Me+2=3

After three weeks of very little riding it was finally time to fire up big Des and head north away from the Amazon and up to Venezuela for country number three. Despite knowing Lenny for what seems like ages since first meeting him way back in Buenos Aires, today was our first ride together. A brief introduction then...Lenny Neugarten, 41, New Jersey, I.T. man, shared humour, and (sorry if you’re reading this Lenny, but) rides what felt like a truly horrible KLR during a brief swap over in Belem.
With a long days ride in prospect to Boa Vista the first few hundred km’s flew by as we sped through the national park admiring the nice road and view. After the heat and humidity of the weeks before the heavy rain that came down late in the day was actually fairly welcome but little did we know what implications that would lead to further down the road...
Before then though Lenny’s KLR (Killer?) managed to commit murder (OK then, birdslaughter) by taking out one of the huge er...blackbirds that are found in these parts. Not nice but we’re all in the firing line on these roads...Next up was another Equator crossing with my last in Gabon last year. Photos quickly taken, we rode on and the rains continued, until the road didn’t. The first reports we had was from a truck driver that seemed to indicate that the road north was closed for maybe up to three weeks(!?) with no re-route option. Hmmm. Still, we managed to persuade the police to allow us to “take a photo” and attempt the first breached river crossing. Both Des and BJ’s TT600 rumbled through the knee deep stuff much to the amazement of the locals but Kenny’s KLR cut out a couple of times and needed to be pushed through. No damage done except for a little lost time but the second road closure 80km up the road was a different matter altogether. This time the truck driver was spot on. Chest deep, still rising, no hotels, dark, not good. After a little ‘beer money’ a local allowed us (me and BJ) to use our camp gear for the first time in South America and there we camped. More heavy rain during the night meant deeper flooding but after some negotiating and more bits from those horrible little black flies we managed to get all three bikes across the 3km flood to the dry and waiting road by way of hiring a ‘put put put’ boat.
All’s well that ends well or something.