South America: The Heart of the Beast

Years of fevered daydreams. Months of meticulous planning, spreadsheets, and agonizing decisions. Tuesday night, I finally entered the cattle roundup that is Newark International Airport. You can call me Mr. EWR. Bound for South America with a one-way ticket in hand. A hop and s skip to Peru, with a connection in Bogotá, Colombia. All paid for with 20,000 frequent flyer miles, a bargain.

I forgot the 170-degree reclining seats are great, but the tip-to-tail length of the “bed” is just short of comfortable for my 6’2” body. The arrangements are designed for Peruvians and they are in general not the tallest of people. Starting to sleep at 10:00 PM I was doing OK, until 2:00 PM and the bus was coursing through mountain switchbacks that tossed me back and forth. A gentle rocking is usually a good thing, it gets babies to sleep. In my case the hope of solid sleep to make up for no sleep the night before was over. Now two days running without proper rest, ugh.

No doubt I was looking for info about the town of Augua Caliente at the base of Machu Picchu when I stumbled on a video describing a totally different site. The other Augua Caliente is in eastern central Peru, south of Pucallpa. To get to the boiling river you need to first go to Honoria and hire a guide, then have two choices, take a boat with the required guide for a short float down the river or ride with the guide by motorcycle. The cost of going by motorcycle was 2/3 the price of the boat and you arrive by motorcycle. It took two seconds for me to decide to take the second option. 

Transferring ownership of the Honda XRE 300 to me was started before leaving Huanuco. On July 26th Toby Shannon and I went to a notary to file the paperwork. Toby did all of the work with his fluent spanish and expert knowledge of the process. I tagged to pay the fees, provided my passport when needed, and applied a fingerprint to seal the deal. A trained if unruly monkey could have done my part. The paperwork was submitted the days before Independence Days hoping the submission would be at the top of the stack when the government reopened the following week.

It's generally easy to navigate to a town or city. Once arriving, the challenge becomes finding a specific place in a place where the streets may have few names or street signs. It can be equally difficult to find the best route to leave an urban area of any appreciable size. Leaving Sapito took a few tries to find the road south. Without too much backtracking I "escaped" once again from the town de jure. 

A pleasant day unfolded, climbing higher into and over mountain peaks on PE-24S. A stream cascaded over rocks on the side of the road. It was good to be back in the Andes.

Before getting far from Huancayo I stopped for gas, then shortly afterward in a small town called Pampas for lunch at a Chifa (Chinese-Peruvian fusion) restaurant. Chifa is mostly Cantonese with a distinctly Peruvian twist. Wonton soup is a favorite of mine and it is just a little bit different than the soup we get back in the US.

In the morning there were several tables of Peruvians getting their morning meal. The breakfast of champions in the US of cereal, eggs, bread of some form or description, and bacon or sausage for the non-veggie crowd is different than the way to start the day in the Andes. The locals were sitting down to soup or as observed a full fried fish. All I wanted, needed desperately,  was coffee. While the servers were busy attending to those ahead of me were loading, I felt like a junkie waiting in line for the Methadone clinic to open.

Cusco is now within easy striking distance, 124 kilometers away or roughly 3 hours of riding twists and turns through mountains and valleys. Once near the city center, my first goal is to find where I stayed for a few nights 10 years ago. The name is long forgotten; my only option is a block-by-block game of hide-and-seek. A few blocks east of the Plaza de Armas the neighborhood starts returning familiar places. With a little backtracking, I found it. Sadly at midday, there was a heavy roll-down gate covering the entrance and no one responded to persistent knocking.

10 years earlier I visited Machu Picchu by riding the hair-raising mountain roads, crossing a few streams, storing the bike at a hydroelectric plant, and then walking 11 km along the train tracks. While the site is amazing, there was no need or pressing desire for a repeat visit. A key concept of the current trip was visiting places I had missed in 2012-2013. 

Heading "northeast" from Cusco…taking the scenic route

In the morning I packed up and said goodbye to my new friend Glen Short. A longboard is laid on a flight of stairs to leave the hostel and get to the street level. With a little speed and a dash of courage, the bike climbs up the ramp and onto the sidewalk. One final goodbye to Glen and I turn right into traffic. Half a block later I realized the 50/50 choice was 100% wrong. Turning around I saw Glen grinning as I passed him, now going in the correct direction. The (mis)direction of the day has been cast. 

It’s roughly 250 km from Lanlacuni Bajo to Puerto Maldonado. The Peruvian high mountain Amazon quickly changes into the Peruvian Amazon. The landscape is a mix of tropical plants and bushes, with breaks of farming. I’m on a mission to get to Puerto Maldonado by afternoon. As I descended the last of the Andes and the eastern foothills, the twists and turns dwindled with each passing hour. For many weeks to come the roads would be more or less straight. Sometimes mind-numbingly straight. The motorcyclist motto, “Waste no turn” would have little meaning.

My original plan was to ride north in Peru along the eastern border of Bolivia, then cross into Brazil at Iñapari, Peru. The idea was to skip crossing into Bolivia, avoid spending needless time with customs and immigration to enter Bolivia, and suffer the typically bad roads of Bolivia. I was going to revisit Bolivia on the backend of the trip, so why bother? Before leaving Huanuco, Toby Shannon asked if I would be willing to test the Bolivian border near San Lorenzo. Test the border?

Taking stock of my wallet, three flavors of international currency were found: Peruvian, Brazilian, and USD. Stored in my luggage from previous trips, Chilean pesos, and due to inflation nearly worthless, Argentine pesos. In my travels, I learned to use a coin purse in an attempt to keep organized and spend the loose change before leaving any given country. Try as I might, coins would appear in an obscure pocket or recess of a backpack. Trust me, you can't get rid of coins once getting far from the country of origin. 

Late that night I checked into Frank’s recommendation, Hotel Central, Porto Velho. The breakfast buffet was typical Brazilian fare. Much later, I learned these white crepes are made from tapioca flour and are not eaten plain. Take your pick of sweet and savory fillings, such as cheese, banana, coconut, or chocolate. Hmm, that is why the crepes were so boring to me, no filling!

Rewind to 2006-2008, while researching adventure riding, a long dirt road in Brazil appeared on my adventure radar after reading member posts on Horizons Unlimited’s South America forum. Located in the State of Amazonia, BR-319 is a poorly engineered and thinly maintained 655 km long road. Portions are paved, with long stretches that are dirt. By dirt, I mean red clay. Add a little rain and the red clay becomes super slippery, ice skating rink slippery. Add more rain and modest traffic to the mix. What comes out?

Waking up at Chez Elismar my headache was gone and the Brazil sun was shining brightly. A good day to be alive. Time to wash the BR-319 mud off the bikes. Elismar set a generous price with the bike washing service, to ensure a thorough cleaning. My traveling companions, Beebee & Octane, got a bath as well.

The ferry to Santarém leaves in a couple of hours, enough time for last-minute shopping. One of the pannier padlocks has gone missing. After circling the area for 20 minutes, I found a hole-in-the-wall hardware store near the ferry terminal. I made a questionable parking decision, squeezing the bike into a smallish space on a steep grade.  While looking padlocks I heard the crash of the bike falling over. Did someone passing by bump the bike? I’ll never know. One thing was certain, the windshield was broken into several large pieces. Damn.

Somewhere in my travel research, Fordlândia, Henry Ford’s namesake town, appeared on my radar. Ford built “…a prefabricated industrial town intended to be inhabited by 10,000 people to secure a source of cultivated rubber…” He failed, big time.  An enormous number of mistakes were made in planning and running the town. The land was wrong, rubber trees were planted too closely together, and most of all the US managers tried to tell the Brazilian workers how to live and work. Even the food the company provided was wrong.

After snapping some shots of the crumbling Fordlândia machine shop and the ever-so-famous water tower (really?), I took a quick spin around the backwater town. The rubber groves planted by the Ford dream team? Who knows—maybe they’ve dissolved into the ether, like the ill-designed plan itself. The managers' housing was equally elusive, and frankly, finding it wasn’t a priority. The hospital? Looted and collapsed, a pile of wood scraps and dust from what research told me, so no need to conduct a protracted hunt. I explored the machine shop, saw the water tower, and mediated on Ford’s folly.

Altaira size gave hope of mechanical salvation, big enough to offer refuge for my beleaguered motorcycle. The mission was clear: reinforce the battered pannier frame, straighten the rakish angle the left engine crash guards had assumed (a byproduct of dropping the bike), and snag a mesh shirt to combat the heat rash blooming on my lower back. Priority number one: the bike. I found a mechanic who didn’t just fix—he reinforced, conjuring up some mechanical magic that would hold up until I hit the halfway mark in Argentina.

Two days to Rancho Arcturus, the name for a mountain retreat dreamed up by my friend Verónica. The Arcturus part speaks to her belief in the fantastic. She dances in the constellations. Naming her mountain home after the nearest star—perfect.

On my first trip through South America in 2012-2013, I met Verónica, a Couch Surfing host for travelers. Posting on the website that I was headed to northeastern Brazil, and she invited me to stay at her house in the suburbs of Recife. Several years later, she was my guest in New Jersey. The first summer after retiring, I could finally take a long-planned trip back to South America with multiple destinations in Brazil, featuring a reunion with Verónica.

This is my third multi-month trip to Mexico-Central America and/or South America. Currently on my second tour of South America, on the road for almost two months.
Here are a few travel tips and thoughts that came to mind and are hopefully useful to you. This is a living list that will be expanded and improved. Suggestions are welcome!

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