MotoBS Ep 52 Guest Interview- 7 Countries in 19 Days!! Central America on Motorcycles

In our 1 year anniversary episode we talk to Ernie and Camilo who rode their motorcycles from Houston TX to Panama City in 19 days. They recount their adventures of border crossings, mountain crossings and preparation for the next leg of their journy later this year. 

Ernie and Camilo's Instagram - @2locos_en_moto

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Each episode of the MotoBS Podcast is available in video at the MotoBS YouTube channel. 

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Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00)
Hello fellow motor enthusiasts and fans of BS. Welcome to a very special episode 52 of MotoBS with Brian and Sean. Today we've got two of our friends here, Ernie and Camilo. They just got back from a pretty awesome trip from Texas all the way through Mexico and Central America down to Panama. Seven countries. Yes. They're two motos and loco. Is that what you guys are on? Two locals and moto on Instagram. If you want to give them a follow.

Speaker 4 (00:17)
Seven seven countries

Speaker 2 (00:26)
goes and more

Speaker 1 (00:29)
So welcome guys, welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 (00:31)
Thank you, thank you.

Speaker 2 (00:32)
Thank

you.

Speaker 4 (00:33)
It's great to have you guys. As soon as you guys told us your plan about this trip, Brian and I were like, we got to get them on the podcast.

Speaker 1 (00:40)
I was trying to get him to come on the podcast for even yeah

Come on, I want to hear about the planning of the trip. want to hear everything. Yeah. So he's like, we'll do it all at the end. I'm like, OK, OK. So this isn't the end of the trip there, right? You are doing a multi part, right?

Speaker 2 (00:54)
This is probably five, six, seven legs maybe.

Speaker 1 (00:56)
You can do seven legs. Okay, so you use your first leg. You guys ship the bikes to Texas, right? Texas and you guys flew out to Texas and the road all through Mexico. What countries and what order did you go?

Speaker 2 (01:03)
Yeah ⁓

Mexico Guatemala ⁓ El Salvador Honduras Nicaragua Costa Rica Panama Wow

Speaker 4 (01:19)
Seven countries.

Speaker 1 (01:20)
Nice

You guys are gone in 918 19 days 50 500 miles I'm sorry 30. I'm like I'm mad. I'm I'm upping your trip, you know Yeah, but your your grand plan is to go all the way to the tip of South America Yeah, right. So what do you I let's start. Let's start at the beginning How long you guys been riding together

Speaker 3 (01:20)
and

Speaker 2 (01:22)
It's 19 total. No, 30.

Speaker 3 (01:26)
35

Here you go.

Speaker 2 (01:31)
Definitely.

Turn it on.

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:44)
We met two years ago doing a BDR.

Speaker 2 (01:47)
But ⁓

Speaker 1 (01:49)
Okay, John. John Ross. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:52)
no chance.

Speaker 2 (01:54)
But the funny thing about that trip is like literally I got back home and I told my wife like I think I finally met the guy that I'm gonna do this trip with

Speaker 3 (02:02)
Because I didn't know if he knew, he said second time. So he tried to do it one time. Yeah. Didn't work out.

Speaker 2 (02:04)
This is my second

Right? didn't work out at all.

Speaker 1 (02:10)
Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. That was one of our questions we have. You have done parts of the trip before,

Speaker 2 (02:16)
But it's like none nothing that we've done now like because last time we went down Baja. Yeah, this time we went down mainland. Okay, I didn't touch any route that I did on the last time. It's all new.

Speaker 1 (02:27)
Nice.

Speaker 4 (02:28)
Was that on purpose because the first trip didn't work? Turned out so good.

Speaker 2 (02:32)
I mean we thought about going down Baja but honestly if you're not doing Baja on there, Baja is just... This highway like... Street Road? is in the west is great, like you got some very nice views and all that but once you turn the corner it's just heading straight back into the desert and waiting for the next turn. That's... when you look at the map it's just zigzagging.

Speaker 1 (02:39)
Just highway,

That happens a lot when you think, I'm going to ride the coast of Florida. I'm going to ride the coast of whatever. And then you realize you're not seeing the ocean. You're not seeing the mountains. You're just looking at highway.

Speaker 2 (03:03)
I mean, there's cool parts about it, don't get me wrong. Like I will do it again, no doubt, but wasting again, that took me, I think it was five, probably five days with the ferry to come around. That was a little too much time. Cause in five days we were down to where?

Speaker 3 (03:19)
But

we're probably halfway down close to Mexico City.

Speaker 2 (03:23)
Yeah. So basically in five days we would have been in Mazatlan, which is Northwest of Mexico City. So it would have taken us three more days to get just back to that place. Okay. And we only had 19 days to do this.

Speaker 1 (03:36)
Yeah, 90 days is pretty good. Pretty good amount of time. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:40)
⁓ So there was a limit on your schedule. You had to complete this. It wasn't like, ⁓ we have as much time as we want.

Speaker 3 (03:48)
Right. ⁓ And actually we met people along the way that they just had no timeframe. Like, you know, one of them is like, yeah, I've been a year doing these. just finished Mexico for three months and we were like, we need to be back at work.

Speaker 1 (03:49)
They have jobs and wives.

Speaker 2 (03:50)
There it is.

Speaker 4 (04:06)
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:07)
That was me. Yeah, that was me. Yeah. Yeah, I did all the way across America and back and I did it in 20 days.

Speaker 2 (04:12)
And there were those guys doing the Panama Express that I told you that did Mexico all the way down to Panama in 77 hours and turned around.

Speaker 1 (04:20)
Wow, that's crazy.

Speaker 3 (04:22)
Yeah. So 20 days is doable. get to we got to see a lot, but it's definitely not. I mean, seven countries in 20 days.

Speaker 1 (04:31)
Yeah, but these aren't like giant countries. They're pretty compact. It's like driver states.

Speaker 2 (04:35)
That was something that caught us off guard. We went into Mexico and yeah, it's taken us nine days to get out of there. And by now we're looking into Guatemala and like, we might not have enough days. And then something clicked and I'm looking at the map and I'm like, wait a second. We just did this distance in one day. In Guatemala, that means three quarters of the country. We're fine. And from that point, the distance is just getting smaller and smaller.

Speaker 1 (04:53)
Yeah.

Right.

Speaker 3 (05:01)
Yeah, especially the Barrow was one of those that really surprised us how small it was. We're two days in the second day. We're like, we already hit all the spots that we want to go. But also we do well, let's get into Salt Barrow City. yeah, that was a pretty bad idea.

Speaker 1 (05:18)
How much pre-planning went into the things you saw along the way? Or was it kind of like my trip? was kind of like, look, there's a giant bunny over there. Let's go do that. know what I A of wing in it.

Speaker 2 (05:27)
There was a lot of wing in it.

first four days were pretty bland.

Speaker 1 (05:31)
Right, so you guys had places to stay ahead of time and all that.

Speaker 2 (05:34)
At least the first three days we had a solid idea.

Speaker 3 (05:39)
the whole thing. There's just no way. I mean, I think you can. It's just not, it's going to take away a lot of things if you're planning every

Speaker 1 (05:46)
No, it's more fun if you're just doing the adventure.

Speaker 2 (05:48)
And

the things you keep meeting people along the way that they point you in the right direction like right it was funny this time because We were like driving into countries and I got a bunch of friends from like Central American Facebook They would see me coming and then they would hit me Hey, you're gonna be my country tomorrow like you should do this and that and that and that and that would sort of Lay out what we're gonna do over the next few days nice

Speaker 1 (06:10)
That's exactly what happened to me when I did a cross-country trip. My friends were like, hey, you know, I live in Vegas. was like, I'm not planning on going to Vegas. He's like, stay in my house. We'll go out to dinner. All right, why not? You know what mean? I ended up going all over the place. Colorado, different places, just people popping up. They see you on Facebook and they offer you a place to stay or something to do or point you in the right. He point you to something to see.

Speaker 3 (06:34)
you ended your trip.

Speaker 1 (06:36)
My trip I did, I went from Tampa to Kansas City and then all the way across the top of the country to California. Yeah, across the Golden Gate Bridge. Then my plan was to do the PCH all the way down. But of course it was closed, the big service on it, turn around and go back through the middle of the state and then across the Southwest, know, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, all the way back. Yeah. That's fine.

Speaker 3 (06:57)
was cool. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (06:59)
So what motorcycles did you guys take on this?

Speaker 3 (07:02)
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:02)
So

first of all, tell us what you ride normally like here because I know you guys have

Speaker 2 (07:06)
Okay, I'm big on triumphs.

Speaker 1 (07:08)
Yeah,

we're all sporting the triumph today. Sean, you the hat, I've got the shirt.

Speaker 2 (07:12)
Yeah, there's a little bit of traffic going on. I got a scrambler here in Tampa and a CRF 300 that I just used for BDRs.

Speaker 1 (07:19)
Okay.

Speaker 3 (07:21)
I have a Triumph Scrambler 1200. I have a Multistrada. I have the Suzuki V-Strom that I took for the trip. Right. Well, it's not here anymore.

Speaker 2 (07:32)
Like for the trip I did the Transalp.

Speaker 1 (07:34)
Yeah, so you got a Honda Trans out. Yeah, which you rode on our last ride together that we did.

Speaker 2 (07:38)
Kind

breaking it is right. put on that. I prepped it and then at one point, like during hurricane season, I thought I was going to do a long ride with it, but then hurricanes happened and that never happened. So the I get I get to put maybe 600 miles on before we took off.

Speaker 1 (07:40)
Yeah, you bought it just for this trip, right?

So, but it worked out. So you guys chose those bikes in particular because one, you're gonna be leaving them down there and two, because there's more of a dealer network, that kind of thing. Is that what went into the picking of those bikes?

Speaker 2 (08:05)
Thanks.

I'll let you know.

Speaker 3 (08:06)
Yeah, so the original idea was to ride the same bikes just so we can carry the same tools and if anything happens, first, know, tires and things, it was going to be a lot easier. But we did know that we want to take something was going to be easier to find, you know, you know, as far as parts, if anything happened. Right. We just found a good deal on his bike. I found a good deal on mine. We couldn't find two of the same. So we ended up going with the Vstrom and the

Speaker 2 (08:32)
So in my case, I always thought I would be doing this trip on a KLR. The more I thought about it, ⁓ those bikes vibrate, it's going to be uncomfortable. And you probably like power to like pass cars. like, maybe I should be looking into something like two cylinder. And I can't remember what we started talking, but he was the one that brought up the Trans-Hulp. The Trans-Hulp wasn't even on my radar. It had come out that year.

Speaker 1 (08:39)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:02)
I forgot about it. Then he brought it up and I'm like, you're right. And that's the other thing. I wanted something light because last time I did it on a 1200, I ended up on a patch of sand and that was it. Like I knew, okay, I screwed up. I needed to be on something lighter.

Speaker 1 (09:07)
It's a nice second bite.

Right, if you look at all these adventurers now that are big on YouTube, they've all scaled down. Scaled down? Nobody's on 1200. Like Ewan and Charlie did on the 1200. But you saw how much trouble they had anytime they got to mud or sand or whatever. They spent whole days just going like two miles. Oh, like, cool. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:24)
Yeah

gets mis-run.

At that point you're fighting the bike not the trip.

Speaker 3 (09:40)
You know who brought that one up? The beast run? ⁓ You know this guy? You remember his name? Trak? You know, he's big on YouTube. ⁓

Speaker 1 (09:50)
Breck Shrek.

Speaker 3 (09:54)
Haven't seen him. All right. So I did this ride with him, North Carolina and North Georgia. And I asked him because he's done a ton of trips and he actually does like he just did this year China. He does like tours as well. So he's really big into that. I asked him what bike would you take? And he's like, you know what? One that I have been thinking a lot. If I have to choose one bike for that trip will be a Vistra. Like Vistra. yeah, he's like the new 800.

So I came back and we were talking about the B-Strom 800, started checking and found this guy up in Kentucky who, a thousand miles, he wanted something smaller. He thought it was too big for him. It's an older guy. And it gave me a great deal for it. So, okay, I guess we're riding different bikes. He had already bought the...

Speaker 1 (10:41)
Bye.

Speaker 2 (10:43)
I

had already bought the Transl. It was difficult finding Transl. It wasn't easy. I wanted to use one just to come in a little lower on the That was difficult. I found one in Orlando when picked it up. But then finding parts was even more difficult because all the parts for that bike for some reason at that time they were in France. So everything was coming from overseas.

Speaker 3 (10:47)
It was hard.

Speaker 1 (11:08)
And you got nice like aluminum hard bags for it.

Speaker 2 (11:10)
Well, but even that took a long time because those were not out, like the racks for those bags were still not out when I got the bike. So I had to wait a little and then finally I saw them come in and order them quick. I probably was the first one to order them because like literally they put them on the website after I brought it up. I asked them about it and they're like, yeah, they're available.

Speaker 3 (11:28)
Wow.

Speaker 1 (11:32)
So when you're planning a trip like this, do you have to like, do you have to get like visas and stuff in advance or you just. Yeah, go ahead. Tell us.

Speaker 2 (11:38)
Well,

fact that we get US passports, that makes things very easy. Like, for example, he's Colombian. If he was Venezuelan, that would have been difficult coming into probably like Nicaragua. think it's like they would have needed a visa ahead of time. But being US, you can just shoot straight down, not even a concern.

Speaker 1 (11:45)
Okay.

Speaker 4 (12:03)
How long does it take you at the border each border? Is it very or I mean like what's the longest pause or stoppage you had?

Speaker 3 (12:06)
you

I'll say there was no one border that took us less than two hours. Maybe maybe Costa Rica. hours is very well planned, but to us one Nicaragua took us Nicaragua to Costa Rica is the one took us the longest and it's probably four hours

Speaker 4 (12:19)
Two hours

Speaker 2 (12:24)
Be careful.

Speaker 1 (12:28)
What I mean, what is it like you're in a line or they just

Speaker 2 (12:31)
No, so you're on a bike so it's easy for you because like the long line is the trucks and you're bypass all that and you go straight to like doing paperwork and all that but out of all the countries probably Nicaragua had five to six stops just on the same building you would go to this guy get this little piece of paper

Speaker 3 (12:50)
Right. So the head is you go to immigration is the first thing that you do. Right. So you have to go to immigration show your passport and then make you go to some other place to get a stamp. And then you're finally out of immigration. Then you go to what do call it? Customs. So you go to customs to import your buy. You can get insurance and that's probably four or five different stops. have to. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (13:09)
We call it custom.

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:19)
You have to buy insurance on each.

Speaker 2 (13:20)
No, it's necessary on all. It was forced like Mexico. You definitely need it. You need like a million dollar policy because in different states they have different requirements. So that was easy. You can find that easy. And it's not much money. we got a I think it was a like a full cover policy covering up to 10,000 on on our bikes with a million coverage for everything else. And it was like 250 for a whole year. We didn't need that much, but we just went with it.

Guatemala, they didn't require anything. El Salvador, they didn't require anything. Nicaragua, they had...

Speaker 1 (13:58)
So say you had an accident while you were in one of those places where you didn't get it. Are you just on your own? are you covered by, do they have medical coverage there? No? Did you have like a greater plan that you bought here? No. No? No? Did you have any kind of like emergency, you know? No? Okay.

Speaker 2 (14:14)
I mean, we have the in-reach. That's not in terms.

Speaker 3 (14:16)
We have to enrage.

Speaker 1 (14:18)
Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 3 (14:20)
You know, what was funny with the insurance was I will say Nicaragua was probably the one that we could have just walk away without insurance. And as we were leaving customs, this guy that we didn't trust, he hated this guy. He's on top like he has every border. You get someone like, I can help you. can help you. You're looking for money. Right. Yeah. I'll tell you where you need to where you need to go. Where you need to go. And, know, we

Speaker 2 (14:41)
help.

Speaker 3 (14:46)
We both speak Spanish. It was a lot easier for us just to go and ask. But if you don't, you probably need one of those guys. So as we're just finished, we're about to leave. He's like, hey, you need insurance. We're like, well, they didn't ask us for insurance and we don't trust this guy. he take us like, I'm like, all right, show us where they sell it. They take us to these restaurant on the road. Like there's two ladies sitting on, you know, with a notepad. It's just like that's where you buy the insurance. It's just like, yeah, what do you need?

We're like, well, guess insurance, she writes everything on the paper. gave it, you we pay, we're like, all right, we probably got, you we're not, this is real. That's the one country, the only country that we got pulled over and they asked us for insurance. If we would have that, the first thing is like, show us your driver license and insurance. And look at the insurance. They're good. Put it back.

Speaker 2 (15:31)
Okay.

Speaker 4 (15:38)
Now why'd you get pulled over?

Speaker 2 (15:40)
I'll do from stories.

Speaker 1 (15:41)
Because

I know you guys posted one one really funny photo the two guys riding you tickets. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah So yeah, you told me that They took your licenses and you had to go through some more bureaucracy just so it was a well, how much was the $13 or how long?

Speaker 3 (15:45)
⁓

Speaker 2 (16:00)
$13 on

your high flying like yeah normally for that like infraction. Yeah, it should have been like 300 whatever pesos they got there and that's not that's not what we got we ended up getting 500 like well I'm well I'm at the station paying the guy in front of me he's like how much he got you for I'm like 500. Oh, they got you good I'm like, but how much is the exchange and then he tells me I'm like

Speaker 4 (16:21)
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:27)
This is only $13, but it cost us two hours that day. And it could have gotten worse if he didn't stay there with the cop, like watching where the licenses were. Because as I'm there like talking to the guy, he's like, and do you know where the license is? I'm like, yeah, the cop has it. But does the cop still has it because they transfer it? Like, wait a second, what are you talking about? Like, yeah, I mean, they take it, normally immediately they send it to Managua. Unlike that, it usually takes two.

Speaker 1 (16:30)
⁓ That's crazy

Speaker 2 (16:56)
two, three days. I don't like, ⁓ my God. And I'm texting him like, dude, just make sure they got those lights.

Speaker 1 (16:57)
⁓

Speaker 4 (17:02)
Wow

Speaker 3 (17:04)
Yeah, so what happened was this is in middle of the road and we have been just passing cars. I mean, just like here, you're just passing cars every time you can. And we see as soon as we get into Nikolai, well, we got at night, it was probably 7 or 8 at night and we're driving, I see people just putting the headlights all the time. And I'm like, what's going on? So we start turning off our auxiliary lights. Like, you know, we're just, what are we doing?

Next day, as soon as we leave the place where we're staying, people is doing the same thing in the of the day. First turn that we make, then the police stop us there because they're everywhere, everywhere. then, you know, license insurance insurance is good. They're like, you you pass someone when they saw the yellow line. We're like, OK, well, yeah, I'm sorry. You know, and then they start talking and like, yeah, they want money and I'm

refusing to offer anything. I'm like, yep, no, they're, know, they can write us a ticket. They can do whatever they want. And we're like, we're thinking, or at least I'm thinking they're just going to give us a ticket. We're like, all right, we'll just go and pay it and be done with it. Right. Whatever it is. No, they write the ticket and then they take our driving license and they put it in their pocket. They're like, pay, come back to him. We're in the middle of the road. You know, remind you, it's two guys in the middle of the road. Like Ernie, we're not leaving our driving licenses in the middle of the road.

You go and you pay it and I'll just stay here and I'll have to chase these police people if they get in their bike I'll have to chase them and we're not gonna lose our driver licenses. So I stay there and he's like, no the two of you have to go together. Like, no, we'll go one at a time. We're not leaving our driver licenses.

Speaker 1 (18:48)
You guys even thought that yeah

Speaker 2 (18:50)
finding that station was a different story.

Speaker 3 (18:53)
He leaves and I'm like, you know, try it just take the other ticket and they're like go look for the chicken restaurant There is a person chicken kick those. So it's gonna stamp these and then just go to this bank It's a whole thing. We're like, my god, so

Speaker 2 (19:01)
Tick tock, chicken.

Two hours. No, he stayed there. I went to the station.

Speaker 1 (19:13)
And so the cops just waited there with you for two hours?

Speaker 3 (19:14)
They're pulling up where people are watching. see them one leaves and I'm like and I'm thinking the arm was gonna leave too and I'm ready just to follow these guys and just follow them.

Speaker 2 (19:15)
I don't know.

I mean, pretty sure they would have left because as soon as we left, they took off. they had told us that they were going to be there all day, even during lunchtime.

Speaker 3 (19:29)
Day-L-Day.

Speaker 1 (19:35)
Wow

Speaker 3 (19:37)
Yeah, he asked him, he's like, so what do do for lunch? They're like, no, they bring us lunch. Like, we're not leaving you with our drive lights. You mentioned the end of the trip.

Speaker 2 (19:45)
See you.

Speaker 1 (19:47)
You mentioned going through customs and all that that helped you both speak Spanish. Absolutely. So like if I was there by myself, like how much more of a hassle would it be?

Speaker 2 (19:54)
Yeah, makes things easy but don't let that back you off of doing the trip because I mean so many people are doing it. I'm talking from Germans to American people that don't speak a drop of Spanish and they get by so you can do it. Anybody can.

Speaker 3 (20:10)
absolutely. Yeah, it might be a little bit harder and just communicate him. Cool.

Speaker 4 (20:17)
Backing up to the beginning of your trip a little bit. ⁓ I'm curious about Mexico and your travels through Mexico because as you guys have been talking, I've been thinking about Noraly from Itchy Boots and her journey through that same Central America route. And she never had any problems. It was a perfectly smooth trip, right? Until she got to Mexico through some cartel areas. And then there was a little sketchiness where there were some roadblocks.

with some armed guys and you know, she got through it of course, but did you run into anything like that? Is that a concern when you're going through Mexico?

Speaker 3 (20:59)
I don't know, I felt pretty safe. The whole trip.

Speaker 1 (21:02)
And you said the roads in Mexico were the best that you... no, they're great. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (21:06)
Do you have to be aware of cartel area?

Speaker 2 (21:08)
So remember I did this before so I already knew what was the plan and the plan was you never write at night Okay, and you just I mean you just don't bother people Because I mean that first time I did it I met several groups from like Sinaloa and the really hot areas in Mexico and that was their suggestion He's like you'll be fine as long as you're like in the hotel by 5 6 like before dark

and you're not bothering people at bars and trying to find problems, you'll be fine.

Speaker 3 (21:38)
That was the one thing that we did. We always made sure that we...

Speaker 2 (21:41)
Stopped at five. But then again, we met local people again this time and guess what they said? The same exact thing. Yeah. And like the only place they told us this time to avoid was Chiapas. it's hot right now in Quintana Roo, but we were not planning to go that far up anyway. So we ended up taking a detour into Oaxaca and that put us into Chiapas. I mean, we just followed those rules. We were fine.

Speaker 1 (22:07)
Right, right.

Speaker 4 (22:09)
What was your elevation like? Because again, going back to Itchy Boots, it was amazing. She was at the equator, right? Up in the mountains and it was chilly the whole time she was riding. I was like, wow, I had no idea that that's what the environment was like there.

Speaker 2 (22:27)
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (22:29)
My say was 70 % of the time was extremely hot. This was something new to me. I didn't expect this to be such a big desert. 70 % is desert. So you go up and you have really nice but as soon as you start going down it becomes a desert again. So it was hot and we were at 113 degrees at some point. It was pretty, it was just hot.

Speaker 1 (22:54)
Yeah, I

mean, I experienced that in October going across in Vegas and it was was insane. Like I had some water on the dash. It was like boiling. You know what I mean? Like it was hot with the jacket. It hot without the jacket. was. The wind was hot. It was like opening an oven door with a fan on it, you know? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (23:06)
Yeah, no, no matter the wind was

Speaker 2 (23:12)
Like the whole time I'm riding with the helmet my visor up because I'm wanting to cool down. But it doesn't help. do that because it's too hot.

Speaker 3 (23:21)
No. do it. I will put my visor up and it will burn my face. I'm like, I don't understand how you can do it. Open it a little bit, get some air and close it.

Speaker 2 (23:26)
I couldn't do the other way!

Speaker 1 (23:30)
I was so hot I took my jacket off and then I rode like 20 minutes and I pulled over and put it back on because my arms are burning from the sun and from the wind.

Speaker 2 (23:38)
But I mean, I think that costed me the visor towards the end of the trip because like, know, they hold at the top position. That mechanism, like it worn flat to the point that it just came.

Speaker 1 (23:50)
I think I would just come down, yeah.

Speaker 4 (23:52)
Did you guys use hydration packs so you always have something to drink?

Speaker 2 (23:55)
We had a

Speaker 3 (23:59)
carry

one here, know, on trips here. I didn't take it with me and we just have one.

Speaker 2 (24:04)
I

mean I don't like pretty good I never like adding my like weight on myself I usually just carry it on the tank bag

Speaker 4 (24:15)
These are the insider tips, you know, like.

Speaker 2 (24:18)
No, but people love that. I hate it because I mean you're choking your ventilation. You're just choking the air going to your bag with those bags.

Speaker 4 (24:25)
Yeah, good point.

When you stop, you mentioned like you guys tried to stop, you know, five, six o'clock, you know, when you're off the road. That was Mexico. When you stop, do you have a place that you're planning a destination for that day that you're like, okay, we're going to go to this hotel or this hostel or this mom and pop in?

Speaker 2 (24:33)
You just said that was Mexico.

Speaker 1 (24:36)
going.

So you look the day before, that's what I was doing on my trip. So you do it like, sometimes I would try to look the day before and see like how far am gonna go tomorrow? But I usually wouldn't pick a place, what I would do is like, all right, I'm probably gonna go 300 something miles. And I I'd pick a town and I would go, are there places stay in that town? Because I wanna know if I get to that town, am I gonna be able to stop or do I need to go farther or should I stop a little before? sometimes a town before has 20 hotels and then that town has none. So yeah, I'm not sure if it's that way down there but.

Speaker 2 (25:19)
It was.

Speaker 3 (25:19)
That's pretty much how we did it. I think you can do it too early because one is the distance is really hard to calculate there because some of the roads, you know you have 300 kilometers, right? One, you're trying to calculate if it's going be through going up and down mountains, it's going to be a straight line, what is it going to be? And we didn't plan these, but we started usually right after lunch, maybe around

2 or 3 in the afternoon. Alright, we got two more hours. Let's see what's around here and then we will take our final route.

Speaker 2 (25:52)
Yeah, I mean there were days that we detoured completely from the game.

Speaker 3 (25:57)
Well,

there's a town this way. Well, we'll take to this town. We'll sleep there and then we'll come back and or we'll just change our whole, you know, for next day and find something else. But yeah, we usually will do it towards the end.

Speaker 2 (26:10)
Yeah, it was funny like cuz I mean that also drove drove the route a little bit because we would just open like Airbnb or Expedia or something like that Yep, and he just shows you exactly where the hotels are and it's gonna be a big gap here a bunch of hotels here big gap there So, you know like okay by the end of the day we have to be here. Mm-hmm, Because we don't have enough mileage to make it there. So it has to be

Speaker 4 (26:31)
Interesting.

Speaker 1 (26:32)
What about fuel? Was there always plenty of gas stations around?

Speaker 3 (26:37)
pretty good at staying like half tank was usually our alright let's start looking for gas so we only one time and we had extra

There was only one time where we felt like we might need to use it in Guatemala I think it was ⁓ It took us a while to find you know, he I think he put gas and heating and then we usually will put it so we both were at the same levels all the time for whatever reason I didn't put gas. ⁓ no, you know what happened? ⁓ they pull it out, but they didn't fill it completely up and I didn't notice like they put gas

Yeah. And because they, you know, they did. And, you know, we finished, we left them as we leave them like, that's weird. only have three quarters. And he was full. So they didn't fill it up. So as we're riding, we're up in the mountains. I'm like, yeah, I'm in the last quarter. And, yep, it took us a while. Like we were riding really slow and we're like, well, I might have to use our reserves, but we didn't get to use them. We got to the gas station. That was the only time that we felt gas.

Speaker 1 (27:20)
Yeah. ⁓

Speaker 2 (27:47)
Last time I did this in Baja I had two cases where like I thought I was gonna run out and that bike at that time it had like about a 250 range. With these bikes we were really running like 200. So I knew I wanted 100 more. Well it's 100 more, two more gallons. We bought Armadillo bags and those worked out great. We just filled them up before crossing into Mexico and we kept it full the whole way through. Just waiting for the moment we needed.

Speaker 1 (28:02)
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:14)
actually never ended up needing it.

Speaker 4 (28:15)
Not bad, 250 miles loaded down. That's not bad mileage.

Speaker 2 (28:20)
But that was on the previous bike. This bike was 200.

Speaker 4 (28:22)
Still

too

Speaker 1 (28:24)
This is a tracer got about 200. the tiger tiger goes a little further. think really yes like 230

Speaker 2 (28:29)
Last time I did it with a tiger 1200. Yes. Well, think it was just half a gallon bigger and it was that 50 gallons right 50 miles right there. Yep

Speaker 4 (28:39)
traveling, test the patience of the best of friends, husbands and wives, right? Was there ever any time during this trip where you guys were just like, I'm going to go here. No, I want to go here. Where it's just like a little tension. How did you guys deal with that stuff?

Speaker 2 (28:40)
can

Speaker 3 (28:59)
I personally never felt tension. There were definitely times where maybe he just wanted to go this way and this way, but never really had any big issues. And he said it very well, I can't still remember this, we were talking with some friends and he's like, well, we're going to, know, plan is to go all the way to Argentina. And he goes, he's like, well, if we like, if we still like each other in we're going to continue. So this was our test.

Speaker 2 (29:00)
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (29:24)
That was the test.

Speaker 3 (29:25)
Right

and we're like and we finish and we actually we're like, you know what, you know being with someone 19 days day and night while you're writing you're talking with him we were living for I keep telling you know people I'm like I've never been my wife being with someone for so long right all the time because it was

Speaker 1 (29:45)
Yeah, when I started planning my cross country trip, he's like, like I had a friend ask like, can I go or whatever? And I was like, and he was like, you don't want anybody to go. was like, no, I don't want him because like Jose and I traveled together quite a bit. We've gone to Key West. We've gone up to the mountains three or four times and we've done a lot of like long weekend stuff. Right. And we always get along great and whatever. But even on those short trips occasionally, but like, well, I want to eat this, but he wants to that or.

I want to go see the Key West Stupid Sunset Festival but he wants to go back to the hotel, you know what mean? Kind of things like, and you're just like, ugh, you know, like, so, yeah.

Speaker 4 (30:23)
But at least you're not stuck in a car together so motorcycles do give you that little bit of separation.

Speaker 1 (30:28)
Right, there are times where I've been like, well, you go ahead up there and I'll head over there, you know.

Speaker 2 (30:32)
It's very easy to just mute the card though.

Speaker 4 (30:35)
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:36)
No, but like honestly, like again, this is my second try doing this. I didn't come up with this idea. This idea came to me. I was working on the rig and I don't know where a guy came to the rig as a visit for some safety inspection. And like he was talking to everybody and like we just started talking and he was just trying to find like the things to talk to people about. And he found motorcycles with me and we just took off. And like he just told me that he had just come back from Spain doing a

Speaker 1 (31:00)
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:06)
a ride on the Pyrenees. I'm like, that sounds awesome, dude. I would love to do that. And he's like, well, if you like that, you might like this. And he just dropped it on my lap. He's like, we're fixing to take off from San Diego. We're going to be doing, going all the way down to Patagonia. I'm like, yeah, I've always wanted to do that. How are you doing? Because the problem is you never have the time to do it all in one shot. And in my mind, this wasn't even like a way of doing it. like.

And then he goes like, well, first leg is going to be San Diego to Honduras. We're going to leave the bikes behind and Honduras probably to Panama. She'd the bikes over. I'm like, okay, I can manage that with my work schedule. So let me talk to my wife. I talked to her and she was like, yeah, go for it. I didn't expect that. Good thing. Yeah. When you look for the bike and within two months jump on their trip. It was great. mean, I appreciate the fact that they showed me that.

Speaker 1 (31:45)
Right.

Speaker 2 (31:59)
Traveling internationally is something you can do as easy as just putting your passport, going and doing it. Like in my mind, it wasn't that easy, but it is, it really is. But unfortunately, the group dynamic didn't play out. It was five of us, but four of them just wanted to be hauling ass all day. Like, and when I'm saying hauling ass, it's over a hundred miles an hour. Like at every minute.

Speaker 4 (32:21)
Gosh.

Speaker 1 (32:23)
Yeah, that's not enjoyable.

Speaker 2 (32:25)
So I'm like by myself on the back, like I didn't even know in rich was a thing. I didn't know about like, well, I knew about river at the time. That's what we were using for tracking each other. But like apart from the start on the end of the day, I wasn't seeing those guys. Like literally I would just see him at the hotel at the end. was it. I did that whole trip by myself.

Speaker 1 (32:45)
Yeah, I know I've heard some of the Ducati trips are like that where they literally like I was talking to an older gentleman at one of the dealerships and he was like, yeah, I went on the trip with them and they were they were going like 125 miles an hour for over an hour straight.

Speaker 2 (32:58)
Yeah, no, sport bike trips are like that.

Speaker 1 (33:00)
Yeah, and it's like, that doesn't sound fun to me, like, at all. You know, I want to like see stuff. I stopped at the salt flats and I took pictures.

Speaker 2 (33:08)
the thing. I wanted to see stuff. Yeah. But they had seen it before. So for them, it was just a matter of getting to the mainland. Yeah. So they did Paja in a second. Like I was trying to take my time, see stuff, but the dynamic just didn't play out. We ended up splitting in Durango. So you come into mainland on Mazatlan on the ferry. And then we drove the Espinazo del Diablo, which is like the tail of the dragon multiplied by three plus 9,000 foot of elevation. Wow. It was awesome.

then at that point is when I said like yeah this is not working and I'm splitting and I came back up and here we are trying it again and this guy works out

Speaker 1 (33:41)
Okay.

He's got a better temperament, think, especially.

Speaker 2 (33:49)
It's not only that, the fact that he's based on us? Surely we're the same?

Speaker 3 (33:52)
Good!

Speaker 1 (33:53)
Hey,

yeah, yeah, we got a special guest star here. Yeah

Speaker 3 (33:58)
I think there's a

Speaker 4 (33:59)
Thanks. ⁓

Speaker 2 (34:00)
You're

like...

Speaker 1 (34:01)
Click

the microphone.

Speaker 3 (34:02)
There

are sort things to you that like anything, if we were the same like he is very specific like he wants to know certain things he remembers everything he knows I'm just gonna like be very if we both were the same way like I am ⁓ like if we were still trying to get out of Mexico

Speaker 1 (34:27)
Right. It helps to have that other person. Like one person has to have the type A personality. Yeah. You don't want to both be that.

Speaker 3 (34:34)
Ernie is like, we gotta plan for tomorrow. I'm like, that's right. We gotta plan. What are we gonna do tomorrow?

Speaker 2 (34:39)
the same time like when I jump on this trip like for me the end point was Panama so I get on that mindset and he's just go go go go go he brings me to a stop we take pictures

Speaker 1 (34:50)
your

Speaker 3 (34:55)
Okay

Speaker 2 (34:57)
And

I can guarantee you half of those stops wouldn't have happened if he wasn't there because I'm just going, going, going.

Speaker 1 (35:02)
Right, so it helps, balances you out. So Sean wanted ask about the food.

Speaker 3 (35:04)
I think that helped.

Speaker 4 (35:10)
It's a dream of mine to eat my way around the world. So I have to ask, did you have any opportunity to eat some good food or some bad food?

Speaker 2 (35:18)
Or Food

So You tell them, I'll tell them next ⁓

Speaker 3 (35:26)
I'll tell you, I think if it was all about riding motorcycles, like we met these people, all they wanted to do was get to Panama as quick as possible and come back. Okay. Right. To me, half of these was the culture, the food, the places, know, hey, let's just go and check here. Yes. Right. When you're riding. So food was a big part.

Speaker 4 (35:45)
experience

Speaker 3 (35:51)
both of us are big into, let's try local food and let's try different things. And I don't think it was any place. I mean, there are better places in the Netherlands. are some places that we will leave and we're like, that was so good. And some places we'll be like, huh, you know, what did we just ate? But overall, all countries are very similar in food. They just change little things here and there. is the more diverse. Like Mexico, you start

Speaker 4 (36:13)
Enjoy.

Speaker 3 (36:21)
from the north is different than south and different things. But as soon as you get out of Mexico, it's very similar. A lot of rice, beans, and you know, they have, you know, the Mexican tortillas, they just come different. They're just a little bit thicker and a little bit longer. And the tortillas we kept saying, they're like, they're tortillas, man. They're all tortillas.

Speaker 1 (36:40)
it to corn or flour? Corn. That's what I thought. I thought it was corn.

Speaker 2 (36:42)
⁓ That's a gungo thing.

Speaker 3 (36:46)
They're all corn. I have my favorite and I think Mexico, it's hard to beat. They just have to me the best. I mean, most of them start with tacos and they have gorditas and then you have... The south is definitely better. Like the middle and the south, it keeps getting better and better and better. So you go south in my opinion.

Speaker 4 (36:58)
Stand out

Speaker 2 (37:01)
That night up in that restaurant

Speaker 3 (37:13)
But yeah, all the countries were pretty good. I don't remember having a bad experience in any place.

Speaker 2 (37:19)
Horrifying experience

in Tamasofa but you enjoyed it.

Speaker 3 (37:24)
He can tell that. I really couldn't care but yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:29)
Okay, so to me the thing that caught me by attention is like how you just keep going south and things don't change they just transition. Like at the top of the Mexico you start with the normal corn tortilla and the further south you get they keep getting thicker and thicker and thicker. At one point they turn purple and then at one point they start getting filled with meat and they turn into pupusas. It's the same thing it's just it all depends where you are in the country.

Like so Tamasopa what happened there is I'm parking the bike, he finds a place to go eat, he puts the order in.

He's he doesn't have any issues with this but my previous time in Mexico like I wasn't so careful and I ended up with food poisoning on the third day and I couldn't beat it till I Finished the trip. I ended up losing 20 pounds. Okay, I'm being very careful this time. I Don't know what it was. I think it was more of like ⁓ toppings issues on the tap on the tacos like the lettuce on the vegetables I think that's what got me that time. So I'm being very careful and he's drinking like

Speaker 1 (38:22)
So is it a water issue?

Speaker 2 (38:35)
Juices and everything. I'm like, oh man, you don't know what you're playing with But that one day in particular you I'm just sitting there watching the guys cook and it's this old lady She's making the tortillas. She goes that way The guy that was just handling the money rubs his nose goes handles the tortillas The girl that was behind him comes handle the tortillas. I'm like, where's the control? I'm gonna die here I'm about to go back, but it did

Speaker 4 (39:00)
This is the

Speaker 2 (39:05)
Like it wasn't until El Salvador that I ended up getting bad f***. But luckily this time it didn't last till the end of the trip and I managed to get through it without like within two three days. The bad part is like towards the end I wasn't being able to handle beer like it was killing me. ⁓

Speaker 4 (39:09)
voice. Wow.

Were you able to ride though or were you in a room?

Speaker 2 (39:26)
Well dude,

that one day, like there were probably eight or nine bathroom stops and that was the same day that we decided... Yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:34)
I

was worried.

Speaker 4 (39:36)
Also you were trying to

Speaker 2 (39:37)
Push

through. Not only that but that's the day we did two crossings in one day. Like the one coming into Honduras and getting out of Honduras. ⁓ my goodness. It was bad but we made it and after that it got better. My favorite plate I would say was Puebla in Mexico. I can't remember what the name of those...

Speaker 3 (39:45)
loser

Speaker 1 (39:53)
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:56)
those

were our models and we got like different types.

Speaker 2 (39:59)
Yeah, was like five different sauces. Well, Mole is just the sauce. Yeah, Mole is I think they were not chimichangas. They were enchiladas. Enchiladas. Enchiladas with five different sauces. was excellent. And anyway, Puebla, that should be on everybody's radar. That's a really nice city. OK, it. Corazógar.

Speaker 3 (40:01)
And they call him mollies.

Speaker 1 (40:18)
I don't know much about Mexico honestly. I'm intrigued by like Mexico City.

Speaker 4 (40:21)
since I saw it.

Speaker 2 (40:22)
will

be east of Mexico City. If you go there you can take a tour there.

Speaker 4 (40:26)
Now is that in the awaka?

Speaker 2 (40:28)
That would be, Oaxaca would be further south from that.

Speaker 4 (40:33)
Because I hear a lot of the Mexican culture originated out of the Wac... Like the food and...

Speaker 2 (40:36)
Yeah, I mean, yeah.

Speaker 3 (40:39)
yeah that's where you get some of the best food and

Speaker 2 (40:42)
And that's where you start seeing the ruins and stuff too.

Speaker 4 (40:45)
The pyramids, yeah, the pyramids.

Speaker 1 (40:47)
It seems some interesting like travel shows about the food and stuff in Mexico City in the surrounding areas looks They bury stuff in the ground to cook it and stuff

Speaker 2 (40:52)
Yeah.

So in the Yucatan there was one restaurant I wanted to go to and we didn't make it all the way up there so we didn't go but that's how they cook like the Aztecs used to underground everything they make it

Speaker 1 (41:05)
Yeah,

they did use like the banana leaves and the coals or whatever. ⁓ it looks so good. Yeah, they put the pig or whatever in the ground. Yeah, so good.

Speaker 2 (41:12)
everything

we never made it there that probably could have been the highlight but we didn't make it there

Speaker 1 (41:19)
So you guys ended up, you guys rode across Panama Canal. I saw the video. ⁓ Yep. Which sounds interesting, probably compared to like regular bridges, just a boring bridge, right? Is it a long bridge? Yeah. Okay. So leave the bikes there in Panama or did you go ahead and ship them ahead to the next? Cause I know that like you're basically at the Darien Gap now, right?

Speaker 2 (41:30)
It's a long bridge.

Speaker 3 (41:35)
Did you?

Speaker 2 (41:43)
No, not yet. No, There ain't got to be like eight hours past city of Panama. The bikes are in city of Panama.

Speaker 1 (41:48)
Okay, so are you gonna ride down and then have to ship them or are you shipping them now? So you already shipped them from Panama, where are they now? Not yet. Oh They're still in Panama.

Speaker 2 (41:52)
They should come from there.

Speaker 3 (41:57)
very soon Panama.

Speaker 2 (41:59)
So we're using Overland Embassy and they're like this company that have an agreement with customs and they basically can put the bikes in limbo. Because technically if we left the country with the bikes there, would have been illegal. People do it, but they said it could be as easy as then like just swiping your passport and the system flagging the bikes in country he can leave. So they just put the bikes on limbo and the agreement is they're never going to be on the road.

unless they're on a carrier, so you paid for the transfer to the airport. whenever we're ready, we just give them three days of advance and they ship them to Bogota, Colombia.

Speaker 1 (42:38)
Okay, so that's your next stop is Bogota. Okay. All right. So how far are you going to go in the next leg? How much time do you have and then how many miles? So you can take that much time off work too? it sounds like you work on oil rigs so you get like off and on like a pretty big gap.

Speaker 2 (42:50)
It's gonna be about the same 19 days.

Basically, if I'm off half time, it's not true because I got travel days ahead and behind, but truly I got, let's say.

Speaker 1 (43:10)
but you got a job job, like where you gotta be. So how, so you guys are going back in September? Okay.

Speaker 3 (43:16)
September, September, September.

So yeah, definitely taking another three weeks. And yeah, it's going to be mostly Colombia. It's Colombia. If you look into it in South America, Colombia is one of the countries, one of the best countries to ride. Right. So it's going to be probably two weeks ⁓ now, maybe a little bit more. And we're planning to leave with the vaccine.

Speaker 2 (43:41)
Ecuador.

Ecuador, yeah. I got a friend of mine, owns the Triumph dealership actually in Quito. Okay. And he's probably going to hold this, hold them for us. not. He might join us on the Ecuador leg whenever that happens.

Speaker 1 (43:53)
The only time I've been to South America at all was in Colombia, but that was for our friend Bobby's wedding. So I was just there for a long weekend. Cartagena, yeah.

Speaker 4 (44:01)
But the end goal is to get to Patagonia? ⁓

Speaker 2 (44:06)
Is that really the angle? ⁓

Speaker 1 (44:07)
Well, I I've heard rumors of like shipping the bikes to Europe or something.

Speaker 2 (44:11)
I

mean, yeah, it's a possibility.

Speaker 3 (44:13)
The device has to go somewhere once we're down there. We haven't got to that point yet. We might just do a little bit more in Brazil because you don't get to do Brazil on the route that we're going to be taking. ⁓ West Coast. So you'll have to come back up.

Speaker 1 (44:16)
Yeah.

You're

gonna do the west coast like Chile? I mean I heard that's like that's the beautiful stretch

Speaker 3 (44:34)
You have to.

You

have the Amazon forest right in middle so you have to kind of take the west if you if you want to go to Brazil you still have to take west okay, then up So we're just gonna take west keep going all the way down and then you'll have to come up from Colombia to Brazil just to go east it's Probably can't do it, but it's gonna be extremely hard like a lot of

Speaker 2 (44:45)
Go away. Go away.

I mean from now on this is pretty much gonna be one country per trip. because they're they're big. So how?

Speaker 1 (45:05)
How long out are you guys planning? ⁓ Years, it's take years to do it. Okay, okay.

Speaker 2 (45:06)
His years.

Speaker 4 (45:10)
Okay.

Speaker 3 (45:11)
I'll probably to Argentina it's going to be maybe in our three or four.

Speaker 1 (45:16)
So I got time to talk my wife into the leg of this yeah, that's a problem back on your life

Speaker 2 (45:20)
Now

is the time for you to do it because Colombia is one of the like, foreigner friendly countries where you can come in and buy a bike.

Speaker 1 (45:28)
I literally just shot myself in the foot though because my wife said this summer she wanted to go to South America for vacation. was like, I don't to go to South America. And then now you guys are like, you should go to Columbia. And I was like, I can't go there now. I can't go there now. I can't be like, I just don't want to go with you, honey. I want to go with the guys. want to go with

Speaker 2 (45:46)
I mean

We got a group of friends we ride with like from Puerto Rico and they're thinking about renting bikes. They're doing the loop You qualify ⁓

Speaker 1 (45:54)
So I'm married to a Puerto Rican. That's... I'm

Speaker 4 (45:58)
You're

Speaker 1 (45:59)
in.

Speaker 4 (45:59)
a-

Speaker 2 (46:00)
But like I've been bringing it up to you like yeah, John might he's thinking about doing it. Yeah, down. I got a desert eggs and do it with them.

Speaker 3 (46:09)
The thing is down there you can take all the time you want in each country. You can do the same thing in Central America but there's not really that much to see. The highlight is really South America. So, Colombia you can do a whole trade pick or you can do a whole two to three weeks. Brazil, Peru.

Speaker 1 (46:20)
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:25)
I mean, but you

Speaker 4 (46:26)
Brazil

Speaker 2 (46:28)
Guatemala? Complete surprise on my end and a trip that I like everybody should see that.

Speaker 1 (46:35)
Red bikes in places like that get you fly to Guatemala run a bike ⁓

Speaker 2 (46:38)
You

could scooters I saw scooters like you make a rideway if you wanted to do that volcano island with it like yeah there's scooter Reynolds you can like bring over and then do the island and then come back

Speaker 3 (46:50)
If you fly to major cities I'm pretty sure you can probably rent a GS or something.

Speaker 2 (46:58)
Guatemala, totally worth it. Interesting.

Speaker 4 (47:02)
Now you guys mentioned that you didn't have to dip into your gas reserves but did you have any other mechanical issues? Any flat tires? It was just a clean ride,

Speaker 2 (47:16)
I mean, so last time I did this, one of the guys, the idea of that trip was we're going to do disposable bikes because at the end of the day, you don't know what could happen. You're going to leave them behind. They might not be there when you come back. you didn't, we didn't want to put too much money into it. And by doing that, one of the bikes, a KTM 900 just kept having issues after issues after issues. And one day ended up having to get rid of that bike in Guadalajara and actually buy the bike he's got. So that left me, we were really bad.

Speaker 1 (47:42)
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:46)
taste in my mouth and that's why this time I went basically with a new bike. And like it worked out, like none of us had issues. Like the tires, I was very surprised. We never had a flat or anything.

Speaker 1 (47:50)
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (47:56)
nice now do you carry i'm sure you carry flat tire repair kit

Speaker 2 (48:02)
Well in our case we were not tubeless so we had everything. I had everything I needed so from spoons to the bahano pinch kit to tubes to...

Speaker 1 (48:11)
Hey, listen, you have two tires.

Speaker 2 (48:13)
Plus the tires we use, have you ever heard of Ride On? Like the gel? Yeah, yeah. That if you get a... It's a slime. It's like a slime, but this one balances too. Oh, okay. So like, we both had that. I don't know if it helped. I never stopped to check the tires, but all I know is we didn't have no flats anyway.

Speaker 3 (48:22)
It's lame. ⁓

Speaker 1 (48:33)
so you put that in like a preemptive thing. okay. So if you do get a nail, would...

Speaker 2 (48:35)
in

Speaker 4 (48:44)
What ratio pavement and dirt did you guys do on that tree?

Speaker 2 (48:49)
95.5

Speaker 3 (48:50)
Yeah,

we did. We got 95.

Speaker 2 (48:53)
95.5, hardly any dirt. Actually the most dirt we saw, we saw it at 10 PM at night ⁓ in Costa Rica. Before that, mean, do you recall?

Speaker 3 (49:02)
Mm-hmm We did in Mexico a little bit a little

yeah, so

Speaker 1 (49:09)
So most of time you probably didn't want to ride at night, right? I know Mexico you definitely didn't ride at night. But once you got out of Mexico and to Central America, did you guys go out and do stuff at night? Did you go to bars and whatever, shows or anything like that? Was there any nightlife kind of stuff?

Speaker 2 (49:27)
You can join the nightlife. It's not like you're not gonna do stuff. Like you just don't ride the bike. Stay put.

Speaker 1 (49:34)
Right, okay, you

stay like in a town where you can walk?

Speaker 3 (49:38)
So we stay in very small towns most of the time. So it's not that you have a whole lot to do at night. Maybe in Tiwa we stay there and in Puebla, the bigger cities. We did go out and see the city at night and different things. for the most part, was, yeah, Oaxaca. For the most part, they were very small towns. We'll just go out and go to the local bar, have a couple of beers. Or maybe if we were at a hotel and they had a bar, we'll just sit there, get a couple of beers.

I mean, we're tired, know, but yeah, the whole lot. Yeah. we need to continue the next day. So, Yeah. I guess you can just, you know, do both, but you're not going to enjoy the next day.

Speaker 1 (50:11)
Yeah.

Yeah, no, I'm familiar because some days I was riding like 500 miles 600 miles and then I Would you know I would just yeah, I would just get I would just get to the hotel and just crash. Yeah. Yeah

Speaker 2 (50:31)
I mean, I would say we were in bed, but...

Speaker 1 (50:33)
A

couple of times I was like, I remember I was ⁓ in Texas and I went down, I tried to see the Alamo but I refused to pay $25 to park for 10 minutes or whatever, know? And so then I got back to hotel and I remember they have that river walk there and I was like, I'm not going back out, I don't care. I'll see the next time I'm in Texas, I'm not going back. Yeah, it was like another 35 minutes back into traffic and I'm like, nope, I'm not doing it.

Speaker 2 (50:51)
I just see how it's even better.

But the river work is worth it.

Speaker 4 (51:02)
That pillow looks really nice right now.

Speaker 1 (51:04)
Especially

like when you've been wearing the riding pants all day and I was switching to my jeans and stuff to go like when I would get to where I was going and Yeah, I pull on my sweatpants. I'm like, nope, I'm not the jeans are staying in the drawer, you

Speaker 2 (51:18)
I mean, talking about that, that's another thing. Like in this trip, we never camped. Like a lot of people camp through these trips, we didn't even plan on that. Not caring, camping.

Speaker 1 (51:26)
Okay, so I

was gonna ask you like what what was the budget for like hotel rooms per day? Let's say like or on average. What do you guys think you pay? Did you like did you share one room like with two beds? Okay

Speaker 2 (51:37)
month at a time.

We would look for two beds.

Speaker 1 (51:41)
Yeah, no, I didn't mean like you got a king size.

Speaker 2 (51:45)
The two room setup was difficult to find.

Speaker 1 (51:48)
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (51:49)
Yeah,

but we did share the rooms probably most of the times.

Speaker 1 (51:54)
What was an average like like because because surprisingly on my trip I was able I think I Calculated all and that was including like Colorado where the room was like 150 bucks or whatever But I think my average room was like $54

Speaker 2 (52:09)
I would say well, but I mean we did some that were on the high side. I would say 50-60 for one night and then we had some really nice ones like Costa Rica, La Guatilana in Guatemala. Those were 120-130 but they were totally worth it because you were there lakefront, excellent view. Right there in the action in the town.

Speaker 3 (52:10)
It does not fall.

Speaker 1 (52:14)
Yeah, that's what happens. Yeah.

Yeah, there

were a couple of places like, Denver I stayed in an Airbnb which was a house that had multi-room that were each locked. And even that was still close to hundred bucks because that's Denver. And then in the mountains in Colorado, was like the crappiest hotel I stayed in but it was like hundred and twenty bucks or whatever. Whereas sometimes on the road, you're driving through Texas or New Mexico or whatever, you could find a pretty nice place that for $49 or whatever, you're like...

You're like, is it a little too cheap? And then you get there and you're like, my God, it's like they just remodeled this place. It's so nice.

Speaker 2 (53:10)
Nicaragua, Nicaragua, we paid $60 for that night and that was actually the best hotel in that town. Nicaragua was actually pretty cheap overall. Like a beer was $120. Wow. Like the plate of food was $13, $14. Yeah. Traffic fines were $13.

Speaker 1 (53:24)
Welcome to the 80s.

Speaker 3 (53:26)
whole house for like 60 dollars.

Speaker 1 (53:30)
trick is to a

Speaker 3 (53:36)
It was like 50 others. Airbnb. Airbnb. The farmhouse. you know, with hammocks and... was a really large Well, what happened was we were looking for laundry rooms. And we were looking for like a laundry... We needed to use some laundry. So we looked for a house that had a washing and dryer. This one was...

Speaker 4 (53:40)
Airbnb

Speaker 2 (53:42)
It's like

Speaker 1 (53:52)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:57)
on AC.

Speaker 1 (53:58)
Yeah, AC is a big thing, you don't realize it. Anytime we've been to Europe a few times and like my wife, like a couple times we showed up and she's like, there's no AC and she's like flips out, you know.

Speaker 3 (54:01)
AC was our thing, yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:09)
It was difficult in some of these towns to find this

Speaker 1 (54:11)
Yeah, you don't realize something

Speaker 3 (54:13)
our search like from 40 to

Speaker 1 (54:16)
Take

it you probably gonna stay for ten bucks a night if you said no

Speaker 2 (54:20)
I was about to say that if you do the hostel route like you could do it in ISO some like three dollars eight dollars like there's cheap stuff out there

Speaker 1 (54:28)
Yeah, if you're willing, you're we'll rough it out little bit. Yeah, you just don't want to do it right.

Speaker 2 (54:32)
Not at the station or like...

Speaker 1 (54:35)
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (54:35)
Well, one of the challenges that Noraly had on her trip, ⁓ itchy boots, was finding a place to park the bike at night too. Because not a lot of the hotels, a lot of them had like courtyards with a gate, but some of them don't. it's like, no, need a safe place to

Speaker 3 (54:54)
Parking as well

Speaker 2 (54:56)
There was one house where we actually ended up having to bring the bike inside on a video Go well on the side

Speaker 4 (55:00)
⁓ no

Speaker 3 (55:05)
What's up? ⁓

Speaker 1 (55:35)
Take the handlebars off

Speaker 3 (55:37)
⁓ we have to

Speaker 2 (55:38)
No,

no, we didn't get that. Like I was thinking, okay, we might need to take the like the hand guards.

Speaker 1 (55:43)
That

was one of the more expensive places I was in in New Mexico where they film Breaking Bad, what's that town there? But it was a pretty nice town, but there were a lot of zombies walking around. And a lot of the hotels, I was reading reviews and people were saying, people just milling about in the parking lot or whatever, and I was like, I'm not leaving my bike. And so I paid more to have a gated parking lot.

Even though I really didn't need that room, but I was like, I, I don't want to come out in the morning that far into the trip and have the bike be gone.

Speaker 2 (56:18)
Honestly, I'm not that concerned about getting the bike stolen because the honest truth is like most of them couldn't handle it like that big and that heavy like they're not used to that so they can probably pull it off. Yeah, but it's not gonna be like a one minute job that they get it and go. No, it's gonna take

Speaker 1 (56:27)
okay.

Did

you put any kind of like ⁓ motion alarms or anything? Yeah, I use a disk lock most of the time, especially all those cheap hotels I stayed in. I would park right in front of the room and put the disk lock on.

Speaker 2 (56:38)
Had a disc lock, never ended up using

Yeah, I had one of those and I never ended up using

Speaker 1 (56:50)
I've had to go off in the middle of the night and scare me and I jump up and it started raining or whatever in the rain.

Speaker 2 (56:54)
Most of the reason I didn't use them is because of that, because I've had bad experiences with them. It's just a shake and they go off.

Speaker 3 (57:07)
All right.

Speaker 4 (57:08)
Well, that was a fascinating story and really appreciate you guys sharing your adventure there. And we're looking forward to having you back and talking about phase two. Columbia.

Speaker 3 (57:18)
Taste.

Speaker 1 (57:20)
September

Speaker 2 (57:22)
Why don't you join?

Speaker 4 (57:23)
And maybe yeah, maybe Brian will join maybe John Jean Ross will join

Speaker 1 (57:28)
Yeah, our French friend John Rose who's getting ready to turn 40 Yeah He hit us up for birthday suggestions You guys got anything in mind, you know, we already you know dollhouse and Mon Venus all

Speaker 2 (57:33)
yeah, that's right, next week!

Speaker 4 (57:35)
How about that?

Speaker 2 (57:47)
You should take him on his own beach charter.

Speaker 4 (57:54)
He has to re- Who the that is-

Speaker 2 (57:57)
We

go Yes, that's right that is all the boat I can take you out Not right now, but he will that's Yeah after

Speaker 4 (58:01)
That's a great idea.

Speaker 1 (58:05)
Hopefully he's not listening to this.

Speaker 4 (58:11)
I'll clip this out as a short.

Speaker 2 (58:18)
I was telling Brian, I've had a bunch of people hit me up about this trip. And yeah, this is difficult for some people about just keep going south. But we could plan something out where we just do a round trip. Because to me, like Mexico and Guatemala, you wouldn't get a hell of a trip out of that.

Speaker 1 (58:38)
Yeah, I wouldn't mind just doing just Mexico.

Speaker 2 (58:39)
And you could do that in 21 days. I don't know if everybody has the 21 days.

Speaker 1 (58:44)
⁓ I did so when I took my trip I About 19 was a 19 or 20 days. I think it was 20 days. Yeah That was the longest I'd ever taken off of work since I was 14 years old like, you know I mean like I've never taken off that many days in a row, you know, you know Yeah, I work for myself. So like if I don't work a day then I just don't get paid You know what mean? So I have to like save up the money in order to take the time off So it's a little bit. I don't get paid vacation or anything like that

Speaker 4 (59:00)
It felt weird.

Speaker 1 (59:13)
It's tough to take big trips like that, you It is.

Speaker 2 (59:15)
Because at the end of the day, it took us nine days to get out of Mexico. But there's ways to shorten that time because we didn't know what to expect. So we kept going and going and going. But now we know where to focus. So you could push on and get there, enjoy that, and then push on again and maybe get out of Mexico in a shorter time and then do Guatemala from the bottom up and then coming to Yucatan on the top and then turn around. You can make this in...

Speaker 1 (59:27)
Right.

Speaker 2 (59:44)
Would it be doable in 14 days, you think? I think so. If you start from South Texas like we did, you should be able to do a good round trip.

Speaker 1 (59:47)
14 days would be easier to pull off.

Speaker 4 (59:55)
Now here's a question for you. Hypothetical, okay? So my uncle used to do Central America by himself on a motorcycle. Would you ever do it by yourself?

Speaker 2 (1:00:08)
I mean, I did Mexico last time by myself basically. At no point I felt unsafe. As long as you play by their rules, just stay in. After six, seven, at night time, you're not on the road, you're going to be fine.

Speaker 3 (1:00:24)
I three people, one from Singapore, one from Germany, and one from Mexico. They were by themselves.

Speaker 2 (1:00:32)
Yeah, I in Spanish too.

Speaker 1 (1:00:34)
Yeah, I think that was one of the cooler things about my trip is just running into other motorcyclists, like at rest stops or whatever, tourist traps or anything, know, national parks, just pull up and then the guy pulls up and he's like, Oh yeah. Like, you know, I met this one kid, he had ridden there from, I can't remember now, like Michigan or something, you know, and we were in Utah, you know, and he was like, I'm going to go into California. You know, we just happened to stop at the same thing and stood there and talked for a while.

Yeah, that's cool. Or you meet a couple like on the back of a Harley, like a man and his wife, you know, they're retired and they're riding across country, whatever. So everybody comes up and talks to you and yeah. ⁓

Speaker 2 (1:01:13)
motorcycle communities.

Speaker 1 (1:01:16)
It is.

Speaker 4 (1:01:16)
As long as you know, you know, you're speaking of Spanish, like knowing some phrases like uno más, cerveza, por favor. That's really all you need, Oh, a little bit.

Speaker 2 (1:01:27)
You might need a little more than that at the bottom. ⁓

Speaker 4 (1:01:36)
Somebody told me they don't say surface, it's more beer.

Speaker 2 (1:01:39)
Beer? Beer? But that's some further s- I'm sorry, but I saw your file. Okay. But don't get discouraged by the language. That shouldn't be the barrier. If you really want to do this, that's not the barrier.

Speaker 4 (1:01:41)
Okay

Speaker 1 (1:01:49)
So I'm married to a Spanish teacher too. She's a terrible teacher apparently.

Speaker 4 (1:01:53)
you

Speaker 2 (1:01:55)
You're a very bad student.

Speaker 1 (1:01:56)
Yeah,

yeah, one of something is wrong either she's a bad teacher on about student we've been married for almost 30 years now and I don't Know much more Spanish than I did well started

Speaker 4 (1:02:06)
I'm married to an Indian and I know like 300 Indian words, but I don't know how to put them all together. And she won't teach me. No, because she likes to talk to her parents behind my back. So without me, no one else would be saying.

Speaker 1 (1:02:15)
Let's this one.

Speaker 2 (1:02:22)
So you can be stealthy. ⁓

Speaker 4 (1:02:25)
Well, gentlemen, it was a pleasure and thank you for driving. It was a long drive for you guys to come over here. So we really appreciate it. best wishes and safe travels on your next phase. Hope the bikes are ready for you when you get there.

Speaker 1 (1:02:42)
Did they like drain the oil and stuff out of them or are you just?

Speaker 2 (1:02:44)
No, but I'm having them servicing in Panama and I'm probably gonna swap tires too. Okay. He's probably gonna do his in Colombia because he wants to pay cheaper prices. Even though they're cheap already.

Speaker 1 (1:02:56)
Yeah, very interesting.

Speaker 4 (1:02:58)
Will you be able to stay with friends or relatives while you're in Columbia?

Speaker 3 (1:03:03)
I don't think so, because we're not going be in the city that much. From the city itself, from Medellin. no, I don't think so. Same situation as Mexico, or Central America, trying to find words.

Speaker 1 (1:03:14)
We're probably going be in next 20

Speaker 4 (1:03:19)
Yeah. Well, it's beautiful. I saw there's a very famous television show called Top Gear and they did an episode through Columbia and it was gorgeous. really look forward to your videos and pictures from that.

Speaker 2 (1:03:37)
Yeah, we need to get there.

Speaker 3 (1:03:38)
We're

excited.

Speaker 1 (1:03:40)
Yeah,

you gotta get more proficient at editing. yeah. that's the worst. Video editing is the worst. We were talking about that before we went on camera today. How you just get overwhelmed. The first few days you're on top of it, by day five you're just like, I just give up. I completely give up. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (1:03:53)
We gave up in Guatemala.

We got several countries to post about.

Speaker 3 (1:03:59)
It

really takes time.

Speaker 1 (1:04:00)
Maybe one day the AI will be good enough to do it. Because they have those programs now, like with 360, where you can tell it, make me a video. And it's always like the 10 worst shots in the video. like, how do they know? It's never like the good stuff. Yeah, so every time I've tried to do it.

Speaker 2 (1:04:21)
That like a bad idea now after this.

Speaker 1 (1:04:24)
Okay.

That's what itchy boots does. She used to do all of her own editing and stuff and woman on a motorcycle or whatever that other lady is that does that. But now they just have these people here in the States. just upload to the cloud.

Speaker 2 (1:04:38)
Okay, makes sense because I mean I honestly after doing this I couldn't understand how they can keep up

Speaker 4 (1:04:44)
I

Speaker 1 (1:04:44)
Yeah, they've got a team

or she's you know, she's got tons of sponsors and yeah, it's It's plenty of money to do it but

Speaker 2 (1:04:49)
yeah.

Yeah, we only got one sponsor, our bucket. That's it.

Speaker 4 (1:04:55)
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (1:04:58)
We'll sponsor you guys. We'll give you some free stickers and a t-shirt. Yeah Already was sending me nice. He was sending me nice videos Every few days when you cross the border you take a video of the border and he would zoomed in on his bike He had our moto BS sticker on the the penny area. It was awesome I was I was forward him all those the Sean so I slapped it

Speaker 4 (1:05:02)
Yeah.

I loved it.

Speaker 2 (1:05:16)
Like I only did Mexico, Salvador, Nicaragua. There's four missing. I'm sorry. We could have done better. ⁓

Speaker 1 (1:05:23)
Yeah, well you can go back.

Speaker 4 (1:05:27)
Well, the problem I was having was you guys had your individual Instagrams and then you had your local Instagram and you kept putting things on all three of them. I kept thinking, no, I'll just put it on all

Speaker 2 (1:05:40)
There's a lesson learned there. It's just difficult. Then we planned to have access to that account, then he would post something and it would be sort of out of order. And then I would come back with a video that was from like three days before. So it gets difficult.

Speaker 1 (1:05:57)
Yeah, I was like, wait, I thought they're in Guatemala. This video is from Mexico. Did they go back?

Speaker 2 (1:06:05)
We need to get better.

He's got it all

Speaker 1 (1:06:15)
Yeah. All right. Well, we're looking forward to that. like we said, thanks again for coming over and sharing your stories with us. And we look forward to seeing what the future holds.

Speaker 4 (1:06:27)
and being on our 52nd one year anniversary episode.

Speaker 2 (1:06:31)
Okay.

Speaker 1 (1:06:31)
Yeah, so if you're joining, if you stayed all the way at the end here, make sure you share this with a friend, like, subscribe, all that stuff.

Speaker 4 (1:06:37)
But if you made it this far, you better hit the thumbs up there.

Speaker 1 (1:06:41)
⁓

Leave some comments so we will read them on the show if you got any questions for these guys will afford them along if you want to join them, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah You like quattro and moto

Speaker 4 (1:06:48)
Definitely.

⁓ Cool deal

Speaker 1 (1:07:02)
Alright, well thanks again and ⁓ go ride a motorcycle.