Cheap Airflights

Click Here For A Secrets Of Cheap Travel Product Review

Chasing adventure by motorcycle in Latin America

On the pampas the horizon seems to escape. The llamas are golden, the clouds impossibly white. We let the bikes run. Suddenly, consider changes. The lead bike up over the line on the horizon, a rider flails through the air 10 meters above ground. It is not good. Jeff has gone off the road at 70 mph. Katie goes into Paramedic fashion, soothing Jeff, running his hands up his back, probing, monitoring ribs, legs, arms. The decline has skinned his tour jacket from shoulder to waist, peeling back protector to reveal the We-Build Bridges T-shirt. He is scuffed, but within moments are snickering, flashing "I can not believe I'm Still Alive" Grin, which is his default expression.

Ryan prefers the bike up and begins to gather bits scattered across the desert. Baggage is damaged. The right handlebar is bent almost on the tank. Mirrors, lamps, front fender kink in a microsecond. Both rims have dents. Incredibly, it still runs. He put the parts still work back on the bike, take it for a test ride. It will last another 7000 miles. Our motto: We will do this work.

Jeff tells us what happened. A little bird had jumped into his path. The next thing he knew he was off the road, which was launched in a stone coffin. "I thought, wow. I am Superman. Oh look, there is the bike. Oh look, there is the bird … "In an area filled with jagged rocks, he had landed on the sand.

THE BEGINNING

The trip came up long before I was ready. A phone call, an invitation to tag along with a group of BMW riders begin a five-week, 8,000 mile journey from Peru to Virginia. I would document the trip, a fundraising effort for a group that builds bridges in remote areas of the world. I had been thinking about a long trip, nothing open, no support vehicles experience of being completely "out there." This seemed to fit the bill. One third of the distance around the world with complete strangers. I had a brand new BMW F 800 GS and it was thirsty. If there was a point of no return, I crossed it before I hung up the phone.

First riders. Ken Hodge is an insurance specialist and a member in good standing of Newport News Rotary Club. He discovered motorcycles late in life, when he bought a bike, rode it across the country for 48 hours, then began to dream of a bigger adventure something for a good cause.

He recruited his daughter Katie (a fire department Paramedic), his stepson Ryan (a mechanic and dirt-bike rider) and Ryan's best friend Jeff. I am impressed by their preparations. They ride old BMW R 1150s and R 650 singles. Ryan had spent a year renewal cycles, poking about the inner recesses remember shop manuals for each machine. They would bring enough tools and parts to handle almost any emergency.

TO Andes

We stop at the Nazca seeing the old pictures scratched into the stony desert. From the top of a tower we can see a figure with raised hands. Just north, the Pan-American Highway runs in figure of a lizard, cut the head of the animal. Bound by the tight focus brass transit levels, surveyors who laid out the road was not even aware of the sacred relics discovered during aerial flight were common.

I realize that we are so blinded by focus, after concentration as inspectors were at their instrument. The trip will be a series of images, sideways glances, captured by speed.

Descendants of the people who built the Inca Trail, Peruvian entrepreneurs know their stuff. But it's rod mill, controlled flow of momentum that has our respect. The road rises ancient seabed, hills covered with Impure, broke dry ridges with cornices modeled by landslides. Dinner, we find us at a high pampas inhabited by thousands of vicuña and alpaca. In the distance. Our first sight of snow-capped peaks, there are stone corral on the nearby slopes, one bedroom cottages. In the middle of this fight nothing, a lonely shepherd walking on the side of the hill.

We find that the short distances are those of the Condor. We travel incredibly winding roads, sometimes take hundreds of turns (and several miles) to get from one ridge to the next. The map shows cities, but to our dis-may not have all stations. We buy gas in a small outpost of a woman who pours out of a bucket with a coffee pot, then pour it through a plastic, woven kitchen funnel into in our tanks. The whole city watches. We are pushing in descending night. We make it to the next traffic light, 20 or so buildings on two streets, find a hotel and park our bikes in an enclosed backyard with dogs, chickens, dead birds, plastic bottles and a tanning animal skins on the wall. Instead of the usual exit signs, the restaurant at our hotel green arrow that says "ESCAPE". It is not a criticism of food. The forces that drive the Andes skyward has been known to demolish entire cities.

The next morning we fire up the bicycles, and ascend into the Andes on a perfect road. We are fluid, passing through the hairpins, double hairpins, squared-off face-climbing the flank of a single 4,700-meter peaks. I can think of only one word: yummy. We are moving through the fog and low hanging clouds with shafts of sunlight slanting in rainbows. Valleys below is green and fertile, a mixture of ancient Inca terraces and more modern farming. Slim eucalyptus trees line the road, which provide shade for huts with red tiled roofs. A girl tends a flock of goats (identified with colorful tape) on a green meadow, a book in his hand. At one point I think the clouds have parted above revealing patches of blue, but when I look up I see that it is snow-covered rock, another 3,000 or 4,000 feet in mountainous areas. At a turnoff near the top of the top we find a dozen small shrines, small churches decorated with flowers and ribbons and photographs of their loved ones. The site of a bus plunge. On a hillside across the valley paragliders work thermals, the canopies resembling light-colored eyebrows, or demonstrative angels.

We share the road with the vicuña, alpaca, llama, sheep, goats, dogs, roosters, pigs, horses and cows. On a narrow lane near Abancay, a bull trying to Gore me when I pass, charging and making a hook motion with its horns. A night after sunset, I round a corner and a beautiful roan stallion wheels in light of our bikes fill the track with big eyes and flashing the head, inches from my head. I am aware to ride sweep constitutes a risk. The novelty of our passing bicycles wears off, and the local wildlife has time to react.

Entering Cusco, Ryan asks directions, a woman leader us onto a narrow cobblestone street slick with rain, so steep as a bobsled run. Rocks are turned on their side, as teeth. The knobbies have no traction whatsoever. People on the sidewalk furiously wave their hands, indicating that the road becomes steeper. I touched my brakes and the bike goes down, put my leg against the curb, quarter of an inch shy bride. The bike behind me goes down. It is appalling. Local help us lift the bikes, have them turned uphill.
A police escort driver us to a hotel that lets us save motorcycles in the lobby. Without bothering to shower, we make our way to the Norton Rats Bar at the northeast corner of the central plaza. The owner, an American expatriate, when pilots a Norton to the tip of the continent. The walls are covered with pictures from the trip. Above the bar is mounted heads, the four former U.S. presidents, with their best-known slogan: I am not a crook. I did not inhale. I do not remember. We will find WMD in Iraq. We sip beer, trading stories and try to gather the last few days. The dead battery. It punctured radiator. Roads repairs. The incredible rush of unrelenting beauty.

Three days of desert north of Lima generate a few details. The total absence of life, the three colors of sand. Young boys pedaling tricycle ice cream carts in the middle of nowhere. We advocate a <I> zona they nimbleras </ I>, but instead of mist, we find a 60-km / h crosswind, sending a layer gravel skittering across the road as a special effect in a Steven Spielberg film. Two lanes narrow to one covered by blowing sand, thick enough to swallow the front deck, deep enough that one way degrees are preparing to cope with the driving sand.

We decide to try a secondary route through the mountains. We turn on a dirt road and everything changed. We pass through villages live with humans, dogs, small three-wheel taxis made from old bikes. Kids on motorscooters ride over, snapping pictures with their cell phones. The road throws split-finger fixed balls at bash plate, sounded like high and steep as the sound of an aluminum bat. We splash our way through the gravel, gray dust on everything, parts fall off, teeth rattling. Oh yes, that's what we wanted.

ECUADOR

In Macara, we sit on the sidewalk near a small town square, eating pork cooked in a round woman in a yellow dress. Her daughter brings us three beers (huge) at a time and keep timber in a milk bank accounts later. Boys on bikes cruise the quiet streets of the lucky ones with girls on the back. Across the square, sits girls on benches. Jeff experiencing a cultural revelation that South American girls have breasts, and tight pants … and "Hey, I think she likes me."

Our dinner companion, David McCollum, an American foreign that Ryan had met at ADVrider.com. He tells us stories about riding Ecuadoran Andes, and gives us tips on dealing with roadblocks. "Act Stupid. Do not attempt to communicate in Spanish. Say no fumar Espanol" (I do not smoke Spanish). If all else fails, Katie is crying. "Er, does Katie not" cry. "The next day he leads us into the Ecuadoran Andes.

Views: Crisp combs. Clumped, conical outcroppings. Monasteries on top of hills. Slopes so steep that they will never be done by machine. A couple standing against dark soil, the man holding a wooden hoe, the woman a bag of seeds. A woman on horseback, black and red cape, a whip coiled in one hand. Trees. Cloud. Mist. The sensation of a Japanese block prints them suggestive path goes to infinity.

I had introduced the group to a family tradition. When we travel, we end each day to report the highlights, low points and funny bones. After this day, I would add "Pucker moments." Trucks rushing out of the fog, running without lights, signaled only by the ghostly wave pushed before. They appear in our lane without warning or justification. We go through construction where the road narrows to one lane, offering no escape route. One side seems hideously Near new concrete, filled with rebar fangs. The other side is the abyss. Pucker moments? Take your pick. Sometimes it's surface, half mile of muddy bobsled run on loose gravel, the rushing water cycle management as a loose bowel. Twice, we round a corner and find any road surface, which gave way, sucking away by metro torrents. Katie's moment comes when a cow, without feet, encrypts the road on her bike. For Jeff, it passed a truck that suddenly galvanizing for To avoid a pothole, the trailer swinging against him as a baseball bat.

We spend two days in Cuenca, a 500 year old town surrounded by mountains. Ken phones further and discovers that the ship should have taken us and the bikes from Ecuador to Panama does not exist (if we had drugs or were illegal aliens, no problem, but there are no accommodations for <I> Turista </ I> with motorcycles). We ask David for help. While we ride to Quito, he will work phones. He finds a contact, a guy known for getting things done when no one else can. We meet up with this air magician at The Turtle's Head, a biker bar in Quito. At midnight.

The next morning, we ride our bikes to the military part of the airport, then in a store. The steel floor is covered with embedded ball across the slide steel palettes. For the next three hours we are struggling with tiedowns. A skinny man dressed entirely in black and monitors operations, taking pictures of the bicycles with a digital camera and make sure the batteries are disconnected, tires deflated. Drug-sniffing dogs sticking their noses into every recess.

So it is just such our bikes away, bound for Panama in the stomach of an airplane.

CENTRAL AMERICA

Central American countries is the size of postage stamps. You can cross them in a day and a half, only to spend half a day in customs and immigration. Ken had prepared Xerox copies of all our documents (passports, driving licenses, titles, registration) VIN numbers and had them notarized. When he works with the official at the air-conditioned office, we sit in 100-degree heat and see the ants carrying grains of dirt from the underground. We will be used to require multiple copies, freelance currency traders waving bills in front of our faces, the young hustlers willing to facilitate the process, the food vendors are waiting for hunger overcoming caution about local cuisine.

Before this trip, I'd read the State Department travel advisory. The section on Peru warned that five Americans were died from liposuction in Lima. OK, was that consensus liposuction, or there were gangs of thugs wielding vacuum cleaners with sharp pointy attachments? Virtually every shot in Central American countries warned on fake checkpoints, thugs in uniforms, soldiers in the middle of nowhere.

Along the road signs with a blood-red eyes, and the warning <I> Vigilantes </ I>. We round a corner to find two soldiers walking patrol, miles from the nearest town. They ask for paperwork. A wave of adrenaline turn my foot to cotton. David, our friend in Ecuador gave us good advice: Act stupid. Smile. We seem to have a natural talent for it. <I> No fumar Espanol </ I>. After inspection our paperwork, they wave us on. In the next few weeks we will be stopped repeatedly, sniffed by dogs, x-rayed, wanded with devices like carving knives with car antennas where the magazine should be. At border crossings. Guys in jumpsuits and diving masks spray our bicycles fluid designed to kill stowaway bugs too lazy to cross borders under their own power, there are soldiers on every gas station, armed waiters at convenience stores and restaurants, guys with shotguns on Pepsi trucks. We are aware of poverty, a culture of criminal opportunity. The night air can deprive your bike naked, if you do not find a hotel with secure parking.

These countries are connected by land to the United States and our culture has rattled his way through. America is a motorcycle culture. Whole families of whistles lies in narrow seats, wearing helmets with missing visors. In Panama City we run into a group of Harley riders. The bikes have exhaust size howitzers, the horns blare a soundtrack of special effects. They surround us, and ask if we want to join their regular weekend burger run. We follow them to an exclusive Country Club just beyond the Mira Flores locks on the Panama Canal. They send us away with instructions to a bed-and-breakfast up the coast. I fall asleep that night in a hammock, a bottle of beer still hold in my hand, the wings of a fan whirring softly overhead.

America has a different opinion than Peru and Ecuador, a second gravity. We are moving through the verdant countryside with a speed there would be natural in Virginia or Colorado or California. The vegetation is similar to fireworks, only green. Here clusters of a plant has taken over a hillside. There a different species explodes. A slow war.

We have been in the saddle in three weeks. Nothing can destroy our pace. We abandon the Pan-American Highway and find ways that make it seems like you have two flat tires, the ones that seem like you're riding on oil spills. There are narrow, one-vehicle-at-a-time bridge mismatched narrow gauge rails, or less roads, steel plate threw the whole rotten wood. The terrain is geologically a mash-up, without power in the Andes, but enough unexpected elevation changes and tight corners to make for an interesting ride. Towns sign up with speed bumps and holes that can swallow whole bikes. I can see road signs unique to the country silhouettes of odd animals. A snake crossing. A jaguar crossing. In Costa Rica we hit a 30-mile stretch of gravel road, and the world becomes dust. The bikes come alive. We have fun, dirty, hiking, trust gyro. I try To read the strange shadows that appear in the dust-riders, ATVs, big trucks without lights is not always accurate. There are breaks in the dust cloud when I see fields filled with cattle and white on their feet white egrets. Sky shades pink with light from a setting sun. A feeling almost like peace.

We spend one night in Arsenal, a destination resort for the adrenaline junkies with discretionary income. Posters advertise canopy tours, zip line ride through the rainforest, the chance to rappel down waterfalls, that lava flows, night hiking, kayaking, canoeing. We ignore those tenders, saddles up and rides into the rainforest. A group of Meercat swarms down an embankment on the road. Monkeys romp in the trees overhead. A tourist zips along on a steel wire casts a shadow on the road, a blur of color in the sky. It looks like someone who was hanging laundry and forgot to take his or her clothing.

Nicaragua has its own meaning. We ride past the volcanoes so big they make their own weather, crowns hidden under the broad shaded clouds. Don Quixote in his shaving bowl hat. The streets are blocked with horsedrawn buggies. We find a hotel near the town square. Across the street from the hotel is a boutique with galactic Internet. The traditional culture is slowly losing ground to bandwidth. Relay towers compete with church steeples, billboards for cell service block oversized statues of saints in nearby hilltops.

We visit a bridge, built by Ken's body in a remote area of Honduras. At the turnoff from the main road I think we are in favor in a drainage ditch. During the rainy season the road is impassable, the clay surface too slick for traction. Now bikes tackle a road stung by erosion, working their way around rocks exposed by the force of water. This is by far the most technical riding of the trip.

The 40-mile route will take five hours to cross. It clawmark gullies pull Ken's bike out from under him, Katie rode into a ditch and smashing her bike's windshield. Although Ryan has problems. The river when we reach it, is frightening. I take pictures of the bikes as they come through, pushing a bow wave over the front wheels, jouncing up rocks on the other side. If a trip can be reduced to 1? 250: e of a second, a single moment burned into memory, these images become one.

We crossed into Guatemala and spend the night with Hemingway impersonators and Jimmy Buffet wannabes in Rio Dulce. The hotel has a wonderfully tacky feel. Overhead fan showers sparks. It turns off periodically, like water. If you want a shower, step outside. We spend a long day rides through the rain. The water destroys one of my cameras, swivel LCD in an aquarium. Hey, I have enough pictures.

It almost

At the first The city of the Mexican border, we stop for directions at a crowded street. A truck sideswipe my bike, ends a side case, and pulls me down. I am unhurt but the windscreen and instrument panel located in fragments. The police when they arrive is the opposite of helpful. We collect the broken glass, duct tape everything in sight and fire up. We are unstoppable. We ride on, but the mood of change and ride calendar beckons. Katie, Ryan and Jeff have to be returned by a certain date or lose their jobs.

Tour allow time contra distance, a push to blur the most in Mexico, and a final border with the U.S..

We zip over long roads, nursing bicycles that show signs of wear. Ken's bike is missing a hand condition. Ryan's helmet a visor. Katie treats her BMW busted windshield as a badge of honor, but still a 75-km / h headwind is exhausting. Jeff's bike has chewed rear sprocket to nubbins, the chain starts to slip. It will wind up in a U-Haul 100 miles from home.

Five weeks after departure we see light Newport News. When they entered the city, Ken, Ryan and Katie scattered across the road, side by side, arms up. The long journey is over.

About the Author

To read more motorcycle tours stories like this or get reviews of the latest bikes and gear, go to ridermagazine.com or pick up a copy of Rider Magazine.

JCCC Board of Trustees Meeting, 2-19-09