Since leaving La Paz I’ve run into several difficulties. For example, in Bolivia, a lot of gas stations do not sell to foreigners. The gas stations that do sell to foreigners do so at a much higher rate than the government subsidized rate for the locals. This was extremely frustrating and caused me to use my backup fuel can at least once.

Problems followed me as I entered Argentina. I unknowingly entered Argentina during one of the busiest tourist holidays of the year and many people were traveling. That compounded with corruption and an upcoming election led to several gas stations being completely out of gas. I used my spare fuel can to barely make to a gas station that still had gas. Even then I had to wait in line for over an hour just to fill my tank. Soon after this, I realized the ATMs only exchange at the “official” government rate of 350 Argentinian pesos to 1 USD. Exchanging on the black market yielded me approximately 935 Argentinian pesos to 1 USD. Just another further complication in trying to navigate the political landscape.

Things took a turn for the worse the morning after a 14-hour hard ride the day before. The bike wouldn’t start. The oil level was super low. After filling it and getting some help from the mechanic above I got it pop started. It felt a little off, but it was running and the more I rode it around the more oil got spread throughout the engine components and the better it sounded. I thought I was in the clear. But after only a couple hours of riding I had lost most of my oil out of the air box bleeder hose. I filled and pop started it one more time to get myself out of the middle of nowhere and to a town with a mechanic. The mechanics there knew right away that it was probably an issue with the piston. If that was the case it would explain oil getting past a damaged piston. Not what I wanted to hear… I knew this could be trouble.

I was pretty frustrated when the mechanic didn’t show up until 1pm because he was apparently arguing with the local police to get his own personal motorcycle unimpounded. As soon as he returned from that he promptly went on a 2 hour lunch. I was pretty mad. I just sat at this shop all day and finally by 7pm we got the motor head off and found the cylinder and piston were indeed damaged. They would need to be replaced. Unfortunately for me, my motorcycle isn’t sold in Argentina. However, there is another Honda, the CBR300, which shares the same cylinder and piston. He ordered these parts off of what I would compare to a cross between Amazon and eBay. It’s a pretty common website in a lot of South American countries. He apparently didn’t have an account for this website and had to have his friend or ex-wife or something order the parts for him. He told me the parts would take 4 or so days to get here. Not ideal, but at least I’m getting the parts. On the day the parts are supposed to show up they don’t… The mechanic makes some calls and we wait one more day, which is infuriating to me because I don’t have a lot of free time. The next morning he tells me the parts don’t exist because they are out of stock in Argentina. I was fuming. If he actually had an account for this website he could have ordered the parts himself and likely would have found this out before waiting for the delivery date to pass.

Essentially back at square one with a bunch of burned time I immediately packed up my backpack and grabbed the damaged cylinder and piston and hopped on a night bus to Buenos Aires. I arrived at 6:30am and immediately started walking to get myself in the vicinity of all the biggest motorcycle shops to begin my search when they opened. I didn’t have a lot of luck. One shop said they might be able to replace it and they drove me to a machine shop to get their opinion. It was far from a sure thing and it would be about a week until it could get completed. I kept searching for the new replacement parts in the meantime. No luck! It seems they don’t exist in Argentina and Argentina is notorious for a long and frustrating import process. Part dealers were quoting 30-60 days, which I don’t have, to get me the parts I needed. Eventually, I settled on a racing shop that seemed to think they could repair my damaged cylinder and then modify a piston from a local Honda XRE300 to use on my Honda CRF300L. They seemed pretty smart and they spoke English which helped figure out a plan. They called my mechanic back at the breakdown location and ran him through the plan and ensured he would be able to properly adjust the engine to receive the modified piston. Sounds like it might just work! So I left the damaged parts with them so they could immediately start working on it. In the meantime, I continued to search and came up empty-handed on finding new parts. Waiting it is…

While this isn’t the solution or timing I wanted, I have to admit I wouldn’t have ever come to Buenos Aires if it wasn’t for this. Buenos Aires has been a wonderful break from the hard traveling and quick pace on the motorcycle. I’ve met some interesting characters at my hostel ($10 a night) here. I met a Jewish Brazilian who speaks 10 languages and is going to medical school here. I met a Russian who was a sniper in the reserves but deserted when the war with Ukraine broke out. Some very worldly and cultured conversations about what is going on in the world right now. It’s been interesting to hear about the election happening here as well. It’s like watching an alternate reality unfolding as I put myself in the Argentinian’s shoes.

While I have been waiting for the parts to be repaired I have been thinking a lot about how to make some lemonade out of all these recent lemons. I decided to go to a soccer game at the famous La Bombonera stadium in Buenos Aires and I couldn’t have made a better decision.

Tickets normally cost around $160 for foreigners trying to go since the tickets are only available to club members and are always sold out. I figured I would see if I could find myself a deal. I found a couple options online, but I ended up haggling a Facebook marketplace guy down to $60. When I went to pickup the ticket it turned out to just be this young kid. He was being really weird at McDonalds, where we met, about the ticket. He wanted to be very inconspicuous and said the fans want to rob him for the ticket and honestly I thought he was fun of crap, but I grabbed the ticket and gave it a quick look, and from my very limited knowledge it seemed legit. It was a plastic card with the game information printed on it which matched up form what I had seen on the internet. So I gave him the money and grabbed the ticket and left. I should have looked at the card more closely, but I’ll admit I bought into his inconspicuous behavior. Then I rode the bus back to the hostel. At the hostel, I looked at the ticket and realized the year on it had been scratched and was written poorly in ink a 3 over where it probably used to say 2022. I’m assuming I bought last year’s ticket…

After buying a $6 jersey from a street vendor I went to the game anyway and the old ticket got me past all the different police checkpoints on the way into the stadium. Then when I had to actually scan the ticket for the ticket takers the ticket predictably failed. I showed it to the ticket takers and they told me what I already knew… that it was fake.

So I stood around for a while thinking they might take pity on me and one lady tried, but they couldn’t do anything so I decided I would sneak in. Everything was completely barbed wire all around. I suppose the locals here are probably more desperate to watch their home team than me. I gave up pretty quickly on sneaking in. I decided I would wander around to all the different entries and try my luck at each one. At the next one I approached, I scanned again and showed them I got scammed and they felt bad, but still, they couldn’t do anything. I wasn’t going to give up. So I just stood there because if I left I definitely wasn’t going to go to the game. I stood there long enough for the ticket takers who saw my fake ticket to bond with me. Then some dude came along and had an extra ticket and the ticket takers immediately yelled for me and the dude with the extra ticket scanned me in all the way into the fan section!!

The fan section was absolutely wild! A much different sporting experience than I’ve ever experienced. The fans were singing and bouncing up and down and taking their shirts off. People were shoving and pushing each other in good fun. It was hilarious to just people-watch! The area was actually pretty bad for actually watching the game. I had a lot of fun despite the 0-0 score because the atmosphere was just that fun! At the end, I met a drunk friend group and I took a photo with a girl from their group. They were a lot of fun. What an absolutely wild experience! First, I wasn’t even supposed to be in Buenos Aires and then I bought a fake ticket and I still got in and had this amazing experience! God must watch me sometimes and think, “This idiot…” and then bless me anyway!

We will see what happens next. I’m praying the motorcycle repaired part longshot works out and I can take it easy and finish out the final leg of this journey and make it home for Thanksgiving! God is good!

On September 11th, 2023 I left Pigeon, Michigan, and headed out on a motorcycle trip with the end goal of Ushuaia, Argentina. The first whole week of travel was spent visiting my brother, Jon, and his family in Fredricksburg, and visiting Army friends in Columbus, GA. From there I got myself to Laredo, TX right on the border with Mexico and that is where the real adventure started!

From Laredo, I made it through the US side only to get turned around to go get change for the toll road. I did that and made it across with zero issues. I drove straight into Mexico without even having to talk to anyone! I later got escorted by some police officers to the immigration and vehicle import building when I asked them for help. That was a grueling process and honestly confusing. It wasn’t super straightforward, but I made it out and really only spent maybe 90 minutes there before getting on the road.

I drove to Monterey and wasted some time driving through some neighborhoods staring at how cool the mountains are there. I continued on and got gas a bunch of times. It’s kind of fun to have little test runs of Spanish for each gas station attendant.

The biggest blunder from the first day outside the US can be summed up in this message to my friend groupchat:

“I don’t know how to say this but… I was riding my motorcycle through some decent sized town in Mexico. I was going about 60kmph (37mph) when the vehicle in front of me hit the brakes quickly and a puppy bounced out from under the back bumper right in front of me. In a split second, I had to choose between swerving and very likely dumping the bike and potentially hurting myself or just fully sending it straight at the puppy.
I fully sent it and that little guy got ran over by my front tire and then I felt my left boot hit him as he tumbled out from his second consecutive wreck. I was so shocked considering I was just thinking to myself how much fun I was having on this trip and that I didn’t even look back to see if he made it. If I had to guess it didn’t look good for him..

Later I was getting some tortas and taquitos from a street vendor when a local dog came and sniffed my front tire. It’s like he knew what I had done.
The tortas were super good though and I tried to chat with the ladies cooking them to the best of my Spanish speaking ability. They thought it was crazy I was trying to ride my motorcycle to South America. I asked how safe the area was and they said it was good, but later they asked where I was staying for the night and when I told them camping in a tent they got all wide eyes and spoke rapidly about a bunch of different things I didn’t understand. The old lady of the group asked if I had any fear. I understood the world fear – “miedo” and when I heard her say it I said, “Miedo, PORQUE??” Again they all rapidly started giving responses and when I finally distinguished a word I zeroed in on it and asked what it meant. I don’t remember the word, but I remember the girl making a smashing motion with her fist to her head…”

Mexico had some really great roads and I made good progress. There were some really fun drives near a volcano crater and through mountainous canyons with cacti everywhere. Very fun driving on the windy roads!

In Chipas, Mexico there is a choke point as the land narrows coming from Central America. All day riding through this area I saw groups of immigrants headed north making their way to the United States. In one spot I stopped and talked to them and they said they were all from Venezuela looking to make it to the US. Pretty crazy to see the far-reaching effects of illegal immigration in southern Mexico.

The hardest part about traveling so much through multiple countries is all the border crossings. In Guatemala the official personnel were nice, but there are always others there to scam you. I made friends with the security guys at the customs building while temporarily importing my motorcycle and they kept trying to get me and this female police officer/border guard to talk. We talked a little using my terrible Spanish and then she asked for a photo together so I figured I had been take the opportunity to get one on my phone as well.

I cruised quickly into El Salvador the same day as I left Mexico and made it through Guatemala. As it was getting close to dark I decided to detour to the Pacific Ocean for sunset. I had a really great seafood meal overlooking the ocean during sunset. Stops like this are completely unplanned. I saw that it was going to get dark soon and I saw there was a coastal city close so I made the stop. I really enjoy the freedom of riding my own motorcycle and making those free decisions.

In Nicaragua, I drove past multiple active volcanoes with smoking coming out of them. The picture with the two volcanoes on the island has special meaning to me because eight years ago when I was 19 years old I took my first backpacking trip outside of the United States and I climbed the Volcano on the left, Mt. Concepcion. After I climbed it I rented a motor scooter to ride around on the island because I didn’t know how to ride a motorcycle. It’s crazy to see where I am now!

The trip through Nicaragua had more than its share of chaos when I ran over a baby pig about 10 minutes into my day of riding and also when I got pulled over by the Nicaraguan police. I also got pulled over twice while traveling through and the first time I have no idea why I was even pulled over. The second time was because I crossed over the center line in a no-passing zone which those zones hadn’t existed since the US as far as local traffic was concerned. In both instances, the police attempted to take my license and make me pay a fee. After some arguing in broken Spanish and telling them I would call the US embassy they eventually gave me my license back. I am traveling with a backup license precisely for this occasion though!

The photo below and the words written with it are taken straight from an Instagram post:

“Today was a big trip down memory lane as I drove on the Pan-American Highway through Nicaragua. Eight years ago I took my first backpacking trip out of the country to Nicaragua because Spirit Airlines flies there and it was the cheapest “exotic” location. It was my first time outside of the United States (Canada doesn’t count) and I did it alone as a 19 year old.

I specifically remember standing on a rope bridge in the jungle at a treehouse hostel thinking I have never felt more alive in my life. It was that same hostel where I got my phone stolen and while I came back from the trip with many stories I came back with almost zero photos. Today I took a detour to a beach I spent a day at during that original trip. I remember the day vividly. I met a World Race mission group and ended up in a volleyball tournament with them. I played in the ocean with that group and with my trip crush, this French Canadian girl I climbed a volcano with the day before. At night I got a piña colada at a bar on the beach while watching the NBA finals with a group of guys I’d met at the hostel.

As a 19 year old those were some of the most free and independent moments I’d ever had in my entire life. I was amazed at what life could be like if I didn’t listen to all the people telling me Nicaragua was dangerous or that I shouldn’t go alone. The memories and passion for adventure I got from that trip were worth it even if I did get my phone stolen. Besides, today I finally got my picture on that beach, eight years late, but feeling as every bit alive.”

Getting Around the Darian Gap

What is the Darian Gap? – “The Darién Gap is a roadless, lawless stretch of mountainous rainforest straddling Colombia and Panama. For centuries, it’s held the reputation of being virtually uncrossable, by locals and well-equipped visitors alike.”

If there are no roads how do you get your motorcycle through there and into South America? Since through wasn’t really an option my only choices were either to fly the bike and myself over or to go by sea around the gap. It costs around $1000 to fly a motorcycle from Panama City, Panama to Bogota, Columbia. On top of that, you need to pay around $200 to fly yourself. Also there is a lot of preplanning and paperwork involved. Since I am cheap and more so that I have been terrible at planning this whole trip I opted to go the over sea route.

I started by leaving the Pan American Highway and heading north into the Guna Yala indigenous territory to Carti, a small port. At this small port, I slept in my tent for two nights spending my days at the docks talking to any captain to see if I could find a fair price to Capurgana, Columbia. I had an offer for $500 and another for $1300 before finally finding a boat for $400. It is a long journey and it takes a lot of gas so $400 seemed fair though it is possible to find cheaper.

The above photo was my ride from Carti, Panama to Capurgana, Columbia with one stop in Puerto Obladia to get my passport exit stamp from Panama. The captain had just brought maybe 4 or 5 bicyclists over from Columbia and according to them had charged them $1000 each. I was happy to be the sole passenger on the return trip and only paying $400. However, this dude and his partner floored the boat the whole way even through waves. I ended up with a broken kickstand and some scratches on the bike, but nothing major. It was just frustrating he obviously didn’t care about my bike at all. I arrived at Capurgana and the Captain left me there immediately with a broken kickstand without a word. I spent one night in Capurgana before finding a ride to Turbo, Columbia which is connected to the rest of mainland roads again.

The above photo was my ride from Capurgana to Turbo. It was a large cargo ship and I negotiated a price of $125 for me and my bike to ride along. Technically in Columbia passengers aren’t allowed on cargo ships so I spent the first portion of the journey hiding under the deck until we were out in the open water. But in no way was I going to leave my motorcycle and all my gear to a boat captain and hope to see it again in Turbo once I got off the passenger ship. Getting smuggled also added to the adventure! This boat cruised so slow we didn’t even strap down my motorcycle. I spent time chatting with the other four crewmates. One guy was from Venezuela and he said his dad used to be a police chief there before being murdered. He himself is a criminal in Venezuela for speaking out against the government. So I guess now he is a boat motor mechanic making his living in Columbia. Very interesting to hear about the turmoil in Venezuela. The ride was long and grueling, but after 6 hours of slow rolling, we got to Turbo around 9pm and after doing some import checks I secured my gear and my motorcycle and got to a hotel late.

That’s the trip so far and that’s what it has taken to make it from North America through Central America into South America. I’ll be back to talk all about my South American adventures soon! God bless!