Motomon and travellingstrom
 

Motomon, you say you lived of live in Bolivia?? I thought I knew most bikers in Bolivia, especially if they're foreign, but then the country's big and I don't like la Paz. Where were you living then?
I used to live in Sucre with lots of biker friends in Santa Cruz also. I'll try to find out your real name then....
And travellingstrom is that you R.?? I'll look it up now. What has become of you? I recon you should be back home working by now right? Let me know what's up.

Gert, the dutchman

PS. by now I have all of south america complete except for the Guyanas (but no one goes there except for me I think). All for Garmin and all routable. send me a mail at gertmans at yahoo dot com and I'll send them to you. All thanks to Graham, you remember him travellingstrom?

Gert,

It was many years ago, but we lived in the Calacoto suburb of La Paz, where I taught maths and science at the International School. I didn´t like La Paz either and only stayed one year. I went from there to Costa Rica where I was the director in a bi-lingual, multicultural school.

My "real" name is Chris Brown.

Gert, maybe you can help me. I met a dutchman briefly some months ago in Quito, Ecuador. I don´t remember his name, but he had shipped his bike from the Netherlands to Surinam. The cost was less than I paid to ship my bike from Panama to Colombia. I would love to know the company, or some way of finding out who they are. Do you have any ideas as to how I can find out who they might be?

I´m currently in Rio Gallegos, Argentina, where I´ve been stuck with a blown engine in my Suzuki DR650. I found it essentially impossible to get parts, so I used my airline points to fly to the US to get parts to rebuild my engine. It has cost me several weeks of time, but gave me time to see more of Argentina and Uruguay by bus (El Calafate, Rosario, Cataratas de Iguazu, Colonia, Uruguay, and Buenos Aires, where I had a bag with all my clothes, etc. stolen).

I am now almost ready to leave, but don´t know exactly where I want to go. One option is to get to Surinam and ship me and the bike to the Netherlands, especially if it is as cheap as the other Dutchman paid. I think he said it cost $400. I had originally hoped to go back to Chile from Ushuaia and ship me and the bike to New Zealand, but the unplanned for costs of a new engine destroyed that dream.

If I don´t go to Surinam, then I was planning to go back up the west coast of Chile and Peru to Ecuador and Colombia. The two problems with that are that I hate to retrace travel that I have already done, and the recent earthquake in Copiapo may make travel through there somewhat difficult.

Chris, the "Pinche Gringo Loco" (sobre nombre given by friends in Mexico) or "Cabron" (another sobre nombre in Mexico given by a cop who misread my firma, which is C. P. Brown as C.A.Brown)http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...ons/icon12.gif

Motoman, that's one of the more remarkable strings of bad luck I've heard about yet.

If you end up heading for Suriname, I'm leaving B.A. aimed in that general direction (the loop through the Guyanas) in a couple of days. Should spend the first week dodging Santa Semana, so won't really make much forward progress at first. Let me know if you want to try and join forces--Gert had some serious misfortune to report on his swing through that area, and it might be good to bring reinforcments along.

Mark

(markharf "at" yahoo "dot" com)