Leg 19 Final Blog Saturday 25th February : In Closing

Re sending this post as some people did not receive it by email??????

My last blog of each Leg is usually a very deep philosophical expression of the feelings I felt on the trip. I have lambasted Putin, Trump, Biden, shared thoughts on the youth of today surfing the coat-tails of others and entitlement, I have expressed my feelings about losing our rainbow to 3,5% of the worlds population. I had issues about Gun Laws and cried a tear for the kids walking North to the USA from places like Venezuela, (Leg 18’s final blog.) But you are all very luck this time as I have no deep emotional thoughts about one thing like at the end of previous trips, so you all got a bit lucky. But don’t stop reading, there will be something I say you might relate to or strongly disagree with.

Yesterday after Breakfast we disconnected the bikes batteries and parked them under some shaded cover. There were other bikers bikes there as well and we parked in front of them, so it will be a Groot gedoente (big drama) when one of the 3 other bikers arrive before us as our bikes will have to be moved out of the way first. Tex who is on a later flight was given the responsibility of going to town and buying builders plastic and covering the remaining bikes, (Rocky and Milsy’s bikes were covered with an old broken car-cover Rocky has been riding around with strapped onto the back of his bike, he can’t throw anything away, weather it is a old bike cover or smelly shoes, (more about that later.)

I am a bit nervous, don’t know what will crawl out of my panniers when I return to the bike as I left my boots on the bike Friday night and it rained, then I packed the wet boots in my panniers, one on each side’s pannier, so my helmet was placed over the wet boot on one side and my riding jacket was placed with the other wet boot in the other pannier, then closed. So something will grow and hatch in there to surprise me on my return, it had happened before, we left our wet gear on the bikes in Tibilis Georgia and when we returned after the winter we all had some green alien child waiting for us.

Some other Over-Landers arrived:

Hans runs a lovely restaurant here for his people staying in his camping ground, with home made Peanut Pie and proper German Food. He is well supported by the local community who comes to him for dinners and lunches, and over weekends his “Tiny Houses” are rented out to people who just want to get away from Quito.

The soil and weather is so suited for growing almost anything and everywhere on the property you can find coffee growing which he serves in the restaurant. There are also rows and rows of Lime Trees, several different fruit which are blended for juice with your breakfast.

Some Over-Landers are more brave than others, lets all say a little prayer for this poor soul :

Lots of bees and honey:

As you can see below, this has been the shortest trip we have done in kilometres. Usually our trips are between 5000km and 7500km, except Alaska which was a 12 000km trip. But our bikes were also flown almost 1000km, so we did move almost 4000km closer to the souther tip of South America.

Our average speed was only 58km per hour, testament of the road conditions and the very low speed limit of 80km per hour in these countries.

When we were kids in the dusty streets of Blairgowrie we had a VW Combi driving down our steet every afternoon selling ice cream, the VW Combi drove slowly and there was a very simple tune being broadcasted from the old speaker on its roof, Da da da da da da, da, we would get excited and ask my mom for money to buy ice cream, but she would listen to the music from the ice cream man and then tell us that the tune he is playing is the tune he plays when the ice cream has been sold out. Then she would go to the deep-freeze and get us each an ice-lollie made from Oros, weakened down when mixing, and we would be happy as the tune faded away down Holland Laan. This memory was awoken several times these past days in Ecuador as the Gas-Delivery-Van (the little van delivering LPG Gas) also has a speaker on his roof and he also plays the ice cream-mans song, the one he played when I was a kid and his ice cream was sold out.

I loved riding around the little towns and villages just soaking up the people, sounds, seeing them trade from their little shops lining the streets, to smell the bread and see how the people live. The people from Ecuador are happy people. We arrived getting only a 10 day visas as the country is in a state of emergency due to the two main drug cartels uniting all the smaller gangs in Ecuador to stand united against the government and defeat them. We did not see any of this, we hear the trouble is at the coast where the bananas are exported, with lots of drugs hidden in the containers, but here where we were there was no problems.

I feared Colombia, watched Narcos on Netflix and was worried I would be taken by the drug-gangs and sold off into prostitution (yes I probably did not think that one through, don’t think I would fetch too much of a pretty-penny.) We saw no signs of the drugs or the gangs and felt safe late at night walking the streets. Yes, lots of police wearing Balaclavas, but no gangsters.

It was the same in Panama and Costa Rica, BEAUTIFUL Countries, no signs of the under-belly running the drugs through these little strips of land, some only 40km by 100km in size.

On Leg 18 it was the same, we saw beautiful beaches, rainforests, smiling people, historic towns and sights but nothing we heard of on CNN, always felt safe.

We traveled through Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador on the previous leg, no problems. And sadly we also saw no tourists. Yes, there were a few Hippie-surfers, all on a Gap-5-years using daddies trust fund, but no real tourists, its too dangerous they say.

I am glad we are through Central America now, yes, it was tough, long 5-hour border crossings, long days wasted to get our bikes across the Darien Gap, but there has to be days like this if you want to say that you have ridden all the way down from the tip of Alaska to the tip of Argentina. We had a few days like this in Russia and Ukraine, China was also not easy, but I think Leg 20 will be easy again.

And this trip has been tough on me, more than on the others. It was on one of our re-routed flights that the man next to me put his lips close to mine as we slept side-by-side and then coughed his Covid breath into my nostrils as we slept. So the flights into Costa Rica was a nightmare, but I was also sick for the 1st week. Then I made the terrible mistake, I discovered a tube of Lip-ice at the bottom of my tank bag and spread it far and wide across my face, forgetting that I bought that lip-ice on the previous trip when my lips were sore from one little Cold-sore in the bottom corner of my lip. So all the times our bikes were cooking in the sun in Costa Rica for 9 months that lip-ice became a peautrty-dish for a type of lip leprasy (melaatsheid) and hours after I spread it, my entire face around my mouth was covered in one large cold-sore. So I was in Bogota for a weekend without clothes, looking like a person described in the Bible staying in a Lepors Colony. (Yes, I know I spelt it wrong but my Public School Education could not even get the word close enough for Spell Check to see what I was trying to spell,) so not easy happy traveling for me.

I have to hurry-up with this Blog, I am sitting in Heathrow at some pub doing the blog. We had a 7 hour lay-over in London, once again doing the hobo-route home. I thought that after a hard trip and very un-luckly issues with our flights to San Jose (if you forgot, our plane broke on the runway and the mechanic failed after 6 hours, then midnight flights via Mexico and arriving 60 hours after we started,) that going home would be plain sailing. Wrong, we had a 2 hour taxi ride to the airport in a small little Chevrolet with a driver who had a death-wish, (luckily we were 4 in the small car and thanks to Peens and me adding some extra weight, the car was severely under-powered and could not keep the break-neck-speeds up all the way, (although we did clock his speedometer going down-hill thanks to the extra weight.) We raced though districts where the entire area were covered by Hot-houses full of Roses, I think all the roses sold in the USA comes from Ecuador.

As we arrived at the airport we ran into my old friend Murphy who has been waiting for us and made his presence know with the board saying that our 1st flight of 3, Quito to Miami was delayed with an hour. And so started another stressful period to make the connection. We left 1 hour late, then the pilot made up half an hour, so 1,5 hours should be enough to make the connection…… in your dreams, we are dealing with Murphy here, he had it all stacked against us as we had to 1st go through customs when arriving in the USA even though we are in transit.

Then comes the Security Checkpoint from hell, and then more places to get through, then a train to another terminal, and all the time Misly Rocky and I were running, skipping the line using to the front, shoving and scrumming every new line. So as the last person walked through the Boarding Gate we came running along and made the flight. As we sat down I smelled a rat, well, more like cheese. One of us, or all three, had very smelly feet, and it was as a result of the mornings rain when we had to push the bikes around getting our shoes drenched in rain water. I felt so embarrassed doing the flight that I inspected my traveling partners shoes. Misly’s still looked new, Rockie’s not so much, but mine was also suspect.

So when we arrived in Heathrow I went shopping with my Amex Card which I hoped would work as I had to cancel my Visa card when the kid and his granddad stole my phone at the Carnival. Apple Pay had all the card details and I did not want to take any chances. LBut I must have lost Murphy along the way as the transaction went through. So as I am writing this Blog I am wearing my new shoes and new socks, time will tell if our little group has shaken the Blue Cheese Smell following us.

Lets get serious, during Leg 18 I wrote about the kids walking North to the USA, sadly on this trip there are now also those walking South as they think they won’t make it to the USA, so Chilly and Argentina is their destination. But Hans says that lots of people who went South before Covid are now walking north again as they lost their jobs and the countries they walked to has fallen on hard times as the economies of Chile and Argentina has collapsed. We also heard that in spite of the high costs for those walking North (having to pay Bandits exorbitant amounts to cross the Darien Gap,) these poor exploited people has to pay Mexican Drug Lords a further $5000-00 to just be allowed to pass into the  USA, they are not helped in any way, it is like a Toll they pay just to pass.

But in closing, what stands out from this leg is just how lucky I am to be able to do this bike-thing with the friends I am doing it with. We talk and joke non-stop, we share each others concerns about our future or our Countries Future. We get excited about the route we have traveled every evening and we laugh and have fun, we are so lucky.

Doing these trip makes us realise how lucky we are to have families and wives who allow us to do this once in a lifetime adventure. I regret that this trips dates fell over a time I would rather have been at home with my lovely wife supporting her through issues she had to face, but life happens while this trip clicks on and when the dates are set I have no way of knowing about how unforeseen things would pop-up a month before the trip. But we all return home loving those we left behind more. We return knowing we have those waiting for us that “have our backs.”

We generally don’t buy our wives presents on these trips because we just don’t have space on the bike. How many Fridge Magnets can one wife own!!!!! Our panniers are filled with spares and tools and just a little amount of cloths, and just buying something small affects your packing. But we also have to watch each other so they don’t buy their wife something and then you are caught-out not buying your wife something, you know, the wives talk. This trip we had to sit him down and speak to Rocky, instead of buying himself new shoes, we suspect he bought his wife a present, we don’t have proof but he was seen in a dark corner at the market, far from view, negotiating with a salesman and we suspect his wife might be getting a Wolf Poncho, like the one I bought myself in Bogota. He denied everything, but riding behind him yesterday I have to admit his bike looks different to before, just a little different, and in time when we are back home we will be looking in the cold winter months if his wive goes around sporting a new wolf poncho, which might not be “her look” but its the thought that counts.

Pie is already in Germany, Peens took a 5 flight option and will only arrive in JHB 12 hours after Milsy Rocky and I. Tex have a small 5 hour hop to his home in Houston and he might already be home. We are exhausted and will for the next few months not think of Leg 20, but I know that we will each secretly start thinking of where our next route should go, it is getting exciting again. We have to check out the Incas in Peru, there is the highest pass and Salt Lake waiting for us in Bolivia, we still need to eat a giant mouse (they eat some type of Ginny-pig here roasted on the fire,)  (again, I know it is spelled wrong but can Spell-Check not be a little more Woke !!!!) and no doubt Professor Google will once again point our bikes in the direction of danger and adventure.

I hope you will all join us again soon and ride with us, we are honoured that you share in our little adventure and laugh with us. We are just an ordinary bunch of guys having fun together, riding bikes just happen in-between everything else.

Keep Well !!!!!

Fleisch