rtwPaul

Peru, Ecuador and Colombia Offroad Part 5…and Leaving South America

Caraz is not a bad place to be stuck in for two weeks, even with bad food poisoning. A nice little hotel right on the main square, secure parking in the courtyard, and my buddy @mak arrived

His bike is a Yamaha 250 Tenere, pretty much a perfect bike for South America, Fi, amazing mileage of over 400km to a tank and he bought it and sold it for almost the same price. If you have already read the process of how to buy a bike in Colombia, great, if not I wrote an article about it for the editorial front page HERE

To put this in perspective of how different people can and do travel and how they afford it, Mak had a minor financial loss on the sale of this bike, but to get here he had to save for SEVEN years working in his native India where wages are very, very, low to fulfill a life long dream.

He then rode and traveled on a budget of around $500-700 a month…and you think you can’t afford it! So for less than $5000 for seven months of riding, he had a ball on a solo trip.

The original plan was to be doing it all with his wife but the US Embassy put stop to that. Unbeknownst to me, Indians have limited priveledges when it comes to travel and the US inadvertently can create a reduction in countries they travel to.

Colombia DOESN’T allow an Indian citizen to come into the country without a current US Visa, basically, they use the US as their private vetting agency. Mak and his wife applied the same day, he got his, she was refused. She did the honorable thing and told him to go solo…

We had met months before, we chatted in Caraz and as we were both riding back to Colombia we decided to ride together.

Heading north out of Caraz put you straight on to Cañón del Pato route, so for the second time, I ride it. It is listed as one of the most dangerous roads in the world…which is a major stretch! You can see thru almost all of the tunnels from end to end and the ones you can’t you sound your horn. The road is mostly paved now so no issues with dust anymore

…but right here of all places my horn decided to die…oh the irony, but after all the tunnels it started working again!

and into the valley below

Once you clear the canyon the views go for miles and you can pick your route without using a map

I guess minor electrical issues were happening and somehow my GPS decided to delete some of its tracks as well as it cut off, but then, of course, it came back on and was fine.

Stopping in a small village in the middle of nowhere, name unknown due to lost tracks we found a town that had been passed by, by the paved road and all that was left was an amazing church, a few people and some very steep cobbled streets

Not finding an alternative smaller track/ back way out of the village we have no choice but to head back to the main track and ride the more used ( i use that term very lightly) track

We know roughly our heading it’s towards that drop-off and down and up the other side…more fun coming…

Mid-morning arrival in a tiny Puebla I’d planned to get to for lunch (i can’t remember the name) had me sitting around taking in daily life as for the day began. The lady in the kitchen asked if I’d mind waiting for an hour or so…I’d been here before and her cooking was good, some of the best I’d eaten in rural Peru, I was in no rush so yes!

I sat outside on the curb as just observed…

Then this guy and his horse comes and sits next to me

His buddy arrives and the drinking begins, its 10.30am, I just sit and wonder if these guys said to each other before the first drink…its gotta be 5.30 somewhere!!!

Mak had asked me to take a few photos of his bike for his return to Colombia so he could sell it, he headed off to get it cleaned from this to this –

As his bike was a Colombian registered bike he’d bought there it would be an easy sell to a local or a traveler. The latter interested me where he would find an international buyer…”Horizons Unlimited” he stated. So we had a look to see if anyone was looking to buy in Colombia around the dates we roughly planned to be there…nothing!

…but I spotted a listing of a guy looking for a bike the same week I had planned to ship mine out. Not holding out much hope I dropped him a message, he replied instantly and we went back and forth with a few questions and answers then he said where do I send the money! I told him I wanted at least 50% down, he agreed and in minutes the money was in my Paypal account.

At this point I really had not any intentions of selling, I was working with Veronica in Bogota about flying the bike back. A few days before Mak and I had made a spreadsheet of all the options she was offering –

The final destination was Phoenix, to either ride there or ship direct, prices are not exact due to not knowing the exact final crate estimates

Bogota – Miami $1850 +/-
Bogota – LA $2750 +/-
Bogota – Panama City $900
Bogota – Phoenix $2900 +/-

The problem was flying it to Phoenix wasn’t a good option because they just don’t do it from Bogota, so the bike would have been ground freighted from Miami to Phoenix.

We sat and looked at these options and then the possible extra days on the road and added costs…especially the Panama option and riding back thru CA…yikes! All of them came in around $100 difference from each other. At this point, we were sitting in central Peru

…but now none of this was necessary at all because I had a sale. Veronica sent me an email telling me she had received a new quote to Phoenix for $2200, I thanked her for her time and told her the bike had sold so no need for shipping any longer.

To me, my original thoughts were get the bike back to PHX take off a lot of the expensive add ons sell them separately and then sell the bike as a basic adventure bike with just upgrades like, tank, luggage rack and a few other minor things, now this wasn’t a worry, now the worry was getting the bike to Bogota in one piece.

Now in my head, I was $2200 better off!

This certainly didn’t make me stay on paved roads or the Pan America for safety, if I broke the bike I would simply fix it before his arrival.

We passed a sign somewhere along the way, one of many we’d seen and could easily be the title for this ride report – “Pavements ends”

One last pork dinner in Peru then it was time to cross back to Ecuador

I picked a slightly different route north but keeping to dirt, this time through the rainy season was in full effect and photos were reduced, only taking the occasional shot here an there…plus maybe a little lack of motivation as South America ending was now a reality with a timestamp

I used a few of the dirt tracks @CourtRand had shared with me months before and headed north via Banos, Mak and I agreed to meet back up in Quito later

Once we had reacquainted I promised to show Mak a few odd tracks because he hadn’t seen too much of Ecuador, passing by quickly making a beeline for Peru and the mountains, his main goal.

Mak sat patiently a few times as I was taking my last few panaramas

our last section of Ecuador was west to east crossing near the border on a remote track I had ridden a few times and I promised to get a few good shots of him on the trail.

I took to an area that could be Ecuador’s equivalent of the BaM road and collapsed bridges

and the beginning of more than a few waterfalls

he was having a blast

A quick crossing and we were back in Colombia and more mud

It took us almost two hours to complete this part of the track from where we’d seen the last house to where we’d see the next one, and this guy was pushing his bicycle with a bag of grain over the crossbar, makes you wonder how often he makes this journey thru the rain forest.

Maybe not too far as a short while later we met ranchers moving cattle and this was the only traffic we met along here

He was having fun and his once clean and shiny bike was now looking like it needed a fresh cleaning

Out from the rain forest an back into the mountains we rode up from the bottom of the valley (see the track) to here

and traversed at altitude for a few days heading north

We planned our last section of dusty dirt track before heading back to the Steel Horse where we’d both stayed before

The plan was to use the SH as a staging cleaning area for me to head off to Bogota and him to Medellin to our respective buyers, we didn’t waste any water in the process, mother nature took care of the washing and all the bike needed was a quick wipe down between showers

and it was ready for the new buyer (a non-inmate)

I arrived in Bogota a day later parked it and never rode it again… @Tricepilot took the final photo (he was here for a few weeks riding) before the buyer rode it away

My very last photo of the DR was this…I don’t name bikes!

It had covered 70,225 km/ 43,635 miles with me and actually a few more as I had a few tracks that didn’t register so call it 44k, never once did I have anything similar to the issues Andi @Two Moto Kiwis had when he owned it prior to me

I hoped a cab early the following morning and before I knew it ‘merica was right there.

not too many hours later I got to the house in Phoenix and a delivery had beat me there a few days before!

The ride is not over, by far, it’s about to take a whole different twist and continue…

Peru Offroad – Part 4

Rolling out of the other side of the Olimpica Tunnel at over 4700 meters you are just hit by a blast of freezing wind blowing off the glaciers but you just have to stop and sit and admire the view

A few days of rising on high plateaus over 4000/ 13,100′ meters daily and hoping those clouds will just stay where they are because I know that some freezing rain I really don’t want to deal with right now

A lonely dirt road is what I need, quite helmet time to think (of the above post) and keep distracted and away from crowds

The downward descent is keeping me focused which is a good thing, one mistake here could be my last

I know there’s a bottom to this valley but from my position, I can’t see it from up here at 4500m

Riding thru a little village that is almost abandoned, stopping for a short break a little dog appears out of nowhere, he gives me that look, he doesn’t want attention he wants food, all I have is a few tuna packets…do dogs like fish?

When they are starving and shivering from the cold…yes they do!

I continue and still can’t see the bottom of the valley

The sun comes out for a brief moment and the valley comes alive, but still, the bottom is out of sight

I take a few of those dirt hairpins you see there and then I see it, its know as ‘that bridge’; a bridge that was washed away and made this valley a rarely visited area in the last few years, but I read that a few months back it had finally been replaced…what a relief!

After crossing ‘that bridge’ no one mentioned what an awesome canyon it took you in to

and with each turn, it got better and tighter

and then dumped out into the next canyon on the other side

the big problem with Peru is you run out of superlatives!

you know that saying – ‘what goes up must come down’, its the opposite in Peru, ‘what goes down must go up’ and up I went…

ending up on a track that seemed like a road to a mine, it just had that feeling, and it was. Eventually, in the distance the mine became visible and the track went right thru the middle of it and included going thru a graveyard at the side of the road that I can only imagine is miners who lost their lives

Taking the track forever upwards thru the mine and looking down where I had come from

cresting the top next to a lake and a peak that looked like rusted iron ore in front of me

just when you think it can’t get any better the pass route down the track into a totally different landscape, and each turn you think Peru cannot get any better but it does

More dirt, more remoteness, and more amazing scenery

The following day somewhere up a very rarely used track I stopped to take this photo (that surprisingly Google has been up HERE), and the bike wouldn’t start, just a click and then nothing. Sitting at 4850 meters and a storm slowly coming in my direction there was no choice to turn the bike around and try and roll it to a lower elevation…as nothing obvious was wrong that I could find after a quick inspection.

I rolled about 95% of the way down plus a little pushing and pulling to the town of Charlacayo HERE the freewheel was over 80km/ 50 miles, none stop, a reduction of elevation of around 4000m

at the same time, my Sena battery died so I just hand held my little P&S and videoed a small section

What was it that caused the issue?…this!

A connector going into the regulator had snapped, allegedly a rare problem that seems to happen to a lot of DR’s, there is a very sharp bend where the positive wire goes in. Vibration over time causes the issue, the problem was, it has broken and the battery wasn’t charging but the wire was still in place but not touching…took me a while to find it!

The following day heading back up the same general direction I decided to take a different route..who knows why!

…and somehow got caught up in an army march in the middle of nowhere

In a small town looking for somewhere to stay, I had to stop and take a photo of this for the English reading who think the tour companies in South America don’t like them

life continues on at a slow and steady pace, the only way you might know the years have changed is the updated dates of politicians pitching themselves for the next government seat

Riding roads like this it made me think of the riders who make a beeline for Ushuaia and how much good fun is missed by so many by not spending more time in the Andes…just to get south to collect ‘that photo’

The lessor ridden areas of Peru offer some of the absolute best riding in South America, paved and unpaved

Meandering slowly on deserted back roads and tracks the higher more jagged peaks of the Andes have turned to smooth rolling hills but still the altitude tops 4000 meters

tiny little villages pop up and probably not too much change up here for the last 100 years, save electricity

Miles and miles of nothing, Peru is the equivalent size of the range of the Mexican border to the Canadian border. With a population of 32 million and a little more than 10 million of those living in Lima, the Andes offers solitude whether you want it or not.

I had met up with an Indian rider months before, he was currently in Peru somewhere else and had sent me a message, he put Peru in perspective from his point of view – “India is slightly more than double the size of Peru, India has a population of 1.3 billion…Peru is empty, and quiet, I love it.” I could tell he was smiling as he wrote this.

The occasional small towns are friendly and welcoming, food is available, it is just to fill you and keep you moving…not made to make you sit down and write a 5-star review.

Each day offers more, a different perspective, a different landscape. I am just glad I am using a digital camera and not film, untold rolls could be used on a daily basis here

On the occasion you do see some movement in the distance, as you get closer its usually just a llama, vicuña or alpaca looking for better grass.

Another track, another horizon, another mystery to find over that hill, I haven’t seen any other adventure riders in so long it makes me wonder, where are they riding?…but I’m not looking for them either!

over that hill was a small finca, no one around but an interesting looking setup, from above on the dirt track

I decided to head down to the coast to make a decision of where to head next, the population grew

it’s all downhill from here

I eventually got to the beach, the point of coming here was having good wifi, and good wifi lives in populated areas…as I need to make a decision

Peru is great, but just wasn’t feeling South America right now so I decided to leave the continent, but the big question was how?

I was literally halfway between Bogota and Santiago, the two easiest place to escape the continent from. The prices were comparable but it would mean riding around 4000km thru Chile and the expense was a lot higher, so I decided on Bogota. Plus, there are other options to get out, containers, boats, etc…

So, northbound and back into the mountains

a quick buzz up the Pan Am, wow it sucks, how do people ride this all day every day!!! …and got stopped four times by the cops in less than 100km

right before making the turn to the Andes and remoteness I stopped and grabbed a drink, and when people say the DR650 isn’t a big bike…well it is down here, imagine how big your GSA would look in this shot

It doesn’t take long to be back to the tracks I love, hope the pavement will end soon

This bridge marks the end of the pavement…

I found a track on the GPS that looked like it’d be remote, headed off the main road and went up, and up and up

reaching a plateau and a lake that wasn’t on the map my speedo clicked over 62,137 miles, but why is that significant? Well its 100,000km and a milestone for some bikes, just another day for the DR

The remnants of what used to be a paved road right at the top, weird how that happens in so many places…dirt for miles and miles then a random piece of blacktop albeit very old and barely there

At 4850m it was like riding on the surface of the moon, a little loss of power but not much, still have the same jetting as I did at sea level

There’s an option for a more desolate road… I take it

Occasional small glacial lakes are dotted along the side of the road, rarely having to get off the bike to get a shot, good, air is thin up here and the less unnecessary movements are better for the breathing

I get dropped back out on to bigger dirt track, and see potential signs of life ahead

Two men are working llamas and are the first people I have seen in hours up here, I shock the heard a little, with the noise from the exhaust and the men turn and see me, acknowledge me with a wave then carry on doing whatever it is llama farmers do!

a few km’s further I ride thru a settlement with no name, if I hadn’t seen the two guys minutes earlier I would have thought this place was abandoned, but the buildings look in slightly better condition than theirs so I guess this is a thriving metropolis in the mountains and the people are somewhere out there working the land

Still finding solitude and its great

Even though there is signs of life, tracks, and manicured fields there is just no one here, Peru really is empty.

A few weeks back talking to locals they were saying the Venezuelan crisis could be good for Peru. “We have loads and loads of land and no one to work it, if the Venezuelans are willing to work hard they can make a great life for themselves in Peru.”

I could see where I was headed, following the single track thru and the valley and somewhere out there it would climb to the top and over the other side

I eventually came out on a rare piece of pavement and rode by a line of motorcycle cops at least 100+ strong, then not a km along the road I am stopped by motorcycle cops, they want to see my license, that’s all. a few km later I’m stopped again, motorcycle cops, this time, “Passport Señor?”

Another km and more motorcycle cops, they have a line of cars pulled over so I just ride by. And then there is it, a walled complex to my right on the side of the road…Police Acadamy.

Not even a few km on the other side more motorcycle cops have drivers lined up, they wave me thru without stopping…time to get off this road.

I find a dirt track off the pavement and take regardless, and head back upwards, now my only company has no interest in me at all.

At an overnight in a small town I find a hotel with amazingly fast wifi, the owner asks where I’m headed and I tell him vaguely north. “Do you like dirt roads in the middle of nowhere because there is a good one from here that will lead you to the eastern side of the Huascarán national park?”

I pull out a map and he shows me the road, “it’ll be very dusty to start, but then get past a few small villages and it’ll be you and the llama farmers until you hit Chacas, the views of the Andes are amazing, but get up early its a long ride!”

I woke up late but took the track anyway.

This shot was at around 9.45am and I didn’t see another vehicle until it was dark.

he was right about the view

Even though passing thru villages there were just no cars around

…but the Peruvians sure do know how to make a road up a hill

…and he was right about the llamas

He forgot to mention waterfalls though

My track clung to the side of a mountain, just another death road, one of many

small settlements clung to the edge of hillsides and I slowly made my way thru them

then back to being by myself up and down, I went

I took this shot just after 6 pm and almost dark (yes i know it doesn’t look like it, i really had to up the exposure to make it show up), it was my birthday and I considered setting up a wild camp here, the sun had already set, it seemed like it would be a cool place to set up camp. Then I came to my senses I was sitting at over 4500m. I really needed to get lower

After the lake the sun dropped and the temperature dropped quicker, the track became worse or maybe it was my imagination, the headlight was making the track look like it was lined with basketball size rocks with the huge shadows it created.

eventually, the tarmac started and I was in San Luis, a tiny little town that I immediately recognized. It was the same town I was chased out of a parking lot by a guy wielding shears. I recognized it straight away, but this time around I saw an ambulance outside and maybe it was a small hospital or insane asylum!!!

I carried on because on the GPS there was another town close by called Charcas. I rode to the town square, it was very dark and as I stopped to look at my GPS to see if there was a hotel/ hostel close by a lady approached me and offered me a room in her ‘hotel’ that was nearly finished.

I inquired about the possibilities of food and she offered to make me dinner. She was intrigued if I had been here before. I replied “no!”

“Ok, so I will give you a room with a view over the plaza so when you wake in the morning you can go outside and take it in, its one of the nicest colonial plaza of any small ton in Peru.”

I woke up to this…

The plan for the day was a short 111km ride to Caraz via Huascarán National Park (again)

This time I decided to take it a lot slower and take it in, this would be my last really up-close look at the Andes for a while

I’d read about others that had been up here recently had snow or rain and virtually no visibility…not me

I came thru the tunnel at the top and must have sat in the spot for a few hours just absorbing the view

To give you an idea of the 360-degree view from up here …this was behind me

A few minor side tracks reveal different views, you honestly can’t get enough of this if the weather is on your side

RTW Costs 3.0

Let’s talk about money…RTW costs, that is!

I try and keep real-world costs on a year by year basis, was very lax in the first five years but the last three it has become part of the daily routine and actually helps in being more aware where the money goes and trying to have realistic day to day costs.

I read of other riders doing the same, some seem very accurate where some seem to exaggerate with outrageous high or low amounts, and when questioned get very defensive, where others just simply don’t care at all and just say it is what it is. So, I guess I’m somewhere in the middle ground.

For reference, the previous year’s posts are below

Money 1.0 is HERE – 2016
Money 2.0 is HERE – 2017

…but as a brief description,

2016 was two people one bike (Super Tenere) and a yearly daily avg. of $65.86
2017 was two people one bike for a 1/3 of the time then two bikes and a daily avg. of $65.33
2018 was two people, two bikes and a daily average of $69.69

So how did 2018 break down?

I track four simple categories – fuel/ food/ lodging and miscellaneous first three are self-explanatory the miscellaneous covers everything that isn’t in the first three categories. Parts, repairs, border fees, entrance fees, replacement gear, insurance, medical insurance etc.

the reason solely for the increase in cost year over year was taking two bikes to Cuba and the related shipping costs, if instead we had simply ridden down to Panama and crossed the Darian the normal route 2018 would have actually worked out cheaper than both ’16 and ’17 by a dollar or so a day.

Averages were

Fuel costs – $2342.28 or $3.21 per day, per bike
Food costs – $8539.41 or $11.70 per day per person
Lodging costs – $7261.06 or $9.95 per day per person
Misc. costs – $7294.04 or $9.99 per day per person (Cuba skewed this number)

So if you skip back to Jan 1, 2018, and review where this ride report took you as a single rider it all could have been done for $12.720.25 (or $34.85 a day) for a year on the road riding thru US/ Mexico/ Guatemala/ Cuba/ Colombia/ Ecuador and Peru

in those 365 there were 69 nights of wild camping, staying with friends or comped rooms, so zero cost. I DO NOT live on noddles on a daily basis, I like a steak, I like a beer or three, I pick nicer places to stay, I DO NOT EVER STAY IN DORMS or shitty hippie hostels

I like to tell you all this stuff not to brag but to share information because there is this illusion that riding RTW is a pastime for the rich, and I AM NOT RICh by any means, but from these numbers, you can see it is more than doable.

Questions???

Peru Offroad – Part 3

Pallasca to Caraz via Cañon del Pato could be one of the top ten, day rides in Peru, there are a few options to get to Caraz but of course, we had to take the Captain’s road and he built an absolute beauty.

Dropping out of Pallasca is an overload to the senses, views forever and in each of these there is a track or road that we’ll be riding down, mostly dirt but occasionally a little old broken pavement

Out here you are nothing but a tiny speck on the landscape and one second too long admiring the view and you will get a free flying lesson

From the top, the river was a thin blue line that takes you an hour or more to reach

In such a desolate landscape that looks like its bereft of life, we find a vineyard flourishing alongside the river, no one around, just grapes doing there thing

A few miles later we pass thru a very depressing village with just a few people living there, the thought of why and how anyone would even consider living, settling or staying here is beyond us, we ride on and find an abandoned mine. By the looks of it, non-functioning for a very long time, but obviously the little village was built for the workers, the mine closed but some of the workers decided to stay…the mind boggles

…but the view from the mine…

We make the left turn onto the main road most people use and head along the road towards Cañon del Pato, not a duck in sight! There are a few former tunnels that have collapsed and been cleaned away, and the occasional bridge before the 40 or so tunnels begin

As we stopped for a break a Bently comes racing past us, then a 40’s chevy!

We catch a glimpse of a plate on the Chevy that they are on the Grand Prix of South America, a few more cars go by and the drivers are waving and having a great time.

We find out later its not really a race at all, just a bunch of very rich people who shipped over their old rally cars to Buenos Aires and are driving to Cartagena, Colombia. It set up by a company called Bespoke Rallies who obviously do this and have very wealthy clients…sadly the employees who are also traveling along are not as cordial as the paying guests.

A simple rule is in place on Cañon del Pato sound your horn as you enter a tunnel to let others know who is coming from the opposite direction there is someone in the tunnel, and you wait for them to exit before you enter, its simple the tunnels are mostly just big enough for one vehicle wide.

Nope, not the organizers, we are in a tunnel, horn blaring, LED flood lights on (7200 lumens of them) and they race in at speed, I have to skid to a stop and go in a ditch because of these jokers who think Peru is a one-way race track…the novelty of the vintage cars wore off real quick.

Some sections have things that make you stop and go…!

This rock formation just did not make sense…geology majors?

…and can you imagine this was part of your trip home?

The Cañon continues…

We end the day in Caraz, find a really nice hotel on the square with a secure courtyard to park the bikes inside and decide to hang out for a few days, its 40 soles/ $11.84…we grab food in the market and I have fun letting Egle walk first and watching all the ladies expressions when they see her hair, they all love it, sadly it was so dark in there its difficult to get good crisp shots of most of them

…but here goes, all these are shot from the hip as to not be too obvious and upset the ladies, hence the slight fuzziness because of not pinpointing a subject, just wanted you to see the characters, the expressions, and the hats!

and whats the last stall in the market selling…hats of course!

****More about the Captain

NOVEMBER 15, 2018
The Last Captain of Pallasca

The central square of Pallasca is deserted and silent in the glaring white sun of the high Andes.

An old colonial church, built in 1625 by the Spanish monks, is crumbling, rotting away, paint peeling, walls slowly cracking and disintegrating, ghost houses surrounding the plaza abandoned and boarded up, save for a few, and the little crooked streets of cobblestone and dirt and clay run off into the labyrinth of Pallasca carving their way through a maze of decrepit, hollow houses covered in red tiles, broken, overgrown with moss, some now used for pig enclosures, pitiful laundry drying in the icy cold rays of the highland sun as the wind sifts the dust and the debris like a blind, vagrant wraith from the days of the past.

On the corner of the plaza, under a looming shadow of a Spanish villa, an old Quechua woman sits selling Andean herbs and bananas that had long gone black, her face half-covered by a wide-brimmed hat, squinting, dozing, she has been dreaming open-eyed, not noticing the dust and the sand that the wind had kicked up in her face, as if she herself had become a part of Pallasca, a stone in the cobbled street or an old wooden banister of a decaying gallery or a heavy silver ornament on one of the windows, long gone now, long forgotten.

Walking the crumbling, narrow streets smelling of moist earth, pig shit and sunsets, we abruptly come to a halt, this is where Pallasca ends, suddenly, in a pile of rock and stone, next to a rambling clay brick house, covered in soot, crippled and misshapen, the roof almost touching the ground now, and out in the yard overgrown with wines and coarse highland grasses, on a bench made from grey stone, or is it a tombstone – a strange lopsided obelisk – there is an old couple sitting. She is knitting a woolen mantilla, humming to herself softly, her fingers wrinkled, gnarled from arthritis. He is looking out at the menacing jagged peaks of the Andes, painted crimson and scarlet by the setting sun, his head trembling a little. They smile, and nod, and wish us good evening, good evening.

We stay with the Captain of Pallasca, in his white palatial nineteenth century house right next to the old church. There’s a small boy running about in the courtyard and there are voices of women and a strong aroma of soup emanating from one of the inner chambers of the mansion, and somebody is listening to the radio in the labyrinth of rooms upstairs, and a heavyset, black- haired girl is picking ripe red tomatoes in the dark green jungle of the inner garden.

The courtyard cobblestones are now broken and worn, the Spanish galleries rotting before our eyes, collapsing, supported by wooden poles and scraps of metal, the stairs creaking and decaying, the rambling, crumbling mansion bound together by nothing but the iron will of the Captain. Our room has a high ceiling, there are two beds at the opposite walls, mattresses moldered, covered in threadbare blankets, and in the middle of the room there is a small wooden cabinet piled high with photographs and medals. There he is, the Captain: young and lean and handsome, standing tall, solemn, shaking the hand of the President, saluting the General.

Once a Spanish gold mining hub, Pallasca had since become a ghost town, had fallen through the cracks, its young leaving for Chimbote and Trujillo as soon as they could, its old slowly, dutifully dying. Merely six hundred people remain, quiet, weathered, smiling in disbelief, sitting around on curbs and broken benches, pious, staring at their own hands.

Five decades ago, Pallasca had been cut off from the world, with one dusty narrow mule trail going up the mountain, and the good citizens of Pallasca rode donkeys and mules and walked and had never seen an automobile. Then the Captain arrived. Stationed in Pallasca, the Captain became hellbent on changing its destiny.

“Millions of soles had been allocated to build a road, a real road to Pallasca, and millions had been stolen by thieving politicians. All five Peruvian presidents, crooks and scroungers, all of them! They should have their hands chopped off or be put to hard work. God damn! Well, I would have none of it. Pallasca needed a road to connect it to the Pacific and the Amazon, money or not. And I was going to build it”, – the Captain tells us, leaning on the gallery banister, his voice booming. He is old now, so old, but still strong as an ox, his back straight and his hands calloused, he speaks in perfect Castellano, his face is marked but his dark eyes glimmer as he talks.

“We had no machinery and no technology, but we had vision and discipline. People have no vision and no discipline these days! God damn! I said to the Pallascans, each of you will build ten meters of the road, and it doesn’t matter who you are: a merchant, a peasant or a teacher, or a child, even. Every living soul in Pallasca had to build their ten meters. Women would bring us food out on the face of the mountain. I had not slept in months, months, I tell you – but the road was built”, – the Captain speaks hotly now, and behind him, there is an old black and white photograph, framed: the Captain, laughing with pride, carried on the shoulders of a cheering mob, waving the Peruvian flag, the first automobile entering Pallasca just behind him. June, 1973.

“Everything ages, everything crumbles and perishes… Pallasca is dying now, but I won’t move. Carajo! I will hold this place together with my bare hands, even if the Pallascans are leaving, I tell you, vision and discipline! I wrote to the Australian embassy and asked them to give me a pair of koalas: there are forests around Pallasca, immense woods of eucalyptus trees, the koalas would breed and the tourists would come, those ridiculous little bears would attract travelers, just like the Pandas in Guayaquil, you see, and Pallasca would flourish once again. We have built the road, god damn it! We have built the road”, – the Captain says, as he wishes us a good night and vanishes into the darkness of the second floor, into his chambers and into the glories of the past.

Deadly silence engulfs Pallasca as the freezing cold Andean night descends all around it. The Captain’s palace, leaning heavily on the old church, sighs and whispers in the darkness, and in the crooked cobblestone streets, during the witching hour, steps of Spanish ghosts fall soundlessly into the velveteen blackness of the night.

“…the only thing that gave us security on earth was the certainty that he was there, invulnerable to plague and hurricane . . . invulnerable to time. For he had not survived everything because of his inconceivable courage or his infinite prudence but because he was the only one among us who knew the real size of our destiny” – Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Autumn of the Patriarch

After hanging with the ladies in the market we rode a little stopped a little, nothing special but made sure we were on the west side of Huascarán National Park so we could do a two-day loop, across the park on the #106 and back on the #107, this took us 4 days to complete…

The pavement ends at Yungay and five minutes later you are at the National Park gate, pay a nominal amount and the gate opens and immediately you are in another world

The road leads along the extremely blue Laguna de Llanganuco fed by the Nevado Huascarán Sur glacier above it

Still carrying those tires and still don’t need them, but feel like a real adventure rider with an overloaded bike though

All the Zen dudes got here before us and made their mark like they do with Cairns, just wonder if half the people that do this actually know why they are doing it…or just copying

The track had become a small stream flowing into the lake and knowing we were headed up to and over 4000mm the thought of wet feet wasn’t good

The sun disappeared behind the clouds and where we were headed did not look too inviting at all

Looking back down the valley willing the blue sky to come with us

Looking up it was difficult to discern between the clouds, the snow and the glaciers, but regardless up we went

Even at this high altitude life blooms as we shiver

you know when you are on one of those tracks and you take a photo and the next corner will be as good or better, but you still take it anyway…yeah, that!

***click photo for a big version

The pass some riders call one of the toughest day rides in Peru, well not sure about that, but the views up here are nothing short of spectacular

We head down the other side still on dirt but the two sides don’t have too much of a resemblance after we leave the last glacier.

We set our sights on Yanama to try and find some lunch, not knowing there were two places with the same name seperated by a valley. As we pull into the first one I get a flat on the front, guessing a pinch flat from the rocky trail, this section of the town has just a few dirt streets and dirt brick buildings. The flat happens right next to the village school and what happens next is nothing short of inspiring, amazing and a little hard work…

…continued

Huascarán National Park has to be one of the best areas for riding and viewing the amazing Andes, so much so you kinda forget to check your bike as much as you should…tire pressures!

My front was low and coming down the east side of the 106 in some heavy sharp rocks I got a pinch flat on the front, in a tiny little hamlet called Yanama. I’m guessing not too much ever happens here, and most riders just ride on thru…nothing to see, well they didn’t stop and meet the kids, did they?

Within minutes of stopping I was surrounded, unknowingly stopping by a school, it appeared the teacher had told the kids to go check what the alien was doing.

The kids were great, and just being kids, asking loads of goofy questions but very politely and interested in the GPS mainly to see exactly where they were on the planet and where this alien had ridden in from…they were amazed.

Once the flat was fixed food was needed, the kids said the next little Puebla had food and if I needed Facebook its in the main square, not internet…but Facebook.

The teacher shouted one word from the doorway of the schoolroom and with no complaining the kids said goodbye, the boys waved or wanted to shake hands, some of the girls wanted a hug, in a, ‘please come back and see us again soon way’, and then they ran and disappeared through the doorway laughing and giggling as they went

The kids were right there was food, not great food, but the Puebla was as sleepy as theirs, and also called Yanama, but in this one, the aliens were not as important as knitting, this lady literally never looked up, she was so engrossed…knit one, pearl one!

A dirt road out of town revealed a great valley with stunning views down to the river below, eventually…the track started so high that you literally couldn’t see the bottom until around 20km was ridden

Eventually flattening out into a waterlogged muddy mess where a new bridge was being installed, heavy truck traffic went back and forth and destroyed the road outside little houses that appeared abandoned except for a few street dogs

…but with the sound of a throaty exhaust a few little faces appeared, I stopped and took the helmet off and walked thru the mud, the least I could do was try and make the kids day with a lollipop, I mean there was no way they were playing in this street for a long time to come

this dirt road leads to a little town called San Luis which in hindsight wasn’t a great choice, after asking at 4 hostels with point-blank refusals or no parking or one where one guy came at me with shears shouting to get out of his parking lot.

The fifth said yes, and it was by far the worst place I’ve stayed since a place tattooed in my memory in Kazakhstan…and what makes it worse is there is a beautiful little town on 20km away that I’ll stay in, later on, that is easily one of the nicest small towns in Peru!

To make San Luis worse, torrential rain started and it made the town feel even unfriendlier if that was possible, the power went out multiple times so all the restaurants closed their doors and didn’t reopen

Eventually finding a bread lady who couldn’t stop laughing like someone just told her the best ‘yo momma so fat’…joke, I had to get a happy shot in this place just to me feel better about it, and I was only staying one night…albeit a blurred one, the camera unable to focus quickly enough due to the heavy rain

you can take a photo pretty much anywhere in Peru away from a big city by an hour or less and it could have been taken today or fifty years ago…plowing with a cow doing the pulling, the only thing that makes it not an older photo is the power lines, but I bet this family have been plowing these fields for generations

From San Luis its all pavement taking the 107 to the top, but it is worth taking because of the views of the glaciers

The road to the top is all hairpins as you’d expect and at the top is the Olimpia Tunnel, the highest vehicular tunnel in the world…allegedly

and say goodbye to Egle as she disappears into the tunnel, this is the last riding shot of her I have, not long after this we had a heart to heart and decided we are looking for different things from our adventurers so mutually agreed to an amicable split. (this all happened over a month ago)

She will still be writing for the editorial front page of ADVrider, but she simply doesn’t have the time to do a ride report right now of her own, I’d just ask that you respect her privacy.

From here on out, this ride will continue solo for the foreseeable future

Peru Offroad – Part 2

Having lunch in a tiny little Puebla we look at the map to see where looks like an interesting route, we are sitting looking south and find a place called Pallasca, it’s taking the 3N and it looks to have a crazy section.

The towns are sleepy and lost in time

Education in these areas still isn’t great, most buildings are covered in political slogans and names, but to help the illiterate, which there are still a great number, images are used for the voters to understand where to make their ‘X’

every corner is a view and at times we feel we could cover as much ground if we were walking, you just need to tell yourself no for some of the shots otherwise we’d be lucky to make 20km per day

in these little Puebla’s every blind bend there could be something so you just take it slow, there are few cars but right now loads of pigs

we round a bend and see this…

this is what you ride Peru for, but it does make you think who the crazy nut job was who built these roads…we are about to meet him, one of Peru’s finest

The man who built and designed this and a few other roads in this area

I’ll talk about him in the next post but wouldn’t you like to shake the hand of the man who dreamt up this masterpiece?

We roll to the bottom of the valley and up the other side and pull into the small Colonial town of Pallasca

There are three small hotels/ hostels on the main square, two potentially have bike parking, the first one we enter there is only a cleaning lady walking around and she tells us she can’t rent us a room without the owners permission…and they are out with their cows and she has no idea when they’ll be back!

As we come out Egle heads off for ice cream and a man approaches me and tells me the same story about the hostel owners just left for their cows, so I should come and meet the Captain, he has loads of rooms.

The man walks me over towards a large green door of a building that is attached to the right of the church which he points out was build in 1650.

Inside an older man approaches us, he tells me a room is 15 soles/ $4.45 for one night, he points at a door, I look inside and tell him we have motorbikes, “not a problem, I’ll open the big door park them here, very secure.”

I go back outside and Egle is looking for me with ice cream, we finish up and ride the bikes inside.

Over the remainder of the afternoon and the following morning, we get to know him quite well, as you could in such a short period. In these areas, he is a very famous man. His name is Captain Orlando Bladimir Alvarez Castro (you can’t make this stuff up) in 1973 he told us he made this town accessible to the world by car, prior to this you could only get here by horse, donkey or foot.

As a Captain in the Peruvian military he was given the task, he not only built the road, with help of the locals of course, down to the bottom of the valley and back up but also two other roads as well. He said he biggest regret was not making it wider, but in 1973 he was the very first person ever to drive a vehicle into the town square

This was such an amazing feat of engineering he was was commended by not one President but by three!

and given multiple awards for other services, our room where we slept was his ‘trophy room’

Why is this little Puebla so special?

Pallasca has a history that goes back to the earliest times of the Spanish Conquest. Serious studies indicate that its name would come from Apollacsa Vilca Yupanqui Tuquiguarac, an important noble Peruvian native who served during the passage of the first conquistadores, thus would have received a coat of arms, according to the historian Felix Álvarez Brun in his book Ancash, a regional Peruvian history.

A fact which is apparently not so well known is that the corpse of Huáscar, the last legitimate heir of the Incan Empire, was thrown in waters of the River Tablachacá (formerly, Andamarca) by the Spanish conquistadores.

There is a lot more detail about the town on Wiki where you also read more about the Captain

The roads to the Plaza De Armas was completed 10 meters at a time by all the men and children of the town and they were supported by the women who provided the food.

He told us that they would set to work each day and during this time he would go and survey the land himself to determine the direction based on the geology the previous ten meters uncovered and that’s how you end up with this.

The town is a very original colonial place, one of few in the country, but as in most small towns and villages the populace is leaving and buildings are falling into disrepair…Captain?

“Ok, what we need is for people, local people to respect this town and its heritage, I am retired but I have made it my mission to restore this building as its attached to our church built in 1650, if this building falls down the church might fall down too, then who would come here…no-one!”

If you have ever been to Mexico and Real de Catorce there is a striking resemblance here (albeit in a Peruvian style), built on a very steep hillside, minimal cars, very friendly people, all original buildings, it is a place to visit for sure and the ride in and out is nothing short of spectacular

notice this is a one-way street look at the street sign arrow!

as we were walking around Egle thought she spotted Blinkin, if that means nothing you then you need to read this…the enlightened will fully understand

The sun starts to set and we wander back and stop in a store where we meet a local who is interested in how and why we found this place. We tell him the first thing that intrigued us was seeing the road on a map.

“you should meet the Captain!”
“we’re staying with the Captain!”
“he is a great man, a hero in these parts, if it weren’t for him this town would be dead, thank you for coming here.”

We leave early in the morning and head down another of the Captains amazing (dirt) roads and as you look across the valley you have to ask yourself if you were given this blank canvas what would your road look like and would it still be there today?

Peru Offroad – Part 1

Its straight into the good stuff, and before you know it you are riding dirt tracks with drops that will end you

we try and find remote areas to go to the places we want to see, you know how we pack kinda light we still save room for a few treats for the kids, maybe a lollipop or a kinder egg to a small child in the mountains might be the only the only gift or treat they get this year…and surprisingly a bag of dog food for our canine friends who we meet.

Egle posted a similar photo to this is a Lithuanian post and someone commented that doing this will make the kids beggars and thieves…really, a 3-6 year kid who gets this will convert into begging and thievery, I don’t think so, we just made there day, month or possibly year.

This little girl was living in a mud hut on a mountainside dozens of miles from the nearest people…likelihood of her becoming a mob boss zero.

These comments usually come from people who don’t travel to the areas we have and have no conception of the extreme poverty this kids and their families live in, the minimum wage in Peru for a month is $260…do you think the parents are treating the kids?

We ride the back roads towards Kuelap and climb over 10,000′ in no time

There is an option to take a cable car across a canyon to get there quicker, besides the fact we are on motorcycles, so we’d have to leave all our gear and the bikes for hours…we are on motorcycles we came to ride, anyone who comes to Kuelap and takes a cable car must really hate riding or dirt roads and they missed out on a spectacular ride

Once at the parking lot, one other car was in it and our two bikes, it takes an hour or so to ride and we weren’t holding back at all. We switch from the mighty DR to 1hp to get to the fortress

The ladies that own the horses are required to lead you up a path so steep that at times I could see Graeme Javis struggling on his Husky but my trusty steed took it in stride. To make the walk they charge you around $4, well worth it, they might make this same walk only twice a day but they were telling us it has changed their lives an the lives of their families…we rounded up and gave a 100% tip

Kuelap was built almost a 1000 year prior to Machu Picchu, its more well-known mountaintop community to the south of Peru. It is by no means as grand but it is just as impressive a location.

As you approach you see the dominating fortress walls

We enter thru one of the 3 entrances that reduce in size to an area where only one person can pass, Egle is her element, you know this if you’ve read her ride report or ordered her book, she has a love for last people and where and how they lived

Kuelap has 550 structures all but 5 are round in varying in size, only in the 1980’s did archeologists really start looking at the site and as a tourist attraction it is very new…we had the place to ourselves.

Our only company were a few llamas keeping the grass short

a thousand more years have reduced some of the stonework to nothing nut there are still glimpses of intricacies

The big difference between MP and Kuelap is MP was only occupied for around 80 years, Kuelap was occupied for hundreds of years until the Spanish Conquests until it was abandoned just a few years before MP was.

Walking to the edge of the settlement you get to look out at the dirt road we rode up and you have to admire the road builders to add that slither of sand and dirt to get you here

***click for full size

As we leave the impenetrable walls must have struck fear into anyone who dared to try and sack the fortress

That night the rainy season started on time Nov1, it was torrential, we rode out in the morning and in an hour or two the skies opened and we continued in rain almost all day long passing thru little villages, going up and down, but mainly up.

The tracks and roads got smaller, the mountains got taller, we were starting to enter the high Andes

we continued along for a few days more of the same, but all stunning

Eventually peaking out a few times over 14.000′

***click to expand

We headed down towards Balsas, a two street town on the Marañón River which is where Amazonas starts.

This is in the main square, we are directed to a family who has a small hostel on the outskirts of town

we find them down a dirt road after a small stream crossing here -6.840110, -78.026190, they are not too welcoming but it is late and nearly getting dark. The lady agrees to make us a little food which was nice, in the morning it is a different scene, everybody is up and super friendly, I’ll let Egle take up the story from here –

River Marañón, starting in the snow-capped Andes of Peru, is the main source of the Amazon. Marañón is spectacular: it pushes its vast waters through deep canyons, carving up Andean valleys as it makes its way East to meet River Utcayali and give birth to the Amazon river in Brasil.

It’s also terrifying. When it floods, Marañón gets out of control, its rapids becoming violently turbulent, its banks flooding and destroying everything in its path.

Some of the canyons and gorges of Rio Marañón are so massive it’s been compared to the Grand Canyon. The nature surrounding Marañón is out of this world, and travelers are now attempting to explore the whole length of the river by boats.

Somewhere along the river, there is a small pueblo called Balsas. It’s so tiny it’s barely visible on the map. It’s hot and sticky in Balsas; women sell fresh coconuts, mangos, and bananas, and kids run around half-naked, chasing lizards. Derelict streets line a small plaza where dust-covered trucks stop for a cold coconut water and gossip.

Just a few kilometers out of the village, there is a narrow dirt track leading to a settlement on the riverbank. Right off of Rio Marañón, there are a few clay-brick houses, makeshift huts, and a larger compound called the Rancho – a small clay-walled homestay.

Last night, having ridden over the mountain pass from Chachapoyas, we stayed at the Rancho. It’s a simple place. The room was completely bare except for two beds and a wooden chair. There were mosquito nets on the door shutters – this is dengue fever region – but no glass in the windows. The yard was graded clay dirt, and all the washing was done outside.

The Señora made us some rice and pork for dinner, asked us to switch the outside light off for the night, and retired. Perhaps she was tired that night. We were, too. We fell asleep listening to the mighty Marañón whispering into the night.

In the morning, I was woken up by a giggle. As I headed for the sink, I saw a small boy hiding in the kitchen. The boy kept peering at me and laughing.

As the Señora busied herself with our breakfast, the boy got braver and braver. At first, he hid in the kitchen; we smiled and waved at him, and he began inching forward. He had a small toy dinosaur in his hands and looked about five years old.

Little by little, the boy got closer. He made his dinosaur “walk” on the wall, approaching us slowly. He was curious.

Eventually, the Señora sat down to talk, and boy’s dinosaur ended up in my plate. Despite numerous warnings from his mother (“the gringos will take you away on their motorcycles if you don’t take your filthy toys off the table!”), the boy now felt comfortable around us and kept bringing his toys on the table: a water gun; another dinosaur; a toy sports car.

Sitting down for a moment, Señora chatted about life. Just like everyone else in Balsas, she and her husband grew limes. They had a lime tree orchard, and they would get a little over $10 for a fourty-kilo bag of limes. Once a month, trucks came from Celendin and Cajamarca. They bought all the limes in Balsas. Señora and her family also had some tomatoes, chickens, and potatoes.

“Life is good here, in Peru”, – Señora said. “On the TV, we see so many Venezuelans fleeing to Peru. Why do they all go to Lima? There are no jobs there, and so much crime. Once on the TV, we saw that young Venezuelan girls have to sell their bodies to survive. Is that a life! It’s a tragedy, I tell you, an atrocity. They should come here, to Balsas. We would welcome them. They could grow limes, too”, – Señora smiled.

The little boy was now bouncing around our table on a blow-up duck.

“How old is the boy, Señora?”, – I asked.

“Three and a half, this one”, – she said.

The boy was very big and intelligent for his age; we thought he was at least five. He had the longest, thickest eyelashes I have ever seen. I asked him whether his toy dinosaurs had names. The boy shook his head.

“Are there any other kids for him to play with here, Señora?”.

“Yes, but he doesn’t really go outside much. He doesn’t go near the River”, – she said, quietly.

“I had four sons. Two are teenagers now, they’re in school. The little one is with me”.

“And my other boy is gone…He went missing. We looked for him for days. Finally, they found him, six days later… It was the Marañón. The River took him… He’s over there now,” – Senora pointed at a small shrine near the washing sink. In it was a big photograph of a boy, about ten or eleven years old, and above him, a painting of Jesus looking over. The shrine was decorated with plastic flowers.

“And look, here”, – Señora carefully unwrapped a red cloth which held a pound sterling coin. “A traveler left this for me once. Where is it from? Is it lucky?” – lovingly, she wrapped the coin again and placed it on the top of the shrine.

Thanking the Señora and her family for their hospitality, we packed up our bikes. The little boy ran around giggling. His father came up to us to ask for a photo with the bikes. Paul lifted the little boy up on his tank bag. He sat very still before his father put him down.

Thanking the family again, we said our goodbyes. Red earth clung to our tires and boots.

As we weaved our way back towards the road on the narrow dirt track, on our left, the muddy waters of Rio Marañón snarled and foamed over the rapids.

It was the start of the rainy season.

Photo by Isaac Caffeina on Unsplash

We leave the village and head a little further south, we might average 20km south for each 100-150km we ride due to the mountains

…and we’re trying to speed up a little to catch the seasons. We were talking to a local guy at a gas station and he said rainy season is due to start any day now, I hope your gear is waterproof?

Then this happened…fffffoooooookkkkk!

The best way NOT to get wet is to get above the clouds, that way they can’t get you

We head for Cajamarca for one objective – Insurance

On arrival, if you were just dropped here you’d think it was national silly hat day, but it’s not it’s just a normal day where everyone wears these hats in this area of Peru

We’d priced insurance as its mandatory here, the first town we’d tried was crazy expensive, equivalent of $850 a year, but even they said they were expensive, I know we just said that!

The company was called Mapfre, they told us to look for an office called La Positiva, they are cheaper. We tried in that town then in another then another and denied insurance in all of them because we’re not Peruvians, until this is where we were sent.

100% guaranteed you can buy it here, we find the office and its closed or are they asleep inside?

We go find food across the street and ask the restaurant owner if they are still in business, he said yes but today is a holiday, come back tomorrow!

We come back the next day and they had decided to add a day to this holiday that no one else is taking except them and the local puppies it seems

We have a chat with the local police to see if there is another place, they say yes and we head there, yes they sell La Positiva but won’t sell it to us!

They tell us we need to go to the main office, the one that is taking the holiday that no one else is? Yes!
Oh, and they take a 3-hour lunch as well when they are open

Three days later we finally get the insurance at a third of the price so I guess it was worth the wait.

In the mean time a little detective work on weather websites I have deduced my dear Watson that if we get up at 6 and on the road by 7-8 we should have a blue sky until at least 2pm. This is nothing short of weird for us types that like to roll out at the crack of 11

What do you know it works, clouds are there but don’t dump, so lets go find some cool interesting places…how about this beauty

We ride a little too long that day and catch the rain just after 2pm as predicted by the interwebs, but somehow looking for a place to stay and get dry we ride by a hat gathering, and are shoooed away as I sneak a few shots

the following morning we are up with the roosters at 6 am…this sucks, why anyone would want to be up this early is beyond me, the only thing 6 am is good for is leaving a bar and heading home if you’re from Vegas

…but the lady shepherds are already at it…in their big hats of course

this weather thing is working out though, look at that blue sky in the rainy season

Let’s go ride over there, that where the big mountains live…ok!

before we can get a few hundred meters she’s at it again, once again in the middle of nowhere four snotty nosed little ragamuffins are sitting at the roadside with their mom

Egle holds up four lollipops, two green, and two purple, they each grab one, then take a few steps back and debate like only kids can…whats the coolest color – green or purple, then a few swaps are made.

Egle and the mom watch and laugh as it unfolds, then they are all happy. They hadn’t spotted me 30 meters or so back, when they did they all ran to me and high fived me and thanked me as well…yes we are just making hardened criminals here in Peru…HA!

The mom right behind them smiles at me and give me a big thank you…life is good this morning in Peruvian Andes

***as part of Egle’s book deal on Indiegogo we are giving back a portion of the proceeds to the people she is writing about in her book, we are heading to see a few of them, but also this allows to do more of this too, with total strangers. There were more than a few naysayers on this forum, saying it’s not possible to donate back to poor people in the middle of nowhere because they don’t have bank accounts, really, well it is, its easy if you really want to do it, you can bring gifts. We are actually carrying a computer as part of a donation for one family and some other stuff, but more about that later when it happens

Ecuador Offroad – Part 3

Over the next few days we took llama and donkey tracks, we know this because this is all the traffic we saw

The dirt tracks we nothing short of spectacular with views across the mountains and valleys for days, we could stop for a few minutes and pick tracks that looked fun

Some of the tracks were in excellent shape but still zero traffic

it would be such a shame to ride Ecuador and miss these areas just because of the fear of a little gravel

For days we rode up and down from 1500m over 4000m and back down again, over and over

Hitting small villages like; Simiatug, Pinllopata, Zumbahua, Sigchos and many more

It was just llamas for days

Lake Quilota is a must see in Ecuador, but riding your bike down this single track path is probably a no/ no now the area s getting developed…whoops!

We grabbed a hostel with a deep canyon on one side and Cotopaxi volcano on the other

This was the view out of our window, $20 including dinner and breakfast!

and from a high point the view the other direction

The following morning trying to get a little closer

We circled back to Quito, not five minutes from where we were headed to stay I get a flat on a very busy intersection while taking a right, the bike tried to go straight so choice but to replace the tube right there in the intersection as the tube had shreaded and dumped all the air instantly

Finally made it back to our place in Quito, hung out for a few days in the city and all the bizarre things that cities do…not really interested tbh

Left Egle by herself while I went for a ride for a few days, she was doing her Indiegogo campaign so she was focused on that, seemed like a good time for a little more seat time.

I took a simple route of the easiest dirt but in reverse because sometimes the great photos are behind you and you just miss them

hitting little towns along the way like Lumbaqui, Chingual, and San Gabriel

Water (falls), water everywhere, on this stretch I counted 101 of them in 2 hours, there were probably a lot more but occasionally I had to look at the road

in this northeastern part of Ecuador it is so green and fertile and the outlying western section of the Amazon

Heading west the patchwork of farmland shows the dividing line in the Andes and as you go further the land becomes significantly drier

riding up thru gold mining areas of Charchi and around Buenos Aires and down to the valley and thru Cahausqui, Pablo Arenas, and Tumbabiro

Crazy roads to try at another time…just have to figure a way to get to them

On the outskirts of Cotacachi, there was a sentiment about the president that there must be a good story to tell

but you would never know meeting the people, they are listed as the 6th most emotional and positive nationality in the world according to a poll. In the middle of nowhere, I came across a small parade where emotion was in full swing

and wearing Luis’ chaps (from a few posts earlier)

and followed by the band and a crowd

A man stepped out of the crowd to share his moonshine with me, and it was good, but he was gone before I could find out where I could get some, in his kitchen would probably be the answer

A few more days of peaks and valleys

taking corners guarded by llamas showing their opinion with their ears

Happy llama

unhappy llama

The patchwork goes on for days and days…from the valley floor right up to the peaks, with tracks dividing

a loop past the massive Chimborazo and onto Baños

A stop by the Equator, again, fifth times a charm getting 00.00000 in the poring rain

and back to Quito

****Sadly this last section of the trip wasn’t all great, Egle had stayed in Quito and we’d invited someone who we thought was a friend to come and ride with me while she was writing. This turned out to be a huge mistake!

I HAVE NOT included a photo of him as he is easily the most disrespectful person I have ever met his image doesn’t deserve to be here

His name is JD Dyess and goes by Skizzman, I am embarrassed to say I even know him!

The person that I thought was a friend arrived in Ecuador and turned out to be the most arrogant, ignorant, disrespectful, and obtuse individual.

Both Egle and I have literally NEVER met anyone like him – I wouldn’t be writing this if it were just a case of a few misunderstandings or simply a mismatch of personalities and riding skills. This was way, WAY worse than that.

His offroad riding skills are not only lacking and nowhere near his Walter Mitty/FIGJAM level that he has an illusion he possesses, why would you lie when you know you will be found out instantly, which they were, they caused close to $600 worth of parts, service, and labor to partially repair the damage he caused by his lack of ability and has now left us with a damaged front rim that we will have to live with for the next two years.

His lack of civility is astounding and the one thing that really rubs me the wrong way more than anything is HE DIDN’T even have the decency to say thank you to Egle for letting him use her bike.

I’d emailed him two weeks ago ( one week after he returned to the US) about all of this with no response whatsoever.

He is not a man in any sense of the word, just a person that has verbal diarrhea when he is in your presence and like to tell stories of how he is the best at everything he does but cannot back any of it up, a real-life Walter Mitty if there ever was one and appears his life is a lie, he is generally a self-absorbed and narcissistic scumbag!

If you only know this person online and have never met him in person, stay away from a face to face, you’ll be glad you did…or unfriend him ASAP

I could write a book about him, and his actions along with the multitude of people that I have subsequently found out that have blocked, barred, unfriended, ignored, or simply do not talk to him anymore.

He is not worth it though, I’d already wasted too much time on this person as it is.

…but put simply, he is an embarrassment to the ADVrider community – #fuckskizzman

Ecuador Offroad – Part 2

We leave the Vicuñas and the Volcano behind

and find our next dirt section a few km away at a slightly lower altitude but still cresting just above 4000m

it’s a simple dirt road headed to the town we’re headed to Salinas, according to the map, nothing between the volcano and the town and you can see why; realistically why/ how would anyone want to live up here

We ride along as far as you can see in the above shot and there is small figure walking towards us, as we get closer we see its a little girl, maybe 5-years-old, we stop to check on her to make sure she is OK out here all alone, there is not a soul in sight

i’ll let Egle take up the story from here…

Riding a remote desolate dirt track somewhere around the Chimborazo volcano in the Ecuadorian Andes, Paul and I were talking how remote it felt. The track ran along the endless green highland grasslands and hills, zigzagging around jagged peaks and crossing small valleys. It felt like we were the only humans on Earth: the howling winds ruffled the grass, and there was no sight of any human activity – no houses in the distance, not even a pasture fence.

Suddenly, turning a corner, we saw a tiny figure walking down the dirt road. As we rolled towards the little silhouette, we realized it was a small girl wearing a traditional Andean costume. She held a tatty rope in her hands.

“Where are you going?”, – I asked the little girl. She seemed about five years old.

“To fetch my llama”, – she said, looking at me incredulously. Of course, where else!

“What’s the name of your llama?”

“Jimango”, the little girl replied, all business-like. She was five and all alone in the highland pampa, and she was going to fetch Jimango the llama.

I offered her a Kinder egg – I keep those in my tank bag just for such occasions. The little girl took one and looked at me, questioningly. I opened the egg and showed her a tiny toy inside. The girl wasn’t impressed; she had to go get Jimango – there was no time for toys.

“And this part is all chocolate”, – I told her. Unsure, the little llama herder dug her filthy little fingers into the egg, scooping up the chocolate and tasting it. She smiled.

“Can I have one more? I’ll bring it home, to my grandma”, – the girl said. “My mum lives in Ambato, you know?”.

Every year, many indigenous highland people migrate towards the cities in hopes of a better life. The little girl’s mother, it seemed, was no exception.

Tucking her Kinder eggs under her poncho, the little girl nodded and marched off. Jimango was waiting.

I watched her in tiny silhouette in my mirror until she disappeared.

We found her village – a small settlement of maybe ten or fifteen houses – some two miles later.
Adventure riding isn’t always about you, it’s about the people you meet along the way and how a 5-year-old girl can be your inspiration for the day, hell even for the month…I’ll let you dwell on that, and think about your daughter/ sister/ niece at 5 years old?

I used https://thetruesize.com/ to show size and detail of we are.

I grabbed a few screenshots of my own in case you don’t know how it works

We’ve been in South America (Colombia and Ecuador) for 5 months this time around and got from Cartagena to Quito…but whats the blue stuff over the map?

It’s to show you scale, in size terms its taken us five months to ride from San Francisco to Tucson…did I say we travel slow and do lots of loops! How big is the US compared to South America? Some riders think its a similar sized land mass…nope.

We made it to Salinas and planned an overnight after a little more dirt in the clouds

As we pull into the little Puebla the first person we see is a lady and her llama, just ordinary stuff in the mountains

Before getting off the bikes we knew this town had more to see and needed more than an overnight…we ended up staying three!

We looked across the street and saw this…

“I have a right to live without Violence” – we never did find out what had happened to make these be painted, the town was very quiet about it, and probably rightly so

The Puebla is home to

if you’ve been observant riding thru Ecuador especially in bigger towns its a store that you’ll find, and sells salt, chocolate, textiles and cheese from this region, they also export to many European countries

We unloaded, changed and grabbed a bite to eat and sat in the main square as a volleyball game started as the sun was slowly setting

These guys played for a few hours none stop, no big thing right? Try running around for 2 hours at 12,000 feet! We went to the store and grabbed them all a bottle of water each, it was making us thirsty just watching.

It seemed the whole Puebla who was past their playing days came out to watch…

Over the next few days we hung out, chatted with the locals and got a feel for the place, to us it seemed like the friendliest place we’d been in Ecuador so far.

We chatted with a lady as we walked down a side street and asked about everybody being happy and she agreed, “it’s really simple, we are all the same, no one here is richer than any other person, we all know each other and treat each other with the respect we’d like to be treated ourselves.” – what a simple concept that so many places have forgotten

If you find a flyer in the village they have a motto – “people come before money, the poor come before the rich, the weak before the strong, the sick before the healthy, and the small before the big.”

There is a ‘thing’ that happens every time we stop if there is a dog close by they all come directly to me, this little Puebla was no exception and the nice thing was all the street dogs looked very healthy

The town is most famous for its salt, and the ‘salt mine’ dominates the valley opposite the Puebla, the salt here is so good and full of minerals depending on specific content it can sell for as much as $50 a kg/ 2.2lbs

We were looking out towards it when a young lady came down towards with her llama on her way to collect salt water, we chatted and she told us a little but said there is a man to look out for, he knows the full story. Her llama posed for a few photos then off she went.

The following day we met Victor Yanchaliquin, who was formerly a fruit and vegetable salesman, a shop owner, a shaman, and natural medicine doctor and now retired. He told us that this mine is documented to be working for the last 400 but probably a lot longer, maybe thousands, his mother and grandmother both worked the mine, but no men did.

The women would bring water that came from a spring and then move it by hand in the to the various smaller pools via little channels carved in the rock face.

He explained the sun would burn off the minerals that didn’t need to be there and when it was ready they would collect the water and take it to the village

The minerals that are left

They had an ingenious way to know when the salt water was ready, they would put a coin in the pool and if it sank it was good, if it didn’t it wasn’t

****edit, just found notes, he was using a coin to demonstrate, an egg was used to see if the water was ready, not a coin.

…but what of the men? They had specific jobs, farming, hunting and collecting firewood, the salt process was so big at one time there were massive pots to boil all the water away and leave just the salt, now only one remains, an old lady runs it and we never got to meet her.

This will give you an idea (a little blurred)

We made our farewells and he wandered off…

In the morning we found the local ‘gas station’ and we’re off to find more dirt

Ecuador offroad – part 1

We crossed the border and the heavens open with full force for a few days, we decided to ride into Quito, and stock up with a few things and met up with @CourtRand at Freedom and had a chat about possible routes…these guys know Ecuador better than anyone. We had a rough idea of where we wanted to ride to try and create an offroad route from border to border and Court made a few tweaks with some of his favorite roads.

New route in hand we headed back north, jumped on our first dirt road and at 4000m in the rain, a flat!

The rain continued and we headed for much lower ground trying to find a little warmth and in the process missed our turn off, but it would have taken us back to 4000m and more rain, we figured tomorrow!

The following morning we looked at a map and thought we’d spotted a shortcut, maybe some single track for 20-30k but hey let’s go have a look, the dirt road in was good

right until we reached this point, I jumped off the bike, walked on to the soaking wet bridge and the wood was rotten and cracking under my weight so didn’t want to risk putting a bike on there with a 50-foot drop to a river below

Everybody’s favorite, backtracking and we made it to the entrance of the Cayambe Coca Ecological Reserve, this area has restricted vehicle access but Court had given us a special permit so we could ride thru, sadly, we ended up in fog and clouds and didn’t see much past about 100m…its supposed to be spectacular

Standing up to see over the trees when the valley cleared for a few seconds

Eventually, we clear the Reserve ending up in a little town that was long past it prime, we rode thru many of the same, some were a little tighter to get thru than expected but it kept us on dirt

you can’t come to Ecuador without doing the tourist stop at the Equator, even though our track had us cross it about 10 times already, this is a given

The plan after the middle of the earth shot, was to take the next left and go to the Hacienda I had stayed at back in 2011, we got there, the doors were open, actually everything was open but no-one was around so we took off and headed to Cotacachi about 45km away.

@CourtRand had told us about a family we needed to meet – the following is what Egle wrote they may be more detail in her upcoming book –

****Luis and his father are the last natural leather tanners in Cotacachi, Ecuador. They use the huarango tree seeds to tan leather, as opposed to chemicals; it takes 24 hours to tan a hide using chemical processing whereas the natural huarango seed method takes a whole month. “All good things require time and patience”, – Luis explained, and it’s hard to disagree: he and his family seemed to have embraced a very special Andean zen and found happiness working together.

Luis’ mother Maria – a woman with a thousand smiles – offered us some homemade chicha, a local corn and grain flour drink that is cooked and steeped overnight. “You’ll live a hundred and ten years if you drink this instead of Coca-Cola and beer!”, – Luis’ dad declared.

We talked a lot about tanning leather, making drums from llama skins and growing long hair – something that’s very special to the local indigenous people of the Andes. “Long hair is part of our identity. Not too long ago, my mestizo co-workers in Otavalo would make fun of me telling me I was wearing my “tie backward”, referring to my braid. Or they’d say I should cut it because I looked like a woman. But it’s part of who we are”, – Luis explained.

Luis’s father is very proud of this python skin brought to him by a friend from the Amazon. He’s been planning to make boots and bags from it for a while now, but just can’t bring himself to cut this beautiful skin up.

Working quietly in their little tannery in the outskirts of Cotacachi, the Yamberla family was so welcoming and friendly we stayed there for hours, just chatting and sipping chicha. Luis fixed my ripped pants by patching them up with this gorgeous handmade patch that he’d made then and there.

When Luis’s father was a small child, a lot of indigenous people were still forced to work on big landowners’ farms for free or for a scrap of land for their own use. The feudal system is now gone – but not forgotten. “There still are very few indigenous people in power positions because in Ecuador, the belief that only whites can give orders and make important decisions still linger. We own our land now, though. All my sisters have small farms and grow corn, beans, and potatoes in the mountains”.

“The life of a Quechua woman? Work, work, and more work”, – Maria said, when I asked her about a female perspective. “Girls get married when they’re eighteen and make babies. But they must also work, at home and on the land or in the market”. I told Maria my country had a woman president serving her second term. She paused a little and said, “yes, Ecuador should have a woman president, too. But girls just can’t afford universities”.

“I don’t always know what I’m going to make. But I love making things that people need, things that get used” – Luis Yamberla

These are the huarango tree seeds that Luis and his father collect themselves, then boil for two hours to get a dark liquid. They then soak the hides in it for a month, converting them into leather.

*****

As we walked away probably the most inspiring thing, for me, was the hides leaning against the wall opposite their shop

The irony here is that wall of the building without the roof is the old leather factory that used chemicals, its obviously now out of business for many years and Luis and his family are still going strong with traditional values…not chemicals.

Luis’ daughter snapped a quick photo for us before we left and of course, their dog photobombed us

Here’s a quick video of Maria brushing out the tangles and knots from a skin, we forgot to ask, most likely llama or sheep. We were with them for around 3-4 hours and virtually the whole time she was working on this, progress was very slow, but dedicated

The following day we left town, filed the tanks and headed into the mountains, looking back towards the volcano

we carried on down the track but it had a partial landslide and massive water damage with axle deep ruts, basketball sized rocks, at almos the bottom there was a ditch that looked like it was about 4 meters deep so we deemed impassable.

We found a lucky option so we didn’t have to backtrack, a barbed wire gate to the right and a few km double track that quickly turned to single track, fully loaded bikes on a mix of dry and muddy single track is always a fun ride, the single track here is just like at home and we’re more than used to riding it when needed, we hate having to backtrack

We found an alternative route and headed upwards, the pass was at around 4200m, at 3800m both bikes died instantaneously with no apparent reason, we’d been to 4200m before with the current set up. They coughed and sputtered and didn’t want to climb any higher, we had no choice but to roll back down, as we’re rolling it dawned on me…bad gas!

A few hundred meters lower they ran, albeit badly, 1000m or further down they ran better

we got to the bottom of this section of the track in the middle of nowhere there were two police pick up truck and four cops standing there closing a gate and locking it down. Five minutes later we would have been royally screwed. They let us pass telling us everything was good, they watched us go up and disappear into the distance but were intrigued why we came back down.

Bad gas, they all smiled and just said “yes!”

We took off to find a new gas station and fill back up and return to Cotacachi for another night.

We decided to get up early and head back to Colombia, the border area that is, not the country. A few km before the border there is a little town called Julio Andrade…hang a right, Clyde.

This takes you to a very spectacular road eventually, first, some great twisty pavement headed towards a tiny little Puebla called El Carmelo which doesn’t show on google maps unless you switch to satellite view.

About 1km before the Puebla there is a right turn guarded by the military. The reason is you are literally at the Colombian border and in an Ecuadorian red zone

The military was great, we told them we were headed east and they had no issues or concerns for our safety at all.

From here on out its a very simple dirt road a child on their first dirt bike could ride with zero issues, it starts in and out of a few minor outlying communities and fincas then the track joins the E10. At this point looking on a map you might think it would become paved…nope! The surface texture changed a little but that was about it, you are riding on the south side of a canyon and Colombia is to your left/ north

The road is just amazing, waterfalls on both sides, in 2 hours I counted 101 waterfalls!!!

The views, oh the views

Egle has just significantly dropped the price of her Ecuador motorcycle tour in her Indiegogo campaign, so if you are looking at this and want to ride with us but think you don’t have the time this might be the deal for you, drop me a pm and I’ll give you the details, we’ll take you on all these crazy tracks we’ve found

a few hours later you are looking out at the Amazon rainforest, a crazy fact I had to look up to confirm if it was true, before you hit the E45 going south – if you flew directly east it would be 13,000km before you hit the first major city and that would be Nairobi, Kenya…that a whole lot of trees and water in the middle!

we had our riding cut short when an oil tanker had flipped and spilled its load on the one and the only road headed south…just a little chaotic!

We rode the last 60km in the dark and the rain, we stopped at a little Hostel, owner offered a room for both of us for $15, looking at us soaking wet and dirty, he asked if wanted to unlimited use of his washer and dryer for an additional $5, and how about dinner for $3…we accepted all three.

We planned another day riding dirt but heavy rains made the rivers flow too high, and the mud too deep to make it fun on a loaded bike, so we continued riding towards a blue sky and hopefully a little more rideable track.

Right up to when we came across a roadblock.

The demonstration was about this particular area when most of Ecuador’s oil comes from, but the profits don’t stay, they get siphoned off and sent further south. This makes it the most dangerous area of Ecuador with the highest crime rate, we were told by the demonstrators and the worst roads.

The strange thing was as we rode towards it we were just talking about how good the paved roads were!

All we needed to do was make a left turn behind that second building on the left of the picture about 30 meters away, but they refused to let us thru. This is unusual as most of the time when a demonstration is reached and it’s obvious we aren’t locals we are let thru…not this time!

Egle even offered to interview them and do a write up for the press (in English) to make more people aware of their plight, they became rowdy and a little offensive towards her so she just walked away.

Cars and buses had been waiting 3 hours or more already when we arrived so we joined the wait.

The day drifted by and riding possibilities dwindled so we decided to ride pavement for a change and head to Banos, the second most visited place after Galapagos in Ecuador, riding thru small villages on a windy road that decreased in altitude so the order of the day went from dirt to ice cream sitting by a local bike shop

We hung out in Baños for a few days just people watching and waiting for the rain to pass and just people watched, Baños is Ecuador’s Disney land, stores selling loads of plastic crap souvenirs and I ❤️ Baños t-shirts. If you sit there for long enough all you seem to notice is hats, lots and lots of hats. Ecuador is very famous for its hat, it called a Panama Hat!

The reason dates back to the construction of the 48-mile long Panama Canal that links the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. When construction commenced in 1881, most of the workforce was brought in from Ecuador who all wore their lightweight yet sturdy hats to shade themselves from the sun. As photos made their way across the globe of the work in progress, many started asking the question ‘Where can I get one of those Panama hats?’

Now there are a lot of variations, from the standard to more of narrow-brimmed trilby and also the more traditional indigenous versions and western styles, but most everyone has a hat

…but western culture is creeping in…

The weather showed the rain was due to stop so time to go up high, we had heard about a tiny little town in the mountains called Salinas de Guaranda and the nice thing about riding there was it was a mix of dirt and paved but it took us by the Chimborazo Volcano, Ecuador’s highest peak at 6263m/ 20,548′

Riding up to it, it was a sandy track to our left and volcanic rock to our right

The track was at around 4300m and looking at the volcano it was like watching a time lapse, it would clear and cover in a 10-15 seconds and made it difficult to get a clear shot, high winds dropped the temperature down to the low 50’s/ high 40’s where that morning we’d been wearing shorts!

I hopped off the bike to take a clear shot of the bike and volcano and in the time it took me to walk this far away…missed it!

ride towards and it might clear

wait a while and there it is…

Wiki told me – Chimborazo’s fun fact is that it’s not the highest mountain by elevation above sea level, but its location along the equatorial bulge makes its summit the farthest point on the Earth’s surface from the Earth’s center.

All we knew was that it was freezing and getting colder by the minute, all that was around at that altitude hanging out was us and Vicuñas, they can have it, we’ll come back on a warmer day to have another look.

Colombia Offroad – Part 3

As we left the Steel Horse (again) the horses made faces at us and we made our way to the Cocora Valley

We stopped by a m/c shop/ vulcanizer who was putting a ‘good’ patch on a heavy duty tube for me and in his shop, he had color-coded butterflies!!!

The valley is known for is amazingly tall palm trees, we’d ridden this dirt track before but in the opposite direction and in the dark, most people who come up here are tourists from Salento and they come as far as they need to see the palms then head back, or take the other road on the opposite side of the valley where its paved. We took our token shots then continued rolling

last time riding this it was dark and raining, today blue skies and a dry track made for fast riding

We finished the 100km in good time, grabbed food and carried on. i spoke with a local rider who showed me a track not on many maps because it was a FARC road but now had been sold to a logging company so he said “it ‘should be ok, less that 2-3 years ago you would never consider riding it, we as Colombians are getting to see more of our own country than before and I’m happy to share this track with you.”

I really miss bacon!

The track was in decent shape, I’m guessing the logging company did some work on it for their heavy trucks

we crested a hill in this valley and this is when we met the loggers

A man was taking a break, it appeared, then he shouted something and thats when we noticed the horses walking up the hill towards us

As we were looking down towards him a white horse walked behind us and then another and another

As we stood there watching and horses circling he came onto the dirt roads and not sure if it was words or noises but the horses started to move in an organized way

A few more noises from him and the horses arranged themselves in a line and stood at particular coresponding piles of wood and where they needed to be unloaded…it was amazing to watch, we stayed back to let him get on with his work

We never got a chance to speak to him, before we knew it he was gone and headed back down the hill to assist with more loaded horses coming up

The logging in real time as I’m taking photos

…we rode on

Time flies when you are riding Colombia, but we hadn’t really been keeping check but when we looked at our passports we had a decision to make, do we extend our visa (easy) or continue south and then ride more of Colombia when we are heading north again…we decided on the latter.

We plotted a route of almost all dirt to the border and the San Miguel crossing but were stopped by the Military as there were a few FARC/ Cartel uprisings happening and by just a couple of hours we’d luckily missed a car bombing and a double murder on the very track we’d tried to go down.

We stopped at the roadblock for an hour or more with the military, sharing food with them (some breakfast bars) and them with us (pineapple), we joked after an hour that surely now it should be OK, the commanding officer wanted to make sure we understood how dangerous it was and pulled out his phone and showed us video and photos of the bombing and dead bodies! There were no military thumbs up at this checkpoint.

Because of the reroute we ended up on the Pan American Hwy for about 20 minutes, what a fucking nightmare, why anyone uses this road is beyond me, in 20 minutes we very closely avoided four head collisions, two by less than an inch! And you get to watch cyclists taking selfies as well…yawn!

We wanted back on the dirt ASAP, we rerouted around that area by a big margin, found some more dirt, and played in it for a while, we’d done this a few times for Mosko so not sure on the timeline and if it was correct but, hey!

Neither of us had ever been to Popayan so we stopped over for the night, really bad timing there was some sort of hippy bicycle event happening and taking over the town, every corner we turned there was a drunk, stoned or unconscious hippy within 10 feet…no thanks, zero inspiration for photos at all, actually surprised I even had this bad shot on my camera!

This is some of the riding we did to give you an idea about Colombia for various areas, some of this is between Popayan and Pasto and a few areas a little further north IIRC

From Pasto, we headed east to the Trampoline to avoid the crazy Ipiales border crossing

We rode the whole road in torrential rain

We spent our last night in Colombia in a little town called Santa Ana before making a run for the San Miguel border in the morning, we arrived around midday and there were crowds of people, 99% Venezuelan refugees

We were let inside almost immediately, all the process for both countries is done in this one building so it’s easy. In line behind was a Venezuelan lady and her daughter and we got chatting as we waited in line, she told us that they (the VZ’s) now were only being given ONE DAY to cross Ecuador, as they were no longer allowing them to enter and stay in Ecuador. The next option for them was Peru, she felt she was lucky as her husband had already made it there so she would be OK, she didn’t feel the same for everybody else.

She told us all she wanted to do was live in VZ and once things returned to normal she would return.

As we were doing our import/ export paperwork there was a rider from Chile and he painted a little different picture, “Chile has officially closed the border to VZ immigrants, we allowed 700,000 in and we can take no more, we have high unemployment so as a country we have done all we can, I personally feel very sad and sorry for them.”

Outside we met a Colombian rider on his 150cc riding south as far as his bike will take him, he told us.

We pulled away and we were in Ecuador and the adventure continues…

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: