Chasing motorcycle adventure in Latin America
In the plains of the horizons seem to flee. The flames are gold, white clouds impossible. We leave the bike race. Suddenly, the view changes. Rose to lead the bike over the horizon, a rider flails through the air 10 feet above the ground. This is not good. Jeff came off the road to 70 mph. Katie comes into paramedic mode, calming Jeff, running his hands through his spine, probing, checking ribs, legs, arms. The fall has torn tour jacket from the shoulder to the waist, peeling back the guard to unlock the We-Build-A Bridges shirt. He is scratched, but within moments she laughed, showing the "I Can not Believe I'm Still Alive" smile that is his default expression.
Ryan pulls the bike and begins to pick up the pieces scattered across the desert. The luggage is destroyed. The right handlebar is bent almost to the tank. The mirrors, turn signals, front fender snapped off in a microsecond. Both rims have dents. Incredibly, it still runs. He puts the parts that still work on the bike, takes it for a test ride. It will last for another 7,000 miles. Our motto: We will make this work.
Jeff tells him what happened. A small bird had jumped in his way. The next thing I knew he was off the road, went into a culvert. "I thought, wow.'m Superman. Oh, look, there is the bicycle. Oh, look, there is the bird … "In a field of irregular stones, which had landed in the sand.
THE BEGINNING
The trip came long before I was ready. A phone call, an invitation to the label, together with a group of BMW riders embarking in a five-week journey of 8,000 miles from Peru to Virginia. I want to document the trip, a fundraising effort for a group that built footbridges in remote areas of the world. He had been thinking of a long journey, as open, with no support vehicles, the experience of being totally "out there." This seemed to fit the bill. One third of the distance around the world with complete strangers. I had a new BMW F 800 GS and thirsty. If there was a point of no return, I crossed it before hanging up the phone.
First, the riders. Ken Hodge is a specialist in insurance benefits and a full member of the Rotary Club in Newport News. Found motorcycles later in life, when he bought a bicycle, a horse across the country within 48 hours, and then began to dream of a great adventure, something to a good cause.
He recruited his daughter Katie (a fire department paramedics), his stepson Ryan (a bicycle mechanic and pilot dirt) and the best friend Jeff Ryan. I am impressed by their preparation. Montan old BMW 1150 F 650 R and individual. Ryan had spent a year renovation of the motorbikes, digging as hidden, memorization of procurement manuals for each machine. They provide enough tools and parts to handle almost any emergency.
IN ANDES
We stop in to see the ancient Nazca figures scratched into the rocky desert. From the top of the tower you can see a figure with hands raised. Just north, Pan-American Highway bisects the figure of an alligator, decapitating the creature. Bound by the strict approach to traffic levels of brass, the experts who put the road were not even aware of the sacred relics, discovered when it became common in aerial flight.
I realize that we are so blinded by the focus, concentration and the inspectors were in his writing. The trip will be a series of images, glances, captured at full speed.
The descendants of the people who built the Inca trail, Peru builders know their stuff. But it is the tracery, the flow of momentum, which has all our respect. The old road ascends seabed, talus-covered hills, broken cornices dry ridges carved by landslides. Noon we are in a high plain inhabited by thousands of vicuña and alpaca. From afar, our first view of the snowy peaks. There are stone yards in the nearby slopes, hut one room. In the midst of this giant of nothingness, a lonely shepherd walking along the side of the hill.
We found that the distances on the maps are those of the condors. We traveled very crooked that sometimes takes a hundred laps (and miles) to reach a ridge to the next. The map shows the cities, but not all of our dis- may have service stations. We buy gas in a small outpost of a woman who ladles of a cube with a pot of coffee, then poured through a plastic kitchen funnel tissue in our tanks. The clocks all over the city. We push on into the night descends. We do it to the next traffic light, 20 or more buildings on two streets, finding a hotel, and park a bicycle in an enclosed yard with dogs, chickens, dead birds, plastic bottles and animal hide tanning on the wall. Instead of the usual output signals, the restaurant of our hotel has green arrows that say "ESCAPE." It is not a criticism of the food. Forces driving the Andes to the sky has been known to demolish entire towns.
The next morning started the bikes and climb into the Andes on a clear path. We fluid through the hair, double brackets, square turns climbing the side of a single peak 4700 meters high. I can not think of a single word: delicious. We move through fog and low hanging clouds, with sunlight slanting in the rainbow. The valleys are green and fertile, a mixture of old Inca terraces and several modern farms. Thin Eucalyptus trees line the road, providing shade for huts with roofs of red tiles. A girl tends a herd of goats (identified with colored ribbons) in a green meadow, book in hand. In a moment I think the clouds parted to reveal that the patches of blue, but when I look I see is a rock covered with snow, another 3,000 or 4,000 feet of the mountain. An outlet in the top of the peak is a dozen or so small shrines, chapels decorated with flowers and ribbons and photographs of their loved ones. The site of a bus crash. On a hillside across the valley paragliding thermals work, the appearance of the eyebrow canopies of bright colors, or angels ostentatious.
We share the road with the vicuña, alpaca, llama, sheep, goats, dogs, roosters, pigs, horses and cows. In an alley near Abancay a bull, my blood is passed, the burden and making a gesture to connect with his horns. One night after sunset, I round a corner and a beautiful roan wheels in the light of our bikes, filling the lane with wide eyes and hooves flashing, inches from my head. I realize that sweep poses a risk riding. The novelty of our bikes passing fade and local wildlife have time to react.
Introduction Cusco, Ryan asks directions, a girl we directed to a narrow, cobbled streets, slippery by rain, as steep as a bobsled run. The rocks are turned over to the side, like teeth. The have no traction knobbies at all. People on the streets frantically wave their hands, indicating that the road gets steeper. I touch the brake and the bike goes down, held my legs against the curb, a quarter inch shy of a fracture. The bike is behind me down. It is distressing. Locals help us lift the bike, get turned upwards.
A police escort leads us to a hotel that allows us to keep the bikes in the lobby. Without bothering to shower, we made our way to the bar Norton rats in the northeast corner of the square. The owner, an expatriate American, once drove a Norton to the tip of the continent. The walls are decorated with photos of the trip. Above the bar is mounted heads, the four former U.S. presidents, with their most famous soundbites: I am not a thief. I did not inhale. I do not remember. We will find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We drink beer, trade stories, trying to reassemble the past few days. The dead battery. The radiator hole. Repairs on the road. The relentless rush of incredible beauty.
Three days in the desert north of Lima generate some detail. The total absence of life, the three colors of sand. Young boys pedaling tricycle ice cream carts in the middle of nowhere. We entered an area of <I> nimbleras </ I>, but instead of the fog we meet a cross wind of 60 miles per hour that sends a layer of sand slipping through the road as a special effect in a Steven Spielberg. Two narrow lanes for an object of blowing sand, heavy enough to swallow the front wheel, deep enough that a road grader is prepares to clear the drifting sands.
We decided to test a secondary route through the hills. We passed a dirt road and everything changes. We live by the people with people, dogs, small tricycle taxis fashion of antique motorcycles. Motorscooters Children walk past, taking pictures with their cell phones. The Launches way split finger fastballs in the crash bash plate as strong and firm like the sound of an aluminum bat. We slosh our way through the gravel, gray powder on However, the fall of the pieces, teeth rattling. Oh yes, this is what we wanted.
ECUADOR
In Macara, we sat on the sidewalk near a place of lesser importance, eating pork cooked by a rotund woman with a yellow dress. Her daughter brings three beers (giant) at a time, and keeps the results in a carton of milk for later accounting. Children crossing the streets on motorcycles, quiet, the lucky with the girls in the back. On the other hand, girls feel banks. Jeff cultural experiences a revelation that the South American girls have breasts and wear tight pants … and "Hey, I think she likes me."
Our dinner companion is David McCollum, an American expatriate Ryan had met on ADVrider.com. He tells stories about riding the Andes Ecuadorians, and gives us tips on managing roadblocks. "Act stupid. Do not try to communicate in Spanish. Say 'No Smoking Spanish" (I do not Spanish smoke). If all else fails, have Katie mourn. "Er, Katie does not" mourn ". The next day takes us into the Ecuador Andes.
Impressions: sharp peaks. Lumpy, conical outcrops. Monasteries in the top of the hills. The slopes so steep that never work machine. A couple standing on the dark earth the man holding a wooden hoe, the woman a bag of seeds. A woman on horseback, black and red cape, a coiled whip in one hand. Trees. Cloud. Mist. The feeling a Japanese block print, those who suggest the road tends to infinity.
I had introduced the group to a family tradition. When we travel, we end Every day our high point, low point and funny bone. After this day, I'll add "moments Pucker." The trucks hurtle the fog, running without lights, signals only by the spectral waveform implemented before. They appear in our lane without notice or reason. We go through construction sites where the road narrows to one lane that offers no escape. One party seems awfully close to the new concrete, studded with tusks rebar. The other side is a precipice. Pucker now? Take your pick. Sometimes the surface, a half-mile bobsled run mud, loose gravel, water jet, maneuverability the bike as a loose bowel. Twice, we round a corner and find no way, the surface collapsed, sucked away by underground streams. Katie moment comes as a cow, without any conditions, stir in the way of your bike. For Jeff, it is passed a truck suddenly swerved to avoid a pothole, the trailer rocking to him like a baseball bat.
We spent two days in Cuenca, a city of 500 years old, surrounded by mountains. Ken phones later and discover that the ship was to take us and the bikes from Ecuador to Panama there (if we had drugs or were illegal aliens, no problem, but no accommodation for Tourists <I> </ I> with motorcycles). We asked David for help. As we ride to Quito, working the phones. He finds a contact, a man known for doing things when no one else can. We find this magician of airfreight in the turtle's head, a biker bar in Quito. In midnight.
The next morning bike ride to the airport's military section, then in a cold store. Plant is covered steel Fitted with ball bearings through which pallets steel slide. For the next three hours struggle with moorings. A thin man dressed all in black monitors operation, taking pictures of the motorcycles with a digital camera, making sure the batteries are disconnected, the tires are deflated. Drug-sniffing dogs to poke their noses into every recess.
Then, as our bikes are gone, on his way to Panama in the belly of an airplane.
CENTRAL AMERICA
Central American countries are the size of postage stamps. You can cross in a day and a half, only to spend an average day at the office and immigration. Ken had made Xerox copies of all our documents (passports, certificates, registration, VIN numbers) and had notarized. While working with the staff in the office with air conditioning, we sit in 100 degree heat and the ants carry seeds to see the dirt under the ground. We will become used to the demands of several specimens, currency traders separate bills waving in front of our faces, the young hustler ready to facilitate the process, vendors waiting for food to overcome hunger caution about the local cuisine.
Before embarking on this trip, I had read the State Department warnings travelers. The section on Peru warned that the Americans had killed five of liposuction in Lima. OK, that liposuction is consensual, or had gangs of thugs brandishing the sharp vacuums sharp accessories? Almost all entries in the Central American countries warned on posts false control, bandits in uniform, soldiers in the middle of nowhere.
Along the roadside signs with one eye is blood red and the warning <I> vigilantes </ I>. We have around a corner to find two soldiers on foot patrol, miles from the nearest town. They ask for paperwork. A rush of adrenaline comes back to me cotton mouth. David, our friend in Ecuador had given us some good advice: Act stupid. Smile. It seems we have a natural talent for that. No Smoking Spanish <I> </ I>. After checking our papers, we wave. In the coming weeks we will be arrested several times, sniffed by dogs, an X-ray Wanda devices seem carving knives car antennas where the blade should be. At border crossings, kids overalls and masks liquid aerosol cycling designed to kill insects stowaway too lazy to cross borders on their own. There are soldiers at each station, participants assembled in stores convenience and restaurants, guys with guns on Pepsi trucks. We are aware of poverty, a culture of criminal opportunity. The night air can take your bike naked you can not find a hotel with parking.
These countries are linked by the U.S. soil, and our culture has rattled its way through. Central America is a culture of the bike. All the genius of the families through, clinging to the narrow seats, wearing helmets with visors that are missing. In Panama City we find a group of Harley riders. Bicycles must exhaust the size of the shells, horns sound of a special effects soundtrack. They surround us and ask if we join their regular tour burger weekend. We followed an exclusive country club, Mira Flores beyond the Panama Canal locks. We send the instructions to a bed and breakfast to the coast. I fall asleep that night in a hammock, a bottle of beer still clutched in his hand, the blades of a fan whirring softly overhead.
Central America has a different feel to Peru and Ecuador, with a different gravity. We move through the green field at a rate to be natural in Virginia or Colorado or California. The vegetation is similar to fireworks, only green. Here, a single plant groups have taken over a hillside. There is an explosion of different species. A slow war.
We have been in the chair for three weeks. Nothing can break our rhythm. Pan left the road and find ways that make it seem as having two flat tires, which seem as if you were mounted on an oil spill. There are narrow, the bridges of a vehicle-on-a-time line rails narrow, mismatched, or a lesser roads, steel plates thrown through the rotting wood. The plot is a mash-up geological, without the power of the Andes, but enough unexpected change in elevation and tight corners to make an interesting trip. Municipalities are advertised with speed bumps and potholes that can swallow everything bikes. I see road signs only for the country, the silhouettes of strange animals. A snake crossing. A jaguar crossing. In Costa Rica we reached a 30-mile stretch of gravel road, and the world becomes powder. The bikes come to life. We romp, jump, walk, relying on the gyroscope. I try to read the strange shadows that appear in the dust-bikers, ATVs, huge trucks with no lights, not always with accuracy. There are breaks in the cloud of dust when I see fields full of white cattle to their feet and egrets. The sky tinged pink with the light of a setting sun. A feeling almost like peace.
We spent a night at Arsenal, a tourist destination for adrenaline junkies income discretionary. Posters announcing canopy walks, zip line through the jungle, the opportunity to rappel down waterfalls, night walks to the lava flows, kayaking, canoeing. Ignore tenders, saddle and ride in the rain forest. A group of meercats swarms down an embankment on the road. The monkeys cavort in the trees overhead. A tourist with zip fasteners a steel cable casting a shadow on the road, a spot of color in the sky. Looks like someone was hanging clothes and forgot to take his clothes.
Nicaragua has their own sense. We rode past volcanoes so big that they make their own time, crowns hidden in the clouds broad brim. Don Quixote in his barber bowl hat. The streets are crowded carriages. We found a hotel near the town square. Across the street from the hotel is a virtual store that offers the galaxy. The traditional culture is slowly losing ground to bandwidth. Link to compete with bell towers of churches, billboards for cell service block large statues of saints in nearby hills.
We visited a bridge, built by Ken organization in a remote area of Honduras. At the fork of the main road I think we are entering in a drainage ditch. In fact, during the rainy season the road becomes impassable, the very slick clay surface for traction. Now, facing a road bike excavated by erosion, working his way around the rocks exposed by the force of water. This is by far the most technical riding of the season.
The 40-mile road will have five hours to cross. The gullies clawmark Ken bike pull from underneath him Katie walks into a ditch and breaks his motorcycle windshield. Even Ryan has problems. The river, when you reach it, is daunting. I take pictures of the bikes as they come through, pushing a bow wave in the front wheels, jouncing by the rocks on the other side. If a trip can be reduced to 1? 250 years of a second, a moment seared in memory, these images would be.
We crossed into Guatemala, and pass night with Hemingway imitators and aspirants Jimmy Buffet at Rio Dulce. The hotel has a wonderful sense of bad taste. The ceiling fan sparks showers. The oven is turned off at regular intervals, like water. If you want a shower, get out. We spent a day riding through the rain. The water destroys one of my cameras, making the display in an aquarium. Hey, I have enough pictures.
CASI NO
In the first town over the border with Mexico, we stopped for directions at a busy street. Sideswipe truck my bike, a sidecar hooks and drags me down. I am unharmed, but the windshield and instrument panel are in the fragments. The police, when they are otherwise helpful. We collect the waste, all duct tape in sight, and start. We are unstoppable. Amount, but the mood of gear and the timing of the flame. Katie, Ryan and Jeff have to be back on a certain date or lose their jobs.
The trip becomes distance vs. time, a drive that erased most of Mexico, and a final border crossing in the United States.
We struggle through long paths, motorcycles nurses who are showing signs of wear. Ken bike takes a stand. Ryan helmet visor. Katie treat their windscreens shattered by BMW as a badge of honor, but still so, a wind of 75 mph is exhausting. Jeff has chewed bike rear sprocket nubbins, the chain is starting to wane. It will go into a U-Haul 100 miles of your home.
Five weeks after departing, we see the lights of Newport News. As you enter the city, Ken, Ryan and Katie spread across the road, side by side, arms aloft. The long journey is complete.
About the Author
To read more motorcycle tours stories like this or get reviews of the latest bikes and gear, go to ridermagazine.com or pick up a copy of Rider Magazine.
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