20th July 2004

There and back again

The inflight map on the miniture screen 20 inches from my face tells me that we are 33000ft over Delhi, India.  It's another sobering reminder that Heathrow is about 8 hours ahead.  Reminders like that and the captain stating that London has "persistant light drizzle" as we get nearer do nothing to help my denial that I am going home.

My friend Dermot told me in an email to savour every remaining morning, day and night, as the realities of life will hit me hard on my return....well mate, they have not only hit me hard, but they have push me down the stairs, taken me out the back and given me a good going over with a bit of 2 by 4.

Ive already started to reminice about the adventure that has taken a year to fulfill, already started to pour over the photos of people met and places visited.  The memories are still fresh and I want to keep it that way, although I am painfully aware that two weeks from now it will all seem like I never left blighty and those memories will start to fade.

Consoling myself with the fact that I will see my family and friends soon, and that eases the pain, whilst I have been away, I have gained "Uncle Brian" status, I cant wait to meet my niece Megan.  Have some good days ahead in the UK....am I clutching at straws?

Na, actualy England is a pretty damn cool place to live and being away from its quirks and delights really makes you appreciate the place.  I think the biggest fear is one of getting back into the routine, if I'm honest with myself I think that is what I fear the most....slipping into a routine an watching months go by being a wage slave.

Right, I've got that out of my system for the time being, so what did we get up to in our last month in South America?

Well Iguazu falls knocked us off our feet, we took a flight there from Buenos Aires in Argentina.  The girth of the falls was incredible, even when you are half a kilometer away from the falls, you cannot fit it into your vision, ITS THAT BIG!  Then a flight back to Bueenos Aires saw us soaking up one of the best cities in South America.  We fell in love with Tango and took private lessons, lots of fun and lots of work.  I'm still trying to sort out the moves in my head and piece a sequence together.  After BA we took a bus to an estancia (a Argentinian farm) to go horse riding and walk around the hills around.  The owner / host was the ex president of the Argentinian gastronomic society.  My god, the food that he conjured up for every meal was a small miracle.  Had not tasted food that good for a very long time.

Then a very uncomfortable 10 hour bus ride took us into Mendoza, more shopping there and more sampling of their fine wines and meat saw me put on more lard.  After Mendoza we took a bus back into Chile and Santiago.  At the border I approached a bunch of bikers, they were Chileans, and had traveled a day on their bikes to pick up their dead pal from Argentina, they were taking him back into Chile for his "final ride". 

Santiago saw us get some quotes on flying the bike back home to Europe.  Got a mail from a biker friend on a really really good price on flying the bike back home.  I subsequently followed up his hint and got an amazing price. 

We took in Santiago for a couple of nights before deciding that we should spend the last remaining week in latin America in a city we really wanted to be in...so we took another flight back to Buenos Aires.  There we dined on more incredible food and spent the day getting more lessons from our very patient tutors.  It's not an easy dance and will take a lot of practise before I can even think about keeping in time to music.  Lots of twisting of the torso in one direction and the legs in the opposite.  It really is a beautiful dance...ahem, when its done properly.

After our final visit to Buenos Aires, it was time to return again to Santiago, where I visited a Chilean airline and said goodbye to Thumper as I saw him get all packed up like a big present.  They even covered him in shrinkwrap.  Feel a bit guilty that the last month of travel was without him, but there was no way that we could have covered the distances we wanted to travel in Argentina on him.

So then we left Latin America, my home for the past 8 months, what an experience it was, what a fantatic, colourful, passionate part of the world.

We then found ourselves in Sydney where friends put us up for three days.  It was three days of taking it easy and catching up on news, again, more time would have been great.  Then onto Thailand for a stopover in Bangkok. At this point our internal clocks were all over the place, we were eating breakfast at 11pm and having dinner at 8 in the morning, or so it felt.  After a productive day of buying all kinds of things, thoughts turned to home.

So here I am, it's summertime in London and the weather is superb, Saturday night approaches and we are off to a wedding.  What then?  Well, I have a flight out of here on Tuesday, to even sunnier Madrid, where my bike awaits, it's just arrived from Santiago....well, you didn't seriously think that the adventure was over just yet did you?

Thursday 24th June 2004

I looked at the road ahead and imagined the 2000km of desertland that awaited ahead.  Arequipa to Santiago.  Looked at thumper and gave him a pat.  "Good bike"  Shortly after that moment we were twisting and turning around the road leading down the Chilean coast and into the Atacama desert with Red Hot Chilli Peppers blasting away.

Five days of that behaviour and you have one hell of a happy boy feeling on top of the world after having sooooo much time with machine, BEST music selection you can imagine, blue skies, and curves.....sooooo many curves, not short and nippy but long and gliding...sometimes I could have sworn I was dreaming.....  You can find yourself blatting it down the coast without another vehicle to be seen for hours.  Heaven.  Even better was that for the first time in yonks, Thumper was at zero altitude - the grunt and thrraapp sound of the bike was a very welcome change from the simple purr he made at 5000 metres he recently suffered at the top of the Andes.

Jules was meanwhile learning Spanish for the same week in Santiago.  It has to be said that her week of Spanish has seen her surpass my 4 weeks in Mexico in terms of confidence she has with the lingo and bredth of conversation!!!  Pesky language degree student!!!

Before all of this we travelled to the middle of the Andes in Bolivia.  We took an amazing tour around part of this incredible mountain range.  Experienced thermal baths at 4500 metres, with a ring of mountains around us for company.  Flamingoes everywhere around the salt flats and a very special sunset and moonrise above the mountain range.  Stayed in a very remote part of the Andes in a military police station.  They were stationed there to stop the flow of nicked vehicles being brought into Bolivia from Chile.  Did not get a great deal of sleep that night as the station is soooo remote, it feels like the place is exposed to the harshness of space when the sun sets.  We all woke up with icicles dangling from our noses in the morning, IT WAS THAT COLD!

La Paz was a fun place to be also.  A road with the title "the worlds most dangerous road" cannot be left alone.  Was hesistant to do it on thumper, so settled to race down it with a group on mountain bikes.  It was a hairy road and cant believe the speeds that we attained on that dodgy piece of road.

We were introduced to Vicunas and baby Alpalcas, very cute little things with big brown eyes and eyelashes....that also make excellent steak and throwovers for the sofa.  Cheers fellas!

Lake Titicaca is beautiful and does indeed (as the books say) have a special kind of colour in it, apparently due to it being the highest navigatable lake in the world.

The electric vest came in very handy some days at altitude.  Could have survived without it, but it just made riding comfortable those days instead of just bearable.

So far Argentina has surpassed everything we have heard about this wonderful country.  We are only just recovering from the first few days here of an onslaught of snow shoeing, bike riding, riding the teleferico (cable car as they call it over here) and of course sampling the delights of the world famous steaks and wines....often for less than a british pint and a half (I'm not kidding). 

Iguazu falls / Buenos Aires / Skiing and Estancias of Gaucho land all await over the next two weeks & we can hardly wait.  Sorry about that......hows that work thing then?

Thursday 20th May 2004

Aye?  What?  Another month gone by?  How did that happen?  Another month, another 5000 km of travel.  There have been some "big days out" recently, taking in views of mountains views that make you believe that you are standing on the roof of the world....on a bike.  Trying to fit all the stuff that's happened and experienced into a page is difficult.  I realise now that a lot of stuff is going to remain in my head, never to pass my lips, because there are no words for that match the sights...none, but if I could make a sound it might sound something like weeeeeeeewoooooowaaaaaa la la la leeeeeeeethrrrrrrrpbibble..

After arriving in Costa Rica I decided that I would forgo any trekking and other big adventures in Central America, as I wanted to get the bike flown from Panama City to Quito, Equador in good time to get me started in South America.  In Panama City I paid the fee to fly the bike to Quito.  The manager of the freight company and his family took me to his beach home where I got treated to a BBQ on the beach.and a nights accommodationall inclusive!  The downside of this was that the bike did not make the flight and it finally arrived 5 days late.  Upshot of this is that I received a 60% refund, jammy Colesy does it again. 

Very relieved to see the bike in Quito customs.  Customs was a mad scene of lots of bit of paper for the bike, people shouting at each other about the bike and me and what to do with us both.  It took six hours to process.  In the end I was surrounded by a gathering of officials watching me reconnect the bike battery like I was re-assembling a UFO.  I expected a round of applause after the heated interest, but none came.  I gave one of the officials a lift to and airport building and got back to my hostel in Quito.  Parked the bike at the Turtles Head pub (local bikey hangout for overlanders) and had a few pints to celebrate my re-union with Thumper and shared stories with the other bikers there, lovely crowd, great pub, amazing food.

Above the clouds in Equador, you discover a new colour of blue in the sky...dunno why, its just a different colour up there.  The weather ranged from the aforementioned blue skies to riding through clouds and mist at 20km an hour for hours.  On one such misty day, I managed to hit a rock-boulder thing at slow speed, this pushed the bike to the right, I planted my right foot down and struggled to keep the bike upright (but once she gets past a certain angle shes a-going).  But the forces of gravity and my knackeredness gave way and I saw the bike tumble off the right into a BIG ditch....mmmm took 4 people to get him out of that mess.  Right hand mirror broke off.  No other damage.  I was VERY glad to get to town after that...so I sat down, had a coffee and stared off into the distance for a bit.

Seeing Julie at the airport in Trujillo / Peru just made me grin.  She had been traveling for around 48 hours by the time she had got there and her plane had been delayed by 6 hours from Lima.  Grins all round in the cab back to the hotel.  The next ten weeks will see us traveling through some incredible sights together and I cant tell you how lovely it is to have her here at last.  Lucky lad me.

We've been blasting it through the coast of Peru and Julies bike training in the UK has paid off big time as a confident pillion, money well spent that.  I cant wait to see her ride Thumper, but Im pretty sure I will wee myself laughing and fall over when I do and be massively proud at the same time.  There is not a great deal to see along the coast, but its a quicker route south.  The plan is to spend most of next 9 weeks in Argentina and Chile.  This means that certain corners have to be cut.  For example, flying to Cusco instead of riding it there.  Doing shorter hikes in Machu Piccu.  Can't do everything...unfortunately, but I don't believe that South America is going anywhere soon, so one will return...I know that already.  Everything that everyone has said about this place is true.  It's a beautiful set of countries.

Jorge a fellow overlander helped me get to a good garage to replace the back tyre and then took us to his weekend retreat just outside Lima.  What a treat that was.  His house staff served up a typical Peruvian meal, introduced us to Pisco Sour and to top it off the Lima Harley Davidson Chapter turned up on his lawn for a drink. 

So it's 9.16am now we are waiting for a plane to take us to Cusco, where the famous Machu Piccu  Inca city sits majestically and draws millions of tourists every year.  Slightly miffed by the fact that we got up at 6am to get this hugely delayed flight.  Jules tries to flatten down my "suprised morning hair" to no avail, boing.

So that's less than three months of travel left....

Blimey.

Monday 19^th April 2004

Crash, bang whallop, border crossings and Semana Santa.

Just when you think one month can`t get any better, along comes another one that blows the socks off the previous said groovy month.

Ive experienced crashes, blood, robbers, corruption, the biggest Easter party in Latin America, new wonderful friends, volcanoes, 100 degree temperatures and the like..

Mary, or Mary Moo as Mary is known, and I traveled south from the amazing Tikal in North Guatemala.  We decided that a bit of off roading type action was required, so we agreed to take off on a road into a remote part of Guatemala.  We started with good intentions to getting more experience with each other for backup in the case of an emergency.  Two hours along this track it has stopped being a proper road as soon as we started down it, the track started to deteriorate badly.  We pressed on through truly pants terrain.  I heard a massive bump and scrape, looked in the mirrors to see a massive cloud of dust and gravel where Mary should have been.  I`ve seen a motorcycle accident many moons ago, not nice.  So was very concerned as to how Mary had fared on this incident.  Luckily she was swearing and shouting like a trooper.  A good sign, she`s ALIVE!   Mary had cleared the bike and the bike had followed, and stopped about an inch behind her.  She had a fair chunk taken out of her hip flesh wise, needed to be cleaned but otherwise she was ok to stand up, not to ride.  So there we were, in the middle of a Guatemalan jungle track, lots of k`s in front of us and it was starting to get dark.  We locked up Marys BMW and put her rucksack on my bike and she got on the back.  Off we went down the poorest excuse of a road I`ve ever seen, no lights anywhere, potholes that deserve the title "craters".  Two hours later in the dark and deep into this national park, we found the only accommodation listed in our guide booksclosed.  Oh dear, not good.  We talked to a few locals hanging around a shack cum bar and were offered a place to stay.  It was a shed, but a shed with beds and a table, for a small fee of course.  Lifesavers.

We dined on red wine (bought earlier in the day), tuna with veg, bread and sweeties and Mary had lots of painkillers to get her through the night.  The next day was not that much better on account of the rain, making it doubly treacherous to ride the track back.  It took hours to do, but we found Mary`s bike and got on our way to the nearest big town with a posh hotel to crash out (no pun intended Mary).

A few days later we traveled to Guatemala city and then Antigua where the largest Easter festival in Latin America was about to get under way.  So we booked accommodation and set off to Lake Atitlan to chill, see the lake and get a shiatsu massage, because life is so stressful.   We Met Maximon  (he`s made of wood) a patron saint of the area.  He smokes / drinks / wears a cowboy hat / gets shifted from home to home and generally looks like a street dude, but his many followers are dedicated and worship him like there is no tomorrow.  For about a dollar, you can get blessed by a high ranking Maximon priest to pray for you, swallow a mouthful of rum and then have him release it into your face.all meant to be good for the soul..I abstained.

I had a wonderful time in Guatemala and in Antigua, thank you Mary, Alex, Bret, Jeff and Agnieszka.

I always approach border crossings with a sense of resignation to the system, and recall the wise words of my friend Deepinder.  He said about India once "see Indias bureaucracy as a brick wall, you can push it and fight it, but the only thing you can do is sit with your back to the wall, and SLOWLY, the bricks will start to come out over time".

So don`t rush, smile, ask for receipts for EVERYTHING and be courteous.  Even when you really don´t want to be.

On the approach to the borders of Honduras and Nicaragua you are bombarded with money changes and helpers all vying for your attention and pointing you in different directions to get your papers.  It`s hot, youve ridden a fair bit already that day and all you want to do it have a beer in a nice hostel.  Enter one drunk man trying to be a helper at the El Salvador / Honduras border crossing.  The sod would not go away after repeated calls of "I dont need you" and "you smell".  He followed and pestered me from department to department, only adding to the already frustrating experience that border crossings can sometimes be.  Finally after 2 hours of queuing, photocopying and explaining, I had my vehicle permit for Hondurs.  For some unknown reason the border official gave it absentmindedly to the inebriated pest following me.  The pest`s eyes lit up and he legged it out the door.  Right..  Great.  I ran to the police station (as the immigration officials shouted at me to do) as the git flew back across the border bridge (think checkpoint Charlie).  A horizontally challenged policeman looked up from his pie he was stuffing his face with and mumbled a "what do you want me to do?".  He was in no fit state to give chase as he had clearly eaten all the pies.  The next 30 seconds saw me mount the bike, hoon back across the border at silly speeds no time for helmet etc, stick my left leg out as I passed the git and walloped him in the back of the knee out of blind mad rage to see him fall down.  I jumped off the bike and gave chase down an alley way that he then disappeared into.  I finally caught up with the mother of all skinheaded drunks, whereby he then threw the permit down.  In the moment that I picked up the permit, I stood back up and watched him continue to run, lose his footing and fall arse over elbow down a flight of stairs..."street justice" I said in my head, "street justice my son".  I then faced the border control guards I had flown past to give a description of Mr. Permit thief.

Just when I thought that was enough I was stopped by a man with teeth of gold and a walkie talkie 100 metres outside immigration and customs, asking me to pay 10 dollars for something I had already paid 10 dollars for and got the receipt for.  I demanded he get on the back of the bike so that we could talk to the police about it....he then said it was alright for me to pass.  Cor, don`t mess with Colesy that day.

Thumper has been doing so well that if it was a horse, Id be putting some extra oats in its bag.  So I gave it a treat and fed it some premium fuel yesterday.

So after Guatemala /  El Salvador / Honduras / Nicaragua and some great days riding on the bike, I find myself in Costa Rica,  I have an uncanny feeling that more trails of the unexpected await.what have you been up to then?