Jan Weitner riding his XT from Terra del Fuego to Vancouver

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  • Jan Zondervan (Don Juan on the R…): Jan – ik weet niet of je nog wel eens naar reacties kijkt, maar hoe dan ook gefelicite…
  • Paul (Angels in Mexico): Jan, ik hoor dat je plannen hebt om weer op de motor te klauteren, om er pas in Austra…
  • Henk Biesheuvel (The good guys (my…): Tsejus Jan, wat een reis man!! Ik denk, die zit nog lekker bij Exxon… Geen idee of je …
  • Ab en Toos Claase… (Angels in Mexico): Hallo Jan, Als iemand verre reizen doet dan kan hij veel verhalen. We zijn blij dat je…
  • Edward Galarza (Angels in Mexico): Hi Jan, did you remember me? I’m the guy that you konw in Panama, we meet in the aripo…
  • Anouk (Angels in Mexico): Welcome home !!!
  • thijs ter Hart (Angels in Mexico): Jan, Wel erg gaaf wat je aan het doen bent, respect! Succes, plezier en tot…Later …

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From Peru to Colombia

I can hardly believe it but I made it to Bogota. I'm staying safely at Sara's house, 13.000 kms from Buenos Aires. I arrived yesterday after a 450 kms ride from Manizales through the high mountains and hot valley´s. Manizales is in the 'cafe' region. An excellent place to visit coffee farms and learn something about the coffee you are drinking every day. From Salento (near Pereira) I visited the coffee farm of Don Elios and his smiling family.

The mountains are known to be dangerous here, they are full of heavy armed militia, I even saw a tank on the side of the road. Getting into Colombia was actually not that easy. In Equador it took me 5 hours before they let me leave the country. In the queue people started to warn me I should hurry up going to Pasto.... The road is not so safe you know.... jajajaj... But the police and militaries are amigo´s here. They wave, smile, salute and tell you which road to take and which not. In Manizales the cops invited me for a tour through the town on the policemotors with their unit. Lucky these people are not often visiting Peru otherwise they would get other ideas, like ripping off tourists instead of taking them on tours.

After Pasto I continued on another nice but very dangerous road to Popayan. Quiet, hardly any traffic and very beautiful - you can hardly imagine something could go wrong there. From Popayan I moved to Cali to stay for the night. City of salsa they call that place. My hotel was surrounded by Salsa bars and clubs. At the hotel they even offered salsa lessons.

In Quito I was already thinking about taking Salsa lessons but my friend Paul had a different agenda! No time for Salsa we have to save Maria! Paul cares for Maria but she is married to a sort of Holleeder. Not an ideal situation.

With Paul I made a trip to Ambato to visit the Chimborazo vulcano and a bikers event. In Equador they are crazy about vulcano´s but not about riding motorcycles. Paul´s guzzi and La Moto together have made more kms than all the bikes in Equador we found out during the short time we were on the bikers event.
Climbing the Chimbo was easy when we discussed it during an evening drinking beer, but a few hours later we ran into problems. The Chimbo has an impressive landscape but not ideal for a late afternoon ride. The guzzi and la moto had to relax once in a while to be able to deal with it. The Chimbo is with 6310 meters the highest (picture from Paul) vulcano in the world. Paul went crazy when he saw a bright Cotopaxi on the way back to Quito! When vulcano´s look at each other they are probably all jealous of the Cotopaxi. It has the ideal vulcano shapes.

From Ambato it was a nice ride in the direction of the jungle (Banos - Puyo) and found a new danger: tunnels! It's incredible, but it rains in the tunnels, there is no light, no reflection, no escape and they are LONG! I wanted to take a picture in the tunnel but I was too eager to get out of it.

Before reaching Ambato I took a peek in Cuenca the hometown of Fausto. He showed me around with his buddies and their fancy machines. My machine deserved a beauty treatment and took a day rest in the clinic of Cuenca. After 10.000 kms I removed the off the road tires and put some new fast road Pirelli´s. The bike loves them!

In Peru I drove along the coast from Nasca to Lima, Trujillo and Mancora. The coast is hot and the North is mainly desert with asparagus fields in the middle. Pretty strange. Mancora is a surfers hangout. Nasca is known for Inca lines expressing figures that are only visible from the air in a remote area. Beautiful..

The road from Cusco - Aboncay - Nasca was a little nightmare. On the top of a mountain my throttle cable broke just before reaching Abancoy. Without engine I ran down the mountain to look for a good place to make an emergency repair. Due to the extra hours for this little delay I arrived after sunset in the mountains where a nasty storm, thunder and lightning show started. With chickenskin and my tail between my legs I drove slowly to Challuanca. The lightning was lighting up the whole mountain and scared the hell out of me. The roads were covered with small and big rocks (as a medium basket) and medium sized mudstreams (my favourite). I was so glad when I reached Challuanca. Fausto arrived there hours before me as usual.

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