2008 » All the way south

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Wednesday, December 31st, 2008

Mendoza Argentina

After spending a couple of days in Santiago, we then left for Mendoza, Argentina. The pass between the two countries was another one of the prettier and more interesting passes on the trip. On the Chile side, the road basically twisted its way up a couple of thousand meters in only a few KM. Or Feet in miles. I get so confused now between miles and KMs.

Lots of pointy mountains!

In Mendoza, while looking for a hostel I was acosted by this wierd guy asking all sorts of questions about my trip and motorcycle. I just thought it was some crazy Canadian traveler… It was Brian who is a crazy Canadian motorcycle traveler. Once he said that he was on a bike, he made much more sense. Most backpackers don’t care about which road you took to get here.

Anyway, it was great to meet Brian and Marie at Hostel Independencia in Mendoza. It turns out that Marie and Brian also knew Cecilia who Theo had been emailing for a couple of weeks and was also in Mendoza.

Left is Cecilia and right is Marie.

Mendoza was a great place. I basically spent my time drinking Malbecs and eating asados. The Argentinians are my people. They maintain a nice work-life balance and love to grill. mmmmm asado.

In the picture above, Brian is using his propane torch to start an asado. Why use a lighter when you have a real heat source.

The hostel had a couple of asados while we were there– this really added to the exprience as I got to watch professionals at work.

Look at all that chorizo goodness.

Theo and I bought tires in Santiago at MX. They’re a Kawi dealer who also sells Metzler tires. I had what I thought was a few thousand Ks left on my tourances and planned on changing my tires to a more dirt oriented grip once I got to Tierra del Fuego.

The courtyard at Hostel Independencia.

I ended up having to get rid of my Tourance because it started to split and I could see metal banding. I’m pretty sure it was a defect in the tire as I had tons of grip left. I’m going to write them when I get back to the states.

You can see how my tire is splitting.

More friends in Mendoza.

Theo seems to always be hungry.

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Sunday, December 28th, 2008

Chile

Culture shock. That is was my first opinion of Chile. I’ve been traveling for 5 months and I’ve not experienced this much culture shock between two countries.

I thought that it was pretty crazy going from Nicaragua to Costa Rica, but trust me… From Bolivia to Chile was basically like returning home. From the second we crossed the imaginary line (well, fence that we just drove around) between Bolivia and Chile things changed.

This was also one of my least typical border crossing experiences. But now that I think about it, I’m surprised it didn’t happen earlier.

The immigration guy was reading my entry permit form and started scrutinizing it. Uh oh I thought.. I’m in trouble. I had heard that you need to pay US $75 to enter chile and I can just hear the cash register dinging in his head.

He looked up from the form, made eye contact and said in spanish, “Are you a programmer?”

I responded, “Si.”

He then started looking me over slowly and said, “You know about computers then for your job?”.

“Si.”

Next the border guard reached and turned the keyboard and monitor that was facing him to my direction.

Without smiling, he says, “I’m having problems with the internet. My web pages aren’t loading right.”

I about die. On the monitor isn’t some important government work but a page with soccer news with a screwed up font. He wants me to fix his fonts.

Of course I ask a few questions of what it is supposed to look like, click a few times… and bam.. back to normal. He stamps my passport without looking through it and I’m now legally entered into Chile. No $75.

You never know when computer skills will come in handy.

The Chile border was very easy. First migration then followed by customs. My one piece of advice for Chile is DO NOT BRING FOOD. I made friends with the younger guy who was the customs inspector and he did a quick open/shut bags search of my stuff. With Theo, he made him take out all his stuff and was running his hands all over the place. They’re searching for any type of food, fruit, meat, and especially coca. In Bolivia, it is legal to have coca (the plant that cocaine comes from) in leaf form. People chew it or make tea from it. I tried it and didn’t really feel anything. The taste was pretty good though.

After the border we started the difficult 8 more hours of sand/washboard roads to Calama. Once in Calama, I felt like I was right back home.

Everything was modern, clean, and expensive. We went from spending under $10 a night for a room to $30-50 for a double. Every hotel has internet and a breakfast that feels more like Europe than Latin America.

The people are olive skinned with black hair wearing new clothes. Everything is different. There aren’t one legged people sitting on the curbs begging. The women are beautiful with fancy hair cuts and are no longer wearing conservative bowler hats and long skirts. Road construction is no longer marked with a pile of rocks and cut down trees, but with proper cones, guards with signs, and get this.. FLASHING TRAFFIC BEACONS!!

Chile is nice, but not interesting.

Theo is happy to be back on paved roads.

One of my favorite aspects of Chile are the snacks. This place knows how to do it. They have hundreds of varieties of snacks in the convenience store. Everytime I visited one, I’d pick up a new flavor. This was my favorite flavor of Lays– Ham flavored! I don’t know if it is vegetarian or not.

Here are some of the pics from Chile.

We met two Germans who were traveling together on a KTM LC4. It was having some electrical problems and we tried to help get them back on the road. After realizing that we were stuck beyond a roadside repair, I towed them 5 miles to the campsite. This was the first time I’ve towed a motorcycle with my motorcycle. We were climbing a few small mountians and I barely even noticed him. I’m still glad we didn’t die though =].

At the campsite we met two Canadians. Their website is Adventure Quest. They are the first people I’ve ever met who visited the Guyanas.

They were very cool and are unfortunately heading the wrong way. They had TONS of camping gear!

This is what a REAL German looks like. She’s Bavarian. I keep telling Theo that I wish he was a real german.. One from Bavaria with all the giant beer stiens and lederhosen.

There was tons of rocky coast in Chile.

Just like at home, actually even more developed than Texas– You just can’t chuck a piece of garbage on the road like people do in the rest of the Americas I’ve been in for the last 5 months. You have to throw it away in seperate bins!

One more thing to note: ALL THE GAS STATIONS HAVE WIFI!!!!!!!!! How cool is that?

Wind power

This is example of a photo which most fits the “If only I could have captured the real beauty”. This was one of the most scenic driving moments of my trip. It looks very unimpressive in this photo.

My new best friend in Chile.

Chile was annoying because there was grafiti everywhere. In other countires I’ve visited, there was grafiti, but only political grafiti. Here it is just vanity grafiti.

Theo thinks he likes the Chilean lifestyle.

2 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by daveg

Thursday, December 25th, 2008

I MADE IT!!!!! Texas to Tierra del Fuego

After traveling for 6 months, I finally made it all the way south to Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina!

Two years ago, I took a trip to Mexico with Gary to Real de Catorce. There were no banditos. Nobody wanted to steal my bike. While my spanish wasn’t very good, I had no problems communicating. What really happened is that I ignited my wanderlust for Latin America.

Even being away from my life at home for so long I am still enjoying each day. Unlike in “normal” life, every day is different. Each city is slightly different than the one the previous day. Every country is radically different than its neighbor. It is amazing how imaginary lines in the dirt create such differences.

For me, the draw of taking a long trip instead of just a normal vacation is the continual influx of new experiences.

Although making a trip like this does have its own routine and frustrations. Sitting for hours on a motorcycle trying to stay awake when driving for miles is obviously difficult. It is strange feeling when you dread a day of curvy mountian roads. OK, well, there weren’t many days where I dreaded facing the twisties… but when you’re crossing a 13,000 foot pass and it is raining– curves aren’t adding to the fun of things. The other annoyance is arriving in a new city and trying to find a cheap but clean hotel. Uhg.

Uncountably sitting in traffic in Guatemala City is much more fun sitting in traffic in Houston. There is always something to look at =].

Theo and I rode a couple of hard days through the Pampa (plains and desert) of southern Argentina. We were averaging from 500-650km a day. The cross winds were so strong that I had to practically sit on the side of my seat as I counterbalanced the bike into a lean into the wind. Intead of developing the typical flat spot that you get from miles of straight road like we road, my tire is noticably worn asymmetrically.

About 1 hour before Ushuaia the scenery changed dramatically. The climate remained the same but the land went from soggy marshy tundra to jagged mountains peaks with bases covered in pine trees. This is exactly what I thought the “fin del mundo”/ “end of the world” would look like.

Now that I made it to the tip of South America there is nothing left to do but head north. I think I’m ready to resume my humble corporate life. Plus, I want to see my fluffy puppy! Oh yeah, my family and friends too…

I’m not sure what route I’m going to take but I have two choices. I can either take a ferry that cuts the trip down by a week or two to Chile or take the long way that is a few thousand KM offroad. I’ve prepared for the long offroad trip, but it’d be nice to be on the water for a few days.

Either way, I’ll end up in Vallparisio / Santiago where I am going to ship my bike by air or sea back to the United States. Depending on the price, the bike will either go to Houston if by air and possibly by sea, or somewhere on the west coast if it is dramatically cheaper. Then I’ll drive from California back to Houston.

This has been a trip of a lifetime. My expectations were huge and I was not let down. There were days where I’d sit on the bike and think to myself, “What am I doing here? How did I get this far? This is so wonderful!”

I was asked the other day what are my dreams. My response was terse: I’m doing it. Anyway, I don’t like the term dreams, I prefer the word plans.

yeah, I’m pretty happy to be here!

12 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by daveg

Wednesday, December 24th, 2008

The highlight of my trip– The Bolivian Salt Flat, Salar de Uyuni

Since the epoch of my trip plannning, the Salar de Uyuni, or Salt Flat of Uyuni was one of the places that I was looking forward to the most.

Ever since I saw the picture of salt piled up on the lake, I knew it was somewhere that I had to go on my trip. There was a little bit of contention of even going to Bolivia at all because of the $135 gringo fee and the political issues with the US. The allure of seeing the salt flats was a significant factor in why I made my decision to “take the risk”, however perceptable it may have been.

Getting to Uyuni was a signifcant undertaking. As the last post talked about, we had to cut through massive road blocks. About 100km after Oruro the pavement ended. I would not see any pavement OR even a street sign for the next 5 days.

The road to Uyuni was pretty clear. The first 15km was very rough as it was a bypass of the gravel road with a pure sand road.

Neither Theo nor I dropped the bike but it was only because we were being very careful in not wanting to test the local medical system.

The road to Uyuni was absolutely beautiful. It was a mixture of desert with river valleys so you’d be driving through kms of sand and scrub then all of a sudden there would be a grassy field. I love Bolivia!

With the road you had two choices. If you stayed in the middle of the road it was washboard or heavy corrugation. Uhg. At low speeds you’re just asking alot from your suspension. If you go fast enough to gently clip the tops of the washboard to get a smooth ride you had the opportunity to meet only other component of the road: deep sand.

As a result, we forced to take it easy. It was 200km of roads like this and it took us all day. The jeeps, which would periodically pass us at an insanely fast rate, took only 4 hours.

We had lunch with some flamencos. It was amazing. This was one of the most remote places I’ve visited in my entire life and it really felt like it. There were almost no other people and everything felt exotic. This is my first non-zoo flamenco experience!

The skies were just screaming to be photographed. Most of the pics in this report are Theo’s, visit his website and check out his “emotionals”. They’re a bit odd in google translation, but they work.

Thanks Theo for taking this amazing picture. I think I’m going to print it out when I get home for my office wall. Yeah, in thinking of what life is going to be like when I return to work, seeing this photo will bring me back to exactly where I want to be.

Uyuni was kind of a dumpy desert town. There were a few nice streets, but here at the oil change place, they just dump the oil all over the sand. Thanks guys.

We spent the night at a good hotel as our reward for 8 hours of offroading. The basin of the shower was brown with sand and dirt. It was a great day.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Finally, what I had been waiting for my whole trip. The Salar de Uyuni is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. It is a completely flat plain of whiteness. It goes on miles and miles for all directions. Other people describe it like being on another planet. For me, seeing the salt flat was accomplishing one of the dreams of my trip. What another great day.

Once we got to the Salar de Uyuni, we realized we weren’t the only bikes there.

I was able to get my picture!

Here is the rallye sticker for the Fench bikers. They were so great to meet!

We stopped at an island in the middle of the salt flat that naturally had a restaurant. Here I left a couple of the Bolivian 4×4 guides sit on my bike and take pictures.

Not me either.

This french guy used a bread basket and napkin to get out of the salar’s intense sun.

We made 45 new friends with frenchmen who flew their bikes over to ride from Santiago to La Paz on thier new BMW 1200 GS Adventures. Wow. It was quite a sight. I felt like I was in the middle of some TV commercial. I saw more GSes in one day in the middle of Bolivia as I did my entire life in the United States.

The graitious standing on the pegs on perfectly smooth salt photo.

The next that follow is the game that everyone places on the Salar de Uyuni. Because it is so perfectly flat you can really mess with perception and depth. For about 3 hours we procede to try to stand on top of everything we had.

OK. Enough of that.

No really.

Now we’re just back to bikes on the salt flat. No more tiny people.

Did I mention I’m happy to be here?

We left the salt flats and were trying to find a cheap hotel. That isn’t as easy as it sounds, even though we’re in Bolivia. We didn’t want to drive back to Uyuni (about 30 minutes away). We tried the hotels that the French Bikers were staying at, but they were 4 star hotels and we couldn’t even come close to affording that.

After learning that we didn’t have the money to stay in a room at the hotel, one french guy started insisting to the front desk that we were elite BMW mechanics who helped fix the rallye bikes. We were then permitted to sleep in the hamocs of a 4 star hotel. this is my first 4 star hammoking.

The entire hotel was made of salt. Pure salty luxary. Even the floor was salt granuales. Kinda like visiting the beach, but even more salty.

This was truely a unique experience.

They had a few support vehicles. It must have been nice to have fresh tires constantly!!

Here is what some of the other salt flats look like. Most of the ones in Bolivia and Chile aren’t the solid salt flats what you are thinking about. They’re these salty crusty dried mud places devoid of life.

I’m still happy to be here too.

After leaving the Salar de Uyuni, we were constantly lost, even with GPS loaded with maps. The problem was that none of the maps that we bought or brought or were loaded on GPS reflected reality. We could use the names of cities we read on maps to ask the people working their alpaca for a direction, but none of the roads were where they were supposed to be nor even the orders of cities. We were navigating blind.

The first day we found a hostel that would let us park in their restaurant. They had pretty good llama too.

Another salt flat…

The ride to Chile was as challenging as the road to Uyuni. Atleast there were a couple of times whee we were on rock roads high above the salars.

We saw this mine in the distance and went through their perimeter gate to ask them for directions. They were super nice and told us they were mining sulfur.

We eventually made it to the Chilean border after a tough couple of days of riding. Bolivia was a great experience. I’m so happy I made it in.

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Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008

Massive road blocks in Oruro, Bolivia

We left Sajama for Uyuni. There were a few routes that we could take, but after fighting with loose sand for a couple of days, we decided to follow the paved roads as much as we can. Yeah, we’re weak adv-riders, but hey, we have a lot of luggage!

As we were starting to get close to Oruro we had to dodge a simple roadblock in front of a bridge. We were in the middle of nowhere really, still 50km to Oruro, so we didn’t really think much of it. I just figured it was a few pissed off buses.

As we neared Oruro I started getting very nervous. There was even less traffic than normal. Oruro has 215,000 people, so there should be SOME activity.

I got to the tollway and there were buses, rocks, and broken glass spread across the road. OK. Now is when I realize there is a serious problem going on in the city.

Every moto traveler talks about Bolivia and road blocks. My understanding is that they’re just to harass buses and cars, not motorcycles. I don’t know why they’re OK with motorcycles going places, but there was no way for any other vehicle to get through this road block.

We managed to squeeze through two buses parked next to eachother. The area was full of onlookers, just hanging out.

The other thing I heard from moto travelers about breaking through roadblocks is that sometimes you’ll have rocks thrown at you.

Lucky for us, this protest seemed pretty peaceful. Getting through this city was going to be pretty rough.

Every intersection had atleast a bus or microbus blocking the way for cars. Not only the car intersections, but they had lined up 4 or 5 buses on the train tracks to prevent the train running. Lets just say I wouldn’t want to be the first bus to park on the track.

I’m not exactly sure what they mean, so I’ll let a better spanish speaker translate that sign.

It was a crazy experience though– It was a modern, well, Bolivia modern with lots of big wide roads, city of 200,000 and it was nearly silent except for the chatter of people.

Don’t mess with the buses.

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Saturday, December 20th, 2008

Traveling to Sajama, Bolivia

After following some contacts in La Paz, Theo was able to identify an interesting charity project in Sajama, Bolivia.

Mountain climbers know Sajama as the tallest mountain in Bolivia at 6,542 meters or 21,463 feet. The town of Sajama has a couple of hundred people and is located at the base of the mountain in Bolivia’s Altiplano.

The Altiplano is a very rough environment as it is a high altitude desert (Sajama is around 14,000 feet). There aren’t many people living there because there is so little vegetation. The majority of what I saw while driving to Sajama were alpaca (!!!!!) and very small villages of indigineous people.

I didn’t see if they were selling lentils, but I did find it interesting that I was in a region of the world where I could directly meet recipients of US foreign aid. That photo was taken at a roadside market.

Here you can see some of the locals at the market. This place was very well stocked as many other places we’d stop in Bolivia, you’d have a choice between crackers and crackers.

This part of the world is absolutely beautiful. Driving around Bolivia really made me feel like I was experiencing planet earth, not human civilization. There were very few cars and trucks on the roads.

The presence of alpaca was significant along the way.

Everything is sandy. Fortunately alpaca are able to eat the grass that grows in the desert.

I’m going to write about the charity project in a seperate blog entry later, so I’m going to skip over that part and just write about the town of Sajama.

The town is located in the national park of the mountian and consists of a few sand roads of houses and shops with a huge plaza in the middle. Sajama has many amazing opportunities for nature tourists (or should I say eco-tourists, vomit).

Hotsprings!

Bolivia’s highest mountian

Geisers

Bubbling geisers that shoot up many meters into the sky (not this one though).

Amazing sunsets

Here’s where I stayed in Sajama, Alojamiento “Los Andes”, or hotel Los Andes. It was very comfortable and humble. Everything was perfectly clean and it had one of the more interesting bathrooms in my trip. Just a toliet where you had to use a bucket to flush it yourself.

There were no street lights at night so it was an experience trying to find our hotel after sunset.

Again, Nevado Sajama. Such a beautiful mountian.

The roads were pretty rough– you had a choice of either corrugated (washboard) sand or loose sand. Whatever happened to hardpacked sand?

Alpaca queueing up to cross the road.

Sometimes you’d have to wait 5 or 6 minutes to wait for the line of alpaca to cross. Whats amazing is there wasn’t any sheperd leading the herd. They just queued up natually. So cute AND smart. What great animals.

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Wednesday, December 17th, 2008

Alpaca, My new favorite animal

I’d like to formally declare that Alpaca are now my favorite animals. I’m sorry penguins, but you had a good run. I’ve liked you little flightless birds ever since I started working at ADIC when I was 16 years old (see their logo).

Alpaca, cute, fluffy, careful, and curious… how I love you. Those who know me know that I have a propensity to fluffy animals (see my dog INDY!, the Australian Shepherd).

They’re all over the place in Bolivia and a few parts of the Peruvian highlands. Atleast thats where I saw them.

In addition to their fluffyness, they only crap in designated crapping areas. It is amazing because when you walk through a field that had cows, you’ll see cow crap everywhere. If you go through another field with alpaca, you’ll see only gently munched grass. Yes, they poop, but they all poop in the same spot, you can call it the pooping area. Because of this, it is possible to house train an alpaca.

Alpaca laying down getting ready for bed.

Here you can see the different colors. Read the wikipedia article linked above to see all the varieties. You can see 3 or 4 of them in this photo. So cute AND colorful.

This is the most famous alpaca I met on the trip. I was asking for directions and there were two alpaca in the back of a minivan. I naturally asked if I could take a photo. The driver said that these were prized alpaca that were featured on several billboards and posters around Bolivia. It was an honor to meet such a famous camelid.

Unlike other herding animals crossing the road, alpaca queue for hundreds of yards to cross the road in a straight line. They’re so careful. What a great ungulate.

Such a sad sight.

Oh yeah, I am a tough biker. You just watch out.

2 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by daveg

Sunday, December 14th, 2008

Bolivia!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BOLIVIA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I looked forward to going to Bolivia my entire trip. It is the country that I had the most curiosity about. The more I read, the more I wanted to know Bolivia, first hand. It is also the country that was only second to Colombia that people from back home said I should skip. Maybe I was just lucky, but I had _NO_ problems in Bolivia. Like Colombia, the only trouble I had was leaving.

Bolivia started out with a bang. It did not disappoint. The border between Puno, Peru and Bolivia was INSANE. People EVERYWHERE dragging things across the border.

I’m pretty happy to be here as the photo shows!

Theo’s happy too. According to his original research, Bolivia was also a no-go country. I think I can speak for him too in that he really enjoyed Bolivia.

The annoyance that I have with Bolivia is the visa fee for United States passport holders: $135. That’s right, one hundred thirty-five dollars. OUCH. I spent more entering the country than I did the first week staying there.

It was kinda funny. The first thing you do is check-in with the police. There we were talking about the fee for entering the country and the police man generously offered to let me in for only US$10. He was of course joking (I think) as he didn’t have access to the visa stamps. We were joking the whole time. How could I not? He looked like a 60 year old version of the evil terminator from T2 complete with the mirrored oversized sunglasses covering most of his face, mustache, and rigid posture.

There is also when I starting having my first problem with my bike: The starter switch wouldn’t work. I’d press the button and nothing would happen. Switch off the bike with the key, check that gearbox is in neutral, hold the clutch, switch the bike on again… and still nothing. Eeep.

Fortunately there were about 370 people standing around at the border who were willing to help clear a path and bump start me.

After leaving the border area we started looking for gas. Another problem with Bolivia that I read about was gas. While I had no problems with the fuel, every and I mean EVERY single person I asked had no idea about the octane. Hell, I even know the word for octane in spanish. Another interesting thing is that there are military at every gas station keeping track of how much gas you buy and tracking your license plate. Strange. I don’t know much information about that.. if someone else does, please comment.

La Paz from the toll-booth. Notice the Evo Morales grafiti.

I found it interesting that people had signs not accecpting US dollars. I really expected an anti-american sentiment, but I never encountered it.

This is a shoe shine kid. They’re all over the place and all wear a baseball cap with a ski mask covering their face. My understanding is that it is a looked down upon if you are shining shoes so you hide your face from your friends. It is also incredibly creepy and I didn’t want a shine from any of them.

La Paz was one of the few large cities that felt different than your typical metropolitan. There is a huge and obvious indigineous presence there. I had an American Day and went to Burger King for lunch and it was full of couples where the woman was wearing a long skirt and a bowler hat.

The one thing I did in La Paz was ride the old Yungas aka “DEATH ROAD” of Bolivia on a mountian bike. While I met a very cool american moto traveler who was working there, the Death Road was nothing special. It’d be much more interesting if I hadn’t been riding death roads all over central and south america for the last 6 months. I have a CD of pictures and movies that I need to go through. Other than the cool kiwis that I met on the bus, there is very little worth mentioning about the trip.

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Friday, December 12th, 2008

Puno and the Floating Islands

Just a photo post. Puno was nice but nothing too interesting happened to warrant text. We did have some pretty pics though.

360 degree rainbow.

These guys lived on floating islands. Wikipedia says “

The Uros is the name of a group of pre-Incan people who live on 42 self-fashioned floating man-made islets located in Lake Titicaca Puno, Peru. The Uros use the totora plant to make boats (balsas mats) of bundled dried reeds as well as to make the islands themselves.^[1]

Los Uros island

The Uros islands at 3810 meters above sea level are just 5 Km west from Puno port ^[2] (20 minutes in a boat ride from Puno). Around 2,000 descendants of the Uros were counted in the 1997 census,^[3] although only a few hundred still live on and maintain the islands; most have moved to the mainland. The Uros also bury their dead on the mainland in special cemeteries.”

The President explains stuff to us. He’s floating in the middle of a lake but has a DVD player and TV thanks to solar power!

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Wednesday, December 10th, 2008

Theo’s Machu Pichu photos

Here are photos from Theo’s camera. Visit his website!!!

I made friends with two peruvians who gave us directions.

When we stopped and asked for directions to Santa Maria they pointed…. then asked if I had space to give them a ride. Of course I said yes and I wasn’t even going to charge them a sole.. only a picture!