Hasta luego, we’re off to South America

Once you discover a spot and like it, you’re bound to go there time after time. For us that was the case in Asia. It was time to change for our next adventure. Not to go east again, but to west this time. To the Americas, and more specific, three months in South America.

But where the hell to go in this gigantic continent and what to do? The latter was pretty easy. Traveling by own means of transport gives so much freedom to go and stop wherever we like. This in our case means riding a motorbike. Motorcycles would be found anywhere, so where to start spontaneous?

Somehow Peru was first on our minds, but plans changed as fast as they were made. Why not Colombia? Yeah!! Colombia would be great. But is it safe to go there these days? And wouldn’t it be too far north on the continent to start? Maybe Chili then? Too expensive. Peru stil? Finally we booked tickets to Ecuador, situated between Peru and Colombia, that would be a great place to hit off. There we would find some bikes, how hard could that be. Little did we know.

Soon after we arrived in Quito we became aware that Ecuador was the worst place to go in South America. Not at all because of the country, its a great place, but the kind off bikes we had in mind are immensely expensive (for us). Japanese and European motorcycles are much more costly than in surrounding countries or in Netherlands. Even second hand and rent was out off the question while costing 100 Dollar a day. The quest was on!

The solution were ‘Ecuadorian’ bikes. Because of high taxes foreign motorcycles are fairly expensive. So what they do is, they import bike parts from china and assemble them into a motorcycle in Ecuador. These half Ecuadorian, very much Chinese motorbikes are reasonably affordable. Jackpot! Through some Google Translate negotiation at a local dealership (don’t speak English versus no hablo Espanol) we bought two of the most all-roud type off bikes with the highest engine capacity they had (250 cc). We were good to go!

After a test ride in Ecuador, the first stop on the horizon: COOOOOOLOMBIA!!!!!

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