SOUTH AMERICA BY BSA
A 1970 BSA A65 Thunderbolt is 48 years old, struggles massively in the heat, is heavy and parts are hard to find. Especially when you are in the middle of nowhere, South America. Not the obvious choice for a jaunt from Mexico to Montevideo, Uruguay then.
1970 BSA Thunderbolt heads for Montevideo, two-up.
THERE WAS NO pivotal moment or moment of inspiration that led to our trip through Central and South America. We had no point to prove. But we wanted to travel more and we knew a motorbike was by far the best way to do it. What was even more certain was that in our mid-twenties, having spent the last few years travelling, we didn’t have thousands of pounds to buy a new adventure motorcycle and our Honda CD250U wasn’t going to cut it. Fortunately, on the family farm in Derbyshire, was a barn full of old British motorbikes. ‘Why not do it on the BSA?’ Tom’s old man suggested. Why not… In reality what we should have realised was: she’s 48 years old, struggles massively in the heat, is extremely heavy and is hard to find parts for on the road. But we didn’t take on board any of these issues as we committed to doing a motorcycle adventure on a non-adventure motorcycle. And doing it without a fortune in our back pockets. After six months of planning routes, booking shipping, sorting visas and wrapping up two years of life in Australia ‘Two-up Fifteen Down’ moved from fantasy to reality as we set off for Mexico. The ‘plan’ was to spend three months travelling two-up, heading south, through 15 countries in Central and South America. In reality it ended up being six and a half months through 17 countries because, as with all good trips, our ‘plan’ soon went out of the window and we were lucky enough to allow it do just that… Before we knew it we were on the way, somewhere in the middle of the Guatemalan highlands, on a never-ending gravel road, having spent two hours travelling just 20km. I use the term ‘gravel road’ advisedly, ‘rock road’ would be closer to the truth. By this point we were just three countries and two weeks into our journey and ending our day’s ride with a busted front fork that was oozing the last of its oil, and a pannier system that had been bent out of any kind of usable shape. It turned out the very attractive, hardshell, retro-style panniers we chose to match our BSA’S classic beauty were made for weekend jaunts on tarmac rather than South American off-road pursuits. By some minor miracle the hostel we were staying in, in the middle of the jungle, was undergoing an expansion which meant there were a number of welders on site. For some amazing and selfless reason one of the Guatemalan workmen agreed to help us and spent half his day with Tom reinforcing the metal structure which suspended our panniers. In fact, he eventually agreed to weld them to the bike when we realised there was no easy way to keep them detachable. This was by no means the only act of kindness we found along our way. It was the first of many experiences that made the trip as meaningful as it turned out to be… A couple of countries later, in Honduras, we encountered more problems: the bike had been running rich – too much fuel and not enough air going to the engine, dirtying the spark plugs making
‘On the family farm in Derbyshire was a barn full of old British motorbikes. “Why not do it on the BSA?” Tom’s old man suggested. Why not…’
the bike splutter. By chance we came across an American man, travelling in a huge RV, who used to rebuild British bikes as a hobby. Even more fortuitously his RV was full of old manuals and loads of tools. Adding a newly-acquired drill to the equation we were able to make holes in the air-filter case to get more air into the engine while an earring was used to make tiny holes in the filter itself. This done, we were back on the road again. In Nicaragua we were waiting for new shock absorbers to be delivered. After a week of hanging around our French-nicaraguan hostel owner received a phone call saying the package was two hours away in Managua and we owed import tax which had to be paid before the shocks would be released. Long story short, without this man spending so much of his precious time on the phone with Nicaraguan DHL and translating back to us, we’d have never received our shock absorbers and would have been off the road for weeks. In Panama we found the captain of a sailboat who agreed to take our bike across to Colombia. With a crew of Panamanians on hand our Thunderbolt was loaded onto a tiny speedboat which took it out to the ship where it was hauled on board using rope thrown over the mast. A terrifying but spectacular ordeal to watch. The fun and games continued in Peru where we were merrily cruising through the Andes when we heard a loud snap and ground to a halt – the rear brake’s backing plate had broken into pieces. The cause, we think, was the combination of dirt roads and frequently crossing small streams – dust had built up behind the backing plate and once water was added it had started to roll up into a ball that later solidified into a small stone. This stone then got bigger and bigger until it managed to inflict serious injury. Back in the United Kingdom this ‘challenge’ would have taken weeks and a specialist to fix.
We dislodged the wedged metal and limped through the local village followed by inquisitive stares. We enquired about a ‘soldador’ (‘welder’, en Espanol) and were directed down the high street to the ironically named Taller de Mechanica ‘El Gringo’. Deploying our very basic Spanish we managed to explain what we needed welding and how. The man made a phone call to a friend, who soon turned up in his van and took our back plate away. Meanwhile, the man’s wife came out with bowls of food for us, an act of generosity made all the more poignant when she allowed us in the house to use their bathroom – they slept on straw mattresses in the back of the shop. We played with a local girl while we waited the return of our damaged plate. Looking back it strikes me as odd that in a town where there was quite clearly no tourism, that was so far from anywhere, how we never felt the slightest bit on edge. For some reason we had no fear, basically because we could tell these were good, honest, wonderful people and they certainly did not let us down. After three hours our newly-welded plate was back on the bike and we were waving goodbye to one of the most memorable experiences of our trip. In Bolivia we received an invaluable piece of advice from a local shop owner. Okay, so it was advice you’d only ever need after crossing a vast salt flat, but it was invaluable at the time. We’d come off the Salar de Uyuni with the underside of our bike completely caked in solid salt and warm water barely touched it. In desperation we asked a bike-shop owner if there was any kind of
car-wash around which is when he who told us that the only thing that would help was to buy a couple of huge bottles of coke, shake them up, pierce a hole in the lid and spray the bike. Sure enough, the salt dissolved right off. On the border crossing from Argentina to Chile, at just under 5000m above sea level, we were frozen to the bone as we got off the bike to hand over our passports in the little hut. Unlike the usual glares and grunts you get when entering a country, the border officers invited us in, where they made us tea and gave us biscuits before sending us on our way topped up with fuel. Then, in Brazil, came possibly the biggest challenge of all. We were done, the bike had all but given up and we were limping – at this point we were looking at the prospect of trains or van hire to get us down to Uruguay from where we’d ship her home. But in the campsite where we ‘broke down’ for good, in this country where our basic Spanish no longer served any purpose, a Portuguese-speaking American man and the campsite owners saved our trip. Prior to arriving at the campsite the clutch had been slipping for a couple of hundred kilometres, but now she wouldn’t even pull away. After taking the crankcover off (for the third time that week) we discovered the problem – by riding in the heat with the clutch already slipping, the internal rubber had melted which meant the three internal arms were now smashing against the inside of the clutch. We needed to clear out all the gunk and metal and find someone to weld two pieces of the clutch together so that they moved as one, so stopping the clutch from slipping. We explained the problem to our new friend and he in turn translated what we needed to the campsite owners. The lovely couple spent an hour or so ringing around their friends, until they found a welder who was able to come out that day. Fifteen minutes later sparks were flying and that same day we were riding out of the campsite to complete our last thousand kilometres to the port in Montevideo, Uruguay. While all these problems might suggest adventures such as this are more trouble then they are worth, in truth it was our numerous problems that led to our trip being so different and memorable. They resulted in us meeting some truly special people who in turn were better than any manual, guidebook or website. It was the time, help and guidance these people gave us that made the whole trip what it was. So what did we learn? Well, you can have a motorcycle adventure on a non-adventure motorcycle. It is the experience that provides the adventure, not the make and model of bike. We had the most eye-opening, awe-inspiring, life-changing time on this trip, but we’re not going to deny that had we been on a Honda we would have had a far easier time of it, travelled at greater speeds, in more comfort and with much less time spent sweating at the side of the road. But we would have denied ourselves the meetings and experiences that made the trip the ‘adventure’ it was. To us this word does not mean, ‘have an amazing time in a foreign land,’ it really stands for ‘an unusual and exciting or daring experience.’ We wouldn’t have had it any other way.
‘You can have a motorcycle adventure on a non-adventure motorcycle. It is the experience that provides the adventure, not the make and model of bike’