the Kamloops "motorcycle riding fools" south american adventure

04klr

Well-known member
you had a box spring! big spender. Some of the beds on this trip have been real special one of the beds i slept in was much like sleeping in a hammock! we've camped about a weeks worth in some pretty nice spots, perhaps not as much as initially planned, but there was no plan to camp in central am. as it is so cheep anyways, and in south america it just didn't happen often, we've run some pretty full days and the shower and pita factor (pain in the a,,) made staying in a place with a room more attractive, a longer trip would make the camping more of a requirement to keep costs down.
We're in Puerto Montt now on a rare day off, seems odd, not right somehow, did some bike mntce. the other day and the bikes are showing the miles now and by the time they get home tlc will be required, tires, chains and sprockets, valves, brake pads, fork seals, steering head bearings to name a few parts, routine maintenance after a trip like this.

I found a few more mud pics from the same road in columbia, floyd has better ones and some good video but here they are, there was one slope that actually had moving oozing mud flowing down it.

full



full


we followed that monster truck on the left out down the road riding in its huge deep ruts, at times dragging the panniers deep stuff.

full


here's a couple of fun pics the first taken in a hotel lobby in Bolivia, wierd or what?

full


a wall of masks for the new years celebration

full


and now or everyones favorite, pictures of food eaten while on holidays, yum. For me food and the different tastes are a big part of any trip, this one was fairy bland overall but there were a few standout meals. the first was a terrific shrimp (prawn) soup in columbia with fried almost candied plantains on the side, we went in for the carne turns out we went into the wrong place, lucky for us, one of the tastiest meals of the trip.

full


dont remember where but the fried fish including a little head with a cristal beer, was muy bueno

full


more fish different beer

full


ok brace yourselves, this was taken at at what turned out to be a chain steakhouse type of place in equador where food is very cheap, this is floyds dinner and there was a choice of sizes and this was not the large one, two plates, one just for the spuds and vegis! and meat meat meat! no Crystal he did not eat it all.
my plate is the one at the top of the pic., the one with meat hanging everywhere off the edge of the plate.

full


while not exactly food, here are some coca leaves out to dry on the side of the road of death in bolivia

full


and to round out the food pictures we have food on the fly, what's more fun than a barrel of moneys, a van load of live sheep thats what!


full


that van was west bound, this van was east bound, as we rode up to pass the van i was wondering why the side door was open, turns out it was so stuffed to the brim with meat the door wouldn't close!

full



thats all for now, Macch Picchu pics next, and perhaps some more boring old scenery pictures.
Our time is running out on this adventure, we're barely two weeks and a thousand kms left, hard to imagine or remember all that we've seen so far, and only several thousand pictures to sort out at home.
all for now Wayne
 
Last edited:

motoged

New member
`"....dont remember where but the fried fish including a little head with a cristal beer, was muy bueno "

Now that's a trifecta meal !!! :eek:
 

wrstu

Member
I got you guys all signed up for Odessa- I wanted to make sure you didn't miss the pre-entry deadline. Somehow I just knew that your spouses wouldn't mind another weekend alone and that you'd have some extra cash left over from your trip that was burning a hole in your pocket. No need to thank me now :cool:, and I won't charge you any interest on your entry fees ;). I figured that 3 months of training and you guys should easily win your classes! I'll be lucky to put in 100 km before Odessa, if the damned snow doesn't start melting in a real hurry!
 

motoged

New member
Stu,
Are they serving Guinea Pig at Odessa? Didn't know they had a KLR class there either.

But your gesture is certainly thoughtful....;)
 

luvtoride

New member
we spent the last while riding up the carraterra astral which is a beatifull
scenery road with a mix of pavement and gravel. was good riding then
we ended up on a 12 hour ferry ride to peurto mont due to full ferries because it is holiday
season here. we are slowly heading north to ship the bikes and our adventure is going
to come to an end.
 

cactusreid

Active member
Guy's I'd just like to say thanks for taking us along!It really felt like we were there, all except for the cooked house pets, and bug bites!
 

04klr

Well-known member
thx reid! I think i can tempt murphy now and comment on the rear shock comment, I am quite happy with my choice to stay with the lame stock shock (equipped with an eibach spring) as of the 3 progressive rear shocks two of them failed as Marks has been leaking now for awhile though still works quasi ok and robins was a total failure, they will likely be able to get warranty all going well, but the scot in me is ok with not spending the big coin for the replacement shock. I plan on doing a what worked/didn't post as a wrap up and things like a flat tire tally will be mentioned, with 300k to go I'n not going there yet. Though the bikes sre showing the miles, mine is covered in oil as both forks seals have been leaki g quits badly not a pretty sight, in all the KlR's have proven why they are possibly the best choice for a ride like this, routine mntce and some new worn out parts is about all they need.<br>We should arrive home around 7 on the 28th, three months after leaving, Wow.
 

mugs

New member
Ya starting to relize the end of the journey is near, we are spending a extra day in Pichilemu Chile a town wher the Chilian people come for vacation not many gringos . We did meet John and Stacy from Fairbanks Alaska here spending some time before they head home after four months travelling by mainly bus, nice people and were happy to meet some english speaking people although they can speak spanish well.Going out for cervazas with them tonight. The scenery in Chile turns out to be very much like British Columbia atleast the lower part of Chile , so it seems like we've been riding at home in the summer, i guess thats why the lack of post. Not that it not breath taking it just seems normal to us. The price of things remind one of BC also. Trying to limp the bikes through with out having to spend any more money on them down here not that we've spent much on them, routine stuff, i think I might of won the prize for the most flats and Floyd comes in a close second Wayne has had none but in saying that i may of jinxed him. We seem to have lots of laughs everyday , especially when ordering food because every single time there is a suprise when it shows up , you never no what your going to get.To the freinds and family back home we'll see you soon , to the rest of you who have been tagging alone with us thanks . bien viaje
 

04klr

Well-known member
wahoo!! after 376.37hrs (in the saddle) and 25000kms we have arrived with all our fingers and toes in Valpariso! not sure which is in more od a need of cleaning us or the bikes, but we've made it to the end run of the trip and A stunni g day of riding it was a perfect day, sunny skies and twisty roads. Enzo greeted us on arrival with a cold frothy beverage, and now the process of packing and unpacking begins.

I knew before we left that this was a terrific group to do this ride with and I was happily proved right, riding with experienced riders the likes of Mark, Floyd, Robin and Al was a priveledge and I've thankful to have neen able to tag along.
The riding may be done but this thread certainly isnt! there will be more pics. and yakkity yak coming, thanks to our signifigant others for putting up with the great many hours spent on preparing for this adventure and thanks to all for vicariously riding along.
Wayne
 

motoged

New member
Wayne y los otros,

El gusto es mio....it was our pleasure to catch snippets of your adventure...there will be many a time when we can enjoy your recountings of the ride. Once the dust settles , looking forward to those times.

Bienvenidos home soon.
 
Hola caballeros!

Congrats for making it to the end of the continent! From looking at your pics and stories I conclude it was a fun struggle..? But also a great adventure, and one to share with good company.

Meanwhile I made it to the other end of the continent: Cartagena, Colombia. Tomorrow morning we'll try to get my old XT on a catarmaran sailboat, to take off to Panama.

It was great meeting you pleasant bunch of fools in Cuzco. Will be looking forward to more pics & stories!

Dennis & Señor Martinez (1999 Yamaha XT600) from the Netherlands
 

04klr

Well-known member
Heyy! Hola Dennis, good to meet up with you also, your muy bueno espanol skills in the cab ride back from Macchu Picchu were a bonus. Look forwarding to your visit in Kamloops so we can share stories.
Struggle,,? if by struggle you mean preventing the wind from blowing the bike off the road, and literally pushing the front wheel sideways, then yes we struggled, otherwise it's been (and still is) fantastic, and running into chap like yourself are a large part of the trip!

and speaking of that tourist trap called macchu picchu, perhaps a few pics. whatever you may of heard what you may not know is that it is huge, not just that the rock that has been carved is big but the area that the site covers is perhaps 30 acres or more in size I started my guessing at 20 and have upped it to 30 and now that I'm revisiting the pics I'm sure its way more even, it's really big.

As you may have already seen on the discovery channel, the workmanship is boggling, how the F did they do that, huge pieces of rock fit with each other to exacting standards, staircases carved out of one stone, can you imagine whacking away on a piece of rock for months or years and then DOH! you whack off a chunk that should have stayed intact, BUGGAH! a really quite unbelievable accomplishment. The work was not completed by slaves as done in other eras and societies (mexican cathedrals built by Indian saves etc.) but by conscripted worker from neighboring villages required to do a stint as a laborer for a set amount of time. really an amazing sight.

This staircase is from one hunk of rock.

full


Mark listening intently to our guide who was very informative and comfortably quiet.

full



full


if the jigsaw assembled rocks dont impress you, how about the ones in the corner jig sawed and carved into a 90degree bend, each piece out of one hunk of rock.

full



full


check out these snooty rabbits looking down their overly long noses on us, as we walked by we could hear them talking down on us in their hoity toity voices "oh Martha look at the Gringos", bugger off you highbrow rabbits.

full


building on an existing hunk of rock, how do you engineer that? can you imagine trying to get city planning to pass that today, um, no!

full


see what i mean 30 acres may be a low guess as to the size, this place was not built on a weekend, and all the work put into building and they only lived there a very short while, perhaps 50 years.

full


way up on to there is a post for the guards, the sentrys looking out for the invading Spaniards who never found, never plundered Machu picchu.

full


Though not at the top of my list for this trip it was amazing and I was glad to have visited this site, when you are in the neighborhood you should drop in for a visit.

One of the repeating issues we've had on the trip is parking, everywhere we go there is always some issue with parking, at Hospedaje's it's "a little over here, closer to over there, park this way, no park that way, dont park here, park there" funny but a bit aggravating. We stopped just inside the Bolivian border in copacabana on the beachfront where there were many food stalls with parking across from them, and each place was posessive of the space in front of them and kept shooing us away when we were choosing where to eat, here Robin makes a stand "I aint F'n moving!"

full


as a leader to some following pics. a road sign that is no exaggeration (unlike most road signs on this trip), and we saw this sign many times on the way down to the far south of chile/argentina. It's english translation, Hang on!

full


the roads far south were not nearly as twisty as the roads up north in south america, straight as an arrow for miles and miles and flat as any prairie perhaps flatter.

All for now, thanks for looking. Wayne.
 
Last edited:

jbob

New member
looking forward to having a beer or two or.......when you get home buddy! Have a safe trip back,Cheers!
 

Ann Vandrick

New member
Oh you amazing guys; delighted you've arrived at your SA destination still smiling. My favourite line of the last few posts was yours, Robin, "We seem to have lots of laughs everyday." That speaks volumes about your collective abilities as seasoned adventurers. Looking forward to the slide show debriefs in Kamloops over some frosty ones and I really only have 1 question. So....where are you all riding to next? ;)
 

04klr

Well-known member
For me, I plan on riding the klR down to Yuma to complete my "as far north to as far south as you can go" journey, and I´ve been attempting to put the bug in the guys ear, that we only have the east/west portion to do, as in far east.
Sitting here in Santiago killing the last few hours before the excitement of 20hrs and three flight to get home sets in this evening. Getting the bikes dealt with and into the shipping container yesterday added another 8.5hrs to the time spent crossing borders" total, bringing the total up to a whopping 56 hours (still not back in canada), in other words if you were to ride for say 8hrs a day we have spent 7 full riding days just in crossing borders, ouch!
To prep the bikes for shipping they must be clean, supposedly quite clean, so after a thorough washing the other day to make at least my bike cleaner than when we left home, i walked past my "tempted Murphys law by actually saying that I didn´t get any flat tires", only to see that the rear was flaccid, er, flat. Buggah! At that point I didnt see the nail head poking out of the tread, instead I went straight to Floyd and Robin "alright what did you guys do?" only to be stared at with these innocent and sincere whaterya talking about eyes, damn I guess it really is a flat, in retrospect I should have gone straight to Mark as he wouldn´ve been able to keep a straight face as the kidders had cut a nail head from the rest of the nail shoved it into the tread, then flattened the tire, funny guys. It was pretty funny and now that the bike is crated up I can freely say I didn´t get a single flat, bring it on Murphy.

The riding in southern Argentina and Chile is waay different than in the north of south america. flat as a pancake, plate of glass flat, and windy, 80k sidewind kind of windy.
The wind was easily strong enuf the move the front wheel sideways on the loose gravel road, that´ll get yer attention!! (a little note: due to a language misunderstanding I just closed the page i was on and lost a very long winded and picture filled post, so we´ll see how long my patience last on this one)
It seems I havent uploaded any pics yet of the bikes riding along at ridiculous lean angles but I do have some of the somewhat straight roads, prop yer eyelids open they´re exciting alright.

full



Floyd riding down a road where the Rheas, Guanacos, fox and giant bunnies can be seen running away for miles before you get to them.

full



full



though actually on the road towards the Atacama desert in northern chile, it is though somewhat straight.

full


this turned out pretty well for an on the fly pic. Floyd and myself took to the gravel as Robin and his pogo stick like Klr and Mark took to the paviemento. The 18" tall pryamid of gravel was made from an up ahead unseen grader requiring a 50/50 guess as to which side he was on, I guessed wrong which required a full stop , turn to face it, then blast my portly skidplate armored bike through the pile.

full


ok enuf with the poker straight roads already. When we left Yuma Az. we all knew that it was time to remember that anything may be around the next corner and to expect just that, whether it was the three cars in their lane and two cars in mine that i encountered when rounding a corner in peru, or the rock/mud/tree slides that as Robin stated last night "looks like the trees are growing out of them" that block the roads. This one was an easy one though it looked like it had been there awhile it did block the entire lane and was easy to spot ahead of time.

full


why is Nascar so popular, carnage! fortunately I have no real carnage pics to show, I do however have some that could´ve been, and though no crash pics. some damage pics.
There are three bikes avoiding that thrill seeking Llama, the brake lights are Big Al´s.

full


Here is one of several pics of Robins flats, you only get one picture so please just imagine the same scenario in different locations and be sure to use plenty of "F" words as a soundtrack in you mind.

full


just to prove that kawasakis bleed green Floyds rad guard chewed a hole in the rad, fortunately a small hole that simply required a frequent addition of h20

full


Yes there were pics. so I suppose it happened. After making a brilliant crossing of the river, (perhaps the best crossing ever made on a motorcycle haha), the other guys (being somewhat jealous) ran over and pushed me down, yea that's it they pushed me down. This was the only time that this happened on the trip, well except for when Mark pushed me over a couple hours after they pushed me over this time, other than that it was the only time! Sadly floyd tweaked his shoulder helping get the porky bike off of my trapped well under water foot. Being a klr it fired right up and rode onto the next unfortunate incident, worst of which was Mark filling his boot full of water assisting with my stuck bike.

full


this is on the same road where the guys pushed me into the water (heh heh), this is a double decker, must have been a heck of a ride on the top floor!! the bus must have hooked an edge and got crossed up with the obvious result, there was a horrible sight on the other side I spared the viewing audience the unpleasant task of viewing the limes and mangos scattered around on the ground, nasty.

full


here´s Mark making a really good decision, waiting for that truck to clear that long narrow tunnel, what a difference couple of seconds makes.

full


and for some carnage of the digital kind, check out that unicycle van in the middle/left of this messed up panorama pic. man is he gong to fall on his face when he tries to stop.

full


though willing now to give Murphy a razzy over no flats, I am not willing to tempt fate any longer on attempted this second post! Arrrgh!
As this trip nears its ultimately long and sleepless commute back to reality I would like it known that as this last picture will attest, we ate and stayed at some pretty high brow (sort of) and certainly low brow places, and this place where we ate in La Paz Bolivia is an example of the high class joints we frequented. This picture taken of a pillar inside the restaurant shows, they don´t even allow spitting on the floor, now that, shows class.

full



For those that have followed this journey hopefully there will be more later, perhaps from one of the airports we will spend time in later today/tonite. Thanks for following along on the fantastic ride. And thanks also to my ride mates, it's been one hell of a ride!

Now off to explore Santiago, and find a nice classy place to have lunch and a Kunstmann cerveza!

Wayne, on behalf of Mark Al Robin And the even grinning Floyd.
 
Last edited:

Redhed

New member
HI Guys
Martina and Enzo said that they would put my dirty laundry in your crate to Van. Sorry I missed you on the rutas, but your pics certainly tell the story of SA riding. I will be taking the slow boat to Jamaica, Cuba, and then riding from Isla Mujeres norte, so probably not back in BC before June. Perhaps you can PM regarding the dirty laundry, or I could pick it up at the next Loose Screw? Thanks for sharing your ride.

Redhed
 

Ann Vandrick

New member
Wow - now THAT'S creative (nail head placed in tread and air let out). You guys are HILARIOUS and SO bad! Thanks for the great chuckle. And the only thing that stopped me from groaning in sympathy about your red mud bath with your bike was the delightful commentary. You guys are getting funnier as this odyssey winds down! Great posts and even better pictures. Hard-to-fathom stats about border crossings. Not sure how much patience you all had before you left, but your adventures have certainly enriched that gene! Enjoy the trip home. Your adoring fans await your arrival.
 

04klr

Well-known member
it's good to be back! this post has been brought back from the depths of the DSBC vault and planted into the "blast from the past" section for your perusal. Over the next little while even more pics will be inserted into the original post as, why not!

as always, thx fer lookin
 
Top