I knew this leg of the world ride was over when I disconnected the battery and had a glass of bubbles yesterday.
So many wonderful people helped make this a memorable and successful adventure. Thanks for the emails, and many suggestions of places to go.
We did just over 3 months, [...]
We’ve finished, parked the bikes up and are getting ready to return to NZ. 21,000 kms of South America completed, great taste of the Andes and then followed by Uruguay, Paraguay and half of Brazil. All good, no worries with bikes – they’ve been serviced, stored and await our return in a few months when [...]
The state of the wild animal life in a country is judged by the road kill as far as I am concerned. America lots of animals and lots of diverse road-kill, Russia no animals on the roads, dead or alive.
South America the dogs are winner , or really the losers, of the “dead by [...]
The haul back across Paraguay was made more memorable by the rain that bucketed down turning all but the one strip of tar into a red bog and then a close encounter of a truck passing head on into Gareth’s path causing him to divert into the verge wasn’t particular unusual but a huge “Jesus” [...]
Our day in Asuncion with the UNICEF staff again made us think of the poor and vulnerable, lack of education and poor health often means the adults can’t care for the children as well as they would like to. The much loved little ones are carried everywhere and given lots of love but there are [...]
Always a highlight of these rides is spending time with UNICEF folk on the ground and looking and learning about the work they’re doing. Today we spent in the capital of Paraguay visiting projects that are focused on getting kids off the streets, lifting their hygene standards and in short making their life better. Life [...]
They are great to visit and certainbly deserve thei ranking as amongst the world’s most spectacular (and largest). I remember them mainly from the movie The Mission and those scenes where Jeremy Irons as the Jesuit priest was leading the Guarani to land above the Falls, climbing the cliffs beside them and being pursued by [...]
The world’s largest hydroelectric power station at Itaipu. What do you say about these types of projects – over our lifetimes we’ve seen heaps of them – starting with the dam at Arapuni, then the big one at Arrrateatea near Taupo (got a tour of that at primary school in 1965) and then stepped up [...]
It is about dinner time in NZ but I am sitting in a lobby looking out at the skateboarders and staggering happy drunks, it is around 3am. Gareth sat in the lobby and did his computer work earlier as it is the only place the WiFi works here and then I woke when he [...]
Central and northern Uruguay is home of the gaucho – boots, breeches, belts, buckles and berets – the Basque influence is heavy and these guys dress like this every day for work. Indeed we passed one that was also wearing a black cape. the pace he was galloping along at, all that was missing was [...]