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A Little Bike on a Big Adventure, Potosí (2026)

19/06/2025

The new rig is going to be for sale in two months in New York. I’d like it to go to someone who wants to travel on it as I know how much work goes in to starting a trip and how daunting it can be (more than the actual trip I think sometimes). Unlike the previous pig, this one is a much better bike, better condition and better set up, almost can’t compare the two.

All you need is flights, travel insurance, riding gear, 2 pairs of underwear and if you’re as tight as me, some pocket money for fuel and food. All luggage, camping gear, tools and spares can be included. Paperwork all sorted. Meet at the airport and off you go. Doesn’t get better or easier.

Trans America Trail, Utah and Moab, the Rockies, Death Valley, Mojave, Joshua Tree, Yellowstone, down to Baja to watch the Baja 1000 and Pricey flying over the finish line for his first win. Keep going to South America and Ushuaia. I’m even tempting myself to turn around and do it all again!

Don’t let the crap you see on TV persuade you, the landscapes and people haven’t changed, both are still awesome and the best you’ll find between Alaska and Ushuaia. ICE and CBP is only worried about the 10 million illegals.

I’ve had a few nibbles but no bites so PM me and let’s make a hassle free deal. If you’re not interested in this awesome deal, at least share it with someone more exciting than yourself.

15/06/2025

Long story short (that’s still very long), after 9 months and 50,000+ kms in South America - from the most northern point to the most southern point and back to the north, I’m now in the US.

You didn’t hear much about the last trip and to be honest, you wouldn’t believe much of what happened. Amed self defence groups chased me and kicked me out of their towns. A truck nearly squashed me. I’ve been to some of, if not the most, remote places in all of the Americas. I’ve seen South American mummies and their extremely remote burial sites. Had more flat tyres than I can count. 5 lots of food poisoning (that’s three weeks of the s**ts fyi). I rode now forgotten about Dakar Rally race stages, got lost, ran out of food, water, common sense and stuck in a lightning storm while camped in a partially dry river bed. A minor inconvenience compared to a break down in the altiplano at 4500 metres with food poisoning and no water along a drug smugglers route so precarious I was nearly writing final letters home while too dizzy to push the bike. Countless other lightening storms far too close to my aluminium framed tent. Blown up cactuses with dynamite. Been stuck in mud so deep and sticky and ridden through rivers so deep and fast flowing I thought I was going to lose the bike. Climbed the depths of Bolivia’s infamous underground Potosi Mine, once the richest silver mine in the world and been humbled by the hardest workers labouring for the most dangerous and low paid wages imaginable at 4000+ metres. Offered numerous daughters and sisters for marriage. Patagonia. The best work the Gods of the Andes did and it goes on and on.

I even saw Machu Picchu and for perspective, despite how amazing it is, compared to usual weekly events of chaos and surprise it ranks quite low.

A huge shoutout to my now good friend Steve in Los Angeles for opening his families house to me for nearly two weeks while I bought and set up my new pig. No one in the last 9 months offered 1% of what Steve has to me and this next part of the trip probably wouldn’t be possible without it. It could very well be karma returning the amount of time I’ve spent on the side of the road fixing locals and other travellers dilapidated bikes.

Anyway, if anyone in the US has a spare sofa, somewhere to park the bike for a night and can receive a few packages, let me know. I’m in Northern California/Nevada, on my way towards Canada then over to New York for an awesome summer of American backcountry riding. And even more so, a garage I can work on my bike is invaluable.

Here’s a photo of tonight’s hopefully bear free fire lookout campsite and the first tree I’ve ever rope climbed earlier today, a monster 150 footer.

10/04/2025

Anyone used this stuff before? I’ve got a few questions.

One end of the cord in the little silver thing and the little silver thing goes in the big white stick? Light the other end and run away? How much time have I got with a metre of cord and how far away should I run?

$1.50 sticks of dynamite don’t come with instructions and my Spanish has no dynamite related vocabulary

06/02/2025

Ushuaia
El Fin del Mundo (the End of the World)
Tierra del Fuego (Land of Fire)
The end of the road (it’s actually 80kms away, i had already been there to collect a rock)

Call it what you want, after the amount of blood, sweat and tears it’s taken to get here I’ll call it about fu**in time.

The last time you heard from me I was at the opposite end of South America, Punta Gallina, the most northern point of the continent. Since then, I’ve lost count of the amount of ‘you still alive?’ messages, and yep, it’s been a wild few months. Armed para military, another attempt for a bribe, dodged a truck crash and a very remote break down that had me properly worried. And a lemon of a motorbike that hasn’t lived up to its bullet proof reputation and has had every problem the little fella didn’t have.

But we’re here. What’s the plan now? There is a plan but every km from here is a bonus. I’m aiming for Colombia, almost completely offroad, along some of the wildest and most remote routes in South America. I keep getting asked if I’m doing the famous Ruta 40. I’ve already done some the most spectacular it has to offer, including a phenomenal route that was used for the Dakar Rally, but we’ll instead be going further in to the Andes and further from other tracks I’ve already done were I suspect my tire marks will still be the only apart from shepherds and their horses.

The bike has given me all sorts of trouble, some left overs from the previous owner, lots caused by what is apparently the best mechanic in Colombia and some from current monkey that hangs on to the handlebars and whips it like a dead horse. Bent this, broken that, whats that noise? Why is it turning off this time? Keeping the bike running has been tough, hopefully it’s got some kick left.

26/10/2024

But overall it’s probably only comparable to the greatest travelling memories I’ve got. Floating a motorbike across the crocodile filled Jardine River of far northern Australia with someone carrying a rifle ‘just in case’ and the northern lights and the helicopter delivering breakfast in the Yukon. I won’t be going back and I certainly won’t be recommending it to 99% of the so called adventure riders out there but it’s been a time that won’t be forgotten or regretted. Regardless of the difficulties, I’m now one of the few who can say they’ve ridden a motorcycle to the most northern point of South America. I’ve now ridden to the top of Australia, Canada and now South America and have a wild story for each trip.

Now that I’ve finally got to where I wanted to start the trip from, I plan to just gently dawdle south through Colombia and the countries that follow along a mostly off road route that many others have travelled.

First I need to recover from another bout of travellers diarrhoea, woo hoo.

25/10/2024

I barely got above 40km/hr for 4 days, often doing 40kms in just 4 hours because of the sand and mud while weaving through single track cactus forests, barely wide enough for my bike. I had to pay people to let me through their roadblocks for no other reason than to give them money or I can’t pass, always with a machete nearby to help convince me of the correct decision. The less trodden roadblocks were manned by kids with a thin rope between two sticks in the ground. Sent out by their parents instead of going to school (which is probably a few hours walk away) often asking for money, on being told no, they would ask for water, and they genuinely needed it, heartbreakingly we just couldn’t carry enough for even ourselves, instead we had to give them some of our pre purchased cookies, they new the routine well. I had to pay 4 people to carry my bike across a river mouth and another group to push my bike over a bridge they had made after a storm destroyed the road which they kept control of, a frustrating but worthy expense. At one roadblock specifically disrupting the mine, I was chased down the road with people grabbing my gear when they realised they were letting a Gr**go through without charging them. I constantly fixed the guides 15 year old Indian made bike which went from having a cracked and leaking exhaust held together with a beer can and inner tube (an ‘interesting’ but the only available material for an almost red hot piece of metal), to having all the exhaust leaking out of the header to the unsurprisingly blown head gasket that made it sound like bag of bolts. Other issues included two flat tyres and a broken throttle cable, all of which he intended to keep riding without (he also had no tools or spares and rode with it flat until the tube was destroyed). I’ve managed to damage a few more parts of my bike, of course they’re parts not available in Colombia and considerable wear and tear I’ll pay for sometime soon.

25/10/2024

The desert of La Guajira is a terrain like no other I’ve ridden. Unlike other deserts I’ve been to, there’s evidence of people living all through here, mini villages (rancherias) every 20 minutes, each of a separate family, narrow paths leaving the main trails every get kms to another rancheria. Many with a tienda (store) selling non perishable food and less often than hoped - water. There were more houses the size of carports than I could have imagined, often with walls made of sticks, roofs from palm fronds and doors serving not much more purpose than to keep their goats out. No power or water, even for drinking and barely even a solar panel, not even a fridge.

It was a 400km loop without a proper fuel station yet there was more fuel and at a better price than anywhere else in the country (and most of the world). With the Venezuelan border being just an hour away, there was a huge black market of Venezuelan fuel coming over the border. Venezuela, despite its shambles of a government and economy, has the biggest reserves of oil in the world. Combined with a very poor population that couldn’t otherwise afford world prices and a socialist government, they instead sell it at the cost of production rather than at global commodity prices, resulting in some of cheapest prices in the world. It then ends up in Coke bottles being sold on the side of streets with a cardboard sign with the price. Prices so cheap i couldn’t believe it, as little as 20 US cents for 1.5 litres. I couldn’t work out the quality of the fuel as my fuel injected engine can easily adjust but it seemed to only be the motorbikes taking it. Many, including all the cars, were still choosing to go to the pumps for 6x the price, thinking that the quality is better. Sometimes they would put a cloth in the funnel in an attempt to make it look like a quality set up, others would just put it straight in the tank, either way, the bike kept on going. I couldn’t find out how they got it through the border, maybe there’s backroads around the border posts, maybe they pay the guards. Interestingly, in the most remote town we went to, probably the most remote in the country, there was still evidence the cartel activity, a huge mansion between otherwise dilapidated homes, this is an area where their boats to the US depart from, I wonder if they know that Google Maps has mapped their house from above with a drone?

24/10/2024

Once again, things went much further than expected.

Road conditions were tough, early morning starts, deep sand, heavy bike, riding all day in the heat and humidity, missed turns on the unmapped paths and still only managing around 100kms each day. When I first saw this river, much further inland, it wasn’t crossable and I wasn’t expecting things to get better closer to its mouth at the ocean. After bush bashing through to the mouth, we realised the water was now above our knees and quickly rising with the incoming tide, we had missed the low point by no more than 30 minutes. The guides bike had no chance and I wasn’t risking mine, usually a salt water crossing wouldn’t be remotely considered but with the amount of salt already on the bike, it was down on the list of concerns. I was expecting a 12 hour wait for a full turn of the tide and crossing in the dark, or going around which would’ve taken hours and fuel was already low. It’s something the ‘guide’ should have known but as with lots of things, didn’t. But as luck had it, some other locals were endeavouring on their own mission to also cross from the other side. We’d seen hardly any traffic all day so this timing was perfect. Two thick branches inbetween the spokes of the front and back wheels, four people, two bucks for the guides little bike, 4 for the Gr**gos bigger bike and all his gear and 10 minutes later we’re back in the cactus forests on our way.

Giving your bike to someone else for what ever reason is always daunting but when it’s over half a meter of salt water and is your only means of getting out, it’s potentially a very nervous time and a great test of composure. The worst that can happen is just another story right?

24/10/2024

It’s been a relatively boring first two weeks on the bike so far (just like the start of the last trip), lots of kms, getting to know the bike, hot and humid weather and tourist towns that have been let downs. But somehow, just like the previous trip in the Yukon, things have escalated to a level I wasn’t planning on. I hope you enjoy the next 5 posts because I don’t intend on having anything this crazy happen again.

At some stage, I’ve realised I’m near the most northern point of South America, considering I’m going to the most southern point, the northern point isn’t that strange of an idea is it? I’ve already done it in Canada, Australia and almost the US. I had a look on the maps I’ve got and there were no major roads and barely any towns, there was some info online but most seemed to be organised 4x4 tours. I asked around and couldn’t find anyone with first hand experience and only two recent stories of people going on motorbikes. One story finished with the riders walking out, with their motorbikes and belongings being taken by the locals due to the fragile security of the region and everyone else with their limited experience were very firm in their concerns of security, something that’s very unusual to have a consensus on.

This area is entirely the traditional lands of the Wayuu, an indigenous tribe. There’s no Gr**gos out here or even non Wayuu Colombians. There’s considerable tensions in this area and hostility, especially towards foreigners and the local coal mine and port. I wasn’t left with much choice than to hire a local guide to navigate the unmapped paths and negotiate potentially dozens of road blocks (there was set ups for hundreds but fortunately many weren’t manned), each expecting a fee to pass.

On getting to the unremarkable most northern point I could see from the tyre marks that almost no one had visited, was I the only Gr**go? Definitely the only motorcycle. I was quite chuffed with myself and was equally demoted when an hour later the next accent I heard was another Aussie who had also just visited on an organised tour.

13/10/2024

It’s been one of those days.

Arrived late in city - peak hour and hot. Hostel is full.
Go to next one. It’s dark now, never ride in the dark.
It’s a dump, too far from downtown to walk anywhere.
Next to strip clubs, is actually hourly love hotel.
Motorbike is safe but it’s too hot and noisy to sleep, rubbish everywhere and smells.
Leave ASAP in the morning.

Get to next city, miss the turnoff, twice.
Do u-turn over the median strip on highway.
One foot drop off gutter, off camber, off balance, drop bike, on the highway.
Pick bike up, nice person pulls over to help… it’s the policía.
That was dangerous and illegal, I’m getting a fine.
Passport please?
Begin the game (bribe attempt).
Realise I’ve lost passport, it’s at the s**t hotel, crap.
Lucky I have dual citizenship.
Fine is a whopping 1 million pesos (350 aud, 250 usd or 3 weeks of his wage).
He can’t hide smile when he makes this number up.
I ‘forget’ how to speak Spanish and count.
Is tied to my passport, I can’t leave country without paying.
Officer has wrong passport, I use other passport.
Fake fine won’t work.
Tell him I’ll pay in office.
Not happy cos fine doesn’t exist.
He’s hot, bullet proof vest, helmet, no shade etc.
I get comfortable, I want to play games.
Other policía is chica.
She wants to look at my hands, very interested in my palm, touches them. Does she read them? Why I not wear gloves? I’m confused.
Keeps giving me the look.
Nearly remember how to speak Spanish, Señorita.
She keeps hand on gun, has two and a big bat. What is happening?
She is texting boss, they don’t know what to do with dumb gr**go.
Has to use translator, because I’m making them suffer in the sun.
No fun, no bribe, amigo.
Finally, asks for bribe without saying “bribe” - x5 times.
Gr**go too dumb to understand, translator must be broken.
Gives passport back.
Does not check important stuff - tourist visa, temporary vehicle permit, vehicle ownership, insurance.
Ciao Señor y Señora.
Colombiano stops to enjoy dumb gr**go getting bribed.
I tell him funny story, in Spanish, we laugh, jajaja, estupido policía.
Go to next hostel, it’s good.
Find lost passport in bag.

Es todo bien (it’s all good).

Photo is of the Caribbean Sea. I want a sail boat instead of bike… taking donations.

09/10/2024

I’ve bought a secondhand Honda CRF250L, it’s from someone finishing the same trip I’m starting and he had bought it from someone who had also done the same from the US. It’s something I tried to get for the last trip and to be honest, if I had, I’d be finishing the trip now instead of restarting. That’s not necessarily a good or bad thing, just a very different way the trip would’ve gone. It’s a US bike which means a pile of paperwork and has needed a trip to a lawyer to give me ‘ownership’ of the bike, insurance and able to cross international borders. I don’t actually own the bike but have a power of attorney from the previous owner, who has a power of attorney from the owner before him, this combined with the shipping costs back to the US is what helped devalue the bike in my favour.

It’s an entirely secondhand set up which takes some pressure off because its value isn’t as much if things were to go wrong and I won’t care about any scratches, which there’s already many of. When travelling, never have belongings you aren’t prepared to lose, break or leave behind. But at the same time adds some risk due to possible unknown surprises. Unfortunately I’ve had a mechanical surprise each of the four days so far. I’ve been able to manage them for now, but there’ll surely be something else tomorrow. It’s not necessarily from a dishonest sale but just having a better mechanical knowledge than the previous owner and needing time to find beyond a test ride.

The bike was already set up with all the modifications I would’ve made anyway, probably worth more than what I paid for the entire bike. If I get 12 hassle free months (unlikely at this rate) and the bikes worth nothing at the end, I’ve lost as much as a brand new bike with modifications would’ve devalued on day 1 anyway.

A Little Bike on a Big Adventure

19/06/2025

15/06/2025

10/04/2025

06/02/2025

26/10/2024

25/10/2024

25/10/2024

24/10/2024

24/10/2024

13/10/2024

09/10/2024

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