Round the World - in Stages

Hi & welcome to our first Blog on Horizons Unlimited,

After so many years of reading every corner of the site its hard to believe we are doing our own trip and Blog story.Hi & welcome to our first Blog on Horizons Unlimited,

After so many years of reading every corner of the site its hard to believe we are doing our own trip and Blog story.

This is a recent shakedown trip with gear and bike mods as we will take to the UK..

Being new to this blog thing and being the Queen of Verbose I (Alanna aka Lan) am going to give this my best shot as John (aka Skill) has handed over the writing to me. He is in charge of bike stuff and technology, although he will edit and add to the Blog as required.

The Bike Story so far..............
Friday 25th February We deliver the bike to the shipping agent in Brisbane.

Tuesday 7th March the boat leaves Sydney

Wednesday 12th April Rang the shipping agent (London), yes the ship is due in tomorrow afternoon and it appears to be on time. Ring us back after Easter - maybe Tuesday afternoonTo keep ourselves occupied in the meantime

Well I shouldn't have gloated about our navigational prowess. After picking up the bike and making it back to London with ease, we had a lay day sorting out gear on Saturday and on Sunday we decided we would head off to Oxford for the day, to get our bike legs after so long. Skill planned our route, onto the bike and away (it was grey, raining and totally miserable) Well to cut a long story short it took us nearly and hour to get out of Kentish Town, basically every street we went down we had to back track through. Ahhhhh! It was just one of those days.

I must say that we have had a great time with our friends Donald, Lou, Mairi and Harry near Aderdeen, although they were all incredibly busy, with work, business commitments and wedding preparations etc etc. Skill was laid up in bed most of the week with the flu. With Skill being so sick we didn't get out much, Mairi was marvellous giving him the sympathy and attention his mean wife seemed unable to supply.

Skill bought our tickets for the ferry and came back to the bike fuming. "They are a mob of thieving B*****" They had quoted him a price for bike, rider and passenger, but when buying the ticket the price went up because suddenly I was not considered a pillion passenger on the bike but a walk on passenger and charged accordingly. There was a cheaper price for a passenger in a car, but a bike passenger was a walk-on at a higher price. Then they didn’t even give us a separate ticket so I couldn't walk on anyway!! Skill always feels these injustices towards bikers very personally.

Well we have adjusted to French life very well, even the bike has taken on a decidedly French flavour and quite likes being ridden on the right hand side of the road.

We arrived in Germany via the motorway from France and of course being the naïve travellers we are, got our passports ready for them to stamp at the border, but not even a cursory glance at the bike and certainly no passports, I don't think the bike even slowed down to 50km per hour.

We leave Holland via the Autobahn and head back into Germany, once again we are left standing by the traffic in the left hand lane. Scary stuff but the Germans seem to be very good drivers. We end the days ride at a village called Melsungen, we never seem to have a destination we just follow the camping signs.
A good pick, a camping ground on a river with a central lake. The owner was a gregarious German who now lives half his life in Spain and the other half running the caravan park, but previously was into freight forwarding and travelled all over the world.

Heading to Greece we couldn't decide which Ferry Line and agonised over whether to get a cabin or not, in the end economy won out. Skill checked out all the brochures, and all the ferry lines seemed much of a muchness, so we decided to just get a deck passage, 95 Euro as opposed to 300 Euro. We took the ferry that departed first.

At the border it is quite hilarious, we pass through Greek immigration who want to know where our Greece stamp is, we don't have one we arrived at 4.30 in the morning and couldn't find anyone to stamp our passports. "OK" and stamp stamp stamp, off we go, past the Greek and Turkish guards dressed in traditional dress.

Next day it is goodbye to Patrick and Belinda and we head to Ankara as we know that we have to be there by Thursday as the Embassy is shut on Friday and we don't fancy spending three days in the capital. This was our biggest days ride by far. We leave at 10.00am and reach Ankara at 8.30pm with only fuel stops and a quick lunchstop. The last 40 kms before the freeway from Polati to Ankara is roadworks, a loosely gravelled surface in the dark. Finally make it to Ankara.To quote the Lonely Planet, if you have your own vehicle, "do yourself a favour and use public transport instead.

Up and at em early as we know it will be a long day. Breakfast, packed up and gone by 8.30am we ride past the plains beneath the twin peaks of Great Ararat and Little Ararat on our way to the border. (Gurbulak)

After doing all the paperwork and taking two hours to leave Iran, we ride out of Iran into Pakistan following a dusty trail only to realise we have missed the immigration point, which I actually mistook for a chook shed. (Chicken Coop) We turn around and join the 100 locals who are queuing, the money changers are trying to boss us around and tell us we must join the line outside and stay there, obviously so they have more time to badger you to change money.

For those of you not familiar with the KKH (Karakoram Highway) here's a little bit of background.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Pakistan and China jointly constructed a road across the mountains following a branch of the Silk Road from Kashgar to Islamabad via the 4730m Khunjerab Pass. It was only in 1986 the Khunjerab Pass was opened to travellers. This engineering feat was completed by approximately 15000 Pakistanis and 20000 Chinese. Conditions were hard and deaths on both sides were extremely high.

Disaster has struck, the letters z, x, a, s and e have died on the collapsible keyboard so you will have to be patient and forgive typos and worse than usual spelling in this blog as it will be a tedious process until we get a new keyboard, anyway here goes.

Finally we are back in action with a new iPAQ keyboard to write the blogs and we have a little catching up to do. Thanks so much to our friends Kath and Sean for scouring Australia to find it for us, then flying to Melbourne to pick it up and post it, hope you enjoyed yourselves. The lengths some people will go to so we do our blog homework. So now where were we last blog.....

Life in Goa is quite blissful and we spend three days at Palolem, just swimming, eating, and generally relaxing.

We leave Gorakpur as soon as the curfew is lifted at 8.30 am and make the 100km ride to the border at Sonauli, a dusty Indian town complete with traffic jams caused by the trucks crossing the border, we later find that it is more congested than usual because of the Terai blockades.

Indian formalities completed, we enter Nepal and head to get our visas which take no time at all.

After a perfect landing in Santiago Chile we find ourselves lined up to pay the reciprocity tax that Aussies are required to pay in reply to our own government's visa requirements for Chileans. This is all OK until we realise that there are about 300 people queued (2 other planes have landed before us) and only 2 people on the processing counter. After standing in a line for nearly three hours we have our visas, are stamped into the country and have collected our bags.

Well here we are 5 years on ready to travel on the bike again. On arriving home from our first overland motorcycle trip in 2007 we had a four year plan to travel again which blew out to 5 years but finally we are on the move again.Time dulls the memory, we had forgotten the sheer hard work it takes to pack up your life for 12 to 18 months and we could never have done it without the support of friends, family and the HU Community who have kept us inspired when we would begin to lose focus.

So once again we will start at the beginning......................

Well D Day has arrived and we are off to pick up the bike.Enso first goes to Customs in Valparaiso town by himself and when he returns, we get into his friend's pick-up and we are off out to the shipping agent's warehouse, about 20km away. On arrival we enter the main building where Enso negotiates, and gets several pieces of paper stamped several hundred times (slight exaggeration), after this we are informed that only one person can go with Enso to uncrate the bike, so I sit and wait and wait and wait.

We arrive in the delightful San Martin de Los Andes after a glorious days ride. After a couple of half hearted attempts at trying to find a camping ground we give up and head to the Tourist Information Office where we find a delightful young lady who speaks perfect English and directs us to the Puma Youth Hostel.Another brilliant find, a gorgeous double room in the attic, kitchen facilities, wifi, hot water and fabulous staff. Some days are just easy and this was one of them. We throw our panniers in the room, shower and off to wander the streets.

Still in Fitz Roy we are up and at em early-ish, the sun is out, it's still semi-windy but there is no dust storm, so we pack up, Skill takes the bike seat off to find the tubing to decant some fuel into our emergency bottles (starting to get a little further between fuel stops now). There is sand/dust in every nook and cranny, under the seat, covering the battery, in the tool compartment, everywhere, all from the dust storm.

Sorry we have skipped ahead with our blog, but because we experienced so much in such a short period of time we wanted to get it down while it was still fresh in our memories. We will do a backtrack/catch-up soon.........................so here is Antarctica Part 1......

Day 6 Saturday 1st December Yet another overnight transit, and we awake to 10 cm of fresh snow on the front deck of the ship, but by the time we have had breakfast the crew have hosed it off.
Snow on the deck

Blog Backtracking...... our time in Ushuaia before we leave for Antarctica. We are pretty excited to be in Ushuaia, we have heard so much about this place from our fellow motorcycling friends over the years. We find the Freestyle Hostel with no problems, secure parking out the back after negotiating a building site, throw our gear into the room, for tonight we have to share a dorm room with two Italian ladies but tomorrow we get to move into our own private room. We then head out for a king crab empanada and Quilmes beer.

We sadly leave Ushuaia after nearly a month. Long sad goodbyes to Nancy and Mariano then it is onto the bike. It is cold and rainy, we then have to queue for fuel at the YPF, as the two previous service stations are out of fuel.It is a pretty miserable ride up over the Garibaldi Pass where the rain turns to sleet and the temperature is down to 0 degrees.

Boxing day is here and we need to leave this little oasis of El Chalten and head North, we refuel and add an extra 5 litres (in a 5 litre plastic water bottle) to the bike. As fellow travellers, Grant and Jules Guerin so succinctly put it, we are now a travelling molotov cocktail.We have calculated it will be a little over 300km to Gobernador Gregores, about the limit of our fuel range so the extra is an insurance policy.

Our days in Pucon are quite blissful, our first morning we awake to a beautiful sunny day and although it is very hot, we have a piscina (pool) to cool off in, the views to Volcan Villarica are uninterrupted and quite spectacular, although it is not puffing out any smoke. We do the usual chores, washing, mending, and research. The most exciting thing about Pucon is the huge amounts of different foods available, we score Burrito mix and Petaks Tikka Masala curry sauce, heaps of fruit and veges, we are in seventh heaven.

Our first day on the farm is a reasonably quiet one, it is Sunday and we help John with a few odd jobs before Annette arrives home later in the afternoon, a late night of catch ups, drinks and tall stories is the order of the day.The following day we head down the farm for a morning of tumble-weed weeding, the weather is oppressively hot and sticky, so by lunch time it is time for a siesta and a swim. In the late afternoon we return to the farm for a bit more work. This is the pattern of events for the next week.

It is Saturday 2nd March and we finally decide that we need to get on the road again but feel rather guilty leaving poor John and Annette with 40 tonnes of plums to harvest, our timing was probably not the best, but hope we provided some help with all the pre-harvest preparation jobs.We make the short ride into San Rafael where we attempt to get some money out but with no success at all, after lining up to try 4 ATMs we realise it is not the usual Argentine ATM 'no cash' problem. Our card of choice is not working!

Leaving Cafayate we head out with plans to ride Ruta 40 to Cachi, we stop to refuel at the YPF but with no luck, an English speaking Argentinian on a BMW redirects us to another fuel station up the road and follows us there. After refuelling he advises us not to ride Ruta 40, 'very dangerous' he says and gives us a map with alternative routes which we reluctantly decide to take, but it is such a stunning ride along the RN68 we wonder if Ruta 40 could be any better?

Well what will today bring, another new country - into Bolivia!We get away by 10.00am after manoeuvring the bike out of the building very carefully, as you can see.

We get the bike out of Hostal Copacabana

People come to Sucre for three days and stay for three months, it is just that kind of place. It is a really easy city to negotiate, there are great restaurants, markets/supermarkets, cultural museums and activities.Life here is simple. Our move to Hostel Pachamama (Mother Earth) proves to be the right one, the cost is 100 Bol ($15.00AUD) per night and we have our own big room with ensuite on the second floor overlooking the garden. It really is a gorgeous place.

Samaipata will go down on our favourites list. We spend 5 days here enjoying the tranquil, peaceful surroundings. The evening we arrive we find a bar and to our delight share the evening with fellow Aussie and former resident of Brisvegas, Kirsty. She and her husband Dave own and run the delightful “La Boheme” Bar on the main square. Kirsty is a Samaipatian enthusiast and gives us her take on the best food in town, which happens to be across the road at “La Cocina” run by 2 Istanbulians.. The food is a Mexican/Turkish fusion and although incredibly simple, it is amazing.

We awake in a new country, Peru, a place we have dreamed of coming to for nearly 30 years. Our excitement is tempered by our tiredness, yesterday's border crossings, teamed with the rain and cold had been a bit of a marathon effort, for this reason we start the day slowly. We make breakfast in our room then go for a walk around the village of Chucuito. It is a lovely, sleepy little village and it's inhabitants are incredibly friendly.

Out and about in Chucuito

We are lucky enough to be in Cusco in the two week lead up to Inti Rami – the festival of the Winter Solstice. It is truly amazing, there is always something going on in the Plaze de ArmesCusco sits at 3300 metres above see level. It is the continents oldest continuously inhabited city, steeped in history, the narrow cobblestoned streets are lined with huge Incan built walls, and while it is undeniably a tourist city it is also undeniably beautiful and still quite authentic. It truly is a lovely, living city.

After the weekend we are eager to hit the road even if it is a short 3 hour ride to Ollantaytambo.For the first time since we arrived in Santiago 9 months ago we have pre-booked our accommodation in Ollantaytambo at the lovely Hotel Munay Tika. The hotel is gorgeous, we have the most amazing views from our room and the staff are so helpful. The only problem is getting the bike through the garden door. It is more than a tight fit but Skill manages it.

Yesterday was a long day, and last night in Puno it got down to minus 6 degrees Celcius, so we have a bit of a sleep in before venturing out for a bacon and egg breakfast and hitting the road for (hmm is it back to Bolivia or off to Chile) a toss of the coin and Bolivia it is.We leave Puno easily, fill up with fuel and enjoy a short ride to …................... the first police checkpoint. They check our papers, including our SOAT insurance and we are off again.

We awake next morning to find that we have indeed slept for twelve hours, it must be the aging process, whatever happened to the couple that used to party Friday night, drive 800 km to a party Saturday night and return the 800 km home Sunday and front work on Monday. I fear they are extinct.For some reason we feel completely exhausted so decide we will just chill in Tilcara for a few days, although cold at night it is beautiful, sunny and warm during the day.

On leaving our oasis in Trindade we follow the coast road to the uninspiring outskirts of Rio, the closer we get to Rio the warmer it gets and you guessed it the bikes starts to misbehave really badly.As it is a Sunday the traffic into Rio is not too bad which is a God send as the bike will hardly run at all, in the stop start traffic. We make it to within a km of the hostel but cannot quite work out the one way road system to get to our street, so pull over and turn the bike off for a while, while we check out the GPS.

We make the decision we will ride as quickly as possible back to San Rafael so this is a pretty boring account of the weeks ride …...................................

Well here we go again The Americas Part 2 …................................................. On a hot February morning we say sad goodbyes to my mum and dad and we drive our trusty old ute (pick up) from Kingaroy to Brisbane to our hotel of choice. Later in the afternoon we are joined by my sisters family and Wally-roo (my sister cares for young orphaned kangaroo joeys). We head over to the new Brisbane cruise ship terminal for a farewell family lunch (Wally stays in his pouch in the air conditioned comfort of our room) before it is more sad goodbyes for yet another year.

We leave La Serena after a lovely breakfast beside the bike, then comes the task of actually getting it out through the reception, which we manage to do after yet again rearranging the furniture.We refuel and join the Pan American for the long desert trek North.

Breakfast with the bike

We spend a total of 4 nights in Miraflores, Lima, the Hitchhikers Hostel is a gathering point for many overlanders, a filtering point of the North/South America overland traffic.On one evening we share drinks with our new found Dutch friends, they are travelling for a year with their two children in a large motorhome.

It is a border crossing day. Border crossings are always a mix of heady excitement because you are off to a new country but also anxiety, because you never know what border officials are going to throw at you. We leave the gross Peruvian town of Sullana behind us in a lather of sweat, it is a very hot day and the ride to Macara is fraught with the usual maniacs, driving with no care or respect for anyone else on the road, let alone a bike. By the time we arrive at the small border town of La Tina we are sweltering.

It is a quiet Sunday morning in Lasso, we awake to very overcast conditions, have a hearty breakfast, pack up, don the wet weather gear and are on the road to Quito by 9.00 am. We get only 10 km up the road before the phone tells us we have no satellite reception and decides it doesn't want to navigate us into Quito. We pull over while Skill makes a few adjustments and after a few tense minutes, the problem seems to resolve itself and we are under way, albeit in the rain.

Back in Quito after our tour of the jungle we go to see Diego to pick up the bike only to find that the workshop is closed with our bike locked inside. After a bit of a run around we discover that he is currently out on the road fixing one of the “Freedom Motorcycle Tour” bikes which would be OK except that they are caught out between two landslides and will not be returning until Tuesday afternoon. Hmmmmm.

Oh well while we are back in Quito cooling our heals we finally get to visit the old part of the city. Sunday is a nice day to visit as the streets are closed to traffic.

It is a reasonably early start as we have heard that it can take up to an hour to clear customs and organise the paperwork which is necessary for entry to the Galapagos. Fortunately we are checked in and through in no time. We head for the nearest cafe for a bad coffee and a good breakfast, then have about an hours wait. The flight to Guayaquil takes about 40 minutes, nearly everyone gets off before new passengers get on. Forty five minutes later we are on our way to Baltra on Santa Cruz Island.

Well it is border crossing day again, we are not travelling far today so we are pretty slow on the breakfast and packing up front. Skill goes out to make the necessary photocopies for the border authorities and we are off. It is a pleasant but slow ride up over the mountains with the inevitable traffic and stops for roadworks. The Ecuadorian roads have proved to be very good and those that are a bit rough are under reconstruction, hence quite a lot of roadworks.We arrive at the Ecuadorian border at about 12.30 and are processed pretty quickly, all goes according to plan.

Despite the heat, and the noisy generator under our window, armed with ear plugs, we sleep reasonably well, but the following day is an absolute scorcher, there is really nowhere to escape the heat. The shelters are corrugated iron and brick which seem to absorb more heat than offer any kind of respite. There is a pool but as it is a long weekend I think every resident of Neiva has descended upon it, so it is almost impossible to find a space, let alone swim, we opt for continuous showers throughout the day to cool off.

We spend a total of four nights in the noisy and slightly sketchy town of Tolu, the weather is hot and sultry, it is actually hard to do anything without being wet from perspiration, but we do venture out and about, fortunately the town has a big supermarket where we can buy supplies.
The streets of Tolu

Sunset in Tolu

With only a week left on our Colombian visas, today is the day we finally leave Columbian shores. We are up at em at a reasonable hour but are unable to have a shower or even wash our hands and face as the water in Cartagena has been turned off for 24 hours, oh well bottled water and baby wipes it is. Breakfast, then taxi to the dock where we wait to be picked up by the guys from the Stahlratte.

The land of border crossings.....

After Skill hunts and gathers some yoghurt and yes you guess it, Chiquita bananas for breakfast, I pack up and get organised for the day ahead, another border crossing and another new country.We get away by 8.30 am and hit the border around 9.00am after two military police checks for paper work, we encounter a hotchpotch of buildings and with no signs of official presence we wonder if we have taken a wrong turn somewhere, after a few questions we discover we are actually in the right place and begin the exit procedures for Panama.

We wake late, because we are tad tired from our huge day yesterday and also because it is still quite dark outside due to the black storm clouds and pouring rain. I also realise it is my birthday.Well I can't think of a better place to spend it. We head out for breakfast after cleaning up the water on the floor (obviously our roof leaked in the torrential downpour last night, seems to be a theme happening here), and meet up with Ben and Maurice. We enjoy a fabulous breakfast and spend the morning chatting. By lunch time the rain has abated and I head to the pool for a lazy afternoon.

Well finally it is time to leave Panajachel and head towards Lanquin, we know it will be a fairly long day over 300 km, with a 25 km gravel/landslide section so we leave by 8.30 am, the first part of the road is fairly slow going with a fair amount of traffic and countless speed bumps, the road then opens up and it is a lovely ride through the hills and small villages until we get to the dirt section which proves to be very slow going but manageable.Fortunately it wasn't raining.

We awake to the sounds of spider monkeys dropping debris onto our roof, not a bad way to awake to a new day.We pack up, have breakfast and say farewell to our new found American friends. Spoons and the big Mercedes have already hit the road.

We leave the beauty of the Tikal National Park and head towards the Belize border, it is a really scenic ride which we thoroughly enjoy and before we know it we are at the border.

The lovely grounds of the Jaguar Inn

Mezunte proves to be a difficult place to leave. Our little hostel is perched high above the beach with beautiful views and lovely breezes and the owners are a friendly local family.Our first nights stay sees a huge storm with torrential rain, it teams and while our balcony leaks badly our room remains dry, something we are quite surprised at. The following morning the streets are awash with mud and sand, everyone is out cleaning the floors of their shops while others are shovelling the mud from the streets.

Our arrival at Syulita RV Park is very fortuitous.We camp next to Dan, Karen and their two boys. They are a great travelling family originally from the UK but now living in Canada. They also travelled the same route as us from the UK to India in an old Land Rover with their two older boys in the late 90s. They are really great company and we spend some funny evenings reminiscing about travelling through Pakistan and India.