I headed to Parque Industrial where everybody sells their vehicles near the airport and prepared myself for all the interest the bike would generate. “Dos mil siete,” “Kawasaki seis cincuenta,” “Quince mil kilometros.” My spanish got better but I wasn’t happy with the guys making their low ball offers and just the way they acted. One young guy was overly aggressive, annoying, and put me on the defensive. The guy from the previous day who I had a deal with showed up, too, dropped his price and wanted all my gear. That was annoying after we had agreed on a price the previous day and I wasted my entire afternoon waiting for him. He eventually became unreachable that day.

I left around 10am, a bit frustrated, and was surprised that the sketchy, young guy, who wanted my bike very badly, was following me on some old, old Honda 500 dirtbike. He pulled alongside of me at speed and tried to get me to pull over to negotiate on the bike. I kept waving him off with a no, no, no, but he persisted. I sped up, he sped up, I slowed down, he slowed down. We were close enough that a small swerve would have locked us up for an ugly crash. Finally, he pulled off but what a psycho!

I returned to the hotel and ran into the guy that bought Roar’s bike. He was interested in my bike for his brother but his offer was another low ball offer like the others and much lower than what he gave Roar for his bike. I negotiated the offer a little higher and then left for the Honda dealership in hopes of standing outside and selling it there. After standing there for a few minutes I asked, why am I doing this to myself? I was holding out for a better price which I could surely get on the big market day on Saturday but at what cost? Time, money (hotels, food for extra days to stay), and peace of mind.

I returned to the hotel and called up the guy that bought Roar’s bike. Even though it was a lower price, I liked the guy and I knew that he could close the deal. The biggest problem with selling the bikes was that they were not registered in Peru. To make them legal, the buyer accepted the responsibility of paying the import taxes which were 40% of some number of the value of the bike. Who knows how that is determined.

I went with the guy to the bank while he withdrew the money (another problem since few people here have the means to buy what, essentially, is a large, luxury motorcycle). We went to an English center to get a translation of the title. Finally, we went to a notary to sign a two page contract (I was listed as “Don Andreas Osman” which was really cool) and translations of the title. The brother and I placed a fingerprint by each signature and we waited while each of the three copies was stamped by at least five different stamps to make them official.

This process (including the money and motorcycle key exchange which occurred at the hotel) took all afternoon. At the end, the guy took us to his museum for photos of his brother, me, and the bike “para recordar.” After the photos, he took me for a tour of his museum, and they both walked me part way back to my hotel before giving me big hugs and wishing me luck. I’ve never had a sale of a vehicle happen like this before and I felt good about the whole thing, even the price, and even the way they smooth talked me out of my helmet for $200.

These guys had been riding their whole lives and in their late 40s, early 50s, they were like little kids about these motorcycles. The guy kept talking about how the bikes would be together and you could tell how excited they both were. I could just imagine them riding out in the Valley where they lived and how people would look at the huge bikes in awe and how they would tell the story of how they bought them from two gringos who road them down from California. Although I’m not emotionally attached to the bike at all, I like the idea of these two guys continuing to ride the bikes together.

Thursday, we joined the sheep of other tourists, and rode a train to Machu Picchu. I had to contain my feelings for hippies, dirty backpackers (and even some clean ones, why do they carry so much stuff with them?), and super lib travelers, but it wasn’t too hard as Machu Picchu is really such a unique, amazing place. Beautiful, impressive, awesome, just like everybody says it is.

Without the bike, I felt that a part of me is missing. I can’t just get up and go wherever I want to. God, I am just like every other traveler again. I have to take a taxi, a train, or an airplane to get from place to place. Until this trip I was always one of those people and I don’t know if I can go back to that (well, maybe for short trips). But the freedom of having your own wheels, your own means to get from one place to another when you want and how you want is fantastic. You experience more of the land, the beauty, the people than you can when you are rushing by on a night bus or hopping by plane. It will be nice to go home for some normalcy but I’m hooked. I’m doing this again. I want to do the original South America loop but I don’t know what will be next. Africa, Asia, Norway, Australia, New Zealand. They all beckon and they are all on my list….

In a couple of hours, Roar and I fly to Lima and will spend the weekend there for one last hurrah before heading home. I know that he intends to post a lot more pictures when he gets back to his own computer with a good connection and I will probably do the same. But sadly, this trip has come to an end and I know that I will dwell on the experiences for a long, long time.

Here’s to the next trip and to anyone else out there who makes their own next trip…

Salud! Prost! Skal! Cheers!!!

Andreas Osman

First one person and then another, mostly just curious, stopped to ask questions. In just fifteen minutes we were fielding questions left and right. One guy was interested in Roar’s bike and I helped to translate. I turned around to talk to a couple of other interested people and a moment later Roar was walking with the guy back to the hotel.

The cops came up to me and told me I had to move (I think because we had been getting too much attention). I waited till Roar got back and the interested buyer hopped onto the back of Roar’s bike and they took off for the bank.

Roar ended up getting a pretty good price for his bike and now it’s in the hands of a happy Peruvian rider and his son. Long story short for me is that I haven’t sold my bike yet. Loads of interest, only a few offers, some too low, and one that I accepted this morning, seemingly has fallen through since I can’t get in touch with the guy.

Nevertheless, we have made firm plans (we already paid our money) to take the train to Machu Picchu and have a guided tour on Thursday. That gives me tomorrow to try again with the bike. If that fails, my best hope is to hang around until Saturday. That’s the big day for people to sell vehicles and many people have assured me that I can sell it then for sure.

I envy Roar that he is bike less with a pocketful of cash. He has no plane ticket and can go wherever he wants to. I’m still shackled to the bike (funny how I loved it so much before!) and probably won’t fully relax until it’s gone. This feels like the end of the trip and transitions tend to suck. If I had the time and money I would love to continue but I can’t. I gotta go back to work.

Cross your fingers for me!

The Pan America highway south of Lima is a nice and fast divided four lane highway that lasts about 100 kilometers. Sure enough, the desert started again right away and the section along the coast was filled with sand dunes, empty desert, and small hideaway beach communities for the well off.

One stretch was long and straight and had a strong, howling crosswind that strained my neck, no kidding. It’s interesting when you approach a tractor trailer because you lean so hard into the wind normally that you have to get ready for a vacuum and straighten up momentarily as you overtake the truck since he shelters you from the wind. Then as you approach his front you need to lean hard into the upcoming wind that threatens to blast you off the highway.

Six hours of riding and we arrived in Nazca, whose most famous attraction are the Nazca Lines. These lines were dug 30cm deep into the sand to reveal the lighter lower layers of rock by ancient peoples two thousand years ago. They are large and the funny thing is that they can only be viewed from above and the best way is by small airplane.

A plane crashed here a couple of weeks ago and it has been big news here. Five people died. So, we took one of those plane tours this morning and the Lines are interesting and worth checking out. There is quite a bit of damage from people that drove vehicles across the lines and some natural damage from El Nino from some years back but they are intact for the most part.

Immediately after our early morning flight, we packed up our things and hit the road. Nazca is at about 1200 ft and I knew that we would be headed straight up into the cold of the Andes by looking at the map. The first stretch of road was full of tight switchbacks up and up and up. Desolate, rocky, arid desert turned gradually greener and greener as we made our way up pot hole filled roads with few guard rails to prevent you from falling off the mountain. This made me nervous and I kept my pace slow. I didn’t want to push my luck by hitting a bump in the road while leaned over in a turn that would cause me to head straight out of a corner.

We saw less and less people and less and less traffic the higher we rode. This stretch was isolated and the altitude contributed even more to this feeling of being out there by yourself. The air is crisp and thinner, you can tell it’s not filling up your lungs the way it should. The sky is extra blue, bluer than I ever remembered seeing it with puffy white clouds and some scary looking grey ones. Our bikes felt it, too, and they chugged along with less air to combust. They hardly had any power and I had to keep the RPMs up to get anything going. When stopped the bikes barely idled and it felt like they would go out with the next breath.

Near the top of that first long ascent I saw some llamas off to the side munching on grass. The mountains here had no trees but rolling hills of grass, brush, and rocks. I couldn’t help myself and went off road to see the llamas up close. On another trip I would have loved to do this all the time and stay off the road and ride up and down the hills.

Roar’s GPS told us that we hit a maximum altitude of 4548 meters (almost 15,000 ft)!

This section of road was a lot nicer without the huge dropoffs. Plenty of nice sweeping turns and hardly any traffic at all. I used the whole road (since I could clearly see no opposing traffic) and felt like I was riding on a racetrack. I concentrated on riding lines and apexes in a way I don’t normally get to do. And you’re faster without even trying too hard.

That night we stayed in a small town south of Abancay, which appeared to rarely get gringo visitors. Thank God, I hate seeing hippies and dirty backpackers. One group of small kids were so interested in the white Norwegian that I thought Roar might be taking some kids with us.

The next day, continuous excellent riding. We paralleled a river through a gorge and the twisties were incredibly fun. The altitude was getting to us and my body was tired and achy most of that day. But I knew that it was our last day and I powered through. Although we peaked at 15,000 ft most of our riding was between 7000 and 12,000 feet.

We arrived in Cusco yesterday and it is probably the most impressive of all the old colonial towns I have seen in Central and South America. It’s amazing. Wait for the pictures to see for yourself.

We met our friend, Chris, from the boat to Cartagena. He had just finished the Inca trail and we were lucky that he was staying an extra couple of nights. Cusco has great nightlife and I’ve been told it’s crazy every night of the week. Roar and I found out the hard way that you can’t drink the same amount that you do at sea level without paying the price for it the next day. Cusco is at 11,000 ft and the alcohol works a lot quicker here. If you’re not acclimated to it (and maybe even if you are) do yourself a favor and drink less . We’re still hurting today.

So now, we just have to sell the bikes and see Machu Picchu….

Most people probably think about Machu Pichu and the Andes when they think of Peru. Some might think jungle. But I never thought that Peru would have deserts. The coast of Peru is covered with desert, ranging from the type with some plant life and some irrigation to reclaim desert land to rocky moonscapes to sand dunes to totally lifeless desert. The desert started in the north just outside of Piura and only stopped for us just shy of Lima. I don’t know yet if the desert continues south but we will find out.

I love the desert and we will post some of the amazing pictures we took of the deserts in Peru.

We are currently in the Miraflores neighborhood of Lima. We took the bikes to the shop for an oil change and servicing and will pick them up later today. Miraflores is the really nice part of town and reminds me of northern Bogota as far as the quality of the area, the people, and the fun nightlife.

We have a couple of leads on selling the motorcycles and we have had a lot of interested people. In Piura, one Peruvian guy approached Roar and tried to buy the bike from underneath him. I don’t think we will have too much of a problem.

A couple of guys have told us that it will be easier for us to sell the bikes in Cusco (near Machu Pichu). To the both of us, that sounds like the perfect ending to our amazing trip and I think that I will be able to make it back to the States in time. So, tomorrow we head to the Nazca Lines and hopefully, we will arrive in Cusco a couple of days later (by April 19th or 20th). We’ll sell the bikes there if all goes well, see Machu Pichu, and I will return to the States. I can’t speak for Roar but he talks about doing some more traveling. Why not??

Last Sunday we headed out of Bogota. We made it to a small, picturesque town called Carcamarca (I think) nestled in between the mountains on the road from Ibague and Armenia. This  road is fantastic by the way and shouldn’t be missed if you ride. Great views, beautiful pavement, slow tight twisties.

We ran into tons of toll roads on our journey through Colombia but, guess what?, motorcyclists ride them for free! All you need to do is head over to the far right for the special motorcyle lane.

The next day we arrived in Popoyan, a well preserved white washed colonial town. We attract attention wherever we go and Roar made a quick and easy friend and I was amazed at how far his Spanish has come. He kept this conversation going (or maybe she did) entirely in Spanish.

The cops across the street

Munching on some delicious street meat that cost fifty cents

The road from Popoyan to Pasto is another fantastic road not to be missed by other riders. It starts out with slow twisties, through the mountains on uneven pavement making it more challenging. It turns into long sweepers with good pavement which turns into a small pothole maze. Strangely, I saw cactus on this ride. Never thought I’d see it down here. Fantastic, fantastic views of steep mountains that are very distracting when you’re concentrating and leaning in for a turn.

We pushed through Pasto (at about 6000 feet and cold) and headed to the border near Ipiales. The border crossing was pretty easy and we stayed the night in Tulcan for seven bucks per person. So far, I wasn’t too impressed with Ecuador. It was run down and dirty and reminded me of former communist countries like Bulgaria and Romania.

Early the next morning we drove out to Quito on good roads with much more considerate drivers than in Colombia. We stopped at an equator monument at 9000 ft. I thought that if I ever crossed the equator it would be at some hot jungle location and not where I was freezing from riding in rain in the mountains. The whole ride from Pasto on has been cold and rainy and at elevations from 6000 to 10000 feet. I never would have thought it but if you spend some time looking at a topo map it makes sense.

Quito was another surprise. Roar told me that the old town was listed as a UNESCO heritage site. Once there in person, I could see why. Tons of beautiful buildings, churches, government buildings, theaters, some of which date back to the 1500s. All of this on hills reminscent of San Francisco, again at 9000 ft. This is where the clouds play and they constantly moved from one mountain and valley to the next. Unfortunately, the pressures of getting back home won’t allow us to stay longer although I’d love to come back here and really check things out. Quito has my curiosity.

I met her and her friend, Alberto, a couple of hours later and we met up with several other riders at a nearby motorcycle shop. I was envious as I looked at the other bikes and saw Ducatis and Suzukis and Kawasakis. There was one other dual sport, a KTM 640 Adventure, but the rest were crotch rockets and naked bikes. For the first time since California I would be on one of the smaller bikes.

Martika, Alberto, and I headed to another spot in Bogota. It was a part of a small park and I couldn´t believe my eyes when I saw about a hundred other shiny, flashy new bikes and their riders and passengers hanging out. Thursdays are the nights for bikers in Bogota. They just come to hang out and talk and bullshit. Martika´s group had other plans….

We (about 20 to 25 of us) promptly headed out of town to hit miles and miles of twisties outside of Bogota. Some stretches were pitch black but the ride was cold and there was no traffic. A lot of the guys in this group could really ride and would put me to shame no matter what I was riding. But I didn´t do badly considering that I had ridden for 11 hours that day, had never ridden those roads before, and had a small bike. I was somewhere in the middle of the pack and I felt good about it.

We rode for about an hour before we hit an Italian food joint for some pizza before heading back on dark, cold, isolated highways back into Bogota. Riding in large groups is a lot of fun and I whacked the throttle open to reach my max of 90 mph but I was always playing catch up to the other guys and their large beasts.

We stopped for some coffee (for me a beer) in the ever popular Zona Rosa before I met up with Roar at the hotel for some sleep at 1 am. A long, long day…..

Martika and her friend and their bike

At the pizza joint

Martika and me

The next day, Roar and I did some sightseeing. We went up to Monserrate, an old building and a church at the top of a mountain. I had been there twice before and enjoyed fantastic views of Bogota during the day and at night but today we had no such luck. It started raining like crazy when we reached the top. Roar snapped a couple of photos and we headed straight down.

We hit the Candelaria, the old town of Bogota, for a little bit of sightseeing before heading to the Bogota Beer Company in the Zona Rosa. I have always had a great time there and this time was no exception. It´s a great place to meet new people and Roar and I made some new friends with Colombians that were starting a group to practice their English skills. I also met with my friend, Stefy, and we all headed to a club near Parque 93 called Salto de Angel for a fun night of drinking and dancing.

I´ve been to Bogota twice before and I always had a great time. The people are friendly and fun and the place has a great vibe. The only things I don´t like are the traffic and the cold weather. On Saturday night I met with my friend, Efrain. We caught up since I hadn´t seen him in a year and a half and then we met up with some of his friends at the “En Vitro” club, a newly popular place that was laid back and a lot fun…..

Me and Efrain

The next day, Roar and I headed out of Bogota down south. The current plan is to head straight and steady for Lima, Peru. I am running out of time and I have to be back to work in early May. That gives us less than three weeks to get down to Lima, to sell or ship the bikes home, and to fly back to southern California.

The time in Bogota was too short. We both loved the time we spent there and wish that it could have been longer. But there will be a next time and the trip must go on…..

I hobbled around for a few days and iced my ankles to little effect. My ankles swoll up and my left foot especially looked worse than I had ever seen it. I didn´t want to look closely at it but I had to. I looked at my foot and thought of all the homeless people and other derelicts I had seen because sometimes they had feet that looked like mine did. Nasty, dirty, infected feet. Yuck.

I went to the hospital, talked to a doctor, and got some medicine. It is now about a week after I started taking the antibiotics and my feet are much better. I deal with some localized swelling that probably would have gone away by now but this roadtrip waits for no one and I´ve had to ride and walk around which irritates my ankle. No big deal.

In Cartagena, we hung out with some of the folks that were on the boat with us. It was a good group of people and it was fun to hang out with them for another couple of days before the inevitible happened and the group dissolved and people went their separate ways.

Last Sunday morning, we struck out for Medellin. We encountered the Acapulco Syndrome with the local people and we got answers between five and twenty hours to get to Medellin. It felt great to be back on the road again, although it was uneventful riding for the most part through what appeared to be cow country.

By chance we saw a couple of adventure motorcyclists on a Beemer headed the opposite way. We all stopped and exchanged information about the roads ahead. They were en route to Cartagena to take a boat to Panama and we told them what we knew. In turn, they told us about a nice hotel about 5 hours north of Medellin which would be a good stopping point since we would not have enough daylight to make it all the way there.

We spent the night in Caucasia at that hotel and headed to Medellin the next morning. This leg was a lot more fun and the riding got better and better. We started up a mountain north of Medellin and kept going up and up and up. The views were fantastic and this was the other part of the trip that I had envisioned of riding in South America: steep, curvy roads through towns and villages perched high in the mountains…fantastic views of the valleys below. Also, the vibrant green we saw in the countryside combined with steep hills on which animals grazed reminded me of the landscapes I had seen in Scotland and Ireland. It was incredible.

We arrived in Medellin in pouring rain. My gear held up well and I was pretty dry. All in all it took us ten to eleven hours to ride from Cartagena to Medellin over two days. We encountered the first of many friendly paisos (person from Medellin) when I asked a fellow motorcyclist how to get to an apartment we were planning to stay at. He told us to follow him and he took us straight to where we needed to go. He even offered his cell phone so that I could call the American who rented us a couple of rooms in his apartment for a few days.

This was my second time in Medellin and my only disappointment was that we were going to miss the weekend. Instead of enjoying a weekend in the Poblodo section of town, we had a couple of slow and rainy nights, Monday through Wednesday. Medellin and Cali are well known for the beauty of its women and we saw plenty of incredibly beautiful women that confirmed this.

Thursday morning we woke up early to ride to Bogota. We were told anywhere from five to twelve hours this time so we decided to head out as soon as the sun came up to maximize our riding time and give us enough cushion for mistakes or mechanical problems.

We started out a little bit late but still got on the road by 7 am. There are two highways to Bogota and one is supposed to be faster than the other. Unfortunately, with my limited Spanish it was easy to misunderstand directions and we got lost. We waded through stuck early morning traffic and rode up steep hills that appeared to have no end. We ended up on an open mountain road with great views of the city. This was one hour later and I was frustrated as hell. We were about ready to turn back when I asked a passer by how to get to the airport. He seemed to know what he was talking about (that´s a challenge; trying to determine if the person you ask directions from knows what they are talking about) so we went for it, and relief soon came as we found ourselves back on track.

The riding got better and better the farther east we went. Nice pavement, curvy roads, not too much traffic. Then, on a long downhill section with incredible views of the valley below we noticed less and less traffic. And we started noticing more and more military checkpoints. Between Cartagena and Medellin it was normal to see a checkpoint every five to ten or even twenty kilometers. Here it was almost every 500 meters to a kilometer between checkpoints. We started seeing soldiers patrolling the highway on foot and greater and greater numbers at the checkpoints. When we saw some small tanks and APC´s at some of the checkpoints I knew that we were traveling through a fairly hot area. No big deal, we just wouldn´t stop unless it was at a checkpoint and many were located at most restaurants and stores where travellers would stop.

There was little car traffic but we started seeing more and more trucks. Many people might decide to cancel driving plans because of possible fighting but truck drivers still need to make money and haul cargo.

On one curve I didn´t appreciate the way these guys drive sometimes. I couldn´t see around the curve because of the mountainside but had to wait till the middle of the curve to see an oncoming truck in his lane. I saw extra movement underneath the truck and noticed  that there was another truck overtaking him in my lane! I headed to the outside of my lane towards the small shoulder and slammed on my brakes. It was going to be close! The bike slid but I stayed upright. Luckily the truck driver reacted quickly, hit his brakes and moved right towards the other truck. If he had not done this I would have splattered against the front grill of his truck. As it was, I made it to the right shoulder of the road in time and missed him by maybe half a foot. I felt the adrenaline rush and my heart pounding and took a couple of seconds to collect myself before starting out again. Besides my one crash several years back that was the closest I had ever come to that final wreck.

At the bottom of the mountain the military presence lessened and we were stopped at a police checkpoint. Here there was no pretense. The cops were just interested in the bikes and our journey and asked us tons of questions. The Colombian cops and soldiers were always polite and friendly. It was nice knowing that they were on the roads and I would rather talk to them anyday than to narcotrafficos, FARC, or kidnappers. These cops confirmed that we did, in fact, go through an area with a lot of conflict. No surprise.

The road continued to be a lot of fun, lots of curves, and that day I really felt at one with the bike. I felt like I had so much more control than before and Roar and I were both speeding down the road, leaning hard into the curves. Colombians love their bikes. There are tons of motorcyclists on the road and this has been the first country since we left the U.S. where larger bikes are a lot more common. We weren´t the biggest guys on the block anymore. But Roar and I were outriding these guys on a regular basis.

The increased traffic only gave us more challenges as we negotiated the mountain roads and passed slow moving and not so slow moving trucks and cars. On the left, on the right, whatever made sense. I admit that I took some risks I shouldn´t have taken but hey that comes  with a bit of confidence and overconfidence and I felt solid in my riding skills. It was a long, very fun day of riding, about as much fun for me as our rides in Baja were, which is saying a lot. We made it to a hotel in Bogota at 6 pm,  eleven hours on the road. It was great and I ended up riding a little bit more that night…..

We met Captain Dennis and his partner and friend, Angel, in Portobelo, Panama, which is on the Atlantic side south of the canal. It used to be the main port for the Spaniards five hundred years ago but now it is a sleepy town populated with the descendants of former slaves with some old buildings and ruins of forts.

We met a couple of the other passengers and spent the night on the boat, a 65 foot trimaran. The following day we took Angel as a guide to the customs office in Colon. We needed to get our bikes stamped out of the country and Colon was the only place to do it. Everybody we talked to and the guidebooks said that Colon was a dangerous, seedy, port town. We heard “shithole” and watch your back, too. Angel is Colombian, speaks fluent Spanish, and knew the town so I was thankful to have him as a guide.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have an extra helmet and as soon as we hit the main highway some cops on bikes signalled us to pull over. I asked Angel seated behind me if we should pull over and he said “I guess so.” It’s a good thing we did because it turns out that the police captain spotted us speeding down the highway with a helmetless Angel and he sent his guys out to stop us.

We were escorted to the police station and Angel was able to talk our way out of it after about thirty minutes. The other cops kept wandering over to us and our bikes to ask questions. It was kind of fun.

After we were let go one of the cops agreed to escort us to customs (he also had to get the helmet back that they loaned to Angel). We bypassed waiting traffic by lane splitting down the two lane highway. It’s much easier when you’ve got a cop leading the way. It was a good thing Angel and the cop came because everything at customs had changed and we had to go from one place to another. Roar and I could have done it ourselves but it would have taken a lot more time and, given the city’s reputation, I didn’t want to wander off into any sketchy areas with our valuable bikes. As it turned out, we only saw very minimal bad areas. It was kind of disappointing after the hype but I think that we just didn’t need to go through the really bad parts.

Later that day we manhandled the bikes onto a launch and took the bikes out to the boat. Loading was no problem with some help and two hoists. We tied the bikes down to some lines and we were set.

You have to be very flexible when you take a trip like this. The timelines are always changing due to a number of factors. The captain wants to fill up his boat to make money and passengers encounter problems in trying to get to the boat. Also, weather plays a role in deciding how fast and where we can go.

We finally left late Wednesday morning (we arrived on a Monday). Upon hitting the open sea we hit 6 to 8 foot swells which is kind of rocky. Despite the seasickness pills I took I still got sick. I didn’t throw up but the most comfortable position I found was lying down with my eyes closed and then I was pretty much worthless. For about the first 24 hours after a start I would feel sick and be worthless. After that my body adjusted and I was ok.

We stopped at several of the San Blas islands, which are inhabited by the Kuna people, the only indigenous people in the Western Hemisphere who retained most of their autonomy to the present day.

I did a lot of snorkeling and borrowed Dennis’s speargun to hunt for fish. I saw tons of fish, mostly small ones but a few big ones, some stingrays and one shark. The shark looked about 8 feet long (so he was probably five or six), was completely black, and lay on the ocean floor beneath a ball of coral. I assumed that he was a bottom feeder but it still scared me to see something that large under the water with me. I left him alone because I thought that he would take off with the spear and the gun if I shot him. Later, I thought that I should have shot him right through the brain for a quick kill but, alas, I didn’t have the balls to do it at the time.

I ended up spearing three small fish over a couple of days. The big guys always stayed just a little bit out of reach and I think that they were on to me. I realized how much I enjoyed spearfishing. I am an amateur and the real guys dive way deeper than I can go (20-30 meters) but it is a challenging activity that I might test my limits with again.

The bad thing about the snorkeling is that I used some very stiff fins that rubbed my ankles raw. I enjoyed it so much I ignored the pain before finally switching to some softer ones. By then it was too late. My ankles swoll up and I could barely walk during the last couple of days. There wasn’t too much I could do besides disinfect them with hydrogen peroxide. By the time we got to Cartagena the swelling and pain got worse and worse. Off the boat, I iced my ankles several times a day with limited effect. Infection had set in and I went to the hospital. They prescribed me some antibiotics and anti- inflammatory drugs. Normally, I don’t like taking these kinds of drugs but I had never seen my feet look so bad. I had strangers staring down at my feet constantly. So far, the drugs are doing the trick and my ankles are a lot better.

Back to the boat trip…..the parts of the trip that fulfilled expectations was cruising up to some islands, anchoring, and just hanging out. Those times were fun and I really enjoyed those experiences. Dealing with dirty kitchens and a boat with constant problems wasn’t so nice. Captain Dennis and his friend Angel were interesting characters. They reminded me off my next door neighbors when I lived in my condo in Huntington Beach. A little rough around the edges, things on the boat didn’t always go so smoothly. As Angel said, “Punk owned and operated.” When you forgot about schedules and didn’t mind some discomfort and inconveniences it was a fun voyage…which I probably won’t ever do again but hey I look back and think what a crazy little adventure that was…..

Me on a deserted isle

Punk owned and operated….Roar, Captain Dennis, and Angel

We are headed to Portobelo, Panama to catch a ship that will sail to the san blas islands and then on to Cartagena. sailing time will be about four to five days and we will probably be completely off the grid for most of that time so we might not be able to update the blog for a while….