On the 6th of April 2005, cousins Jamie Mackenzie and Ben Wylson set off on their bikes on a journey which will take them to over 50 countries and to every one of the worlds great continents, all without the use of an aeroplane.
Sunday, July 22, 2007: Eating Ice Cream in the Playboy Mansion
On with the bike ride...On day two we passed the border guards of the banana-loving nation of Costa Rica and from there galloped up the black-sanded coast towards Puerto Limon, the main port for the entire East coast of Central America and a hive of truck activity. It was like seeing the 'Mother Nest' for our evil, arch-enemy, the breeding ground where the death-munching truck monsters are spawned and receive orders to search out and destroy the blond cycling wallies. The Spanish graffiti was often difficult to decipher but translating 'deatho to el bicycleto boyos', as we saw down one side street, was roughly translated and, we thought, to be particularly 'anti-us'. We imagined an ugly Volvo lorry stirring in the dead of night, trawling through the side-streets and dark alley ways, armed with spray cans and tins of red paint, then tagging signs of harmful intent towards our final destruction on the breeze-block walls. They hold secret meetings, you know; truck gatherings where they draw designs on how to 'get us'!
Well, the blighters gave it a damn good shot as we departed the Port of Lemons and on several occasions our chips were nearly up. 'This is worse than anything before...worse than Moscow even!' yelled Ben as another beast tore past, grazing our elbows. Was it worth the risk, was it really worth dying for, being maimed or seriously disfigured for...absolutely, and on we went, only this time we put our helmets on!
The days passed with frequent skirmishes and ambushes, a running battle that shook us to our gristle as we struck north-west, skirting the mountains and volcanoes. No casualties were taken but what, we asked, is the unseen damage...the mental scarring that is yet to present itself? Doubtlessly we'll be suffering in years to come with PFWEDTS (Post Free Wheels East Death Truck Syndrome). We did, however, have an ally against the terror bearers: 'Helado' or Ice cream. Reputed as being the finest in all the world and now confirmed by us as indeed being so, we'd gobble down tub after delightful tub of choc-chip, vanilla & vanilla choc-chip ice cream. Boosting the soul, drawing out our reserves, lining the belly with grit & fire and giving us a reason to continue...motivation to plug on and find the next creamy tub.
The scenery was an artist's palette of green and the wheels were a constant blur. Through Guapiles, San Miguel, San Rafael, Upala & Cecilia we pedalled the bikes. On the third day we swung off highway 32 and took to the more sedate tarmac of highway 4. The San Jose traffic was syphoned off, the sweet twittering of birds and lowing of cattle now replacing the roaring met menaces. The relief was palpable.
Rain fell from the skies in the late afternoon and evening, tumbling down from on high with metronomic timing. Just as our town, our target and final destination for the day was in our sights, just as the fresh hotel linen could be whiffed on the breeze and as the smell of fried chicken flavoured the air about us, the first fat drops would fall and by the time we arrived two minutes later we would be soaked to the bone.
Since our return, 600 kms have fallen under the sword...Nicaragua looms large and if we're to believe fresh reports, the ice cream is to get even tastier.
Monday, July 16, 2007: Chain Brakes
After disembarking in Panama we turned our backs to the Ocean and to every little boat on it. Still relishing everything land, we were finally presented with an open road almost devoid of traffic which cut through a lush land of banana plants, palm trees and dripping rain forest, a place where leopards prowl, monkeys chatter and birds of paradise sing, all to the constant comforting cacophony of the cicada and the rhythmical croak of the toad and frog. With bikes beneath us whirring away nicely over smooth tarmac we rode through a thousand shades of lush green, land cultivated by Panamanians who have lived in the same thatched, stilted huts for generations. A scent of fresh pineapple filled the air and the sun shone overhead, radiating a pleasant heat while the fresh breeze of motion cooled our skin. The bikes seemed to move on their own momentum as our effortless jaunt took us closer to Costa Rica. Ahhh, it was the perfect day to ride; invigorating, enlightening, full of clean- slate hope and light-hearted simplicity. Short, dark skinned Indian people smiled and waved as they saw us. Much to their delight we rang our silver bells vigorously in response. Goats bleated, cattle mooed and hundreds of butterflies of every colour fluttered by; some found their way across our path into the forest, others lived their last moments in our spokes: crunch! there goes another one.
By midday on this first day's ride the sun had become too hot and the high humidity seemed to summon the sweat hiding beneath our skin. Soon our clothes were sodden and a suncream /sweat solution trickled into our eyes. Energy levels began to dwindle just as the beautifully flat road decided to undulate -but not gently at all- at such severe gradients that only the roads in the mountains of central China could compare, each undulation a mini-mountain. At first we merely widened our eyes and muttered "Blimey" as the road showed us its darker side. Later on it was an out and out "$u%* that, you´ve gotta be %**$ing joking!" Our poor, ill-prepared chicken-stick legs wondered what they had done to deserve such punishment. Our lungs burned, lactic acid built up in our mouths like chewing gum and newly-formed bottom blisters popped and oozed onto our shorts. Here and there we found thatched shelters in which we sprawled to escape the sun, only to be plagued by troops of red ants, each igniting its own fire, our skin the kindling. Between ant brush-offs we distributed sweets for short-lived pleasure and energy.
The tropical heat, the shockingly steep hillocks and the fire ants should perhaps have been our only torments, yet our first day back on the bikes had one more inconvenience in store for us.
'Vrrrrrr, Grrrrr, Grrrrr, Grrrrrr' , that dreaded sound! The chain brakes of one of those foul, snorting demons of the road, a truck. No hard-shoulder. Here it comes. "Brace!" 'Grrrrr, Shummmmmm' and it had gone, vegetation flailing in its wake, a great white monster, moving at top speed on roads only wide enough for two small cars to overtake. The behemoth had passed as if it had never been, the sounds of the jungle returned and we were white with fear.
With the heat, the drastic undulations and now a death truck, our great big morning bubble had reduced in size considerably; five trucks later our bubble had burst. We were irritable, exhausted and our necks burnt with tension, yet before the mosquitoes came out to supp on our savory blood we had covered a very respectable 100 ks and were only about another 100 ks' ride from the Costa Rican border. Our first day had been long but satisfaction and achievement reigned supreme and we remembered that tortures of the mind outweigh tortures of the body ten fold. We had got back to the essence of FWE.
Thursday, July 05, 2007: a dance with the devil
'...and if you all look up here you can see where the bullet went after blowing his brains over the wall,' exclaimed our Captain in his deep American drawl. He wiped a drip of salty sweat from the tip of his dagger nose with a gnarly knuckled finger and continued: 'I still find his crispies over the boat from time to time...always make sure I eat them up...keeps his soul alive I reckon.' Captain Carlos growled a pirate's growl and imitated popping a piece of dried brain in his mouth and chewing it around. He squinted through his fiery eyes and swallowed hard. Captain Canniba was describing the demise of his good chum Ziggy, the man whom he inherited the Comet from several years ago.
It was late in the day of the 22nd June when a motorcycle, a Yamaha 650, two Thorn Ravens, three Englishmen, one German and a Portuguese-American took to the blue seas of the Caribbean just off the Colombian coast and struck out west towards Panama in an 11-metre boat. The painted sea-horses on the sides of our fibre-glass vessel snapped at the sea and pranced in the wind as the anchor was lifted, the main-sail was set and the jib raised. Our leaping bows were turned to the wind as light of heart and full of voice, we were spirited away.
The last couple of days on land had allowed the chinkiest of small chinks of disquiet to appear in the smiley, easy-going exterior of our Captain. The polite veneer of his polished leather finish had shown occasional signs of cracking and of a quick temper that simmered in the depths beneath. It was also noted that our man had a certain affection and fondness for the gravelly rasp in his own vocals...in fact there was no quietening him once the string in his back had been pulled. Still, these were early days indeed and we figured it was just a slightly irritating teething problem that would soon settle down once we got under the calming influence of the ocean's swell. Besides, cash at this late hour had exchanged hands & hooks and there was no going back.
The tall buildings of Cartegena slipped from view; falling into the trap of darkness that swamped the watery world behind us. A starry night sky soon fell over the Comet and a few wisps of wind blew up and a swell began to roll. The following morning arrived and we'd already removed 30 miles from the bank of 250 between us and our Central American destination off the Panamanian coast. A watery sun fizzled above, burning off the dregs of night and all seemed well. We had been at sea for all of 13 hours and it was the last time that all would seem 'well' for quite a few days.
The low thrumming noise that had already become like a companion to our ears, a sort of soothing whisper that reassured us that all was good & well, suddenly died. The engine was dead. Silence fell over The Comet as all heads turned and all eyes fell on the plastic housing that hid the now defunct engine. We all stared at the blank plastic, no one saying a word...surely the Captain had the situation under control and we'd be underway again in a jiffy; surely he'd leap to action with a can of oil, a rag and screw-driver and get the metal hunk to breathe life again. 'Looks like we'll be sailing the remainder of the way,' said Carlos with a perplexed look splashed over his face that perfectly mirrored the gormless looks of the sailors gathered about him. Dealing with dodgy engines, it seemed, was not his strong point. I'm certain that it was no coincidence that the demise of our engine came at just the same time as a switch of character came about in the Captain's. From this moment on the man in charge became a true tyrant. The throttle to his mouth slid into overdrive and from it spewed endless monologues of abuse directed at his shocked and floundering crew. No word of callous description, nor profanity or insult was left unattended for more than a few moments. Woe betide the poor soul who was asked to pull on a rope or twiddle a dial. Repulsive comments were bandied around willy-nilly like a mis- firing canon that threatened to explode in all directions at the same time...wherever you stood a shell of abuse was liable to land at your feet. Verbal shrapnel of armour-piercing brutality slashed away at the crew's morale from dawn to dusk. Vicious attacks that slashed and cut us down to our wicks. You could attempt to use a deflective smile or shrug of the shoulder against the harsh barrage but this was state-of-the-art weaponry being deployed and damage -limitation was only a fruitless exercise.
The wind dabbled in our sails but for the most part of the remainder of this second day, it left our fluttering canvas alone. The captain cursed and moaned, muttering under his breath that 'there be a Jonah aboard', then he went below to get some sleep and left the four of us in charge to 'do what we will'. With the peace and quiet still ringing in our ears, we set about lounging around on the crampe decks and one by one all fell asleep in the warm sun.
The first any of us realised that we'd been doing circles in the sea was when 'The Cannibal' woke up and came back on deck. 'The German' had knocked the tiller hard to port with a stretched limb in his slumber and as a result we'd been doing 1/2 mile donuts for over two hours and ended up going back some 7 miles towards Cartegena . Sadly, it seemed, we weren't doing ourselves any favours with the Captain's notion that we were a bunch of half-wits. With the tiller straightened and a new course set, the wind eventually gathered itself together in the evening and mustered a puff to get us going forward again. Through the night we continued to make head-way but come the morning as the sun came up, the wind again died and we were set to bobbing about without conviction and no forward progress. In fact, during this third day at sea, not only did we NOT move forwards but we actually managed to once again drift backwards...this time nearly 20 miles! All we could do was sit in silence and watch as a piece of bamboo floated past us in the opposite direction that we'd overtaken 5 hours previously. The current in the water was such that the puff of wind we held in our sails, merely slowed our rate ofprogress. AGONY!!!
The looks on the faces of my fellow crewmen said it all. We were struggling to raise a forced smile or see the funny side of the situation. Water was running low, batteries on MP3 players had long ago withered, the bananas had all turned putrid, the tin was empty and the Captain was seemingly reluctant to feed us. It seemed only a matter of time before we were all going to be fed one by one to the sharks and our Captain to eventually turn the way of Ziggy. Our trip would make all sorts of news items around the world and professionals would be left to psychoanalyse exactly where it all went wrong and why, for the most part, the satellite navigation records showed our course to run in large circles.
For five days we sailed on under the close attention of Captain Carlos, his hounding words of putridness, battering us with spilt evils from his hell-mouth like a broken record. We sailed in circles, we sailed backwards and on occasion we even managed to sail forwards. How we clocked up 250 miles I shall never understand. On the sixth day at sea when we had all just finished putting the finishing touches to our personal 'notes', we sighted land and lo and behold, later that same evening we finally touched foot on dry land once again and found ourselves eating fresh fish and drinking cold cans of Coke.
The San Blass islands. Some describe them as being the finest island chain in the whole of the Caribbean and that after seeing them everything else is just a bit of a let-down. There are 400 individual islands to be explored but for the time being at least we were chuffed to discover just one of them. We rested for several days on El Pourvenir, drinking, sleeping, avoiding the Captain, dangling about in string hammocks over cool water, swimming and scribbling pictures in the sand with sticks. On the third day of rest the call to arms went up once again...it was time to get back on the boat. Our new destination was Porto Bello, mainland Panama, a further two days up the coast. With the engine still unwilling to purr, however, we all felt a sense of pending doom about the ensuing mission and all agreed that it'd be quite nice to just stay on the island.
Disaster struck the second leg of the voyage after only 10 minutes of our anchor being lifted. Under the watchful eye of our Captain, who by now must surely have been considering a return to his previous life of booze, we were making a steady bee-line for a rather nasty looking coral reef. White water crashed over the jagged rocks and it was all the Captain could do to get on the VF radio and issue an immediate mayday. Within moments a motor-powered skiff came whisking around the corner with a bare-skinned Indian at the tiller and towed us to safety. The Captain stood in the cockpit in his yellow underpants while the four of us stood in the bows trying to appear perplexed by our consistent run of bad luck and in no way insinuating that it was perhaps our Captain's own poor lack of judgement.
There was no wind what so ever on the first day of sailing but come the evenin at about 5:30pm, the wind dutifully picked up and moved us along at a steady 5 knots. Sleeping out under the stars was a lottery as breakers would frequently come over the bows and soak the victims who sought sleep on the bench in the cockpit but it was always a preferred option to that of sleeping below where the air was dank and funky. Many a cough and a splutter was heard through the night as sea water was taken down into the lungs via snoring portholes! The following day after making 28 miles through the night, the wind dropped and slowly at first we began to once again saunter backwards in the direction from whence we had come. By lunch we had lost 15 miles, by tea we'd dropped 23 miles and by the time the sun was starting to sink we'd gone back past the start line and were a few miles back extra on top of that. We'd been at sea since leaving El Porvenir for nearly two days and were less advanced than when we'd set out. Something had to change. The captain suggested that instead of us all pulling long faces and glum looks about the decks that we try some positive thinking and concentrate on summoning some much needed wind from somewhere. We all closed our eyes and began concentrating, the captain, standing in the cock-pit with no more than a pair of skin-tight yellow underpants on, held his arms in the air and swung his head back and shook it from side to side, his wild hair flowing out behind him. We all began massaging our temples and concentrating as the Captain started prancing up and down and chanting to the wind gods...nothing happened...30 minutes passed and all us crew were just starting to wonder about the worth of the exercise when I struck upon an idea. A light bulb flashed in my head...who's the one person I could call on to to get the wind blowing again, get the boat moving...Grampa of course. The mightiest wind blower ever...5 minutes passed and gradually a light wind blew up...it got stronger and stronger until the wind generator began to spin, the flag perked up and the weather vane began to show signs of life. It worked! The wind blew for 30 hours straight after that and all in the right direction as well. The Comet flew through the waters, the Captain still barked orders and insulted everyone, but little did it matter: we were sailing again and as chance would have it...in the right direction. Later the next day we arrived at Porto Bello some 12 days after we first set out from Columbia.
However, such was the loss of time on The Comet, that time was now a pressing issue. We made a few enquires around the town and within only a few hours found another Captain who would take us further north to Bocos Del Torro.
We arrived yesterday lunchtime after doing battle for a further four days at sea. The progress was painfully slow all the way and there were times when we both seriously wondered if we were ever going to make it or whether this was all just a sick joke and there were secret cameras filming us as we gradually fell apart at the seams. It has been the better part of 2 weeks on small boats now. Peeing into buckets, sleeping in sweat-soaked sheets, eating tinned beans & tuna, drinking water that has been filtered through a swimming pool and wearily watching wind markers.
Here in Chirqui Grande near the Costa Rica border we have patched the bikes back together, fixed up cuts, bruised limbs and battered shins and are readying to push off north towards the border. At times these past few weeks it seemed like we would never make it thus far. Through those long afternoons spent bobbing about on the ocean as we listened to new slang from our Captain, eating lemon jelly again with our hearts' captors in beloved Melbourne seeming like an impossible daydream away. It was all we could do to hang on to the thought that if we could just get back to land, then we'd be back on the bikes again and free to ride ride ride...free to point our wheels in the right direction and chase down our hearts' desires once more...
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