Day 331 Tuesday 6th of August, Overland Camp to Colombian\Ecuador Border and back 275km

What a long day!!!  The last time I slept in a bed was on Sunday night, (it is now early Wednesday Morning in South Africa, 19h45 here in Ecuador) so I guess just short of 48 hours without sleep for us, (our flight on Monday was a “Day Flight” so the long haul was not conducive to getting any sleep.) Our flight on SAA promised to be a huge improvement on flying via Europe like in the past, but it started with a rude awakening when they refused to load  Rocky and I’s 3 new tyres onto the flight, “No Motor Parts” they said in spite of us having flown with tyres often, but not on SAA. The other problem is that we landed in San Paulo Brazil late in the evening, then had a 4 hour wait to fly to Lima, Peru, only to wait again to fly to Quito, Ecuador, arriving very late and flying out again at Midnight, and then we arrived at 3h00 in Quito. We caught a taxi to Sommer Wind Over Landing Camping Site, and arrived at 5h00, the gate was still locked. We had to break in via the neighbours yard.

We were greeted by the new puppy and I longed for my dogs at home, (who no doubt are very confused with me disappearing for weeks at a time.) We went to the very primitive storage and started removing our bikes from the storage area.

Sadly the ground was wet where we parked the bikes, and after a coffee at 8h00 I found DadAss on its side,  one of the hand-guards had broken in the fall, so I was a little upset, until I opened my pannier, then I was very upset, I  discovered that my worries about the storage turned out to be plausible, (it had a roof of plastic and my bike was exactly where the two large pieces of plastic met, which no doubt must have formed a nice little funnel onto my bike every time it rained in the past 6 months, which on the equator, is daily. My 1 pannier had about 3cm of water in it, and the other was so damp that there was a little mushroom-crop growing on most of my clothing, and I found my helmet intercom and GPS Submerged in water.

I am happy I can cause so much joy to my friends:

My gloves :

My GPS

My Riding Pants

But my day was about to TEST ME further; this time it was my battery that did not survive the Storage Period, (we always have at least one bike’s battery that gives us problems when we return after storing them.

Our “Mac-giver” “Battery Booster was not charged so on the way to the border it was of no use when DadAss cut out, so Tex bought some copper wire from a Building Contract (not an easy thing to translate and try to explain,) which we used as Jumper Cables. Eventually we had to fit our spare battery, but it had also died during storage, so the solution was to jump the bike every time it needed to be started, which was rather often.

We spent 5 hours at the Ecuador\Colombian Border sorting out our TIPS (Temporary Import Permits) and it took us 2 hours to get there and another 2 hours back, but now it is sorted, the Admin is done!!!

Tomorrow we ride to a bike-shop near Quito to get a few new tyres and a few batteries etc. and we will be shopping for some riding gear as it was not just me with mushrooms in their pannier, Pie is wearing these beauties : (you smell him before you see him.)

And Rockies Gloves have also walked away the minute he looked away in horror.

At the moment it is just the 5 of us, (Pie, Milky, Tex, Rocky and I) as Peens came a week early, to visit his new “love” in Colombia, but now we found out he is fishing, so not sure what happened there, but I am sure we will meet-up in the next week or so along the way to Peru and hear the full story.

Regards

Fleisch