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Published: August 17th 2015
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Distance driven today: 255 miles / 410 km
Cumulative distance driven: 15,552 miles / 25,298 km
Yesterday’s trip: Mar del Plata to Buenos Aires, Argentina
Last day of riding: yes
Yesterday morning I left the very agreeable city of Mar del Plata and headed to Buenos Aires for the very final leg on my long PanAmerican highway trip. It was indeed a pleasurable ride, with blue skies, a bright shining sun, and a highway with very light traffic. As I was entering Buenos Aires I could not help but feel a sense of accomplishment. At the same time I was, for the very first time, hit be the realization that this long riding trip was now coming to its end. I will therefore attempt below to summarize my PanAmerican ride in the only way that I know of, i.e. a list of facts and figures.
Total distance driven since I left Alaska: 15,500 miles / 25,000 km. That is equivalent of driving 60%!a(MISSING)round the circumference of the planet. No wonder they call the PanAmerican Highway the world’s longest motorable road.
Most chaotic border crossing: Costa Rica to Panama. The Costa Rica customs officer
clearly took a bigger interest in the ongoing soccer match on TV, rather than our customs forms. The process was completely unpredictable and the entire area full of vendors, handlers, people ‘hanging’ out and a general sense of disorder everywhere.
Most frustrating part: The almost 2 weeks it took to ship the bike from Panama to Colombia.
Most difficult traffic: Before and after Medellin in Colombia. Factors that contributed to making this part difficult to drive include, very heavy traffic, tons of trucks and buses, no opportunity for taking over for hours sometimes, too many hairpin turns and mountains, relatively few traffic rules obeyed by drivers, steep ascending or descending roads.
Distance ridden together with Zoe: Around 10,000 miles, 16,000 km.
Countries visited: 13
Schools and libraries with donated Kindle e-readers that we visited: 7 schools and 1 library.
Number of hairpin turns and switch backs driven: Even though we stopped counting after the second million or so, I am sure that the actual number must be bigger than a
Googolplex.
Countries we ‘forgot’ to exit because we couldn’t find the exit custom office until we had already entered the next country: Two.
First we missed exiting Mexico when headed into Guatemala, and about a month later we missed the Ecuadorian exit customs office and didn’t realize this until we were already in Peru. How it is possible to build a border crossing in such a way that a traveler can miss the mandatory customs office, without anybody stopping them, is beyond my understanding.
Emotional highlight: Visiting the Tatumbla library, outside Tegucigalpa in Honduras, and seeing all the middle school children open the Kindle e-readers we had donated, turning them on with our help, and starting to read. It was a very gratifying moment indeed and both Zoe and I felt a sense of meaningfulness and accomplishment.
Most beautiful road driven: This is a hard one to answer because there are really so many parts of the PanAmerican highway that are breathtaking, that it is hard to single out a specific road. Still, if I have to pick one section it would be road number 2 going south from San Jose in Costa Rica, following the central Costa Rican mountain range. This road blends rain forest and mountains is a graceful way, with fantastic vistas.
Easiest border crossing: From Bolivia to Argentina. It took under an hour to clear all paperwork for us and the bike through both countries.
Most difficult road to drive: without a doubt the road leading to the Uyuni salt plains at the Bolivian Altiplano. The long sections of sand, the lack of any signage (whatsoever), the blending of the ‘road’ and plain, led to a sense of being lost, and physical exhaustion in the middle of nowhere.
Emotional lowlight: The sudden malfunction of the electronics on the bike, 30 km outside Lima Peru, early in the evening, after a
very long riding day. We had to find a tow truck to take the bike back to the hotel in Lima.
Punctures: Only one in northern Peru. If Zoe and I had not chosen to pull out the screw that was wedged into the rear tire, we could probably have driven without even having to repair the tire.
Most intense days: The time we spent at the Colombian Amazon town of Leticia. Obviously this was not part of the PanAmerican highway and neither did we drive there. Still, Zoe and I had a few very intense days there, and it seems that something noteworthy was happening all the time during that trip.
Best fruit juices: Without a doubt it will have to be Colombia.
Tired of eating chicken with rice: Definitely. Chicken with rice seems to be the main dish available everywhere we stopped all the way from Mexico to Bolivia.
Highest elevation road driven: The Ticlio pass, headed from Lima Peru to La Oroya, at almost 5,000m / 16,000 ft.
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