http://rumbum.com/1122-detours-to-machu-picchu

May 3, 2010

It was a lovely, and long, and rather hot ride to Tebicuary. Robert Rolón  had invite me to stay with his family there, and tour the sugar can mill he worked at. I was really impressed my the countryside–gone was the dismal, trash-strewn roadside, but clean, kept, and with large ranches proudly displaying their names and the products they produced. German influence  meets Latin America, and it kept me wondering why other areas I’d traveled through had such a hard time keeping themselves organized and clean, when Paraguay, the poorest country in South America, was so neat and orderly.

Because I love bathroom humor.  But really.  Just WHAT was I supposed to do with this hose?

Mennonites.

Note to self: NO MORE BEEF!!!

I got completely and utterly turned around in Villarica. I was supposed to meet up with the folks that I had dinner with in Concepcion, but that went out the window with my 5 laps of Villarica. I ended up asking a taxi driver how to get out of town, and he was nice enough to lead me (for free) to the highway. Sheesha. I was in a state by the time I left town.

I got to Roberto’s late, and he’d arranged for me to speak at the local high school. So he bundled his family into the car and I followed them on the bike to the school where I met with about 50+ kids in two separate groups. We talked about cancer prevention, supporting your loved ones through a diagnosis, a bit about my travels, and about wearing all your protective gear while riding a motorbike.  It’s a real problem in Paraguay ALL the kids seem to have a scooter, and so few wear any protective gear at all.

May 4, 2010

Roberto and his family are so lovely–I was so tired that night as we went to bed about midnight. The poor people kept the house and kids so quiet in the morning that I slept until 9:30!!! I was mortified, but I guess I was in sore need of a good bed and a restful place to sleep.

Here’s the little one with her Terere:

A tour of the sugar mill:

On-site church

Cane Trucks waiting to gain entry into the mill.

LUNCH!

I got a late start that day — I think I left around 2 or 3. Hindsight says I really should have stayed over another night, but I did not want to be a burden on the family. Plus, I counted the days and I still had much of Paraguay I wanted to see. Too bad, because things went from bad to worse the  next few days.

http://rumbum.com/1104-broken-bones

http://rumbum.com/1085-mechanical-meltdown

http://rumbum.com/1066-where-anything-goes

May 4th, 2010

Oofa. I wake up and I am a wreck.

The only satisfaction I have is that there’s a car in front of the hotel entrance–I ask them if it’s a guest and they say yes, and they go and wake Mr. Noisy at 6:30 AM. He comes down shirtless, which I easily could have gone the rest of my life without witnessing, and moves the car. I fire up the bike in the lobby (I’m feeling wicked) and Oh yeah, I bump into all the furniture on my way out, too.

Ugh.
Putting on wet gear to ride in the rain. My Daytona boot were great when I bought them in 2006, but now they have decided to not be waterproof any more, despite the Gore-Tex lining. It’s a drag to put on cold/wet boots. But I solve the problem by putting my my cold/wet socks first so the cold/wet boots are less noticeable

Dirt roads in the rain = slow going.

OK, now I am feeling REALLY sorry for myself. Rick and I talked about riding the Che trail together, but Rick had problems with his chain and needed to make a bee line to Lima…too bad, I could have been (not) enjoying this days ride with him.

Bad piggy! (Doesn’t seem like the stick thing worked on this one, either!)

Ah, blessed pavement. Normally I don’t mind dirt roads, but two days of dirt roads in the rain have me wanting to kiss the pavement. Too bad I cannot find the border crossing I am looking for. Next up: Paraguay.

Lunch. Note the pile of french fries to make it look like I got more chicken! (I’m so hungry I order a second piece of chicken, sans fries, and they serve me a drumstick. Same price, too!

(Little do I know at the time this will be my last meal for two whole days!)

OK, where IS that border? I backtrack a bit, consult the map 452 times, ask a few locals, and never seem to find the northernmost border crossing. Oh well, I head to the one everyone points me to.

I’m told this is the way…I only have 60 miles of dirt to the border…then another 60 miles of dirt to the next pavement

Oofa. Not good. I haven’t seen a car in hours. Guess this ones on me.

I get the bike upright again, but it’s not easy with the still-hurt hand. Yeah, can ride without every vibration of the road coming up and sending electrical shocks through my hand, but sheesh, gripping and heaving a bike upright and my hand is DONE.

Well, jeez. this is MUCH slower than I had counted on.
But I’m a gnarly adventuress, right?

If I can just get to the border, I’ll find a nice place to stay, eat a good meal, and sleep the sleep of the dead…

These little green birds (I think they are Quaker parakeets) make these nests e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e. Noisy critters! I’m entering the Chaco region.

Alrighty then.
Some SERIOUS Bolivian military folks ask me every question under thee sun, and try to intimidate me. They take me inside, and another officer logs all my paperwork, while Mr. Intimidating proceeds to try and try on all my gear, and asks me how much everything costs. I wince when he tries on the helmet, and rejoice when he realizes it’s an EXTRA SMALL and it doesn’t go on. Yick! I don’t want someone else’s head in my helmet!

These guys don’t really get to me–I’ve been through this drill so many times, with so many NICE policemen…I know my papers are in order, so I revert to my too-chatty-American-butchering-the-Spanish-language persona, and eventually they lighten up. Back outside at the bike we chat about my trip, I try to take pics with them and they get all serious again, OK, so I ride off to the migration office. The police have informed me that there’s no place to stay there, and frankly I really want to leave them behind anyway. Here’s the only picture they let me take.

Nope, says immigration, but NOT! The drunks at the bar next door tell me it’s down the road a bit but invite me for a drink. No thanks. I ride off.

Ah. THIS is immigration. And NOPE, not the guy in the uniform, its the couple in farm clothes.

?

No place to stay here, either, they tell me to try the next stop, 60 miles, on the Paraguay side. I ride off into no-man’s land between the borders. I’m officially checked out of Bolivia, and have to ride another 60 miles or so to Paraguay. Alrightythen.

More dirt. I am riding FAST, like over 40 mph, even though I know it’s not “safe”. it’s almost dark, and my only option is to make it to the Paraguay side and hope THEY take pity on me. Hmf. Usually I am luckier than this…

Ain’t gonna happen. I m NOT going to ride this dirt track that keeps turning to sand every once in a while in the DARK, so I start looking for a place to pull off the road. Not an easy place to find: I need somewhere where I can get off the road without leaving a track, get far enough off that no one will see the reflectors on my bike, hard enough that I won’t get stuck in sand, with two trees so I can hand the Hennessey Hammock Edward loaned me just for this “emergency” purpose. I can use it like a tent on the ground *IF i HAVE TO* but since you enter the thing from the bottom, it makes more sense to hang if I can. Besides, even though there are trees it’s desert-like and all I can think of are things that slither and crawl.

Did I mention that I never actually TRIED the camping hammock? Edward showed me how to unpack it once in my barn at home, but that’s the sum total of my experience with the thing.

One horrible night’s sleep in the Chaco, coming right up!

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In order not to repeat myself here, I’ll re-post the link to my Chaco experience I wrote about on RumBum.com

http://rumbum.com/953-a-night-in-the-chaco#continue_post

This tree is called the “palo borracho”, the drunken stick. The engorged trunk is actually a lifesaver for the tree: when the rains come, the tree stores water reserves in the trunk. I’d smile every time I saw one (which was quite often!)

Crappy night’s sleep, but the Chaco is an incredible place. Here are some of the sounds the next morning:

May 3, 2010

Goodbye Rick.

Gosh, I’d had so much fun with him…he was great company–easy to be with, an awesome rider, and an instigator like me and we kept pushing each others’ envelopes. We’d had a great time together, but since we were headed in opposite directions (him North, me South) it was time to say goodbye. A break in traffic outside the hotel and I was off.

Need to make a call?

I had to show all the bike paperwork here for the nice policeman.

Bad piggy!

Pavement ends, back to ripio…

Yeah baby, I forgot to mention my Bolivian luck…Air Hawk found out that I was riding all these miles on a STOCK SEAT, and they sent me a cushion to La Paz. Yeah! salvation for those achey buns!

Wow. Serious landslide.

Uck. rain. Off and On all day. I’m soaked, even though my gear is supposed to be waterproof.

Miserable, I stop in Monteagudo. A strange little town that has all sorts of mining supplies in every little store…also selling lots of alcohol. Why alcohol? (Like the sterilizing kind.) I ask someone, and am told, in case they get cut or want to drink it! Oofa.

My hotel had a girl working that didn’t care too much. I bumped and banged into all the lobby furniture to get the bike inside–she was too busy watching her soap opera to help me.

I’m not happy with this place…there are two people in the hotel an they manage to put us right next to each other. There is no divider at the top of the wall, so I get to listen to my neighbor snore while the TV blares it’s evil noise. Just when I hit the REM sleep, his alarm goes off. WHAT?!? He get up, lights on, get ready and leaves. Phew Thank goodness. I just hit the REM sleep again when he’s BACK, this time with 114 kids and a woman that yells at them constantly…

May 2, 2010

Next day at breakfast, back at joy Ride cafe, we noticed that they also offered tours…MOTORCYCLE tours! Cool! It was Rick’s great idea to hire a tourguide and ride the area without the stress of navigating ourselves.

We hooked up with Sergio, and told him what we wanted: more bike maintenance in the morning (Rick needed to adjust a front-end rattle and also do some electrical work, I needed to clean my air filter, and install a new horn since the one I installed in Lima rattled off!)

Sergio took us to the local shop he uses.

Then we took off with Sergio. Over breakfast we’d decided that we’d ride to the Inca Trail, then follow Sergio on a loop he knew that would give us a good feel for the Sucre area.

Lunch.

Lunchtime entertainment.
They came and asked for food, so we gave them everything we had not eaten including a couple of sandwiches and cookies.

Pretty incredible scenery.

Yup, that’s our road!

Sergio and Rick are really good riders…it was a job for me to keep up.

I could not keep up. On the way back down the mountain we passed the shepherds again. The fellow didn’t seem to notice or to care that he’d already cleaned me out of food. this time he asked for my sunglasses and camera.

Poor Rick…he’s been following Sergio and I for hours. I was tired at this point and didn’t want to be a sissy and turn back, but I needed to go slower. I let Rick go ahead from this point on. Poor guy! (But so darned funny I had to take a pic!)

Sergio took us on some single track, but I was too busy with both hands to take pics.

He’d given us a choice…short route back to Sucre or river crossing. RIVER CROSSING! (Bravery in numbers!!!)

We got lucky and were able to watch a car cross in order to gauge the depth…the river was moving f-a-s-t! My largest and deepest water crossing to date!

Back to Sucre.

Wow. This was the most fun I’d had on m y trip since that day in El Salvador with Mario. I was re-pumped about my trip, excitement overriding the trip weariness I’d been experiencing lately, absolutely in love with my trip again. Thanks Rick and Sergio!!!

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May 1, 2010

It was a cool morning, destination: Sucre. We had about 60 miles of dirt before hitting pavement, and Rick left me in the dust, literally, as he opened it up on the ripio. (He was a good sport, however, and about every 15 minutes I’d find him casually waiting for me).

He got the bleep scared out of him in this S curve–it still makes me laugh. He’s a hell of a rider because I don’t know how he recovered from the raggedy-ann stunt maneuver he pulled.

Ah, pavement.

what the?!?

We got to Sucre and found a place to stay where they’d let us park the bikes inside (literally inside the lobby). Later on a KTM joined our bikes–obviously this hotel knew the drill.

We went to the Joy Ride Cafe for dinner. Where else would you go for dinner?