Sights from the Saddle

Often times, you're riding down the road and you see something interesting but there is nowhere to pull over safely to take a picture so you just have to store the scene in your memory bank. Here are some I was able to retrieve:

-Sign in Mexico: Better to be a minute late than have a minute's silence.
-Coffin on top of SUV
-Donkey pulling a cart and baby donkey walking alongside while his mom worked.
-Trucks so loaded down with hay that all you see is a moving haystack
-Sand dunes of Peru as far as the eye can see.
-Deep mud road crossing from San Augustan to Popayan, Columbia (took all day to go 146kms)
-Drop off’s into valleys that are thousands of feet down with no guard rail or divider.
-Half the road washed down the mountain with only some branches on the road as a warning.
-Whole families on small motorcycles. Dad wears the helmet, mom and kids don't.
-In Columbia, there were billboards saying “No more stars in the road”. They paint stars -on the road as a memorial to people killed in road accidents. It took me a while to put the two together.
-In Ecuador, they had the same idea but used winged hearts instead. In one particularly bad corner, there were about a dozen hearts! Needless to say, it slows you down!
-Hundreds of roadside shrines for accident victims ranging from wooden crosses to little houses containing religious icons, candles and flowers.
-Shanty towns in northern Peru consisting of shacks no bigger than the average storage shed.
-Construction workers in coveralls, balaclavas, sunglasses and hard-hats looking like terrorists. Some wear breathing devices to keep out the dust and sand.
-First sight of the Pacific Ocean as we came up over a hill.
-Signs telling people to use their seat belts but most people travel in open trucks where they all stand in the back like cattle on their way to market.
-Pairs of shoes hanging by their laces strung over hydro lines.
-And always, always big waves and smiles or thumbs-up when they see the bikes.