Caballitos de Totora – Little Reed Horses Caballito is Spanish for sea horse and these reed fishing boats are ridden like horses into the water by fishermen in Pimentel; a small rustic village on the coast by Chiclayo, Peru. This technique predates any European contact – though the addition of styrofoam in the stern probably …
Author Archives: colindotpdx
They Call It Rain Forest For a Reason. The geography of South America is pretty simple; the continent only has three parts – the Amazon, the Andes, the Rest. Alright, it might be a bit more complicated than that; the Rest is made up of the drier parts of Brazil, plus the Pampas in Argentina, …
Ecuador Highlands; Closest to Heaven. Today our hosts, The Brosters, led us from Quito to Baños by circling the volcano Chimborazo on dirt roads and we got a real sense of the landscape, the indigenous people, and the real Ecuador. First Chimborazo. When the German explorer, Alexander von Humboldt, and his French assistant, Aime Bonpland, …
A Short History of the Equator. The Greeks started the ball rolling on the process of understanding the shape of the Earth. Pythagorus suggested that the Earth could be a ball in space; Eratosthenes designed a method for calculating the size of the ball in space by measuring arcs on a meridian and the angles …
Intro to Ecuador As part of the strange and wonderful brotherhood of worldwide adventure motorbike riders, we are fortunate to be hosted in Ecuador by The Brosters – the country’s BMW riders club in Quito. These guys have opened their arms, decided to show us all that Ecuador has to offer, and provide hands on …
Big Bikes in Small Pueblos Whenever a group of us shows up in a small town on big bikes, we are always the centre of interest. There just aren’t any other large motorbikes in South America – anything above 150cc causes as much stir as if a Ferrari has rolled into town. There follows the …
Sugar Cane in Colombia Today we rode from Alcala in the Zona Cafetera along the Valle de Cauca that is the heart of the sugar industry in Colombia – hours of riding and nothing but sugar. The climate here is such that sugar grows all year round and is harvested constantly and transported to the …
Medellin – The City of Eternal Spring. We escaped the heat and humidity of the tropical Carribean and crossed over into Medellin, wedged in a narrow valley between the Western and Central Cordillera of the Andes at a more pleasant 5000 foot altitude. The weather is Goldilocks beautiful; not too cold, not too hot, but …
Baptism on the Rio Cauca – Conversion and Spiritual Cleansing. Some days you just ask how did this happen and then you realize that everything happens for a reason. Inshallah. Leaving Monteria and the horse farm we all had bikes that were covered in hard mud from the day before. This day we had decided …
Crossing Colombia – Climate is what you expect: Weather is what you get. The first day out of Cartagena was intended as a gentle break-in day down to the beach and then and easy ride to camp at a ranch in Monteria. Well it didn’t quite work that way when a huge tropical thunderstorm followed …
Colin's Travel Journal 