rtwPaul

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…

Colombia Offroad – Part 2

From Guatape to Medellin we took a dirt track via Alejandria and Conception until we met the pavement, it had rained the night before and lots of baby heads for the whole way

We didn’t take any photos as it could have been a dirt track anywhere!

Egle had a few requests from female and male riders in Lithuania for some videos about riding offroad as there is a certain douchebaggery sect in the form of older male riders who think shouting at people and saying “just do it!!!” “full throttle!!!” etc is a good way to teach, so she was doing fundamental videos about balance and a few other things…they were an instant hit, now she is getting requests to come home and start an offroad riding school

We rolled into the city dusty and dirty and found our Airbnb in El Poblano, it was weird to be back in a very modern city, we had a few weeks planned in the city as we had a few things we needed to get for the bikes, and a few articles that needed to be written for various magazines, motorcycles, cars, horses, culture etc

So here are some views of the city, the lifestyle and people if you haven’t seen it before, I’ll let the pictures do the talking

We only had one strange encounter, at a local restaurant, the World Cup was on and as we were walking by the owner, hands us a menu and asks where we’re from, Egle blurts out “England”, and he comes back with, “sorry we’re full” and grabs the menu’s. Colombia was due to play England in the world cup the next day. England end up beating Colombia on penalties and knocking them out, we walk by the same place a few days later and it was obviously empty, he stuck his head out “still full!”

A few days later, we walked by again, “it’s ok, I’m over it now, come in,” he proclaimed

While we’d been sitting I had saved our ridden tracks to my computer and while doing a few photos looking back at Cepita I look at Google Earth and spotted road that didn’t exist on maps… “lets go back and find it and ride it”, we really liked the little Puebla so we headed back east, which was our plan anyway. The weather had improved and we wanted to ride the El Cocuy area.

So, for the third time in my life I ended up in Cepita, Egle named it the most friendly town in all of Colombia, this time it was empty we sat and chatted with locals and asked about the track from Cepita to San Andres, everybody that we spoke with was amazed we knew about it, as its rarely used. A few weeks later a Colombian adventure rider asked me if I had been to Cepita and was amazed that I’d been there three times, and even more amazed I knew the road across the canyon.

If you go to Colombia this is one road you have to ride, up and down the Chicamocha Canyon, more next post…

The map shows the paved road which is a great ride, but imagine a line straight across between the two towns, that’s what I’m talking about, except its not straight for more than 50′ at a time, search it in google earth or maps and zoom in on Satilttle and it follows the ridgeline and see how many tracks are hidden in there, time frame around the same, we never saw another vehicle

https://www.google.com.ec/maps/dir/…40cf4d1a2c2e2!2m2!1d-72.848242!2d6.811888!3e0

The ride from Medellin to Cepita was uneventful using the paved road, just lots of twisties eventually dropping into the canyon road down to Ceptia

We ate before going there so had an early night to get up and ride this track that’s rarely used and like I said not on any maps (at least it wasn’t until yesterday and now its on google maps, well at least some of it is), the condition of the track varied on who you spoke to, but honestly none made it sound too bad.

If you are standing in the main square with your back to the police station look to the right of the massive tree with the buttress roots and take that street

Its Calle 4, it ends in 2 blocks, then turn right, this is your road for the rest of the day to San Andres, within one block you are on a dirt road, within 5-10 minutes you are here and begin to climb

and these are from the climbs and descents

Somewhere in the middle you ride right thru the middle of a small finca (farm) the owners waved but backed into the shadows very quickly, I guess they really aren’t used to seeing people at all

then it goes back to just you and the dirt

then down to the lower valley, in the middle of nowhere, they are under construction of this amazing suspension bridge that just seemed way out of place, I guess bridge first, great road later!

but for now just avoid the deep truck tracks anyway possible

We rolled into San Andres around lunchtime, we get asked the usual where are you from, where are you going, where did you come from today? We say Cepita. The response is, “that’s a nice ride around the canyon.” We tell them we came thru the canyon up the dirt road and they are surprised we found that track as well…always good to surprise the locals

Somebody stole a few letters!

The days going good, the sun is shining, we are way earlier than expected, so we head back to that road near Guacamayas but decide we’ll try and reach Güicán

time for more dirt…

Here’s another update, last lot of photos I have before having to go thru the next batch and while Egle is clicking away, she did the release of her Indiegogo Campaign for her new book ‘Tales From South America’, you guys know how to google search right? I’ll show you a little more of northeastern Colombia

There’s a non-descript left turn that looks like it could go to nothing but this is the road we need, there are no signs saying where it leads, its just outside of the Puebla of Capitanejo, it keeps you on the north side of the river and in a couple of km its a dirt road…just us and some goats

Today the track is good, the last time we did it, it was raining on and off, wet mud and getting dark, nice to see the view this time.

This is serious landslide country, these rocks in the river, difficult to tell from this angle are around the size 3 bed two storey house!

We were heading to 6.487031, -72.548410, this is where the road splits, we were told not to take the right last time we rode this area, but we spoke with the police chief to ask him why, when we stayed in Guacamayas previously. He told us the climb is very steep and dangerous initially and if it’s not raining or wet ride it, the views are great.

We get there and it was wet and initially weaving you are way thru a minor boulder field

The climb like most things is exaggerated, it was maybe 1km up a steep 40-degree slope, then just an easy track, the views were ok but nothing special sadly, just sheer drops to the river valley below

We made it to Guican late in the afternoon, stayed the night in a little hostel/ homestay for $10 and in the morning headed to the Ritacuba Glacier. I had read somewhere that permits and insurance and a license were required to go up to it….but…if you tell them you are just going to look then its free and none of that is required.

So, we rode the loop clockwise and made the left turn to the glacier

on the way up you ride thru the clouds

until you are in them and then above them

we met a few local adventure riders who told us where we could ride to (there’s a limit even though the track continues) but then had to stop, that was here

As the view was good it seemed like a great place for a tire review

The other riders told us if we turn left when we leave the track might be a little tricky due to the bad weather, they were headed to the right, of course, we went left!

Nothing crazy but I guess on their big loaded bikes two up on street tires it might have been a little entertaining at best

but sadly for them, they did miss some amazing scenery riding the lower part of the valley as we rode the higher sections, we ended up in El Cocuy around the same time

and even a few cows

ending the day taking these last two shots in freezing cold torrential rain heading back down the valley, taking it very steady and in search of a place to get warm.

I had to reload all our tracks to try and figure out where we went, I remember riding that last two photos but for the life of me couldn’t remember where we ended up…it was a little town called Socota, way of the gringo trail, we found a small place and settled in for a couple of days while there was torrential rain outside.

The last few hours into the town in the rain, we came across a few recent landslides which is just life in Colombia

Due to the rains, we had no choice but to ride pavement down to Zipaquira most of the way, a quick stop at the Salt Cathedral, my second time coming here Egles first.

Stange light shows and goofy flags and crowds were the recipes for the day

This place is such a big tourist attraction and not cheap to enter by Colombian standards it makes me wonder where all the money goes, does the church absorb it all or are they really genuine enough to help the families who had former generations working here underground in dire conditions and putting their lives at risk daily…walking around town there seems to be an abnormal amount of people begging so I’m guessing the former. Or is it because of the volume of tourists the begging is more abundant

cut out of the salt walls

We sat in a truck stop eating the absolute best chicken I had tasted in the whole of Colombia for $1.20 a plate, looking at where we were headed, Filandia, there were two options, paved or mystery, we picked the mystery route.

We stopped by the town of Honda for a few days to warm up and actually get to swim in a pool, then it was back to the mountains heading south towards and thru Ibague

As you leave the town there is a small town, almost on the outskirts of Ibague, this is where we were eating chicken and I spot the road 4.41373, -75.26512, a few hundred meters away, its Calle 19, but the locals call it the A Toche road, this is where we headed, it was about 1 pm, there were around 6 hours of daylight to get to Filandia about 110km away…easy right?!

It was the old road across a few valleys and ranges and also had a bunch of old train tunnels to go thru

we’d ridden about 50km and then this…

A local guy stopped asked all the usual questions, and we asked him how far and how long to Salento…”55 km and 3 hours!” As he pulled away we looked at each other, 3 HOURS!!!!, it’ll be dark by then, surely not.

Some of this…

and a lot of this…

We made it to Salento in two hours and 57 minutes, we knew three hours seemed way exaggerated!!!

We eventually made it to Filandia and the Steel Horse, hung out for a few days and our company was @Normlas and @XR Valdeez who are both heading south, we’d met @Normlas in Mexico City and Taxco, he’d ridden Central America while we went to Cuba. They headed off after a few days and are now on a blistering pace south.

We just hung out, Egle loves riding m/c’s but horses are her real passion, so she had a great time

somewhere along the way Egle’s bike started having a few issues, blowing massive amounts of smoke at startup and would for a few minutes till it was warm, I was checking a few different things bt nothing seemed to make it any better. With the DR if you park it on a hill front wheel up it can stop it as the oil will drain from the head, or another option is to lean the bike over to the right once you stop for the day for around a minute to do the same just in case there is extra build up.

None of the above worked, so I’m thinking rings, valves, guides, chunks of clutch disc from Cuba jamming a line somewhere not allowing good flow. I dropped a msg to a guy I know who is super knowledgeable on the DR and he tells me to check an oil breather line under your tank. He said when putting back the hose keepers/ reusable zip ties its really easy to pinch a line that you can’t see as you are standing on the opposite side of the bike regardless of which side you stand, its a double hose with a 90 degree connector under cables and wires usually, and it gives the symptoms you describe.

Doh!

the following day the bikes is fine no smoke at startup, cool. 20k out of town her right boot it soaked with oil. The case was leaking, and in the middle of nowhere I find out a few of the retaining bolt thread is stripped…great.

Luckily I had a spare liter of oil and off we go to find a town who’ll have a helicoil kit…eah right!

Well, we found a mechanic who builds DR650 supermoto bikes, what are the odds.

I pull the oil cover and the filter and find this

I’d done three oil changes to flush out the remnants of chunks of clutch friction parts that I hadn’t got out of the motor. I guess there were some left and enough to cause massive pressure and twist this Warp9 stainless filter and tear it off its backing plates. If I had a paper filter in there the damage could have been catastrophic…thanks Warp9

Also, I guess the pressure build up with the pinched hose added to reduced flow because of this had enough pressure to make the threads pull enough to open enough to cause the leak.

Not a job that can be done without a drill and the right Helicoil kit, the mechanic did that part because he didn’t want me touching his tools, I get that, and then I put it all back together. An hour later we are headed back to dirt

We had a delivery arriving in Nieva so had to high tail it down there to collect, then we headed back north to continue riding the awesome area we just weren’t done with yet.

On some of the back roads and tracks, there is obviously animal issues

there were others we’d missed, anteater, bears, Jaguars and more…we saw nothing!

We rode north via the Tatacoa Desert, a few people had described it as Colombia version of Bryce Canyon and just as amazing, it was a good way to get off the paved road.

We bumped into another rider, a Canadian called Ron on a massively loaded down Africa Twin who was heading south we chatted for a while, his departing words were “careful you don’t miss it”

I hear thru the intercom “stop, stop, I think this might be it”, I had ridden straight by and missed it!

This was all it was worth, after living in the Southwest for a number of years you see better on the side of the road, maybe 60 meters or so long we were riding again in a matter of minutes

We found a dirt track up to a little town of Chaparral and stayed the night

Then took a few days to ride back to Filandia, finding the smallest tracks we could thru the mountains stopping in little towns that were REALLY surprised to see us there.

In a crazy moment over lunch, we talked about getting rid of the Mosko luggage and going back to aluminum panniers as we liked the local style a lot

We got very remote and even with the 8-gallon gas tanks we knew we were running low and hadn’t seen a gas station in a long, long time

same shot as above zoomed in

We rolled into Filandia on fumes, stopped at the gas station right as he was closing up and he refused to even give me a liter to get to the other gas station on the opposite end of town. I leaned the bike over to get the few drops I had left to the petcock and headed for the next place 3km away.

Made it and filled up my 8-gallon tank…with 9.2 gallons!!!

Colombia offroad – part 1

Hello Colombia

As we slowly move into the harbor area in Cartagena in the early afternoon I am amazed at the changes, I first came to this city in 1987, and when it could only be described as a shit show, the army presence back then was intense, the town was dirty and very dangerous, cartel activities were in full swing and if any drugs were leaving by sea most likely they were leaving from here and taking a direct route to the Bahamas, where coincidentally I was living in the early 90’s. The Bahamas were a stop off point and distribution hub, from there multiple speedboats would disappear into the darkness at night and do drops to southern Florida beaches for the booming cocaine trade Miami had.

Now Cartagena is all high rises clean streets, restored buildings and clean money from legitimate investments.

We get off and find an Airbnb 3 minutes walk from the dock where we’ll get the bikes the following morning.

We get there at 8 am and the bikes are already unloaded, mine refuses to start but with a push down a side street it bursts into life and we ride the 1km or so to the customs. We meet the agent who shows as much interest in doing his job as the two boys that were crew.

He tells us to take a seat and about 20 minutes @Normlas walks in with 6 or 7 other riders who were supposed to have been on board but ended up taking a container because Colombia refused entry to all but our two bikes via the Stahlratte as we’d been on board since Mexico.

IIRC he said they had been there for 3 or 4 days and they all looked tired and stressed, after about an hour a guy came out handed them paperwork and told them to go and get insurance. They took off…

We sat for about another hour, our agent had been in the back room area the whole time, but now there were only a few people around and Egle was getting restless, all we needed was a signature allegedly.

She’d had enough, got up and walked to the back off the office area where he’d headed, TWO MINUTES later she is walking back with papers in hand. She found the agent just sitting there checking his Facebook, when she asked him what was happening, he had zero clue! He pointed at a guy behind a desk, who also was checking his Facebook page and also knew nothing.

She asked can we get our paperwork, he disappeared thru a door and came back with the papers in less than a minute. We were done, the Stahratte agent obviously has little interest in getting the process completed as quickly as possible….his facebook has more importance!

So we were out in just over 2 hours vs 3 or 4 days for the container, we had located an insurance office one block from our Airbnb and had insurance in hand in less than 15 minutes…total time for us for all clearance and insurance and ready to ride about 2 hours 45 minutes.

That insurance office is here 10.415393, -75.542247

Cartagena has a law against local bikes carrying passengers, rules don’t apply if you are not a citizen on an imported bike

We grabbed a few liters of oil to do another oil change on Egles bike to flush the last remants of clutch fibers out if there are hiding somewhere, then we were off to the old town

I was kind of amazed at how much Cartagena has cleaned up since the last time I was in the city in 2012

The token big butt shot outside the church of the Fernando Botero statue, the ladies in the background sell fruit but in trade for buying they will let you take photos of them in traditional dress, kind of a win-win, sadly her fruit didn’t look great so we moved on

The historical center is nice to walk around for a day or two and there are interesting things to see, this time of year the heat is just oppressive and the city was empty, which was good for us.

We grabbed some fresh fruit from a lady on the way out of the center and she stood in front of us smiling, I forgot the fruit comes with a photo so I snapped an image

We planned on leaving the following day to ride, a quick check of the weather and it showed 3 solid days of rain in a 300km radius, we hunkered down and waited for a break in the weather before we headed off, the joys of slow travel…

The rain finally stopped, we headed out of Cartagena, hitting the road in Colombia for the fifth time in my life, this time it was going to be different. Since last time I rode here in 2013 a lot of areas had opened up as Farq presence had reduced.

…but first to get away from the oppressive heat of the city.

Within an hour we hit little dirt roads in small villages that a week’s worth of rain had made life difficult for the locals

We went back to the pavement to get some miles done but there was clean up in progress to remove and clean away debris from flooding a few days before, but not the normal equipment you’d expect

Late in the afternoon, we arrived in Magangue at the ‘ferry terminal’ a term that should be very loosely used, it wasn’t more than a dirt path leading to a very old ferry that looked like it had maybe a few trips left in it

we asked around where the tickets were sold? “On there!”
when does it leave, “when they feel like it!”
we thought we’d heard wrong so we asked another person who was walking off the ferry, “the captain decides, maybe an hour or two, maybe tomorrow!”

Two minutes later we are being told to get on, the captain will be leaving.

We then find out the rush to get us on board…this needs to be shoehorned on and we’re told the ‘entry ramp’ might not be useable after!

the ferry costs us 10k COP per bike about $7 for both of us for a ride down the Magdalena River and then a short ride after into town.

This ferry arrives in a very poor area and life is hard and you can see it on the faces of the locals.

Mompox has history, the town is cleaned up a lot and now new bridges and roads are being built and this ferry will disappear. All over South America you will see various things relating to Simon Bolivar, but if there is just one place that is more important than the rest it is Mompox –Simón Bolívar, liberator of much of Spanish South America, said “If to Caracas I owe my life, then to Mompox I owe my glory.” Simón Bolívar arrived in Mompox in 1812 and recruited nearly all of the able-bodied men, some four hundred, who formed the basis of the army for his victory in Caracas.
We found a little hotel that would let us put our bikes in the lobby for security, a room was 40k/ $13.50 with a fan. We changed and headed to the front door to have a walk around, we didn’t make it outside before torrential rain started and continued for most of the night, the power went out for a few hours more than a few times.

Mompox is obviously a very old town, in the latter part of this century sadly it has been off-limits in certain surrounding areas by the ‘wrong people’. The new bridge is nearly finished making it a lot easier to get tp and the locals are systematically cleaning and restoring everything they can for the rush they are hoping will happen.

The cemetary like any in any country shows the division of wealth but also no matter how much we have, we all end up in the same place. In this case, the rich are given front row seats it appears with displays of their final show of wealth and status.

looking the other way

all the way in the back of the cemetery behind a few walls and thru a few arches its a different view, similarities to New Orleans graveyards come to mind,
mausoleums 3 and 4 high, some of the names are just scratched into sandstone and no headstone was there, just a name and a year. At first, the ones we saw we recent just weeks or months old, but then as we walked thru months became decades.

The one thing that stood out was these had more fresh flowers than their counterparts up front, a stronger family bond may be

the small squares at the top are mostly children, some were very young…it was very sobering, this would become more apparent the next day.

From the Cementerio De Mompox its a 3 block walk to the tributary of the Magdalena River, Brazo de Mompos, walking past fruit sellers and large graphics.

Above your head howler monkeys ran along phone lines from and tree to tree, every time too fast for me get t a shot to I had to borrow a file photo

Here is where you’ll find Mompox is a town frozen in time. While the rest of the country has evolved and modernized in some of the bigger towns and cities, Mompox looks pretty much as it used to be during colonial times, for this reason, it was declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1995.

…but sadly empty, maybe at the weekends the river front comes alive, others would have to comment on that for us, we had the place to ourselves, literally.

The following morning we rode south out of town, over numerous bridges over the Magdalena where you could see it had burst its banks due to a rainy season now three months longer than normal

Pickings are thin as the river is moving so fast and the silt levels are way above normal, you can see this division in the color line of the main river from the side stream

Riding on dirt roads was rarely an option, thick red soup was covering the main street of a few little towns and the military was helping and directing where they were needed

Colombian yellow, blue and red flags were flying everywhere, the World Cup was about to start and Colombians were optimistic. Passing a rural area goal posts stand upright but no one is playing, as we ride closer we see why

The football pitch was a lake and maybe a foot or more underwater now because of the floods, the ‘lake’ reached the buildings and went out of sight

The dirt road that entered the town was too deep for the little bikes to cross so now it was a makeshift parking lot, and the locals waded thru to their houses

It made us so sad, such amazingly friendly people, we asked if there was a way we could help, but what could we do! The answer was blatant honesty, the government cared little about this area, it’s about 50km from the Venezuelan border, we are nothing, almost like ‘them’ struggling to survive.

If you have ever lived in an area that has a low water table you’ll understand, the ground is fertile but floods easily and can take a long time for water levels to subside.

People have to stay in their houses, no money to go anywhere else, no way to farm and fears of meager possessions not being there when they returned or water damaged beyond repair. You can see the high water mark on the house below and how health risks are extreme when this area is like this

Once we were out of the predominantly flooded swamp-like areas near Mompox we started the search for Colombian dirt, at first, a few tracks seemed promising but lead nowhere so we continued down the paved roads avoiding the familiar obstacles

Most tracks we found ended up at someones house/ farm/ finca/ river or a gate

We continued looking for ways thru but the floods made finding a continuous track south impossible, as we were thinking of giving up the search for the day my bike made the decision for us. On a rare piece of smooth pavement I accelerated but didn’t move forward as I should, now my clutch had started to slip.

I had a feeling after the world’s longest DR to DR tow across southern Cuba it was imminent for it to happen. This time though not an issue, the DR is built in Colombia and they are everywhere, usually bright green in livery as its the bike the Police use. Most bike shops can get parts in 2-3 days.

I did a Formula 1 clutch change and was done start to finish in 15 minutes, including taking this photo

Clutch installed and working fine we headed to ‘the beach’ but not that kind of beach, Playa de Belen in the mountains and the point we would start exploring the northern Andes

the area has a similar feel to parts of Utah with red rock escarpments pushing their way out of the green hills and farmland

it was a town @michnus from PikiPiki had suggested and the following day as we rode out of town we see this, which in Spanish has no meaning…coincidence!

Increasing in elevation the roads turned from paved to dirt and the population decreased, the few tourists we had a seen days earlier were not here

we had the riding to ourselves and the few small fincas that dotted the hillside

you read a lot about Colombia and Farc, and the papers will tell you that they are done, disbanded and life has returned to normal everywhere in Colombia because of this…this is the case in most areas but their presence is still felt and in these outlying areas Farc are still very well respected and represented and we would run into more issues as we rode along. Reminders were everywhere, we would continue but keep our sixth sense sharp.

As we are talking about this as we ride, thru Sena the intercoms, wondering how would we even know if we were riding in a Farc area if they are not in uniforms, it could be any person standing at the side of the road, we saw an easier way to know we were in Farc Territory, that was very fresh and newly painted

We headed deeper into ex-Farc territory…quite honestly how could you know what was going on out there in those hills, who could police that!

In 2010 the town of Gramalote by a landslide and 6000 people lost around 1000 homes during the deluge, the most prominent reminder of the village is the remains of Iglesia de San Rafael and a few odd walls of building as you come down the hillside

Riding down what was one of the main streets you pull up outside of the church, well whats left of it

in most cases when this happens the town is slowly rebuilt or in some cases abandoned…not here, it was both abandoned and rebuilt but on the other side of the valley, the ‘new’ village is nearly complete

Obviously, not a good area to stay yet…we moved closer to the Venezuelan border for a while and made our way to Pamplona, a busy market town that I didn’t remember the name of, but stayed in after I left VZ in 2013…even stayed in the same hotel on the main square

Not a town to be in for a long stay, mainly because its not that interesting for what we wanted, we moved on still seeking safer areas to ride dirt, the ride out of town all paved, as we were about to get onto dirt around a corner a family was stranded four people two bikes and one going nowhere.

They had sheared off the bolts for the rear sprocket and jammed the chain int the drive sprocket in the process, they honestly had no idea what to do, we stopped to ask if they were ok…no!

They had minimal tools so I grabbed my kit and started pulling the bike apart

Ten minutes later the bike was complete and they were ready to ride to town, they wanted to pay us but had no money which of course we would never take, we laughed when they offered and explained we just like to help fellow riders, to pay it forward. Then out of nowhere they produced bags of strawberries and offered them.

We questioned why they had so many, “to sell at the market!”

Again we refused, the strawberries were their livelihood, it was just good to see them smile and pull away…it was a very long push in either direction.

A few miles later we found our dirt track and the valley we planned to ride thru

Skirting a river for miles until it joined another we felt the day was going well, plenty of time to get where we wanted, all we were looking to do was 191km for the day. We had 40km left and 2 hours until sundown

The track was fast dry mud…right up until it rained, torrentially. The remaining distance took us nearly three hours and we arrived in the dark, what we saw looked very impressive, sheer drops to a fast flowing river, steep inclines up the muddy track had us rolling very slowly. We figured it would be a great place to ride the next day and get some cool photos.

There were two options to get to the town, one partially paved and the other up a very steep muddy track with a brown river flowing down it, that was the shortest way but looked near impossible under the current conditions, we had no choice but to opt for partially paved in the pitch darkness.

Arriving in the tiny little town of Guacamayas we were met by the military and the police who were surprised to see us especially arriving in the dark, “we really never see tourists here”, claimed the police chief.

There was one tiny little hotel for $8 for a room, we uncomfortably had to leave the bikes on the street as we carried our stuff upstairs. We planned like I said to ride locally the next day, right up to the point when the hotel owner refused to give us a key for the room. We were told everything is really safe here. We wandered into the town square to find the only place open that had hot food, it was full of military and police, there was a little tension in the air…we changed our minds and left the following morning, but vowed to return at a later date (we did) and get there in the daylight and get those shots.

The following morning as we rode out of town and looked back, we knew it would be epic in the daylight

Here is our “Illogical Colombian Route!”

Leaving Guacamayas in the distance

we look to the mountain ranges ahead in anticipation of what’s to come

our only companions when we stop see to be stray dogs which are like a magnet to me, the nice thing here in Colombia people respect them and feed them, so they mostly look to be very healthy

occasionally a horse or two and of course lots of insects

our trail is thru tiny villages where we seem to be one of the few motorized pieces of transport

we cross river

after river

occasionally we get to do it and have dry feet

but all on remote dirt tracks, so good some not so much

Before we got back to Colombia, my fifth time and Egle’s second time we had a look to see where people had been riding and if there were places we felt would be a good fit for us.

Sadly we found on here and other forums/ pages/ groups there seemed to a be a common similarity of routes for the majority. That was mostly Cartagena to Ipiales hitting a major city or two of either Medellin/ Bogota/ Cali and a few minor places along the way, Salento, San Gil, Guatape, Ibague and Popayan seemed big favorites for some reason and seemed to pop up the most and all routes also seemed reasonably direct north to south or vice versa

We decided to go further afield, where on closer inspection there are more areas that suit our riding style, @michnus and Elsbie travel like we do, very slowly and make loops going thru countries, stopping in smaller towns and immersing with the locals.

We’d be on a track and see another in the distance and try and figure out how to get there if it looked interesting

and sometimes just play in puddles…

How do we get there? When we see a track in the distance, some of these are on maps, paper or digital unless you have the right maps so finding the start of the trail can be a challenge. Locals can help to a certain extent if you know where the road is headed, but sometimes they have never been further than a few villages or towns away, so this is where the adventure begins

Occasionally dropping on to a paved road fruit and vegetable stands are abundant, we’d stock up one whole we food and go back to the dirt

in 2013 when I was coming out of Venezuela I stopped in Pamplona and bumped into an English guy who’d been living in the area married to a Colombian lady for around 15 years, he enquired where I was headed?

My plan then was to ride to Medellin via Guatape over the next few days and have a look at the Chicamocha Canyon, he got very excited and almost demanded that I go to a town called Ceptia, at the time not many people went there, it was a steep dirt road to the bottom of a canyon to a village of fewer than 300 people…so I went.

Back in this same area again I took Egle down to the bottom of the canyon.

The ride down is nothing short of spectacular, sheers drop thousands of feet down to the canyon bottom, sadly for us, but good for the locals they have now paved some of it

When we got into the Puebla I knew of one little Hostal…it was full, they directed us to another, full, she directed us to another and the last one, they had a room available, I guess this place has now been found!

We rode around a few back streets to see if we could find an alternative way out for the following morning, when I was there years ago landslides had shut every route but one, hoping they had been cleared, we found a footbridge and crossed it. On my GPS it showed that it was a footpath that leads out to
Pescadero

it looked promising until a little after this photo it got so narrow the bags were hitting the trees on each side, it really was just a footpath.

we turned around and disturbed a few locals…

The following day our target was Barichara, there are more than a few ways to get there, we took one of the longer ones over the Sogamoso River and the possibility of having to drop the bikes in a canoe to cross the river…Fail, it had been paved but what a ride

The bridge across the river takes you to the other side where the switchbacks continue

We were slowly making our way to Medellin, I had a bunch of photos to process for a European car magazine while Egle wrote the article, what they wanted was a story about the Colombian lobe of the Renault 4 which then developed to the love of the Twingo. Why am I telling you this here, well look about Eglem there’s a Renault 4…they are everywhere, even Pablo had a few for racing.

When you get to the top you get to look back at where you just rode, don’t come here, you’d hate it, roads are boring!

after peaking out we found a minor back road to take thru to Barichara, that we had to ourselves and a great waterfall thrown in the mix too

after this shot, the camera battery died so we didn’t get the river crossing that was a few hundred meters ahead, shame as it was a good fast moving one

Barichara is a very well preserved town with an authentic feel, a little rough around the edges but well worth a visit

we grabbed a room dropped our gear and went to find food, a restaurant came highly recommended but the appetizer potions didn’t make my 250lb frame too happy after a full days riding

It seems normal when we are walking we get adopted by a dog, and there was no different, he stayed with us the whole time we walked around town as the sun was setting…even all the way to our hotel on the outskirts of town to make sure we got home ok, almost a spitting image of my buddy Pats Dogo Argentino

hey look a Renault 4, told you they were everywhere, this ones a little worse for wear

next up, blowing up dynamite with the locals for fun!

MotoZ Tires – Tractionator GPS 19,200km/ 12,000 mile review

MotoZ Tires – Tractionator GPS 19,200km/ 12,000 mile review

I found the perfect motorcycle seat!

In 2011, I got back into long distance multi-country motorcycle travel. I had my new bike – a Yamaha XT660Z – shipped to Ushuaia, Argentina. A bike I had never ridden more than 5 miles.

When I first sat on it and rode out of town I had a feeling of euphoria but after about 25 miles I wanted to get off, the seat was so bad – and I still had the whole American continent to ride.

I struggled through agonizing miles, but whenever I had an internet connection, I would search for solutions. There weren’t many; I found a few companies making custom one-off seats with very high prices and long lead times…the search continued.

Little did I know that at the same time, a fledgling company was growing in a guy’s garage in California. They had found the same problems I did – getting a good comfortable seat, at a reasonable price and within a reasonable timeframe.

They are Lendon Smith, Amy Smith, and Robert Lightfeldt, calling themselves the Seat Concepts. An evolution in comfort and quality was on the horizon.

Skip forward a few years and after trying solutions like seat pads, silicon gel, different foams etc I heard about Seat Concepts, I was immediately interested and on the phone.

I had changed bikes by now and was on a KTM 625sxc, a rare bike – but Seat Concepts had a seat for it. I placed an order and a few days later, I received my seat cover and new foam; within 20 minutes, I had it mounted onto my stock seat pan.

The key to good quality parts for your motorcycle is simple: once they are mounted you never think of them again. This was the case with this seat, I rode this bike around the world in 2014, and honestly never thought about the seat once! Why?

It was comfortable, it held me in place with its gripper top when I wanted it to, and it never made me not want to ride from discomfort from the previous day.

***in the Bartang Valley, Tajikistan

This Seat Concepts 2014 journey…

I was now a very big fan of Seat Concepts: whenever I heard someone complain about their seat those two words were all they needed to know.

Like a lot of people, I have more than one bike, but they all have something in common. They have Seat Concepts.

…Riding on Seat Concepts seats, I have covered over 125,000km and adding to that daily, as we continue traveling RTW

So now you know I love Seat Concepts, but should you? It’s a company you probably know very little about, so here are some more in-depth details.

Originally based in Southern California, Seat Concepts moved to Idaho just over a year ago and expanded. The employees love the company so much they all moved too!

The new manufacturing facility is state of the art: they give you the option of a seat cover and foam and you do the mounting at home with a few simple tools or ship your seat pan to them and they will mount it for you, or a complete seat with a new seat pan from their vast inventory.

Their process is all in-house and this is how it happens:

A premade fiberglass mold is taken from stock to be used to form the seat foam, you can see they have literally hundreds of bikes and models covered, yours is in there somewhere

Then, the seat foam is mixed and injected into a mold to be a perfect fit to your stock seat pan…no cutting and shaving here.

You can choose standard, low or high seats on a number of models

***this is my seat foam being created before my eyes for my DR650. I asked for a slightly firmer foam, not an issue, a few buttons were tweaked and the foam started to flow

For some popular bikes, they held a stock of premade foams and covers. Lendon explained this was very rare to have this many sitting on the shelf, in a few days they will all be shipped out!

My new seat pan was getting prepared

My foam, once it had set, moved across the facility and was placed on the new seat pan. The mounting process began

While my seat was being finished Lendon showed a few new concept seats he’s working on adding to their vast range.

Seat Concepts vs stock seat

I’m extremely happy with my new seat; has it taken me to unique places in comfort? A resounding 100% yes!

If you are ever in Idaho, drop in and say hello, and if you are like me you WILL be converted and become a Seat Concept customer for life.

***I’m a RTW rider with over 300,000kms clocked since 2011 and I’m still riding and adding to that distance daily. I was a customer first and now am proud to be a Seat Concepts Ambassador.

Sunsets, shipwrecks and new clutches

Right before lifting the anchor Ludwig comes to us and tell us “we might have a problem!”

We honestly have no idea what is coming next…

“Colombia has changed their rules/ regulations/ laws…who knows; since we were last there they told us we are no longer allowed to bring motorcycles to Cartagena.”

“What?”

“I have had to cancel the 14 riders coming onboard in Carti, Panama and I have my agent in Cartagena trying to get approval for just you two to disembark there as you boarded before they changed the rules…they told me they’d get back to me, we need to wait for an answer, that’s all I know right now.”

We sail away not having a clue what we are going to do, will we have to disembark in Panama and then arrange our own transportation across the gap, will Colombia be nice to us, can Ludwig pull an ace out of his sleeve. We sail off in zero communication zone with these questions hanging in the air.

We sail for 3 days not knowing, we arrive in San Blas and get good and bad news almost instantly –

Ludwig comes to us. “I have good news, Colombia said you can come, but the 14 others definitely not. The bad news, for now, but I’m working on it, the Kuna people (San Blas Islands) don’t want us here!”

So we are kind of happy and kind of confused, the Stahlratte has been coming to San Blas for years, why the change?

The way it was explained, they felt all the boats that came in used the islands more as a dumping ground, leaving bags of garbage etc and it was costing the ‘people’ a lot for very little in return. Sailers were not going to the islands and eating or buying things from the Kuna, just ‘using’ the islands

Ludwig disappeared for a while, was talking back and forth with people, people were coming to the boat, around 24 hours later it was all good, he had smoothed it over, now we could relax.

We had arranged for someone to bring a new clutch pack for Egle’s bike to Panama City, we’d made that arrangement before “the tow”, once that had happened we called again and asked if they bring a second clutch pack and now a few tools I had missing.

All was good except the timing was off by a few days so we hung around and had to wait in San Blas for a week…life could be worse, the end of the day as the waiting begins

the people are very humble and friendly with a unique culture, I would say not so much a time out but simply asking people to have a little respect for them and where they live. While we were there the ‘Sailah’ who are the chiefs for the bigger islands we getting together to try and work out a plan that was good for them and also for visitors. The main problem is that there 378 islands with only 49 inhabited so it could be very difficult to enforce and a real uphill struggle

If you have never been there you have to understand this is a group of people who until a few decades ago didn’t have words in there language for work, time and money.

Work – was just something you did for the community, everybody did it, so instead it was just life.
Time – there are various sounds blown from a conch shell for different things, when to fish, when fishermen are coming back with their catch and bad weather is coming so everybody will try and ward it off
Money – the islands are/ were a collective, everything for everybody and trade was more important

The trash situation is horrific on the more inhabited island; if you swim in the sea before going to a major island you might question swimming in the sea afterward anywhere near one

From a few years ago, trash everywhere and ‘toilets’ that drop straight into the sea surround every inhabited island

San Blas’ largest pile of garbage isn’t a pile of plastic bottles on a beach somewhere it is this…

It was put there by what can only be described as a total idiot, and by put there I will explain.

What you are looking at is the San Blas Ferry, I find it amazing that people still think this thing runs back and forth daily!

No, it doesn’t, the owner who formally owned a catamaran running bikes and backpackers between Panama and Colombia ran that aground on this same reef. He had just bought the San Blas Ferry and did one run I think Ludwig said, he then grounded his catamaran and then used the ferry to get the catamaran off the reef…doing so, ground the ferry on the reef and its been there ever since, for almost two years!

This shot is taken from the deck of the Stahlratte we were anchored about a mile away

We looked at it from a distance for a few days until I pulled out a zoom lens and saw that rope ladder hanging off the side, we decided to go and have a closer look, Egle and I along with a German backpacker, Christoph who was the only other passenger on board.

Excuse the quality of the photos, they were taken with a waterproof point and shoot

Is it big, yes!

it’s sitting in about 6-7 feet of water

and at a crazy lean angle

Inside and out its totally destroyed by the salt water and no it will NEVER run again

I jumped off the far side to get the next shots, the water is not much deeper here so who knows how it would ever be moved. Think about it, the Guna people cannot afford to clean up the islands from all the trash that is around, how do they move a 10,000+ ton rusted ship?

Here’s a short video in the rain of the San Blas Ferry and why it won’t sail again

We now had a week to wait in San Blas for sure, it was guaranteed that we were getting clutch plates for Egle’s bike and they were being brought to Panama City and then relayed to us on one of the daily tour jeeps.

Also, while this was happening Simon and Lisa were making their way from Jamaica to Panama to take their bikes off, which was their original plan…there was no Colombia for them this time around.

We’d done our marine exploration of rust, the Stahlratte had been cleared and was OK to stay here and for us to get off and go to the islands if we wanted, so it was time to meet the people and their culture as they’d been eyeballing us anchored there.

San Blas is like having a cultural museum floating by, Egle had been asked to write another article for the BBC, which if you’re not aware is a huge thing being one of the most respected prestigious outlets to write for in the world. She decided to write it about the people…it should be out in a week or two, she details how the ladies are the most important part of the culture and how this affects life on the islands between men and women

The Guna believe they came from space, 4 sisters came, one was the earth sister, one was the gold and you can research the other two…hehe.

This when you first hear it may sound a little far-fetched but think about it, there are around 3000 different Gods, religions and stories about creation, if your belief is that you were created in the image of your God from two people and everything was here 7 days later, doesn’t make there’s sound so far-fetched does it?

When they came down, they came down with the designs of the Molas.

These are Molas, originally the Guna was not a clothing wearing culture so these were painted on their bodies, then as clothes were introduced they transferred them to cloth with extremely intricate stitching and layering of various colored cloth

Some of the ladies wear a gold nose ring inserted in their septum to represent the sister who brought the gold

They are very shy and reserved people and taking photos is no easy task, most photos I took were with a zoom lens from a great distance, but when spotted some will turn away or hide their faces

clothes for very young kids seemed optional

Another unique item the ladies wear are a row of tiny beads in various designs and colored to protect you from evil spirits, orange is a predominant color as its the strongest protection! These are worn on the arms, wrists, and legs, they now make and sell them to tourists for around $5-10.

As we did in Guatemala we approached some of what we felt were the poorer people to buy them, Egle has a group of people that like to donate money to unique cultures and in return, we try and find unique items as a token of thanks for their donations. We don’t give money directly to the people, we buy their products to entice them to continue…we bought a lot of bracelets and molas!

Some of the ladies will also tell you they are good for stopping bug bites!

On the smaller islands people are hand-picked and live as ‘caretakers’ of the island mostly fishing and collecting coconuts, some of the 40 or so inhabited island may have only one family living on them

one day haul from a small non-inhabited island…I guess its thirsty work

They were very intrigued by Egle’s hair!

Other islands where there are a few families living they work and do everything together including laundry!

One day drifts into the next in San Blas, life is slow easy going and just hanging around seems to be normal everyday life here

another day ends…

the next is more of the same, just a relaxing time, interspaced with a little crazy

you can set your watch in the late afternoon as the rain predictably comes down

end of another day…we are waiting for Simon and Lisa to get to Panama and for my parts to arrive too, maybe tomorrow

The following day starts a little different early on we have visitors, dolphins, and rays

it ends up today is not the day, more exploring…

of course, the rain comes in again while swimming back!!!

end of another day…

We wake up in the morning to the sound of the motor running, its familiar potato, potato, potato rhythm…Simon and Lisa are heading to the dock, a 3-hour drive from downtown Panama City, we cruise around 1 hour to the dockside to go and meet them and unload the bikes

if you’ve never seen a bike unloaded of a boat, put down your hot drink if you have one

later in the day, my parts arrive and are relayed down from PC and brought directly to the boat, we are about half a mile off shore. As soon as the box hits the deck the motor starts and we point towards Colombia…and I do a clutch swap as we sail away from San Blas as the sun is setting

This Stahlratte experience wasn’t as good as the other two I had been on.

The Stahlratte, if you are not familiar, could be described as a floating hippy backpacker hostel, it’s an experience, not just motorcycle riders but also bakpackers as well.

There is Captain Ludwig and then usually 3 crew, this time around there was definite friction between them, a female and two males who she very clearly stated she had stopped talking to a long time before we got on. The boys, and I am being honest here were young, 18 & 20, and neither wanted to be there any longer, and it showed.

They had a few jobs, one of them was to clean the kitchen, this was extremely lax but not surprising from an 18 & 20-year-old, it was dirty, very dirty, not like I had experienced before.

Another of their duties was to make food, now keep in mind we were with the Stahlratte for two months, and onboard for 17 days of sailing, we paid for 3 meals a day, somewhere to sleep and motorcycle transportation. I cannot fault the Stahlratte for getting the bike from A to B it is done extremely well, the bed is well a bed!

The food – I have had experience on the Stahlratte with excellent food especially when Ludgwig is in the kitchen, so much you struggle to do up your riding pants a few days later…sadly this time it was not the case. Food stocks were extremely limited, food selection was what I would call atrocious for the latter part of the trip, most of the time if the two ‘boys’ were left in charge of food. One ‘meal’ consisted of boiled potatoes with melted cheese on top…this in their eyes was considered dinner. It ended up numerous times that we had to go search for sustenance later.

Another meal we were offered was rice on a plate and pumpkin soup, when we asked what was for dinner, they smiled “this is dinner!” I told them soup is an appetizer and rice is a side dish…they laughed.

Tension built over the last days as food stocks reduced and quality of what was left did too.

We were asked for feedback after we got off from ‘Stefan’ who I can only describe as the mouthpiece for the Stahlratte, we gave him very strong constructive criticism which he wanted, now keep in mind HE WAS NOT ON BOARD AT ALL, but is based in Germany and told us we were lying!

Really for the last part of the sail there remained three of us, paying guests, we all felt the same and were there but according to someone who wasn’t there, it was all lies. We DID NOT get what we paid for which was the offer of three meals a day. His argument to this was seasickness, ok fair enough, but at least come and ask and make an offer?

So much to the point the crew couldn’t even be bothered to let us know food had been served on multiple occasions they couldn’t be bothered to even shout “breakfast”, but instead eat as much as possible before we even knew.

No doubt Stefan will respond (and I would take his responses with a pinch of salt, as I say he WASN’T THERE), and tell you I tried to blackmail them, his communication is extremely poor and borderline offensive, opinionated and aggressive, other examples of his tone can be seen in his responses in @LoneStar RR

The reality is, I told them we did not get what we paid for in the way of food, and a refund should be offered. I told them I would not accept it but the money should be used for some sort of pest control in the kitchen which was swarming with cockroaches and would continue to get worse if similar help continued to be crew on board

Now all that being said Stahlratte is in a difficult position, costs are exorbitant, crew options are minimal, Colombia and Panama are developing countries, and boats like them and others bringing motorcycles in and dropping them at the shoreside was never even looked a few years back but Colombia especially now has aggressively come up with new rules and regulations and import and export of goods (our bikes are the goods for either import or export) so are getting extremely strict on all boats arriving and they have new and changing rules which need to be complied with.

I just spoke with another rider yesterday who was on the following sailing and he told me of massive food poisoning and complete disarray on arrival in Colombia and could not get his bike for one week, we only had to wait two days.

I have been assured by the Stahlratte (Ludwig) and Stefan(!) that all has now been resolved and everything is back to normal, the new crew is on board, the ship is clean again, the customs are accepting bikes openly albeit with a lot more paperwork than years ago…but its working.

So what are your options to get across the Darien Gap…there were basically four, but now three

San Blas Ferry – defunct
Stahlratte
Container
Plane

The container shipment, I have done an import to Colon (heading north), it was a nightmare and took 2 days and hundreds of excess dollars over and above the stated cost. loads of running around in what can only be described as a dangerous city – Riders heading south will tell you that didn’t use the Stahlratte that a container is the best option. All in it will cost them around $600 +/-, what they forget to tell you is what they paid over and above that for taxi’s, food, hotels and other expenses, also the waiting around 3 to 4 days and having to deal with dock personnel in Colon and Cartagena in 100+ degrees and 100% humidity who can be very unhelpful at times with the process or paperwork. So what is their real cost closer to $1000 is most likely?

The plane shipment, I have done this in both directions, is it was quick and simple, you are at the right place where all the paper required is to be done, but its around $800 – $900, then you have to fly yourself and might end up with a night or two in a hotel, and the possibility of taxis as well as food, so you can be spending $1200+ and then if you want to see Cartagena you are now half a country away that you’ll have to ride back thru

The Stahlratte – right now it is your best option, by far, the price is comparable, the food, when Ludwig cooks is exceptional, it is a door to door, service with years of experience and paperwork is processed on your behalf. The only piece of paperwork that isn’t, is insurance, and we found an office a few blocks from where the bikes are unloaded, Ludwig has the details. Also, the experience, while riders were sitting in offices, at docksides, dealing with paperwork in a foreign language…we were on the beach drinking a cold beer, swimming with dolphins, experiencing a different culture, relaxing. When we did arrive in Cartagena we had our bikes off and processed and were done in slightly more than 2 hours

You decide, just giving you my experience of the options, I wish the Stahlratte all the best, times are tough, Central America is unraveling and by the time you are down there you might not be thinking straight, use this as your guide…for me my choice would be 2, 4, 3 and have a look at #1 while you are doing #2

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