Archive for November, 2008
Friday, November 14th, 2008
Theo’s pictures from Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru
I don’t download Theo’s pictures that often so I’m just going to make a huge confusing post of his pictures.
His nikon does a great job of capturing the trip. He also takes pictures of me, so it is good to have proof that I was actually on the trip, not just the bike. Again, donate to his charity work at: http://world-tourer.de
Me very happy to see the bikes arrive in Colombia.
We’re not the first bikers on the Panam.
I met these folks at the church in the valley in Colombia
Stupid tourist shot balancing one shot on the equator. I have the benefit of reading many other ride reports and blogs so I know what pictures to take. Once I did this shot, several other tourists followed my lead.
Jump shot, equator style
I’m happy to be in Peru!
I met these guys at the side of the road. I stopped to take some pictures of some goats they had tied up. All of a sudden a crowd appeared and they insisted that I drink Chicha. It is a lightly fermented homemade corn drink. It was pretty tastey, but I ended up getting a case of the D for 3 days after it. Ohh well, it is part of traveling.
I’m happy to be in the desert
Lonely desert rider.
This is a great photo of Theo’s taken in Canyon del Pato.
Me putting on rain gear before an amazing storm.
Drop number 3 of the trip. Like time number 2, I was turning around. ARGH!
more desert offroad riding.
Here is me chitchating with the spanish/french couple at the Nasca tower. I have tons of respect for the bicyclist travelers.
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Thursday, November 13th, 2008
Traveling through Peru
I’ve been making some serious time while traveling through Peru. We drove for 4 days straight from Lima to Cuzco. It is a very long but incredibly scenic ride.
There were these chicken houses all over the side of the desert next to the Pacific. I was so amused by them that I even have a video posted on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/dghomefry
Look at all those chickens!!!!
My bike did well in the desert.
dunes… dunes!!!
Theo getting ready to ride down a dune headfirst on a duneboard in Ica, Peru
I met a canadian pair of snowboarders who’s skills translated well on the dunes.
Theo and our big buggy.
I’ve always wanted to run down a sand dune. So I did it and I got a little bit of sand in my shoes.
Don’t mess with the Germans.
ARGH.. I can’t remember their name. But they’re really cool and here is their pic in the dunes. Please email me with your name so I can fix this post! That and send you the clips of ya’ll coming down the dunes.
Nasca Tower. Wow. And by Wow, I mean that in the most sarcastic wow as possible. While I didn’t want to fly in the old/overweighted single prop cesnas to do a fly over, we did climb the tower for 1 sole. It was… kinda cool? maybe a little. My favorite part was talking to the bicyclists who were there also. You can see their bicycles in front of the tower. They were from Spain and France and were cycling for 6 or 7 months.
Yup. That’s one of those mysterious nasca lines. They’re signs to a god for fertility.
The tower wsas a great vantage to take a picture of the bikes.
The drive was just filled with fantastic views. Peru is beautiful and diverse.
Llama!!!
And even more cute… Alpaca! Soo fluffy!
Thats my current desktop. So. Much. Fluff!
Next up is my ride to Machu Picchu. Theo already wrote a blog entry about it on a german language newspaper website: Here
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Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
Lima Bullfighting
After making some serious miles, it is a nice break to stay a couple of days in Lima, Peru.
I’m staying in the Miraflores area which is not like the rest of the city and even farther from the rest of the country. Unlike the desert where I saw mudhuts without electricity or power, Miraflores has Starbucks, McD’s, TGI Fridays, Chiles, Burger King, and a few sidewalk cafes that I swear were swiped from the streets of Paris.
To only add the the surreal aspect of this experience, I went to a bullfight. Warning, the following pictures are quite graphic but are the best way to tell the story of going to a bullfight.
The road to Lima on the Panam!
Miles and miles of desert
Lots of religious messages in the sand. I’ve been asked a few times by locals what religion I am.
Musician at the bullfight.
The plaza del toros
A picador, the guy who rides a horse and uses a spear to weaken the bull.
Ornate clothing
Picador in action
The matador. It is really easy to get pics of these guys as they’re always posing
Celebrating after killing a bull by taking a drink of wine that someone threw down from the audience
More picadors.
These guys throw darts into the bull to weaken it.
The matador sticks the sword directly into the heart of the bull from over his head to kill him very quickly.
See, I was here.
This is the taxi drive Juan Carlos. See Juan Carlos, I told you I put you online. Now sign my guestbook!
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Tuesday, November 4th, 2008
Cuy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’ve been meaning to try cuy (guinea pig) since Ecuador but didn’t get around to it until Peru. The Ecuadorians say it is better there and of course the Peruvians disagree.
This post is more about pictures than it is about words. So Enjoy.
If you want to see the really graphic pics, just mail me. There are a bunch that I have online that bring you even closer to my dinner.
So cute!
This is where Mr. Cuy was cooked
This is the drink that Theo was drinking– Inca Cola and beer. He has been drinking Coke and beer, but when in Peru you HAVE to use Inca cola. It isn’t that bad… really
Mr. Cuy is now cooked
See, I liked him!
Now he’s quartered for sharing.
Theo likes him too!
9 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by daveg
Sunday, November 2nd, 2008
The Cañon del Pato (Duck Canyon) and more police issues
We left Caraz at 8 with the plan of going to see some of the lagoons in the mountains. Caraz is very high in the Andes (yeah, like the mints). The region is beautiful but we were having ugly weather prohibiting us from seeing any of the high peaks. You know the paramount logo? Well, it is in the Andes about an hour off-road from Caraz. The map has a star noting it as “The most beautiful mountain in the world”.
The plan to see the lagoons was interrupted by me having some issues with my chain oiler. I thought that it was just out of oil but it was clogged and I had to disconnect everything to get it working again. Since it took me a couple of hours to fix it at the gas station we didn’t really have the time to go up the pass.
Instead, we just hit the road and started heading to Lima. The road was paved but there were TONS of potholes and road constrution making the progress slow going. I just loaded up some music in the iPod and was having a nice relaxing ridef through the twisties of the Andes.
This lasted for a few hours until the afternoon storms started rolling in a little early at 11. We stopped before the sun was completely blocked with black thunderclouds to put on rain gear. Because it was so cold and the sky was blocked with rain, I went full force:
* Rain liner inside riding jacket
* Rain jacket over riding jacket
* Rain pants over riding pants
* Rain shoe covers over boots
* Rain 3 fingered lobster gloves over riding gloves
I felt like a snowman. With all that gear on, it is a little hard to move and a little hard to control the bike so I very rarely put it ALL on unless I know it is going to rain hard and it is going to be a very cold rain. I think a torrential storm in the Peruvian Andes was the perfect time.
Just as the rain started coming in we started climbing a pass to break through the Andes and start heading over to the coast towards Lima. This was one of the most difficult riding I’ve ever done — We weren’t driving through hard slamming rain exactly, more through clouds that would produce such rain. The air was thick with water. We could only see a few feet in front of us. Under normal circumstances we would stop, but there were no safe places to pull over because the visibility was so poor and there were so many convoys of big trucks on the road. To make this worse the pass was under construction. There were paving crews reducing the road to one lane alternating with huge strips of non-paved highway. This was the double-black diamond run of the Andes.
We kept the speed low but made continuous progress and eventually descended through the clouds onto a desert mountianscape. There was almost no plant life as all the mountains were textured by only exposed rocks.
It was still cool, but atleast the rain was over. We then continued towards Lima.
One of the things that the area north of Lima is famous for in the South American motorcycling community is the corrupt police. I’ve read about it many times on Horizons and spoke to people personally who have had problems with them. There are police checkpoints on the side of the road where there is a big police SUV and a cop standing there with an orange lightsaber looking traffic guiding device. When he sees you, he either waves you by or waves you to stop.
We have already been stopped once north of Chimbote, but managed to talk our way out of any problems by redirecting the conversation to us asking him for directions.
Our stategy is to keep the speed up and hopefully not give the cop the chance to think to stop us or to ride in the wake of a big truck so that he doesn’t see us until we’re passing him.
So we were enacting this technique but were unable to find a truck to ride behind and a cop starts to wave us down.
At the exact moment it was happening, it was unclear if he was waving us through or to pull over. Both our reaction was exactly the same: Wave back!
Anyway, he walks to the drivers side of the car and I start to run the various chase scenerios through my head. It is now clear that he wanted us to pull over and we didn’t. There are checkpoints every few miles and he was now radioing to his collegues to REALLY stop us next time.
Our solution: Find a hotel.
It was already getting late and that is to the police’s advantage. Usually when you get stopped, it is a waiting game. They hold your documents and you just sit there. They want you to be in a hurry and to just “pay the fine on the stop” regardless of if you did anything wrong.
There was a turn off to a small town on the beach called Vegueta. We asked a collictivo (multiperson taxi) driver if there were hotels in town and he spouted a bunch of spanish that sounded like yes.
We headed towards to coast and came upon a sandy beach town. The main road was paved, but the rest of the city of probably 10,000 people were sand roads.
First we stopped at the tourist office. As Theo went into the tourist office, I saw a hotel and went inside to see if they had rooms and parking for the bikes.
I enter the hotel and start with my DaveSpan and explain that we would like a room with two beds. The old Peruvian woman, who I can barely understand, says yes. I think.
Then we start talking about the parking situation and she starts pointing to across the street where all the tuktuks (3 wheels motorcycle taxis) park and says that it is secure. I then ask if we can park inside the lobby area because the bikes should be able to fit. She keeps talking about the tuktuk parking and I decided to break out the big guns.
In my best DaveSpan, I start into a speech I’ve used many times about how my motorcycle is novia (girlfriend) and that I don’t want to park her on the street with all the other men. That I want her to be close to me so I can look after her. My novia is beautiful and everyone likes to put their hands on her, so I like to keep her in very private parking.
She stops pointing and then takes a good look at the bike. With a huge grin, she says I can park my novia right in front of the room.
After all this is going on with me for 5 minutes inside the hotel, Theo is having his own experience. While I’m not sure what that it, the result was him talking in even worse spanish than my own to a group of 10 very curious people.
Everyone is smiling and laughing. It looks like the one english speaker of the town came out and with his very basic english starts to ask questions for the group and translate answers.
I manage to grab a second with Theo from the crowd and we start to move the bikes inside the hotel lobby.
The enthusiastic crowd follows.
Theo and I were now trying to move the bikes into the lobby’s new “Big Bike Parking Area”. There was one guy who had a tape measure and measured the door frame for us, another guy who moved the furniture out of the way, and then the crowd of people who were squeezed into the door frame watching the whole thing transpire.
Once we get the bikes parked they realize I speak a little spanish and start asking me all sorts of questions.
Where are you from?
Where have you been?
Where next?
How much time?
and the final question was: How did you choose our small town of Vegueta?
I of course did not mention anything about avoiding the police.
3 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by daveg
Saturday, November 1st, 2008
Mitad del Mundo and Ecuador
Middle of the Earth Park
I’ve been in South America for a while, but FINALLY I will be in the Southern Hemisphere upon entering Quito.
Just north of Quito is the park that celebrates the equator “Mitad del Mundo”. They have this big monument and an actual line that is supposed to be the equator.
Bathrooms on the middle of the earth.
I’m using SUPPOSED to, because according to GPS, it isn’t. I don’t know who is right, but I know that my GPS (actually, both my garmin AND my spot) say that the middle of the earth is actually just north of the park and runs along the side of a dusty road.
I understand that the dusty road isn’t as fun as the lavishly landscaped park filled with tourist shops (No stickers, btw), but hey, if I’m going to celebrate the equator in ecuador, lets atleast use the real one. Not some line paved on a piece of land that the cousin of some government park official owns.
Of course I had to visit Alberto’s Turtle Head Scottish Pub in Quito. HI ALBERT. After many-a-shots and a very good but drunken conversation with an Ecuadorian I eventually made it back to my hostel. If you’re in Quito, you have to go to The Turtle’s Head. It wasn’t until after quito did a scottish guy explain the vulgarity of a turtle head. I knew it had to be something vulgar, I just wasn’t sure what it was…
Take your sheep for a walk!
The elusive cuy.
Gotta get the good photo!
I miss my doggle
…..
Highlanders
Wear great hats…
I could live here. All the men wear shorts
But I need to enlighten them about the sandals thing.
Typical town square
This is near Vilcabamba where I partied way too late 2 nights in a row. Man I’m getting old… Strangely I have no photos from that night 
Why walk your horse when you can lead it while in your car!!!