So Many Roads, So Many Potholes

I sat finishing my Sprite (the empanadas having been polished off ten minutes earlier) and noticed out of the corner of my eye, a bike approaching the intersection where my table sat. He approached heading up the small side street, and barely slowing, went through. What he either couldn't see, or didn't care about, was that from my right a grey four-door was coming into town on the highway that made up the other half of that intersection.

I was surprised he chose to go, though I'm guessing that once he had seen her, he misjudged how fast she was going. He didn't hammer on the throttle--he simply kept going at his speed. She never slowed either. I suppose she thought he'd stop. I watched as he slid through the intersection, and I thought, "Wow, I thought that was going to end badly."

And then it did.

It wasn't seeing her car hit the back end of his motorcycle, sending it into the air, and showering the intersection with plastic pieces that made me realize he hadn't made it through. It was the hugely loud crashing sound of her front right quarter panel slamming into the little bike. The sound of it made me sit forward in my chair, in time to see him pitched forward off the bike, hit the ground, and his helmet fly off his head, rolling and finally coming to a stop on the sidewalk, another forty feet away.

"OH, SHIT!" The words just came out, and I was out of my chair sprinting towards the young man lying in the street. Despite my gear being heavy, and my boots being big motocross boots, they didn't slow me at all, and I got to the kid quickly. He was rolling from side to side, holding his right arm, gash on his right leg, moaning and crying. Josh ran past as I bent down to him, stopping the car coming around the curve from hitting the guy in the street and me. The woman in that car stopped and got out, dressed conveniently in scrubs.

She immediately got on the phone with someone, while I asked the kid what all hurt. Through his pain, which subsided a bit as the adrenaline kicked in, he realized his bike was toast for now. He tried to get up, but Josh pushed him back down, went and picked up the bike, and rolled it onto the the sidewalk to make the kid feel better.

At about that time, I saw the woman from the car walking back to where it happened, her small son in her arms. There was no hurry about her. She seemed concerned, though I'm not sure what about. She never approached the kid or asked about him. As more people arrived and the woman in the scrubs put the kid in her car to run him off to the doctor, I walked over and picked up his helmet and a piece of plastic that had broken off. It felt cheap and light in my hands, and as I looked at the perfectly intact chinstrap, I realized he hadn't had it fastened.

I draped it over the handle bars and told Josh that this was where we walk away. The kid was going to the doctor, we got his bike to a place where it wouldn't cause more traffic grief, and people who all spoke the language could take care of the rest. We walked back to our table, and I finished my Sprite, thinking about what I had just witnessed.

There are so many things that were wrong here, but the first thing that I thought of (beyond the obvious things like kid shouldn't have been riding in shorts and flip-flops, he should have secured his helmet, he should have looked harder or slowed knowing a 150cc moto never wins against a car...) was the lack of signage on the streets didn't help this matter at all.

In most of the cities we've ridden on this trip, smaller streets have zero signage. There are no "stop" signs or "yield" signs at intersections, and if a road has a name, there is often no sign saying what that street is called. The rule of thumb seems to be "He who gets there first, goes first." For the most part, that strategy works well. Though it can be scary when I'm partway into an intersection and I spy a large truck coming at me from the side and I wonder if he'll stop. So far they always have....

It seemed that was the case with the young man, though the woman never even slowed. We are taught to be defensive drivers in the United States, but the southern countries seem to teach offensive driving.

As for the idea of signage, anything goes in Central and South American countries. Stop signs are rare, and nobody actually stops for them except Chileans. Sometimes there are signs for speed bumps, and most times not. There are signs for steep ascents and descents, though they often are so overstated they make me laugh in your helmet.

This is not photoshopped! They seriously think the upcoming ascent is crazy steep. Also, please note the following sign--that is placed directly before a hairpin...

You know how you head into a curve in the States, and there will be a sign with a suggested speed? No one actually goes the speed on the signs, (especially not motorbikers...) but they give a good idea of the severity of the curve coming up. South of the border, you're lucky if you get a warning that a curve is coming at all. There is rarely a sign indicating speed suggestions--though in Peru, they seem to have had a huge number of 35 kph signs made, and they put them everywhere.

In all fairness, primary and secondary mountain roads with multiple switchbacks or hairpins in Peru usually have signs indicating what is coming. Bolivia and northern Chile have "hairpin" and "curve" signs, but it appears they were assigned randomly to curves by kindergarteners on "take your son to work day." I'll be riding along and a switchback sign appears. I downshift to second gear, then wind up running my engine out because it was less than a ninety degree curve. On the flip side, a curve sign appears and I shift down to fourth, then have to push and lean like hell to get my bike around a hairpin that never seems to end.

My personal favorite of all the signs on this trip.

The area of Bolivia I have ridden through has about six different signs for llamas, and four each for alpacas and vicuñas. There is nothing for sheep...where is the love? Even goats get a sign. Through all the countries, there are signs for cows. They all vary. Some are for cows, standing still, udders full--clearly the "ladies who lunch" of the bunch. Some are for very proud, strong bulls, mostly found in Mexico. Then there are all the other renderings of cows in some state or another, and quite honestly, they are accurate. One can find cows on the side of the road anywhere. I always want to hug them. Same goes for the guanacos in Argentina, too.

There are many signs for rock falls/land slides, and for good reason. Walls of rock are often blasted through and scraped through to create a place for a road to go, with little thought to ten days--never mind ten years--later. One particular stretch of road I was recently on had a landslide averaging every one hundred meters or so. Some of them were small and restricted to the mountain side of the road, but many were spread across the entire road, with a vague two-track running through one side. More than likely, it occurred on a blind curve, and I was really happy to have my aftermarket, dual-tone air horn on my bike, blasting my oncoming presence like I was a thirty-ton big rig.

A very tame landslide by Peruvian standards.

Often times, those rocks come in handy. At least one country we have been traveling in requires vehicles to carry reflective triangles to put on the ground in case of an accident or breakdown. The countries do not require it of motorbike riders, so please don't ask which ones--I don't remember. In most countries, however, rather than bright red reflective triangles, drivers often use a branch or series of rocks to let other drivers know to slow down or move out of a lane. So, if the front end of your SUV is crushed by a rock fall, no problem. You just hop right out, pick up some of those fallen rocks--preferably the larger ones as they are easier for bus drivers careening around blind curves on two wheels to see--and lay them out on the road to distract, I mean warn, other drivers.

Speaking of blind curves--if you're on a tiny dirt road in Chile, heading into a blind curve, you can well be sure a red pick-up or a small white sedan will be coming at you in your lane.

With. Out. Fail.

In Peru and Colombia, anything and everything will be coming at you in your lane on a blind curve. I have mastered riding curves with my left thumb poised over my horn button, ready to blast the poop into a driver's shorts when he realizes I'm coming. Some of the blind curves will even have a sign telling you to "toque el claxon"--blow your horn.

This sign says " tocar bocina"--blow horn. And did I ever! What is the point of having a horn I call the "Train" if I don't blow it in a tunnel?

Then, there is the "Desvio" sign. Desvio means detour, and just like anywhere else, it can mean a quick work around a piece of road being repaired, or it can mean a much longer deviation to a different route until the one you want to be on is finished being made or repaired. In Bolivia, one day, one desvio meant more than ten miles of riding along a river bed (is there really a road here...?) and crossing that river nine times. And, I don't mean crossing the river over a bridge, I mean riding through the river. Nine times. On ONE desvio. And, of course, that was the day I said, "Hey, it's beautiful, sunny weather. I'm not going to wear my waterproof socks." Yay! Wet feet!

Desvio--also known as just drive through the river if the real road doesn't work!

Other than the desvios, I haven't said anything about road conditions. In theory, one can make it to the end of the Western Hemisphere all on tarmac. I guess that would involve heading over to the east coast of Argentina to go south, rather than taking Ruta 40, or maybe taking a ferry past it into Tierra del Fuego. However, if you or someone you know is planning this trip on two wheels, you need to load your bike up, regardless of what kind it is, and take a weekend's worth of off-road riding class with it. Make sure you are comfortable riding off-road, because through most of these countries, experiencing a full expanse of paved roads, never touching dirt, is SOOOOOO not going to happen.

Sometimes your road just looks like this, and you wave to the guy driving the grader as you go by.

We were often looking for smaller, dirt roads, so were not surprised to find rough stuff. But, never fear, the paved bits can be rough too. Though all the roads have any number of potholes, sitting and hiding in the shadows, waiting quietly to test your suspension, most countries have signs or some sort of warning for big things like when half of the road is missing on the cliff edge--don't laugh, saw that in every single country--or when there is a particularly catastrophic occurrence to the road that could do you some damage.

Take, for instance, Panamá. We were riding along a perfectly lovely stretch of twisty mountain road, when a sign appeared saying "Falla geografia." I was leading, and slowed a little, when suddenly I realize the falla geografia was a huge sinkhole. I mean huge, like thirty feet across. There was no avoiding it--we were going in. As I approached at speed, I got a little concerned when I realized I could see the bottom of the middle, and the exit, but I couldn't see what the entry really looked like. Was it a sudden drop off of three feet (because the bottom of the center of it was easily three feet below grade) or was it a smooth downhill. As I flew up on it, I was thankful to find it was a smooth ramp down, while Josh yelled in my ear to "Ohmygodlookout!" He couldn't see that the entry was good.

In stark contrast, our third day of riding in Peru saw a different adventure. As we left a small town on a paved two lane road, a truck was moving quite slowly in front of us. Josh passed him on the straight, and by the time I was able to, I was going to come around him heading into a right hand, blind curve around a hill. No biggie as Josh told me it was all clear. As I got past the truck at passing speed and started heading into the curve, there was a sign that blurred by in my peripheral vision as Josh yelled, "Rock!" I came around that curve to see not a rock, but a boulder in the middle of the road. I thought "rock fall" and pushed a little further right to avoid it.

And launched off a sudden drop-off of nearly a foot!

"What the hell!?! Which way did you go around that rock?" I had been too far back to see Josh avoid it, and he said he went to the left. Apparently the sink hole this time had started on the right and stretched a bit more than halfway--he hadn't had any problem. And, thanks to laws of physics and forward motion, neither did I. My teeth just rattled in my head a bit.

I could go on and on about roads we've ridden and questionable signs we've seen. It has been a massive part of our trip, obviously. There is one last thing, however that I would like to explain. In this post, I have used the pronoun "he" always to refer to other drivers, and even mentioned "take your son to work day." This is not by mistake, nor am I trying to say that all the crappy drivers here are male. I am simply saying that nearly ALL drivers, once out of large cities, are male. In most countries, there are signs along the roads warning drivers to slow down. I saw one that said "Amigos" and have seen a precious few that left a subject out entirely. But, starting in Mexico and going all the way south, there have been signs that say "Papá, no corre! Tu familia te espera!" Don't risk it, Dad, your family is waiting for you.

Then, there are these signs. All throughout Argentina are signs saying "Las Malvinas Son Argentinas" ( they're not...) and the signs all throughout Patagonia tell you how far away from The Falklands you are. Ps--Argentina still believes they own a claim on Antarctica, too....

 

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