Asheville to Argentina

As you might have guessed, the charger for my computer is dead. I´ve been taking lots of pics but writing is hard with the bad connections and slow computers that are the norm for Peru. I don´t expect to be able to fix the problem till we get to Chile, so posts will be few and I can´t post pics till then… 

We´ve been riding on the moon or at least thats what Peru feels like. On the coast, huge dunes give way to bare red rock mountains and nothing grows. Not even weeds. The wind blows sand and dust and mist and gives the whole scene a washed out water color look. Heading south we turn left up dirt roads and ride half lost into the Andes. Following river valleys higher and higher we ride through little towns of ten or twenty buildings made of mud brick. There are no road signs so when we come to intersections we wait for someone to come by and ask them which road we should take. Sometimes we get where we´re aiming and sometimes we get somewhere else.

Like the day before yesterday. We were aiming at a town called Huancayo but ended up about 150 miles north. The road up was a full day of single lane dirt cut like a step into the side of the mountains. With two way traffic and thick fog. After a trying day, like Hanzel and Gretel, we found ourselvs in front of a hotel with a trout pond for our dinner and a hot springs for our tired bones.

Luck runs big both ways, and for balance, yesterday we were making good time on a paved road and set to get to town with time to walk around and take in the sights. But not thirty miles from our destination all traffic was stopped. We rode past cars and buses pulled to side and found some police. They said there were problems ahead. Some kind of protest with angry people armed with guns and rocks. They said if we went back a few towns there was another route through the mountains to the west. We hooked up with two other adventurous cars and struck out through farm fields and gravel roads, and then struck out all together. The tracks were a maze going nowhere.

Shannon and I gave up on that route and went back down to a small town perched above the paved road. We could see a good dirt road going in the direction we wanted and on it we could see groups of locals around roadblocks. We stopped and talked about what our next move should be. Go back and look for a place to stay and hope we could get through tomorrow or roll the dice and see what we could make happen?

We´re gambling men so we rolled the dice past rocks in the road and around trees cut to block the passage of cars, but we were on motorcycles. Arriving at the first group of locals, we rolled in with our engines off. They said pas on by, the guy we needed to talk to was at the next blockade.

Coming to a group of about twenty men behind a tree cut across the road, one stood up and said You can´t pass here! I took off my helmet and walked around the tree to introduce myself. Shaking hands all around, passing out cards with my picture and a map of our trip, and being as respectful as I could, I explained that we were in a bad way. With darkness falling we had to make Huancayo fast. We had no place to stay and the roads are dangerous at night. He thought about it for a minute and said we could ride the paved road and take our chances there. But another guy from the group argued that it was safer to take the back roads. I agreed and after some conversation, the boss man said OK.

Riding up the good dirt road, our two adventurous car loads of friends could still be seen in the red dust of sunset looking for a passage out of the fields.

Crackers. He must have had dry crackers for breakfast. Now his mouth’s all dry and that’s why he’s talking like it’s full of sand. It might also explain his mood. I don’t catch much of what this little Napoleon of a government functionary is saying, but he keeps pounding his finger on the stack of papers I put in front of him and saying something about a letter. He has my passport, title to my motorcycle, drivers license and a huge stack of papers from the company that shipped the bikes. What would he need a letter for? With the way he’s talking and my bad Spanish, I can’t understand what he´s after, so to divine this mystery I repeat a rudimentary line of questioning that goes something like this: “Letter?” “What type of letter?” “What letter?” He started out impatient and this is quickly driving his mood south, so maybe I should retreat a bit.

Turning to relay what little info I’ve garnered to John and Shannon I find they are talking to a guy in a white T-shirt and woven reed fedora. Papers pass from hand to hand. They’re way ahead of me on this. Under the fedora is George. Hes Mexican and is in this customs office in the center of Cali for the same reason we are. He and his friend Salvador are riding a BMW Dakar and a Ducati from Mexico City to Terria Del Fuego and they shipped their bikes on the same plane we did. ´The paper George gives us is a hand written letter of intention saying that we promise not to sell the bikes in Colombia. Cross our hearts. It’s a fill in the blank so I take that, along with our other documentation, across the street to make copies.

Now, armed with our letters, I storm the Bastille a second time. Napoleon is ready for me though and thwarts my attack by waiving my letter in the air and yelling “mas copias!”. 

Back across the street for copies and now a third foray.

SUCCESS! Napoleon eases into action entering info into the computer, and stamping and stapling papers. He leans back, reviews his work and deems it good. He keeps his stack of documents and hands me a copy of my letter of intent telling me that I have to go out the building, around the corner and up the stairs with this copy. There, they will know what to do next.

So off we go, past armed guards weaving through throngs of vendors in the street selling magazines, fried mysteries, fruit, sodas and belts, up the stairs to Lilly. And it was true. She knew exactly what to do. She signed the copies and told me to bring them back down to Napoleon.

Reverse the path and Napoleon trades my documents for Lilly’s signature.  And tells me that I need to bring the stack back to Lilly. At least this time I know where she is.

Back at Lilly’s she takes our papers and shoos us into the hall where we sit and wait. And wait. A deliveryman with lunches in hand passes us and goes into the office. This doesn’t bode well. About and hour and a half later she  opens the door and calls our names, hands us our papers and tells us that we have to hurry to the airport because the inspector quits for the day at 12:30 -and its already noon!

We fly down the stairs and get a taxi to the airport. On arrival we attack from the flanks. Shannon goes upstairs to the office, John rattles the gate at the warehouse and I go over to the customs house. George and Salvador are already there getting their bikes cleared -and we have no more problems with paperwork! Our spirits are running high as we repack gear, get our boots and jackets on and fire up the bikes.

Then they come crashing down when we’re told we have to take these 600 pound machines down the front stairs.

WHAT?!

No.

Seriously?

F&*#!

OK…. Lets try it.

And we do it. I’m amazed.

It feels so good to be rolling again. Out past cane fields and cows and horse carts on good roads with the mountains rising hazy in the distance. We bypass Cali to the South East and head to Papayan, a colonial city where all the buildings are white. In our hotel we watch as the election results push Red to Blue and wake up with President Obama.

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From here we ride into the Andes where the vistas expand across valleys inconceivably deep. The light green of the mountainsides is broken by darker greens of hedges and white houses with terracotta-tiled roofs dotting the fields. Its beautiful and I want to open myself up, absorb it through my skin, I want to take it in and make it a part of me. I want to remember forever how this looks and feels and smells.

The moon, like mischieviuos bacon
Crisps its desire
While I harbor myself
Towards two eggs over-easy
~ Richard Brautagan

Colombianas don’t seem to struggle with negative body image the way American women do. Regardless of age or body type they wrap what they have tight, push it up high and put it out there for all to appreciate.

Thank you Ladies

Word on the street is that the Marimba Dance video link isn´t working on Windows. Heres the link directly on Youtube.

It’s a bit discouraging. The motos are in Cali. We saw them when we went down to Copa de carga in hopes of getting on them and riding out of this big city into the mountains to the south. But hope ran head-long into reality when we were told the inspector, whose signature we need, isn’t working today. And tomorrow is Sunday, so he won’t be in. And Monday is a holiday. So we can come back on Tuesday, after getting our papers stamped at the customs office downtown, and pick up our bikes then. We tried everything we could think of including offering a “tip” to the inspector. That got his attention, but there are two more people who need to sign-off on our documents, and they aren’t available.  So we got nowhere and now we’re back in Cali for a few more days.

That makes seven days between arriving in Panama City and potentially throwing a leg over my bike in South America. Add to that the time we spent waiting for my clutch in Patulul Guatemala and San Jose Costa Rica for Shannon’s oil leak, and that’s almost three weeks of sitting around. Its left us both a bit discouraged, short tempered and antsy.

We’re trying to make the best of the situation and have left the sketchy hotel.  We’re now in a nicer place in an area of Cali called Granada. It’s more affluent here and there are a lot of restaurants, bars, galleries and shops. Its really the nicest place we’ve been since crossing into Mexico. Walking around here is interesting enough, but no matter how you slice it, its still just killing time.

We had originally planned to take a boat down the Amazon from Yurimagas Peru, out past Iquitos and on to Manaus Brazil, and from there drive south into Argentina. But with all these delays we abandoned that idea. Without the boat trip I thought we might have enough time to ride together down to Ushuaia, but even that idea seems to be slipping away as we sit flipping channels in another hotel room. I had expected shipping the bikes and customs to take a while, but I though that we would be spending this time in Quito with friends. Things didn’t work out like that and we’ve been flexible, but this pig’s going to need a lot of lipstick. So far we’ve been lucky and our down-time has allowed us to meet some great people. Lets hope that holds true for Cali.

The girls, in Copas warehouse and ready to fly

Panamas busses are cool, but not as cool as Guatemalas

Shannon, John and Jamie enjoy breakfast before we get on the plane to Columbia

The door to our seedy hotel, locked by a pipe through the handels

The bathroom door in our seedy hotel

The door to the john in Johns room

The weird box as seen from the hall. Shannon’s in the room. Anyone know why they’d have this in all the rooms?

Elvis tiles on the wall

Lenny is a white guy and has moobs.

We´ve made it to South America! We arrived in Cali Columbia this afternoon. I know, we said we wouldn´t go to Columbia but they couldn´t ship the bikes to Ecuador until the end of November. Cali isn´t too far from the Ecuador border. Maybe two days ride. We expect the bikes to arrive on Friday afternoon and we should be on the road by Saturday morning.

So far two great things have come from shipping via Copa Air to Columbia:

One is that we met John and Jamie in shipping warehouse. Jamie is from the north of Spain and was acting as a sort of guide for John who, in his early 70´s is making this trip alone. Jamie´s mother is sick so he is returning to Spain and we are now traveling with John for a while.  He´s a tough old bird, barrel-chested with laughing blue-grey eyes, he speaks with a German / Canadian accent that makes me laugh when he curses. Here´s Jamies website: http://lavueltaalmundodesarto.com/sarto.html It all in Spanish, but he´s got some pics for you unilinguals.

The other is the hotel we´ve found in Cali. This place has to be the seediest hotel yet. To get in you ring a buzzer and the Madam, er, attendant comes out from behind her cage and pulls the pipe from between the door handles to unlock them and lets you in. Your room is small and (thankfully) smells of Clorox, but after you get used to the dark blue light you start to notice things… things like the bathroom door is clear glass with an etching of a naked woman on it, or that there is a box on the wall with a small door, open the door and there is another small door that opens onto the hall. I´m pretty sure I don´t want to know what this thing is for…. Then theres the art. The place is called the Hard Rock and there are big cement relief painting / sculpture things of J Lo, Britteny, Elvis and a Lenny Kravits with tits… Yes, I have pictures, but you´re kidding yourself if you think they have internet there. I´m in a combo convenience store /  copy center / internet cafe about four blocks from the hotel writing this. When I can log in on my machine I´ll post the pics. You won´t believe them.

I can´t wait to see what goes on there after dark. 

Costa Rica is a country that relies heavily on the revenue from eco-tourism. While having lunch with Julio, the manager of the KTM motorcycle dealership in Santa Ana, we found out just how deep this revenue stream is.

Julio asked if we’d paid our eco-Tax yet. Shannon and I were confused so Julio took out a 5000 Colone note, about $10, and showed us the Toucan pictured on the bill. He then asked if we’d seen the police that stand roadside wearing white gloves.  Instead of driving around in cars and stopping law breakers with flashing lights, these cops stand at traffic circles and intersections. When they see an infraction, they point at you and motion you to pull to the curb. They threaten with confiscation of your license, towing your car, and a court date a month out. Its all a game and what they’re working towards is getting you to pay a little something so you can drive away, or as Julio explained, they put their finger out, hoping a Toucan will land on it - the  Eco Tax.

Well, we hadn’t paid our tax in CR, but on our way to Grenada we were pointed to the curb at a traffic circle. The cop asked to see our licenses and explained that we hadn’t signaled our turn as we entered the circle. No, I’m sure we didn’t. Those things are nuts with traffic across four lanes of a two lane road, cars both stopped and flying through, no road signs and us about lost, I probably didn’t signal that I was going to exercise my only option and turn right into the circle. So, the cop had our DL’s in hand and explained that he would need to keep them until our court date a month out. And he would need to write us a ticket for $40 each. And it was Sunday and we couldn’t pay it till Monday so he would need to tow the bikes. (This guy was good)

After his speech he just kind of stood around waiting. We did too. This frustrated him, so he explained to us again just how dire our predicament was. And then we stood around some more.  To move things along, he went to his car and got out some papers and a pen, shuffled them a bit and then walked back over. We obviously didn’t understand what was happening, so he explained it a third time. Yeah, we got it. What he didn’t understand was that he had laminated photocopies of our licenses and that we had two more to give away in our luggage. We didn’t care.

What I did care about was time. It was late and I was tired and hungry and after about 15 minutes I was ready to go. I asked if there wasn’t some tax that I could pay to take care of the problem now. He lit up like Christmas morning. I opened my wallet and showed him that I had 120 in Nicaraguan currency - just under $6. His face fell like he opened his present and found underwear inside. He asked if my friend had any money. I asked, and Shannon said “yes, but no.” Ok, so we play some more.

Back to the car and more theatrical shuffling of papers.  Then a conference with the other cops. He walked back over and said - “OK, 120 and you have no more problem” So, there in the middle of traffic I get out my wallet and without looking at me he says “esperae,  esperae!” Wait, Wait! He doesn’t want the cars to see what hes doing. When theres no traffic he holds out some papers and motions for me to put the money between the pages.

So I do, and we drive away having negotiated our “tax” from $80 down to $6.

This is one of my favorite shots so far. We were on our way to a hot springs outside of Boquete Panama. About a mile down a dirt road we came to this bridge over a crystal blue class IV river. From here, up to the left, the road turned class V with steep, slick clay. After both of us gave up fighting the hill, we walked to the hot springs. Arriving at dusk , sweating through knee deep swamps, we were WAY too hot to appreciate warm water. So it was back to the hotel and the comfort cold showers for us.

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Plug #1 - The Hands of Sean Perry: These are the folks that are helping me with maintenance on the house while I’m gone. I had a leak in the roof and they got on it without multiple emails and did it for a great price. If you need renovations or repairs done in the Asheville area, Seans your man.

Plug #2 - Hotel Lusiana: We’ve been in San Jose, CR trying to get Shannons oil leak fixed. The KTM dealer is in a suburb called Santa Ana and about a mile away is Hotel Lusiana. Its under construction and the owners, an Itialian couple, have given us a discount. Last night they even made us dinner in their kitchen. The owner of the hotel, Ivan Sala, was a World Superbike competitor and was Costa Rica’s 2007 Supermoto champion so he’s been great. Last night he took us downtown for a street bike get together. I followed him through pot hole filled, dark streets, weaving through traffic and ignoring all good sense. It was a classV ride of a different ilk that I’ll not soon forget.

Ivan steams us clams in white wine, mmmmm.

Ivans wife Elena and two rosy Gringos

Shannon rides bitch while his bikes in the shop

Costa Rican Super Moto meeting

Plug #3 - Todo Moto: This is the Kawasaki dealer in San Jose. They had a lot of KLR parts in stock and while hard to find, worth the effort.

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*Note that since our SPOT was stolen I have created a map using Google maps. Click the”Our Progress” button in the top navigation menu to check it out.