Unlike the majority who travel with sightseeing as their goal; I have no interest in museums, touristy spots, beaches, sky scrapers, nice roads, or historical sites. That doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy all these things, I do, but the drive behind traveling for me is to know the people themselves not what they have created or destroyed.

I was going to Bolivia to try to establish a local branch …read the rest and see the pictures.

It wasn’t until I saw the road in daylight that I knew what kind of misery I was in for. This road was supposed to be paved, but it was under construction at the moment and the ranchers said that it would be like this for another 100km. As it is customary in South America, when you hear a number related to distance, you should always multiply it by three for good measure so I figured the whole way to Bolivia would be like that. …read the rest and see the pictures.

A whole century later, I must have had the same look as the Sundance Kid as he stepped off the train in Bolivia. I stood in front of a mound of rubble, no sign, no road, no nothing, but a narrow mule track straight out of the 1900 which marked the border of Bolivia.

To tell the story of the damned Bolivia, I must first tell the hellish story of getting to Bolivia. Imagine yourself sitting under …read the rest and see the pictures.

I’m well and alive and was for a long time computer–less. About a month and half ago, I was going to the parking garage to leave the motorcycle, and I asked my friend Lourdes to open the sliding door of the garage. The door was stuck because of some gravel on the rail but she got it open just enough for the bike to pass through. As she turned around towards me, before I could say a word, the 25ft long steel door collapsed on her head and buried her missing and the bike by less than an inch. The gigantic piece of metal was so heavy that I could only lift it a few inches off of her body, but she couldn’t get herself out. Finally people arrived and with some help we lifted the metal gate and rescued her. She still had her motorcycle helmet on, and it undoubtedly saved her life. She came out with lots of cuts and bruises, and as she was wearing a backpack with my laptop in it, the laptop was crushed as well. Everything is almost fixed now and I have a lot of catching up to do. For now, happy late Thanksgiving and early Christmas to everyone.

When I find a road that is not on the map, my first reaction is to always roll on the throttle and ride straight for it. This time I found a road that was not charted, was reasonably short, and from the GPS Topo maps, it seemed to be passing through some beautiful landscape. Little did I know that this 50km section would prove to be one of the most isolated, hottest, and sandiest roads in entire Argentina. …read the rest and see the pictures.

We finally woke up early, took hot shower at the fire station, and headed out due south for Cafayate. We went five blocks and I was hungry already so we stopped for one last salami and bread in Salta. We only had 250km to go and it was early in the day so I wasn’t too concerned about the time. At one of our stops, there was an all familiar shrine built for someone who had died in a car accident. In most of South America, when people die on the road, their families build a little shrine for them on that spot. …read the rest and see the pictures.

We left Dragones and all its glories behind and headed west again towards Salta, the Capital of Salta province. The first thing I did was to find an empty jug and fill it up with extra gas just in case. The next was finding a shoe store to fix Lourdes’s boots, but we never managed to find any; they were either closed or the locals sent us on a wild goose chase. In northern Salta, we had to turn south at a junction that split the road in three. One went to Bolivia, one to Chile and the one we took went south for the wine country, a 2000km …read the rest and see the pictures.