South America / Mexico 2005/2006

Copacabana (Bolivia) - Machu Picchu (Peru) - Salta (Argentina)"I have to fax your registration to Lima, 2000 Bolivianos please... No, no receipt - 1000 then, but there's no receipt." This was my first contact with Peruvian police right at the border with Bolivia. Just before, this man had raised the Peruvian Flag with all the pride and respect stuff - and now he wanted to be bribed by me. I had heard from other travellers as well as from Argentinos and Chilenos about the bad reputation of the Peruvian police, so I reacted in a rather relaxed way.

Frankfurt-Santiago-CopacabanaThe Flight (Frankfurt-Santiago)

Salar de Uyuni - Iguaçu FallsThe most fascinating place up to now in South America is the Salar de Uyuni, the largest and highest Salt Lake on Earth. Crossing it you spend hours and hours in a sea of white and blue, just driving straight in one direction. Despite the crystal clear air you can't see the other shore, only some islands and the majestic vulcano Tunupa. Fascinating also to know that the salt layer is 200m thick.

Iguaçu

Foz do Iguaçu - CuritibaI fled as soon as I could from the ugly town of Foz do Iguaçu and took the highway which leads directly to Curitiba. I felt like being back to civilization i.e. back to European standards: A well-maintained highway, very good signage, loads of filling stations and toll stations and - McDonalds. The highway crossed a large part of the southern state of Paraná, which is a beautiful landscape of green, gently rolling hills, with trees, forests, fields, somewhat like the Auvergne or Alsace or similar landscapes in Germany like the Rheingau/Taunus/Westerwald region.

Curitiba to FlorianopolisCuritiba is not at all a beautiful city. At first sight it's really shocking - approaching the city you are welcomed by high-rise social housing (?) and office towers. The entire city is dominated by lots of multistorey buildings. However if you stay at least a day and spend some time in the center, especially in the pedestrian zone and the squares around, you slowly get an idea that life here has a certain quality and the city has a certain charme - just like Mannheim ;-) .

Ilha Santa CatalinaI was very quickly fed up with Floripa (Florianopolis). So on Sunday I packed my stuff and set out for the tranquil south of the island. Since it's a rather small island, I already arrived at my destination - the 'Posada Sitio dos Tucanos' at around 10 in the morning. It's actually a beautiful place in the middle of some kind of natural park, some 2 km from the beach - with a beautiful view of the sea and the islands. The next village is Pantano do Sul, which almost looks like an authentic and unspoilt fisher village.

Sao PauloApproaching the airport from air, an immense and sheer endless cityscape of grey steel and concrete unfolds in front of me, dominated by large rows of skyscrapers and an apparently infinite number of multistorey apartment blocks. The dark sky is covered by thick clouds and the rain seems never to stop. No, I am not the Blade Runner and this is not the Los Angeles of the year 2019 - but São Paulo in the year 2005.The first impression reflects exactly what I expected of a south american city of 17 million inhabitants: Huge, ugly, polluted and full of cars and people.

BrasiliaAnother déjà-vu: When the plane brakes through the dense layer of clouds, an intensely green and sparsely populated landscape becomes visible though the curtains of rain. My inner eye recalls the touchdown in Cardiff/Wales 1995 with very positive memories.First red dirt roads contrast with the green fields and forests, but then the red dirt is swiftly and increasingly being replaced by grey asphalt. Suddenly the landscape changes and is apruptly converted into city: Brasilia, Brazils capital.

Colonia del SacramentoThere's nothing positive to say about the coastal road from Florianopolis to Porto Alegre. If you expect beautiful sea-and-mountain views - forget it. It's largely a long truck queue through an industrialized plain with some hills in the background.

No, I don't want to die in a car - this would really be too embarrasingly uncool for a motorcycle adventurer like me. But I felt very close to this early end when returning from the asado with Jorge, Maria José, Juanjo and Beli in Mercedes, some 100 km northwest of Buenos Aires.I had met them on the road on my way from Salta to San Pedro de Atacama, shortly after starting my trip through South America - and we kept in contact. I had to take the bus to Mercedes, since my bike was not yet finished with the chain and tyre replacement.

The first 500 km were the worst. The second 500 km were also the worst. And then I slightly lost my enthusiasm... This is probably how Marvin the paranoid android would describe the long ride from BA to Bariloche.Cordasco Motohaus had finally finished the tyre and chain replacement on Monday (as promised), including a (free) thourough cleansing of the bike - and they even had removed the rests of the transport stickers from the windscreen and polished it. The bike looked gorgeous, standing on the workshop's assembly rack.

Driving from Bariloche to El Chaltén and Perito Moreno you have pass - apart from some beautiful national parks of lakes and mountains - some 700 km of dirt road through the steppe, with only very few villages on the way - and even less filling stations and hotels. The landscape is partly impressively beautiful, partly so amazingly boring that it fascinates you and urges you to stop and listen to the absolute silence, smell the air of pure and apparently virgin nature.

Christmas 2005"Nothing prepares you for the spectacular beauty of Parque Nacional Torres del Paine", sais my guidebook "South American Handbook". Bullshit. It's nice and beautiful but the author should see the "Tre Cime" in Italy's Dolomiti mountains. They are embedded in much more spectacular surroundings and give a lot more beautiful views - in my opinion. But maybe when you do one of the multi-day trekking tours with all the necessary tents, food and equipment, then you might find out what's so spectacular (which I doubt).

Just before Chrismas 2005The reason for the existence of the tourist town of Calafate is the Perito Moreno glacier. So I spent two nights there and took the time to enjoy the glacier unhurriedly and wait for a greater piece breaking off - just to take some fotos of it. Some people spend days there with the camera ready to shoot but miss the crucial moment. I waited for maybe an hour and then told a couple next to me that I was going to leave now and therefore of course something spectacular was about to happen (when I was gone).

Ushuaia is just like the North Cape - nothing of beauty, you just have to be there once, because it's the world's southernmost city. Wrong. Well, only partly right. Ushuaia itself is not interesting. Just another tourist town. However, the scenery of the surrounding mountains, the Beagle channel and the (almost) arctic skies is beautiful and worth a one-day-visit at least.During Christmas on Ushuaia's 'Rio Pipo' campground motorcycle travellers from all over the world meet and celebrate.

Finally I left Argentina (probably for the last time during this journey) and entered Chile. After all the Patagonian flatlands I was really happy to enter the south chilenan landscape of huge forests, mountains and lakes.

Heading further north on the Ruta 3, I took a short 100 km gravel road detour (who would do this in Europe?) for one of the famous "Bosques Petrificados" (petrified forests). The naming "bosque" is quite an exaggeration since it's about a few (in this park maybe less than 10) extremely old (150 Mio years) but reckognizable tree trunks, lying around in a complete desert. However, it's amazing - these trees have actually turned to stone but you can still reckognize the annual rings (Jahresringe) and knotholes (Astloecher). Some of the trunks are still 30 m long.

On New Year's day - just after one day - we decided to split up again: Katja and Martin wanted to continue the asphalt road northwards while I decided to check the gravel detour recommended by Gerardo. After a few hundred meters on the gravel road I was already fed up: The bike's steering behaved really strange and I presumed that I was finally noting the contiuous loss of fork oil. So I decided to return and take the asphalt road and look for a mechanic in the next town, Coihaique.

I left Puyuhaipi (or whatever this place was called) during a short rain pause - and arrived 200 km later completely soaked in Chaitén. The last 50 km had been like driving though a very long car wash, just without getting cleaner. Luckily in Rita's place, a very basic and low-budget but cosy hostel, there was a kind of fireplace where I could dry my stuff.

From Chaitén I I took the ferryboat to the island of Chiloe (which turned out to be a nice although not spectacular place) and went more or less straight to Temuco, having short looks at Puerto Varas (small & ok), Puerto Montt (outstandingly ugly and rainy but nice people) and Valdivia (ok so far, with a very friendly and helpful policeman on the central square).In Temuco there should be two fork seals be waiting for me at Edgardos "Servitren" workshop. However, the seals had not been delivered and Edgardo did not really seem to care at all.

For the 700 km from Temuco to Santiago the information in my guidebook was rather sparse. Since I did not want to do the entire trip on the motorway (which would have been possible in one day), I asked in Temuco's tourist office for the most interesting route. The answers I got were little satisfying, since of course they only had information for their small region and didn't know anything (not even from private excoursions) about the roads and landscapes beyond.

After finishing the motorcycle maintenance and other stuff that I had planned to do in Santiago, I had a little more than a week left and did not want to spend this time in Santiago. It's not really that much a thrilling city (although it's certainly not too bad either). So I decided to go to Valparaiso, Santiago's famous harbour. It took me less than 2 hours to get there and to find my accomodation (pre-booked since it's high season), the Villa Kunterbunt with a large portrait of Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Langstrumpf covering the entrance gate.

The flight to Cancun was long but without major incidents. 9 1/2 hours from Santiago to Dallas, and 3 hours later a 2 1/2-hour flight from Dallas to Cancun. Loads of Yanquis, but all friendly people (how can this be in Bush-country?? ;-))Cancun itself is all-right. Well actually I like it. It's clean, safe, warm, has the carribean beaches - but no historical buildings at all.

Didn't I just praise the Mexican drivers? Forget about it.

I really liked Mérida and the tranquil accomodation (a rare thing in Mexico) but Mexico is huge and I have only two months. So after two nights I hit the road again, heading southwest, passing by Campeche and entering Chiapas at Palenque. There were 3 military checkpoints on the road but only one stopped me and kind of searched my luggage. However, these were very young guys (with German G-3 rifles) and I was about to ask them why they stop me - is it because European motorcycle tourists are notorious for arms smuggling? Well, I didn't ask - better run no risks.. ;-)

From the hot and sunny beaches of the Mexican pacific coast I rode into the green coastal moutains towards Oaxaca, the capital of the state of the same name. The road almost exclusively consisted of curves, so I had to alternate between enjoying the landscape and enjoying the road. The cool mountain climate was very pleasing after the oppressive heat on the coast. Oaxaca is a beautiful colonial city with a strong atmosphere of culture and history. It has loads of curches, fine colonial buildings and loads of tourists and those who want their money.

From Puebla I headed straight westwards towards the Volcanoes of Popocatepetl and it's neigbour, Itzisomething. Popo is still active, which becomes manifest in a quite unspectacular and hardly visible trail of smoke over its peak.

After a short day-stay in Pie de la Cuesta near Acapulco, I drove another 300 km on the mainly nice and twisted coastal road to Barra de Nexpa, a really tiny beach place the mouth of the river Nexpa. The place mainly consists of a few rentable huts, one or two B&Bs, and a really pleasently laid-back crowd of mainly north american pot-smoking surfers in their late 40ies or early 50ies. However it's really rather a surfer than a swimmer or snorkler paradise, since the water is not as clear as in other places and the beach is mainly pebbles (although there is also a sandy stretch).

On a motorcycle you are much closer to your surroundings: You notice the landscape more intensively and do more intensively perceive impressions like heat, cold, rain or smell. Mexico is the country of roadside smell adventures. Apart from rotting animals and smelly industry of the strangest kinds, you should take a nose of the heavily contaminated rivers or the mexican speciality: Fire. Apparently they love burning things, e.g. when in Europe (or any other more developed country) the weeds on the roadside are cut or mowed, in Mexico they are burnt.

A young biker couple I had met in Chile had highly recommended Edward James' Gardens "Las Pozas" to me, a park landscape near the village of Xilitla in the middle of the Sierra Madre north of Mexico City. They had been so enthusiastic about these gardens that I took the 600 extra km - and did not regret it. It turned out to be something like Dali's surrealistic paintings made reality.The gardens are situated in a beautiful steep green jungle landscape in the middle of nowhere.

From Teotihuacán I went straight to Puebla, trying to avoid Mexico City as far as possible. On the map it looked like easy-going via some kind of "Autobahn", i.e. dual carriageway highways. Unfortunately these turned out to be mainly chaotic, dirty and dusty inner-city avenues, with places signposted (if anything) that I rarely found in my map - and of course the signposting was completely inconsistent and unreliable (this is not Western Europe, is it?).

The 14 hour bus tour to Mexico City was surprisingly easy. I had two seats for myself and actually slept some hours, which I did not really expect. The bus and its passengers was checked by highway police and immigration three times on the way - once even with a drug search dog - and 3 or 4 guys where taken out by the authorities. Luckily I weren't one of them.Mexico City is just as expected: Above all it's endlessly huge, quite hot, there's always a thick brown smog layer over the city (which seems to be less thick on Sundays) and the traffic is chaotic and aggressive.

Having safely returned by night bus from Mexico City to Palenque, I was very happy to realize that my bike was still in the courtyard of the little hotel, where I had left it. Even my left luggage was complete and untouched. Well actually I did not expect anything else - I have great faith in the people of Chiapas! :-)I took a shower, had a good breakfast with loads of coffee and re-arranged my luggage. Around midday - the hottest time of day - I started the 300something km trip to Campeche at the Gulf Coast of the Yucatan peninsula.

The Caribean is really paradisiac, but of course quite touristy (and with the corresponding price structure). I was tempted to stay on the beach all day and swim, enjoy the sun and the beach bar - but in the end I actually could not do it since I would be bored quickly - and I wanted to see as much as I could before returning home.

Cozumel is Mexicos only significant caribbean island, it's famous for snorkeling and diving - and it's a nice, calm and not too expensive place to stay. After El-Arenal-like Playa del Carmen, Cozumel was quite a positive surprise - although of course also here you have the inevitable hords of cruise ship passengers and hence hundreds of tourist-trash-shops, all selling the same useless junk - with bored mexicans sitting in front, shouting at you "amigo, come in!!".

There's a small island at the northern tip of the Yucatan peninsula and it's called Holbox. It's rather off the beaten track, i.e. less touristy and you get there by a one-hour ride on a kind of waterbus from the mainland. It makes most sense to leave the bike on a guarded parking lot on the mainland - and this is what I did.Holbox is very tranquil and a little hippie-like, it has only sand streets, loads of cockroaches and supposedly mosquitoes (the latter at least in summer) and the main means of transport are golf carts. I've only seen two real cars, one of which was the police.

Even 6 months can be over so quickly - coming monday I'll be back to work...