JourneyRider

Getting robbed in Argentina of all places! (02/27/08)

I was riding South today towards Ushaia when the connecting link on my chain snapped. I could hear something clacking near the tire but I assumed that it was the annoying plastic mud guard coming a part again after just fixing it. Did I mention that my speedometer quit working yesterday and my neutral light will not turn off today. If you are doing a grand voyage do not take a post 2000 F650! I am going to post up a picture of how dirty and chewed up my hands look from working on the bike every day.

Now I will return to the subject of being robbed in La Rioja, Argentina. While trying to figure out how to take the chain off several kids showed up and started asking me questions for 15 minutes. I was frustrated and did not really want to answer all their questions but at the same time I did not want to come across as a jerk.

I took my rear tire off and placed it a few feet behind the bike because I did not want the kids to mess with it. (In Colombia a guy used my rear tire as a chair.) One of the kids went over and picked up my tire while I was concentrating on the bike and I ran over and stopped him just before he was about to put the rotor on the ground. After that all of a sudden the kids took off and they made off with most of the tools in my tool kit.

Wow, was I ever surprised that people would have the nerve to rob you of your tools when your bike was broken down! Some people truly are heartless!

I am going to stay here in La Rioja a couple of days and try to track these kids down. The more I look for them, the more I think I will not be able to find them. I know that 2 of the kids have lip piercings so that makes conducting a search worth it, but this city is a lot bigger than I had thought intitally.

All in all, I would rather risk being friendly and having something like this happen rarely than being an jerk and just telling the kids to go away. I guess next time I will keep a closer eye on my stuff though.

BTW: Sorry for not posting pictures in a while. The internet in Boliva was horrible and so far all the Argentinian computers have been great except they all have firewalls that will not let me upload pics to this website. I am staying with a couchsurfer in a couple days and hopefully he will have a computer I can use.

First Impressions of Argentina (02/25/08)

Argentina has definitely been different than the majority of other Latin American countries I have visited. The economic system works smoothly here and things get done in a timely fashion. The only exception so far has been the border crossing where I could not cross in the night and had to spend 2 hours waiting the next morning to get through, but it is very similar to the American/Mexican border crossing where every person and their dog is checked for drugs (Bolivia has grown steadliy in drug production since the 80´s, stealing business from Colombia).

I was highly surprised when waiting in line at the grocery store and the clerks were checking people out at 100 mph. In other countries this would have been a 20 minute wait. Another thing that surprised me was that the grocery stores have one employee who weighs and prices all of the produce. At first I thought this was another hassle, but now that I have seen how it works I have changed my mind. This system was much faster than the grocery store I worked at in the U.S. (HyVee) where the speed of your checkout was dependent on the memory skills of the 16 year old pimply faced checker (me).

The food here has been delicious. So far, I have not spent a dollar on bad food. Every kind of food whether it is Steak, hamburger, pizza, salad, or etc. was prepared with a lot of TLC. The only annoying thing about the food has been that it takes and average of 45 minutes to be prepared at any restaurant. When eating by yourself 45 minutes is a long time! I left one of the restaurants here to use the internet and couldn´t believe it when I came back and saw many of the same people still there drinking/eating.

Driving through Argentina I often feel like I am in Europe. Many of the cities have a European flavor in their architecture, the way people dress, and in the layout of stores. It reminds me of the way I felt in New Zealand. The quality of the food in the grocery stores has been excellent. I was amazed to buy a peach (from a convience store) that tasted just as good as the best peaches that I have sold while working at the fruit stand.

The stoplights here do not change directly from red to green. After red they go to yellow momentarily, but to 99% of Argentinians this means go. A local Honda Trans Alp rider introduced himelf and bought me lunch yesterday. He was a very nice guy who worked in the oil and gas industry here and had been doing a big motorcycle trip through Argentina for 2 months.

Seeing the showdown of Butch and Sundance (02/26/08)

BC and SK were killed in a small mining town named San Vincente after trying to rob a mine´s payroll. I drove the treacherous 120 kms of rocky mountain roads from Tupiza to get to San Vicente. As my bike vibrated to pieces I wondered if I should head back or not. Fortunately the trip was worth it. The town of San Vicente was not so interesting because none of the original buildings from the showdown remain, but I enjoyed seeing the hilly landscape around the town and imagining BC and SK riding through there. It became clear to me why they chose to rob payrolls in this area. The landscape was almost the same as Wyoming where the gang´s stradegy was to split up after a robbery and than meet at a highpoint where police could be spotted from miles away.

Playing with dynamite in Petosi, Bolivia (02/22/08)

I rode from Cochabamba to Petosi to meet up with my Australian motorcyclist friend Tim who I met at Machu Pichu. We signed up to do a day tour of one of the local silver mines the next day. On the tour I learned that Petosi was the richest city in the world for 200 years and that it was and still is the highest city in the world at over  4000 m. Unfortunately the rich mountains have not done a lot of good for the local people who still live in poverty. The average age of a miner is only 45.

To start out tour the tour guide took us to a local miners shop where we bought gifts for the miners (soda, coco leaves, and dynamite. The guide told us that Petosi is the only city in the world where you can buy dynamite legally. Tim and I took a close interest in this fact.

The next day we went back to the miner´s market and for 26 Bolivianos ($4 US) I bought four sticks of dynamite, 4 fuses, and 2 bags of fertilizer. We rode South for a couple of hours and than stoppd to test out the dynamite on some giant cactuses.

The cactuses never stood a chance. We mixed sharp rocks in with the fertilizer and than inserted the dynamite with fuse into the fertilizer bag and taped it up. After trying to make a whole in a castus with a sharp rock I got too close and a big needle went directly into the ring finger knuckle of my right hand and broke off. Damn, does it ever stink to have a needle imbedded into muscle/tendons.

The dynamite blasts were surprisingly more powerful with the fertilizer. I tried to take a picture of one of the blasts but it went off before I could get both hands on the camera and the shockwave made me drop my camera on the ground. For the last explosion Tim and I hid behind a tree that was 40 ft away. Too much of my chest was sticking out and in the explosion a piece of cactus shrapnel hit me dead in the chest. Luckily the pointy needles on the cactus shrapnel did not hit me.

Hanging out in Cochabamba, Bolivia with Matthias (02/15-20/08)

Matthias was a 55 year old German Couchsurfer who I stayed with in Cochabamba. He was an interesting man who enjoyed casual smoking and drinking and fine foods. After retiring from the banking industry Matthias moved to Bolivia 3 years ago.

Staying with Matthias really made me forget that I was in a third world country. He cooked very good meals that he learned to make while living in France. The guest suite that I stayed in had a huge king bed and a shower fit for a king.

Matthias helped me get my motorcycle fixed. It seems like I am having 5 problems every day. A good example of my problems came when Matthias jump started my bike so I could drive to the battery shop but a few miles away my leaky radiator made the bike overheat. I could not turn the bike off because of the battery. Now

While looking for parts in Cochabamba I asked a random guy on a antique Honda scooter for directions and he turned out to be the owner of one of the best motorcycle repair shops in Cochabamba. His name was Coco and he helped me find parts for half an hour and than we went back to his shop and he let me work on my radiator there free of charge. He had excellent knowledge of all different kinds of bikes and I was very surprised how well he knew my F650 since they do not sell BMWs in Bolivia. The name of the shop is Charlie: Reparaciones, Repuestos, Venta de Motos and it is located at Tumusla N* 406 esq. Mayor Rocha. If you have problems in Bolivia I highly recommend going to Coco. His dad and him own the business which has been going on 45 years now. It is easier to pay a taxicab driver in downtown Cochabamba 5 Bolivianos ($0.75) to guide you to the shop.

Driving the Yungus Road: ¨The Highway of Death¨ (02/15/08)

I am sure that many of you have seen videos or picture slideshows of ¨The Highway of Death: The world´s most dangerous road¨ in Bolivia. These videos make the road look like you will die just from standing on it. The road is actually pretty good in most places and is 2 lanes for the majority of the way. Most of the road does have crazy 1000+ ft. drop offs beyond the shoulder.

The Yungus Road was built by Paraguayan prisoners in the Chaco war of the 1930s. The Chaco war was about land called the Chaco between Bolivia and Paraguay which was thought to be rich in oil deposits at the time but turned out not to have any. One international oil company sponsored the Bolivians and another sponsored the Parguayans. More than 30,000 men died in the war for nothing and the border line through the Chaco remained the same.

Because I got a late start from La Paz and the road took a while to find (exit is off to the right after the tiny town Udavi) I decided to camp the first night on the road. I found a small town and asked a family if I could camp in their backyard. A group of neighborhood kids watched with wide eyes as I tried to fix my leaking radiator with epoxy in the dark.

Getting an early start the next morning I setoff and cautiously drove the highway of death. It was pretty nerve wrecking driving through the narrow one lane stretches on my motorcycle. (I can not imagine what it must be like in a bus or a big truck). Everything was going fine until about an hour in when I drove up a tricky Caterpillar trail and than all of a sudden there was a 10 ft drop off in the road. There were no signs to show that the road was closed or that they were doing construction. Being stuck at the top of a muddy hill I wondered how I was going to get out of this situation. Fortunately, constuction workers showed up 20 minutes later and told me that the road had been closed since yesterday (no wonder I could not find the main entrance) and that they would have the road driveable in 2 hours. After removing all the weight from the motorcycle (panniers, tank bag, ruck sack, etc.) the construction workers helped me roll my motorcycle down the steep hill.

As typical of Latin American time estimates it ended up taking 4 hours to clear the road, but that was okay because I passed the time eating Tuna and Crackers while reading my Lonely Planet.

Entering the land of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: Bolivia (02/13/08)

Bolivia was beautiful around Lake Titicaca which had a very dark blue color and was surrounded by snow capped mountains. As I started to make my way toward La Paz I stopped at a gas station to ask for directions. I was thrilled to see that the price of gas was only half of Peru, but because I heard that the octane of Bolivian gas was only around 70 I decided to bring as much Peruvian 90 octane with me as I could get. In Puno, Peru the gas station guy gave me two 1.25 gallon clean plastic oil jugs that I used to fill up and strap to the top of my panniers. Now I have found out that Bolivian gas has 87 octane so I am not too worried about it being hard on the engine.

Driving into La Paz was quite the challenge. The Pan American ended abruptly at a construction site where they were building a new bridge over a small river. It was getting dark fast and there did not seem to be any marked detour so I went to watch what the other cars were doing. I followed a bus through a dirt bike style track that had all kinds of different obstacles to get through (rocks, lose dirt, wet grass, and to top it off the river you had to drive through which was about 2.5 ft deep!). How could they not have a temporary wooden bridge for this river I thought. The water was deep enough that cars could not cross!

After getting my legs soaked I was very cold at nearly 4000 m so I decided to look for a motel. I searched for about an hour not finding any until I stopped and asked a guy what the deal was. In Bolivia they use a different word for motel/hotel. They call it ¨alojamente.¨ I scouted out a few motels and came to the conclusion that almost all the motels in La Paz are dingy. The bathrooms in all of them were atrocious and non usable. The bed did not look the cleanest but it was a bed and I throughly enjoyed not sleeping on the ground.   

In La Paz I saw some very strangely dressed contruction workers. Bolivia seems to be the Latin American country that has maintained the most of its indigenous culture. I also saw the famous shoe shine guys in La Paz who are dressed like bank robbers. It was kind of scary to walk by a row of them. They wear disguises because they are embarrassed about their profession and do not want their friends to know what they do. The guy in the photo was trying very hard to sell me a shoeshine so I took my camera out and took his picture which did not make him very happy.

Machu Pichu at last! The mecca of the Incas! (02/10/08)

After many difficulties in getting to MP I started to question whether it would be worth it. Wow, did it ever turn out to be great! There are so many things to see! You could spend 5 days and not see it all. MP sits on the edge of mountains and the ruins stretch about 15 miles. The main complex of ruins was even more impressive than what I had seen in photos. There was so much detail in the architecture as I inspected it closer. The way that every rock fits perfectly is amazing. It is crazy to think that this society was thriving here only 500 years ago!

Unfortunately, Waynapichu, the cool set of ruins that is at the very top of a steep mountain was closed by the time I arrived. They only allow the first 400 people in the morning to see it. I really wanted to see this, so I found a jungle trail that bypassed the security guard station and snuck in. Half way up the mountain the guards spotted me and began to blow their whistles. I sprinted up the trail pretending not to hear them. Finally one of the guards got pretty close to me yelled ¨Venga aqui o Policia.¨ That was enough to make me turn back. I had a nice long chat with the security guards about rules and regulations and than they let me go.

Riding up to Machu Pichu (02/09/08)

Many locals and tourist guides in Cusco said it was not possible to ride a motorcycle up to Machu Pichu and that instead I would have to take a train or a  bus. Fortunately, I met an Australian motorcyclist named Tim who knew otherwise. Tim told me that you could follow the route the busses take up to Machu Pichu and than walk 2 hours a long the train tracks to get to the ruins. Not wanting to pay a $170 train ticket or a similar bus ticket I followed the advice that Tim gave me and set off to Machu Pichu.

The ride up to Machu Pichu was treacherous. I took the mountain route that goes through Chinchero and Ollyatamba because I thought it would be faster. As soon as I got up into the mountains it started to rain. Mistakenly, I thought that the rain would be fine because I had the thermals and the rainsuit that my parents just sent me. After putting on 5 layers of clothes, 2 pairs of socks, a extra pair of gloves, a neck warmer, and my rainsuit I was still freezing. Part of the problem was my non waterproof leather boots which were soaking up water likea sponge.

Once I reached the dirt road at Santa Marta the fun really began. The rain makes jungle roads very hard to drive on. Jungle mud forms for long stretches on the road and without knobbies (offroad tires) it is very hard to keep from falling into a nice big mud puddle. It was funny how rediculously easy this road was to drive when dry on the way back.

After a few challenging hours of dirt roads I made it to Hydroelectrica. This town has no roads and was basically just a big hydro electricity plant with a few houses close buy. After unsuccessfully trying to ride the railroad tracks for 20 minutes to get into town (there is no road) a local man who was an engineer for the dam helped me push my bike out of multiple obstacles (railroad tracks, rocks, garbage, etc.) and than took me to the police station.

The police kindly let me store my bike on a concrete pad behind the police station. Normally I would be worried leaving my bike outside, but here I was perfectly okay with it. I thought to myself ¨If a thief can ride this out of here he can have it.¨ The police let me stay in a spare bedroom that they had at the station. It was pretty nice to stay at a Peruvian Police Station. They had  hot water, comfy beds, alpaca blankets, and good lighting. It was better than a lot of the hostals I have stayed at.

The next day I set out for Machu Pichu following the railroad tracks. It was quite the walk to Agua Calientes (town closest to MP).

So many damn animals on the road!(02/05/08)

Highway 26 goes from Nazca to Cusco, Peru and is a very beautiful drive thru frontier type landscapes. It is the first time that I have seen wild cows, horses, and llamas. The llamas are scattered everywhere. Coming around a blind corner in the mountains all of a sudden there was a llama right in the middle of the road. I missed him by about 2 ft. Even know I am not religious I quickly had to say a prayer and force myself to slow down in these great mountain   turns.

A consequence of my wipe out is that my horn no longer works, so to warn animals on the road I now have to open my visor and yell ¨Hey, Hey, Hey¨ at the top of my lungs like a crazy person. My riding buddy Mike must think that I am going crazy.