sloths that barely move hanging from the thick branches.
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There are monkeys everywhere. Very active and very curious.
We even meet a racoon that seemed to be very interested in the dumpsters at the park entrance. We saw us coming and went away fast.
The beaches are really wild. There are no umbrellas or chaise longues around here. Palm trees, coconuts, fine sand and the sea… a little bit turbid because of all the rain.
If you watch the sand carefully you can find some more creatures.
We are enjoying Cahuita. That’s also because there are not so many tourists. We enjoy this luxuriant setting and we barely meet other people. We also appreciate that there is no entrance fee for this National Park, apparently the locals objected to charging visitors. And their protests helped, for us this is the first tax free National Park we visit.
It’s December 2nd and time for us to set sail to Panama, the last country we will visit in Central America. The weather is getting better and we cross the border at Sixaola without difficulties. We have to wait longer because we arrived after a bus full with tourists. But the delay is not too big and it doesn’t take long for us to hear “Welcome to Panama!”.
Route map for this story:

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Next time we will introduce you to Panama- the last country we visit in Central America- and find out how we will cross the Darien Gap. Stay tuned!

Panama: 3-7 December
We are in Panama and still don’t have a clear plan, except the fact that on December 7 we have to take our motorcycle to the pier and prepare it for boarding. We are slowly heading to Panama City. We see a lot of bananas plantations and we are craving for some.
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You can basically stop anywhere by the side of the road and get 2 or 3, just like picking some plums in Romania. It wouldn’t have been polite though. So we keep riding, enjoying the warm weather and interesting landscape.
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We stop for lunch by the side of the road. We’re not the only ones who need a break. I am looking at this man and it feels rather unusual to see him using a cell phone. A machete or a cigar would be more appropriate. I know… it’s just a stereotype.
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The road goes up slowly and soon enough we are so high that we can see the Pacific in the distance.
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The road is excellent. We stop every kilometer to take pictures. These are the moments when you realize why you went on this journey. “THIS is why you do it!”
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Clouds are dancing on the sky and their choreography is amazing, from another world. We almost feel sorry that the road has to descend. We would have wanted to stay longer there, in the mountains.
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We ride towards the plain where we meet PanAmerican highway and discover that apart from the wonderful landscape Panama has also speed cams. In only 3 hours we see more than we ever saw in the whole Central America. The moto-policemen park their motorcycle in the shadows, prepare their radar and wait for the “customers”.
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We stop for the night in Santiago at a doubtful hotel (price was by the hour) where we sleep with our clothes on and don’t dear to use the shower.
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But it happened to us many times to meet nice people in the most unexpected places. So it happens once more, we meet at “Hong” two more very friendly motorcyclists. They are Dutch and they will be on the same boat with us, trying to cross in Columbia.
Panama City is a surprise. Tall buildings, suspended highways and a totally different image of what we got used to in Central America.
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Right as we enter the city we encounter 2 novelties: traffic jam and… rain. We are stuck in traffic but we see a gas station just 200 meters away where we can find shelter and put on our rain gear. Unfortunately we cannot go forward and by the time we can do it it’s already too late. After only 5 minutes of rain… our gear looks like this…
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But the 14:00 o’clock (we were to discover that it rains around the same hour everyday) rain doesn’t last too long and we can ride relaxed in the city on the way to our hosts, David and Vincente. After so much time without CouchSurfing – since US – we meet a Panamanian and a French who invite us into their homes offering us a great time with them.
We go for a walk in the evening to discover another side of the city. The modern and cosmopolitan one. There are people running, walking their dogs, you can hear more than Spanish on the streets, we hear German, English and other languages, we feel somewhere… special.
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And the tall buildings look even better during the night. We buy a pizza and imagine it’s the best dinner in the world enjoying it by the waterfront. At least the view is nice.
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In the sunset light we can see the ships aligned to cross the Canal that connects the two oceans.
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Not too many people know that Panama used to be for a long time a province of Nueva Granada (Columbia) when Colombians gained their independence. There were a few separation attempts afterwards but nothing really happened as they didn’t get any outside help. Later on, in 1903, USA tried to negotiate with the Colombian authorities the rights for exploring an inter-oceanic canal… on Colombian land… in Panama province.
As Colombia refused the terms offered by the Americans, Panama all of a sudden got US’ support to claim their independence and only one year later, in 1904, an agreement was signed between US and the newly created Central American state for the Panama Canal project to start (actually the works started by the French were resumed). Selfless support for national assertion or just economic interests? Hmmm…
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Ironically maybe, much much later, in 1989, American president W. Bush authorized a military intervention for protecting the canal. 10 years later, this wander of engineering was “returned” to Panama and US troops had to leave the country.
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It is interesting to know that before the canal went to Panamanian administration an entire area around the canal was practically US territory. You even needed a passport to be able to get to the canal locks and visit them.
Luckily now you can visit them without problems.
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The canal locks are really impressive, especially when a big ship crosses. They are now building a third row of locks, much bigger ones for the bigger ships.
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There is not much after Panama City for us. There is an area named Darien Gap between Central and South America that cannot be crossed.There is jungle, marsh and there are certain people that make this crossing impossible. So all traffic between North and South is done by air or by sea. We choose to cross Darien Gap by sea, on board of a fishing boat built in 1903. Now owned by some enthusiastic Germans and used for “cruises”. The day of our departure we wake up with the sun
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and get ready for the last hundred and something kilometers to Cali, the boarding point. One by one we meet other motorcyclists that were to be on the same boat like us.
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We met some of them repeatedly in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica. Others we new from the travel blogs or emails. Very different people, traveling by very different motorcycles to different directions.
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But today we all have the same destination: Stahlratte (Steel rat), te boat that was supposed to take us far away across a sea and a… country in Columbia.
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After a nice windy and steep (from time to time) road and 15$ tax entrance in the National Park we are in Carti and find ourselves a spot on the pier full of motorcycles.
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What a great view. We are not the only crazy people doing this. And besides taking this trip now we have to be crazy enough to trust that a steel rat can sail.
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I take my key out of the ignition and I realize that this is it, the last leg of our trip through North and Central America. Next time Gunnar will roll its wheels will be in South America. Until then… this is the end of the road! WE MADE IT!
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There is no complete route map for this story as the road to Carti is not on Google Maps:

View Larger Map

YAY!!! :thumbup1:

Vamos pa' Colombia!!!

bier

bier can't wait for the next one. seriously hurry up!!!! :tongue3:
:clap:

Sorry for the delay. In a lot of parts of the world, there is snow on the ground right now so I will try to compensate with some "sunny" pictures.

Here it goes:


-----



The Central America vagabonding had a nice and sunny end as I was writing you here.
But, in order to continue with the next part of the trip, we had to get in South America. And in order to get to South America we and the bike had to get on Stahlratte. Hmm with the people is easy. The girls just took a lancia and off they went towards the big boat.
But with the motorcycles it will not be that simple. In order to get them on board, Stahlratte got close to the shore
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And we started the loading, lifting the motos by crane, one by one.
No matter how much you trust those sailor knots, you cannot help to feel a “little” bit uneasy when you see your motorcycle hanging in the air above the sea. I do not know how my face looked like, but I imagine I was not far away from my colleagues…
But it all went OK and we were ready to counquer the seas!
OK, now what? Well… now we relax. You see, this is supposed to be a water crossing between 2 continents, but this is so much more than that. Normally the crossing would last around 30 hours, but the trip will be 4 days long. The rest of the time means just relaxing around the San Blas islands.
So this is the “cruise” part of the trip. I usually do not like cruises and the hole concept of “you pay x dollars and you can spend 7 days on a luxury ship, all inclusive somwhere”. But this is different. We did payed x (a lot) dollars but this is no luxury ship and for sure it is not big. No private cabins here with amenities. We get bunk beds. I like it! First of all, everybody is trying to organize a bit the “orderly disorder” from below the decks.
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Then we go to a small island, inhabited by the Kuna people. (it seems that in 2011 the naming changed to Guna as “K” was not the proper equivalent in the native language. The island is packed with houses and the pathways are very narrow.
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And the people from here try to keep their traditions.
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But, as in so many other places, the modern life creeps in. In the native huts, you can get electricity, phone coverage and even internet (we did not use any of those while on the island). Of course, I am not pleading for an archaic life. After all, I am writing all this on a computer and you are reading it with the help of the Mighty Internet. But, that being said, care should be taken in such places (in all places to he honest) in order to have some kind of sustainable approach to integrate “the new”. What happens with all the plastic and garbage from the “modern” age things that come to the island? Well, nothing. it just takes it’s rightful place in the scenery.
And yet again we see that kids will do their job -their job, as kids, is to play http://micadu.ro/en/wp-includes/imag.../icon_razz.gif – anywhere and with determination and resilience. It takes so little for a kid to be happy. We, the so called “grown ups” might learn (or better said, remember) this more often.
To be hontes, I liked the island. It seemd very much “in your face”. It didn’t hide anything about their lifestyle. You could walk and see the day by day life of Kunas (or Gunas now?). With good and less good things.
Next day we return to Stahlratte where we find the motorcycles packed up. Salty water is not the best friend of metal parts and so they were covered with plastic sheets.
We on the other hand, made sure to be as little as possible covered and started to do… nothing. Just anjoying the day.
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And to discover the sub-aquatic life. Unfortunately the pictures made with a GoPro are not doing justice to the wonderful life found below
Corals, colorful fish, an old wreck to explore and a lot of other super interesting things. For me it was the first time doing snorkeling so maybe that’s why I was so excited.
Next time we find out how did we manage to get out of the tight spot and see how will Cartagena greet us. Stay tuned!

Just passed the Equator line today. It was a very exciting moment for us http://d26ya5yqg8yyvs.cloudfront.net/clap.gif
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There, in that empty parking lot, near the "center of the Earth" we realized that we've never been so far away from home. And we plan to keep going, until the day to return will come!

Great trip! Loved the way you kept score at the hunduras border crossing, 1-0, 2-0....

yesterday got around finishing the short movie from Cerro Nero, Nicaragua.

Enjoy:
http://youtu.be/zrcOERTszPo

Merry Christmas everybody. Wherever you are, we hope that you are enjoying these days close to family and friends.

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We wish you nice roads and sunny travels!

We got to spend Christmas in Ecuador and we had some unexpected events that made our Holidays very special (in a good way). But until we tell you that, I hope you will enjoy the story of our first days in Colombia.



First days in Colombia: 12-14 of December
I open my eyes and the walls are moving. The problem is that you don’t have a fixed point to hold on too. Everything shifts and rocks up and down and from side to side. It is morning, it must be as there is some light from above. But the engine noise is missing. That means we are still broken down and “dead in the water”. I get up and carefully climb up to the deck. There people are trying to find a “stable” place to sit and wait.
The engine has problems with some admision valves which broke into pieces. Luckily there is a welding machine on board. And, even more, one of the travelers, Paul, knows how to weld. So, the guys get to work. It takes a few hours to take the parts apart, weld them and put them back. I can only imagine that it was quite difficult to weld in an environment which is moving all the time. After the second try, the motor is ready to go. We start with reduced speed in order not to stress the parts, but we are advancing.
No map for this story.
Next time we find out in how many ways you can pass a slow moving truck on a Colombian road. Stay tuned!

Great Blog
 

Hey nice blog. Look forward to more!!

Hi guys,

I just put together a movie from our crossing of Darien Gap with the Stahlratte. Hope you will enjoy.

To Medellin: 14 – 17 December
I am looking at the map and I see Cartagena way up high on the North tip of South America. And our plan is to get way down South.
It´s therefore time to start the engine and make some progress. As we are trying to get out of the city we are introduced to another Cartagena very different from the old colonial part we´ve seen. Chaotic traffing, a lot of garbage and people living in pretty harsh conditions…
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This brings us back to a dilemma we´ve had some time ago. It´s up to every traveler to decide what he wants to see and what to remember of his trip. The way you travel also matters. I remember when I used to travel with work last year, by plane, riding from airport to hotel and from the hotel to the office and back, being “protected” from some less pleasant views. Now, by motorcycle we are passing through places that tourism industry wouldn´t want to have people with cameras and money in their pockets see. Kids here don´t go to theme parks, they have fun with their family preparing the pork meat for Christmas. Pleasant and acceptable? Don´t know. Natural and honest? Definitely.
Acum, pe motocicleta, trecem de multe ori prin locuri pe care industria turismului ar prefera sa le ascunda de cei cu aparate de fotografiat si dolari in portofel. Aici copiii nu merg in parcul de distractii, ci se distreaza la taierea porcului de Craciun. Placut si in regula? Nu stiu. Natural si sincer? Cu siguranta da!
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Now that we are out of the tourist area we get to see a different country, harsh and straight,the one behind the touristic velvet curtain.
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The surroundings might not have looked too good but people really impressed us. Honest, open and smiling, always ready to help, these people didn´t make us feel “foreigners” or “unease”.
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Whenever we stop at a streetlight or by the side of the road people approach us. There are all smiling, asking us where we are from and where we are going. People are impressed when they hear about Romania and even if some of them don´t really know where this country is located they honestly wish us safe travels.
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We are moving pretty well and soon we discover that there are tolls on the Colombian roads. All the roads. We´ve seen (and used) the toll roads of Mexico but there you always had the “libre” alternative to get from A to B. You would choose “cuota” if you were in a hurry. Here you have no choice. There is only one road from A to B and you have to pay.
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Luckily motorcycles don´t pay tolls and have to avoid the barriers through the right. Some toll stations have decent passages for motorcycles like the picture above. Others have tall walls that make a veritable test for someone riding a large motorcycle with side cases, reminding me of my motorcycle test when I had to ride a straight line with just one hand on the handlebar.
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We are passing through low and muddy lands. Darrien Gap is on the other side, the piece of land we had to avoid by sea. Panama is further away. It seems so far away now….
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We stop for the night in Caucazia (we find out late on that the place might not have been so safe but we were really ok there) then head to Medellin, Colombia´s second largest city. The road to the city starts climbing up the mountains.
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We are really high. And surrounded by trucks. There are only two roads connecting North to South and we are on one of them. Things can get crowded pretty fast….
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One truck after the other, all going up 10-15 km/h. If you want to get somewhere at a reasonable hour you have no other choice but to follow the locals and start passing them. However you can. Through the left, through the right, through gas stations. Some situations seem inconceivable. Small cars, trucks and motorcycles fighting for the same piece of road.
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We are in Latin America for some time now but we never overtook the way we did in Columbia. The rules are simplified pretty fast. The heaviest and the biggest has priority. The small ones have to find their way. For example, a heavy transporter took over the entire road so cars from both sides had to stop, including trucks.
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We manage to overtake a lot of trucks and we are really happy where we don{t find others and the road is clear. Now I can look around. We pass stylish towns and military posts with friendly military guys. They are all waving! Funny or not Colombian soldiers were the warmest ones of all the army guys we met since Mexico.
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Medellin is a cosmopolitan city, we find it all dressed up for fiesta. There it is in its evening gown!
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Christmas is coming. Soon. And we are enjoying ourselves!
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Route map for this story:

View Larger Map
Next time we enter the coffee world and find out what Colombian hospitality is. Stay tuned!

Today, in our hotel's basement:

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What a way to finish the year for Gunnar, near 4 KTMs that will race in Dakar Rally 2013. Happy New Year to everybody!

Guys, I hope you had a blast for New Year's Eve party. We celebrated in Lima and then headed out on 1st of January towards the Andes.

Right now we are high in the mountains and enjoying every moment of it. Here's a picture from today, taken at 4500 meters. In search of llamas!

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New entry in the ride report coming soon, still trying to get out of Colombia in there http://d26ya5yqg8yyvs.cloudfront.net/friday.gif

Coffee and sweet people: 17 – 20 December
I´m not a coffee drinker. But I did have a coffee from time to time ever since I got into Central America, in the coffee areas. Never too much and always with milk- I know, I know, the taste is not the same but what can I do, I am not a genuine coffee drinker.
As we are heading South out of Medellin, we are entering the Colombian coffee plantations.
We are heading towards Manizales where we will couchsurf for the first time in South America. We are making slow progress mainly because we cannot take our eyes of the scenery.
Even the road signs seem funnier here. Hmmm, what animals should we pay attention to?
We had a dilemma to solve in Manizales. Gunnar was unstable for a while, the steering wheel was vibrating pretty hard. I supposed it was the front tire, it was an old one and had some small bumps. I changed it in Medellin and the “symptoms” didn´t disappear, to my disappointment. Therefore I decided to change the break pads also (thinking that maybe they didn´t wear off equally) . Nothing again! The steering wheel or the fork were tight and good. The wheel was spinning freely. I couldn´t figure out what´s wrong with it.
Our hosts knew a mechanic so we went to see him in the morning. The mechanic did the same thing and everything seemed to be all right. Then he takes a look a the rear wheel. I look also and we see a big crack in the rear tire. I think it helped that the tire was heated now because I checked it few days before when it was cold and I didn´t see anything. Anyway this was bad. The tire had large surfaces with cracks so deep that you could see the casing. Pretty scary. So we know what we have to do without further discussions, we get into the mechanic´s car and hit the city to find a new tire.The only thing I can find is a very expensive Bridgestone. Great, now my both wheels have tires I don´t trust (TrailWings), and since I bought them without researching before I payed a lot of money for them also. But at least Gunnar is fine.
We say “Goodbye” to our very helpful and friendly hosts and pick Salento as our next destination. Salento is a small village further South. We like lazy days when we don´t do too many kilometers but discover beautiful things.
We get to the main plaza in Salento and begin our usual “accommodation ritual” (we are looking for an affordable place, with safe parking for our motorcycle and pretty ok for us also, and that´s what we are asking around for). We get really funny directions, they vary according to how much we can understand from the locals and how much we think we understand….
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“Todo largo” on that street (??), walk 4 “cuadras” (I do know what that is), then left and “recto” (watch your language) and you are there. Got it? Hmm, we will see what we can find. We found a different “hospedaje” where we cross the “finish line” of the day. Right on time as sun is sneaking behind the roofs.
Before leaving we go back the the coffee place we had the very good coffee and meet the owner of this small business, Jesus. He is very passionate about this place and he is telling us about coffee growing also inviting us to the place where we selects and grinds the coffee.
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We learn a lot of interesting things about coffee growing process.
Even more impressing is the fact that this man is a lawyer. But came back to the “countryside” and started a project trying to support the people there.He told us “I am trying to build something positive for my family, environment and the community I live in then extending it to the region and my country, Colombia. We have to start locally, in small communities. We will be able to see the results when more an more people will start doing the same”.

He decided to build a small processing factory so that the good quality Colombian coffee can be drank in Colombia also. He takes the coffee from his father´s coffee farm but also buys it from other plantations, carefully selecting it, roasting it at the right temperature so that his customers can enjoy an exquisite cup.
Most of the good coffee will continue to leave Colombia in its early stage and for little money and most Colombians will only be able to drink lower quality coffee. But he found a way to bring little changes. He decided to do something, although his work is just a small drop in the ocean. But what is an ocean if not millions of drops getting together.
We shake hands and wished him good luck with his project. Maybe one day our friend will be able to send his good coffee to Romania also.
From Salento we go to Popayan, keep heading South. We leave the mountainous scenery for the sugar cane plantations. Apparently it´s harvest time.
It getting more and more difficult to overpass. Luckily we are not in the mountains anymore so there are not too many curves.
But hei, if you ride for many days in a row and don´t know where to keep your bananas… here´s an idea:
It´s almost dark when we reach Popayan and some rain clouds get there in the same time. We confine to our ritual again searching for a place to sleep. Hard to find an available and affordable spot. It´s holiday time apparently and everyone is traveling home. As I come back unsuccessfully from a hotel search I see another DL650 parked next to Gunnar. Red, clean, 2012 model (but the old lines not the new design) and lots of after market parts.I meet the guy talking to Andreea. His name is Fredie and the red DL belongs to his boss. He is trying to help us guiding us to other hotels but the ones that still have rooms have touristy prices. Then Frankie says “if you want you can come stay at my places. I´m on Couchsurfing but cannot host people right now because my place is really small. But if you want and don´t mind cats you can come sleep at my place”.
We stop by the ship where Fredie is working meet his boss, Jaime (the owner of the red DL650) and he offers to help us well, with a place for our motorcycle overnight.
We feel so taken care of, needing to do nothing and having so much consideration from these guys. We settle in the motorcycle (first worry of any rider http://micadu.ro/en/wp-includes/imag...icon_smile.gif ) and then we set up our place to sleep in the hallway of Fredie’s small apartment (which he share with 2 other girls). We move around some furniture to make room on the floor for our two sleeping mattress. The space was very limited but who cares? His heart was so big. So we felt very very good in the end.
Heading back to the shop, Jaime and 2 other friends are waiting us with some beers and a lot of happy mood. My Spanish must have been improving due to the beers or so I think because we are taking about “heavy” subjects and these guys seem to understand me… Hmmm…
One of Jaime’s friends is a cop (oh and I just told all the stories about passing in Colombia) and he is so funny! He educates us about how we should handle the situation if we are stopped by cops on the road. I must confess that I am not good at the methods he explained and I would prefer not to be stopped at all http://micadu.ro/en/wp-includes/imag...icon_smile.gif
And, to he honest, now that we’re out of Colombia I must say that the cops and the military met in Colombia where among the friendliest we’ve seen in the hole trip. No stopping, no control, and every time big smiles and “thumbgs up”. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-J...0/DSC_0050.JPG
We talk with Jamie Frankie and their friends a long time, well into the night. Next morning we are invited for breakfast before leaving.
Then, we have to say good bye and start a new day of discovery!
The map of these post:

View Larger Map
Next time we head full speed into Ecuador and try to change the Hemisphere in which we are traveling. Stay tuned!

Adios Columbia, Hola Ecuador: 20 – 21 December

We still had 2 more days to go from Popayan to Ecuador border. Of course, we could have done it in just one longer day but…. why hurry? Especially that we are getting into the mountains again.
There are many deserted places on the road but nature is wonderful. Beautiful but not that simple. I remember what my friends from Popayan told me “If you go 50-100 km away from Popayan into the mountains you can meet the guerillas. Stay on the main roads”.
Columbia is recovering after a long periods of internal fights with many paramilitary organizations.Many of them gave up arms in the last years and formed… political parties. Not all of them though. The government and members of active guerrillas are discussing it right now in Cuba. The subject is a delicate and complex one, same as in others countries in the area. And it seems really hard to be black or white. The certain thing is that many lives were impacted by these fights. And it´s obvious since we didn´t live like that we cannot imagine how their way of life was during that period.
I remember a Colombian friend from Medellin telling us how he moved to from the coutryside to the city after they were attacked in their own house one day, locked out in one of the rooms and when they managed to get out there was nothing left in the house. Whoever got in stole everything but they were happy they came out alive. But decided to leave those beautiful places and nature landscape for the safety of the city where guerrillas cannot operate. These kind of stories really puts your mind at work and in the same time makes me feel grateful that we can think freely about moving to the countryside when we go back to Romania.
We´re staying on the main road and we are feeling same. Actually we felt safe all the way through Colombia. Things seem to be going back to normal and the army seems to strongly control most of the areas. Colombians can now feel safe again and travel at ease.
On our way to Pasto, we pass through a very weird place. It was a village where basically all the villagers were begging on the side of the road. Just like that, they were reaching their hands and asking for money as you came closer.
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We were told that this is a “practice” that happens mainly around end of the year, the villagers are asking for money for the new year and they are making straw dolls that they will burn on December 31 (impersonating the problems and worries they had in the year that was coming to an end). Weird and dangerous customs I would say. We also find out that you have to pay attention at the way they hold their hands. If the palm is up it means they are begging. If the palm is facing down they that person (mostly a woman) is offering herself to you for money. … That place was incredibly sad for me.
We were relieved to leave that place. Sometimes it is better to travel through deserted areas. But clear road may be dangerous so we have to pay attention.
View Larger Map
Next time we will be really crossing the Equator line and getting ready for Christmas. Wonder where we will be going? Stay tuned!

Hoping to help other travelers that might take the same routes as we did, we thought to put together a section listing the accommodations and places to eat that we've liked (or disliked http://d26ya5yqg8yyvs.cloudfront.net/eek7.gif)

The descriptions cover only the journey from Mexico South (as we figured in Canada and US is less difficult to find good places).

The listings are divided by countries so that they are easy to follow.

I do not know if there is a better place to put the link but for now, here it goes here in here

Places – Micadu International

We will continue to update the section as we travel South.

A line, a fish can, and a stop between high mountains: 21-24 December
Ecuador! It might sound strange, but I remember this country from when I just a kid back home, looking through the geographic atlas and dreaming about far away journeys. I remember this country mainly because, although I never knew for sure what countries the equator line crosses, definitely it should cross Ecuador, right?. And the atlas confirmed this every time I was checking. I know, child logic, but now, many years later, we were in this country heading for… the equator line, surrounded by tall trees.
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Dark clouds travel by our side but we don´t really care about this now. We are very careful not to miss the “sign” as we almost did with the Tropic of Cancer sign, back in Mexico.
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We do not miss the sign and only a few kilometers before the capital city, Quito, we turn left towards the spot that marks “the middle of the world”.
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We find a totally deserted place and a huge pole in the middle informing us that it is official, we are on the equator line.
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Mmm, still, I know how this works. How these commercial places are made for tourist convenience whereas the real “landmark” is “a little bit further”. I don´t trust the exact spot of the pole, it has to be verified. So I take out my GPS (it might not have S.A. maps so it is useless for directions but it can still show the current location) and… they are right! Latitude read is: 0.00000. And we also discover that we are at 2753 meters altitude. We don´t know who to blame for our “loss of breath” our excitement or the altitude….
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Oh well, let´s have our picture taken, each one in his own hemisphere. There you go, you can be in another hemisphere and still… so close!
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We are smiling, we are happy but also nervous. This large and completely empty place makes everything seem very unreal. We cannot believe we´ve made it so far, it would be more easy to believe that rather somebody played a trick on us and put this pole here. But it is true, we are on the equator and from now on we will be traveling in the Southern Hemisphere. Let´s go!
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Quito is not far away. We find it stretching over the valleys as if trying to reach the clouds. As far as I know it lays at 2800 meters altitude, and it´s the second highest capital in the world, after La Paz, Bolivia.
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Ecuador is known for its geographic location but fewer people know that before the Spanish invasion in the Americas these places were part of the Inca Empire and Quito has been for a long time one of the two capitals of the empire (the other one was Cusco).
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We only spend one night in Quito (thank you Felipe for having us) and we don´t have time to explore the old city centre (one of the most well kept historic centers in Latin America). We want to keep heading South. We get out of the city and we are in the mountains, on a 3 lane highway, 3000 meters altitude.
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I don´t know when it has been built, how log it took and how much money. But I feel so sad when I am thinking for how long are we struggling back in Romania to build a (first) highway over the mountains in places that don´t get over 2000 meters. But political changes and corruption make us back home to start over and never finish. But we will finish. I think we are changing for the better and rather sooner than later I do hope we will over pass our own weaknesses. Still I would like to be more efficient. I don´t know how things are in Ecuador, but to me, as an outsider, things seem to be working rather well. And Ecuadorians seem united and active, always at work always building something. And we also see a lot of “patriotic” signs by the side of the road. I wonder if they really have any effect on the population?
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We ride on through an area called “Avenue of the volcanoes” named after the numerous volcanoes that the road winds through, some of them even active.
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Unfortunately weather is not on our side and we can barely see anything. We stop in Baños for the night where we could have been able to see Tungurahua volcano in action, if the sky would have been clear. Unfortunately the clouds are very low and nightfall doesn´t change anything.
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We are pretty sad as we missed a very impressive show. Here´s and ideea of what we could have seen, compliments of Google.
On the second day we take a route that could have allowed us to see the volcano from multiple spots. We only see an agrarian mosaic at it’s base. The volcano peak remains hidden in the clouds.
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We are not very disappointed though. The narrow and windy road seems to be carrying us into another world, an archaic one, where we seem to find our place. From time to time a spot of blue sky sets light over the fields.
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We get lost several time. We have no GPS maps for S.A. and our paper map was not too good. We managed to buy some sort of a route atlas from Quito, but must have been a touristic one, it didn´t seem to be a serious one. But every time we got lost we managed to find locals to ask for directions. These interactions are very dear to us and almost every time I promise myself that for the next trip I will get an open face helmet or at least flip-up helmet.
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It´s lunch time and we are still on the same isolated route, in the mountains. The altimeter tells us we are at 3500 meters. We realize that sometimes we are having trouble breathing although we don´t do too much effort. It´s the lack of oxygen. Our lungs are not yet used to this altitude.
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We didn´t see a village for some time now. So we decide to stop by the side of the road and get into the food “reserve resources”: our last salmon can from Alaska. It had to travel for so long to help us now, in Ecuador.
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The only shelter from the wind (that raises some sort of volcanic ash) is by the side of the road, next to Gunnar. So we take a sit and enjoy our delicious lunch: a fish can, some two days old bread and water. But we are truly happy!
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There was no one around, we were surrounded by agrarian fields and the wind. Volcanoes are watching us from behind the clouds´curtain. My mind is far away. We are at 3500 meters and we can read that on an altimeter we received from friends in Romania 2 years ago. On the road we can listen to music from an mp3 player given by our friends in California. We heat water for tea on a burner received also from friends back home. The fish can is from Alaska and reminds us of the Russian guy (do you remember?). And so on, simple things, thoughts, pieces of advice or just a simple smile, we carry them all with us on this journey, received from people dear to us, old friends or friend that we hope to become old friends, from Europe and from Americas. We are all there together, far away, by the side of the road, sharing a fish can.
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It´s Christmas time tomorrow and we don´t know where we will be. We are not worried though. We might be far away from home, but… we do have a Christmas tree with us! So it cannot be bad!
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Route map for this story:

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Next time… Santa Claus is coming! Does he manage to find us in Ecuador? Stay tuned!

We keep riding but try to stay very alert. I get less and less visibility. Only a few meters in front. It´s raining but I have to keep my visor open because it gets foggy instantly. Andreea says I might as well let it fog inside as you cannot see anything anyway because of the fog outside so….
Our steak and sausages disappear on the side of the road and we are alone again in the rain and fog. This encounter made us happier. We are now both trying to figure out how far our walking bacon will end up.
We get to Cuenca pretty late. And again we have to follow the “ritual” of find an accommodation.
There are many hotels around so we decide to split and start asking. I only find expensive hotels. I am told “es la temporada” Argh… I don´t care it´s high season. I am only passing by. But they do care so I wish them “Merry Christmas” and continue my search. I meet with Andreea and unfortunately she couldn´t find anything in our budget either.
I leave Andreea with the motorcycle and I go check another hostel “round the corner”. They have a room. Even a private one with double bed. Shared bathroom (hostel type), no window and very small. But it´s clean and matches our budget. I´ll go talk with Andreea. I am a little down. Usually we are not very demanding. We sleep where we can. Normally a room like this would be perfect and we would take it in a heart beat. But today… we don´t even get a window on Christmas day?
I go find Andreea and discuss what to do. We don´t really like it but it´s 7 p.m., it´s dark, Christmas Eve and we are with our motorcycle by the side of the road in a cold and wet weather. We will take the room we last found. It’s seems it will be the best we can have for Christmas. Or so we thought!
As we were deciding what to do we hear: “Hello, are you from Romania?” As we turn around we see a good looking gentlemen smiling at us and at Gunnar. He is English and his name is Christopher. He saw the license plate, that´s how he knows we are from Romania. We recognized it because his girlfriend´s name is Codruta and she is from… Romania. We tell him our names and he invites us two blocks down the road to their restaurant. “Come on, Codruta will be thrilled to meet you”. And indeed she is very happy to see us. She wants to know our story and she is even more happy to hear where we are coming from. We are looking around. It´s a select restaurant, candles on each table, people enjoying their dinner and… ROMANIAN carols playing!!!! We soon discover that Codruta insisted on teaching the Ecuadorians some Romanian traditions. We are looking around and cannot believe our eyes. We are dirty and wet from the road. We feel like we don´t belong there, among those well dressed people. But Codruta and Chris don’t let us feel uncomfortable. They are inviting us for dinner. We ask for little time to run to our hostel and change our clothes.
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We go to our hostel and the room with no window but the night is not sad anymore. We put Gunnar in the hallway, take all our luggage upstairs, take a shower and change into normal clothes. We are clean and dry! And… there are people waiting for us in a warm place.
We are going back to the restaurant where Chris and Codruta invite us to dinner. We are happy and talking a lot. We cannot believe what is happening to us and that this place really exists. What are the chances for a British guy with a Romanian girlfriend to approach you on the street in Cuenca, Ecuador on Christmas Eve. That he doesn’t pass you by, but stops to say “Hello” and get to know us. And what are the chances for us to enter a restaurant in Ecuador where Romanian carols are playing and be invited to dinner, Romanian dinner, Romanian dishes, just like home! I have a self imposed rule to not post pictures with food on this blog. But this time I decided to break this rule because…. well, because these are real Romanian “sarmale”, cocked like home, that found their way to our stomach in Ecuador. Ha!
Oh, and if you want to know what “sarmale” are, then… well I guess you have to go either in Ecuador (on Christmas Eve) or come to Romania when we will be around http://micadu.ro/en/wp-includes/imag...icon_smile.gif
I will let you figure out what that night was all about. I can only say that for us was surreal. At the very end we can only say “Thank you” and be greatful for our lives.
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We left the restaurant late in the night and cannot remember how we fell asleep in our small room. I do remember falling asleep thinking that tomorrow is December 25, we don´t have anything to eat and probably all business will be closed tomorrow. But these are tomorrow´s worries. Now we are thinking about the wonder that took place tonight.
In the morning Santa Claus manages to find us here in Ecuador! He brings me chocolate and Andreea gets flowers. We are both very happy! We are going out planning to walk around and hopefully find something to eat. But we are surprised to discover that all the stores are open. Even the market is open and it´s full of people.
We learned a secret in Colombia and it worked so far, if you go to the central market you can have a good and cheap meal with the locals. So we go to the food section of the market and we have another surprise: there are entire pigs waiting for us on the tables. Skilful cooks with huge knives ready to satisfy your culinary needs and serve you whichever piece of meat you want.
We are having a good and cheap meal with many of the locals.
OK, that was the last food-picture on this blog. I promise. Unless we will find another Romanian somewhere down the road… http://micadu.ro/en/wp-includes/imag...icon_smile.gif
And we go out on the street just in time to assist to an impressive religious procession. “Nino viajero”. Many cars dressed up to the “tip of their antennas” (extravagant I would say), music, horses, people dressed up as characters from “biblical scenes”.
This manifestation is one of great tradition here in Cuenca and indeed people who participate go to great lengths to prepare.
Other people are running on the side of the convoy, trying to catch some of the gifts (people from the convoy are throwing bags with sweets, bread and other aliments) that are given by those in the chariots.
On the side, sitting quietly on a door step, an old woman is watching all this show. I wonder what is she thinking about all this. How does this connect with earlier years? Was she once part of the those riding the chariots? We cross our views, making eye contact and she smiles. I do not dare ask her anything. I just smile back.
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We continue our walk and when we get back at the hostel we meet Phill, one one the motorcyclists we shared the Stahlratte with crossing from Panama to Columbia. He got lost in Amazonia and spent Christmas Eve in a city in the jungle, he wanted to get to Cuenca also so we gave him our hostel coordinates. And here we are reunited and ready to hit the road again. The next day we decide to go together to Peru.
The way to Peru is interesting, some rocks on the road, some off-road and there, we are at the border.

Another border crossing. Another queue. While waiting to get our exit stamps out of Ecuador, a lot of people are gathering around the motorcycles. In these parts of the world the “etiquette” is more… permissive. It is not uncommon to have someone straddle your bike to have a picture taken, check out your acceleration, your brakes. The trick is to stay cool about it and understand that this is not seen as something unpolite or aggressive. It is just pure curiosity.
I confess that even knowing this I am still uncomfortable having a stranger on my bike without him asking permission. Luckily, most of the times while I run around for papers at borders, Andreea stays with Gunnar and you do NOT want to mess with the wife while she is guarding the bike http://micadu.ro/en/wp-includes/imag...icon_smile.gif This time she took care of both bikes. So when we are done we try to make our way out of the crowd. Here is Phill trying to “sneak out”
On the Peruvian side all is smooth. The only “hick-up” in my mood is that the mandatory insurance for motorcycles is $35 for one month. The same insurance for cars is only $8. Beyond the big amount of money they ask, that makes you think about how well are the motorcyclists respected in Peru… hmmm. But that we will discover in the next stories. For now, let’s be happy. We are in Peru! And we came here on our motorcycle!

The map of this post:

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Next time we find out why Peru is nicknamed “The Egypt of South America” and we manage to find a place from where we can start in full speed 2013. Stay tuned!

Till the next story, a sneak peak of some traveling we had to do on the Altiplano in the last days. Nice and hot... ahem...:oops2:

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In the desert, passing the last days of 2012: 26-31 December
The landscape changes quickly once we are in Peru. Everything is dry around us.
But the road starts to descend rapidly following the beach line. We are looking for a place to spend the night and among all the 5 stars locations we manage to find a decent person who probably just started the business. We was probably still trying to get clients or else I cannot explain why he gave us such a good price for a bungalow by the beach. Mmmm, first night in Peru the sound of the waves puts us to sleep.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-n...0/IMG_0089.JPG Happy new year, 2013!


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A few days ago, we entered in Argentina, just for a day before making a loop back into Chile and Atacama.

At the boarder there was a sign... so here it is, we have it "in our sights"... well not close yet but hopefully we will get there!

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Where the condors fly!: 1-3 January 2013
2013 came upon us with Peruvian fireworks. I felt that we have to speed up. One year ago, when all this was a just a drawing in our head, I was thinking that we will be in Ushuaia by December 2012 and in 2013 we will be already going up, heading home. Oh well, here´s the reality, January 1, 2013 Lima, Peru shaking hands with the Dakar 2013 competitors and wishing them good luck.
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A steel tower that you climb and from where you can see to of the Nazca lines, plus some weird lines. It´s not all of them but it´s good enough.
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Next time we continue our high altitude ride and have to make a decision: we pass directly into Chile or make a “detour” through Bolivia? Stay tuned!

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Returning home!
For us is not the time yet!

We are in the mountains but still this doesn’t quite feel “usual” for us. Which is a little bit odd as Andreea was born in Meridional Carpathians and I grew up close to Oriental Carpathians back in Romania. But here… strange things one has. At more than 3500 meters altitude, even if it is summer can get cold, real cold and in the same time, if you forget to use sunscreen for a few minutes you are burned. Literally. Here’s the end-of-day result of my burned face with the very sexy (uhmm not) ” motorcycle helmet pattern” .

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To Machi Picchu
 

Cusco is full of them. Banners, posters and lightly bright comercials., all of them offering various trips to Machu Picchu. There are people on the streats, offering as well trips, inviting you to their tourism agency to sit down for “the Machu talk” as we nickenamed it. But, once you start investigating you realize that in fact there aren’t so many options. At least not for the budget minded traveler. And this is because all the Macchu Picchu “universe” is a well greased, excelent functioning tourism machine. From the site admistion fee (a modic US$ 50 per person per day) to accomodation near the site, how to get to the entrance, and even how one can get close to Machu Picchu, everything is well thought of and is working like a clock. A “clock” though that costs a lot.
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And I was mentioning, “getting to the site”. The idea is the following: Machu Picchu is on top of a mountain. In order to start the climb on that mountain you need first (obviously) to get somehow to the buttom of the mountain. There there is a single village Aguas Calientes, and to get to it, one has to take a train or… walk. There is no road and no other way. This should be interesting! So we are in Cusco and we have to make a decision. Well the decision is rather straightforward: we would really like to go to Machu Picchu. But you see, when it time to big spendings, after 6 mounths on the road, no decision is straightforward anymore. Not even the good coffee is not making it easier…
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And the initial inquieries didn’t helped much. A 4-5 days Inca Trail trip (only ~US$1000 for 2) or a train ride (~US$200 plus all the costs with site entry and additionals), or maybe a 7 hours minibus ride, cheapest of the offerings (yet not really cheap) but somehow speding so much time in the bus, driven by a Peruvian driver didn’t appealed to us that much.
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We toss the options back and forward and then we just think, why wouldn’t we skip all the tours, take our bike and ride it as close as possible to Machu Picchu (a village called Sata Teresa) and then make our way on our own to the top. Yeah, let’s do that.
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But in order not to start “head first”, we ask around on AdvRider people who took the same route and also talk to Alex, owner of a bike rental in Cusco, figuring that he will know the road conditions. He tells us that we will have around 20 kilometers of tarmac, over a 4300 mountain pass and then around 30 kilometers of dirt roads in “OK condition”.
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The road is 240 kilometers long out of which the last 30-40 are dirt. But the views until there are spectacular and full of Inca ruins.
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When we asked about the weather Alex told us: “you are in rainy season, the question is not IF it will rain you, but how much and how heavy”. Mrrr, not the best of perspectives but indeed… 50 kilometers under way and we need to stop to put our rain gear. Here we go!
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And this is happening just as we are approaching a mountain pass, at 4300 meters.
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Normally when I am on tarmac I am not worried about rain. I just slow down and mind my way.
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But the thing is… the fog is playing with us as well and there are parts where the tarmac just ends. So you get visibility like this:
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And the road can get like this:
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And there is something else: when you climb to above 4000 meters, you have to wonder if what you see on the tarmac is just water or there is maybe ice? I don’t have a thermometer and I do not know the temperature but it is getting cold. Really cold.
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We get to the top of the pass but unfortunately we cannot see too much because of the clouds. We do see a sign that makes us feel good. It’s not because we did a big thing but because we know that this means we will start descending. Unfortunately we are still in the clouds.
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And when the sun does come out, we feel like in a fairy tale:
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The road descents about 4000 meters taking us into a… tropical climate, just to start the climb again, on the dirt this time.
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Come on, just a little bit more to Santa Teresa. We are slowing down, following the road going up slowly. The river to our left is getting lower and lower. Way too low.
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As it rains a lot during the summer (rainy season) all the rivers are bigger than expected. And there are not too many bridges, you have to cross through the water.
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Ah, actually we did find a bridge. Notice there are no shoulders or railways and the only option to cross if you are on two wheels is to go “straight” on one of the wooden boards for cars, there are some boards missing in the middle.
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Let’s just call it an…. interesting experience and all I could think of while crossing the bridge was that I will have to cross it back again… Scenery is impressive but there is no time for that either. The motorcycle is too heavy for this type of road. But that’s all we have so we have to deal with it.
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We get to Santa Teresa and quickly looking for a place to park our bike. By total chance we end up in the same place that our friends from AdvRider.com were last year. So we are ready for the last leg until Aguas Calients, which can be done either by train or… walking. We manage to sync with the train’s schedule and catch it.
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In Aguas Calientes we meet Phill who was 1 day ahead of us and was already coming down from Machu Picchu. He took the train tours to here and we congratulate him for his choice. It must be a very pretty ride. He wishes us good luck the next day and we are sure we will be meeting somewhere down the road again.
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It’s early morning… and I mean very early! At 5 AM we are up and after a quick breakfast we head out for the buses that take the turists up to Machu Picchu. Although we are quite early the queue is already huge.
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There are people waking up very early just to make sure they get up there while there are still few people in the ruins. We end up in the tenth or eleventh bus but still, when we enter the ruins we manage to get “that classic picture”. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-3...0/DSC_0802.JPG
Classic! But what a classic! This is one of the most impressive places I’ve seen in my life. The sun is also helping a lot as it shines from behind the clouds just in time.
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Yes, Machu Picchu is a place worth seeing. One of the few I could say it “shines” above all the touristy propaganda.
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We look around and we can’t get enough. Seeing is nice but hearing stories about this place would be even better. At the gates there are guids that offer their services. We try to get one but again (maybe because we are foreigners) we get a very “incredible” price. Hmm… that’s not going to work.
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So… instead we approach an organized group and we ask if we can join in and share the costs to +2. They are very nice, say yes and the guide agrees as well so we join the group.
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Things seem to arrange themselves quite nicely. Here we are, in Machu Picchu, reaching it on our own and then having a guide and a fun group to visit the site with.
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After the guided tour is over we remain behind, findin a nice secluded place where we can have lunch.
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Then we have a last look before descending into Aguas Calientes. The place is by now quite full of tourists but somehow, we still have with us the images from the early morning, when you could walk at your heart content through the empty ancient streets.
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One could spend here days, entire days and still have things to discover. But this is true for a lot of places where we’ve been in the last six months. We are happy with the little time we had there, and most grateful that we had this opportunity. I wonder where the road will take us next?
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great photos of machu picchu! it is such an amazing place.
glad you guys enjoyed it!:funmeteryes:

Last echos from Peru: 7 – 10 January 2013
We are out of Machu Picchu but we cannot really say that we really left yet as there is still a long way to “backtrack”. First we need to get back to the motorcycle. We took the train to get to Aguas Calientes but… we “went for a walk” on the way back following the train rails.
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Light at the end of the tunnel? For us it was just the beginning of an 18 kilometers walk.
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Gunnar was waiting for us patiently. While in Santa Teresa, before leaving for Aguas Calientes (Machu Pichhu), we were thinking to spend one night there before going back to Santa Maria and Cusco. But we saw the dark clouds approaching and decided to leave as soon as possible and take advantage of the (still) dry dirt road. So we pack everything quickly, inform our host that we will not spend the night there (and she was very understanding), and off we go.
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It`s the same road I took 2 days ago but somehow it looks different this time, and not only because the backdrop is ow on the right side.
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Unfortunately it starts raining before reaching the asphalt in Santa Maria so we have to ride through the rain on the last portion of gravel. We notice we are running low on gas so we ask where we can find gas that has at least 90 octanes (the two gas stations we see on the road have only 84 octane gas). We were told to go to the “shop”. And they were not joking. The only 90 octane gas in the area came in barrels.
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I tried to look relaxed when the man came to me with the gas bucket. I don`t know if it worked or not.
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We now have enough gas to continue our ride and decide not to go to Cusco anymore but head to Puno, a city close to Titicaca Lake and Bolivian border. Before getting there we still have to cross the same mountain pass again hoping we will be able to see more than the first time. Apparently the we will have clouds and rain this time as well.
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But the sun fought on our side and as we got to the top, the sky seemed to clear more and more. Until…
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All of you riding a motorcycle know the feeling. Now there is more than just the lines of the road, now I can see through the clouds. It`s not just cold and wet but sun, clearing sky and dry gear. While riding the motorcycle, sun coming out after the rain is a true blessing. The state of mind changes completely.
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And there it is, we am not just riding for a destination. We forget that we need to get somewhere today, and just enjoying the ride. And when you are just riding for pleasure you can stop as many times as you want. So we stop in the mountain pass.
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Crossing on the other side of the mountain we discover new places and sights. There is even a small village we didn’t see because of the clouds when we first came here and we even see the road winding down.
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As we reach Puno we realize that our time in Peru is coming to an end. But we still have to make a very important decision: we go to Bolivia or head towards the ocean and go straight to Chile? We need visa for Bolivia. And we don’t really feel ready for it. But if we go straight to Chile we won’t get to see Salar de Uyuni and other special things that Bolivia has to offer. If we choose to go to Bolivia we have a good chance to remain in cold and wet as Bolivia is situated at high altitude also. Even getting to Puno, we were just behind a very serious rain storm, leaving hail marks behind it. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-E...0/DSC_0132.JPG
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On the other hand, although Bolivia is the only country in Latin America that require a visa for Romanians, ironically we still feel attracted by it. So we give in and decide to go there. We have to dare. We will probably be out of our comfort zone here (and not just the thermic one), maybe more than in other countries, but we have to be optimistic.
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OK, so we’ve decided to go, that means that first there is a trip to the Bolivian consulate in Puno in store for us. We are surprised to discover that it is not hard at all: a pile of documents- copies of different documents, our itinerary in Bolivia, hotel reservations (???), proof of yellow fever vaccination, passport format photos- and we have the new visa on our passports.
We were getting ready to say “goodbye” to Peru and we were thinking about our experiences here. So here are our thoughts about Peru. Before crossing to Peru we used to read other bikers’ stories and experiences which were not very pleasant at times and so, based on their stories we were expecting:
- aggressive drivers not paying attention to motorcyclists: indeed they are, but it’s not because they have something against motorcyclists, it’s the way they drive, that’s all they know. I think in Peru you get the driving license if you pass the “impulsive honking” test and “driving as close as you can to the car/ motorcycle on your left/ right/ front”. You have to acknowledge their way of driving and not take it personally. It’s hard not to take it personally, I know, when they get you off the road… but that’s something else.
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- corrupted policemen asking for bribe: we didn’t meet any. The only policeman that stopped us on the way back from Machu Picchu did it because he wanted to know more about the motorcycle. We knew we didn’t do anything illegal so we stopped without worrying about it and so it was, he asked us a few pointless questions (how much does the moto costs, what’s the maximum speed), managing to get Andreea, who was wet and freezing, pretty angry – “this guy doesn’t have anything better to do?”- and then he let us go.
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- rude people who see you as a walking dollar: if you go to touristy place you might end up being treated this way. It’s harder to find relaxed and welcoming people in Peru( Columbia seems so far away) who help you without asking for something in return, but it’s not impossible. Puquio was one of those places. And then we have to remember that the people are so different from country to country, having so diverse backgrounds and history that brought them to the way they are now in the present. So it is better not to judge their approach of handling “tourists” as it is not always a matter of choice but a matter of survival.
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- double or triple prices just because you are a tourist: yes we did have them, maybe more than in other countries. For example, I think since Guatemala we haven’t had a “on the fly” price change of a meager water bottle just due to the way we were dressed or Spanish we spoke. Well, in Peru I got a straight blow when, telling a lady from a store that I know the water price is a “special” one just for me she didn’t even denied: “I can tell by the way you are dressed that you have a lot of money”. Yeah, what can I say? I can only smile and leave the store politely , convincing myself not to judge all Peruvians by particular behavior and making a note to self that if I were to work in the tourism industry, I would treat everyone equally. And we did meet in all the countries we visited wonderful people, honest people, who saw us as human beings and not just an opportunity. And Peru was no exception. One just has to be patient and really want to get to know them.
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But apart from all these points from previous experiences we read about – and I can say there weren’t so bad for us (or we didn’t take them too personally), Peru was an extraordinary experience and we are grateful for having the chance to visit it on our way South! Thank you and goodbye!
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Wondering how Bolivia will be like?
Route map for this story:

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…30! 3rd of February 2013
I know that the next episode was supposed to be The New World IV.13 and the topic should have been Bolivia, but… let’s make a big jump ahead and talk about the day which just ended.
A special day? Normally not really. I usually do not make a big case about the 3rd of Februarys in my life. But this time… it was a special day, beautiful and in the same time strange and also very very hard. One of the hardest days from this trip.
In the morning we wake up in a cold room, with the sound of rain drops outside the window. But, by the time we are out at the bike and loading our stuff, the things already improved: no more rain.
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A day which normally would have been a very lazy one (at least today from all the days of the year, no?) started this time early and in a rush to catch the ferry, the only ferry of the day leaving from Punta Arenas. But hey, the beauty of it is that this is not just a ferry, for us is THE ferry that will take us to Tierra del Fuego.
I still remember when I was working at micadu.ro website almost 1 year ago, I was afraid event to write that we plan to go all the way to Tierra del Fuego. And here we are, just a straight away. We embark with rain again but then, here it is again, the beauty of the day:
“And what are you going to be doing today?” asks Andreea. “I do not know exactly. We should be crossing from Chile to Argentina (again), and then… we’ll see where we will sleep for the night.” So I don;t know much about what’s going to happen, but I do know that right now, I am crossing the Magellan Straight. The one that I was reading, beaing a little boy, in Geography lessons. Feels so unbelievable to be here. Fortunately the waters are calm…
And we also have company. A very playful one.
And this is it, we set foot on Tierra del Fuego. It is happening!
“And on which roads are you going to ride today?” Andreea asks. “I don’t know very well that neither” Our GPS is long broken (yet another thing who gave up on us) and our map is just showing some ripio roads to the boarder. Not much details but hey, the beauty of the day again… here is the amazing scenery:
While still on the ferry, we were told that 60+ miles/hour winds are expected today. At least, a good portion of the road the wind was from the back. So again, we get to marvel the surroundings.
It’s a busy day, but we do have time to stop at the beach as well. You know, the kind of beach that Andreea loves so much. What? no swimming? Let’s blame it on the fact that our bathing suits were not very easily reachable. Hmmm right…
It is so cold that even the boats seem to prefer being out of the water.
Another nice surprise comes from the border customs. The formalities are super rapid and we find ourselves in no time in Argentina. Southern Argentina.
The winds insists on crossing the border with us as well and this time, the road takes us to a different angle. It is bad. It is very bad. I can barely hold the bike and attempting to ride in a straight line is just a joke. It is probably the toughest ride I ever done in my life. But hey, the extreme happiness when you manage to avoid being throned into incoming lane is beyond description. With that, we don’t have any pictures (as Andreea had better things to do… like hold on to me as hard as she could:P) but here is a tree receiving the same treatment from the wind. The picture is very very real:
To stop, there is no place. There is no forest, no hill no nothing to at least remotely protect you. The only thing to do is go on until the nearest town which is some 45 miles away. Nice and slow and eyes on the incoming traffic. We reach Rio Grande and find a nice and warm place to sleep in. After such a day, on this day, no tent for us. From inside, the wind seems a beast, howling angry that we’ve escaped. Inside is nice and peaceful.
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We are in Tierra del Fuego and we’ve passed today through some extraordinary places and… events. But the day is special for other reason: even though we are so far away, your nice thoughts and wishes, still found us here and made me smile. Thank you! Ushuaia is close now…

super excited for you guys! so close now!:clap:

Dear friends, we've made it. End of the road, but for sure we hope not end of the trip! So stick around!

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Great Job!
 

Fantastic reading about your travels. You are a year ahead of me but have given me some great insights of places to visit. Look forward to your next post!

PN

:D:wave::D
HOORAY!!!

Guys, thanks for following along. Sometimes seems a little lonely here but, we are glad that it is not like that :)

Getting back where we left the story, here is the next installment:


First days in Bolivia: 10 – 12 January 2013

After the short step forward from the storyline with the 3rd of February post, it is time to get back to the “present” time of our story and that “present” means the border between Peru and Bolivia.
As I was riding towards the Bolivian border I remembered something the guide at Machu Picchu told me: the Incas had 3 main laws:
-not to lie
-not to steal
-not to be lazy
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The leaders would make sure that, at least, the 3rd law would be obeyed so they tried to keep the Quechua people busy all the time. Why? Simple reason: Inca believed that if people are busy working they won’t have time to plot against their leaders or rebel. It’s ironic how sometimes the ancient wisdom gets lost with the years. Long time after the Inca empire, Peru and Bolivia (old Inca territories) had only a few years of peace and tranquility since gaining their independence from the Spanish. I was reading somewhere that during 200 years after Bolivia gained it`s independence there have been more than 200 government overthrows, riots, military insurrection and other types of armed rebellions. Peru had a little bit more peace but not by much. That makes you wonder…
But let`s get into Bolivia. The border crossing goes smooth and fast. The border we cross it`s not so used, they had the “barrier” on most of the time.
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The Bolivian authorities are very friendly and try to give us all sorts of recommendations. We are almost surprised that we are talking to them for more than 20 minutes and they don`t ask us THE question, a question we got used to hear in Peru and that started almost every conversation we`ve had with a Peruvian: “How much does the motorcycle costs?”. They seem to care a lot about this aspect here. I don`t feel at ease when I am asked how much my motorcycle is worth. I cannot understand in which way knowing how much I payed for Gunnar, in another country, from another continent, will help these guys. We almost leave the border when… the guardian cannot hold it anymore and pops the question: “Buuuut, how much does the motorcycle cost?”. Uh, so we will get that question here to. Hmm we need to find a way to avoid a direct answer to this. But until then, welcome to Bolivia!
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We spent the first Bolivian night in Copacabana. Not the one by the ocean, where Portuguese is spoken but Copacabana by Lake Titicaca, where luckily for us Spanish is spoken (we need to get tarted on our Portuguese lessons).
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There is a holiday feeling about it. Many foreign tourists,
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but even more locals.
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We try to sit aside and watch the crowd assaulting the cruise boats and all the other “attractions” by the lake.
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https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-C...0/DSC_0371.JPGThen we decide to go check out the market, where you can find everything…
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We say “goodbye” to Copacabana the next day and head to La Paz, not being the only ones waking up early.
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As we are still on an island we have to get to a ferry, time for another interesting experience.
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Before getting on one of the wood boats Andreea goes and asks one of the guys how much is a crossing for one motorcycle and two passengers. She is told it`s 10 bolivianos. That`s fine. Let`s do it.
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As we were crossing the lake I watch patiently the two locals spitting sunflower seeds and throwing all sorts of garbage in the lake. Being in a foreign country and a meager tourist, for sure it was not my place to say anything so I just stood there and observed. But I could not help thinking how illogical their gesture was. We saw the same attitude in the Danube Delta, when a local guide we hired for a boat ride, casually threw the beer bottle he just finished (during his working hours) in the Danube. Leaving ethics and other ecology-related arguments aside…. their actions are nonsense from a pure economic point of view as well. The main source of income for this touristy places is… well the land mark that is the attraction for the tourists. So tourists come to these places for the Danube Delta, or Titicaca Lake or the mountains and so on. Simple logic or even selfishness should tell them that they should take good care of the “landmarks” that bring the tourists (and money) to their area. So why on Earth would you work on cutting the branch from underneath your feet by throwing trash everywhere? And then, one day, they end up asking themselves why the tourists aren`t coming anymore to visit their wonderful natural wonders. Hmmm, I should stop watching these two men spitting sunflower seeds in their “golden geese”. Titicaca is an extremely beautiful place. Still.
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Oh well, so here we are on the other side, same gentleman that kept spitting sunflower seeds in the lake the whole “trip”, comes to me asking for 20 bolivianos. “How does that work, it was 10 on the other side and now it`s 20?” Damn inflation… “Here`s 10, that was the deal and I wish you good luck with everything”!
I am walking to my motorcycle that was already off the boat and the man keeps following me, desperately asking for 20 bolivianos. I explain to him once more, in Spanish, that he was the one telling Andreea that the crossing is 10 and there is absolutely no reason for the price to double now. For a few moments he cannot find an argument about the doubling of the price but then he is back: “OK, then give me 15!” Now I am shut, trying to figure out his reasoning.
“No, it will not be 15 either, it will be 10, like you’ve said on the other side. And really now, good bye, have a nice day” And without waiting for another “bargain” I leave Andreea is depressed by this “approach” of the men at the crossing and lake Titicaca seems to follow her mood as it gets darker and rainy.
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Until now, we were running on gasoline from Peru in our tank (90 octanes – European measurement standard). But the tank was getting empty so it was time to go to our first Bolivian gas station. I must admit that I didn`t do my homework regarding this aspect. But I knew that foreigners have to pay more for gas than the locals. So here I am at the first gas station. Silly me, asking them for premium gas. The lady looks at me compassionately. “We only have one type of gas”. “Very well, what`s the octane number?” She is shrugging her shoulders, as if trying to tell me “If I`m telling you we only have one type of gas, why are you asking me more questions? You will anyway have to get this one since there is nothing else”.
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I agree to her unspoken reasoning so I ask her to fill up the tank (praying for that gas to have at least 87 octanes on European standard measurement). Just when I thought that octane number would be my main worry, here come another one. I would have to worry for not being a Bolivian. Of course I am not, I from another place, far far away. But I want to think that I am a nice guy, so could you please help my by giving me some gas so I can be on my way, visiting your wonderful country?. “Well, then I cannot sell you any gas.” “How come?” “There is a different (higher) price for you and I would have to give you a different receipt.” “Aaaaah, Ok… so lets do that?” “I don`t have that type of receipt.” “Oh, really…. and if I am running out of gas?” There goes another useless question from my side. I am looking at the sign displaying the international price, asking myself what is the real reason that stops me from filling up my tank, is it the lack of ”special receipt” or the lack of willingness to do the extra effort to fill the dreaded thing?
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And I feel bad about it, I feel like asking a favor or for pity, and that is not OK. Fortunately we still have enough gas to take us closer to La Paz where we manage to find another gas station, get some gas seasoned with some kind of unfriendly looks, for 3 times the normal price. Get my 2 receipts. One for supporting the gas station and the other for supporting the state. But no problem, the bright side of things is that we can move on. Life is good, even if this time we had to pay triple for that.
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But rules are meant to be obeyed. I know that they have this rules in an attempt to stop trafficking of Bolivian subsidized gasoline to neighboring countries. But I think it would be easy to recognize that this measure should not be applied to tourists, especially when they just want to buy 15 liters of gas for their motorcycle. In Ecuador and Venezuela gas is subsidized but somehow they managed to avoid annoying the visitors with such laws. Anyway, these are just random thoughts while I store my receipts away. We are not here to judge, it is better to just enjoy the places we see and people we meet.
Now our tank is full and we are ready to head towards the capital of Bolivia. Did I say “we were ready”? No, we were not. I don`t know if it was because of the rain, the mud or both, but it seemed to us like we were crossing into a chaotic world, and traffic didn`t seem to obey any rules. Cars coming in and out of the main road without signals, without looking left or right and apparently we are always the ones that did not had the right of passage, as everybody else seemed to just ignore our presence and continued on their path counting on us to stop and give way, even if we were on the main road. And don’t even get me started on the round-abouts http://micadu.ro/en/wp-includes/imag...icon_smile.gif
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Unfinished buildings shine in the mud puddles. Extravagant (wannabe) houses next to humble abodes barely rising out from rubble and garbage.
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We know we are not doing the right thing, for sure there are nice places in La Paz but we decide not to stop here even before reaching the city center. We need a break from “civilization” and “urban”. We follow the road to Oruro and leave the capital city as fast as we can. We regret not spending at least one day here. But we didn`t have anything booked, didn`t know anything about hotels or other details (safe neighborhoods and so on) and we just got “soften up” by the size of the city and the crazy traffic. So one last picture from the steets and of we go towards Oruro.
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Bolivia is a pretty large country. But the geographic location and lack of funds makes the number of paved roads quite low. Actually, there is a list on the internet. And you can count on your fingers the paved roads listed there. This can be a good thing as many of the amazing places in Bolivia remain like that exactly because the only way to get there is on a dirt road. But, we try to stay on the main paved roads. And still get to discover a lot of beautiful places.
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We enjoy Bolivia. We want to enjoy Bolivia. But in order to fully appreciate it, we have to get used very fast to some different approaches and communications patterns. Let`s see if we can adapt.

View Larger Map

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This morning we woke up and there was a lot of fresh snow on the mountains surrounding the city. Ha, and it's supposed to be summer here. We decided to take a "vacation from the vacation" for 10 days and that means no internet, e-mail or phone until February 17.

See you on the other side :)

As I've notice quite a lot of mistakes in my report I got a little bit horrified and promised myself a "re-read" and a proper cleaning up once we will get home. In order for this to function properly I need to have access in a centralized place to all the "text and lyrics".


So from this post onwards I intend to post here the first 2-3 pictures from the story and then provide a link to Micadu website for the rest. I figure it shouldn't be more difficult to read, and you can most definitely go on with the comments here, on this thread, as it is more easy read by everybody than on our website :)






Here we go...


Still trying to get out of Bolivia with the stories. But somehow we are delayed again. This time with a good reason: Salar de Uyuni!

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Salar de Uyuni: 12-14 of January
We had plans to take a detour, starting from La Paz, into the Amazon basin on the (in)famous Death Road. But since we couldn’t find the inter strength to stop in the capital, we find ourselves now on our way to the next “landmark” that we would like to see: Salar de Uyuni. But to get there we first need to head towards Potosi. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-u...0/DSC_0765.JPG
Then, using a newly asphalted highway (just finished in december 2012), we make our way through beautiful landscape.
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We have around 200 kilometers to go and we are really enjoying ourselves. This is what motorcycles are made for!
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Open roads, bright colors, blue skyes! Uhuuu!


The continuation of the story, on micadu, right here!

http://micadu.ro/en/wp-content/theme...&a=t&q=90&zc=1


One day in Argentina: 15-16 January 2013
Leaving Uyuni is not that easy as we have to sneak through the line of cars waiting for their turn at the only gas station in the area. We didn’t manage to figure out if the line was that long because there was no gas at the pump or because the whole village wanted to fuel up at the same hour of the morning.
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We don’t have to join them in line as we have our spare gas canister that will take us out of here, to the next, hopefully uncrowded, gas station. We are heading back the same way we got to Uyuni just that this time it seems drowned in a summer day’s laziness. We get to a small village where we were supposed to find gas. Hmmm… Some other times maybe. Now everyone is enjoying their siesta….
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Read the rest on micadu, right here.

Emanuel, it was very nice too meet you! I wish you all the best with your projects in Rio Gallegos! :)

It was nice to meet you too. Sorry for not helping you with the plug but you fix it.

BTW, did you get my e mail with the requested information?

Hola Manolito! Yeah all was OK, thank you for the advices :) Hope to see you again someday

The New World IV.16 - Atacama

We’ve been in Argentina for only one day and here we are, already going for a heist escape towards Chilean border, across the Jama mountain pass.
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This is not because we were not enjoying Argentina but just because we decided to save it for later and try to see how Atacama desert in Chile is. I must admit I was a little bit anxious to cross Atacama desert, one of the driest places on Earth (annual rain is 1 millimeter).


Read it further on Micadu, here.

The day we’ve visited the Desert Hand in Atacama, was the last day we had our Nikon D3000 photo camera in proper working conditions. Sometime after that stop a stone must have hit it in the display, something that we’ve noticed much later during a stop. The bad news was that that the display was cracked and un-usable anymore. The good news was that the camera retained it’s main function: to take pictures. So let’s be happy about that. We will have to make it without the nice shiny colors
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Up to some a little bigger… (and with more wheels on them http://micadu.ro/en/wp-includes/imag.../icon_razz.gif )

The New World IV.18 – Again in Argentina


By: AlexMD On March 7, 2013 in Blog, Part IV, The New World

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Before crossing back to Argentina, we spent a few days in Valdivia, a small and neat town with a lot of appeal for tourists. All over the place the German influence was very obvious. From the design of the houses to the way people were dressing. But maybe that was accentuated by the fact that we were there when a beer festival was just started. What a coincidence! Hmm it really was a coincidence.Really http://micadu.ro/en/wp-includes/imag...icon_smile.gif
From Valdivia it is just a short ride to the boarder with Argentina. And a very scenic one as well.
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Also a total coincidence, we meet Phill again at the boarder. We knew that we were both in the same area but had no idea about his exact plans to cross in the same day with us. So we were very surprised and happy when we saw him riding to the boarder queue.
As I believe it is wise to take note of good events, we decide to wait for him (first time he was entering Argentina so it took a little bit longer for him to set up all the papers for the bike). But even with this wait, the entry in Argentina was quite smooth and no where near the “complexity level” of say… Central America border crossings. Not even one single photocopy to be made, not even one payment that had to be made at a bank which was closed for lunch, nothing tedious or time consuming. Ha! This is sooo good! Chile, see you down the road in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, glad to be baack!
It seems like yesterday that the 2 VStroms, the newer model and the… good looking model (hehe) were making their way through the Peruvian Andes. It is good to ride again together, this time through a very strange, apocalyptic, landscape.
What happened here? Seems that earlier in 2012 Puyehue Volcano, situated some 93 km away, on the Chilean side, erupted violently covering a huge area in thick volcanic ash. We were riding through these places some 10 months later but still, the effects of the volcano were very obvious all around.
We were heading for Bariloche for the night, which at the time of the eruption was totally shut down but now it was in perfect working conditions and ready to receive tourists. The town left us with a very nice impression. Nice houses, very nice people (we sleep with CouchSurfing for the first time in Argentina) and we find out a lot of interesting things about the area. Also we get introduced to the “blue market” when it comes to dollars and getting cash. Officially the Argentinian Peso is linked to the dollar and the official rate is around 5 pesos for 1 dollar. But because the “Cristina administration” implemented some very strict restrictions for Argentinians and it is very hard for them to buy foreign currency, anyone willing to help with that gets a much better rate of above 7 most of the times. As it turns out, this rate is not even “black” anymore, is somewhere in the middle and they call it “blue rate”, and it is shown, every day, on TV as well. So then the question is, you buy official rate to support the official approach, or you buy at any exchange office at the “true” rate and make life a little bit less expensive while in Argentina. Hmmm existential dilemmas… better let’s ride as we are in fact in a very nice area, Lake District.
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Phill was was riding in front, comes to the rescue and helps push the bike out of the sand as only with throttling it was just more digging and no advancing. Finally we move on and soon we find another tarmac patch and the ride gets smoother and… tilted to right. Here is Phill riding straight, on a straight like an arrow road. I’m thinking that in this pace we will worn out the sides of our tires (at least the right side) without even being on a curvy road. Ha ha!
“Daniel I have a flat tire repair kit, we could try and fix your flat”. No, this is not necessary as he owns an auto repair shop just a few blocks away and he will ride his motorcycle there. OK, then maybe you want to use our air pomp to put some air into your tire? Just for the short ride? Yes, this would be very helpful, let’s do it. I pull Gunnar close to his motorcycle and take out the pump. We start it but strangely enough the tire does not get harder. The air is escaping faster than the pump is able to push it in. We soon discover that in fact he did not had a flat tire but rather a bent rim. Ouch! that will be harder to fix, and there is nothing we can do there on the side of the road. I put my ari pump back and Daniel is telling us that if we want, we could follow him to the auto shop and we could sleep there for the night. If we are not picky and we don’t mind the auto and oil smells. Ha, are you joking? That would be GREAT! Thank you!
So we head of, this time 3 vstroms, in the dark side roads from the town’s periphery.

The New World IV.19 – Flowers of the south


By: AlexMD On March 12, 2013 in Blog, Part IV, The New World

Alaska and British Columbia seem so far far away. It was august. English was all around us and the only bits of Spanish we knew were “no me mates por favor” and “¿Donde Esta el baño?” (second one necessary immediately after if we would ever needed the first one) Andreea had red long hair. We were still at the beginning. Mexico was just a thought of missing heart beat and Argentina a drawing on a map.
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But now, here we are, saying our goodbyes to Daniel in a basic and quite skittish Spanish (but containing words certainly more useful than what we knew before ), learned on the way down here from Mexico. But he understands. And we understand him. “I wish you a good journey and take care, the wind down here is getting worse”. Hmm … worse than it was before? WE sure hope it will not be the case.
Good bye Daniel and gracias! See you next time!
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But why do I remember now about Alaska and British Columbia? Because today we are going again to a glacier, a sight so majestic and often encountered in the northern province and state. This time, the glacier is quite famous because it seems for a long time it was the only glacier in the Americas which did not retreat but on the contrary, it was growing in size. First we need to get to El Calafate, the touristy town some 80 kilometers away from the Perito Moreno glacier.
The road is not without nice encounters.
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We are getting close to El Calafate and things get a little more variety in terms of landscape. Hills, valleys and looming in the distance the Andes. All right. Means that soon we will be there.
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In El Calafate we enter on a triumphant weather with blue sky and white clouds
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Unfortunately we do not feel as triumphant as the weather. Instead, we are seriously beaten by the wind, we have only fumes of petrol in our tanks ( the reserve from the plastic can is long used as well, because winds, consumption is somewhere on the level of a poorly tuned tractor) and in addition Gunnar is behaving a little odd. I do not understand exactly what it is but I hear a strange noise from the transmission. So no chariot entrance with flowers for us thank you very much hehe. But we are happy to see the sign to the town which unfortunately was already taken for a photo session by others so we did not stop. In fact, I think we were more afraid that if we do stop, there will be no gas to start back on. I preferable to “roll” to a gas station.
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In the city, many buildings and trees make the winds rather harmless. Working gas station which releases the much need, bad smelling fluits for our bikes in echance of some swapping of a plastic thingy, so another problem solved we have fuel. But … the problem with noise from my transmission remains. Without a helmet, in calm weather it is very distinct. Pulling to one side and examining the chain reveals the fact that it is very loose. Should not be that loose. Something is not right. Phill has a look as well but the only way to investigate more is to open the plastic cover from the gear shifter. We need a plce to stop. And since El Calafate is a very touristic place, it is a good idea to stay away from the hotels. Camping it is!
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-0...0/P1300001.jpg Photo by Phill!

We take off the shifter cover and the news are not too good. The chain got some tight points. a lot of them, and the front sprocket has shark teethes. And the hole transmission has only 18,000 km, it is much too early to give up. I thought it would get me home. Especially since I’ve been taking care of it, much like the first chain which lasted over 30000 km. But the reality is that I have to find a new chain. And fast.
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We have internet and that was good. After doing some researc, looks like we have 3 possible options: a moto store in Punta Arenas( the direction we were planning to head in the first place) a motorcycle store in Rio Gallegos (300+ km the way we came here) and also Daniel was trying to source something from us back in Pico Truncado. After sending the email asking about the chain there is nothing much to do than to wait for an answer. And better to wait actively by visiting the “Black Little Dog” glacier (Perito Moreno) which is some 80 km away from El Calafate ( 160 round trip). I am in no mood of using my bike because of the chain issue so we go out and source alternative transportation means. Bus?
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There are only 2 buses going to Perito Moreno, one is very early in the morning and one is about 3 hours later. And they have some exorbitant prices! So I guess no bus this time… OK there are other options: Phill’s bike is very much functional and Andreea could ride with him. That leaves me… And I can find another way…
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-2...0/P1300003.jpg Photo courtesy of Phill!

Hitchhiking! It’s been a while since I’ve done this. Let’s see… if I put on my best smile it shouldn’t take too long, should it? 20 minutes. Not too bad I would say. I was fearing that I will never find a ride. Andreea takes a quick photo, not sure if she was taking a photo of me or of the license plate of the SUV…
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But the guys turn out to be very nice and we get to chat in Spanish all the way to the park. Very cool people. From the parking lot they go on to see the glacier, i am waiting for Phill and Andreea to come on the moto. That waiting made me understand my parents a little bit. Boy was I anctious knowing they are riding a motorcycle (the damn things are dangerous you know??) and was so happy to see them arriving safe and sound. At least the view while waiting was not bad at all…
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With the team reunited, we head to the glacier as well
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Now, this was not for sure the first piece of ice we’ve seen. But this was for sure impressive. The size and the fact that one can get so close to it.
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The weather is no very sunny and there is rain over Perito. But that is fin, somehow it feels suitable for it to be so gloomy
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After each step the views are changing and keep you busy
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As for the scale, it gets really into perspective when you see the “little” boat (which was not little at all) that was hauling tourists closer to the ice wall.
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We are glad to be able to bring our national costumes in such a wonderful place as well.
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Behind us there are loud cracking sounds from time to time. The glacier seems to have life inside and big pieces of ice fall in the water and float away.
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It is getting late so it is time to head back. By pure coincidence we met another Romanian in our camping, Florin is also a traveler but his means of transportation is a bicycle. He and his girlfiend are out to explore South America. They are really nice people and we spend a lot of time telling stories. They started their journey in Ushuaia heading North, hoping to reach Ecuador. Compared to what they are doing our journey is a piece of cake, we don`t have to pedal every day to get to our next destination. And, of course, that keeps them in very good shape. You can follow their trip on Facebook, here. We wished them good luck and we look forward to seeing them again in Romania on their way back.
We are enjoying their company and time goes by easily but unfortunately still no news by email about Gunnar`s chain. The guy in Punta Arenas, Chile (the place we wanted to go next after Perito Moreno), who initially answered on the stop now doesn`t answer any of my emails. Daniel is the only one who answers on time letting us know that there is bigger motorcycle store in Rio Gallegos, he bought his Vstrom from there. We might find what we are looking for there. So we decide to go to Rio Gallegos the next morning. Well, depends how you define morning as we have a tent to pack. I don`t know how tidy you are when it comes to camping but usually everything has its proper place in our tent:
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We stop at the gas station outside of town to fuel up and fill up the spare canisters also. A man approches us letting us know that wind is really strong today and we should be careful. And, unfortunately, he was right. Our ride into El Calafate 2 days ago was piece of cake compared to what we have to deal with now.Here is Phill again, leaning in the wrong direction while trying to take a left curve. We followed him closely using the same technique. You must admit that this is an unique experience for a motorcyclist: leaning to the right while heading left….
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It`s not easy at all to ride under these conditions. 100 kilometers later we say “goodbye” to Phill. It`s no use for the three of us to make this big detour so Phill will follow the initial plan and will head for Chile. We assure him that we will be all right and head for Rio Gallegos, that means going back 200 kilometers but we are hoping to find a new chain that will enable us to continue our trip. We knew what road to take but couldn`t figure out where it would take us.
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See you next time!

The New World IV.20 – Tinkering with the bike


By: AlexMD On March 15, 2013 in Blog, Part IV, The New World





Tinkering with the bike: January 31 – February 2nd
We check out Phill and his motorcycle in our rear mirrors and soon he is just a small yellow dot. He is heading for Chile and we have to clatter (blame the chain for that) our way to Rio Gallegos. We have high expectations.
It was Thursday, right before noon and we were optimistic, hoping to find what we need today and maybe even change the chain.
We gloriously (ahem... trink trink trink) arrive in the city. We know the name of the motorcycle store so we decide to stop by and check it out. We stop at a gas station to ask for directions and we get our answer in no time: today, (yap, today of all days) is a holiday, everyone in the district has a day off so everything is closed. Oh, what a joy…. We still go check out the store hoping they would be an exception but all we get is a locked door and iron bars. Ok, we come back tomorrow. Now let´s find a place to sleep.
We knew about a camping outside the city but we weren´t really in a mood to camp. Wind was blowing pretty hard and there was no shelter from it also we needed internet to check our emails from the spare parts news in case this was not going to turn out good . So let´s look for something in the city.
All the hotels are ridiculously expensive and we cannot understand why. Rio Gallegos is not a major touristic attraction, the location is no where near a well known landmark, so why is everything so damn expensive? We keep riding around the town, must be a cheap hotel around here somewhere. As I am waiting for Andreea to come from a hotel (one of so many) I notice a car stopping close to me. A man comes out asking me if I am ok and if I need help. I am telling him that we are fine just that we are looking for a place to sleep, what else can you do on a day when everything is closed. The man tells me that he was having a coffee in an Esso gas station and saw us passing up and down (from one hotel to the other) and thought we might need some help. He told us there is a cheaper hotel close to his house and he can take us there if we want.
Hmm, ok, please do. We get there. It seems to be a hotel. Above the door there is a sign saying H-O-T-E-L. But there is no one there. We ring the bell, knock on the door. Nothing. Our new friend, Oscar, also tries. But he doesn´t get any answer either.
We thank him for the help and prepare for another round of searching. Then Oscar says “My friends, do you enjoy this wind so much? Are you looking for luxury or would you be fine with less than 5 stars?´cause I have an empty attic. There is no furniture but it is warm and it has (only) a soft carpet, you can put your sleeping bags there. Oh, it´s unbelievable, it´s happening again, that smack in the head that says: this is why you travel. No, I don't mean the free accommodation. That, being as good as it is for the budget, is of less importance than the feeling you get meeting open people, that try to help with what they have. People who not only cut short their coffee break to help us but end up inviting us into their home. Well, Oscar, if it is OK with you, your soft carpet will be our luxury place for the night just fine..
Oh, but what about our motorcycle… Oscar finds the solution again “we put it inside, of course”. Now let me explain better. The door to Oscar´s house is right in the alley, you open it and get inside a small room that´s kitchen and living room in the same time, there is a small hallway that goes to his bedroom and the bathroom and a wooden ladder going to the attic. That´s all there is and still this man is so relaxed with having us in his attic and Gunnar in his living room (we had to do some remodelling to have it fit in).
And there we have it, with a little bit of effort I can get Gunnar fit a normal apartment door.
Oscar takes us in his car (too windy for walking) to show us the city and we soon realize that lots of people know him. Many of them say “hello” and ask who are we. He gives them a simple answer “They are from Europe and travelled by motorcycle from Alaska to here”. Then he lowers his voice and adds proudly “I am hosting them. We are Argentinians and we should show them the Argentinian hospitality”.


The second day it´s time to go to the store. Yes, they have a chain, it´s DID (great!) but… it´s non o-ring (hmmm). They have the front sprocket also but they don´t have the rear one. Ok, I will buy what they have. It´s not like I have other options. I am not in a position to bargain about the price either. Having a store in such a remote area you are entitled to set some daring (trying to keep it polite :P) prices I guess. And I do need someone to pun on the chain as that´s something I cannot do by myself in Oscar´s living room. I didn´´t have the proper tool to cut the old chain, adjust the new one or the right tool to change the sprocket. So I needed their help. So I ask them if they can do it… and here comes the "good part": “yes, we can but you need to make an appointment”. “Fine. I can do that. And then we start the job?” “Oh, no, we are free after 3 p.m.” It was 10 a.m. I don´t give up, I try to explain that I am travelling and it would really help me if they could do it faster so I don´t get stuck here another day. Their answer doesn´t change. The service is one street away so I decide to stop by and check it out: there were 3 guys in there and no motorcycles. They had no work. What can I do, I leave the place and come back at 3 p.m. There are good people and… people.
So I go back at 2:30 p.m. Nobody looks at me. It´s past 3 and nothing. I decide to go to the mechanic, telling him I have an appointment. “What appointment? Nobody told me about any appointment.” I show him my receipt, I already paid for the job at 10 a.m. “Oh, but why didn´t you come straight here? I was free the whole day.” Oh, why didn´t I?!?!? But let´s just say it was miscommunication…
He gives a call and it turns out that his boss forgot to inform him about my appointment.No biggy, we can start now.



As I am waiting for my guy to change the chain I see 2 Brazilians stopping by the store. One is on a BMW, the other one on a VStrom.They need an oil change. Guess what? They need an appointment (and again, there was not much going on in the workshop, I was the only external client and there were 3-4 mechanics around). And they have to come tomorrow morning. That´s unbelievable! I am not in a position to judge how others run their business. Probably if your service has created a name for itself, and has certain standards it´s impossible not to act “professional-up-tight-class" about it. But even then, when you have people were from another country, obviously caming a long way, tired and blown away by the weather, you might cut them some slack eh? They got to a “motorcycle friendly” place and all they needed was an oil change to go on with their journey. I don´t know how long it takes to change the oil for a BMW 12000 GS but it´s half an hour for a VStrom. But no, they had to come tomorrow morning for their appointment . So the two motorcyclists have nothing more to say or do but go back to their motorcycles. Don´t know if they came back the second day, a nice summer day.


We left Rio Gallegos contemplating about all that happened to us in such a short time. We cannot be upset about the place. They had what we needed (partially) and that was important. The rest was just a lesson of life. Or of what to do and what not to do when (and if) I will have a "tienda" somewhere in a far corner of the world...


And on top of everything else, here goes Oscar showing us Artentinian hospitality again. Just when we were about to leave he says: “this is the only route to take on your way back North, so you will be stopping here again. You have to stay at my place again. I might be at work or somewhere, so here is the spare key from the house. Take it with you, use it when you are back. Come in and feel at home. Ride safe!”


And here we are heading for Punta Arenas, passing one more time the border into Chile. This time there was a huge line at the border.Stretching outside in cold and wind, it made a good opportunity to discuss "border life" with some Argentinians that lived near by. Due to borders configuration if you want to cross from main land to TIerra del Fuego (Argentinian side), you need to pass through ~200 kilometers of Chile, so that's 2 border crossings and a ferry crossing of Magellan's straight. That's quite tough for people leaving at the border and having family on the other side. They have to do all the border formalities all the time, each time. For me, as a tourist, doing them once suddenly seemed far less a pain in the ass.

We buy a new rear tire in Punta Arenas and take some time to walk around the city. We like the place. We laugh, and walk along in our sandals (apparently the easiest way for South Americans to recognise an European tourist), we make jokes of all kind of things. It´s just the two of us and we are loving it.
It´s interesting how politics is everywhere, even here, so close to the “end of the world”. Apparently Punta Arenas has its own artists and their views are pretty harsh….


The truth must be (as always) somewhere out there, in the middle. We prefer to stay out of it, admire the bright colors and hope for a peaceful future.



As we got back to our hostel we noticed that our room was under a thorough examination process.


Next day was 3rd of February. I was turning 30, but you already know that story.

As you noticed, SM motos is not bike friendly. They don't care if you are argentinian or a foreign motorcycle traveler

The New World IV.21 – Per aspera ad astra


By: AlexMD On March 17, 2013 in Blog, Part IV, The New World


I woke up early. It’s 4th of February, my birthday is gone so no reason to be lazy. After the “fun in the wind” we had yesterday, we are determine to beat it to the start and be long gone before noon. Ushuaia is not that far anyway, just 200 kilometers to go.
And indeed, with a calm weather and sunny sky, the miles are rolling fast and fun. Not long and we see again, after so many days, trees. Well, not just 1 or two but actually a forest in its own rights. And by then the wind is losing even the little power that it had, dissipating between the branches.
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We do a tour of the town. Very nice ,tidy and clean town. We like it. In the port, we see a big cruising ship, just arriving.
We find a good place to eat, side by side with some local workers (but the food was excellent) then we decide to look for the camping. Yeah it is rather cold and yes we have arrived at one of our “destinations” but we feel like our trip is far from being over. So we need to keep an eye on budget. Besides, the camping has a killer view of the hole city. Let’s pitch the tent.
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The next day we wake up early as well. Taking my nose out of the tent I feel the very low temperature. On the mountains all around there is fresh snow. And it is summer here! Uhuu!
We would like very much to hide back in the warmth of our sleeping bags but today we want to travel the last 30 kilometers to the South-West, in the National Park to the end of the road, in Lapataia.
Mathias, the German rider that we’ve met on the ferry from Punta Arenas, is joining us on this last part. Many times I thought my VStrom is too heavy but seeing the masive Super Tenere… I get more happy with our total weight (riders+bike). In all honesty I would want only one thing from that bike: the cardan transmision http://micadu.ro/en/wp-includes/imag...icon_smile.gif Hmm I wonder if Suzuki will ever make a 650 v-twin with cardan transmission http://micadu.ro/en/wp-includes/imag...icon_smile.gif
The road is without tarmac but in very good conditions. We can have fun and also admire the surroundings.
We reach the parking lot and since there is nobody we can slip through the wood pillars, taking our bikes closer.
That’s it! You cannot go further. At least… not without taking a boat to one of the islands that are to the South. Beyond those islands there is the Drake Passage and the South Pole in Antarctica.
Because it was very early, everything is as it should be. No noises, no tourist crowds, no buses, no guides. Nobody around but us. So, with your music in the mp3 player, with the sun rising from beyond the bay, we get close to the sign saying it is “el fin”.
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After that day, we took a long break, without motorcycle, phone, internet and getting far away from “civilization”. A fantastic period during which we felt like in a story book.
Then the return North started, having us heading to Buenos Aires, Paraguay, Iguazu Falls, South of Brazil and Uruguay. But all of these in a chapter that will probably be written from Europe.

In the last 2 days we had... hmm let's just say we had some interesting rides. I will resume the posting with stories starting next week when we will hopefully safe and sound home, with the motorcycle parked and OK.

Until then, I would like to share just a picture, which for us meant a lot.


Yesterday, before the sunset, we came on a narrow country road in front of a small sign. It was bitterly cold and we were half frozen. But we stopped. On the sign nothing fancy. It said: "Cenad" (the boarder town) and an old painted flag, with time marks on it. We are home. We are in Romania. At least for a while, we are not cold anymore.

Fantastic
 

:D :clap:

Great report, looks like you all had a wonderful time, real glad you made it home safe. If you decide to take out through the stans come see us in Kyrgyzstan.
:thumbup1:
Mac

Enjoyed your report and following your adventure....I too attempted this journey...did Alaska from Ontario Canada in June and made it to Belize in September but turned back when my riding buddy had medical problems....so it was great riding along with the two of you.....

Thanks
Bob
hickeryonthemove blog at google:scooter:

Guys, thank you for your (maybe too) kind words. We are finally home, beating the snow with one day. We couldn't beat the low tempertures though and I have to admit that the ride from Munich to Bucharest was one of the coldest from the whole trip, right up there with Alaska or Patagonia (both in summer).

But, here we are, sitting in a comfy chair back home, sipping a big cup of tea and watching the snow flakes falling on the other side of the window. It is time to write the 5th chapter of this trip: The return home. Here we go, I hope you will enjoy it.

The New World V.1- The departure from Tierra del Fuego









The departure from Tierra del Fuego: 17 – 21 February 2013
We are back in Ushuaia after our 11 days break and it was time to leave Tierra del Fuego. But, before that, we had one more thing to do in Ushuaia: hopping on the train from the “End of the world”

The New World V.2 – Good bye, Patagonia!


By: AlexMD On March 30, 2013 in Blog, Part V, The New World





Good bye, Patagonia: 21-22 February 2013
It’s something about this road. Gunnar keeps rolling all this time, so many kilometers. And we still want to ride. Hm, I am not bored at all. Andreea… takes some naps in the back from time to time. Sometimes I agree with her. What else can you do when you are sitting in the back of a motorcycle and all you can see is this:
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There is something magic here, in this vast Patagonian land. Sky seems closer to the ground here. And it seems to be the stage for a magnificent movie. Sky is never the same, it’s always changing even when you stop. You need to be patient. An invisible hand keeps drawing, sometimes with a child’s innocence, sometimes angry as a grownup who seems to know nothing but frowning.
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We left Rio Gallegos without any surprises or complications. We said goodbye to Oscar and remembered to give him back the spare key. We also said goodbye to Manolito, a guy we met just one day before who (also) impressed us with his optimism and desire to help people. And that was it. We are traveling for hours through pampas and clouds, “admiring” what you can see in the photos above.
It’s cold outside, but that’s no surprise for us. We forgot how warm weather feels like. “The great outdoors” seem to never have changed since the creation of the world: cold, harsh and ever present wind. Everyone traveling on this road can only accept and adapt to these conditions.
Time seem to have a different pace here. Settlements are scarce and far away from one another. We lost track of time and it didn’t seem to matter. When we decide to take a break we realize we are next to a place where time seems to be standing still. Our engine was the only source of noise so I turn it off to enjoy the silence. Over the fence there is a pond that’s apparently the main attraction of the area for all the animals.
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Some bird decides to break the silence to call for one of its mates. Then some flamingoes agree to change the spot and as they set sails they wake up everyone.

__________________

The New World V.3 – Towards the Capital!


By: AlexMD On April 2, 2013 in Blog, Part V, The New World

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I feel that this journey is not just a “cruise” through space, shifting from A to B and seeing places. Many times it´s about discovering (sometimes superficially and other times on a deeper lever) people. People you meet day by day. Always different personalities. Always different lives. You take with you, faces, gestures and words, small fragments that follow you in your journey and you pass them forward to the people you meet onwards. Some of them you might never meet again. But that´s the least important. There is a connection somewhere and you know there is no need for other words or explanations.
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Ehee… you see, riding the motorcycle gives you enough time, plenty of time for thoughts, lie above and many others. And I feel that is one of the best part about traveling on a motorcycle. Somehow the open road, the scenery, the sound of the engine, all of this invites you to use your brain, to search, to discover, in your “interior”, as much as you discover by traveling, in the “exterior”. W
e were heading for Pico Truncado, where Daniel, our “old” friend, was waiting for us. He helped us alot the first time we were in the area and now he was waiting for us with a new transmission set for Gunnar. This time we get to meet his family, open and optimistic people just like him. We felt welcomed and it felt really good.
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Ah and of course, we “had to” try the Argentinian stake (asado). Just like it´s traditional for the Finns to have a sauna in the house (or close to it), Argentinians must have their barbeque always ready for action.
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This time I’ll keep my promise and I won´t share any food pictures, although that stake deserved all the credits. Well or the cook did. The stake was incredible, not less than a culinary dream came true http://micadu.ro/en/wp-includes/imag...icon_smile.gif
The next day we were planning to stop dreaming and get back on the road. Or so we thought.Well, it’s one thing what we want and another what the weather has in store. Daniel told us that it almost never rains in Pico Truncado. I mean, people can count the rainy days during the year. And even if it is raining it is never heavy. Usually. But not this time. This time they had to close some streets because of flooding.
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Great! Actually, I don´t think we could have made a run for it and we would have been fine, but our hosts decided that there was no way we could get out of the house on this weather and on their watch, on this weather when not even dogs should not be kept outside.
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So, after we spent 2 extra days in Tierra del Fuego because of the wind, this time we are “stuck” here because of the rain. It´s not actually a problem, good talks, excellent asado and grandma-made empanadas make for a nice Sunday spent in house. And sun comes out fast in such company so the second day we are ready to hit the road, not before receiving another amazing gesture of good faith from Daniel: when talking about Buenos Aires and the traffic there, Danie knew that our GPS was broken for some time now, so he wants to make sure we don´t get lost in the big city. So, he wants to give us his GPS for the remaining of our trip in Argentina. “It´s OK, you can send it back with a bus before you leave Argentina.” We were speechless. What´s there to say other than a big thank you. With Daniel’s GPS with us it´s less likely we get lost (ya, right) so back in the saddle. Goodbye, lovely family!
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Buenos Aires is getting closer. We are less than 1500 kilometers closer to the capital city of Argentina.
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Before reaching Buenos Aires we spent two nights in random but interesting places. First one, a resort by the Atlantic Ocean (I always loved the resorts off season) with colored buildings and interesting messages.
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The other one was Azul, a small city 300 kilometers away from Buenos Aires, in a place called “La Posta de viajero“. People there own motorcycles and are passionate about motorcycle travel so they decided to offer a place to camp for the other travelers. And now it´s not just a place to camp in a yard full of rabbits. It is so much more.
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You find good advice, someone to listen, tools if you need to make any repairs and there is a big chance to meet other fellow travelers. There is no price list or bookings, everything is based on donations. There is a box where you leave as much as you want if you want and if you can. Jorge, the owner, convinced us to stay one more day, what was the hurry anyway? Why hurry to get to a big city when you can camp and get visitors like this:
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Jorge has a tradition: he puts up the flags of the visitors he has. One week ago he even had the Union Jack flag (England) up. That night, there were 3 flags up.
It´s getting harder to leave this place and even harder to pack, we have a long debate on whether or not Gunnar should take an extra passenger. Jorge has nothing against it but it´s hard to convince Andreea that we cannot take our new friend: we don´t have a bunny helmet! http://micadu.ro/en/wp-includes/imag...icon_smile.gif

The New World V.4 – A small detour


By: AlexMD On April 7, 2013 in Blog, Part V, The New World


In Buenos Aires we had to face an important decision: how to send the motorcycle back home?
We already had our plane tickets from Sao Paolo to Europe in two weeks. It would have been a good option to ship the motorcycle from Sao Paolo also, or maybe Rio, it was not that far. This would be around 3000 km, the last kilometers of our trip. We would get there, leave the motorcycle in cargo and prepare to fly home.
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But… it´s not as easy as it seems. I sent some emails to shipping agents (you can only arrange cargo shipping through them) but the ones in Brazil didn´t give me any good news: lots of bureaucracy at customs, complex shipping process and lots of “uncertainties”. Here´s how one of the conversations with a Brazilian agent went:
“You will need to prepare . And the process will take from 3 to 14 days.” “Well… I am in Buenos Aires now, and I have a plane from Sao Paolo to Munich in 14 days. It would help me alot to know how long it will take because it´s a pretty big difference from 3 to 14 days and we might not catch our plane under these circumstances.” “We are sorry but we cannot tell for sure. It´s all up to the authorities here.”
I decide to contact Bogdan, who shipped my motorcycle from Otopeni to Montreal and his investigations lead to the same result. This is not good at all. So change of plans: we send the motorcycle from Buenos Aires (where things seemed to be a lot more easier) and then see how we can get to Sao Paolo to “catch” our flight to Munich.
In this case what shall we do the next 2 weeks? There is no use to stay in Buenos Aires (especially since it is not a cheap town). Let´s go visit something. A 10 days “detour” that includes Iguazu falls, a little bit of Paraguay, South of Brazil and Uruguay. Not bad, ha? So, this is how it looks like on the map. Instead of 3000 km to Sao Paolo, we have more than 3500 to… well, basically back to starting point. http://micadu.ro/en/wp-includes/imag...icon_smile.gif

Guys, sorry for the slow updates. Getting back to "real life" is not always very cheerful or inspiring... :( But let's hope it will turn better and better :)

Until then, here is a new episode, I hope you'll enjoy the fall...s :)


The New World V.5 – Iguazu Falls


By: AlexMD On April 13, 2013 in Blog, Part V, The New World





We awake being aware that we are in close proximity of two “landmarks”. Iguazu Falls, the second in the world based on water volume and Itaipu Dam, the world’s biggest electricity generating hydro plant. In other words, majesty of nature and greatness built by human race. The plan for today is to visit the natural wonder, leaving the dam for the next one. The waterfall is only a few miles away from where we are. But ’till we wake up, ’till we have some breakfast, here they are, rain drops singing on the roof. And by the sounds of it, I am quite sure that you don’t even have to move from the house to see a “waterfall”. It is enough to pull the window curtains aside. Ta daaaa!
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Like a bad prophecy, the boat was “parked” next to our window. Uh, I do hope I won’t have to change my name to Noe and gather the animals….
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As the situation in the backyard was not optimistic, I am thinking to go to the front entrance, maybe there there will be at least a hint of blue skies? No chance. One guy who wake up in the morning (when it was not raining) was having lots of fun now on a scooter driving down a flooded road. Myeah, seems there can be good aspects of sleeping in. Here’s today’s lesson, one that Andreea applied as often as she could during this trip: sleep late http://micadu.ro/en/wp-includes/imag...icon_smile.gif
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We wait for the rain to stop, or at least to pretend to be stopped, based on principle: “at least when I get out of the house I want not to get wet. After that… not important anymore”. Around 11 AM things seem to be in a stand still with St Peter and we quickly go for Plan B. Plan B was big, sluggish and had many passengers. Plan B was of course, a bus! Which was our way to say that “today we are not motorcyclists, today we are tourists” http://micadu.ro/en/wp-includes/imag...icon_smile.gif
We arrive in the national park and everything goes smoothly. Give some money for the tickets (n times more expensive for foreigners than for locals, but it’s OK, we’re already used to that, we had “trainings” in Peru and Bolivia about that) and get in return a smile from the lady at the counter, a map of the park and good wishes. Good. Let’s go to the train station. Yes, the park has its own train that takes you between different main points where the trails start to the falls. The thing is serious, they have more than one platform, signs, and even a schedule and a “display” with the next departure time.
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The colorful birds are found everywhere around, careful not to miss bread crumbs left by tourists.
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The 2 o’clock (sharp) train leadsus through dense vegetation …
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… among thousands of butterflies playing in the sun. I remember Mexico and “Mariposa road” there. Seems like yesterday. Hard to believe that 5 months have passed since then… For us it is still the same summer, the same… fun!
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We are awaken from our Mexican dreams by the train brakes. I arrived. From here on, a one-kilometer metal walkway will take us to the edge. But at first, all is calm, all is normal.
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Pressing on, there are signs explaining the “rules”. Humans on one trail, the snakes on the other. Hmm what about the humans who behave like snakes? But enough with that…
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Waters beneath us continue to be lazy, giving no hint that soon it will be totally different. Even the birds seem bored in the drowsy summer heat.
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After a while, a thick rumble is distinguishable. The eyes see only a vague steam, rising from what seems to look a calm river.
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But appearances can be deceiving. That’s not steam and that’s NOT a calm river overthere. Before getting here, we red some stuff about Iguazu Falls. The name means “big water” in Guarani dialect, it is the second greatest water debit in the world, but because the river here has a very wide bend, the water falls are not a continuous curtain (as Victoria in Africa) but small islands divide the water in over 200 “smaller” waterfalls with heights between 60 and 80 meters.
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Largest such waterfall, where the water concentrates with high speeds is called by the Spanish “Garganta del Diablo I ” (Devil’s Throat) and there, on the edge of his ridge was our destination. So we knew a few dry things, read in advance, but nothing prepared us for what was waiting. Like Andreea seems to say, “Dear God, what’s here?”
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We are at the point where the river waters flow impetuously, hit the rocks hard only to fall more than 80 meters below.
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Thousands cubic meters of water, launching over the edge, drumming on the stubborn rocks with incredible strength. And the walkway takes you so close, you can feel the waters vibrate inside you. I never felt more “on the brink” of something than there.
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And the name of the place seems appropriate as well. Water has a hellish howl and gray clouds in the sky accentuate the gloomy feeling. I remember the Niagara Falls, which we saw at the beginning of our trip. There the waters seemed more calm and beautiful summer sun and rainbow seemed to fill bohemian picture. Here, however, one is so close to the harsh and unforgiving waters that it is hard to compose in your mind a peaceful picture. At least not from this point of view.
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And of course, everything gets wet almost instantly around.
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The waters who take their fall here, continue their flow between a great procession, of white water and green vegetation, like in a huge Cathedral. Somewhere in that direction lies their “salvation”, somewhere there lies the blue Atlantic Ocean.
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I realize that it is hard to leave that place. We linger more than other tourists and I note something strange. Beautiful, no doubt, but somehow (and it is hard to explain) the place is “heavy”, after a while seems like it sits on your shoulders? Eventually we move away slowly, in search of more peaceful places, which are not hard to find, down the metal paths invaded by vegetation (metal and green, what a strange combination).
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And the waterfall is not the only attraction in Iguazu National Park. If you’re careful you can find many animals. Just be careful of what the green canopy might hide.
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What could it be, what could it be? Yes! it is a Tucan bird! Ohoo like in the cartoons from the childhood!
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If Tucan birds are quite shy and generally stay away from people, other animals are not afraid at all to look for food, aggressively if necessary, on your path. Mind your step!
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All these movements of troops on the ground, are carefully kept under observation from high above, in the control tower.
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And more playful than all, butterflies remain the “kids” of the house, flying all around and “landing” on everything and everyone. Even on travelers.
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In our walk, the green canopy opens occasionally, like a curtain of a show, allowing a sneak peak to the show that unfolds beyond.
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Other and other waterfalls, all from the same great concert.
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Slowly the night is approaching and we have to head towards the exit of the park. I spent here not even a full day but somehow it seams like years. And the funny thing is, I feel I could spend years more. But, it is time to move on. We leave, but we take a part of Iguazu with us. Farewell!
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The New World V.6 – Itaipu


By: AlexMD On April 18, 2013 in Blog, Part V, The New World





We are at the “crossroads” of 3 countries: top end of Argentina, buttom end of Brazil and a strip of Paraguay and 2 majestic rivers: Parana, the big river and Iguazu, the one giving birth to the waterfall we just visited a day before. We are in a good spot so we decide to take advantage of our position and visit Paraguay, mostly for Itaipu Dam, one of the largest in the world. To get to Iaipu we have to leave Puerto de Iguazu (Argentina), cross into Brazil through Foz do Iguazu and then cross the Parana river into Paraguay (Ciudad del Este).
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The plan was to get back to Puerto Iguazu (Argentina) in the same day so we decided not to involve our motorcycle in this visit hence not worrying about temporary import papers for both Brazil and Paraguay. So here we are back to public transportation. We are starting to like riding the bus.
The bus we take from Puerto Iguazu (Argentina) stops at the border check point for everyone on the bus to get their exit stamp for Argentina. I am pretty nervous since, in theory, I entered Argentina on my motorcycle and now I was planning to leave it by bus (luckily nobody checked). Ok, so we have our exit stamp for Argentina, now where do we get the entry stamp for Brazil? I asked the lady at the border crossing and she smiles at me informing me that if I plan to stay a couple of days in Brazil and get back into Argentina using the same border there is no need for customs process. Seriously? Mmmm, fine… I find it hard to believe but if the official is saying it, it should be true. So everyone is back in the bus and we ride smoothly into Brazil without any other stops at customs.
We get off the bus at the final stop, very close to the “bridge of friendship” between Brazil and Paraguay. Before reaching the bridge we have to pass the border crossing office for exiting Brazil.
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We are again nervous and confused, what if an official wants to put the exit stamp on our passport? He will be looking for the entry stamp… and it will take him forever. We take a break to think things over. This is very serious for us, others don´t seem to care about it and they are all passing us by carrying large bags, cardboards, cases, chests, handbags and many other items. They are all passing by the officials and none of them bother to stop.Well, if they are doing it I can´t see why we cannot. We don´t have anything to carry so we stick our hands in our pockets and walk like we own the place. The guards might not care about us but we still feel like we are part of a James Bond movie. Unlike 007 we don´t have an Aston Martin or other fancy vehicle so we cross the bridge by foot. Pretty crowded I would say.
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Same thing happening on the Paraguayan side: people passing by the customs building without bothering to stop and get a stamp, not to mention to declare whatever they were carrying in all the big boxes. This time I insist on doing things “officially” so we venture into the building. In the beginning the people behind the desk don´t understand exactly why would we bother them but finally they get that we would like to hmmm, enter the country. They stamp our passports without asking any questions, probably (from the look on their faces) thinking we want the stamp as a souvenir. There is a tourist information office in the same building, they have maps and everything and a pretty lady who helps us find the right means to reach Itaipu. The fast and easy option was to take a cab. But for us that meant caging ourselves in a yellow cell and only get glimpses of the life here. We choose instead the classic (by now) method: local bus so that we could take in as much as possible of Paraguay in our short visit there. The bus station was not that close so we had to walk a few kilometers through Ciudad del Este. What can I tell you about this city… it´s all a big market place. One market stand after the other, small store, large store, tiny stores.
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There´s not a single thing you cannot find here, from tires to plasma TVs, from shoes to dental equipment. Of course you receipts or other “papers” are only for newbes… and these guys are professionals. And it is hard to determine exactly the work of some people as we see a lot of them just sitting in their chairs by the side of the road. They don´t seem to be selling anything and if they are they are not very convincing. We were there at around 11 AM and they didn’t seem to have any pressing things to get done. Oh, the sweet relaxation!
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But not everybody has the luxury of relaxing. As it’s a very hot climate there, somebody has to make sure that all the ACs are working properly. And I do meen… ALL of them. Hmmm, I wonder if there is somewhere a diagram or something, to show which box is for whom and what. I doubt it.
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We find the bus as well or better said it finds us. We were just arriving in what we were not so sure it is the bus station when an old blue thing stops with squeaking sounds near the side of the road and a guys speaking very fast is pushing us in. We barely have time to ask if this is indeed the bus to Itaipu and we get only a hasty “si si” before we are inside. Suddenly I feel transported in the 80s in one of the old buses that used to run in Romania. Suddelntly I have that warm feeling from childhood spent in the countryside, when we used to hitchhike a ride with the local bus to the town to get ice-cream or to see a movie.
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After a while the bus stops and deposits us on the side of the road, at some crossing. From here the Hydro-plant is not far. Gracias amigos!
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We look around, trying to determine the right way to walk and we discover more people doing hard work. Chairs all over the place, with nice music, some food and some drinks. Ah… the life!
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We find the hydro complex and we head to the tourist building. The free tour will consist of a 30 minutes movie, followed by a live tour of the dam, in a bus. The movie was quite educative and then we hop in the bus, looking forward to be amazed. First we pass near big transformation stations.
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… and then we reach a point from where you have a wide view of the hole complex, with the huge spillways in the foreground and the long dam in the background.
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Itaipu is not the biggest dam in the world. Also it is not the tallest nor the widest. But it has the first place in a very important area: it holds the record of anual generated electricity with over 90 TWh. To put things into perspective Hoover dam generates annually 4.2 TWh.
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The 20 installed turbines are divided equally, 10 to Brazil and 10 to Paraguay. But as Paraguay requires for internal use only 2 of the 10 turbines, the remaining 8 are “lend” to Brazil. So huge power-lines are crossing the river, transporting the current to Sao Paolo area.
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With the output of the 2 turbines Paraguay covers around 90% of the TOTAL electricity needs. On the other hand, even with the extra help of the 8 turbines (so 18 in total), Brazil gets only 15% of the needed electicity from Itaipu. Speaking of David and Goliath…
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The guide gives us more interesting information about the construction of the dam. For example, the project was a joint venture between Paraguay and Brazil, involving bi-national teams that handled the project. There were no external companies, no big corporations from outside and multinational organizations (with the usual over-pricing, passed deadlines and such). While this might have caused some doubts regarding the quality or the speed of constructions, it turned out that the local guys did quite a good job and very fast as well. At it’s peak rate of raising the dam, the pace was equivalent with finishing a 20 stories tall concrete building…every 55 minutes!
There were though also controversial aspects (cleverly overlooked by our guide) mainly related to the destruction of the ecosystems in the area where the artificial lake was created. For example the Guaira waterfalls, one of the biggest in the world before 1982, disappeared entirely in the artificial lake. With an height of over 110 meters (Iguazu is 82) and with a flow rate of over 13000 cubic meters per second (Iguazu has 1700), Guaiara must have been an impressive sight. But, for us, the ones that did not get to see it, we have only the pictures remaining.
Our visit ends soon, maybe too soon. We would have loved to get the chance to enter inside one of the turbines. But it is time to go and our general conclusion was that, despite the controversy, Itaipu remains a successful and useful project.
For us, it is time to get back in Argentina and reunite with Gunnar. Starting tomorrow we will enter again Brazil, this time doing it properly: riding our on bike and doing all the paperwork. We promise!

I'm back. Sorry for the long wait guys. But I am back to "9to6 + overtime" working schedule and at least during this period not much time for anything else.

But let's not get sad. Here we go, episode V.7, and 2 more to go until the end.

The New World V.7 – Sol e chuva em Brasil


By: AlexMD On April 30, 2013 in Part V, The New World



“If only I could understand what she is saying…” this lady that keeps trying to teach me Portuguese but has to fight all this outside noise to get to my ears. We were getting closer to the Brazilian border, by motorcycle this time and we were trying to speed up the process of learning Portuguese. The audiobooks we have with us don´t really help. We need more time and a quiet place, the saddle of a motorcycle is not the most comfortable place to learn, especially when the wind blows heavily and you can barely hear the voice in the helmet.

But we still want to be prepared for Brazil. We will be riding the South of Brazil and people also speak Spanish in the South, we now speak Spanish pretty well but it doesn´t make us feel any better. We really want to speak Portuguese and do it correctly. Out of respect for Brazilians and for this beautiful language we don´t just want to rely on Spanish and not even give a chance to Portuguese.
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Eheee, since the rain didn´t seem to stop we decide to leave Cruz Alta hoping to get out of this persistent cloud.
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Hermenegildo or Balneario do Hermenegildo. We are again lucky to meet extraordinary people. We got there looking for a place to stay and we found friends again. Gunnar is safe in the parking, our dusty clothes are off, it´s time to spend one last day (on this journey) on a beach by the Atlantic Ocean. It´s just the two of us here. And it feels so good!

The New World V.8 – Gunnar takes off!


By: AlexMD On May 3, 2013 in Blog, Part V, The New World





Gunnar takes off! – 9 – 18 March 2013
Hmm yes, we were very close to our flight across the ocean, back to Europe. As we were laying on the deserted beach in the South of Brazil we found it very hard to think of that flight.
Come on, wake up! Stand up the wet sand and…. hmm, let´s just lay here for a while. I realize now that we didn´t have a deadline for months. No specific destination, no exact time to be in one place. And now, in 3 days, on Thursday, we have to be back in Buenos Aires to drop Gunnar off at the airport.
Then we have to find a way and get to Sao Paolo until Monday (3 more days) where we are supposed to board our Lufthansa plane that we bought tickets for some time ago.
And that´s a deadline we don´t want to skip. We already changed our flight date from 4th of February to 18th of March. Let´s try to make it. I am surprised of how calm I am thinking of all these as in the remaining days we have to cross a country (Uruguay), around 3 frontiers (2 by motorcycle), once we get to Buenos Aires, export the motorcycle out of Argentina to Europe and arrange transportation then find a way for us to get to Sao Paolo. Simple… http://micadu.ro/en/wp-includes/imag...icon_smile.gif We had a plan but we weren´t the only ones involved, it was not only up to is to succeed, we could only pray not to get any unpredictable situations.
Come on… we have to go now. Say “goodbye” to our hosts, actually our friends in Hermenegildo. Will we ever see each other again?
Uruguay border city, Chuy, is only 5 kilometers South. I am heading for the border control building as Andreea is laying in the sun for the morning sunbath. As I am walking towards the building I realize that Uruguay is the last (new) country of this journey. We counted 18 ever since we started this journey in Canada and for sure more than we dreamt of a year ago when we were planning all this.
Unfortunately we didn´t have too much time to explore Uruguay. We only had two or three days according to how soon we wanted to get to Buenos Aires. We were sorry we couldn´t stay longer, from what we saw from the motorcycle Uruguay has some beautiful places that we really wanted to explore and we heard the people and traditions are wonderful also. And the space is vast. This country has only 3 million inhabitants. There are 7 cows per inhabitant. http://micadu.ro/en/wp-includes/imag...icon_smile.gif

And then, we were back home...

The New World V.9 – The end!


By: AlexMD On May 9, 2013 in Part V, The New World





The end! 19 – 24 March 2013
I didn´t use the plane very often, at least not on long distances, but I did enjoyed it every time. And on such flights, like the one I was on, there comes a moment, usually at night, when it´s all quiet. Flight attendants stop pushing the food carts, passengers stop wandering back and forth, oh, even the children (there are always children in the plane) are quiet now. You are in between dream and reality with the monotonous sound of the turbines counting your way to the land of dreams. Before falling asleep, all cramped in my economy class chair, I start thinking about where we´ve started this journey and where we go back to. This plane is not an Airbus, it´s the Summer Night´s plane, our summer lasted 8 months and a half. I pull on the blanket (why do all these flights have the AC on max all the time) with a big smile on my face and I fall asleep.
I know what´s the deal with the AC. At least for this flight I do, the captain wanted to prepare us for the weather in Europe for end of March. We barely take a few steps down the gate corridor in Munich airport and both decide we want to go back. The weather here is not very inviting, sleet and cold. We look at all the people coming out of the plane with warm jackets, boots and hats. We have sandals and summer trousers, all the warm clothes are on the motorcycle and Gunnar is in the cargo terminal that´s not even in this airport terminal, we need to take the subway there. We make our way out of the airport trying to mingle with the “locals” but that is pretty hard to do when we look like we are still stuck in another story, the one we left behind in South America. We managed not to turn into ice statues before reaching Lufthansa Cargo where we got warm instantly hearing that Gunnar is there.
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Lufthansa cargo employees and the customs officials made our day, we can only say good things about them. They were very efficient, did their job very professional and after less than one hour we were all reunited (including the warm clothes we left on the pallet, remember we could put all we wanted as long as we kept it to 500 kg).
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-3...eativenit2.jpg Foto: Eugen Neacsu

The New World V.10 – Statistics!


By: AlexMD On May 14, 2013 in Blog, Part V, The New World



From time to time I get some “technical” questions about our trip. How many kilometers, how many days, how many problems and so on (yap, the question about money came up also). So, I thought I should put together some broad “statistics”. My purpose is not to give exact figures (they would never be of any help to anyone) but general ideas that might be useful for a future planning of a similar trip.
I. The route:
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-b.../s640/10_6.jpg

• 18 countries
• 3 continents
• ~57 000 kilometers
• ~285 days on the road

This trip can be done in less time and we could have done it but we already felt like we were in a hurry. We would have wanted to have more time, to slow down even more in some areas. This kind of trip can be a continuous “struggle” between the desire to spend more time in an inviting place and the calling to get back on the road, to discover what’s after the next curve, to meet more people and see more places.
II. About the motorcycle:

• Although I was not the first owner, it gained our trust completely with its ability to function without any problems
• Consumables we changed along the way:
  • 10 oil filters
  • 2 air filters
  • 29 liters of oil
  • 3 front tires, 5 rear tires (due to some unforeseen event)
  • 1 low beam light bulb
  • 2 front sprockets, 2 rear sprockets
  • 4 chains (1 Non O-Ring, the only kind we could find in Patagonia)

No major technical issue. The only problems we had were independent of the motorcycle, there were collateral: one ugly flat tire in Mexico and unexpected tire wear out in Patagonia.
Mileage: between 4,2 liters/100 km and 5,4 liters/100 km.
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I am not experienced with motorcycles. I only had one before Gunnar and rode a few others for a short while. But as far as I noticed the VStrom was the best choice for us given the type of travel we had. Big enough for traveling with a passenger and luggage but small enough to fit some places we would have find it harder to get to otherwise. The mileage was decent most of the times, around 4,5 liters/100 km and the engine never complained about the type of gas we used (we had some cases when we weren’t sure about the type of gas we fed to Gunnar).
And the most important thing of all: the motorcycle never broke down. Never. Nothing happened. We made sure we did the oil change and other consumables on time and that’s all we did. It started each morning without problems. And it took us back home safe and sound.
And I hope I will never have to sell it and it will take us without problems to other great places onwards.
III. What about money?
Well, that is pretty easy: we started this trip without material help from anyone and Andreea and I decided to travel as long as we are enjoying it and money allows it.
We didn’t make a sum up but we tried to stick to 50$ per day. This means gas, food, accommodation and others.
There were days when we spent more (a lot more) and others when we spent less. All in all I think we got pretty close to 50$/day.
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Stepping aside from the money matter I would like to state that we would never have gotten so far without the help of our friends who stood by us along the way. Friends in Romania who helped us with different items (sleeping pads, primus, and others) and moral support and wonderful people we’ve met along the way, who started by hosting us and ended up as friends. We might not have had money sponsorship for this trip but as it were it was really better like that, it’s hard to find real friends if you stay in 5 stars hotel.
That’s it for now. If I forget something, leave a comment.

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