Seeing Rio by bike was great - can`t go wrong if I just follow the beach roads up and down the city I thought - hmmmm, that was until Sunday when all of those beach roads become one way, which led to a few tricky moments.
I reached Porto Seguro, where, by chance, there was a Bike Show - I was warmly welcomed as Star Guest - even though I did confess that I had no idea it was all taking place. I was in search of camping space - but was honoured to be given a bed in one of the organiser`s houses - I think they were appalled that their star guest would be camping.
Time to relax and so I went to the beaches at Itacare - white sand, coconut palms, clear sea, good company and cocktails at sunset- bliss.
Here I am now in Belem after a 5500kms ride along the coastline of Brazil. It is hot and humid (well, what did I expect??), but it feels good to be here.
The last two days on the road were tough due to the mud, I did point out that the wet season was officially supposed to have ended three weeks ago but no-one took any notice of me.
It was a relatively simple affair to get a ticket for the boat in Belem and the boat was much better than I expected - thank God I didn´t go for hammock class - similar to 3rd class trains in India, with ten hammocks in the space I would think only two should go. My cabin was small but clean and also cool as it had a fan - I shared it with a french backpacker, - they had assured me that they don´t allow mixed cabins so at least I didn´t have to worry about sharing with some amorous Brazillian bloke.
I set off from Manaus, after five days on the boat, riding with Ray (from Mexico) on his Harley Davidson - yes, it did look an odd combination, a BMW and a Harley travelling on the road north through the jungle. We crossed the Equator (my fourth time by bike) and stopped for a photo session - I am now officially back in the northern hemisphere, though the humid jungle around me didn't feel much like the northern hemisphere that I know.
...Cheap Petrol.
Yes folks I have reached that oasis of good fuel that only costs 4 cents a litre, and once more Thelma is purring away - the fuel in Brazil was not good to her.
Caracas is like Dodge City without the Sheriff, I saw an argument taking place yesterday and after noticing one of the guys (who resembled the plump sergeant from the Zorro TV series) tuck a gun into his shorts I made a hasty exit - not sure if my medical insurance covers me for getting shot - even by a stray bullet.
and I am not talking about the mad drivers -the Venezuelans manage to make the Brazillians look like good drivers.
Caracas has a a somewhat unsavoury reputation as an unsafe city (even by South American standards) and I have been commiserating with everyone else here at the backpackers' hostel as nearly all of them have had something happen to them - knives, guns, getting grabbed and pickpockets-
After searching the Horizons site and emailing various other travellers I know who have passed this way, I came to the sad conclusion that
a) no-one had shipped home to Europe from here
and
b) I was going to have to do it the hard way
A shipping agent was found and discarded at the last minute as they tried to double the price when I had reached the point of no return. But finally I had tracked down JJ Mari - shipper extraordinaire and also a bike rider himself - he made the shipping a straightforward and easy process (virtually unheard of in S America) and then before I knew it, having once more battled with the downtown Venezuelan traffic; I was strapping Thelma down on a pallet at the Lufthansa warehouse and saying goodbye to her.
Well, having got used to life in one place and acting as an unofficial agony aunt to others either on the road or considering their travels. I am not actually heading far this year, my wrist healed well - though the doctors did tell me off for the extra damage I had caused by riding for another 4 hours after breaking it - and yes it was a bit painful.
I'm off to Belguim next month -the Tesch Rally in Malmedy where I've been invited to give a talk - 17-19th April if there are any HU readers who might be heading there - it would be great to meet up.
I've been home for over a year now and so it is definitely time to get out and about once more...
so, where to go this time, well, I still have a vivid memory of when I was twelve and discovered that Timbuctoo was a real place - and NOT just a place name made up by grown-ups, I decided then, that one day I would go to Timbuctoo.
I crossed France with three other GS bike riders I had met on the ferry - also members of the UK GS Club, I relaxed and sat back as their GPS systems guided us down avoiding motorways, a luxury for me to just follow another bike and not be doing all the navigating myself. I was really lucky with the weather and had sunny days every day while travelling through France and Spain.
Well, I have fairly quickly arrived in sub-Saharan Africa and all in one piece.
I got here (Dakar) on my birthday which was also the day the Dakar Rally arrived in town and so we were weaving our way through the typically African virtually stationary traffic alongside the huge trucks and strange-shaped sand buggies, chatting to the British drivers as I passed them.
The ride down has been looooong and hot, almost completely on tarmac until Mauritania where it was time to hit the sand.
We got the Mali visas in Dakar and have been on the road for the last 4 days.
The first 80 miles in Mali- from Kayes (for those of you with an atlas) were bloody hard, it took us 24 hours. Hopefully the photos will do some of it justice as we had to scale some rock faces (I kid you not) and there was a particularly memorable moment when Ethel and I were in mid-air halfway up one rock face;
We finally wearily rode into town last night at 10 pm having had to negotiate the final 70 kms in the dark due to having been delayed by various problems - my chain jumping off the sprocket at one point, and something simple like trying to find a solid piece of ground to do repairs in the desert is not easy.
Then my headlamp fixings both broke -thanks to an earlier bodge job fix-it from Clive (when we were in Bordeaux 3 weeks ago) I knew all I needed to fix the headlamp was a piece of wire,
I am in Nouakchott and the sand storms are blowing. it's like being in thick fog but more painful.
Ethel and I limped into Mauritania from Mali -her suspension has gone - Ooooh yes, just 300 kms south of Timbuctoo so it has been a painful ride over hundreds of kms of corrugated dirt tracks and as for the sand - trying to steer though it while the bike is like a bucking bronco is almost impossible at times.
reached Nouakchott and relative sanity (as well as cold beer courtesy of the chinese restaurant- getting quite a liking for this rice beer)
Plan X
To rebuild the exploded battery in Nouakchott -as I had discovered that the replacement battery had turned out to be a dud and actually there are NO 12 volt batteries in this country. Loo and Gary (bike-riding friends from Cornwall) had arrived in Nouakchott with a tube of weld stuff and so the operation to rebuild was undertaken.
For several days now it has been Ethel to the rescue as first Tobi ran out of fuel and then got a puncture.
Whilst the major event of the last 2 days is that he has broken his gearbox - it happened on the desert highway - we then had an epic of a day (too long to go into here) involving a refrigerated lorry, the police and a team of Japanese people in a minivan.
Twenty four hours later and Tobi's bike went in the luggage compartment of a bus from Laayoune to Tangiers (about 1500 kms) he also took a bus, while I rode on through torrential rain - the frst rain I had seen since setting off six weeks ago, it turned some of the desert road into a quagmire of mud, the following day I was hit by vicious sandstorms, then the bolt on the broken shock absorber snapped - whoops!