November 16, 2010

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.

4 comments:

  1. At times a helmet-cam would be nice -- but then you wouldn't always want to 'go where you look'

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  2. The terrain on 3S was great to look at - such variety - I bet these aerial views make an 8th grade Earth Science teacher envious of what you are seeing. The ground view have to be wonderful. Too bad the little man on Google does not work so one could see what you see as you move south.
    DJP

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  3. Jean - I enjoyed this "Travelogue" post. Craig and I also figured out that on the SPOT page, we can select the hybrid or terrain mode to get a sense of the landscape you are in. What kinds of temperatures have you been riding in?
    Evie

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  4. Hi Guys, I expected you would spend some time in Cusco doing Machu pichu(spelling?. Ken

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