The World Gets Smaller… Again…!!

I am always astounded by the chance meetings I have with the most amazing people… I am now a very firm believer that somehow all things in life are connected in some mysterious way…

Some of the people I have met know other people I know, or have met other riders who I either rode with for a short while, or stopped to talk to along the way… (Some have actually come looking for me because they have heard that I will be in a certain area at a certain time…!!) But this is not about that… This is about somebody I said goodbye to more than a month ago, expecting never to see them again, and then one day, out of the blue, they’re standing before you again…

And then there were more...!! Many more...!!

Picture the scene:

Punta del Este, Uruguay (26th of February)… Roger Arnold and I come out of the Hotel Americano and see two guys admiring our fully loaded bikes… We are eager to get on our way, as we have a long ride to make to get across the border into Brazil… Neither of the guys speak fluent English, but somehow we understand each other… They are bikers too, and belong to a BMW club…

We chat for a few minutes, and exchange email details… One of the guys, Geromo, later emails me a detailed route plan that will take us from Rio to Iguazu… We use this to make our ride to the Paraguay border… A great three-day ride that avoids the madness of Sao Paulo and takes us through some beautiful countryside and mountains, on a well paved road…

Cut to Cuzco, Peru, five weeks later…

A group of travel weary bikers roar into the courtyard of the Casa Grande Hostal… They have just made it through the glass doors in reception without breaking them… I watch them wearily unload their bikes and carry their gear off into the darkness… Even in the dim light cast by the low-wattage bulbs that light the courtyard, I can see that their bikes have been through the wringer…

One of the guys remains in the courtyard, talking on his cell phone… He has his back to me, and continues talking as I walk past him to check that the cover on the Big Fella is secure… While I am doing this, I hear him say something like “El Gypsy Biker” and “Sud Africa…” into the phone… I turn to see Geromo beaming at me…!! He continues talking into the phone, smiling and laughing and saying “increible…increible” to whoever he is talking to…!!

Geromo looks quite pleased that he was the only one that came through the ride unscathed...!!

When he is done with his call, we shake hands and embrace… I can’t believe he is standing in front of me, thousands of kilometres from Punta del Este…!! What has brought him here, the very day before I am planning to leave…?? Obviously he is on a ride that he and his friends have planned for some time, but by the next day I “know” or “feel”, whatever you want to call it, that he arrived before I left for a very good reason…

Looking much the worse for wear, this GS650 had been down a mountain...!!

I agree on the spot to postpone my ride the next day, because he has just spent 13 hours making the same ride from Nazca to Cusco and wants to tell me all about it…

I can see that he is dead tired, and arrange to meet him the next morning…

Conversing in my, by now, fluent Spanglish, and Geromo’s tenuous command of the English language, he tells me about their “hell ride from Nazca”…

We laughed a lot as we correct each other, but there can be no doubt that they had had a very difficult ride…

Of the five bikes, four of them crashed on the way to Cuzco… One of the GS 650’s is so badly damaged, that I am amazed he managed to still ride the machine at all…!!

The rider misjudged a hairpin bend and went straight through the corner and down a steep mountainside… The bike somersaulted a few times, breaking almost every attachment on it…

The panniers were smashed; one of the mirror stems was missing, as were all the indicators and the windscreen; the petrol tank was cracked and the handlebars were bent…

Two of the other bikes had hit either dogs or sheep and crashed as well… Another rider had come off on the gravel that apparently littered most corners…

Geromo’s bike seemed to be the only one of the six bikes that had not succumbed to the difficult conditions they had ridden through…

He spoke of freezing temperatures for hours on end; of the high altitude that sapped their energy and led to fatigue; of rain and mist; of slippery roads; of animals of every description either running across the road or standing in it; of wickedly sharp corners and hairpin bends without any barrier protection; of mudslides that covered much of the road and forced them to tip-toe through mud and other debris; and over flooded sections of the road that had them riding through water at every concrete drift they came across…

The only things he didn’t mention were earthquakes and volcanic eruptions… Otherwise, he pretty much covered every condition I could expect…!!

See... I knew my toolkit would come in handy...!!

When I told him I was planning to make the same ride the next day, he did what Pablo always did when he was trying to make a serious point… He pulled his right eyelid down with a forefinger, saying,

“Amigo…!! It is muy dangerous…!! And you are alone…!! Do not try and do it in one day…!!”

Later that morning, while Geromo negotiated with a tour operator to visit Machu Picchu and the other sites, his mates set to work trying to repair the damage to their bikes…

I watched them struggling to find the right tools and walking to and fro to exchange spanners and other bits and pieces, before opening my pannier and offering them the use of my own rather “extensive” tool kit…

Their eyes lit up as if they had just stumbled on the Holy Grail, and before long they were each able to work on their bikes without having to wait for someone else to finish with a spanner or a pair of pliers…

The guy whose bike had taken an unexpected trip down the mountainside, limped about and made the most use of my toolkit…

Much wire and cable-ties went into repairing his bike, and I seriously doubted whether it would make the trip back to Uruguay…

In many ways I was glad to get the lowdown on the conditions, but in others, I would have preferred to have tackled the road without knowing what was ahead of me…!!

I checked my maps again, and asked about fuel stops… Geromo advised me as where I could find fuel, and was surprised when I said that all I would need was one stop about 200 km outside Cuzco…

“Abancay then, but with hard riding, you will not make it to Nazca from there…!!”

“We’ll just have to see about that, won’t we…!!” I said to myself, looking over towards the Big Fella and hoping he wasn’t listening too closely…!!

The sticker thieves have been at it again...!! This time it's Serbia and Kosovo... Politically motivated, or just a co-incidence...?? You be the judge....

I seem to remember Adrian also coming over to look at the damage to the bikes, and raising an eyebrow in my direction and shaking his head…

“Try to reach Puquio and sleep there…!!” he had advised, “By then the worst will be over and you can do the last 160 km to Nazca the next morning…!! It is too much to do in one day…!! Don’t be crazy…!!”

I packed my bags in preparation for an early start the following day, still uncertain whether I would heed all the advice I was getting or not…

I was however grateful that fate had sent Geromo to warn me of what I could expect…

“Forewarned is forearmed” I said to myself, before I fell into a fitful sleep…

The next morning, as I was carrying the last of my gear out to the bike, Geromo came to say goodbye, dressed in his underpants and a t-shirt…!!

I could see that he had gotten out of bed especially to bid me farewell, and after a firm handshake and a hug, he went back to his room…

"Let's get outta here...!! Seeing this damaged bike is giving me the willies...!!"

The sun was shining brightly, and as I looked up at the skies above, I made my decision…

As I slid into the saddle, and fired up the engine I whispered to the Big Fella,

“Prepare yourself…!! We’re going BIG today…!!”

©GBWT 2012