SETTING SAIL!! Cartagena de Indias, COLOMBIA

Our new home for the next 4 days

The next morning we woke up and realized that we had slept right on the side of a major highway. I think we got a good three hours sleep. We headed into town where we were pleased to find that it was an old pirate town, full of castles, fortresses, and old rusty cannons.


Upon arriving in Cartagena we discovered that we only have a couple options to get to Panama.1. ride 200 kms through death jungle where only 1 man has succesfuly past with a two wheel drive rocon motorcycle. 2. try and get on smugglers boats and ferrys from near Gurilla Colombia, or..... Take a sailboat to the San Blas Islands and get dumped off right in the middle if Panama! hhhhmmm?? We got an amazing american style breakfast and started looking for a sailboat that would let us hitch a ride to Panama.  After sifting through all the harbors and ports some fisherman sent us over to find Pedro. We found em and after hours of haggling we had ourselfs a boat. Even if it did cost us Over a Million Pesos.

 Dave counting MILLIONS

haha not really that much for, a four day sailboat ride to The San Blas Islands and Panama, All the food you can eat, fishing, sailing lessons, getting the bikes across, a nice bed to sleep in, Basically everything I´ve ever dreamed of!

Part of the old Castle built to keep the Pirates out

Captain Pedro showed us the ropes around the ship and we headed into town. Only after we dropped off our sacks of all our filthy clothes of course! Cartagena is super awesome! Lots of the streets in the main old town are only wide enough for one car. I would assume that it looks alot like spain or france would. We just rode around for a few hours and saw the town for most of the night. After hours of good exploring we took er back to the ship and called it a night!ª

Downtown Cartagena

We spent the next day and a half getting ready to set sail. Turns out our boat was abandondened so we did quite a bit of repairs as well.  Night one we Loaded the bikes on the ship! Turns out its not exactly legal so we had to load em in the middle of the night. We pushed em out the dock, tied ropes aroud the front and back, Hooked the ropes to the mast, and then linched them out over the water and up into the boat! It was so Awesome! We tied em and tarped em to ensure their saftey during the 4 day boat ride. After all our hard work we all fell asleep on the deck. haha

The next morning we went out with captain Pedro and bought food for the 8 of us going over. Captain Pedro thinks alot like we do and we ended up spending over a Million Pesos on Food!! We were just throwing everything we wanted in the cart! It was a great time. We also bought a 50 gallon burlap sack full of Pineapples, another full of Mangos, and others full of other delicious fruits! I´m so Pumped for this! Our outting to buy food got me all excited for powell again. We finished up a few final repairs and right now we´re about to set sail! 50 hours from now we´re going to be in San Blas Islands. Monday morning we´ll be in Panama ready to get back on the road!

Wish us Luck!

The Pirates

VENEZUELA, COLOMBIA and some other pics

 Amazon Sunset by the Ecuator

Spotted Leapords

 This Guy really wanted to know what i tasted like

Another Sunset

And Another

Crossing the Equator

We would have spent some time here but as soon as we stopped a whole bus full of circus transvestites pulled up and unloaded. We saw the ....chickdudes walking over and we got a fist full of throttle and got outta there!!

Worlds biggest Moth. I checked

Right before getting detained at the Venezulan border for almost two days

The Venezulan High Grasslands... Amazing!

Waterfall in the middle of Venezuela.. There are thousands of these all along the way. Including Angel falls which is the higest in the world. Didnt have time to go there though.... 

Dave... feet up ridng off into a smokey venezulan sunset

Some of the biker gang that saved my bacon while i was almost broke down by myself in venezuela. I stayed at Vitaminas house. (Far Right) He`s so awesome! Worked with me all day to get me back up and running, Fed me, shelted me, and showed me a great time! 

Thanks again Vitamina!

As of the other day I was camped out sunday night at Vitaminas house. The next day vitamina and i worked hard to find all my parts and get the tornado up and running again. Not gonna lie i felt a little wierd riding around on the back of his cruiser bike. ha after several trips to the store, waiting for siesta to get done, and some rain the bike was up and running hot! dave called and we planned to meet at the columbian border at 7 or 8 am the next day. I tried leaving but they wouldnt let me due to rain, pot holes in the road, thugs, and of course rain. So i chilled at vitaminas place til 4 am and i rolled out as fast as i could! I made super good time due to more rain and some traffic. I rode as fast as i could stopping only for gas. I saw a dead person again. I hate that. Puts me in the dumps for the rest of the day. The last 100 kms to the Columbian boarder were super ghetto and 9 out of 10 cars are huge 70s rusty old cheys! so funny. At about noon at 5 kms from the boarder I caught up to Dave and Nian right before they were about to cross into Colombia. We got held up at the boarder again, interviewed, and 4 hours later we were on our way!

Welcome to Colombia!!

Once in Colombia  we road as fast as we could to the north east while it was still light. It got dark quick. We left the desert and the roads turned from horrrible to awesome so we kept on going. At around 2 am and 990kms into my day, we stopped about 30 mins outside of Cartagena, Colombia. I looked out in the field and beheld millions of fireflys lighting up the landscape. No moon, few stars, and fireflys tracing every tree, field, and hill side.  Truely a sight that flim cant capture. I wish everyone could have been there to share it with us. One of the most amazing acts of Gods great nature i've ever seen! It was so awesome that we road around til we found some nice trees, set up our hammocks, and got a couple hours rest. 

MUCHO LOCO!!

Ok this is going to be have to be a super readers digest version. no time to kill right now. bad spelling and everythig. so manaus was awesome! we spent like four nights at Edivaldo and Martas house. they are the best people ever. they treated us like kings! amazing people. everyone we met in manaus was so awesome! we went to the zoo  there which was super cool. it was raining of course so we were the only ones there. including the workers which were army guards as it is on a military base. we had more unsupervised fun with animals than we should have. i got the black panther to bite down on the cage and i touched his tooth! haha so awesome! we hit the road for boa vista (one of nians other areas) in the worst rain storm ive ever driven in. it hurt so bad. even when we were going slow. we road like 600 kms in the rain and found an empty tire shop to tie our hammocks up in. we camped the night, got up at 4:30 and road hard all the way to boa vista. the ride was awesome! we crossed the equator, a bus full of trannys showed up so we bailed quick). the rest of the ride was socool. lots of hugee parrots, dead gators, and other crazy animals all over the road.we came out of the jungle and into some savana looking planes. at boa vista we fixed my breaks, ate and decided to head north. 4 hours later we were at the venezulan border in another rain storm. By night fall we were in Venezula. we all ran out of gas, got gas, got our passports stampd, and road north into Veneezula. its so much different than brazil. GAS HERE IS SOOOO CHEAP!!!! I filled my tank for like 25 cents.. gas is 9cents a gallon!! pretty much free. everyone here drives huge trucks, jeeps, and classic chevy cars haha. we road like 100 kms into venezula where we were stopped by the military police. They were not kind. after a long dispute and process we headded back to the border to get more paper work done. we spent the night at the border and  went to the border the next morning. They detained us and we spent the whole next day working on meaningless paperwork!.... we were all kind of depressed. Finally at 5:55 pm they let us go after some hero brazillian guy from the highway patrol named Vladimir made us some papers that said we were legal with brazil. We were once again all out of gas and it turns out the gas stations close at 6. we didnt make it in time so we headed to the ghetto side of town and started anyone if theyd sell us some gas. we got led to three or four houses that usually sell black market gas and noone had any. Upon asking one house a young girl overheard us asking in broken spanish and lead us to her grandpas house. He had us kill our motors, turn off our lights, and push our bikes in his back yard. he turned out all his lights and filled our bikes up from some big 5 gallon cans he had. i guess its super illegal to sell black market gas. we were having a good laugh after gassing up and dave  mentioned we were from utah. a lady from inside then asked, "mormons?" haha well  yes... turns out shes a less active member! soon we were eating a feast with them and she drew out a map for us to get around in venezuela as my new gps only has basic roads on it. The family let us crash on their floor as its not a good idea to night ride in venezula. once again we saw the hand of God in our trip. what are the odds of getting lead to a lessactives house after all we went trough at the border. great experience. the next morning we were on the road by 5 am. we got rolled by some more military police after like 4 hrs of riding. they were going to haul us in and keep the bikes because we didnt have "internatioal drivers licences". after talking for like an hour we were all laughing and having a good time. they finally let us go and we hit the road once more.  The venezulan countryside is amazing. we went from green grassy planes, to jungle, to savanna, to desert. everything you can think of. we road like 10 hours, dave lost his wallet so we spent some time fixing that. 6 more good riding hrs and it was dark. we got lost in cidade guyana looking for a bridge. we stopped for some food and everyone was like.. get the HELL outta here! its so dangerious!! needless to say.. we dropped everything and split! haha forget getting jammed up by robbers.. three hours later we gased up and got more food. as we were eating a guy comes in with a knife and tells dave something. we didnt understand him well but he either said im going to steal your bikes or someones going steal your bikes. we dropped our food, jumped on our bikes and headed out of town. Once again the cops grabbed us on the way outta the city. I was actually glad this time becaue im 100 percent sure someone was following us. I'll admit, i was gettting a little nervous. The cops wanted money and were upset when they found out we didnt have any. Dave speaks pretty good spanish so he does most of the talking.. i understand well but speak just a little so everytime they ask me for money i just smile an say... Si.. and laugh a little. Then i laugh more cause its funny to see them get confued. The cops told us we were going the wrong way which i know saved our bacon. I honestly felt , and know, that someone was waiting to ambush us after we left the police checkpoint. We bunched up and road into the night on the right road. around 3 am i felt my  bike getting a little shakey. we stopped and turns out, my sprockets and chain are all the way worn out again. My chain was tightened all the way and slipping bad so nian and i took some links out with my leatherman and a huge rock while dave slept on the sidewalk. This took like an hour and a half. i tightened by chain up all the way and limped down the road. i couldnt go over 70 kms/hr or my chain would slip again. nian and dave were way behind me for some reason. It got light and i stopped at the police station. I waited there for like and hour and i figured they stopped to sleep. I wasnt tired so i limped on stopping at each city to see if they had a mormon  chruch or bike shop that was open. At like 10:30 am i came across  city with a church and i caught the last 45 mins of sacrament meeting. It was pretty awesome. No bike shop in the city so i  wrote dave on facebook, tightened my chain again, and kept going. I rode til like 5pm. with no bike shops open on sunday i was starting  to get nervous that i wouldnt make it to Maricaibo which is the bigger city that would for sure have my parts.  My chain was slipping bad again so i pulled off on some grass to snug it up. Two bikers rode past me and a lady on the back of one of them invited me to join them. I told them my story and they told me to follow them. Turns out they are in a biker gang. They took me to their mechanics house. They call him vitimina. Pretty soon i was all showered up and at a biker gang pool party/ bbq haha. Remind you i havent slept since 5 am the day before... 40 hrs no sleep! I passed out on a couch by the pool and woke up to an  angry man yelling  at me! We ate the bbq, they took me to a bar, they got wasted and i slammed coke after coke trying to stay awake! we left the bar at midnight and road the town! Once again, theyre wasted riding doubles, im deathly tired riding with sprockes grinding! ha They bought me some bomb venezulan steak sandwhich at like 1 am and they took me back to vitiminas house. around 2 am i finally went to bed. 45 hrs straight! Tomorrow vitamina and i are going to get me back on the road so i can meet up with nian and dave down the road!

Pray for me! hahaa

PEACE!!

Mid-Trip Cruise

So we may have gone on the most interesting cruise ship of all time! After finishing our death ride through the middle of the trail we caught River boat in Santarem and headed up the mighty Amazon. This wasnt your averege cruise ship though. We made friends with the captain and boared the ship a day early. Instead of having rooms this cruise had thousads of hooks and one big open floor. there we´re 10 or so hammocks hung up on the second floor so we followed suit and placed our hammocks three feet apart and spread all our muddy packs, rain gear, tarps, and dirty clothes over our ten foot territory. We slept great the first night in the port. We woke up early to go see the city which was supposed to have "the most amazing fresh water beach in the world." As we were on our way we stopped for some breakfast and to wash our bikes. Lo and behold, here came our arch nemisis from this whole trip, Rain!!! And how it rained. Seriously, the roads became rivers in the matter of 5 mins. We waited out the rain for like an hour, grabbed our now clean bikes, Nian and I bought some food, and headed for the boat to meet Dave with our tickets.

Upon arriving at the boat we were greeted by 4 policemen that were very unhappy with Nian and his broken licence plate. They started giving us some serious guff which was not good because our boat was to leave shortly. I soon learned that three of them were in an english class and we were soon laughing and having a good time talking about guns. Needless to say we made our boat. We lifed our bikes onto the bottom level of the boat and then hoisted them down into the gallows for the two day ride.

As we boarded we discovered that a few more people had joined us for our two day river trip. By a few people I mean like 350 more people! We pushed our way through a colorful rainbow spiderweb of hammocks and people and finally found our stuff. Nian´s and my hammocks were now a foot apart, and a family of 7 had squeezed in between Dave and I. The lady right next to me was way bigger than I am and her 90 year old feeble mother was right next to her. Our stuff was all over the place getting trampled. We all looked at each other and thought to ourselves...."awesome".... Here we were ready for a confortable boat ride up the amazon and suddenly it felt like it was packed inside a crowed city bus. We all laid down in our hammocks and sort of settled in for a long ride.

Nian and I fell asleep. We woke up with people jammed up touching us on both sides of us. I was honestly shocked with the situation. It was like 7 pm and everyone was hustling around for dinner. The three of us went up to the top deck and enjoyed our dinner of cookies and guaraná.

After a while I found out that somepeople could go down to water level and sleep around the cargo so I jumped right on it. Down on the cargo level the whole back was full of crates of Mangos (which we were free to eat i guess) (and were DELICIOUS), bananas, mamão, lemons, many other fruits and vegis, chickens, and a dog. The front of the boat was open and quite fresh. I hung my hammock so I could lay there and watch the Amazonian jungle pass by. We spent almost the whole first two days searcing for sloths and jaguars but we mostly saw cows, chickens, and river people. Still very interesting. The river is almost overflowing so the shorelines are full of trees falling in the river and the effects of erosion were everywhere.

At most times along the two day trip we were surrounded by fresh water dolphins that ranged in color from black, to grey, to blue, to pink. We also saw some pretty amazing sunsets, sunrises, moonsets, and moonrises. All of which occured over the river. Night one I dont think any of us slept at all. Turns out I had hung my hammock under a night light. Dave and Nian both got up to go to the bathroom and were confronted by an unfriendly scene. The guy with his hammock right next to the bathroom door had thrown up chuncks of dinner and rice all over the place. The guys found out that it was throw up by walking though it. The worst part is.... Dave was barefoot. I still think Nian was grossed out more. The whole next day we spent sleeping, playing cards, and watching the jungle pass by. Night number 2 was a lot more relaxing. We arose the next morning and soon we were pulling into the port. A few mins before desembarking our friend rain showed up in full force and made things complacated again. We rigged a pully and hoisted our bikes out of the gallows of the boat. Lifting them out of the boat was a lot eaiser that we had expected.

Upon arrival in Manaus we got some lunch and took care of some bike repairs that were nessary after the Shortcut trail ride. Once repaired, we road an hour or two to the other side of the city and found one of Nians old mission areas. We visited a couple familys and the second one we visited invited us to sleep there.

We all took bucket showers in front of their house, laid down on mattresses and were soon fast asleep. After almost two weeks of only sleeping in hammocks it was great to sleep on a mattress! We are all completely out of clothes, we all have a rancid plastic sack of wet, muddy, sweaty, dirty clothes! Tomorrows tasks... 1. Wash clothes, 2. Find some Jungle to explore! 3. Relax for a bit..... We´ll be in touch..

i´ll put up some more pics later

Love you all

THE GUYS

Mid TRANS AMAZON Highway

 Transamazonican Sunset... Absolutely Amazing

Sorry its been so long since the last update. There aren´t to many wireless internet places in the middle of the JUNGLE! Last time I wrote it seems like we were leaving the last little strip of asphalt of our super long trip. We got me some a new chain and sprocket set. Somehow I burned though a set after 2 weeks of hard riding.? After getting the bikes tuned up a little, we hit the road once more. It was pretty much dark so we did our best to put some distance behind us. We road a few hundred Kms down the Transamazonica dirt road highway when all the sudden, we started to get the feeling that it was about to open up and pour rain! Around 10 pm we found the nearest bar/restaurant/truck stop. Soon we had made friends with the owner who kindly invited us to hang our hammocks up under his balcony where his pool tables were. He let us shower, we ate there, and surely enough, it poured rain!

One of our Camps Along the Transamazon Highway

The Whole 3000 Kms was riddled with these rickety wood bridges

Walking on Water... I just want to be like JESUS

We Slept great in our hammocks and waited til almost 9am for the rain to slow down some. The downpour became a drizzle so We finally decided that it wasn't about to stop all together. So, we wrapped everything we owned in plastic and hit the trail. Everything was awesome except for one minor mishap. My rain gear was nowhere to be found!   I put on this bright purple poncho that our friend Liam had given us and we road out. After like an hour of riding hard down the muddiest roads ever! I was super soaked and muddy! We came across a small town where I set out looking for some rain gear. It was Sunday so everywhere that sold raingear was closed. I was set on finding some gear and after like an hour of searching I found a moto store with the back door open. I bought the only thing they had, found a gas station, showered the mud off, and we were in business back on the road!

 One of the Nicer Stretches of Road (we're barely muddy it got so much worse!)

Who needs a bus? Not these 30 People!! haha

We Made friends with some River People.. I guess they didn't realize Dave and Nian are almost double their size.. The Canoe was about 3/4 of an inch out of the water!! ha

We road way hard through mud and rain all day on Sunday. These roads were nuts! If there wasn't pure jungle on both sides i would have guessed that I was on top of the mountains above Fillmore. The roads are identical. Every time we would stop for gas or food people would tell us that we were out of our minds. ``you're crazy! what if you break down out here? there´s no stores to fix your bikes! you dont ride at night do you?`` ``yes`` ``NO WAY You're crazyyy!!! You're going to get robbed!``  Every time someone says this we look at each other and smile. We road through Jungle, rivers, Fog, mud, broke down some, fixed our bikes and finally Sunday night we made it to Araju. We rolled into town, found another gas station/ restaurant  that let us hang our hammocks up inside. We took a shower at the gas station, and set up camp. We went into town and it was pure craziness! We rode down main street along with like 500 of the towns youth on our bikes. Everyone goes to the main road every night and just does laps up and down main. It was crazy. I felt like I was in a Motocross race. After taking some mains and getting some food, we took it back to camp and got some rest for our big day tomorrow.

Rain Forrest Farm.. Amazing

The next morning we spent getting ourselves ready for ``THE SHORTCUT!!`` We got Dave a new chain and sprocket set, got some food, relaxed for a min, and headed down The Shortcut.

Look how small Dave and I are next to these trees.. They're HUGE

The Shortcut is a 200 km dirt road without stores or homes that goes Right Through the Middle of the JUNGLE!! Taking the shortcut was going to save us almost 200 kms to the river so we took it of course! People in town said that it was a rough road but we´d fly right across it with our bikes. We had no Idea what we had signed up for! We busted out the first 100 kms no problem! A few big puddles, a few trees across the trail, and a few slick spots but we had made pretty good time. We took a break to oil our chains and rest our butts. When we turned our bikes off we were surround by howler monkeys. They were screaming like gorrillas all around us! Pretty nuts! and really creepy

This Tree Was so big they just piled dirt over it instead of moving it!

Full Throttle to not Sink in the QUICKSAND

Rowdyest Ride of my LIFE!

Then we set out of the second part of the Shortcut. The next 20 kms took us over 4 hours to cross! The road was 40 yards wide and pure mud and quick sand! Some of the puddles were over 5 feet deep! There were trees across the trail that were over 6 feet in diameter across the trail! It took all three of us to help each other creep, lift, push, pull, and drag our bikes across this swamp! It was so bad we all just put on our swimsuits and drove right though the middle of it! After 7 hours we finally made it to the other side of the Jungle and to Santarem where we were to get the riverboat down the amazon to manaus.

 

Mud So deep We had to push each other through it!

Muddy ol Dave

From my house in Orem to our farm in Fillmore is almost exactly the same distance as The Short cut! I have never even thought of riding my motorbike from Orem to Fillmore. It seems so far once i think about it. I guess after riding over 12,000 kms (almost 8000 miles) we´ve lost any feeling for distances.

About 150 Kms Down the Shortcut

Another Sketchy Bridge

Nian was so Pumped to See Asphalt

As we got to Sanatrem we searched out the river boat. We worked our way onto the boat where we made friends with the captain. He said we could crash on the boat that night as it didn't leave til the next afternoon. We hung up our hammocks, showered the mud off for like 30  mins each, and crashed out! We´ve logged over 3000 kms this last week and have defiantly felt it! Now were going to take a 2 day boat ride up the amazon to manaus. It will be nice to rest up for a bit!

MOTO TEAM... OUT