South America 2018

It was the beginning of December of 2017, and we were all packed up and ready to go on our next epic trip - South America! The bikes were now out of our hands (see those crates, that's what a master's degree in sculpture gets you), they were flying to Santiago, Chile. Getting ready was exhausting, and we were scared and excited all at the same time!

After we had to spend yet another exhausting day at the airport (walking up and down the half mile road between the warehouse and the customs office for about ten hours), we finally broke free! ......and then Kyle's bike wouldn't start because they had taken most of the gas out of the tank; and then he eventually got gas and we finally broke free for real!!! We we're in South America, you guys, time for the next adventure!

Santiago was surprisingly awesome, we really liked it! It is a cosmopolitan city full of art, trees and parks, cafes and museums and top notch restaurants that are open until 2am, it feels alive, lots going on, with six million (nice, worldly, fashionable, energetic, confident and informed) people, and the best climate ever (think a sunny day in June, full of bird song and gentle breezes). The only objection: Chilean Spanish is impossible - slurred and fast, we didn't understand a word they were saying!

Motorcycle hostel Casa Matte we were staying at was pretty cool, we were meeting other motorcycle travelers of all kinds, with lots of good ideas and information (for example, a Japanese couple greeted us in Slovene and then shared with us their riding experience of Mongolia and Cuba; then there was a biologist who was regularly taking cats for walks in the jungle; and since that bike repair garage has many tools, you even get to meet an occasional local musician with a broken street organ). Soon we would be riding and camping in the cold, but for now, we were happy to be tourists in this pleasant city, home of Pablo Neruda.

We visited Neruda's house, and it was interesting and beautiful, this brilliant poet/diplomat also had impeccable taste; we were walking around (while Stina was holding her naked burnt shoulders most of the time, that mountain sun was strong!) through lively streets, tried some cheap local drink (made out of peach compote and corn and oats - sweet but not bad!), listened to street musicians and watching Santa talk to children on a hot summer day, and then we went to an old school fish market, where the food was cheap, delicious and different (we love seafood, so it was nice to have a good meal and fun to try at least five new things).

Travelling the world, I am meeting many badass women adventure riders...for example, the Japanese lady on the right rode through South America all alone, and the one on the left is travelling the world with her husband and makes him ride off road whenever possible! For more, follow us on Moto Migrants! -Photo by Tsuyoshi Kobayashi.

Santiago, Chile

Next, we visited the coastal town Valparaiso. It was cold, but we really liked it: it is an old port town that looks like a giant architectural sculpture built onto the hillside. Visually, there is a lot going on: hills with houses, the active port with ancient warehouses, big impressive murals, squares... it's a nice mess, a labyrinth of streets exploding with color, long steep stairs and inclines, and streets winding up and down.

For a Unesco heritage site however, it's quite run down - almost everything is falling apart, and we even saw, as soon as we parked the bikes in front of our hostel, a young tourist get her purse snached right in front of us (a good reminder for us to be aware, careful and smart).

Also interesting: Valparaiso has many big stray dogs, and they are sleeping everywhere, all very friendly, happy, dirty and really well-fed.

Our Slovenian friend Jure insisted we meet his knowledgeable amigo José; we spent a pleasant evening talking, drinking and eating, and we were learning about Chile, Valparaiso and Patagonia.

In short: at that point in time, Chile was doing very well, especially considering its intense recent history - they became a socialist country, followed by a dictatorship, and now a democracy.

The seafood was amazing, but the other traditional food was confusing to us: they love avocado in everything, especially as quacamole in their hotdogs (not that good, let's be honest); the pile of french fries, covered with meat and sunny side up eggs was not bad, but if that is a local dish, then half the world eat traditional Chilean food! And then there is "onze" (eleven) - their equivalent of the British 5pm teatime (snacks and brandy included).

We liked it here, and now it was time to head south, to Patagonia!

Wild camp in Chile

After two long days of riding south on the highway, we finally got through the industrial agricultural sector of Chile and into some nice nature.

We stopped at Valdavia for the night, found a nice city camp, and checked out the fish market the next morning. It was an awesome chaos, the place was full of big and small sea lions! They were all over, waiting on fish scraps from the fisherman, and birds were everywhere too, stealing from people who were selling every type of seafood that you could imagine. It was great fun to just hang out there and watch, especially the huge sea lions who were only a few feet away as they nudged themselfs closer to the tables.

Heading south on some smaller roads, we passed some waterfalls and rolling hills, and crossed onto Isla Grande de Chiloe (Big Island of Chile). And now we were officially in Patagonia!

P.S. There was a big landslide, but we are far away from it and perfectly safe.

There are SO many dogs here! Chile is a country of big and fat, nice and free dirty dogs! (They all agree though, that they must run after and bark at our bikes!)

Greetings from a fish market in southern Chile!

250km long, the green and hilly Chiloe is the second biggest island of the continent. It has always been very independent and felt different from the rest of Chile, and so the ancient mythology, belief in ghosts, and whichkratf survived both the coming of the Jezuits and later the modernization.

It's a nice island, and it's funny how it reminded us of the other islands at the ends of the Earth (New Foundland, Alaskan Homer etc.), they all have the same kind of look and feel, they are funky and ecclectic, yet rough and sturdy, with colorful houses cheerfully standing out under the cold grey sky. Well, perhaps it's not that weird, they all have similar challenges - constant strong winds, and cold and dark winters. In climates like that, the way of life is simply to survive.

Still, this is no wild island; the roads are nice, there are lots of cows and sheep and pigs on the rolling hills, and all kinds of birds (from sparrows to pelicans). Two historic sights stand out: palafitos (16th-century houses mounted on stilts along the water in the town of Castro) and the wooden UNESCO-protected Jesuit churches, scattered all over the island.

The best experience however, were the penguins!!! It is amazing to see them up close in nature! And the strangest thing is that it was really easy to get to them: we rode to the beach from the nearby town Ansud, bought the $10 tickets, jumped on the boat, and in the next 40 minutes we got hot, frozen, wet, and super excited while floating around the cliffs upon which the Humboldt and Magellan penguins were doing the funny things penguins do!

Penguins on Chiloe

Due to a major landslide which blocked the Austral highway in Chilean side of Patagonia, we had to change our route and cross the border into Argentina five days earlier than we intended. But that's ok, we were told to zigzag between the two countries to really see Patagonia. For example, we found one of the prettiest wildcamps of all time, a secluded little spot by the cristal clear lake, with the view of three volcanoes. ...So now we were in Argentina, in Bariloche! And it was beautiful!

Argentina

Riding south into Patagonia, the lovely nature with all its purple and yellow blossoms and green hills and snowcapped mountains suddenly dissapeared as we entered the famous Ruta 40, the South American version of Route 66.

Instead, the landscape turned into a windswept, treeless, endless grasslands and desert. The winds were almost too much to bear for Stina - strong, constant, with the scary crazy sudden windgusts that would slide her bike to the wrong side of the road (which is not empty, and there are lots of semi trucks on it as well), and then there was gravel, sand, and it became cold.... All this also means we had to quit camping (insane winds, no wood, the cold...).

Kyle decided that we would spend Christmas in Ushuaia, the southernmost town in the world, so we rode for three days straight, 700km a day on average. It was weird: a town with a gas station every three hours or so (some of them quite big, with population over 100,000 people - with their bitter cold and windy summers, it's hard to imagine what life is like there for the rest the year), and then absolutely nothing but the desert in between, with the endless sky above showing all kinds of weather simultaneously (storms on the left and behind, while sunny on the right).

Our favorite lodging in Patagonia was a camp in a little town of Gubernador Costa: we pitched our tent in a big shed, thrown together as a bbq place, protected from the wind; it was warm, quiet, and a little dog and a cat came to visit as well.

There aren't many other motorcycles on the road (though we did see three bicyclists, how they cope with the powerful icy winds is beyond us), so lots of people, from todlers to truckers, were greeting us with honking, waving or flashing headlights.

We did meet one moto couple on the road, Tiina and Rami from Finland, whom we had first met back in Santiago; they were returning north from Ushuaia, and told us they were skipping the glaciers and penguins down there because they were done with this cold weather! We are all crazy :D!

As hard as it was, there was an upside to Ruta 40: it seems to be the Earth's windiest safari! There is so much interesting wildlife right by the side of the road, we kept stopping with our jaws dropped; herds of deer-looking kind of llamas, eagles and geese and ducks, foxes, and then flamingos, mini ostriches (nandus), and even armadillos!

In short, it's not the smartest and definitely not the most pleasant way to ride down Ruta 40, but it is an amazing trip!

And then, after all that windy flat scrubland, we landed on the island of Tierra del Fuego, and the landscape suprisingly changed into meadows, trees and hills, and dark jagged mountain peaks speckled with snow, rising from the turquoise ocean.

At the end, there was the town of Ushuaia, the world's southermost town and, since it marks the ultimate end of the road, the famous adventurers' destination. Honestly, it's just an average tourist town, but it is really cool to see all those ads for tours to Antarctica, which is only 1,000km away (...but it's also at least $10,000 away, so there is that).

We spent Christmas there, and that was no fun - we missed home and family, and the town was not much into Christmas at all. Our end-of-the- world Christmas was spent skyping with family, doing laundry, resting, and cooking Christmas dinner in a boring little hostel. We did go to Hard Rock Café in the evening (you do what you can...) and ended up having a good time; and at exactly midnight, the blues band stopped playing and all one hundred guests got a glass of champagne.

Next, we had a long freezing windy day of riding gravel roads - we were on our way to see a colony of king penguins. And there they were, one hundred of them, 25m/75ft away, and they were absolutely beautiful. To quote Kyle: "The penguin colony is an ever changing metamorphosis of brilliant black and gold, to watch them just leaves you speachless, we felt so lucky to see such majestic (and big! about 1m/3ft tall!) creatures interacting right in front of us. We took one thousand pictures, and could take one thousand more."

These guys were all dressed up and ready for the upcoming New Year's celebrations!

Returning to the mainland, we met a sharp young Swiss traveler named Jan; we rode independently, but since we got along well and were sharing this part of the route, we kept meeting, shopping together, and sharing the camp bonfires.

Torres del Paine is possibly Chile's most beautiful national park - with terrible weather (the sun is rare but intense, and the weather goes through all four seasons every day), and just the worst roads.

The views however, when the skies are clear, are extraordinary, simply perfect: the steep 2000m-tall `towers' are covered with snow and surrounded by clouds, winds, and fog, floating above an insanely turqoise lake... it's a bit like a pretty Mordor!

And as far as Stina is concerned, the roads might as well lead to Mordor too: all the gravel, and then deep gravel, and dust, potholes, rain, and of course crazy smacks of wind on steep hills, made her suffer and were exhausting her. We decided to camp in the park, so that she could get some rest and because of the unforgettable views from the camp - but ended up being rained on and cold all day and night and even the next morning, with zero view, plus Kyle's rain pants got stolen. The camp was nice though, it provided wind shelters for the tents and we had lots of visitors: all kinds of birds, a fox, and Jan.

We moved on toward touristy town of el Calafate, and the riding remained exhausting: from challenging windy 70km of gravel to even windier highways - it took us 7 hours to do 300km! But at the end of the second day, we are already resting in a warm dry hotel room, awating the año nuevo of 2018.

A Souther Crested Caracara came into our camp. He was interested but didn't take the bait :)

Chile

After a nice rest and a New Year's Eve in El Calafate, we spent two slow and exhausting days riding north through the Argentinian pampa (where the "highway" meant loose gravel, of course); we spent the night at a really nice ranch in the middle of nowhere - in front of our tent was a lush green swamp full of all sorts of birds with babies, and there were flamingos, and horses and sheep, and dogs and cats (but while the sights were nice, we weren't allowed to have fire to warm up and then it also rained, so we were cold).

After yet another hard slow day of gravel, we entered Chile and La Carretera Austral. To get to this famous road, you must of course first go over a mountain pass - and so for five hours, four or more of the following elements accompanied the beautiful views of the mountains and intensely turquoise lake: sharp steep turns, soft gravel, cold rain, wind, mud, cliffs, and traffic. Ruta Austral takes you around the giant General Carrera lake (called Buenos Aires lake in Argentina) and is, for the most part, no better then the previous roads: it's a long, twisty, incredibly bumpy gravel road which was built in the 1970s to connect the remote communities of Southern Chile. Inspite the road and many travelers on it, the occasional small towns remain very secluded - this is the only area where you can't find any fruit or vegetables (south Patagonia, Ushuaia for example, felt way more remote, but they had everything).

Our destination, the marble caves Catedral de Marbol in the lake, was an unforgettable experience and well worth the $15. The giant marble sculptures have smooth walls with yellow and brown veins, and they have been beautifully etched and chiseled by eons of rain from above and turquise lake water from below. It's a fun one-hour tour: the boats take you all around and then also inside of the bigger caves, and you have to pay attention and lay down so you don't smack your head against the low ceilings.

Ruta Austral is an adventurer's dream, the scenery is beautiful: turquoise rivers, snowcapped mountains, untouched green wilderness; with the caves, we took 1,000 pictures in one day. But all this cold, wind, and technical off-road riding was exhausting Stina, so we were really looking forward to a warm windless climate which we should get to in two days!

While we were resting (it was finally warm! And no wind!) and riding the uneventful roads toward Buenos Aires, we figured we'd mention this and that from this trip we hadn't posted about - because sometimes the pictures were no good, or other things were more important, or we forgot.

For example, how most of the Argentinians are crazy about herba mate, their equivalent of coffee or tea; it comes in funky bowls with metal straws, and they carry that around with them, slowly sipping, and occasionally adding hot water. Also, they stay up and eat very late (dinner at 11 isn't uncommon, including small kids and grandpas).

Or how the Patagonian gauchos are the real deal, they still move herds of sheep around and all that; they wear berets (how that helps with all that cold wind is a mystery to us), funny pants and rubber boots, and are usually on a horse and accompanied by eager working shepherd dogs.

Also, who knew, young adult Israelis usually go on a tour through South America after they're done with serving the army for two years. Most of them carry their own pots and pans so they can cook kosher food (can't cook dairy and meat in the same pot!).

Gas is rare, every 250km or so, and the gas stations sometimes run out of gas. We run out once, and had to buy fuel out of a guy's plastic bottle for a lot of money.

And while we are talking bout plastic bottles, there are many to be seen by the side of the road, piled up so that they lead to a little altar. We can't remember the exact story anymore, but the myth goes that a woman was wondering the pampas in Patagonia and died because she had no water. She then became a saint and so now there are little temples all over parts of Patagonia with bottles full of water for travelers.

Falkland Islands are called Malvinas here, and Argentina claims they belong to them and not to the British (there are a lot of signs and maps claiming that, especially on the borders)...but not everybody agrees with the sentiment: some say it's a populist move, and even though the islands definitely are closest to Argentina, they were never really Argentinian.

Perhaps most importantly, we have met some hikers/hitchhikers (hitchhiking is still a legitimate and often used way of traveling in South America), and have nothing but respect for them. It's really hard to travel on a bike or even a bicycle in this harsh environment, but to walk, carry the tent and everything on your back for months, and be at the mercy of a potential ride, that is just crazy. We found them all to be patient, kind, free people, happy about the small stuff (didn't get a ride, went to bed in the freezing winds in the pampa without dinner?...oh well, the stars were beautiful and it didn't rain).

Oh, and for a while there, the road was covered with grasshoppers.

Argentina

Next, it was time for a four-day ride northeast, from Beriloche in Patagonia to Buenos Aires.

On the first day, we rode into the desert, so in just a few hours, we went from freezing winds to 100°F/40°C and into winds that felt like a blow drier! It was an incredibly hot day, and we made it to the camp half boiled to death. Then we cooled off, not only because the lake water was cold, but also because instead of dinner, we got a sand storm, accompanied by one hour of lightning show, and followed by a rain storm; we spent the evening in the tent (thankfully, it didn't fly off into orbit), together with some snacks, a bottle of wine, and a decent amount of sand.

The next day was long and hot as well, and to cool off, we rode through a crazy storm. For a little while, the desert turned into fertile land with fruit farms, and as we sat down to eat lunch under a pear tree, the farmer and his son Romero came by to greet us (hola, Romero! Thank you again for all the plums and pears!). We ended the day in the middle of nowhere and stayed at the pleasant "refugio" for bikers which is called Motovijaheros Ruta 22 and owned by an enthusiastic rider.

On the third incredibly hot day, we rode to the village Villa Epecuén, which had been flooded and abandoned in 1985, because we were told that those half sunken ruins are really pretty. Well, the road to the village is also abandoned, it's really a dirt path turning into a sandbox and a local trash dump; but that didn't stop the government from putting up a fence and charging an entrance fee. So we skipped going in, especially since we were able to see most of it from the road. We camped in a municipal park in a small town of Guamini. It was nice, by the lake, but since it was hot and since we were in Argentina (a big family BBQ at midnight is normal, so is loud music all the time, and even toddlers tend to be up and hang out at 1am), we didn't get much sleep. (And we thought we were night hawks with our 11pm dinners!)

Last day was, yes, long and hot, but we were in Argentina, excited to be on the way to Buenos Aires, and people were nice, and we rode through a giant lake and swamp area where we saw all kinds of pretty birds, from storks and tiny black ducks to spoonbills - intensely pink birds with beaks like spoons!

We were happy that we finally made it to Buenos Aires (Buenos días, Buenos Aires!), but we were very hot and tired, and then we had to wait for our host Esteban to be done with work at 9pm before we could go home to his apartment; and since he said he was making asado (BBQ) for dinner, we wanted to contribute and went and got some salads and desserts.

Dinner turned out to be a small but proper Argentinian party: two cousins showed up at 10:30 in the evening (and just so you know, you greet people here with a handshake and exactly one kiss), and we all went up to the terrace where there was a mini meadow, a mini pool and a huge pile of meat that Esteban then threw onto the coals. While cooking, there was wine (in Argentina, it is usually the red sort called malbec; and by the way, Chilean wine is rare here, there is a tension between the two countries - mostly because during the Falkands war, Chile sided with Great Britain instead with Argentina) with choriso and blood sausage, and then we sat down to dinner, which consisted of only meat, to which only salt was added. If it wasn't for our salads (which nobody but Stina cared about), the only other side dish served would have been two small buns of bread (which nobody touched)! The meat, of course, was incredible, and eaten from a wooden cutting board, and we couldn't believe our luck to be able to be a part of something so private and authentically Argentinian... especially since half way through the night, we found out that the guy who connected us with our host (Ezequiel, an Argentinian rider we had befriended in Alaska) has never even met Esteban (who also rode to Alaska)! They merely have motorcycle friends in common, and still he took us in, how nice is that?!

Kyle needed a visa for Brazil, and Buenos Aires is where you can apply for it, so we stayed for a few days. Even though this city is really big (13 million) and the traffic moves crazy fast, we had a slow restful time in a home, just hanging out, eating and sightseeing.

It's fun to walk around in downtown, the streets are long, alive and framed with pretty 19th-century buildings. The city's symbol 'obelisco' is a must, and so is Casa Rosada on Plaza Del Mayo (it's where Evita Peron, knowing she was going to die of cancer soon, spoke to a million workers from the balcony), then the pretty 18th-century caravan stop Plaza Dorrego in the San Telmo neighborhood (where we found lots of cool antique shops but none of the promised street tango dancers), and our favorite (though touristy) La Boca blue-collar neighborhood.

La Boca is a bit rough, but old and beautiful and colorful, and you really feel like you're in Buenos Aires (and yes, we saw some tango dancers!). Outside of the center, you are supposed to check out the famous beautiful La Recoleta cemetery (where presidents, Nobel prize winners, Evita, and even Napoleon's granddauther are buried) and so we did ...but you're also supposed to check out the murals which are scattered all around, and we mostly failed to do that because public transport was a mess (busses were incredibly slow and the trains did't run), and so we lost a lot of time just trying to get anywhere. It's just a fact, guys: we shouldn't have left our bikes at home - nothing lets you travel and move around faster and more freely than motorcycles!

We went to Cordoba, to see the final stage of Dakar, and we were really lucky, we had an incredible time!

Stina contacted the only Slovenian solo racer Simon Marčič and instead met his PR person, an enthusiastic and knowledgeable journalist/rider Tina Torelli from Slovenia; we just wanted to meet and congratulate Simon, but Tina was beyond nice and got us into the pits (we got the visitor's wrist bands! Kyle might never take his off again!) and showed us around, so we had an amazing oportunity to see all the race action!

We saw over a hundred bikes, quads, trucks, cars etc. coming into the finish for the day and into the pits, after completing 942km of racing in the hot Argentinian desert. We also got to hang out at the factory KTM semi-truck, eat with the crew at the KTM BBQ (all meat, of course, with a bit of bread), and see the mechanics at work, getting the bikes ready for the next day's final race.

The "village" (a settlement that is set up every night at the end of the race's stage by about 3000 people, and then taken down and moved on the next morning) was still very much alive and buzzing at midnight, mechanics working on vehicles and waiting for other racers to get in, journalists writing reports in the media halls, and there were even some people partying. The Yamaha team has lost most of their riders; the Honda team was very secretive (we couldn't see anything); when a Toyota truck or a Peugeot came in, five mechanics per vehicle started working and would work on them all night. Drivers and riders themselves looked exhausted, and a lot of them were also more or less beat up and injured (we saw Andrew Short, the famous former US supercross racer, being helped off the bike, unable to walk by himself - yet he will probably finish the next day's race). Perhaps the biggest heroes, however, are the solo guys like Simon Marčič: they race all day, and after they finish, they are all alone and need to prepare the bike for the next day (it's against the rules to help them), eat, and sleep in a tent.

The Slovenian Simon Marcic was racing all on his own, like today he raced 942km and rolled into the finish at 11:30pm! After which he still needed to work on his bike (oil change, clean air filter and from what we could see, a new front brake line), eat some dinner and then sleep in a tent! Only to do it all tomorrow again for the final day of racing!

On the last day, we wanted to watch the race since the route for the day was close to town, but no such luck: we couldn't figure out where the track was and couldn't find anybody else who knew (the riders themselves only find out about the next phase hours before the start), so we simply went onto the road that led to the finish, parked there and cheered the racers on. When Marčič came, we followed him for the last ten minutes to the pits. It was nice to see everybody exhausted but feeling so happy and accomplished; they had fun honking, doing tire burnouts and cheering at the finish line, and then be silly and party at their pits. Marčič looked tired too, but not fried and in a good mood. We were looking forward to cheering him on and be his Team Slovenia (Kyle even drew posters!) at the parade and podium celebration downtown!

Here is the report of what took place besides Dakar:

Since we were waiting for Kyle's Brasilian visa, we decided to go east and see the end of Dakar Rally in Córdoba. We rode past small towns (stopping in nice colonial San Antonio de Areco) and big flat boring fields; the few camps that we found were ugly yet very expensive (charging per person, per your own tent, and per bike!) and so we ended up camping for free behind a gas station near Rosario. It was a bit dusty and windy in the morning, but the evening sky was full of stars, and so we finally saw the Southern Cross (we felt that it looked more like a kite) and Orion, and it was strange for us from the northern hemisphere to look at the sky that was missing the Big Dipper... We slept like babies.

The next day was gray and rainy, making it difficult to see the town of Rosario - the birthplace of our friend Ezekiel - and of Che Guevara.

You can see the pretty downtown building in which Che was born, but not the apartment because somebody rich lives in it; not sure Che would appreciate that!

Rosario is a nice mix of old, messed up, and new, dirty on the edges but pretty; we were told it wasn't safe to leave the bikes alone, so Stina stayed behind while Kyle went to check out a cool local art gallery.

We then rode to Villa General Belgrano in "German town". A group of Germans settled there in 1930s and since then, the town has somehow lost everything authentic (it's a total tourist trap, and the only Germanish thing we found was a sad strudl in one bakery), and it became the third biggest Oktoberfest location in the world (the second one is in Brasil). But the twisty road through the hills that lead there was really pretty. We then had some time to kill before our hosts in Córdoba got home, so Stina did her yoga practice by the side of the road. :D

Entering Córdoba is not nice, you get all worried and depressed driving through the dirty ugly ghetto; but soon, it becomes and stays really pretty, green, clean and relaxed. Two brothers, Rodrigo and Joachim, took us into their apartment out of pure kindness - Kyle had met Rodrigo late at night on New Year's Eve down in Patagonia and, even though he could barely recall the whole thing, we got invited to stay at their place if we ever made it to Córdoba. How nice is that? Not to mention that the apartment was on a beautiful downtown avenue (so basically we are nobodies who somehow got the backstage passes to Dakar AND a Central Park-type free residence!). And of course, then Rodrigo took us on a tour around town: it's a pretty city, bright and green and vibrant, with nice architecture and lots of art museums, and it is where, at that time, Dakar Rally used to end.

We rode the 700km back to Buenos Aires in one day, and were again welcomed by enthusiastic Esteban (who doesn't seem to realize that he is basically running a free motorcycle hostel - besides us, there were two other biker guests in the house, one from Mexico and one from Uruguay); he just got a new mean machine, he wanted to know which version of the drink Stina preferred: terere (cold) or herba mate (hot), and was of course preparing another asado bbq dinner party that night. We spent the afternoon looking for some cheap tango events (they all seem to cost $50 or more, so we failed, and only saw some people practicing in a pavillion), had a fun last asado night, and then it was time to move on to the other side of the bay - to Uruguay!

Uruguay

We entered south-western Uruguay, and the ride down towards Montevideo was pleasant and uneventful (small towns, green pampa, fields), stopping first in the UNESCO-protected Colonia del Sacramento.

This small yet strategically important town with old cobbled streets and pretty old colonial houses was founded by the Portuguese in 1680, in order to smuggle goods across the Rio de la Plata delta into Buenos Aires. The Spanish then captured it in the mid 18th century, and since then, taxes have been paid by the residents and the town became a popular weekend destination for the Argentines. We thought Colonia was a nice half-day stop, it was fun to walk the ten pretty (and a little messed up) old streets and to see the sunset - but it's all terribly overpriced and 100% touristy.

A little further down the road lies Montevideo. Uruguay's capital is just the right size (1.3 million), it's progressive and liberal (for example, there are lots of gay couples in the streets, and pot is legal - as a foreigner, you can't buy plants or joints, but brownies and shakes are ok, plus it's ok to haggle! ...We wouldn't know any of this for sure, of course, and we were only asking for a friend anyways.), the downtown is falling apart even though it's under UNESCO protection, and it was in its poor areas where tango was born in 1880s. The downtown architecture is a weird mix: instead of repairing the old awesome buildings they just build ugly concrete structures in their place. It almost hurts to look at some of them just sitting there, rotting and falling apart, for example the magnificent old main train station that rivals the fancy old NYC's Grand Central.

Walking around was a lot of fun (by the way, the fact that there are no real supermarkets anywhere in the city - not so fun): Kyle took his broken sandal to the old-school cobbler and had to wait barefoot for them to repair it (they did an amazing job, for cheap), we went to the gaucho museum (who knew that their belts, spurs, knifes etc. were gorgeous to look at), Mercado del Puerto (butcher market with asado restaurants all around - a classic that got too expensive because of all the cruise ships), and found the first real flea market (we wanted each to buy at least 30 things from one stand, no joke).

We also liked our hostel very much: it was owned by two women who had been married for ever but recently decided to move the whole family from South Africa to Uruguay; it was not cheap (no lodging in Montevideo is cheap) but well run, and we got to learn about Africa while eating their oxtail dinner with them.

We planned on spending a whole evening at an authentic tango event ('Milongas" start late and last all night), but we were incredibly lucky instead: the night we came the Carnival started! Montevideans have perhaps the longest carnival of all, it goes on for over 6 weeks, and we got to see the first two nights! It was amazing: tons of people watching (some buy tickets and enjoy the parade seated on tribunes, but you can see it all perfectly well standing on the sidewalk), as an endless row of groups is parading by for hours, everybody wearing elaborate costumes, with most groups consisting of half naked dancers followed by crazy drumming (all those - mostly female - naked twerking butts in the middle of the town don't look like strippers, it's not vulgar at all, it's just their passionate culture, but they do make you feel like a stiff European/Northamerican).

After the parade, we went to Fun Fun Bar to at least see a little bit of tango. We went there because (as per Lonely Planet) "since 1895 this intimate, informal venue has been serving its famous uvita (a sweet wine drink) while hosting tango and other live music on a tiny stage." Which was all true, and we enjoyed the tango music and dance and tannat (local red wine)....until we were made to pay 300 pesos each on the way out for the show. It's not the price which made us mad but the fact that they add that to your bill at the end of the night without ever telling you, a total tourist trap. Oh well, we're over it now. We enjoyed Montevideo!

Brazil

Entering Brazil was the easiest thing in the world: the border took 10 minutes total, and the customs officer even apologized because we had to wait five minutes! And then we were in Brazil!

Flat farmland was boring, but you could also already feel you're in Brazil - it got humid, everything was more intensely green, and the roadkill became interesting (iguanas, armadillos...). Then the swampland began, and the ride turned into something like a free tour in a national park: we were passing miles and miles of pretty meadows, swamps and lakes, in which we saw dozens of interesting birds, big turtles and caimans, and capybaras (which look like giant guinea pigs and are the world's biggest rodents) - so that was an awesome surprise.

Then the road was boring again until Porto Alegre, which had a packed and colorful downtown, and lots of really beautiful and well-preserved neoclassical buildings (with stained glass windows and all) - that were all covered with graffiti.

Our little trip up to Serra Gaúcha to see some recommended canyons ended in our losing a day. The ride up on Ruta Do Sol was fun, but the gravel/sand mountain road to the canyons was way too much for Stina (40km of tennis ball-size rocks, tons of red dust because of heavy tourist traffic, plus the bikes were running badly, probably because of the terrible quality of gas around here). We had to admit defeat, return, and wash ourselves and the bikes.

But the next day was much better: we rode to Serra Do Rastro, a short but spectacular mountain road. The 30km take 45 minutes, and the road is steep (it climbs up to 1.500m/4,800ft), narrow, and ridiculously twisty (we read that "it is one of the most hairpin roads in the world", and in some switchbacks we had to be in first gear!); there is not much time to look around, but there are a lot of stops, and the views of canyons and hills and waterfalls are spectacular.

Next, we were going to the beach for a day (time for the Brazilian cliche #1), and then north towards Rio and the carnival (#2)!

Everybody told us to go to Ilha de Santa Catarina, a popular destination and surfers' paradise, but the first impression was not that good: the town of Florianopolis is the entryway to the island, and it's pretty ugly, with heavy traffic; then we rode up to the northern side of the island (which is supposed to be pretty but only affordable for the rich people), and that too was horrible - completely overdeveloped and with insane traffic (we had to split lanes with cars all the time, which is not fun because our luggage makes us almost as wide as a car!).

By the way, the highway tolls in Brazil are cheap but traffic is terribly congested, plus it stinks due to the bad quality of gasoline and old trucks. Still, it is nice to motorcycles: cars are generally very slow, and the little motos speed-slalom around them, and the cars always kindly move to the side to make room for motos to pass them on the same lane... which is good because lane splitting is the only way to get anywhere around here!

So, we returned down and camped somewhere in the greener and a bit less populated middle of the island, and the next morning we went to the south side where we finally found some of the famous Brazilian beaches. They were lovely and clean and pretty empty, with turqoise waves and sand and gentle breezes... We definitely wanted to spend a few days there soon, but right now we were in a hurry to make it to Rio in time (the problems we have, eh?).

On the way north, we went through the area of 19th-century German settlements. Not much of the authentic culture is left, and nobody speaks German anymore, but there is a lot of old architecture, blond hair, and beer, and it's funny to see old German-style houses under the lush palm trees. Blumenau, now a big city, hosts the world's second largest Oktoberfest; the 'Germantown' stays open all year and is a fun silly touristy stop, plus the strudl was pretty good.

Coribita was our last real stop before Rio; even though two million people live there, it's a pleasant and green city without traffic jams. Our kind host (who found us on Instagram and invited us to their home, just like that! He says that when he and his family travel to faraway places, lots of nice people help them out, so now wants to pay it forward) and his family were taking an amazing care of us, and even organized a little dinner party with some biker friends.

During the carneval, Rio is of course a crazy party town all day everyday; in fact, it's nearly impossible to do anything but party - all the banks and most stores are closed and boarded up (we had to drive to the airport to find an open ATM), and it takes an hour to see or do anything, like buy a little something at the grocery store...but it's totally worth it, even if you're not a party animal, the energy is insane!

Thousands of people, already partying at noon in scorching heat (it was 37 C/98 F yesterday), wearing super light costumes usually consisting of sparkles, tutus, bikinis for women, flipflops, and a funny hat (Kyle was wearing a unicorn hat, but he claimed it was a traffic cone! :D ). It took Stina two days to give into wearing a bikini all the time (I mean, shopping for cucumbers in the old town in a bra?! ...but it sure is pleasant not to wear much in this heat!)

The whole city is dressed up (and it's awesome how gender is completely irrelevant, men are happy to wear all the skirts and angel wings and feathers they can), and random street parties, big and small, happen out of nothing everywhere - all it takes is some musicians, and people and beer sellers start to gather, and before you know it the whole street is singing and dancing!

We were trying to make it through these hot and crazy carnival days - party, be hungover but go sight-seeing and then post a few pictures, repeat; meanwhile, here are some more photos from the unforgettable Sambadrome.

With the crazy carneval out of the way, here is our report on the rest of Rio's sights, which we visited during the four days of partying and which are all much less dramatic in comparison:

First of, coming into the city was super easy and uneventful (we heard many warnings and stories about going into the city on a bike, and were advised to either skip Rio all together or at least get a hotel room in the neighboring town. Turns out that Rio, just like Tegucigalpa or Mexico or whatever notorious place, is just fine). It's a colorful mess, surrounded by bays and beautiful jungle-covered mountains, and it's exciting to spot all the iconic stuff as you ride around: the tall statue of Jesus on Corcovado, the signs for Maracaña stadium, and the Ipanema and Copacabana beaches.

We stayed in the center, in the old party/bohemian/messy neighborhood of Lapa, where carneval was on all the time; we partied there every night but went around town during the day.

Santa Teresa is an old charming hilltop district; after the rich had moved to Ipanema, poorer people and artists moved into the abandoned villas and mansions, making Santa's steep winding streets a popular area again. We especially liked climbing the colorful Escadaria Selarón steps (which Chilean artist Selarón built by using thousands of tiles, donated to him from around the world), and even saw a cute tiny monkey climbing trolley wires!

The other serious sight we visited was the famous statue of Christ the Redeemer (because you are supposed to, plus Kyle wanted to see the views of Rio from above). It is, of course, a terribly touristy and crowded place, and we weren't exactly blown away by it; but it is located on top of the 700m/2,300ft Corcovado mountain in the Tijuca national park, so the ride there was awesome - twisty and steep, fresh and shady roads through the jungle, with nice views of the boiling city below. Then you have to join the crowds and take a van to the statue, and surprisingly, it's not that big! I mean, it IS big (30m/100ft tall, standing on a 8m/26ft pedestal, with the arms stretching 28m/92ft wide), but the reputation makes it much bigger than it really is; it's not jaw-droppingly huge and it's not "towering over Rio"... it's just an impressive and pretty (art deco, from 1920s) big statue that you can notice if you look up. The views from the top are really nice too, you can see most of the city, so Kyle was very happy even though we had to stand in the sun for an hour.

Even though during the carnival there are no events or tours offered, Stina still wanted to go see the world famous Maracaña, the football (meaning soccer, of course) stadium many of her European friends would love to visit. After we took a picture (feeling slighty stupid to pose in front of a closed empty stadium), an Argentinian tour bus arrived, and excited people jumped out and began to take selfies! And then a small group started talking to Kyle because they saw the bike's licence plate, thought he was the coolest guy ever - and ended up taking pictures with him! (In front of Maracanã. about which Kyle didn't know anything and couldn't care less)! :D

We saved the beaches for last, so we could take our time there and get some rest before moving on...but Kyle's bad feeling was correct: the golden days of Copacabana and its neighbor on the other side of the hill, the posher and more windy Ipanema, seem to be over. They were both incredibly packed, full of trash (on and buried into the sand, and of course also in the water), and it stank everywhere. Some of it was probably due to the carneval, but they are the main beaches for a huge city, so it's probably not much better the rest of the year. However, the sand really is white, the turquoise water is very pretty as it spills onto the beach (it's surprisingly cold though, and the waves are too strong on Ipanema to really let you go in and swim), and there are pretty hills around (ignoring the ugly skyline of cheap hotels in the back) - and so it's hard to take a bad picture, or an honest one that would show the chaos and trash, both beaches are extremely photogenic! Either way, it was fun to hum Girl From Ipanema on Ipanema, and Copacabana (At the Copa) on Copacabana, plus this makes it easier for us to leave, because it was time for new places and new adventures!

Next, we went six hours inland, where the road goes from the coast right up into the hills, to visit the old mountain colonial towns Ouro Prêto and Tiradentes.

Ouro Prêto is surprisingly big (pop. 70,000), and even though it feels more like a museum of a town that caters only to tourists, it's actually a real city with its own university (though we never discovered where all those people or university buildings are situated).

It's lovely there: surrounded by pretty hills and mountains, the town is frozen in time (and under UNESCO protection) - most of it was built in the 18th century, and there are no 20th-century buildings. This town was obviously very rich (the surrounding gold mines were the very pragmatic reason for its existence; also, they had African slaves and treated them terribly).

The numerous baroque churches - one for every street or so - are gorgeous (and most of them have carvings and designs by the famous artist Aleijadinho), and it's fun to compare the elaborate little balconies on the houses along the plazas and cobbled streets....but the walk is quite a workout, the streets are incredibly steep and the cobblestone has never been updated (it is stretched, lifted in the middle and sinking on the side of the road, with big holes and cracks). Oh yes, and we finally found a good place to try one of the rare Brazilian specialties: feijoada, the black bean and sausage soup served with rice - it was delicious.

Tiradentes is to Ouro Prêto what Verona is to Florence: much smaller, warmer, less majestic but cuter. ...Honestly, it's all about restaurants and shopping in Tiradentes, but the cobbled streets (which are flat, yeey) are colorful and charming.

The ride back to the coast consisted of two parts: the first five hours were great, the fun twisty roads taking us past beautiful nature and pretty farms, across the many rolling hills and even some mountaintops - but then the rain began. Well, the downpour began: it felt like for two hours, buckets of water were being poured onto our heads and streams were flowing across the road as we were trying to make our way down the (probably otherwise amazing) twisty road that leads through the rainforest onto the coast, dropping an insane 3,100m in 14km. Even our mirrors were foggy, and those 14km took us 40 minutes! We were writing this already in a hostel, dry and content, but we were not sure just how much of the famous Brazilian beach life we would actually get to enjoy: rain was in the forecast, and we weren't able to wait forever for the weather to change its mind!

Paraty is yet another gorgeous colonial town, except this one is also right on the beach (probably the reason why all of the sudden, there were young British tourists everwhere), and surrounded by jungle! We couldn't enjoy that beach though, there were constant downpours, and the water (and the whole town) was muddy. But it was a nice colorful walk - with the cobblestones so messed up that it was actually hard to walk -, a good rest, and we had an amazing seafood stew for our anniversary dinner from a little fish hut on the beach. :)

We were riding south to find a sunnier place, and after two days (and after Stina having been eaten alive by mosquitoes plus bitten by a nasty spider...did we mention the jungle is right behind the beaches?), we landed in a sleepy and fairly sunny town with a nice beach... and the rest is history. We had a day and a half of a perfect beach vacation: The sand was white, the water was clear turqoise with fun little waves, the Caipirinha was a well-made cheap local drink, and nobody spoke anything but Portuguese. Perfeição.

P.S. Three things:

Did you know that Brazilians are crazy about buffets? There are "food per kilo self service" places everywhere - they let you in through a subway-like gate, give you a ticket, weigh the food you have gathered, and let you out after you pay.

Considering there were big and dirty, yet well-fed and happy stray/owned-but-free dogs everywhere in South America, why weren't there any in Rio? That's kind of creepy if you remember that Rio hosted the Olympic Games in 2016...

And did you know that in the whole giant country of Brazil, which has really high cosmetics sales, you cannot find a decorative cosmetics store to buy, say, a mascara? There was only one tiny place in a posh mall in Rio, and even they only had some weird local label (which was useless to Stina, since their mascara wasn't waterproof). Turns out that in Brazil, women are used to buying their cosmetics the old way, from door-to-door companies, which means Avon is big, but L'Oreal remains tiny, and as a tourist, it's hard to find anything (we finally had success in a mall in the middle of nowhere, Stina was quite happy about that!).

We said goodbye to those Atlantic beaches and started returning to the west coast. Our first destination were the famous Iguazu Falls, and on the way there we discovered awesome new friends and also an ugly example of Brazilian corruption: over 500km of the highway (which is also the only road) was sold to a private company, and they were now charging a lot of money for a bad highway - mostly one lane, slows down in towns, with hundreds of old stinky heavy slow trucks (that are actually dangerous, because they make other drivers lose their minds and recklessly pass them any way they can).

Sometimes, you have to drop your attitude and become an average tourist, in order to see some epic sights - and Iguazu Falls are pretty epic. They are the largest waterfall system in the world, spanning almost 3km wide along the Argentinian/Brazilian border. Over 200 falls (60-82m/200-270ft tall) and especially the main one, Devil's Throat, through which half of the entire water's flow falls, create an unforgettable sight and would be a 100% perfect experience, if you didn't have to go through all kinds of trouble to see them (remote location, expensive roads and tickets, two separate crowded slow tours in two countries, and a border crossing). Most people prefer the Argentinian side because you see the falls up close (and it's true, the trails are easy but fun), but we liked the Brazilian side better: you can walk really close to and even over giant waterfalls, plus you get to see them from afar, the entire overview.

Oh, and the climate is already very tropical here, and dealing with it gets tiresome (bugs and mosquitoes, heat and humidity, sticky red dirt painting all your stuff pink, intense storms that last for hours...) - but then we remembered the Siberian winter our European friends were enduring at the time, and so we jumped into a pool and shut up.

Argentina

They all told us that there was nothing to see in Paraguay; in addition, our host in Asencion (the capital) warned us that the mosquitos carried yellow fever. Still, it was on our way, and we always want to see as much as we can with our own eyes, so we wanted to check it out.

But as we came to the border we got a bad feeling, it looked like we were entering one of the sadder central American countries (dirty chaos, long lines, endless amount of parked old trucks...) . And then, at customs, we found out that Kyle can't enter unless he pays - just like all other Canadians and Americans - $150 entry visa fee. You're stewpid Paraguay, this is why so many people skip you! We turned right around and went west through Argentina. Bye bye Paraguay!

An asado view from the road: Argentinians are the kings of bbq, they make Texas look lame! Everyone has a proper bbq at home, even on the 14th floor of an apartment! These are the backs of cow (and one pig), cut in the most traditional way for a proper asado; and it tastes amazing, especially considering they only add salt. ...But it's also terrible because we all know how bad cows are for the environment, plus there are always trucks full of cows going you-know-where on the road!

On our way west we rode through northern Argentina, and stopped at its capital, Salta. The Salteños look different, more indigenous, you can tell the Andes are close.

Also, at their High Mountain museum, they are exhibiting three perfectly preserved bodies of the sacrificed Inka children. They are beautiful, but seeing them felt a bit disturbing, they are dead children plus we found out they were buried drunk yet alive.

The town was just ok, but we still really liked it - the ethnic culture is strong there, from well-made leather purses and llama figurines and colorful ponchos, to gauchos (cowboys) chewing those coca leaves with their morning paper and coffee.

Our favorite were the peñas - genuine folkore concerts and dances which seem to be the mix of the indigenous and Spanish heritages (especially the men all look incredibly cool, like Zorros designed by Tarantino) and which take place at the big old restaurants most nights of the week. Hard to say which is better, music or dancing; either way, an evening at peña with malbec wine and empanadas (they of course also serve llama empanadas) is a perfect evening and pretty much why we travel.

Then we turned north towards the Chilean Atacama desert, and the landscape changed dramatically - we were definitely entering the Andes. The intensely red rock paints the mountains, rivers and dusty adobe towns into all shades of pink and orange; old ladies with wide hats and ponchos carry bundles of wood on their backs; and there are goat sheperds, llamas and giant cactuses everywhere.

The road took us up over a pass that was 4.170m (13,700ft) above sea level (the icy fog was so thick we couldn't see 10m in front of us), then across our first saltflats, and now we will spend the night in a settlement at 3.625m (11,900ft). It was a really fun and adventurous day...but everything, even taking off our gear, or walking to the nearby bar and typing this feels exhausting up here!

Riding west through northern Argentina, we spent an evening at a peña, a folklore event full of brilliant music and dance. We might have to move here!

Chile

For Kyle's birthday, we rode to Atacama desert in northern Chile, and we're really glad that he decided we should go: the desert is gorgeous and out of this world, plus we found a pleasant camp near both the beautiful Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon) and the touristy dusty little town of San Pedro de Atacama; and at that camp, we had really fun company (mostly that meant Jan from Switzerland whom we'd met in Patagonia, and a young couple from Lyon, France). So we stayed a while, exploring the sights under the amazing chain of tall volcanoes during hot days, partying (we actually had a double birthday party!) and gazing at the starry cold sky at night.

Atacama desert is high up there (2,5km/8,000ft above the sea level) on the Pacific coast; it's next to the even higher Andes, and covers 1000km2/600mi; it is the driest nonpolar desert in the world and probably also the oldest - in some parts, it hasn't rained for 200 million years. Atacama has many, many beautiful sights (though of course, this is Chile, and the popular sights like salt lake in which you can float like in the Dead Sea, or visiting the geysers, are quite expensive). There are sand dunes and red-gold lunar landscapes in Valle de la Luna, then saltflats, rock formations, snowcapped and active volcanoes, lagunas with flamingoes, and on and on. Inspite of all those high mountains and volcanoes surrounding the desert, there are no glaciers (the air is just too dry) and only the peaks reaching 7km/22,000ft get some snow.

The high altitude and extremely dry air made it hard for us (constantly out of breath, tired, and with cracked lips and bloody nostrils), but it also means that there is never a cloud in the sky, so the Milky Way is bright and thick with huge stars that look like they're going to fall on your head every night (and of course, astronomical observation in Atacama is among the best in the world).

We never grew tired of staring at those mighty volcanoes...the nature here is so pure and majestic, you just want to stay. So, if you ever have the chance to go, we say definitely don't miss it!

40hp performance by Kyle, content created by Jan

Argentina

We have to post about Paso de Jama, our ride over the towering mountains to Atacama and then back again, separately from the Atacama adventure, because the crossing was crazy and unforgettable and we have tons of pictures!

Paso de Jama is a montain pass through the Andes between Chile and Argentina; the beginning and end are both already at 2.500m/8,000ft, but in between, the road rizes up to crazy elevations: the border itself is at 4.200m/13,800ft, and on the Chilean side, the elevation reaches 4.810m/15,800ft.

First, you have to wind your way straight up through a million switchbacks - this ride takes an hour, but you end up 2km higher than at the beginning (on the way to Atacama, this part was really hard, thick fog and heavy rains didn't let us see five meters ahead on that steep twisty road - but on the way back, the views of red rock canyons were beautiful).

Then we reached our first saltflats, and then spent the night at the only settlement, the dusty little adobe town of Susques, situated at the elevation of almost 4km/13,000ft. Susques offers the altitude-sick tourists only basic stuff and very cold and expensive rooms, so we made sure we didn't have to spend the night there on the way back (you can't really sleep well at 4km, you're sick and stupid and slow and uncomfortable and you keep waking up).

After that, you get to stay weak and sick, because you ride over 4km/13,000ft above the sea level for 150km/90mi - but the landscape is mindblowing! Volcanoes (some smoking, some snowcapped), flamingoes and foxes, and llamas wading through the water way down below (we love llamas, but they are not the smartest and tend to jump in front of your bike all the time), green lagunas under red sandy mountains, Mars-like rocky mountain peaks, and endless views, and even a family of three on a small bike (the baby was wrapped in blankets and strapped onto mama's back)...it is an epic desert on top of the world! Still, we were more than happy when we descended into San Pedro de Atacama (on this side, the ride down is less dramatic, but you do go down 2km in 20 minutes), away from the snowy weather and the total lack of oxygen (it took everything from Stina to make that one jump on Mars at over 4500m/15,000ft!) and joined the civilization at a cozy French bakery, where Jan was already waiting with good coffee and croissants. :)

Well, Chile, Argentina and Brazil, it's been amazing, but it was time for us to finally go to South America - Bolivia is next!

Bolivia

We headed north, past little adobe Argentinian towns, green river valleys and red mountains, farmers with big hats and donkeys, and (after waiting for hours due to a taxi street blocade) crossed into Bolivia.

...and just like that, we entered a completely different world! The majority of people are indigenous, and a lot of them still wear remarcable ancient outfits (especially women with their funky hats, two long black braids, wide stiff skirts, colorful pouches on their backs in which they carry babies or their belongings, and woolen fabrics warming their calves and shoulders). Their cities are pretty modern (though in some ways, years behind - CDs and flip phones are sold big time, internet cafés are packed, stray dogs are everywhere, and supermarkets are hard to find because everything is mostly sold at the colorful mercado and in the streets).

Mountain villages, on the other hand, are hundreds of years behind: many farmers still live traditional lives in mud brick houses, without water, electricity or heat, working in their fields or sitting in the meadows with their sheep, goats, llamas and donkeys, chewing coca leaves and drinking chicha de mani (sweet peanut drink), and occasionaly going into towns to sell the simple stuff they grew or made.

Our first stop were the world's biggest (11,000km2!) salt flats, Salar de Uyuni, created after the prehistoric lake high up in the Andes went dry. We weren't lucky - the rain season wasn't over yet and so the flats were still covered with up to 1m/3ft of water, and so we couldn't go in.

After a quick stop at the Train Graveyard in Uyuni (a railway was built in the late 19th century to modernize the area, but the indigenous people hated it and sabotaged it constantly, and so the railway and the trains were abandoned after the local mines closed in 1940s), we rode to Potosí, which was beautiful (endless views, nice twisty roads with no traffic), though it has to be said: animals were trying to kill us (we had four llamas and a donkey jump onto the road in front of us), most Bolivians are terrible (clueless yet agressive) drivers, and all the buses and trucks use awful diesel and puke out huge nasty black clouds of sooth and smoke so that you can't breathe and must pass them.

Colonial towns are usually beautiful, but built on misery and extortion - and Potosí, which at 4000m is the highest bigger town in the world (we were out of breath all the time), is one of the worst examples of that: the elaborate colonial architecture, pretty wooden balconies, old rich convents and churches... but between 1545 and 1825, around 8 million indigenous people and African slaves died working for Spaniards in the rich silver mines! Today, there is no more silver and this once very wealthy town is not doing so well; lead and tin are still extracted by miners and their working conditions are not much better than in the past (you can actually go on a depressing tour through the mines to see their misery; for example, 15-year-olds work 12-hour shifts pushing heavy carts full of rocks through small dark hot underground corridors for $20 per day). Still, it's a lively colorful town, and for some reason, it's packed full of little lawyer's offices which are open late - perhaps it's because Bolivian men are notorios for their big macho egos, they get insulted all the time...so maybe they sue each other all the time as well? We have no idea.

Next, we rode off to Sucre: Stina had a flat tire, but Jan and Kyle fixed that quickly, and the ride was nice - twisty road through the mountains, this time thankfully taking us down to under 3000m.

Our next stop was the capital of Bolivia, Sucre (pop. 260,000): we were looking forward to some neatness and civilization, and it didn't dissapoint. Sucre is a pretty and clean, progressive university city (but no government here, that's in La Paz), all white and colonial and under UNESCO protection, with a friendly vibe and lots going on, plus it's very cheap.

It's nice to just walk around, but there are a lot of worthy sights and museums, and so we chose to visit Santa Clara, which is both a convent for nuns (funded in 1639) and a museum of religious art; the murals, sculptures, paintings, and Jesuit library with decorated trunks were all nice, plus we were the only guests so the curator was very enthusiastic - she even opened the 17th-century organ pipe for us, and then played the 19th-century street organ.

Honestly though, this time our timing was lucky (third weekend of March), so Sucre pales in comparison to the nearby festival we had a chance to visit - Gran Pujllay de Tarabuco (Tarabuco is an indeginous mountain village, and Pujllay means carnival in Quechua language):

Each year, Tarabuco hosts an event that is a mix of Christian carnival, celebration of the 1816 battle which they won over the Spaniards and thus liberated Tarabuco (you can see the Spanish helmets and spurs in the ritual costumes and dances), and of worshiping Pachamama (Andean deity, Mother Earth) because it's the end of the rain season and harvest time.

Basically, it's a loud and colorful party with lots of llama dishes and peanut drinks and homemade liquor, and with a parade in which indigenous communities from near and far display and celebrate their specific costumes, dances and (surprisingly high-pitched) songs. Besides the people, who for a change looked trully happy, two things stood out:

One was a statue in the town square of a man pulling out the heart of a Spaniard and eating it to show his strenght; the other was "pukara", a very tall tower built out of fruit, vegetables, bread and flour, bags of coca leaves, whole cows and pigs, and even store-bought canned food - to thank Pachamama and to ensure that land is fertile for the next harvest.

What can we say; we thought we stepped into a Nat Geo documentary! It was genuine, colorful, crazy, with authentic people, culture and food...this is why we travel!

Traveling towards Peru, the outfits changed: the hats got taller, the skirts longer, the wool layers thicker; but even way up there, there old stone villages, and some even had soccer fields nearby. Constantly a little sick from the altitude, we were driving on, through sad little mountain towns that were muddy/dusty, full of trash and stray dogs, where the latest (well, probably permanent) fashion was mid-length multi-layered skirts (so that all the women looked like they had giant butts), sleeping in cheap hotels with no heat, and haggling for gas prices (Bolivians pay three times less for gasoline than foreigners - that is, if you don't succeed to bribe the gas station attendant).

Bolivia is a confusing country: they don't have the sea but maintain their navy, they have two flags and are fighting about it, and their capital is Sucre, yet de facto capital (with government) is La Paz.

Entering La Paz (pop. 1,6 mil., elevation 3.660m/12,000ft) was at first crazy (dirty, dusty, scary looking, with traffic and smog and dead dogs), and then it became really really steep with different kind of crazy (market life spilling onto the steep roads and streets, with roads packed full with people, slow honking vehicles and stuff for sale). Compared to that, the center was surprisingly calm and clean, with some pretty old churches and cute little Calle Jaen, the oldest colonial street...while everybody still selling everything to everybody everywhere.

There are issues in this city (for example, half of recommended bars, clubs, peñas, and museums are now suddenly out of business), but our favorite were two things: Mercado de Hechicería (Witch Market) where all things shaman and remedies of all kinds are sold: from herbs and coca products to charms like little stones and misterious yet pretty statues, and then there are yatiris (witch doctors who offer fortune telling to the locals)... and then there are llama fetuses, from tiny to almost completely developed, just hanging there in stores and kiosks!!! Not a pretty sight! They are "extracted" from dead females, so that they can be burried under the foundations of one's house as a sacrifice to Pachamama (Mother Earth). Kyle wanted to buy one, but thankfully, they're expensive so he didn't.

The other thing we really liked was Mi Teleférico ("My Cable Car") or "subway in the sky" - the first urban transit cable car network in the world. It was so much fun riding it - the views are amazing, steep hills covered with buildings reaching 4000m/13,000ft (to which cable car can now take you safely and almost for free, instead of 90 minutes of exhausting driving; also, the buildings look like Kyle's old sculptures, but that's another story) and then in the back, huge snowcapped mountains...it sort of feels like you're sightseeing in a hot air ballon! It's really well done (by Austrians), and there are over 10km/6mi of lines. There will be over 33km when they're done; and of course, this is Bolivia, so the cable car maps were already showing the lines and stations that didn't even exist yet - we were walking around all confused for a while, looking for lines they said were there but weren't.

Oh, also, we happened to be in town on March 23, and we were soon explained that this is when Bolivians celebrate Día Del Mar - Day Of The Sea. So, Bolivia lost the War of the Pacific (1879-1884) to Chile and with that, the access to the sea. They have never reconciled with the loss - they teach/brainwash their children about how that sea belongs to them, they maintain their Naval Force (seriously: they do not have access to sea but do have a navy!), and at the time, they were suing Chile in International Court of Justice in The Hague (they knew they didn't stand a chance, and they knew they would lose a war with the powerful Chile so nobody was seriously considering that they could win, but still, worth a shot they said, maybe Chile would have to do the right thing if UN told them to). Anyways, on Day Of The Sea, there are celebrations and parades, and little boys wear old-school white marine hats.

La Paz is nice, fun and exhausting, all in one. Will let you know how leaving it tomorrow morning will go - those steep streets look mighty challenging to Stina!

The Death Road or World's Most Dangerous Road (WMDR) is a road that used to be (until 2007) the only connection between La Paz and Coroico. It's 64km long, descending from 4.700m/15,300ft to 1.200m/3,900ft altitude. Its title is well deserved: it's a narrow gravel road with almost no safety barriers to protect drivers from dropping down 600m - and so on average, 26 vehicles/over one hundred people a year dissapeared over the edge (there are enough crosses along the road to remind you of that), the most famous among them the camion that fell over in 1983, killing one hundred passengers. Now WMDR is replaced by a new safe highway, but it is still used by locals and adventurers (who have to pay a fee to enter), and it is still dangerous (15 cyclist have died so far going downhill too fast).

Stina liked it: wonderful views (and Jan took mindblowing pictures with his drone!), it's fun to ride under waterfalls, there is a sense of adventure, plus you get to brag that you're the Death Road survivor...even though it really doesn't feel dangerous (unless you're reckless or have vertigo); but Kyle's the one who really wanted to do it, so he should talk: "It's an adventure rider's dream! An awesome single-lane gravel road cut into the side of the mountain, with amazing views and sense of adventure! On this road, you need to keep left (so you're visible to the traffic coming uphill), which means you're constantly riding next to sheer cliffs with a 600m drop, with no guard rail. Plus, it's got charisma, just like Route 66... It had been on my bucket list for a long time, and it was great to do it. We started at 4000m in thick cold mountain fog, but soon we dropped into hot and humid sunny rainforest, and rode through waterfalls and little streams, surrounded by amazing views of mountains covered with grass and more waterfalls, and deep valleys smothered with dense jungle...just a lot of green, the total opposite from cold dry La Paz high up in the mountains an hour earlier."

It was really pleasant to have a short break and spend two nights in the little rainforest town of Coroico, the main road into which is a still solid ancient Inka road; no altitude issues (we even did a workout!), tropical flowers and warm weather (with crazy downpours - it is still the rain season), swinging in hammocks with amazing views of nearby jungle and faraway snowcapped mountains, of canyons, little settlements and coffee plantations...

The famous lake Titicaca lies between Bolivia and Peru; it's high up there in the mountains (at 3.808m/ 12,050ft), it's very big (8.400km2/5,200mi2), and it's where the Inca believed was the birth of their civilization.

The ride to and around the lake was just beautiful: you can see the clear dark blue lake and its islands, the pretty little villages, and in the distance the magnificent sharp glacier-capped peaks of Cordillera Real (and you know they're high because they look high - even though you're looking at them at almost 4.000m/over 12,000ft!).

It is recommended that you do a trip from Copacabana (the town by the lake, not the beach in Rio) to the nearby Isla del Sol, and we were smart and did our own tour. Instead of taking a tour with a boring two-hour ride on a boat, we rode our bikes along the lake to the fisherman settlement only 20 min away from the island....it was cheaper, faster, and much more fun - the villages we rode through looked ancient and very pretty with their mudbrick houses, donkeys and sheep, and fields and flowers along the lake.

Isla del Sol is a large island with several traditional communities, lots of restaurants and hostels, some precolumbian ruins, and of course nice views. It used to be called Titi Khar'ka (Rock of the Puma; the lake obviously got its name from it) and the Inka believed that the sun was born there. It's nice, but we weren't blown away by it: first of, we were only able to see the southern part because they were having a fight with the people in the north at the moment; also, there is not much to really do or see - the two ruins are unmarked and look abandoned, all the village does is cater to tourists (absolutely nothing is free, even three-year-olds are trying to get you to take their picture for money), and the hikes are nice but uneventful, plus, they charge a fee for every little hike (and hike you must, there are no vehicles on the island, and it's not easy because of the altitude and sun. By the way, we avoided paying by leaving the trails ;) ).

So that's it for Bolivia! What can we say, a lot of it was great, some of it was bad... There were endless beautiful views on wonderful roads through the mountains; every day felt like an adventure ride; there was lots of garbage in that pristine nature - not as much as in most Central America, but still a lot; the black smog from the many buses and trucks was unbearable, and most cities' suburbs look and smell like entrances to hell; the countryside way up in the mountains was awesome - ancient lifestyle, traditional farms and outfits; everything was cheap; the people didn't seem kind, or even nice - just pragmatic, even with their kids, they were not nice to animals, and they saw us as money on two legs (well, wheels), trying to squeeze every penny they could out of us (the borders are especially famous that way, they make up fees all the time and put the money in their pockets).

Life is hard in Bolivia, and nobody seems happy; so yes, it was awesome, but exhausting and it left a bitter aftertaste....and so it was nice to be done with it! Entering Peru, everything looked similar, but already at the customs there were clear rules, chairs and toilets, and smiles!!!

Riding to Cusco was boring at first (Titicaca on Peruvian side is all industrial agriculture, and there is a lot of trash), but then the views became beautiful again as we rode through the mountains.

Cusco is a city in Peruvian Andes (at 3.300m/11,000ft) with half a million people. It's very special: it is not only the continent's oldest continuously inhabited city, but it was once also the capital of the Inca Empire. Now, it is known for its archeological remains and Spanish colonial architecture - the whole old town is a beautiful living archeological museum. Massive walls built by the Inka line steep narrow cobblestone streets and plazas, and they are the solid base for the beautiful colonial buildings; walking around, looking at gorgeous colonial buildings with carved balconies built upon the majestic dark Inka walls...you just never get tired of that.

The Inca founded the city in 12th century, in the shape of a puma, believing the place was the navel of the earth. Spanish conquistador Pizzaro marched on Cusco in 1533, and eventually, after many battles, the city was settled by the Spanish. For centuries, it remained a quiet colonial town - until in 1911, Machu Pichu was discovered nearby. These days, the descendants of the Inkas and conquistadors of the (pretty and big) old center are mostly catering to endless crowds of tourists (which isn't all bad: there are museums, good stores, street food and bars that are open late, and that isn't necessarily the case elsewhere).

Two places really stand out: Plaza de Armas, which was the heart of the Inca capital and is now the central square in the old city; it's a giant square full of ladies in traditional ware, carrying lambs or baby alpacas (trying to poze in front of cameras for money), and surrounded by colonial buildings with arcades, carved wooden balconies and Incan wall ruins.

The other is Qurikancha (Incan Temple of the Sun)/ Santo Domingo (baroque church and convent): here, the colonial convent was built on top of the Inca ruins (i.e. on top of what was once the richest temple in the Inca Empire; all that remains today is the masterful stonework).

It was really pleasant and restful in Cusco (though the rooms in hostels are as cold as in Bolivia: there is no heat and it was absolutely freezing at night now in the early fall, and all you get are alpaca blankets...how they make it through the winter is beyond us!), and Kyle even ordered the traditional roasted Guinea pig, but it's time to go again - next morning, we were heading toward what may be the most famous South American sight: Machu Pichu!

P.S. We forgot to add two pictures to the Cusco post: One is our new buddy Richard from South Africa who is trying to keep warm under an alpaca blanket (the only heating device in most Bolivia and Peru); the other one is....Well, the horrible traditional meal we shared (note the little teeth)!

We did it, we went to Machu Picchu! However, it turned out that to us, the ride there (and back to Cusco) was probably more exciting that the goal itself, and it was definitely one of our best rides in South America!

As soon as we left the city, the ladies' head covers changed: some wore cute flat little red hats, and others looked a bit like the Pilgrims, proudly sporting their stiff and very tall white hats. :)

Riding north through the Sacred Valley of the Rio Urubamba was amazing: first we went through little Andean villages with Inca sites (like the ancient cobblestoned Inca village of Ollantaytambo with a massive fortress and a temple above), then the winding road took us over the magnificent dark green mountains, which was followed by a winding dirt "death road" along a steep canyon that took us, completely unexpectedly, down into the hot weather and jungle.

But then the fun was over: there are no roads leading to Machu Picchu (the only way is to take the train from Cusco to Aquas Calientes which cost the incredible $120, or join the poor crowds and walk along the traintracks), so at the end of the long day, we had to park our bikes at the camp of Hydroelectra, and walk on loose gravel in the dark for 10 km. We made it there exhausted at 9pm, and didn't like the town one bit: Aquas Calientes is situated below Machu Picchu (it's actually an island, surrounded by two rushing rivers) and it caters to one-time tourists who have to take what they get, which means that there is nothing beautiful there and that the service is bad and expensive.

Of course, Machu Picchu is even more expensive: the bus that takes you there costs $12 one way (or you can hike up, but that's no fun because seeing Machu Picchu means to hike for hours as well), the entrance ticket costs $42, even toilets cost money, there are no explanations offered and guides cost money (about $40 for two people), and if you want to climb above it to Huayna Picchu mountain for better views, you will pay another $75.

Machu Picchu is a15th-century citadel built on a mountain range at 2.400m/8,000ft, above the Sacred Valley through which the Urubamba river flows. The location is perfect (the climate is fresh but still warm, the land is fertile and there is water and building materials, it's both safe and close to gods, etc.) and though nobody knows, it is believed that Machu Picchu was constructed as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti. The place was only inhabited for a hundred years - it was abandoned at the time of Spanish conquest, even though the Spanish knew nothing of its existence, and then it got "discovered" in 1911 by an American historian.

The citadel with its terraces (which were used as fields) is well adapted to the terrain and consists of about 200 buildings: temples and altars are above (we recognized the round walls of Temple of the Sun, and Intihuatana stone which was the altar that pointed to the sun during winter solstice and thus 'held the sun in place'), and warehouses and houses with a public square are situated below (the skeletons found there were not only of heavy-duty workers, llamas and alpacas, but also of Guinea pigs...so obviously they have been a delicacy in Peru for centuries).

As for us, we liked it, but were not blown away: we both feel that Machu Picchu is special because of its location (it is on top of a remote mountain, overlooking other magnificent mountauns and a canyon with a raging river below...and it is trully an amazing view), but as far as architecture itself, the Mayan ruins we had seen in Central America are much more impressive (and cheaper). Then again, Kyle really liked the sacred temple because it looks like a giant sculpture, and Machu Picchu is of course world famous & high on the bucket list of most tourists and travelers, plus the ride there was awesome; so maybe we should just get over the money we spent and tourist crap we endured and be grateful that we got to visit South America's most famous sight!

We left Cusco and headed west towards the Peruvian coast; after two days in the mountains, our arms hurt from endless sharp twists and turns! The scenery was boring at first and it was cold, but soon it all became pretty again and then, after we descended into a canyon, also really hot! We got to enjoy the summer temperatures for a bit, because we had to spend the night there due to a small landslide which closed the road for the afternoon. ...But of course, the following day we were again riding above 4000m, surrounded by the quiet, cold and barren nature and its tough creatures - llamas, alpacas and flamingoes.

And then, just like that, the Andes were over: instead, we saw the desert below, then within minutes descended the mountains in which we practically lived for weeks, and landed in hot, dry, sandy lowlands.

We spent the night in the town of Nazca, really excited about seeing the ancient Nazca Lines the next day; and though they turned out to be much less majestic and gigantic than we imagined (which also means we're glad we decided not to take the flying tour to see them from the sky, which at $80 per person was probably reasonably priced, but those planes are in a notoriously bad shape - 13 people died in 2010 alone!), they didn't dissapoint.

Nobody really knows for sure why (a calendar? Ritual walkways?) and by whom the Nazca Lines were drawn (probably first, beginning around 500BC, by the not-so-local Paracas people, and then later and until around 600AD, and using a completely different style, by the local Nazca people), but it is agreed that they were all made by removing sun-darkened stones from the desert to expose the lighter soil below.

It's beautiful land art, simple yet elegant with its foot-wide shallow lines, creating images in the rock desert. It's also good to see that Peruvians are proud of the lines and really work on preserving them, but this is obviously a recent development: one of the drawings, the Lizzard, is cut in half by the highway, and the whole desert, even right next to the lines, is a giant horrible trash dump!

You can't see all the images from the simple towers elevated by the road (you have to pay to climb up, but it's very cheap), but we saw enough; also, we hadn't known that there were two different schools and ages of the drawings, and we ended up preferring the lesser known and older Paracas lines: they are funky and naive hillside presentations of old stoned shamans (the curator stated the depicted shamans were high on 'San Pedro cactus', this is why their eyes look so weird).

We moved on, still really enjoying the simple straight road (never mind the terrible, always present piles of trash), and the rocky mountain desert gradually turned into a flat desert with big sand dunes.

We had lunch at the Huacachina oasis (it's a completely touristy place, but it's a real oasis, and the little lake surrounded with big palm trees and humongous sand dunes was a very refreshing sight after the hot dusty ride), and then rode into the touristy and dusty beachtown of Paracas...and laid our eyes on the cold Pacific again! (We were swimming in the Atlantic mere six weeks ago! The world really is becoming smaller!)

Right outside of town is Paracas National Reserve - a big peninsula with beautiful coastline and lots of sand dunes (which are not so much a national park for wildlife as they are a playground for gringos on all kinds of terrain vehicles); our short sunset ride through that nice (and not so polluted) desert was a soothing and relaxing end of both our day and our long ride west. North-bound from now on!

So next, we rode north on the coast of Peru towards Ecuador. It was really weird (but later we were told it's normal this time of the year) to ride through cold thick fog - in the otherwise hot desert! Also, whatever we managed to see of the beautiful sandy beach was pretty sad: there is just so much trash everywhere, piles and piles of stinky eternal nasty plastic...

As for the people, they live urban lives; traffic became crazy (drivers were aggressive, stupid and reckless) and everything traditional that is very much alive and totally normal in the awesome mountains was completely gone, braids and all.

Afer we left the coast, the desert became hot and dry, and where there was water, they had huge sugar cane and rice fields. We rode through the capital, Lima (which half of travelers tend to skip), just to check it out, and it wasn't bad: the suburbia is of course crazy (colorful, dirty, loud and packed full of people and vehicles), but the center is nice - clean, with nice wide roads, and pretty but well-guarded giant colonial squares (packed full of people of course). Lima is very urban, not only for Peru but also compared to La Paz, but as soon as you leave the old center, you are back to South America with its endless people, traffic, noise and markets.

So after some more smoggy aggressive trashy crazy riding north, which however included looking at beautiful desert mountains and sand dunes along the road, we landed in a touristy but pretty and quiet surfer town of Huanchaco just north of Trujillo. We stayed a day to see Chan Chan and to then fall asleep to the soothing sound of the Pacific waves.

Chan Chan ("Sun-Sun") is what's left of the capital of Chimu kingdom (the fisherman people who worshipped the sun); the city was built somewhere between 9th and 14th century, and it became the largest American pre-Columbian city and the biggest adobe city in the world. At its peak it grew to 20km2 with 60,000 inhabitants. In 15th century, it was invaded and conquered by the Inca. Many more destructions followed (Spaniards, floods, tomb looters...), but at least the firm walls and beautiful and varied reliefs with marine themes carved into mud walls remain. We really liked it, you get to walk through "Tschudi complex" (one of the nine subcities - each king built his own part of the city) and see impressive adobe structures and pretty carvings.

So that's it for Peru, and it's now time for some tropical beach fun - Ecuador!

Ecuador

We entered Ecuador, and found out that because we wrote down we'd stay for 14 days (our rough estimate - this stuff is never legally bonding), that meant that after two weeks, every extra day here would cost us $380 per day per person! We drove away a bit worried and on the mission to move fast.

Riding towards the coast, we discovered that in Ecuador, the concept of left lane is a mystery to drivers - they use it just like the right lane (even the police), cruising slowly and causing unnecessary long lines behind them. When we made it to the big liberal city of Guayaquil, we also noticed that Ecuador is developed and multicultural, and indigenous faces were replaced by black, white, and everything in between.

Ecuador used to be a proper poor "banana republic", and in the late 1990s things got so bad that they replaced their currency with the US dollar. But in the last decade, after the young president Correa was elected, everything changed: huge investments were made into education, healthcare and infrastructure, the wages have risen, unemployment and poverty numbers went down, the inflation was tamed... in short, Ecuador is doing better than ever.

The ride to the coast was nice at first (green and clean highlands with little villages), but then the highway was smoggy, hectic and dirty.

The coast itself is touristy - not cheap at all, and apart from the national park area, not very wild either. Still, the locals look indigenous again and own all the local businesses. By the way, this is where the famous and wrongly named "panama hat" is from (but they obviously don't call it that).

We spent a night in Montañita, a surfer town: it's touristy, but pretty and mellow, with sandy streets that stay up all night, and a cocktail alley (a street full of carts that make huge cheap drinks using local fruit); so that was fun!

We had to move to the nearby town of Porto Lopez (because that's where the tours are) which was supposed to be nice but it's not, including the beach (ok, except for the cocktail carts next to hammocks tied onto palm trees, that's pretty nice!). In fact, the beaches in the area were mostly dissapointing: the water has perfect temperature and color, waves make the perfect soothing sound, and there is a breeze cooling the hot sand; but then there is trash, and the fishermen who not only throw what they don't want back into the sea, and so the beach is full of half rotten eels and crabs, but they also work on their boats right on the beach, polluting the air with constant loud grinding and fiberglass resin fumes. There is one exception: Playa de Los Frailes, a beach in the national park, which is wild, clean (they don't let you take in food, drink or toilet paper), and just perfect.

Parque Nacional Machalilla is full of islands, coral formations, beaches, and (what little is left of) tropical dry forest with its monkeys and anteaters; but their main attraction is Isla de la Plata, more commonly known as "The Poor Man's Galápagos" (the day tour costat the time $35, whereas Galápagos take a week and cost thousands of dollars).

Isla de la Plata is 40km away from the coast, and on it, just like on Galápagos, you can find two really funny bird species: blue-footed boobies and magnificent frigatebirds.

Blue-footed boobies are big birds with bright blue feet and other strange features: when they mate, males show off their feet in a ritual walk; they only raise one young - the strongest chick kills the other siblings; females are bigger, have bigger pupils and quack, whereas smaller males whistle.

Magnificent frigatebird males are black and have that famous red pouch on their necks, which they inflate to attrack a mate; these birds are 'kleptoparasites' which means that they feed by pecking at other seabirds (like blue-footed boobies), forcing them to regurgitate their meals, which they then catch in the air and eat!

The waters around the island are fun too: they are full of all kinds of fish and big turtles, and in the summer, humpback whales come here to mate. We were too early for whales, and were generally not very lucky with our tour (the guide was an hour late and was overall a bad guide - for example, the tour includes snorkling so he sent us snorkling, knowing full well we won't see anything because el niño made the water murky for the season)...but we still loved hiking on the pretty island, it was fun to talk to boobies up close and to observe frigates in the trees looking like red and black christmas ornaments. Isla de la Plata is not Galápagos, but it gives you a good idea what that experience would be like.

That's it for the tropical beach fun, time to head north again!

From the coast, we rode north, back into the Andes. At first, the highlands were very pretty and still tropical, the winding road leading us through misty cloud forest full of waterfalls and butterflies. We spent the night in Mindo, a touristy but cute little town, and enjoyed watching dozens of colorful humming birds feed and fight in a hostel's garden.

Next, we rode up to Quito, the capital of Ecuador, the city (pop. 1,7mi) that spreads north-south in a valley high up in the Andes (2.850m/5,350ft). Its colonial "old town" is a UNESCO site and is very pretty with its churches, plazas, museums and other beautiful buildings. In the north, the "new town" and especially Mariscal area (where we slept) is a party central and great for travelers (it's actually nicknamed "Gringolandia" even though it's packed with local young people): there are many hostels and good (but expensive! $6 for a Corona!) restaurants, bars and clubs.

Quito is supposed to be a very conservative Church-based city, but it didn't feel that way: the city life on those old school colonial cobblestoned streets seems modern, vibrant, relaxed and cool. In fact, Quito is one of those pleasant places where you just want to stay a while...but it was time to move on.

Stina imagined that crossing the equator would take place somewhere tropical, in the jungle or under palm trees full of coconuts and monkeys. Well, that didn't happen; but after riding high up in the dry fresh mountains, catching our breath because of stinky traffic and altitude, we made it to 0° latitude and were still very excited - after almost five months, we entered our home hemisphere again! Mexico was closer than Chile now, plus, just like that, the seasons changed which meant that it was no longer fall - it was springtime!

Further north, we started seeing traditionally dressed indigenous people again, and stopped in Otavalo, a town famous for its giant Saturday street market. They sell everything and most of the colorful market is similar to those in Bolivia and Peru, but it's their crafts and textile market that they're known for (though we couldn't find any bargains or outstanding quality), and no wonder: since pre-Inca times, the locals had been famous for their textiles, and after they were conquered, they became the weavers for the Inca royal family. In short, the market was nice, but we're not sure it deserves its extraordinary fame.

...And that's it for Ecuador! We were writing this report at what is now notorious Colombian border: it's the only way out of Ecuador around here (the others are far away or very dangerous because some members of former Farc rebels and other drug trafficers are kidnapping people at the borders - recently, three Ecuadoran journalists were taken hostage and executed, and just days ago two tourists were kidnapped), but it's packed with Venezuelans fleeing their country (thousands of mostly young and cheerful people were waiting to enter Ecuador) and so it takes anywhere between 3 and 15 hours to cross to the other side. It was not looking good: we were waiting for over three hours in line just to make it to the first of four windows.... In the end, it didn't take just 3, but it also didn't take 15 hours - after cold and wet six hours, we safely entered our last country of this trip, Colombia!

Colombia

We started riding north, toward the capital, and right away Colombia let us know a colorful combination of things was ahead: we saw cold mountains with alpacas and lush tropical rain forests with mangos, ancient ruins and pretty colonial towns and modern cities; really nice people but many police check points; and South was becoming mixed with Central America (salsa playing on the radio, country men wearing machetis and riding around on horses, washing machines being transported on small bikes...).

The roads are mostly a mess (and so are the drivers); on the second day, for example, we had to take the beautiful 'Colombian Death Road' because it was the only fast way to Bogotá (which meant that we were riding through rain and fog on a challenging twisty gravel road in the rain forest - it's only 60km long but it took us 4 hours).

We made two quick stops: Santuario de las Lajas, a neo-Gothic church with an impressive location - it sits on a canyon wall! - that was built because the image of Virgin appeared there on the cliff to a local man in 1754; we also wanted to see the mysterious statues of a lost pre-Inca culture in San Augustín, but they are closed on Tuesdays (and they don't tell you that) and we had to move on, Kyle's mom was landing in faraway Bogotá on Thursday!

Most of the time, the slow ride north was very nice, because after we descended the mountains, we were in countryside with forests, rivers, little towns and farms, and everything was growing and blooming abundantly under the hot sun. But then we went up again, and found ourselves on the cold, packed, loud and smoggy road to Bogotá which was getting worse as we approached the city - it took us a whole hour just to make it through the suburbs into the old town.

Bogotá is high up there (2.600m/8,500ft) and it's huge, with over 7 million people. The weather is not very nice (it's never really warm and it rains all the time) and apart from a few streets in the old town, the city is not very beautiful. After we picked up Kyle's mom from the airport to travel together for a week, we were a bit worried that we chose a bad location for her to see with us.

However, after a while it was clear that Bogotá is a great place: easy yet progressive, affordable, with lots of culture, stylish open-minded people, good restaurants and, surprisingly, best of all - amazing museums.

Museo Botero, a big museum complex, contains dozens of Botero's works (including Monalisa painting and the white marble horse sculpture), his incredible private art collection, plus great temporary exhibitions of modern art.

Even better is Museo del Oro (Museum of Gold), where more than 55,000 pieces of gold and other materials from major pre-Hispanic cultures of the area are exhibited; the show is put together really well, with descriptions also in English, and the exhibited pieces of jewelry, shaman and burial artefacts etc. are interesting and absolutely beautiful works of art. We all agreed: museums don't get better than that, we really enjoyed it!

Next, we were braving the messed-up Colombian mountain roads in a tiny car (rent-a-car seems to be the only expensive thing in Colombia), in order to explore the colonial towns north of Bogotá with mom:

After visiting Villa de Leyva, a tiny pleasant 16th century town with a giant cobblestoned main square and with no modern buildings, we moved down to less interesting, but oh so warm and sunny San Gil. We decided to try the local delicacy, fried "hormigas culonas" ("big-assed ants"), inherited from the indigenous Guane and still a popular snack in the area; the anteaters Lorey and Kyle each ate one without any drama, but Stina found it absolutely disgusting and spat it out.

Tiny and pretty old Barichara is another place for a perfect walk, with views of beautiful colonial houses and courtyards, lovely green squares full of big tropical flowers, modest old churches (one has an unfinished ceiling so the birds come in and fly around under the roof, giving the church a joyful, meditative feel), and, surprisingly, an occasional little canary sitting on a chimney and singing his heart out.

Back in the cold Bogotá, we visited Quinta de Bolivar, a pretty mansion that was given to Simón Bolívar in gratitude for his services (look him up, but in short: inspired by the ideals of enlightenment, he liberated Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru and Bolivia of Spanish rule) ...and then it was time to hug and go separate ways, Lorey flew back home and we got on our bikes and moved north-west.

The traffic and the roads remained terrible (Bogotá traffic is especially insane, and it seemed that every road in Colombia was under serious construction), but the views remained breathtaking, and after two days, we rode up from the steamy tropical lowlands into Salento (2000m above sea), a small mountain town that is famous for producing coffee and the nearby valley of magnificent wax palms.

We went on a coffee tour because this one was recommended (lead by an enthusiastic and knowledgeable small plantation owner Timothy from England - aka "Don Eduardo") and because we're both coffee addicts, so it was time to find out how coffee is grown and made. It was interesting to learn about the whole complicated process, from baby plants to roasted coffee - and to then have some amazing fresh coffee (...did you know that there is still no objective way to grade the quality of coffee? Or that for espresso, you need to use cheap, low quality coffee - robusta, which must be so roasted it's almost burnt?).

Salento is small and full of tourists and tourist shops, but it somehow remains totally authentic - it's a lot of fun to go out in the evening and join the local farmers in their funky bars: Billar Danubio Hall for example is a guys' bar where you can play billiards, sit at the bar and talk to the owner with a big belly and an even bigger mustache, or watch old men in ponchos sip coffee made in a hundred years old Italian coffee machine; Los Amigos is a "tejo club" which means that you drink beer and throw metal discs at the pockets of gunpowder sitting in clay a few meters away - it's like bowling with mini explosions!

On our way out, we rode through the gorgeous Valley de Cocora national park - a valley surrounded by rolling hills covered with thick clouds, a mix of forest and lush tropical greenery, and with beautiful wax palms, the largest palm trees in the world (they grow up to 60m!)........and then Kyle's bike broke and we had to return to Salento, wet from the crazy rain and clueless about what was wrong with the bike. A day later and after a lot of work and brainstorming, Kyle thought he found the problem - he cleaned the rusty dirty starter and the bike seemed fine again...for now. Well, we were moving on to Medellin, hoping we make it!

We rode north, fighting the Colombian traffic and roads once again, up to the city of Medellin and then down and all the way to the Atlantic coast, to famous colonial town and port of Cartagena.

In the 1980s, Medellin (pop. 3 mil., elev 1,500m) was under Escobar and became the capital of cocain business; today, it's a cosmopolitan city with insane traffic, lovely Botero sculpture park and, as far as we're concerned, by far the best hostel in South America (The Black Sheep Hostel - which, in short, has got everything and everything is working, it's cheap, there is always free coffee, and the staff is really helpful); we got lots of rest there and Kyle successfully repaired his mysteriously cranky bike.

Then we rode through the pretty mountains for the last time, descending into hot and humid plains that looked and felt like Central America (minus the notorious trash though!) - and finally and thankfully, there was no more construction.

Unlike other colonial towns we'd seen, Cartagena is big (pop. 1mil), and is a colorful combination of city, port (from which we are shipping our bikes to USA), and gorgeous UNESCO-protected colonial downtown.

The old town has everything: 13km of 16th-century stone walls (built to protect the port settlement where all kinds of treasures stolen from the indigenous peoples were stored and then shipped to Spain - pirates like Sir Francis Drake of course constantly attacked both Cartagena and its loaded ships), a cathedral and big churches, cobbled alleys and plazas, pretty houses with even prettier flowers and with balconies under which everybody is selling stuff and where Palenqueras (black fruit-selling ladies in colorful African-Caribbean dresses) are balancing their fruit baskets on their heads, nowadays more posing to tourists for pictures for money than trying to really sell the fruit anymore; there is also a mighty undefeated fortress, a little park with sloths and parrots, a plaza that used to be an important slave market, and even Palacio de la Inquisicion - a palace that used to house the notorious Spanish Inquisition (over 800 heretics and witches were tortured and publicly executed in and around that lovely building).

We have mixed emotions about Cartagena: while it's a pleasure to just roam its old streets and stay at the only recently gentrified edges of the old town (where in the evening and on Sundays, the locals still come out to sit on their plastic chairs and chat, play, stare and drink), it is very touristy and really pricey (especially compared to the rest of Colombia; but even Bogotá is three times cheaper), and it turns out it's not easy to ship motorcycles from here to USA... The agents are very expensive (and you do need one) and the whole process is a slow mess, and after three days, we found out that we cannot ship the bikes close to home after all, but would have to to pick them up in Miami instead...so after they finally did arrive to USA, we would have to ride home for at least three whole days! ...not good news, and we were getting anxious to leave!

All was well though: the climate was tropical, our empty hostel had AC and a little pool (sure, we were doing yoga and working out, but honestly, we were mostly getting fat!).

P.S. Entering Cartagena, Kyle felt nothing for some reason, but Stina was elated, and kept yelling, honking and singing One Moment In Time and other crappy triumphal pop songs into Kyle's ears while trying to high-five him on the road, because for a moment there, though nobody around knew or cared, we were champions, WE DID IT, WE RODE THROUGH SOUTH AMERICA!