2ridetheworld
Junior Member
- Joined
- Apr 12, 2011
So here we are in Chiang Mai sitting in Riders Corner at the start of another great day. It's now April 2011 and Lisa and I have been on the road for 8-years. With a few glasses of liquid persuasion from Phil last night (it didn't take much) we thought we like to share just a little of our journey with you here. Hope you enjoy and feedback and comments are welcome and expected.
Ride safe and ride far.
Simon & Lisa
Let the story telling begin, it's starts a few years back
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What a ride.....
right now we are in Sucre, the official capital of Bolivia, after pushing ourselves and our bikes pretty dam hard through the Altiplano region of Bolivia.....but boy was it worth it.
The colours, the light, the scenery, the landscape.....were all like something out of a Jules Vern novel. We dreamt for so long about being in this region it felt strangely surreal to finally be here.
Like so many of us we saw first pictures of this remote landscape when the r1100gs adventure was launched and the brochure and advertising campaign were shot here. We can tell you....its even better in the flesh! Getting to the Arbol del Piedra (rock tree) felt wonderful.
We left San Pedro de Atacama on 8th August both a little nervous of what laid ahead. Simon's having problems with his 1100gs and we'd already spoken to several friends in Salta (Mike and John, Katrin and Ralph) who'd warned us that they'd had to turn back on one sandy section, that and the fact that neither of us have been atover 16,000 feet let alone ridden a bike that high ....the Bolivian Aduana is at 16,522 feet!
As we rode higher the temperature was dropping by the second, and even in the midday sun our sexy black thermals were hard at work.
By the time we'd reached Lago Verde we'd completely forgotten about the temperature.....as our eyes feasted on the turquoise/emerald green waters sitting at the base of the snow capped volcano, Licancabur. The hairs on the back of our necks were stood to attention, for so many reasons the both of us there was more of a 'buzz' and sense of achievement getting here than there had been arriving in Ushuaia.
The days came and went as did the long sandy sections of volcanic dust and grit, the rocky tracks and the flocks of candy-floss pink flamingos that call this area home. It's almost pointless to try to verbalize this incredible landscape so instead we'll let a few photographs do the explaining.
As you know we've ridden through some pretty tough terrains over our 3 years and 3months on the road......however, the last section from Laguna Hedionda (see photos) over the mountains to the 'so called' main road before the small pueblo of San Juan was still testing stuff...as we clumsily bounced our over-laden heavy machines up and down boulder-ridden tracks at over 15,000 feet.
Sillly mistakes were made with tiring consequences. We were getting little sleep at night as temperatures plummeted to minus 20 deg C. and during the day our unconditioned lungs were struggling with the thinner air.......and still it was all worth it.
hope you enjoy the photographs, if you want to read more our diary will be up in the next few days at http://www.2ridetheworld.com along with the re-worked and NEW gallery!
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Our route through the Altiplano was to take us through to the Solar de Uyuni, the worlds largest salt flat. Again 'surreal' just falls short when trying to desribe it.
We'd ridden from San Juan after finally finding fuel. We have no idea what the octane level was and it felt strangley familiar to see fuel in plastic containers after our Africa experience.
With an early start from San Juan we'd ridden past active volcanoes and made it to the Solar by early afternoon. An expance of eye burning white, I'm not ashamed to admit that the first few 100 metres of riding onto the Solar were pretty intimidating. With no tracks we were placing a 100% faith in the GPS to get us to Isla de Pescada which, apparentley was some 60 miles into the Solar. The small knot of excitement in our stomach's was already growing.
With the Isla reached by around 2pm we'd grabbed a few photos and set about trying to see where we could camp. Any available space seemed to be taken up by the huge and ancient local cacti, besides we'd dreamt for years of actually camping out on the Solar itself, hah, that was'nt going to happen.
By early evening the wind was already getting up and an hour and a half later we'd resigned ourselves to giving up the idea of getting the tent up. The salt surface was like concrete. Even with nail spikes there was no way we were going to make any progress.
As we desperately battled to put the tent away the evening light show began. We did managed to get some nice photos of the sunset, bikes and the Solar.
...and my favourite...
Eventually we managed to get the kind permission from one of the staff on the Isla to sleep in one of the new buildings...talk about relieved!!!
We managed to get a few morning photos before heading to Uyuni town to find a cheap and warm hotel.
AlexR, in answer to your fuel question...the answer's simpler than you'd imagine. With the help of the GPS we had a rough idea of distances to pueblos and the possibilty of fuel but in reality it's always a gamble. Lisa has 3 fuel tanks on her F650GS and can carry 39 litres of gas and I've got 41 litres on the R1100, there's not much point trying to carry extra as we figure if we can't get to where we need to with 80 litres of fuel, then carrying anothert 5-10 litres probably isn't going to make any difference. Besides if you get stuck you'll often find a passing 4X4 to flag down. If the worse comes to the worse we'd set up camp, get ourselves warm and hope to find another passing vehicle.
Right now we're in Peru staying with friends after visiting Lago Titicakca in Boliva. Ahhh, to warm again.
We've just built a new gallery on our website and uploaded it. Here's our site http://www.2ridetheworld.com just click on the gallery link and have a browse...hope you enjoy it, there's six galleries to check out.
Right I'm knackered and off to bed, night, night and thanks again.
Simon T
Ride safe and ride far.
Simon & Lisa
Let the story telling begin, it's starts a few years back
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What a ride.....
right now we are in Sucre, the official capital of Bolivia, after pushing ourselves and our bikes pretty dam hard through the Altiplano region of Bolivia.....but boy was it worth it.
The colours, the light, the scenery, the landscape.....were all like something out of a Jules Vern novel. We dreamt for so long about being in this region it felt strangely surreal to finally be here.
Like so many of us we saw first pictures of this remote landscape when the r1100gs adventure was launched and the brochure and advertising campaign were shot here. We can tell you....its even better in the flesh! Getting to the Arbol del Piedra (rock tree) felt wonderful.
We left San Pedro de Atacama on 8th August both a little nervous of what laid ahead. Simon's having problems with his 1100gs and we'd already spoken to several friends in Salta (Mike and John, Katrin and Ralph) who'd warned us that they'd had to turn back on one sandy section, that and the fact that neither of us have been atover 16,000 feet let alone ridden a bike that high ....the Bolivian Aduana is at 16,522 feet!
As we rode higher the temperature was dropping by the second, and even in the midday sun our sexy black thermals were hard at work.
By the time we'd reached Lago Verde we'd completely forgotten about the temperature.....as our eyes feasted on the turquoise/emerald green waters sitting at the base of the snow capped volcano, Licancabur. The hairs on the back of our necks were stood to attention, for so many reasons the both of us there was more of a 'buzz' and sense of achievement getting here than there had been arriving in Ushuaia.
The days came and went as did the long sandy sections of volcanic dust and grit, the rocky tracks and the flocks of candy-floss pink flamingos that call this area home. It's almost pointless to try to verbalize this incredible landscape so instead we'll let a few photographs do the explaining.
As you know we've ridden through some pretty tough terrains over our 3 years and 3months on the road......however, the last section from Laguna Hedionda (see photos) over the mountains to the 'so called' main road before the small pueblo of San Juan was still testing stuff...as we clumsily bounced our over-laden heavy machines up and down boulder-ridden tracks at over 15,000 feet.
Sillly mistakes were made with tiring consequences. We were getting little sleep at night as temperatures plummeted to minus 20 deg C. and during the day our unconditioned lungs were struggling with the thinner air.......and still it was all worth it.
hope you enjoy the photographs, if you want to read more our diary will be up in the next few days at http://www.2ridetheworld.com along with the re-worked and NEW gallery!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our route through the Altiplano was to take us through to the Solar de Uyuni, the worlds largest salt flat. Again 'surreal' just falls short when trying to desribe it.
We'd ridden from San Juan after finally finding fuel. We have no idea what the octane level was and it felt strangley familiar to see fuel in plastic containers after our Africa experience.
With an early start from San Juan we'd ridden past active volcanoes and made it to the Solar by early afternoon. An expance of eye burning white, I'm not ashamed to admit that the first few 100 metres of riding onto the Solar were pretty intimidating. With no tracks we were placing a 100% faith in the GPS to get us to Isla de Pescada which, apparentley was some 60 miles into the Solar. The small knot of excitement in our stomach's was already growing.
With the Isla reached by around 2pm we'd grabbed a few photos and set about trying to see where we could camp. Any available space seemed to be taken up by the huge and ancient local cacti, besides we'd dreamt for years of actually camping out on the Solar itself, hah, that was'nt going to happen.
By early evening the wind was already getting up and an hour and a half later we'd resigned ourselves to giving up the idea of getting the tent up. The salt surface was like concrete. Even with nail spikes there was no way we were going to make any progress.
As we desperately battled to put the tent away the evening light show began. We did managed to get some nice photos of the sunset, bikes and the Solar.
...and my favourite...
Eventually we managed to get the kind permission from one of the staff on the Isla to sleep in one of the new buildings...talk about relieved!!!
We managed to get a few morning photos before heading to Uyuni town to find a cheap and warm hotel.
AlexR, in answer to your fuel question...the answer's simpler than you'd imagine. With the help of the GPS we had a rough idea of distances to pueblos and the possibilty of fuel but in reality it's always a gamble. Lisa has 3 fuel tanks on her F650GS and can carry 39 litres of gas and I've got 41 litres on the R1100, there's not much point trying to carry extra as we figure if we can't get to where we need to with 80 litres of fuel, then carrying anothert 5-10 litres probably isn't going to make any difference. Besides if you get stuck you'll often find a passing 4X4 to flag down. If the worse comes to the worse we'd set up camp, get ourselves warm and hope to find another passing vehicle.
Right now we're in Peru staying with friends after visiting Lago Titicakca in Boliva. Ahhh, to warm again.
We've just built a new gallery on our website and uploaded it. Here's our site http://www.2ridetheworld.com just click on the gallery link and have a browse...hope you enjoy it, there's six galleries to check out.
Right I'm knackered and off to bed, night, night and thanks again.
Simon T
: :LOL 
