Words from Ernie, along with a video for entertainment;
Well so far, we are 19,180 kms under our belts and over 23,000 views on the blog site, unreal !!!!
Well it looks like you are stuck with me today as our fearless leader needs a night off from this tireless job . You see Bryan is not only our fearless leader , he is also the one that spends countless hours updating the blog all the time to keep our family , friends and followers ( the 3 f’s ) up to date with our activities and day to day encounters and for that he deserves a huge thank you because when Barry and I head off to bed, Bryan stays up for another hour or two each night to keep you all posted, so Bryan, as much as we tease you, thank you for all your time and efforts on this as we all appreciate it so much. For our family and friends, it allows us to show you what we are seeing and experiencing, and to our followers, adventure riders from around the world, it helps give them some insight as to what they might expect upon their arrival for their big trek. You see, with the blog site, it gives you access to a ton of information such as number of hits, views per visitor, and it also give a whole lot of stats such as where are all the followers coming from and it tells how many from each country etc so quite interesting, and i think we are at 11 different countries so a lot of fellow adventure riders watching too , and so this is where some of my blog comments are headed today
You see, what we show you is all the good stuff from down here, all the beautiful scenery, fabulous tourist things etc so in our photos and video clips, you are more or less seeing the best of the best to give you the highlights, but in reality, there is always the good, the bad and the ugly, and that is where reality sets in. The good is all the beautiful people down here and all the scenery that we show you , the bad part is the 5 % of the drivers down here that should be taken out and shot for how they drive and endanger everyones lives on the road, and trust me, this is a very real as you see all the roadside crosses and wonder why. They have absolutely no regard for passing on double solid lines and on blind corners, they do it all the time and i am talking about buses and semis alike, they are bizarre, and then there is the ugly, and that is all the garbage, filth, poverty and pollution that we see on the back of our bikes as we go to the places that tourists do not go to and that is is really quite bizarre too. For our fellow adventure riders, you need to prepare yourselves for all of this as this is what you will see and experience.
For Bryan, not only does he keep the blog up to date, he is more technical than Barry and i together, so he has uploaded all the maps necessary onto our gps systems for us to navigate around here as mapping down here is incredibly poor to say the least, so because of this, Bryan also has to lead each day when we are on the road and this to, is a tiring task, because there are so many beautiful roads that are loaded with tons of twists and turns, that we love so much, but as the leader, you are the front man, and when oncoming traffic is pulling out to pass on double solid lines and on blind corners, that makes his job even more stressful as he is the guy upfront so he has to deal with these bizarre drivers more so than Barry and i, so at the end of each day, he can be quite tired and for good reason, so again Bryan, thank you so much for what you have done for us and continue to do.
When we speak of garbage, it is absolutely disgusting to the conditions that some of these people live and after Argentina Peru, Chile and Bolivia, we were starting to think that was the way all south america was going to be, and wow did we get a big surprise . When we crossed the borders into Ecuador, it was such a drastic change , that you could see it immediately The people and or government here obviously have a different take on life and have pride in their country, as you will not see a single piece of garbage in this country anywhere, it is absolutely spectacular and clean. what a refreshing change from what we have been seeing.
So today, we crossed the border from Ecuador to Colombia, and let me say to all adventure riders, you can never quite prepare yourself for all of the border crossings down here, they are so far behind in the real world that it is truly is a real test of patience, and man do you need a lot of that. There is no such thing as common sense that applies here !
You can easily spend 2 or more hours at each crossing just getting sent from one person to another and going around in circles and getting no where. As an example , today as we crossed, there is a 1/4 mile gap between buildings and you get to one person and they say you need a stamp over there to proceed so you walk back a 1/4 mile to get that stamp, then they say , no, you need a piece of paper first so you walk back 1/4 mile go to get that, then they say no, you need to pay your reciprocity fee first , so they send you to another place, then they say, you need to get photocopying done, and about here you are ready to loose it on someone. Here is a border crossing,and someone sitting at a desk, telling you that you need to go to find some corner store to get copies made of your license etc to bring back to them,???? They don’t even have a copier at their border crossings to take copies of whatever they need, they send you on a mission to find a copier place !!!! I wont really tell you what we were saying or thinking at this point in time, but lets just say that these border crossings down here are an absolute joke and a real test for patience so you had better adjust to this before coming down here otherwise you wont be getting in and out of any of these countries.
As an example, when we entered Peru, you have to register your bike into each country so they know that you aren’t leaving it behind somehow, so they fill in paperwork accordingly, so when we entered Peru, we had a real winner of a lady taking care of us, who had attitude like you would not believe, well she filled in Barry and Bryan’s paperwork ok, but she screwed mine up so when we went to leave Peru, it showed that my bike was from Columbia not Canada, so the guy tells me i cannot leave Peru until this gets fixed.!!!!!!!!!!!!
Fortunately , he was a very nice guy and went out of his way to help me. It appears that this lady said my bike was from columbia instead of canada or else she forgot to put British Columbia in there, who knows, she was such a classic there was no talking to her, so hard to say why she made that mistake, but anyways after much delay, In the end, this guy finally got thru to someone to correct this mistake for me, otherwise i would still be there . So be prepared for this stuff as it can and will happen !!!! Once we entered columbia, anther great surprise, the cleanliness of this country is very similar to Ecuador, and thepeople are so friendly and helpful they just cannot do enough for you , such a wonderful environment
We are still amazed that everywhere we go, does not matter if for gas, driving in town, just stopping to look at the scenery, how many people come over to talk to us, wave to us on the highway, and all wanting to take constant pictures of us, talk to us, get pictures on our bike, and this has been constant throughout all of south america, absolutely everywhere, I don’t think we could count the number of times that we have had our pictures taken, so different from back home. ironically there are thousands of bikes down here, it is their means of transportation , however they are all small bikes as in 125 ‘ so not big bikes or adventures bikes like ours and I guess that is the mystery to them. The other funny part is that they all permission just to “ take “ a picture, not one of them ever just came up and took a picture like we would do back at home, they are so courteous and respectful,, that they actually ask first!!
Well that is about it for today, Bryan will have lots more to say, so for now, i have to get working on some videos to show you . watch for one called “ road side viewings “ as i am trying to put together a series of a bunch of videos of vehicles that we see gong down the road, you will hardly believe what you will see in this, from Live Llamas in a taxi, live sheep on a roof top, crazy truck loads, wheels and tires just sitting on cars as they drive down the road, peaople sitting in back of open flat deck trailes and trucks, large large trucks, kids on bikes hitchin rides from transports…These linked videos, a sampling of what I managed to capture…
http://youtu.be/9NMIwlRwP5w
Motociclistas Amigos 