This meant using some smaller roads but I figured that would be fun. I like to try to get onto the dirt roads at least a bit in each country. It lets me see what the people in the really small villages are doing :)
Well, clearly the bridge on this road is out!
So, I used the GPS and pretty quickly found the road I was after.
Thats actually a bit unusual. As I have been getting further South I have been finding that the quality of the "worldmap" in the GPS is getting rappidly worse... There are plenty of highway routes that are completely different in real life to what is shown on the GPS... They can be out by 20Km or more at times!
But, this time it worked OK. The road started out paved... then after about 10 minutes it bacame dirt (but good dirt). I toodled along this for about a half hour. It went along the side of a beautiful river that wound down from the mountains. Not too many people out here, so not too much litter, and the jungle and mountains and waterfalls etc were beautiful too.
But then, as the road climbed up into the mountains, it came to a point where the local chicken buses clearly stopped...
Its a kind of a measure of road quality that I use... If the chicken buses and the Coca Cola truck can get there, then I can too :)
But now, the road turned into a definite 4WD trail...
I asked a couple of questions of the locals and they said "Yeah, its fine... It goes about 25Km till it hits the Highway, and it doesnt get any worse than this"... So I decided to give it a go.
I toodled along more slowly over the rough stuff and through the creek crossings etc for another half hour or so. The road got higher and the quality got lower... but not too bad.
But! It had been raining quite a lot recently, and Im more worried about the mud than the rough stuff. As the road got smaller, the mud factor was increasing. I made it to the summit of the road with no spills and only a few dodgey sections of slimy mud...Then it was down the other side...
Immediately, things get trickier! Going up is easy since I control speed with the throttle and the clutch and if things get out of hand I just stop (clutch and brake held with the hands). But going down, if things get tricky, I have to use the back brake to control both speed and stopping... whuch means one foot off the ground... And that means much more chance of the big bike toppling over. The problem is compounded by the fact that I currently have road tyres on the bike... These are fine on firm rough stuff but useless in the mud.
So, as soon as I hit the first steeper section of track with mud, things go all swimmy and Im struggling. The bike topples over a couple of times but Im only about 5-10Km from the next highway and its well over an hour back to where I came from...so I keep trying to go forward...
But then I meet a local guy on a 200cc size dirt bike coming the other way. He and his bike are well and truely plastered in mud.
We have a bit of a chat and it seems that the rest of the track is both steep and very muddy.... Best I turn back!
So, he helps me turn the big bike around on the narrow trail and then it takes us another 20min to get both his and my bike back up th short 50m section of steep mud that I just came down. The bike topples over even with the two of us working on it :)
But we get there and I then head off back the way Ive come again.
Where the road gets good again, I stop to check the bike over and I have another chat to that same group of guys who told me the road was fine... I tell them that its actually quite a bit worse etc....
I was not actually surprised that they were wrong. They dont have cars... They take the chicken bus when they travel... It goes the other way... They have rarely if ever actually been far down the road they sent me along... They only know what other people tell them about it, and they were just passing the info along to me. It was just that they hadnt spoken with anyone who had been along the road recently ... certainly not since the recent heavy rains... Oh well.
And thats how it seems to go for me when I tackle these dirt trails by myself.... I get quite a way but after the bike has been on its side a few times, and Im trembling with exhaustion from the effort of manouvering it and picking it back up... I turn around and retreat...
The fact is that If I want to do this sort of thing then I need to find a traveling partner, and I need a different bike...
Oh well, Im having fun doing it this way for the time being...
But I think Ill get a different bike for the next trip... No more mods for this one...
Its just not the right bike :)
