ADVENTURE: OAP SA ROUND THE WORLD
If they can, you can too. She’s 67, he’s 82. There’s hope for us all.
Ding-dong. Ding-dong. There’s a bell clanging in my ear and a voice shouting, ‘brekfis, brekfis’. I emerge from my slumber, swing my legs over the edge of the hammock and get handed four crushed rolls and a cup of coffee. Yummy, breakfast in bed, albeit a hammock on the Amazon River. I see my husband, Brausch, is already up and dunking. At 80 years old, he’s rather enjoying the river breeze and lazy days lying around on a hammock, even if we are sharing the barge with 700 others, packed closely together, feet, knees and bums bumping as the boat chugs along. We face each other, knees interlocking, kiss ‘good morning’ and burst out laughing. How on earth did we land up here?
Our journey together, to the Amazon River, started 20 years ago when we purchased a BMW GS1200. A ride to the Isle of Man and a tour of Europe began our motorcycle travel
adventures. We need to find out if we have the right kit, temperament and know-how. Three days before setting off on this original trip I break my ankle. It doesn’t stop us and a pillion with a leg in plaster proves we can work together, whatever the situation.
Of course we pack far too much, discovering as we go that essentials are not the same as desirables.
Five years on, at 70 years old, the bike becomes a bit too heavy for Brausch so we swop the GS1200 for the ultimate enduro touring motorcycle: a BMW HP2 Enduro. This bike is 60kg lighter than the standard GS, at a mere 175kgs, and we also strip our luggage down to the basics before touring from the UK through to Morocco on this amazing machine. The two grey 110mm pvc waste water pipes fitted either side of the seat carry wine, shampoo, and daily bread. We huddle together in our one-person tent, nicknamed Carrot, our feet entangle at the end point. In Morocco all the policeman look like Omar Sharif, so I’m happy when we’re stopped at a crossroads and redirected around a town. The route to the crossroads is lined with crowds waving flags and bearing bunches of flowers. What a lovely welcome we decide. Except they are expecting their King, not us – they think we are the advance escort in our blue riding gear and on our fantastic bike with rear missile launchers.
Escapeplan
During the winter months we regularly escape to the
Far East. In Thailand, as a complete contrast to the HP2, we purchase a Tiger; made in Thailand (not a Triumph). This dinky 135cc off-road step through cross scooter/trail bike takes us on many adventures throughout Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Laos. We consider it a lucky bike because when it breaks down it is usually outside a workshop. In Laos we get a puncture on a 125 mile stretch of road bordered by lots of empty land, except for one tin shack at the top of a hill. Turns out it is a motorbike workshop. The tyre is repaired like a bicycle inner tube with the wheel in place, vulcanizing the patch with a homemade iron and bare wires stuck into the electricity supply.
After ten years of hard use around Asia our Tiger seizes its engine in an isolated nature reserve, near random oil drilling donkeys. We push the bike 100 metres to a dirt turn-off where we see a service centre for the oil tankers. How lucky. We are loaded up into the back of a pick-up and kindly taken, no charge, the 40 miles to the nearest train station. Tiger goes to its final resting place and we buy a 200cc GPX Legend to continue our winter Asian adventures.
At 75 years old Brausch is finding the HP2 a bit too frisky so we replace it with a BMW G650 Xcountry to carry on touring Europe. Unfortunately it is stolen in London so we buy a BMW GS650 Sertao, testing its suitability first in the Scottish Highlands then Eastern Europe to the Black Sea. The lust to go even further afield grips us, taking us through Bulgaria and on down the Dalmatian Coast as a reconnaissance trip to fine tune our touring package. The Transalpina and Trans Fagarasan passes in Romania highlight a weakness in the front end of the Sertao. With two-up plus kit Brausch can feel the 40mm front forks and 21-inch wheel flexing in tight corners. At this point the Xcountry is found and recovered after being used as a getaway bike in a robbery. So, we now have two 650s. Brausch decides to swop the front ends…
Makingbikesbetter
The heavy duty 50mm upside-down front fork and 19-inch front wheel from the Xcountry are fitted to the Sertao. The Xcountry has the 40mm front fork and 21-inch wheel from the Sertao. Both bikes are now greatly improved, especially the Xcountry which only weighs 144kg, making it an ideal off-road bike even two-up. The Sertao is now the ideal touring bike for us. Brausch’s mechanical experience on race cars and motorcycles proves invaluable once again: his car racing days in the 1960s saw him double up as both mechanic and driver during the early F1 era. Then, during the late 1970s, when Brausch was in his 40s, he took up motorcycle enduro racing – he became South African National Enduro Champion winning classics such as The Roof of Africa,
Trans Kalahari Desert Race and more. I’m very happy to sit on the back of any bike he’s riding.
The Sertao is now ready to take us around South America. We start at Buenos Aires with absolutely no plan in mind. Most motorcycle riding for us is done according to the weather and as it’s February going south to Ushaia will be too cold by the time we get there. We head north to the Bolivian/argentine border first to the tackle the magnificent Ruta 40 which runs parallel to the Andes.
Thethingaboutconstructiontrucks…
The scenery is unparalleled and there are tarred and untarred sections, but it is the ‘Tarred under Construction Section’ that bites us badly. Less than one month into this part of our motorcycle adventure we get tangled up with construction trucks. The theory goes that the faster you ride over sand and pebbles the better the bike will handle. Brausch speeds up the bike from 30mph to 55mph to plane over the pebbles, but he doesn’t notice the trucks have forced the loose pebbles into deep ruts. This sets up a speed wobble and snaking action that became impossible to control. The bike highsides landing on its handlebar, tank bag and back bag, both wheels pointing skywards. The windscreen is flattened and spare parts have flown out of the front box. I slide tummy first on the ‘marbles’ and Brausch takes an impact to his chest. I whip off my gloves and helmet, stagger across to Brausch, who is on all fours choking. I remove his helmet and he takes in great gulps of air to relieve his winded lungs. We are in a hurry to get the bike back on its wheels because of petrol, oil and battery leaks. It’s a public holiday and fortunately a car passes by within minutes, occupied by two strong ladies. Between the four us the bike is uprighted. Another car pulls alongside offering to carry me and all the luggage to the nearest town, which is another 75 miles away. Brausch declares himself fit enough to ride, solo and with no load to carry. He zooms off, skimming over those corrugations.
The scenery is monumental. We are surrounded by jagged peaks, washaways, volcanic debris and landslides. We bid farewell and many thankyous to our saviours before stumbling into the tiny clinic for a check up. Three ambulances later and another 100+ miles we confirm broken ribs and no riding for at least one month. The wonderful doctor who cared for Brausch invites us to stay with him and his family for the full recovery time. I still say I’m happy to sit on the back of any bike Brausch is riding. With recovery complete we once again say farewell to more new friends and after many more adventures in Argentina, Chile and Ecuador we cross into Peru…
Backinonepiece
We ride into a small town called Piura to buy bike insurance. It’s election day and the town is heaving. We pull up to a restaurant to read the map and the Sertao explodes. At first we think it’s fire-crackers, but no the spline on the sprocket output shaft has stripped. We are going nowhere. We find a welder and guided by Brausch and the light from a mobile phone the BMW is back in one piece by midnight.
The owners of the restaurant let us park the bike inside and find us a room upstairs for the night before we ride the 600 miles to Lima where we strip the engine to replace the output shaft.
With the Sertao back in one piece we ride across the glorious mountain passes of Peru to the Port of Yurimaguas, where the promise of 21 days sailing from west to east is luring us in.
There’s no fancy loading platforms here, just lots of mud. The heavens open and large globs of hot rain begin to fall as we slip and slide our bike onto the first of five rusty barges. Then it is 30 minutes of bobbing about in a dugout as we cross the Amazon River from Peru to Brazil.
‘Brekfis in bed’
And now it’s ‘brekfis in a hammock’. It’s taken 20 years but we made it, together. After ‘brekfis in bed’ we explore Brazil right down to the southern tip of South America to Ushuaia before shipping the Sertao to South Africa, where we enjoy more adventures in the hinterland, spotting wild animals in a private nature reserve at the Horizons Unlimited Meeting and riding the mountain passes of the Cape Fold Belt. The plan was to ride up through Africa as far as possible before war, danger and desert got in the way. We didn’t expect a virus to send us home. The bike is now being shipped back here to France, fingers crossed, this week. Planning is tricky, but to continue exploring and staying young is the general idea, preferably with Mongolia in mind. We ride on a tight budget, so that we can continue riding and which helps with making the best use of all available resources. Brausch is 82, and I am 67 and we have many more years of motorcycle adventure travelling left.
» Follow Brausch and Sheila’s continuing adventures at 2up2wheels.blogspot.com and more on 2up2wheels. wordpress.com.