Sorry its been a few days and this is going to be short. To much has happened in the last three days. We´ll have to fill in the full stories later. To keep it short, we left pipa headed for Jericoacoaba. Somewere we lost nian along the way. Dave and I ended up in the middle of some sand dunes in the middle of nowhere! We´re stopped in the middle of a dirt road and some old dude runs out of his house at almost 2am. He tells us theres a 15 km trial through mud sand dunes and beach to the city. another old man walks up with a 2 foot knife. He kind of asked us for a ride and we bailed outta there! haha anyway we found nian the next morning, waited a few hours for rain to pass, and hit the road. we made it like 200 kms where some gas station attendent made us a bunch of food and talked us into spending the night in another truck stop. i woke up at like 3am to three guys all around daves bike and stuff. I jumped up ready to throw down! Turns out they were trying to kill a rat! haha I thought it was finally time for the three of us to Kick some serious trash! We woke up at like 5 and hit the road. we made it another 100 kms before daves bike started leaking serious oil. 3hrs later and we were back on the road. We made it to teresina by night fall were dave got lost. We told him were to meet us and he drove 75 kms past where we were down a dirt road til he found a pay phone. my cell ran out so we guessed where he was and drove that way. The 150 km part of highway that was straight dirt was pretty interesting. We found dave in some shanty lunch place. We were going to hang up hammocks and sleep there after they closed but some kid came by and said, hey, why dont you come sleep at my house, nobodys there and weve got hammocks already hung up. we all decided we could punk this kid if he tries anything. we get to his house and it has three bedrooms and one door. thats it. it remineded me of a grain barn on our farm. inside were four hammocks so we gathered our things by candlelight and got ready for some sleep. Dave and i showered. By showered i mean filled up three buckest from the well 50 meters from the house, twisted a bulb for some light, and poured buckets over our now muddy bodies. It only got wierd when the kids mom came out of the other house thinking i was stealing water at midnight and there i stand, Naked! haha kinda wierd. Especially when she was super nice at breakfast. which was one egg, some cus-cus, and one little cup of milk. When we laid down to go to sleep it was so awesome. four hammocks swinging, crickets swinging, candles burning, and three amigos smiling while falling asleep! Daves hammock broke at like 5 am so we rose early. he had adquired a flat over the night so we fixed that and hit the road. not more than 20 kms into our day i lost the GPS nnoooooo!!! Our guiding light is gone. Now its up to us i guess haha That hurt a little.
We´re definatley getting closer to the jungle, so far we´ve seen road kill of three dead anacondas, on dead alagator, three dead sloths and a bunch of dead monkeys and stuff. haha 10000+ kms down, 2000 more and were in manaus in the Amazon... 20,000 more and we´re??
Friday, March 26, 2010
TRANSAMAZÔNICA
Posted by JIM ANDERSON at 3:25 PM 0 comments
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Leaving Pipa With Sad Faces
This whole trip we have been surrounded by amazing people! We have been to some of the most beautiful places on earth, but many of the things that will most be ingrained in my mind is how amazing the people we met are! It seems like everywhere we stop there's somebody there waiting to take super good care of us! Pipa hasn't been an exception by any means. We've had so much fun here!
Our last day in Pipa was nothing short of amazing! We woke up early and set out for a nice trail ride on our bikes. Somehow a short trail ride took us 50 kms up the beach and I found myself out of gas Again! ha We took care of it and continued the ride. We found another giant dead turtle, we all hit vultures on our bikes, haha, Dave got hit by a wave and found himself up to his seat in ocean water, and we all got some good sun. On our way home Dave crept up on the side of me at like 4 mphs right as i was going to turn. I turned, saw him, and bailed off to avoid us both getting wasted. Lucky we were going so slow, I landed on my feet and stopped and Dave didnt even wreck. Scratched my brake lever a little, thats it.
As soon as we arrived back at the place, Neto yelled for us to get to the Madeiro beach, NOW! There was a nest of baby giant sea turtles hatching right then. So we dropped everything, grabbed a couple people each, and headed to the beach! As i was running out Neto told me, youre crazy! The cops are gonna bust you for riding three with no helmets. So i grabbed helmets for the two girls riding with me and we headed out after the others. We were almost there as I rolled over a hill.. COPS! I slammed on my brakes, turned around, went back over the hill, dropped off one girl, and went right back past the cops. Nian and the others were all stopped, No helmets, riding 3, and in flipflops. haha for some reason i had my shoes on as well. anyway i dropped the one girl off, grapped the other one, got helmets for the others and we got em all to the beach.
We ran down to the beach were there was a group of 50 or so people gathered waiting for the nest to hatch. Turns out it had already hatched and there were only three turtles in the nest. So the guy went to the next nest and it was hatching at the exact same time! The dude opened the nest and it had over 100 baby turtles in it! it was pretty awesome watching them struggle their way down to the beach to the water. Truly and act of God.
Our plan from here is to ride a little way up the coast, go to Jericoicoara, which is supposed to be an amazing beach town, and then head inland towards the AMAZON! To tell you the truth i've seen enough beach and i'm ready to get into the jungle! These next few days we're going to put down almost 3000 kms so PRAY FOR US! haha
Posted by JIM ANDERSON at 6:41 AM 0 comments
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Livin the life in PIPA!!
Our first Day in Pipa was much needed!
When we woke up we ate a killer good breakfast for like $2 and thats when Nian and I discovered what we were dealing with. We were staying in a hostel with only Girls.. haha We just looked at each other and laughed! They were actually pretty cool for once as well. After breakfast the girls took us down and showed us were the dolphin beach was.
Sooo.. .We went and swam with the Dolphins. Not a big deal if you ask me. It sounds so much cooler than I thought it was. Never the less... Scratch that off our list! Swim with Dolphins... CHECK! We spent most of the day on the beach and then went back to the place, worried about dave and his whereabouts, and got some good needed rest.
We woke up from our naps to some noise down stairs, a couple had shown up while we were sleeping. Liam and Colette from scotland. These two have been on the road for 18 months! theyve gone all the way around the world, got engaged in machu pichu, and have some pretty awesome stories! We chilled with the whole crew at the hostel (which consisted of Me, Nian, Liam, Colette, Neto (which is the guy that owns the place), and 9 other girls. Pretty soon dinner turned into them drinking a lot. Which turned into a speaker coming out which resulted into an instant dance party!
Posted by JIM ANDERSON at 8:22 PM 0 comments
Monday, March 15, 2010
Pipa Beach
Well nian and I made an easy decision on sunday. We got kicked out of the temple Dorms due to sunday closures. So we found a cheap hostel near the church. They were super full so they put two cushions on the floor in their laundry room and said we could sleep there for like $10. We were cool with it until we were both laying on the same mattress at 3am trying to kill each other for the fan. So hot! We woke up soaked with sweat, ate showered and headed to church. We walked into church and it was a million degrees inside, We walked into priesthood and the good Lord blessed us with ice box temperatures in the rooms. Best three hours of church in a long time ha. After church we put our feet up and relaxed for a few hours. There was supposed to be a CES fireside at the church so we decided we would stick around for that and then hit the road and see how far we could make it. We were going to stay in the heat box hostel again but we got a super gay vibe which facilitated our decision to leave. After like an hour of searching, going to 5 churches that were all dark, getting lost in a ghetto and doing a sweet ghetto hill climb on our bikes, nian running out of gas, both us blowing the plumbing out of a gas station, and me losing nian. We decided we'd hit the road. As soon as we rolled out we drove past the chapel with the fireside and.... it had just got over. Bad Luck! haha guess we weren't supposed to go ha Anyway we saddled our horses and rode like 2 hours to Joao Pessoa. I wasnt paying attention, took a wrong turn, which lead us here thanks to our trusty GPS.
Posted by JIM ANDERSON at 5:28 PM 1 comments
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Sadness on the Trip... When the Wolf Pack Split Ways
So.. You've probably seen on discovery channel where a pack of wolves splits up to corner whatever it may be chasing and than make an easier attack and kill... WEll that may have just happened!. There we were... 200 miles from anywhere.. our options are limited. Daves motor is jammed up for the 3rd time. What do we do?? We try and push it 100 kms to the next small town, pay $R200 for a tow truck, or dave can hitchhike a ride for him and his bike with a truck driver back to where we got it fixed before and they can fix it for free! So we grabbed some grub and flagged down the rustiest slowest truck we could find. The dude was cool and even helped us lift daves dinosaur in the back of his truck. Now comes the sad part. Dave jumped in the cab and says, "well... if this guy takes advantage of me... i love you guys." Then they pulled away. Slowly... Very Slowly. Nian and I looked at each other, Nian cried, and realized what we had done. haha Daves been doing lots of pushups and crunches lately so we figured he could take some truck driver.
Nian and I hit the road towards Acaraju.We road maybe an hour and the road turned in to cobblestone and then... a river. I guess we had to take a couple ferries that i didnt know about. As the ferry arrived Nian and I dug though all we had and scrounged up R$ 3.50. We had spent/given dave all the money we had and now we didnt have enough to cross the river. I somehow managed to get us on the boat and the lady on the boat was cool enough to let us get off. We raced the 45kms across this island (with a minor pit to pump up my flattening front tire) to catch the ferry on the other side back to the mainland before dark. We made it there with seconds to spare and the lady let us cross for our 3.50 but wasnt happy about it. We rode up the coast to Acaraju where we got money and kicked it for a bit. After some deep convincing I talked Nian into keeping on the track towards Natal. Well somehow I took a wrong turn and which put us into some really ghetto small beach town. It was actually kinda creepy and we didnt have dave there to scare everyone off by riding around shirtless with the chain around his neck. As we looked for the road out of town my tire blew completely. I asked like 30 people and finally found someone that changed/fixed tires in his garage. We were there for a good two hours shooting the breeze and changing tires... As we were leaving, the mother of the whole group piped up and said that we should check out the beach Lagoa Redonda. I guess it had been on t and stuff? So Nian and I once again rolled out and were quickly side tracked when i saw the Lagoa Redonda sign about 30 miles outta town. We took the road to it which quickly became dirt and then lead us aimlessly like 50 kms to nowhere. at the very end of the road there was a small river and a small lunch shack with was strangely open at midnight. The lady said that if we crossed the river we would be able to ride straight down to the beach and there we would find a campsite easily. She assured us that the river bottom was hard but Nian still make me go first to find out.
Now Nian's going to harmonize you with his words..... JIM
Posted by JIM ANDERSON at 10:41 PM 0 comments
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Next Update on our nonstop 24 hr 1500 km ride haha
Well last time I wrote we were back on the road... Bikes running great and ready to ride from Salvador to just past Natal. This time we make it past the 9 km mark and are making great time! We´re once again on top of the world. Crisp evening air, no bugs, smooth roads though groves of palm trees...
Posted by JIM ANDERSON at 7:36 AM 1 comments
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Update on our 24hr 1500 km ride
So were on top of the world. Bikes tuned up, packs strapped tight, crisp cool night, flying fast! were aprox 11.4 kms into our 1500 trip and i get a text from dave... ``bikes broke... come back`` awesome! we go back, find dave, go the the bike shop and... Closed! so we spent the night in lauro de freitas. Got his bike in the shop the next morning and its got a blown motor, cam shaft and bearings are completly fried. haha so here we sit 24 hrs later. haha hopefully we´ll be able to cover some ground tonight
According to my bike odomotor weve done just about 7000 kms. That leaves around 7000 more til Machu Pichu. pretty sure im starting to walk bow legged
Posted by JIM ANDERSON at 11:57 AM 0 comments
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Morro De São Paulo
We took a short cut to Salvador by getting a ferry that cut about 300 kilometers off of our trip. We found a place and crashed hard! All of us fell asleep, didn´t go out to eat, didn´t go hang out with the pretty chillean girls we met, nada! (sorry girls, we´ll have to make a trip down to chile! send us the pics of the toca party and we´ll put them on the blog and you´ll be famous!!! we´re talking to you marcella and carolina)
Posted by JIM ANDERSON at 1:16 PM 0 comments