Meeting the humble local population
and having long talks with those peo-
ple.
Sailing the Amazon was also an ad-
venture for the Motorcycle; having to
load and unload it each time in the
different boats that we took. The in-
frastructure at the ports often none
existent, on some occasions the mo-
torcycle was about to pass on to a bet-
ter life … at the bottom of the river,
next to pink dolphins and piranhas.
Luckily, everything went well.
Having travelled a year, 9 countries
and 45,000 kilometres, I arrived in Co-
lombia again, with a thousand experi-
ences, anecdotes, and some grey hair,
it was more than I thought I would
ever achieve. I’d returned to the ori-
gin of the trip.
The experience of this trip was so
intense, that I decided to continue and
visit Central America with the idea of
reaching the USA. This time accom-
panied by a girl (Sofia) that I met a few
months earlier in Santiago de Chile
who was very brave. She’d left every-
thing, as had I, to travel with me and
live that experience. We are now hap-
pily married.
In Colombia, before starting this
second stage of the trip, something
unexpected happened, a difficult mo-
ment in which we had to leave the mo-
torcycle because of problematic and
expensive transportation to Panama.
A new law; a Colombian motorcycle
driven by a foreigner could not be re-
moved from the country without mak-
ing a temporary export, a condition
that was not in our plans. So, we had
to make a painful decision and sell the
motorcycle.
The trip had to continue, I did not
consider giving up.
“All problems in this life have a
solution," is a motto of mine. So, we
quickly took the resolution of selling
the motorcycle and decided to fly to
Panama and buy a new ‘partner’. An-
other Kawasaki KLR 650. A "tank"
easy to repair and very reliable.
TRAVERSE 103
With a few extra kilograms, and
still inexperienced in riding two on
a motorcycle, we left Panama City to
explore different Natural Parks of the
country, without forgetting its won-
derful beaches where we had the op-
portunity to surf and meet the local
people.
From Panama, we crossed to Costa
Rica, an expensive country in com-
parison to the countries already visit-
ed; one of the main reasons our time
in this country was cut short. I could
recommend some of the places, such
as Playa Pavones, if you want to feel
alone like a real castaway, the Man-
groves of Sierpe or the fabulous volca-
no in La Fortuna.
Nicaragua was waiting for us, a
country from which we did not ex-
pect much, but as we went deeper, we
discovered unique and unrepeatable
places like Ometepe Lake, the city of
Granada, Apoyo Lagoon or the active
volcano Masaya. These gifts are al-
ways appreciated, and if they are un-