Rio Gallegos, Argentina

Jan 5, 2005

I was supposed to leave Ushuaia yesterday, but it was raining heavily and I wasn´t able to do any filming, so I decided to leave early this morning. I spent the night at Javier´s Place, a bed and breakfast owned by a motorcycle riding lawyer who flagged me down the day before when I was riding by, then helped me clean out my air filter. Everyone with an extra room in Ushuaia has a B&B or hostel. Javier let me take him to a chinese and parilla all you can eat buffet in exchange for a room with a full size bed, real hot water (until you´ve tried the hot water, you don´t know what this means), and a working heater.

This morning I set out bright and early, the sun was out, and around Ushuaia the mountains were full of mist, then I hit the rain. At least the dirt roads werén´t full of choking dust. Later down the road I got to decide whether I prefer riding in choking dust or hailstorms.

The sky is so blue and the clouds so thick and intense, roiling almost across the sky, that even freezing bitter rainstorms are beautiful here.

I checked the weather channel yesterday and they are predicting 10 days of rain, followed by locusts and frogs...

Ushuaia, Argentina

Jan 2, 2005

The end of the world is quite beautiful, rimmed in snow covered mountains, with light that lasts this time of year after eleven at night, and lots of peak roofed houses climbing the hills from the
bay. Unfortunately, it is full of backpackers, so the only room I could find that didn't involve sharing with five strangers who would probably pilfer all my valuables when my back was turned is $23, with shared bath. The end of the world is fully occupied. Ushuaia has a permanent population of 45,000 or so, and beautiful light.

I rode from Esquel to Rio Gallegos yesterday and spent the night in Rio Gallegos, which is a dirty port city with nothing to rave about. I had driven so far and fast that my ears were ringing for hours afterward. This morning I got up and realized I was only 350 miles from Ushuaia, the farthest point south one can drive on the planet, so I fired up the trusty Guzzi and headed south, into Chile, then onto a boat, across some water, back into Argentina, and here. There were a total of 120 miles or so of gravel roads, so it took a little longer than I would have liked. I also got a flat tire, but an italian couple I met on the road gave me an inner tube and he helped me change it. My bike brings the italians out of the woodwork, and no matter what they are riding, they all want photos of the Guzzi for someone back home who loves them, and they want to know how reliable it is.

I also met three Chilenos who's whole purpose in riding here seemed to be to show me that they could ride faster than me. I pushed them a bit then asked myself why I was pushing my bike, when it had carried me 10,000 miles and I was hoping to ride it back. So they are out there content in knowing they have faster motorcycles.

When I set out on this trip, my goal was to ride here, filming the experience and the people I met along the way. I'm here.

So now what?

Esquel, Argentina

Dec 31, 2004


I was hoping for more of the same in Argentina, the same sensibility, the same level headed approach to the operation of motor vehicles, but we´re back to three cars abreast in two traffic
lanes and smoking vehicles using 84 octane gas.

Other than that, Argentina is absolutely beautiful. Today was like driving around Lake Tahoe, if Lake Tahoe was a series of lakes I had all to myself. The mountains are snow capped, the water is clean and blue, and the roadside is full of purple and yellow wildflowers. The roads are good, and full of curves.

From Chile it was raining all the way to the border, which was easy to cross, and then as I descended down into Argentina, the rain let up and before I knew it, the sky was a vibrant blue. Esquel is a skiing town, and I´m at a residencial for skiers, where I get two beds, warm water and a remote control for $10 a night.

I´ve seen a lot of motorcycles (a lot here means 3) going the other direction, but nobody stops to chat.

Happy New Year

I found out as I was leaving Chile that there I´m not like a Bull in a China shop, I´m as dangerous as a monkey with a straightrazor. It makes the point so much more poignantly, I think.

Osorno, Chile

Dec 30, 2004

Chile is chilly, unless you are in Santiago. I am about 600 miles south, and it is raining, and the forecast is more rain, then a little bit of rain, with scattered showers on and off between the
spells of rain.

The road down was straight and quick, through vineyards that resemble the Napa valley, then alpine forests and little tin roof villages tucked into the hillsides.

Off to the left the mountain range was covered with snow.

I spent a lot longer than planned in Santiago, and just found out I am about 3000 miles north of my goal of Tierra Del Fuego, which tells me that I really do need to get and occasionally refer to a good map. I was under the impression that I am about 1800 miles away.

The map I got for $2 at the gas station doesn't have Argentina on it, so I am pretty much winging it until I get to an Argentinian gas station and can get a map there with fill up, if they run the same deal on that side of the border.

Santiago, Chile

Dec 26, 2004

I got here yesterday, and made contact with Mario, who takes in stray motorcyclists with problems. I am staying at his house while we get my rear wheel bearings replaced, a new battery, rear pads, and hopefully I change out some suspect electrical parts. Santiago is very beautiful, hot, and remniscent of California. As I rode in from up north, I was amazed at how much this part of Chile is exactly like Southern California, except everyone speaks Spanish. Wait a minute, come to think about it, that makes it exactly like California.

You could literally stop every ten miles or so and take a photo of a beach, they were that perfect, with water that was blue and then green, and lots of rocky shores and beaches full of tents and bathers.

And the people of Santiago are very friendly.

Copiapo, Chile

Dec 24, 2004

There's a reason you've never heard of Copiapo. It's the middle of nowhere. I spent last night in Iquiqui, with a Brazilian rider I met just south of Arica. We talked for hours in Portuguese, which is interesting because I don't speak Portuguese. But I nodded and said "si" a lot, and that seemed to keep him going. I think we talked about motorcycles and I have an invitation to visit him and his family in Brazil for weeks on end or he'll shoot me on sight if he sees me there. I'm pretty sure it's one or the other.

After I went to sleep, he hit the bars, and returned about when it was time for me to get up. I rode to Copiapo, and found a hotel with a room that is actually smaller than the one I spent the night in once when certain public officials alleged I had a little too much to drink. And it's expensive. Chile costs at least as much as the US for basic things, and crappy hotel rooms are actually a bit more. I guess infrastructure has it's price. You can eat the lettuce, which is my new way of evaluating the level of development in a country. There's "Can eat the lettuce," as in Chile, "Can eat the lettuce at TGI Fridays only," which is Peru and Ecuador, and "call the CDC to find out if there's a cure for what you've got after eating the lettuce," which is pretty much Central America.

One of the interesting things about talking to travelers is finding out what unique and bizarre illnesses they've picked up over the years. I learned from one traveler that you can get cholera from drinking the water in a Sudanese refugee camp. So that's not where you'll find me next winter.

Iquiqui was neat, after all the sand, which basically continues from Peru to Chile, the road winds up a mountain, then over it, and there, on a peninsula is Iquiqui, a very modern resort town, with high rises and lots of good bars and restaurants and trees and foliage, like Oz or Xanadu, an oasis of civilization in the middle of nowhere, and I was reminded of the Peruvian seaside towns, of tumbledown and windblown adobe, and at times it is hard to believe that just because someone fought over a line on a map some years past, there is such a difference in how the people live and exist.

Peru to Chile is almost as dramatic a change as Mexico to the USA. On the one side the police officer asks for a donation for the official forms you have to fill out to escape, then you have to go to three different windows in three different buildings, on the other side there is order, a list of what you need to do to enter, and helpful officials who speak with pride about their country.

In Peru I went past an army base where all the guard towers were staffed by mannequins.

Today's ride through Chile was an exercise in extremes, from hugging the coast, watching waves break over rocks and long tranquil beaches, to the Atacama desert, which went through a 400 year drought recently. Your nose clears right up, and then the desert goes on and on and if you pull to the side of the road and stand for any length of time admiring the endless sand, your feet actually start to mummify. I suspect the Latin American habit of pulling to the side of the road no matter where you are to relieve yourself is responsible for at least 99 percent of the precipitation the Atacama gets in a given year.

Arequipa, Peru

Dec 22, 2004

If you like endless miles of sand and desolation, this is the place to be. The road follows the ocean for a while, so you are surrounded by sand and a strip of blue off to the right, then goes back into the desert and more sand. In places the dunes are blowing across the road and a guy on a bobtail has the lonely task of pushing it off, while behind him it starts to pile up again.

Arequipa is like Tijuana without the sophistication and polish. But at least Guinea Pigs are cheaper here than Lima. At the restaurant in Lima they were 30 sols, here they are only 18. And they are so cute, even deep fried. One of the restaurants is called The Scream of the Guinea Pig, (La Grita Del Cuy).

I flew over the Nasca lines today. They are lines in the dirt that can only be seen from the air, and one of the figures appears to be an astronaut, or a bear with a fish bowl on his head, so there is a lot of speculation as to their purpose. It looks to me like someone had too much time on his hands and TV hadn't been invented yet.

Nazca, Peru

Dec 21, 2004

About twenty miles north of Nazca the bike died and the battery was aking a whistling sound. Somehow it had shorted out and was hot to the touch. A cabdriver helped me get the bike to a safe place, then took me to the auto parts stores in Nazca. Nobody has a motorcycle battery that fits, so I´ve now got a small car battery strapped across the passenger seat. I don´t have high beams, tail or brake lights, and only one light on my dash works. So I´m a little concerned. Unfortunately, I can´t find a reference for a good mechanic in Arequipe, the next big town, so I have to do a little poking and prodding tomorrow, then head out, hoping all is fine. If I can make it to Santiago Del Chile, I should be able to get a decent battery and find someone who knows his way around a modern electrical system.

Outside Nazca are the famous Nazca lines. For less than a dollar you can climb a tower and see the best ones. That´s what I´m going to do tomorrow, after hopefully troubleshooting my electrical problem.

Lima, Peru

Dec 20, 2004

Northwestern Peru is about as ugly and desolate as a place can be. The last thing you see before crossing into Lima is a town half built in the sand, in a big bowl below the autopista into town. Dogs bark and you see the occasional person wander, but for the most part, the town is deserted and falling apart, the blowing sand blasting the bricks back into sand.

Lima goes from bad Mexican border town to nice place they only accept
dollars in about ten miles. Home to 8 million people, most of them drive taxis and like to cut motorcycles off in traffic. Due to the Latin American distaste for using the brakes or signaling a lane change in dense traffic, there are several traffic circles with the statue of the local hero or an angel with a trumpet, and the better traffic circles are surrounded by TGI Fridays, Chilis and Starbucks. Chinese restaurants, called Chifas, are everywhere, and they basically take the classic South American Arroz con Pollo,(rice and chicken) and add soy sauce.

Gas is almost $4 a gallon, if you want something the bike will actually run on, and most of the stations have female attendants who put it in for you. At the toll stations, the attendants wave us to the side, so we can bypass the booth and not pay. At one of their bypasses, I knocked a pannier off and Mark had to ride through the garden, and across the lawn in order to take the shortcut.

We are about 4400 miles from the end of the continent, and the Atacama desert and Chilean glacier fields await us. I am thinking about getting rid of my tent and tripod, and the ATV case I have on the seat behind me, to make the bike a little less susceptible to cross winds and to lower the center of gravity a bit.

At 2 PM I can pick up my laundry and will have clean clothes for the first time in two weeks. It will be nice not to smell and look like an English backpacker.

Chimbote, Peru

Dec 18, 2004

Northwestern Peru is sand blowing over more sand, skies grey with
sand, and dunes sneaking onto the road. It goes on for miles, at
least 400 of them so far.

I stopped for an Inka Cola and the woman told us to leave town quick before they get us. she stood in the doorway, out of sight of whoever she was afraid of, and shooed us away with a towel.

Piura, Peru

Dec 17, 2004

It took three hours to cross the border, mainly because of the idiots who work for the government of Ecuador. One of them even went across to the Peru side to make sure they received the motorcycles in their country. We leave Ecuador, the other side of the line is Peru, and they need confirmation that that's where the motorcycles went? The road from Ecuador to Piura was a dramatic change from the endless miles of tropical banana plantations that make up this part of Ecuador. On the Peru side it was all high desert, sort of like Taft, California if everyone made their own house out of whatever they dug out of the backyard, only not quite as well taken care of. Every piece of garbage that ever fell on that road, from the time it was a
mud donkey track travelled by missionaries, is still there, including some very vintage plastic. We hit some nice high desert switchbacks, after riding along the coast for several of their kilometers, which are like miles but not quite so far apart. In several places you can see where they have repaired the damage done when El Nino washed out the road.

Peruvians are a lot friendlier than their neighbors to the north, they smile, try to help, and in general don't seem as prone to thievery. Gas is about $4 a gallon and the roads are straight and
well paved, so it looks to be an expensive proposition crossing Peru.

Machala, Ecuador

Dec 16, 2004

If you ever decide to raise your hand in Ecuador, make sure there is not a fast moving electric ceiling fan above you. There was in my hotel room. After they cut off the nail and put three stitches in my thumb, laughing at the noises I made because the anaesthetic didn´t quite work, the doctors attended to the screaming drunk woman who'd been shot in the leg. It was quite a night. I went back this morning for an X-ray and found out the last bone in my thumb has a compound fracture. The X ray was $4, and they let me keep it as a ssouvenir. The doctor this morning put a big metal brace around my thumb and taped it to my wrist. I cut a hole in my glove and we left Santo Domingo in a slight rain, my thumb sticking out above the hand grip. About 75 miles down the road, I started deciding that this was uncomfortable, so I went to yet another pharmacy, removed the brace, and gauze and taped the affected digit, then set it back out in the wind, this time properly wrapped around the handlebar. We covered about 250 miles and I came to one very interesting realization, they grow a whole bunch of bananas in Ecuador. Machala is the port from whence most of the bananas leave, and the banana fields stretch forever back the way we came. Which of course means banana trucks heavy on their way to port and driven like there´s no tomorrow back for the next load. And the occasional bunch or entire tree littering the road. Makes for some very interesting riding.

I like the fact that all the medical care in Ecuador has been free, other than Mark having to go out to the pharmacy to buy sutures, guaze, syringes and painkillers, but I don´t like the fact that I´ve needed it. He´s starting to call the trip George´s Tour of South American Hospitals and Pharmacies.

I have heard often about the South American town drunk, but hadn´t had a chance to film one in action until now. They are in a league of their own, and I got some really nice footage of the best one I´ve encountered.

Santo Domingo, Ecuador

Dec 15, 2004

Free at last, oh Lord, free at last...

When I woke up it was raining heavy, so I knew today was the day we would get the bikes back. They were released to our custody at 11.30, and we immediately raced back to the hotel to pack up and get the heck out of Dodge. Even the customs agent, who was recommended to us as honest and above-board, tried to rip us off for ten dollars each above the pre-arranged rate. I believe I have met two honest people the entire time I have been in Quito.

The ride down out of the mountains was wet, misty, and full of slow
moving trucks and the busses full of terrified passengers passing them that makes riding in this part of the world such a thrill a minute.

It is nice to be warm, even a little muggy, again.

More when I am in a better place.

Bikes Held Hostage, Day 11

Dec 14, 2004

Today we got to see the hostages, in a bodega at the Aduana (customs) office in Quito, but the Aduana was not willing to sign the paper that he was supposed to sign yesterday but didn´t because one of his agents had filled it out wrong, or so the customs agents say. They want to go out with us, the tall skinny one has developed a crush on me, and the daughter of the customs agent is in love with Mark. So the bikes may be here a while. The motorcycles suffered a little
damage on the trip from Panama via Colombia (change of planes), and everyone who crazily chose ride here from Colombia has passed us by. Intensity Mark was practically gloating in his intense way.

I met a nice Colombian woman who wants me to pay for the time I spend with her, but it's a sure thing. Her family back home think she runs a small store that sells handicrafts. Ecuador doesn't have it's own currency. Like Panama, they use the US Dollar. My Colombian friend is upset because the dollar is falling and she can't send as many pesos home to Colombia as she was six months earlier. One of the other members of the party, who would not wish to be identified,  met the daughter of the chief of police who got mad when the one I am with asked her how much she was going to charge.

It´s a little like Groundhog Day...

Tomorrow we are going to wake up, say goodbye to the Dutch guys on the honda 50s, go down to the Agent´s office at 9:00, and wait for the paper to be signed. The clock in the agent´s office will say 4:37 again (it needs batteries) and we will wait around, watching the agent´s employees and children do crossword puzzles and play solitaire on the computer. At the end of the day the clock will say 4:37 and we will leave without our bikes. But 9:00 the day after...

Quito, Ecuador

Dec 11, 2004

The bikes got here this morning and with any luck we will be able to get customs to release them on Monday and then ride up to the Equator for a photo op. I suspect one of my relatives in Colombia, a retired air force major, threatened to have one of the shipping company´s planes shot out of the air by mistake if the bikes weren´t here today. I wish I had her make that call when we were still in Colombia, but it takes some getting used to the idea that just because you sign a contract for something to be delivered in a timely fashion, with a reputable company, that doesn´t count for much in this part of the world. I see why they only accept cash.

Last night I lay in bed with a 39.3 fever (that´s 102.7 in American), but the doctor came to my hotel room, gave me some oxygen and a shot, and then I called a drug store that delivered all the prescriptions to the hotel for $12, so I feel better.

Quito is big, surrounded by mountains, and we´re definitely back in the third world. We have yet to get in a cab where the driver knows how to get to where we are going. Three times they have stopped to ask other drivers for direction, and one drove slowly up and down a street, slowing and peering up side streets. They are not metered, so you have to bargain before getting in. So in Panama they argue with you, in Bogota they try to run over pedestrians in their haste
to get you where you are going, and in Quito they don´t know where they are going. Towards the end of our stay in Bogota, Mark and I took special pains to pick out the cabdriver with the wildest look in his eye and the most beat up cab. Often this insures a most memorable ride.

We had dinner with Ricardo Rocco, who is well known to motorcycle travelers in this part of the world. Then we went over some maps of different routes we could take if we decide to go to Machu Pichu or stay on the coast and go south.

We met up with Scottish Mike, who traveled with Mark through Mexico. He is a retired military officer who is obsessed with cheap beer. He dragged us through the worst parts of town, through dark alleys and over bums to an absolute hole in the wall just because beer was a quarter cheaper. Mark asked if he could download GPS information from Scottish Mike's Garmin. Scottish Mike said no, then left. A few days later we got an email from Scottish Mike asking if he could travel with us, because he was having problems on the road. Mark wrote back that we wouldn't be able to find him because we didn't have GPS maps.

Two dutch guys staying at our hotel are making a similiar trip to ours, but they started a little north. They fedexed their Honda CB50 Super Cubs from Holland to Alaska, and are hoping to make it to Tierra Del Fuego by late in February. Their website is www.honda50.cc and really merits a look.

Quito, Ecuador

Dec 10, 2004

He hasn't posted for a while and just called me so I thought I'd let you know where he is. After a few days in Bogota where both he and Mark got sick from the altitude, they arrived in Quito yesterday morning but their bikes did not-- they're still in Panama.   Supposedly they will be arriving via Colombia on Sunday, released on Monday so that they can continue. He's still having some difficulty with altitude (over 9,000ft) but says he's been able to film some good footage.

Beab

Bogota, Colombia

Dec 5, 2004

The check in agents at Avianca evidently get quite a kick out of sticking all the Americans and Europeans in the one row on the plane where the seats don't recline. But the flight was only an hour and they serve whiskey and beer.

Bogota is beautiful, the first city that feels civilized since leaving the United States. The people are incredibly friendly and happy, and the city is clean and well laid out, perched in a valley about 9000 feet up. The weather is cool, and this is a welcome change after the relentless humidity of Central America. Mark said it is much cleaner than Amsterdam. We went to the Cathedral of Salt this morning, which is a Cathedral (hence the name) in an old salt mine. It goes down into the ground about a mile, and is enormous. Last night it was described to us as one of the eight wonders of the world, today it was one of the seven wonders of the world, so it definitely improves every day.

Our host family is somehow related to me. They are nice, overbearing
people who do a lot of very funny things. We went out for one of the local delicacies, and got it to go. As we were going up to the elevator from the garage, the elevator got stuck, and the father of the family and his son started banging against the metal door and pushing on the alarm over and over again. This was in an elevator that holds 6 and there were 6 of us. So we were pretty tightly packed together. After about ten minutes of this awful racket, I noticed the phone with which you can summon aid and called it to their attention.

While the father was talking on it, Mark looked at me and said I owed him twenty turtles. If the security guard for the apartment building hadn't gotten us out minutes later, I'm sure it would have been more because as soon as he finished describing our problem and put the phone back on the hook the father resumed banging on the door and his son started pushing the alarm bell again.

The local delicacy was a baby pig stuffed with rice and baked. There was plenty of pig skin and Mark and I were offered it first. We tried a little and it was like eating pork chewing gum. So we let the two children fight over it. And they did.

Still in Panama, Panama

Dec 4, 2004

We went to see the canal today. Mark and I arranged to hire a cab for two hours for ten dollars an hour. The canal was fairly impressive, and we got to film a local announcer giving a spiel about it in spanish. Then we filmed a group of four guys taking turns standing in front of the canal and photographing each other in very dramatic poses. On the way back, we asked the cabdriver to take us up the canal a little, and he started yelling that we only hired him to drive us to the canal and back. So I turned the camera on and Mark debated with him the meaning of hiring a taxi for two hours. The cab driver explained that it was his car and not ours and he would drive it where he wanted. We had only been there a half hour, so told him we would only pay him for the half hour and fifteen minutes he took us there, or 7 dollars. He went nuts again and told us he would take us to the police. Evidently the best thing to do when that happens is to tell them to. He drove us back to the hotel, and we paid him $10 for his hour. Evidently he didn't understand that two hours means two hours of going where ever we want. Mark explained to him that we could pay him to park the cab for two hours or drive it in a circle around the hotel and it was the same $20, and that the driver was stupid not to earn the other ten dollars. The driver said that no matter what, two hours didn't include going further up the canal, and Mark should respect him and not call him stupid. It was actually quite funny to watch.

I'm wondering if a show couldn't be made of just getting in cabs and infuriating the drivers.

Panama City, Panama

Dec 2, 2004

I will be here for three days, arranging the shipment of the bikes to Quito, Ecuador. We are staying at the Hotel Montreal. The ride down was eventful, as we got pulled over for crossing the double yellow line to pass several long lines of cars in a construction zone. The first officer who pulled us over wanted our licenses, then began writing in a pad of some sort. He went on for a while and then told us the fine was $40 each. We said we didn�t have that much money, so he said it could be $40 for both of us. I had just bought gas and only had $7. Mark had $3, so the fine for both of us was $10. In the next town, the officer pulled us over and told us we were committing the same offense. He found a brochure of some sort in the back of his car and pretended to be writing a ticket too.

There is no way he could have seen us, so we told him we had just paid another officer for the same offense. He wrote the information down, then got on the radio and tried to find out who had the fine in his pocket. Because it was such a small amount, I'm pretty sure none of the officers wanted to split it, so he came back to us and asked if we remembered the name of the officer who we paid. We described him, the officer gave us back our licenses, then went off
in search of his cut of the fine. Because they wear bright orange vests, the officers were pretty easy to spot hiding under trees, so I went off pretty fast while Mark rode more conservatively. I didn't get pulled over again, but he did, for exceeding the speed limit by a cop who had followed him for more than 35 minutes. He used his GPS to show the officer that he wasn�t speeding, told him he wouldn't show him the license, and wasn't going to pay, and that he had six
months to spend in Panama if the officer wanted to take him to the station. Mark said he was interested in seeing the jail. The officer told him that wasn't necessary and let him go.

If I got pulled over in the US for crossing the double yellow line to pass traffic in a construction zone at 80 MPH, I would be overjoyed to pay the officer $40 and be on my way.

The road was great once you get halfway toward the capital, two lanes in either direction, with few potholes and excellent drainage. The landscape is rolling hills, lush green plains, and waterfalls cascading down the side of distant mountains. The Bridge of the Americas is spectacular at night over the canal, and Panama City is clean, well laid out, and well constructed. The cash machines dispense dollars.

I wonder who built it all...

At the hotel, we met up with some of the guys Mark had met at the Horizons Unlimited meeting in Mexico. They were for the most part a borish lot of penny pinchers hanging around together because none of them spoke Spanish. One of them, also Mark, was writing a book about his experiences on the trip. Though unasked, he said his trip through Mexico could be described in one word, Intensity. So he is now Intensity Mark. They took us to a whorehouse where Intensity Mark impressed us both by paying a fat hooker three times the going rate for fat hookers and going off for fifteen minutes with her, then coming out of the room in the back zipping up his pants like he had accomplished something intense. Another one was BMW Bill, who is just lonely and wants a woman to ride on the back of his motorcycle with him. He used to be a drug addict and alcoholic, and now doesn't do anything except tell people how miserable his life was. Why can't he have found religion instead of motorcycle travel? Then there was the Swede, a tall, thin man in his early 20s with long blonde hair and piercing blue eyes. He was in the right place to meet a woman, was what the women in this part of the world fantasize about, wanted to meet one, but couldn't. Was it because he hasn't had a shower since starting the trip, has one set of clothes that he hasn't washed except by riding in the rain, or a combination of the two? You can smell him around the corner. He used to have a coke problem, and is on his way to Colombia. Of course he has no jacket, and his plan for riding in the Andes is to buy a native poncho. This could get intense.

By far this is the easiest of all the Central American countries for an American to feel at home in.

David, Panama

Nov 30, 2004

David is the second largest city in Panama. After a long day of travel and adventure, and a bit of anxiety crossing out of Costa Rica, constantly looking over our shoulders and expecting the worse at police checkpoints, we rode through David in darkness, looking for a hotel.

The Panamerican Highway from San Jose, Costa Rica was extremely poor and full of potholes that make you wonder if you broke a rim every time you hit one. The Highway went up to about 14,000 feet, through a forest that was covered in mist. It was freezing. Turns were extremely tight, and because it is the only road that traverses the country, it was full of trucks and tour buses, repairs and missing lanes. There are several very dramatic valleys with little towns nestled between the mountains. the potholes are enormous, and often full of water.

I went to buy gas and found out someone had given me a counterfeit 5000 Costa Rica shekel note. I thought about trying to exchange it with one of the backpackers on the border but decided to keep it as a souvenir instead. So I am out $11.

In Buenos Aires, Costa Rica, we stopped for lunch and my motorcycle, for no reason I can think of, picked itself straight off the kickstand and fell over to the right against a car and broke the mirror, not to mention scraping the side of the car. Of course I didn't see it happen, and have no idea how it could have. Previously, the bike has never shown an inclination to  lift itself up off the kickstand and fall in the oposite direction.

Fortunately, the owner of the car just happened to be standing beside the bike when I got there. He was very pleasant, and I offered him $40 for the damage, in order to maintain the sense of pleasantness that pervaded the scene. He suggested we go to a repair shop to see what it would cost, and so Mark and I followed him to the repair shop.

We passed five repair shops on the way to the special one, where he went inside and brought out the owner. After looking at the car, the owner of the bodyshop told me the door and fender of the car would have to be painted, because my bike had scratched a couple of places where the car had already been keyed by someone else. It was going to cost me a lot, and I could not tell if he intended to paint around or over the rust spots on the fender.

I offered the guy $50 and 5000 Costa Rica shekels. He held firm for $112, so he could get the side of his car painted, repeating over and over that it was not his fault that my bike fell against his car. I said "okay, I will go to the automatic teller," got on my bike and headed off in that direction, with Mark right behind me.

The ride to the border was fast and the falling rain made the potholes easier to see. 

I'm sure somewhere in Buenos Aires, Costa Rica a woman is telling her husband he is an idiot for not taking the $50.

On the border with Panama I had to pay $5 for a visa, because I'm from the USA, and Mark, being Dutch, didn't have to pay anything.

 

San Jose, Costa Rica

Tue Nov 30, 2004

Interesting and very crowded trip from Playa Tamarindo. Both Mark and I contracted some sort of stomache thing after eating at a place called Pedros, owned by an American, with awful service and evidently even worse food. San Jose is clean, the people are friendly, and it is a lot cooler than the oceanside. But there are still mosquitos. On the way here, we observed that on one long stretch of winding mountain road a bus had broken down. Instead of moving it off the road, the police blocked traffic in both directions and let someone try to fix it. From the looks of things, they had been trying to fix it for some time. Travelling by bike is very practical in a place like this, because we are able to go past all the cars and save an hour and a half over what the guidebook says it takes in the backpacker bus. The Panamerica Highway through Costa Rica is very rough, the potholes are occasionally repaired, and we have both wondered why the richest country here has the worst roads. Another 5 liter bottle of water fell off the back of my Quota. Hopefully it didn't hit anyone.

Watching the turtle lay eggs was a bit of a letdown. And it was Mark's idea. 

Mark and I met a couple of extremely attractive Scottish nurses, and were getting along with them nicely, while plying them with beers and describing our trip in heroic detail. About 11 PM we had to leave to watch the turtles lay their eggs. After a short boat ride across a creek, a tour guide took us down to the beach and made about thirty of us wait for about two hours, then dragged us all out to where there was one turtle, a big leatherback, over a hole with about six eggs in it.

The tour guide wouldn't shine his flashlight on the turtles head so we could see it,  and kept telling me to get back and stop bothering it when I was just trying to get a better look.  I told him I paid to see the f&$king turtle, and I was going to see the f$#king turtle or they were going to give me a refund.  As the turtle laid eggs, a young American woman was collecting them and putting them in a container. After about twenty minutes of this we were led back to the boat and taken back. I jumped off the boat before it docked and went wading ashore. But alas, the Scottish girls were nowhere to be found. Mark owes me. 

When we stopped for lunch there were turtle eggs on the menu. They are served raw in a jellied tomato sauce, and are quite good.



 

Playa Tamarindo, Costa Rica

I made it to Costa Rica. When I first thought about making this trip about three years ago, this was where I intended to end up. Mark and I spent last night in Liberia, Costa Rica, in the Hotel Liberia, where for $7 each we got to share a room with private bath and fan. In the morning, there was a breakfast of scrambled eggs, rice, beans and toast for another couple of bucks. The town is supposedly one of the rougher in Costa Rica, but by the time it gets going, I am usually exhausted and fast asleep. Crossing over from Nicaragua was a hassle. If you don't use one of the border guides to get you through, the officials start nickel and diming you before they will let you leave the country. We had to pay a mayors fee of $1, an after hours fee of $2, and three dollars for a passport stamp, which we got receipts for $2 for, so the government official got himself a couple of dollars for his efforts.

I haven't seen a lot of Costa Rica so far, but the infrustructure seems vastly improved over the other countries of South America. The people appear to take pride in their country, and the only unwashed masses I have seen are the hoards of backpackers that refuse to bathe or pay two dollars more for a room with a bathroom. And I stole their soap, so they can't bathe if they wanted to.

Tonight I'm going to watch endangered turtles lay eggs and afterward have a nice omelette and some soup made fresh on the beach. The beach towns are expensive, and full of surfers and more backpackers.

More Honduras Stuff

I almost forgot to mention the ferry ride from Roatan to La Cieba. First off, I ended up missing the early boat, which takes off at 7 sharp, and sharp means sharp here, which is a bit of a shock. So I took the 1 pm boat, and decided to spend the night at the same Posada (Bed and Breakfast) as I had my first night in La Cieba. In La Cieba, the boat and dock were about the same level, but in Roatan, the dock is about six feet below the boat. After riding 135 miles exploring Roatan from one end to the other, this on my day off from riding, a lot of it in the dirt, which translates to steep wet clay with rivulets and pools of water and packs of dogs that chase me at inoportune times, I got to the dock and watched the stovedores wheel my bike to the side of the boat, about two feet from the water, and then after everything else was loaded, ten of them picked it up overhead and stuck it on the boat, after laughing and pretending they were going to drop it in the water. Both of my Quotas have been on ferries.

At the police checkpoint, where the army officers look very sharp in their winter snow camo (blue and white, very effective in the tropical jungle), I was asked to show them my license and registration, then a police officer came over to talk to me. I was sure I was going to have one of those unpleasant and expensive experiences people talk about having in latin america, but he just wanted to talk about motorcycles, being a rider himself. As soon as you tell them you are riding to Argentina, most people here assume you are crazy and leave you alone.

Granada, Nicaragua

Nov 26, 2004

I rode from La Cieba, Honduras to Somoto, Nicaragua yesterday and spent the night in Nicaragua. About 30 miles before the border, I came upon a rider parked alongside the road on a BMW GS1100. I pulled up and he knew who I was and where I was going. Mark is from Holland and had run into Patrick, the Quebecois, in Antigua. While crossing into Honduras, the customs and immigration people tried to charge him about
$100 in illegal fees. When he refused to pay them, they gave him a 7 hour pass to get through Honduras, and still charged him $48.

So he had to get to the border before it got dark, and had covered the distance from El Salvador in 2 hours. We got to the border, and it was getting dark, so the Hondurans rushed us through, then on the other side we found the Nicaraguans were out to dinner until 7:00, so we ended up driving 12 miles through Nicaragua in the dark, and came into Somoto.

The road was beautiful and the moon was full, so the ride went very smoothly. Across from the hotel, a rock band started playing around nine and continued until about 2 AM. The monkeys in the cage outside our window evidently didn´t like the music, because they were noisy all night long, and at about 4 AM something got hold of a cat on the roof and so there was screaming and howling and running across the roof. Other than that, it was pretty quiet until about 7 AM, when the local brass band started practicing in the public square, which was across the street from the hotel.

I bought three bananas from someone on the street for 1 cordoba, which is 16 to a dollar. They were perfectly ripe and tasted a little of citrus. Breakfast was beans, eggs, fried bananas, cheese and coffee for 30 cordobas.

The ride from La Cieba in Honduras to the border was one of the most spectacular I have been on yet, beginning in the jungle, and climbing into dense pine forests, then across a landscape like high desert before descending into hills like those in southern California, only a lot greener. This morning, there were places were the landscape looked like an Eyvind Earle painting of Santa Ynez. This is one of the most
beautiful and wide open places I have ever seen, and it really does look like California before everyone moved there. There are beautiful lakes, and the roads are excellent for the most part. There are a few things you have to be aware of before you drive in Honduras though.

If you mind sharing your lane with oncoming traffic, you are not going to like riding a motorcycle in Honduras. When sharing a lane, the part that is yours is a narrow strip of outside edge or maybe the shoulder.

If it bothers you to go into a corner and find a bus in your lane, you are really going to dislike driving in Honduras.

If a bus is full of passengers it will handle and go as fast as a Porsche, if the road has enough curves in it.

The best way to show the American on the motorcycle that you are a man is to keep up with him through several steep and twisting declines in your full gasoline truck after he passes you.

Cows and people can coexist peacefully on the highway.

If the guy in the truck in front of you suddenly slows down, it means he doesn´t have any brake lights and is about to do something stupid. whatever this stupid thing is will require that you take evasive action.

The best place for children to play is on the highway, especially at dusk. At night it is a good idea to get the entire family up on the road.

Roatan, Honduras

Nov 23, 2004


I finally made it to Roatan, one of my goals for this trip. It is a small english speaking island off the coast of Honduras with a sizable foreign population. Everyone told me how expensive it is, but i'm in a big room with a kitchenette and HOT shower for $30 a night, and beers are about a buck. I'm also right on the water in West End. Had I wanted to look around, I could have found a room with shared bath for $7-9, from what I hear.

I went to the ferry in La Cieba, and watched as my motorcycle was rolled onto the back of the boat, about half a foot above the dock, and lashed to the railing at the back deck. When we got to Roatan, I disembarked and watched six laughing porters lowered the bike about eight feet from the back of the boat to the dock. Watching them manoeuver all 600 pounds of the Moto Guzzi only two feet from the water's edge, laughing and pretending it was about to go over the side, all the things I would have to do to make it run again if they accidently dropped it in the water racing through my mind, sent a chill down my spine in the tropical heat and put a knot in my stomache that called for a cold beer. I was anxious and excited to be there both as I loaded all the travel gear on the bike, started it, and idled slowly through the thronging mass trying to get home or on vacation.

I got in at about 6 pm and the bike was loaded and ready to leave at 6:30. It was dark, raining, and the road to West End is about 11 km. of twisty pavement through hills. When it rains, my visor fogs up, and so I was riding slowly, with it half opened, not sure where I was going. I got into town and the first place I found was full, so I took a room at the place next door, without looking first at my surroundings, just glad to be somewhere. After the shower and beer, I went for a walk and found that right across the street was the ocean. So I think I'll stay put for tonight.

Yesterday I saw an accident between two taxi cabs. After riding here for a while, I must say I am happy whenever I see taxi cabs hit one another. When, not if, but when you are cut off in traffic, it will be by a taxi cab, and every accident I have seen involved a taxi cab, so seeing them hit one another actually warms the heart.

I've talked to a couple of americans who have been down here for a while, one opens restaurants and sells them to people who come down on vacation and fall in love with the place, then buys them back when the buyer has depleted his life savings, and the other teaches diving. You can get certified here in open water for $150.

The island is 40 miles long, so today I'm off to explore it.

La Cieba, Honduras

Nov 21, 2004

Patrick and I went from Chetamul MX through Belize, which is a nice 4 hour ride to cross, even with Patrick poking along at 55 mph, and made it to something of Melchor in Guatemala where we spent the night sitting on the sidewalk in chairs the hotel owner brought out, sampling one can or bottle of each local beer and watching the town slowly pass by on the muddy dirt road.

The next day, Patrick and I rode to Tikal and saw the ruins. There were also a couple of monkeys, and like the ruins at Tutum where everyone wanted to photograph the iguanas and ignore the ruins, the monkeys were pretty exciting to the thronging masses.

From Tekal we decided to head to Guatemala city, but somewhere along the way I lost Patrick and ended up spending the night in Rio Dulce, Guatemala at a small roadside hotel and restaurant with a wonderful family atmosphere. There were porno movies on television, and in the morning the owner's son was chasing a chicken through the grounds. As I left I saw the special of the day was chicken. The road from Tikal to Rio Dulce was absolutely breathtaking, through the jungle, in great shape, and up and down a lot of mountains.

This morning I got up and decided to cross the border into Honduras, but it being a Sunday, all the copiers in Honduras were closed. So I had to take all my paperwork back to Guatemala and get 3 copies made of the paperwork the agent had filled out. Don´t ask why, it makes no sense, nor does it make sense that a Government agency would lack copiers, but there you have it. A lot of people have had problems crossing into Honduras, but other than the fact that the country has yet to invest in a copier, it was no harder and took no longer than any other country. The customs and immigration agents on the Guatemala side of the border are evidently accustomed to people returning to make copies, they waved me through without a thought.

So far the worst road I have encountered was the one from the Honduran border about 30 miles in. Honduras has a lot of water, and most of it is on that road. Fortunately, there are plenty of holes to hold it, and I did a couple of water crossings, and crossed over a bridge that had a couple of boards on it on either side where you were supposed to keep your tires. There were also a lot of bridges with a thin metal covering that was occasionally missing in spots.

Chetumal, Mexico

Nov 18, 2004

South from Veracruz, I spent nights in Villa Hermosa, Merida, Cancun, and now find myself in Chetumal, on the border with Belize and at the point where the adventure really starts, as far as I´m concerned, now that I've ridden this far down through Mexico. Riding in Mexico, while fun and exciting, is basically the same no matter where in the country you are. You go into a town, ride around the plaza, see the old church, the old government building, the building with the graphic display of British-French-Spanish-American (circle one) oppression, and the valiant armed struggle of the indigenous people to overthrow them, then roar on down the road to the next town to begin again.

Outside Merida I encountered Patrick, riding down the road at a very safe 55 MPH on his KLR650. I roared past, then stopped and talked to him. He told me that he´s going to Tierra Del Fuego. Patrick is from Montreal, and we talked about our trips so far and plans for down the road, then met again in Chitchen Itza. Patrick has this thing about seeing ruins and other tourist attractions.

Because of this, we ended up riding into Cancun at dark. As you reach the outskirts of the city the road is well lit. At every streetlamp bugs would splatter against my visor. I had to stop every quarter mile or so and clean them off. We decided to split the cost of a room in Cancun, and so got to be in the beach front area for $24 a night each.

We encountered an Old Bald Guy who told us in broken english that he would find us a hotel, asked us how much we wanted to pay, then ran off down one road, with us behind him. The first hotel was much more expensive than he told us it would be, and a dump, so he went running down the road toward another, at least a quarter mile away. While he was in the fourth one, I wandered into one beside it. It seemed clean, and was priced right (which for us was about $30 to stay in Cancun). The Old Bald Guy saw what I was doing and ran into the lobby, covered with sweat. The hotel didn't have whatever commission setup he was used to, so I gave him a couple dollars in pesos and he was off again, running through the night.

The first night we were there, Patrick spent an obsessively long time locking his bike with four different locks, and covered it, only to realize in the morning that he´d left the keys in the ignition. After losing my sleeping bag, tennis shoes and bike cover off the bike because of the inattention that comes from riding for days and days, I understand. Today he lost his key at
Tulum, and so spent this evening having two more made from the spare.

While in Cancun , we saw a BMW 650GS, and decided to talk to the owner to see if he too was bound for the tip of South America. It turned out that he was a Doctor, and a member of a Motorcycle group that was having a weekly meeting that night, and he invited us along
and to pictures of their recent ride. The meeting was at a very chic little hamburger place, and they were all extremely well groomed and articulate. We got to see the pictures of their ride,
and they were mostly taken of each other urinating, rolling around in white clay and roughhousing, and standing together in groups of two. They had a huge gift basket with wines and gourmet foods in it that they were parcelling out for $10 a ticket to raise money for
the club. We looked at each other with not just a little concern every time the Doctor invited us to stay at his house or ask us if we needed anything. Throughout the evening, he kept inching his chair closer to Patricks. So we started asking why they didn´t take any pictures of any hot women they saw on their ride. Though invited to this meeting, we ended up having to pay for our own meals and beers. And they didn´t ask us to join the club.

We decided to move to a nicer hotel on the beach, Most of the front desk people in Cancun tourist hotels speak very good English, and Patrick is far too honest to use deception to get a better deal, so Patrick pretended to be a television producer who only spoke French and I was the translator who explained the great project we were going to be filming, and that we would need about 20 hotel rooms when the cast and crew arrived. We ended up paying $50 a night for a nice room in a hotel on the beach with a pool where I could wash my riding jacket.

We went to the ruins in Tulum, on the coast. They are fairly small and I quickly grew bored while Patrick photographed all the blocks that make up a pyramid. There were a lot of iguanas, and a lot of people taking pictures of the iguanas, so I decided to see if I could catch one. Evidently there are places in Tulum where the iguanas know people are not supposed to walk or chase iguanas, something to do with "restoration in progress" or "archeological site," so I encountered a little hostility from the park rangers. Then the European tourists took off their tops to sunbathe and every Mexican worker in the place was so distracted with seeing to their comfort that I was free to chase iguanas or desecrate the ruins or disassemble them and take them with me.

While I am sitting here in this internet cafe in Chetumal, a guy two seats over is shouting into an internet phone in Chinese to his daughter back home.

Anybody know where to buy a sleeping bag around here?

Official Jorge Global Tracking System and Moto Guzzi Breakdown Log

Nov 17, 2004

Some here at the AMA are tracking this really long trip with the AMA Communications Department's Official Jorge Global Tracking System and MotoGuzzi Breakdown log up in the magazine dept. I've posted a picture of it which I will update from time to time. The stickers
are his location; the yellow post-it is the breakdown log. As there are no Guzzi riders here, they are all watching this (ever so long) trip with great interest, pens poised...

Beatrice

Veracruz, Mexico

Nov 13, 2004


Well, let´s see.... Since my last message, I´ve been back to McAllen
for a five hour battery buying experience, lost my sleeping bag,
tennis shoes and motorcycle cover off the back of my bike somewhere
on the road, lost three bottles of water, also on the road, and
spent the night in Tampico in one of those love shack hotels common
to Latin America where you pull into a garage and close it then your
^friend^ gets out of the car unseen. It was late and the only place
in sight. I´m heading out toward Cancun tomorrow. I shot a lot of
good footage, then two of the three chips in my camera stopped
processing, so I´ve got a lot of really nice red stuff. Í´ve come to
realize that the sign of a good restaurant down here is not how good
it looks, but whether or not anyone is eating there.

Veracruz has a really nice waterfront, like La Paz.But if I do the
winter in Mexico next year I think I`ll stay in Tuxpan and then the
Emerald coast, both north of here and both charming for different
reasons. Tuxpan is on a body of water that looks like a lake, has a
long promenade and lots of little hotels and the Emerald Coast is
north of Veracruz and reminds me of an orange county beach town in
the 60´s , lots of little hotels and restaurants and a really nice
little beach.

Saltillo, Mexico

November 10, 2004

Well, Im finally out of Texas, in a internet cafe in Saltillo, or should I say Smogtillo, Mexico, where I can{t figure out how to accent contractions. While my bike was getting repaired, I rented a car and went to a Vintage Motorcycle show in Luckenbach, TX. After five days in the shop in Houston, I was able to escape and the only thing that doesn{t work now is the brake light when I use the rear brake. I can{t believe how smoggy the air is from North of Monterrey to here. It has an acrid smell you wouldn{t believe, but can enjoy as much as I did by sprinkling Ajax cleanser on an old tire and tossing it onto your next bonfire. Monterrey was literally invisible in the Smog.. I think every day is a burn day down here. My first day riding in Messko and I already broke my rule about not riding at night.

Tomorrow I head south for either Mexico City, or somewhere near the ocean, hoping the air will be better. I can{t believe how bad my Spanish has gotten. When I get back home, I{m getting Telemundo...

Today feels like the first real day of the trip.

I owe a lot of thanks to Mike and Dave at MPH Cycles, for putting my bike right and Chris B of Austin for putting me up for a night so I could save more of my money for beer. And then there{s Charlie T of Mission, TX, who helped me prep the bike for the final time and
showed me where the places are in Mexico that I needed to find to get permission to drive through this wonderful and picturesque, yet extremely filthy and foul smelling part of the world. I am extremely grateful to all of you.

And thanks to Beatrice for keeping people updated when I{ve not been able to get to a computer.

I haven't seen much of interest here in Northern Mexico, except for the baby goat on the spit in a restaurant. Next time you find yourself at a petting zoo, and one of those cute little miniature goats nudges your hand, keep in mind they make great tacos.

Houston, Texas

November 5, 2004

There may be three people in the entire United States who know how to adjust the fuel injection system on my bike, and probably none between here and my final destination. I headed to Houston, hoping to meet up with Mike Haven of MPH Cycles, a tuning shop for Moto Guzzi Motorcycles.

As I crossed into Texas, the roads opened up before me, the sky cleared and then turned a nice deep winter blue, and I let the bike race down the road at about 75 or 80 mph. Things were looking up and I figured on a day in Houston, then on to Mexico and the real adventure before me.

I got to Houston during rush hour and went off in the wrong direction down I-8. After gettting off the road and calling the shop twice, I was there. As I wheeled the bike into the shop, Mike pointed out to me that oil was dripping out the back of it. I unloaded the bike and asked what it might be.

"Could be a bad rear seal, could be a bad casting. We have the part to fix the rear main seal, it would take months to get a new case for the engine."

I went to the Red Roof Inn hoping it was just a rear main seal.

The Flying Gringo leaves Ohio, destination South America

November 3, 2004

"The Flying Gringo left the American Motorcyclist Association offices at around noon, heading south to the end of the road, in Tierra Del Fuego, the tip of South America. His 2000 Moto Guzzi Quota was so loaded down it looked like a Dromedary Camel, and he was hunched over the tankbag, peering out at the road before him."













Darkness fell as I got to Memphis, at the height of rush hour. Then a gentle rain began to fall. Then a downpour, as I sat in the bumper to bumper traffic and felt water find places in my jacket and rainpants to enter, and run down my back and into my lap. My visor began to fog up, and I got off the road to wipe it dry.

About a mile down the road, it was fogged up again. This continued through Memphis, and the traffic didn't let up until I crossed the road into West Memphis, Arkansas. Once in a roadside hotel, I stripped off all my wet clothes and set them before the heater to dry, then went in search of libations. But the pickings were slim at the side of that road, and I settled for a convenience store sandwich and a sixpack of beer.