Our last border crossing before the final one into the US. On Friday May 19 we rode 140 miles from Chichicastenago to the La Mesilla border crossing into Mexico arriving about 1:30 in the afternoon. It was a surprisingly quiet border crossing with no people hustling us and no lines of people, nice. That didn’t mean it was fast, we still needed to make copies of various things running to a tienda across the street but after about an hour we were let into Mexico. Yooohooo, we’ve been to Mexico so many times it just seemed easier. The roads in general were nicer and we started switching over to the toll roads just to avoid all the topas (speed bumps). Continue reading
Category Archives: 2017 Motoraid III
Central America – Part II
unday May 14, 2017
An easy day’s ride from what we now call the “Waterfalls” hotel near San Pedro Sula Honduras to the small tourist town next to the Copan Ruins. I think the town is actually called Copan Ruins but it might be called Nueva Esperanza. Either way most people just refer to the city as “Copan”. Continue reading
Central America – Part 1
I see it’s been a few days since the last post….. Central America will do that. It’s HOT, WET and HUMID. The close proximity of countries with their border crossings and narrow roads through cities filled with topas (speed bumps), slows everything down. In a way we want to hurry through Central America, in another way we want to explore places we haven’t been. I’m counting border crossings in my head, two more until the USA. I’ll be glad when we are done with those and am worried about having only one blank page left in my passport…. Continue reading
Colombia
Imagine a cat hissing and screaming while in a fight for it’s life, multiply that by 100 cats at the same time in a giant brawl and have that sound reverberate in a dark cave made out of marble walls. That is what we heard as we dropped into the marble caves of Rio Claro in the tropical rain forest of Colombia. We couldn’t see these loud birds but they obviously didn’t like our intrusion into their den of darkness and showed their displeasure by hissing and screaming at us.
The Northern Hemisphere
On Saturday April 15, 2017 we crossed from the southern hemisphere into the northern hemisphere at where else but The Equator! A momentous event as we finished the southern half of the globe and transitioned closer to our home hemisphere. It also occurred to me that we also transitioned from fall to spring in one step. Ha, how cool was that? Since we left Seattle before the first day of winter we managed to totally skip winter 2016/2017. I’ll take that. Continue reading
Galapagos!
Warning – there is nothing in this post having remotely to do with motorcycles. Being a motorcycle blog I feel the disclaimer is in order. However, if you are interested in seeing some amazing wildlife, me being attacked by a Sea Lion, the Albatross mating dance, boobies (yes.. boobies) or me swimming with a shark…. read on. Continue reading
A Slower Pace (and more mud)
Sometimes a picture just tells it all:
We stayed an extra day in Banos and decided to zip line across the canyon (Thanks for the tip Jeanne and Bo). Continue reading
Paradise Found..
I ended the last post with, “We’re ready for a few days of rest.” We found it. Once we crossed into Ecuador everything changed. What? Does the rain just stop at the political border? No, but we learned that Ecuador recently invested millions in upgrading its infrastructure to withstand the occasional years with heavy rain. It was still wet in Ecuador but the roads and bridges all seemed to have adequate drainage to deal with the flooded rivers. We were glad for that. Continue reading
Through The Worst of the Flooding
It wasn’t easy… at all… but we made it safely to Ecuador. Seriously the last few days were tough by any standard. We’ve had hard days before but this might top the list.
Hmmm, where to start.
Here are a couple of links if you want to see it in the news:
Peru reels from floods as it waits for end to brutal rainy season
More rain to plague Peru as death toll rises amid worst flooding in decades
Disaster in Peru
I don’t have first had experience with some of the big disasters in the US like Katrina in New Orleans but now we are sure in the middle of this one in Peru and it’s a mess. A large part of the Peruvian coast is severely impacted by the rain and flooding. Continue reading