11-03-2012

Tonight we were drinking with our friends here in Santiago, Chile, and thought about the trip; at midnight we would be on the road for a year! So we drank more, celebrated this event and today we look back on the year which passed with a bit of a hangover!

Hereby some statistics and experiences. Maybe some things are boring, but still… we might as well post it on the website! Aslo Faff, our mascotte, celebrated his first birthday with his friend Sjefke and a big birthday cake!

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The Bike and Travel facts

-          39.191 km’s (24,352 miles) through 13 countries.

-          5 flat tyres, 3 rears and two fronts.

-          3 oil changes.

-          Running on the third set of tyres now.

-          We think we paid a 1 USD bribe each enteringGuatemala, as we didn’t get a receipt. We didn’t know how to play this game back then, as since that moment we didn’t pay a single penny in bribes!

-         We hiked to 4870 meters (15,977 ft) inColombia, from a campsite at 4000 meters (13,123 ft) above sea level.

-         With the bikes, we made it to 4930 meters (16,174 ft) inBolivia.

-         The lowest point was -86 meters (-282 ft) inDeath Valley,USA. So our vertical distance is more than 5 km’s (3.1 miles).

-         Longest day on the road was in theUSA, 763 km’s (474 miles) in one day. The shortest was inBolivia, 24,2 km’s (15 miles)… which took 7 hours!

-         We camped 36% of the time, of which 28 nights for free in nature.

-         23% of the time we stayed at other people’s places; of which 6% was family and 17% total strangers.

-         For the travel nerds: we use Open Street Maps in our Garmins and love them; way better than any map you can buy at Garmin. We wouldn’t travel without our GPS!

-         Sure we needed to work on the bikes sometimes, but we didn’t loose any day because of technical issues. That is quite rare among travellers overland, and for sure depends also on the brand you are riding! ;-)

-         The respoked wheels, done by Haan Wheels, are giving issues. One wheel keeps breaking its spokes and Haan doesn’t give the best service anymore.

-         We have, after throwing away the real rubbish material, produced 61 Gigabytes of pictures and movies. Mainly the GoPro adds a lot of bits…

-         All this data is stored in The Netherlands, and uploaded using Dropbox. Amazing software, for free! Michiel (friend of Daan) downloads it all, great work!

Our House and Gear

-         The tent is simply worn after 129 nights of camping, so we gave ourselves a birthday-present: a new tent! (MSR Holler)

-         We are also very happy with our MSR fuel stove and the water filter. Also the tarp, we use it a lot and it makes a huge difference when you camp in the rain or in the sun. Also the hammock is nice; we don’t use it a lot but sometimes it is really super nice to have it ‘hanging around’.

-         The bike boots and suits had some seams going loose; Mirjam’s jacket got a new zipper. Besides that, we are amazed that this gear survives all our travelling. Also the helmets (Shoei and Arai) were a huge investment, but are still perfectly fine after a year. Quality isn’t cheap, but does pay off.

-         Our intercom system (Scala Rider G4) isn’t the biggest success. Great service, the factory sent out a complete new system toGuatemala, but this package never arrived so we still use the first kit. About 80% of the time it works great!

-         We are very happy with the service by Cascade Design, owners of brands like MSR, Thermarest, Sealline. Our mattresses had to be replaced within their warranty, and they sent out two new ones via FedEx toChile, which is about 100USD shipment costs, but we didn’t have to pay anything. Also because of this, we decided to buy another MSR product.

 Ourselves

-         Daan was sick 3 times (food…) and Mirjam only once.

-         Record for ‘not having a shower’: 6 days

-         Record for ‘not sitting on a proper toilet’: 2 weeks! Very important…

-         Food wise,Mexicois on top, far on top. Food is simply amazing, from border to border.

-         For hospitality,ColombiaandEcuadorare on top. Very friendly people and beautiful nature. Some day we will return.

-         Considering nature, theUSAmight be the nr1. It is beautiful, and very easy to reach all the amazing parks and places.

-         We (really!) felt unsafe only twice on this trip, both in theUSA.

-         We have to thank Michiel here, for arranging all our paperwork in The Netherlands. This is super boring work, and without him it would be terrible for us to arrange it from here. Example: our tax declaration after emigrating: 58 pages with 105 questions…Thanks!

 Highlights

-         The shipment fromPanamatoColombia, with the Stahlratte. Simply amazing, and we still consider volunteering on this beautiful vessel.

-         The Dakar Rally inPeru; really cool to be able to visit this race. Special thanks to the Finstral Rally Team, who invited us into their trucks!

-         The hospitality of people, which really gives us a warm feeling. Just people who invite you into their houses in the supermarket, great!

-         Motorcycling in general. It is simply great to do this with a bike. The riding itself is fantastic, it also feels good to sit on your little house wit hall your stuff next to you. It is also very easy to make contact in villages with the locals.

-         Some emails and reactions from people about our stories, via email or the website. Really cool to get feedback, sometimes from complete strangers.

Lows

-         The regulations of some parks in theUSAcan be crazy. E.g., having to pay 10 USD extra for a ‘second vehicle’ when you want to get onto a campsite which costs 35 USD, while most spots are taken by huge RV’s which pay just the 35 USD.

-         The route through the south ofBolivia; it was simply too much and made us very emotional. Looking back on it, it was pretty cool but we would not drive this route again in the same conditions.

-         The rainy season. For sure it has advantages, but inCentral Americawe were completely done with it! (And soaking wet…).

So, what’s next… We are in Santiago,Chilenow and are doing big maintenance on the bikes and wouldn’t spend a fortune on a new tent if we would drive home next month; we’ll keep on going for a while! After another 3 months here inSouth Americawe will ship/fly the bikes to another continent; we really don’t have a clue which continent that will be. The options are still: South Africa, Australia or Thailand. To be continued!