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Chasing motorcycle adventure in Latin America

In the plains of the horizons seem to escape. The flames are gold, white clouds impossible. We let the bike racing. Suddenly, the vision changes. The lead bike rises above the horizon line, a rider whips through the air 10 feet above the ground. This not good. Jeff has left the road at 70 mph. Katie comes into paramedic mode, Jeff calmly, running her hand along her spine, the survey, control of the ribs, legs, arms. The fall has torn the tour jacket from the shoulder to the waist, peel the protector to reveal We-Build-Bridge T-shirt. He is scratched, but at times she laughed, showing the "I Can not Believe I'm Still Alive" smile that is his default expression.

Ryan pulls the bike and starts to pick pieces scattered across the desert. The luggage is destroyed. The right handlebar is bent almost to the tank. Mirrors, turn signals, front fender off in a microsecond. Both tires have dents. Incredibly, it still works. He puts the parts that still work on the bike again, takes a walk test. Its duration will be another 7,000 miles. Our motto: We will do this work.

Jeff tells him what happened. A small bird had jumped in his way. The next thing he knew he was off the road, threw himself into a sewer. "I thought, wow.'m Superman. Oh, look, there is the bicycle. Oh, look, there is the bird ... "In a field of irregular stones, which had landed in the sand.

THE HOME

The trip came long before I was ready. A phone call, an invitation to the label, together with a group of BMW riders embark on a five-week, 8000 miles travel from Peru to Virginia. I document the trip, a fundraising effort for a group that builds pedestrian bridges in remote areas of the world. He had been considering a long trip, as open, no support vehicles, the experience of being totally "out there". This seemed to fit the bill. A third of the distance around the world with complete strangers. I had a brand new BMW F 800 GS and thirsty. If there was a point of no return, I crossed it before hanging up.

First, the riders. Ken Hodge is a specialist in insurance benefits and a full member of the Newport News Rotary Club. He discovered later on motorcycles life, when he bought a bicycle, horse across the country within 48 hours, and then began to dream of a bigger adventure, something for a good cause.

He recruited his daughter Katie (a fire department rescue), his stepson Ryan (a mechanic and dirt-bike) and best friend Ryan, Jeff. I am impressed by their preparations. Montan old BMW R 1150 and F 650 individuals. Ryan had spent a year renovation of the motorbikes, probing the depths, to memorize the workshop manuals for each machine. They provide sufficient tools and parts to handle almost any emergency.

IN THE ANDES

We stop in Nazca to see the old figures scratched into the rocky desert. From the top of the tower you can see a figure with hands raised. Just north, the Pan American highway divides the figure a lizard, decapitating the creature. Bound by the strict approach to traffic levels bronze, the experts who made the road were not even aware of the relics sacred discovered when air flight became common.

I realize we are so blinded by the approach, as the concentration of inspectors were for his instrument. The trip will be a series of images, glances, captured at high speed.

The descendants of the people who built the road Inca, Peru builders know what they do. But it is the tracery, managed flow of momentum, which has all our respect. The road rises ancient seabed, talus-covered hills, ridges dry fracture, sculpted cornices landslides. Noon, we are at a high pampas inhabited by thousands vicuna and alpaca. In the distance, our first sight of snow peaks. There are stone fences on the slopes near a village of huts. In the midst of this giant of nothingness, a pastor alone on the side of the hill.

We found that the distances on the maps are those of the condors. We traveled very crooked paths sometimes take a hundred laps (and miles) to reach a ridge to the next. The map indicates the cities, but our provisions are not all gas stations. We buy gas in a small stall edge of a woman who scoops a bucket with a kettle, then poured through a plastic kitchen funnel tissues in our tanks. Watches citywide. We push on into the night descends. We reached the next set of lights, about 20 buildings of two streets, find a hotel and park the bike in a yard closed with dogs, chickens, dead birds, plastic bottles and a tanned animal skin on the wall. Instead of the usual output signals, the restaurant of our Hotel has green arrows that say "escape". There is a critique of the food. The forces driving the Andes to the sky have been known to demolish entire towns.

The next morning the fire to bicycles, and ascend to the Andes in a perfect road. We liquids through forks, double brackets, square becomes climbing the side of a single peak of 4,700 meters. I can not think of a single word: delicious. We move through the fog and low clouds, with sunlight slanting in the rainbow. The fertile green valleys are a mix of Inca terraces and modern farms. Slender eucalyptus trees line the road, providing shade for cottages with red tile roofs. A girl tends a herd of goats (identified with colored ribbons) in a green meadow, the book in hand. At one point I think clouds parted to reveal patches of blue, but when I look up I see is snow covered rock, another 3,000 feet or 4,000 of the mountain. In a detour in the top of the peak is a dozen temples, churches decorated with little flowers and ribbons and photographs of their loved ones. The site of a fall from a bus. On a hillside the whole valley of paragliders work of the thermal waters, the appearance of bright-colored glasses, eyebrows, or angels ostentatious.

We share the road with vicuña, alpaca, llamas, sheep, goats, dogs, roosters, pigs, horses and cows. In an alley near Abancay, a bull with Gore about me when I step load and making as if to engage with their horns. One night, after sunset, in one corner and a beautiful roan wheeled in the light of our bikes, filling the lane with wide eyes and hooves flashing, inches from my head. I realize that sweep poses a risk riding. The novelty of our bikes passing fade local wildlife and have time to react.

Introduction Cusco, Ryan asks directions, a girl leads us to a narrow cobblestone streets, slick by rain, as pronounced as a race sled. The rocks are converted to your side, like teeth. The knobbies have no traction whatsoever. People on the sidewalks of frantically wave your hands, indicating that the road gets steeper. I touch my brakes and the bike goes down, pinning my leg against the curb, a quarter inch shy of a fracture. The bike falls behind me. It is heartbreaking. The villagers help us lift the bikes, get turned up.
An escort leads police to a hotel that lets us store the bikes in the lobby. Without bothering to shower, we went to the Norton rats bar at the northeast corner of the square central. The owner, an American expatriate, once Norton to pilot a tip of the continent. The walls are covered with photos of the trip. Above the bar is mounted heads, the last four American presidents, with their best-known films: I am not a thief. Do not inhale. I do not remember. We will find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We drink beer, trading stories, how to assemble the last days. The dead battery. The radiator is punctured. Repairs to the road. The relentless fever incredible beauty.

Three days of desert north of Lima generate some details. The total absence of life, the three colors of sand. The boys pedaling tricycle ice cream carts in the middle of nowhere. We entered an area nimbleras , but instead of the fog we encountered a crosswind of 60 mph that sends a layer of sand slipping through the highway as a special effect in a movie by Steven Spielberg. Two narrow lanes covered with one blow sand, thick enough to swallow the front wheel, deep enough that a road grader is prepared to clear the sand drift.

We decided to seek a secondary road through the hills. We passed a dirt road and everything changes. We passed through villages live with people, dogs, three small wheels, fashion taxis older motorcycles. Children walk past on scooters, taking pictures with their cell phones. The highway throws split finger straight at the plate that crash bash so strong and firm like the sound of an aluminum bat. We paddle our way through the gravel, especially gray dust, pieces of falling, teeth rattling. Oh, yes, this is what we wanted.

ECUADOR

In Macara, we sat on the sidewalk, near a place of lesser importance, eating pork cooked by a woman rotunda, with a yellow dress. Her daughter brings three beers (giant) at a time, and keeps the results in a milk carton for later accounting. Guys on motorcycles cross streets, quiet, the lucky with the girls in the back. Across the square, the girls sit on benches. Jeff is experiencing a cultural revelation of that girls in South America have breasts and wear tight pants ... and "Hey, I think she loves me."

Our dinner companion is David McCollum, an American expatriate who had met the Ryan ADVrider.com. We tell stories about riding the Ecuadorian Andes, and gives advice on handling blocks roads. "Act stupid. Do not try to communicate in Spanish. To say 'no smoking Spanish (Spanish I do not smoke). If all else fails, have mourn Katie. "Er, Katie does not" mourn ". The next day brings us to the Ecuadorian Andes.

Ridges Impressions: Razor. Lumpy, conical outcrops. Monasteries in the hilltops. Slopes so steep that they will never be worked by the machine. A couple standing on the dark earth, the man holding a wooden hoe, the woman a bag of seeds. A woman on horseback, black and red cape, a coiled whip in one hand. Trees. Cloud. Mist. The feeling of a block print Japanese, indicating the road goes to infinity.

I had introduced the group to a family tradition. When we travel, we end each day by counting point high, low and funny bone. After this day, I'll add "moments Pucker." Trucks are thrown out of the fog, running without lights, a signal only by the spectral wave pushed before. They appear in our lane without warning or reason. We go through construction sites where the road narrows a lane that offers no escape. One party seems awfully close to the new concrete, dotted with fangs of steel bars. The other side is a precipice. Moments Pucker? Make your choice. Sometimes it's surface a half mile bobsled run in mud, loose gravel, water jet, the management of bicycles as a loose bowel. Twice, we round a corner and can not find the road, the area that collapsed, were sucked into underground streams. Katie moment comes when a cow without conditions, is quick in the way of his bike. For Jeff, you are passing a truck suddenly swerved to avoid a pothole, the trailer swung toward him like a bat baseball.

We spent two days in Cuenca, 500 year old city, surrounded by mountains. Phone Ken on and discovers that the ship going to we have bikes and Ecuador to Panama does not exist (if we had been on drugs or illegal aliens, no problem, but no accommodations for tourists with motorcycles). We asked David for help. Although the trip to Quito, working the phones. He finds a contact, a man known to do things when nobody else can. We encountered this magician of airfreight in the turtle's head, a biker bar in Quito. At midnight.

The next morning bike ride to the airport's military section, then in a refrigerated warehouse. The floor is covered with steel ball bearings integrated through steel blades which slide. For the next three hours struggle with fasteners. A skinny man dressed in black overseeing the investigation, taking pictures of the motorcycles with a digital camera, making sure the batteries are disconnected, the tires are deflated. Drug detection dogs poke their noses into every recess.

Then, like our bikes have been on his way to Panama in the belly of an airplane.

CENTRAL AMERICA

Central American countries are the size of postage stamps. You can cross in a day and a half, only for a day and a half in customs and immigration. Ken had made Xerox copies of all our documents (passports, licenses, certificates, registration, VIN numbers) and notarized them. While working with the staff in the office with air conditioning, we sat in the heat of 100 degrees and watch ants carrying grains of dust from beneath the earth. We get used to the demands for copies, independent currency traders waving bills in front of the face, the young hustlers willing to facilitate the process, food vendors waiting for hunger to overcome the caution on the local cuisine.

Before embarking on this trip, I had read the State Department travel warnings. The section on Peru warned that five Americans had died of liposuction, in Lima. OK, is that liposuction of consensus, or there are gangs of thugs armed with sharp pointy vacuum cleaners with accessories? Virtually all entries in the Central American countries warned on fake checkpoints, bandits in uniform, soldiers in the middle of nowhere.

Throughout of the road are signs of a blood red eyes and a warning vigilant . We are in a corner to find two soldiers on foot patrol, miles nearest city. They ask for documentation. An adrenaline rush of my mouth turns to cotton. David, our friend in Ecuador had given us good advice: Act stupid. Smile. It seems we have a natural talent for that. No smoking Spanish . After inspecting the documents, they wave us on. In the next weeks we will be arrested several times, sniffed by dogs, radiography, wander with devices resembling antennae carving knife where the blade drive should be. At border crossings, boys overalls and masks our bikes with liquid spray designed to kill insects stowaway too lazy to cross borders under its own power. There are soldiers at every service station attendants armed convenience stores and restaurants, guys with shotguns in the truck for Pepsi. We are aware of poverty, a culture of criminal opportunity. The night air can strip your bike naked, if not find a hotel with parking.

These countries are linked through the soil to the United States and our culture has rocked its way through. Central America is a culture of the bike. Entire families by genius sitting on the narrow seats, wearing helmets with visors missing. In Panama City we met a group of Harley riders. Bicycles must exhaust size of the shells, horns sound of a special effects soundtrack. Around us and ask us if they want to join their burger run regular weekend. We follow a club exclusive country just beyond the Miraflores Locks of the Panama Canal. They sent us out directions to a bed and breakfast to the coast. Me fall asleep that night in a hammock, a bottle of beer still clutched in his hand, the blades of a fan above soft hum.

Central America has a different feel than Peru and Ecuador, a different gravity. We move by a green landscape at a speed that a native of Virginia or Colorado or California. The vegetation is similar fireworks, only green. Here, a single plant groups have taken over a hill. There is a different kind explodes. A slow war.

We have been in the chair for three weeks. Nothing can break our rhythm. Pan left the road and find ways to make it appear that has two flat tires, which look like if mounted on an oil spill. There are narrow, a vehicle-on-a-time narrow-lane bridge mismatched size, or smaller roads, plates steel thrown through the rotten wood. The land is a geological mash-up, without the power of the Andes, but enough elevation change and unexpected sharp turns to make an interesting trip. Municipalities are advertised with stops and potholes that can swallow everything bikes. I see traffic signals unique to the country, the silhouettes of animals strangers. A snake crossing. A jaguar crossing. In Costa Rica reached a 30-mile stretch of gravel road, and the world turns to dust. The bikes come alive. We romp, skitter, walking, trusting in the gyroscope. I try to read the strange shadows that appear in the dust, riders, road vehicles, large trucks, without clearly not - always with precision. There are breaks in the cloud of dust when I see fields full of white cattle egrets and white feet. The sky is pink with reflections light of a setting sun. A feeling almost like peace.

We spent a night at the Arsenal, a tourist destination for adrenaline junkies with discretionary income. Posters announcing canopy tours, zip line rides through the rainforest, the opportunity to rappel the falls, night hikes to lava flows, kayaking, canoeing. We ignore the offers, saddle up and ride in the rain forest. A group of clouds Meercats down an embankment on the road. Monkeys frolic in the trees overhead. A tourist postcards by a steel cable a shadow on the road, a spot of color in the sky. Looks like someone was hanging laundry and forgot to take his clothes.

Nicaragua has its own feel. Assemble Last volcanoes so big that they make their own time, hidden under the clouds brimmed crowns. Don Quixote in his barber bowl hat. The streets are clogged with carriages drawn by horses. We found a hotel near the town square. Across the street from the hotel is an Internet retailer offering galactic. Traditional culture is slowly losing ground versus bandwidth. Relay towers compete with church steeples, billboards to service cellblock large statues of saints in nearby hills.

We visited a bridge, built by Ken organization, in a remote area of Honduras. At the fork of the main road that I believe we are entering in a drainage ditch. In fact, during the rainy season the road is impassable, the very slick clay surface for traction. Now, the bikes facing a road excavated by erosion, working your way through the rocks exposed by the force of water. This is by far the most technical ride of the trip.

The 40-mile road will have five hours to cross. Gullies Ken motorcycle pull clawmark below him Katie walks into a ditch and breaks his motorcycle windshield. Even Ryan has problems. The river, when we come to it, is daunting. I take pictures of the bikes as they come through, pushing a bow wave in the front wheels, jouncing by the rocks in the other side. If a trip can be reduced to 1? 250th of a second, a moment seared in memory, these images would be the same.

We crossed into Guatemala, and spend the night with Hemingway imitators and aspirants Jimmy Buffet at Rio Dulce. The hotel has a wonderful sense of bad taste. Ceiling fan sparks showers. Energy electricity goes off at regular intervals, as water does. If you want a shower, step outside. We spent a day riding through the rain. The water destroys one of my cameras, making the display in an aquarium. Hey, I have enough photos.

ALMOST THERE

In the first the Mexican border town, we stopped for directions on a street crowded. A truck Sideswipe my bike, a sidecar problems, and drags me down. I am unhurt but the windscreen and instrument panel are in fragments. The police, when they are the opposite of help. We collect the broken pieces, all that tape in sight, and pluck. We are unstoppable. We ride, but the state morale of gear changes and timing of signals. Katie, Ryan and Jeff have to be back on a certain date or lose their jobs.

The walk becomes the time against distance, a push that erases most of Mexico, and a final border crossing in the United States.

We jumped through long road, nursing motorcycles are showing signs of wear. Ken bike takes a Horse. Ryan is a helmet visor. Katie treat their windscreens shattered and BMW a badge of honor, but still, a 75-mph headwind is exhausting. Jeff has chewed bicycle rear sprocket for prominences, the chain is beginning to decline. It will end in a U-Haul 100 miles from home.

Five weeks after leaving, we see the lights of Newport News. As you enter the city, Ken, Ryan and Katie propagation across the road, side by side, their arms raised. The long journey is over.