Fuel: More Than You Ever Wanted to Know

Getting nerdy with the fuel mileage spreadsheet. Throughout the trip, a few of you may have noticed this snippet on the Miscellany page:

Well, I've had time to play with the spreadsheet a bit, which is a personal joy of mine. So here we go:

This chart shows the cost of fuel in US dollars per gallon over the course of the trip. The two big spikes were the times I bought fuel out of a bottle instead of at a gas station: in Ollagüe with Nick just after crossing into Chile, and in Barú on the day Sarah and I rode through the soft, sandy beach. Other than those two instances, all fuel purchases were at gas stations, with an impressive dip in the cost of gas going through Ecuador, and clear spikes in remote areas like the Yukon Base Camp in Alaska.

After noting the dip in price in Ecuador in the last chart, I got to wondering about the average cost of gas in each country along the way, so created this chart. I eliminated the times I purchased gas from a bottle (Barú and Ollagüe), as those don't really give a fair reflection on local trends. The blue columns in this chart show the average cost for each location, sorted from beginning to end of the trip. Again, Ecuador was a clear winner. Chile was clearly the most expensive gas, even ignoring the gouging in Ollagüe. The red line shows how many gallons I purchased in each country...very closely related to the number of miles we spent in each country, of course.

And here we have the miles per gallon that the ol' V-Strom achieved throughout the adventure. When I changed my chain and sprockets, I swapped out for a different gear ratio, affecting the fuel mileage. Thus, I've used blue and red for the differing gear ratios.

Any other miscellaneous data or reports you're interested in seeing? Let me know and I'll see if I have the data to create a chart!

SCHMEST!

We are so glad that the boys are back, to celebrate, Sarah and I planned a camp out called Schmest.  We kept it a secret from the adventurers for almost 2 months!!  Now it is finally here!  Around 30 jugglers, friends and family will be in attendance.
We revealed our Top-Secret plan to the boys just last week as Sarah posted previously.

Kansas City is all a twitter with excitement for the long over-due camp out.  Nick has made a wonderful slide show to show everyone, Ryan is bringing his motorcycle for displaying and Sarah and I will drink.

For those of you who cannot make it: 😩  But fear not!  Photos of the event will be up soon on Facebook and hopefully here on this blog.

Thank you all for following their epic adventure.  We had followers from Connecticut to Florida to all of us here in KC.

What is next?  Who knows!  But hopefully it will be filled with fun, laughter, challenges and love.

Welcome home! Here's some flu.

We've been home for two weekends and the interposing week. The old routine has settle in relatively easily, like the winter jacket you've had for years after a summer in short sleeves.

Heading down the ramp from the warehouse at the airport, free and clear at home in Kansas City!

The Monday after we got back, the bikes arrived, and on the way up to the airport to pick them up, I noticed a tickle in the back of my throat. By Tuesday, my whole back locked up with muscle aches and my breathing narrowed over the next day to the point that I elected to take Dayquil just to properly enjoy juggling club Wednesday evening. I'm not much of a medicine take, particularly when it comes to creature comfort, so that's saying something. There was plenty to catch up with at work, so I struggled through the foggy brain, striving not to breath on anyone or anything. Lots of extra naps this week, and Friday morning the fever finally broke, though respiration was still thick and heavy, clearing slowly over the weekend.

Back to about 90% this morning, I'd say, and happy to be on the road to recovery.

Nick has begun work on a presentation about the trip, particularly targeting our KCJC camp-out, Schmest, which will take place next weekend. Sarah and Nadine did a marvelous job setting it up and keeping it a secret from us until revealing it through a treasure hunt this past Friday evening. I was still pretty groggy with malady, but it was fun to celebrate our journey with them. In addition to the presentation, I'm looking forward to getting back to organizing photos and videos from the trip, and reflecting on the past 3-4 months as I do.

The array of souvenirs at home. Not much space on the bikes, so souvenir shopping was very limited.

From Peru to Bolivia, then Chile to Argentina!

Once we were moving again we were really moving!

Still in Ariquipa.  We hit a lot of national holidays while on the road and here was no different.  This is actually the days leading up to the holiday but we got to see some traditional singing and dancing.

Museo del Pisco, featuring 100 different piscos!  The drinks were fancy and delicious.

"To pay the Earth." A bit odd, maybe, but it seemed like the perfect gift.  I smuggled this guy across 4 borders!

Bikes are finally ready to hit the road again.  It was such a frustratingly long time for them to get the part in and they did not communicate well at all.  It was like being on the Stahlratte again.  We would swing by in the morning, talk to somebody who would tell us to come back in the afternoon, then we would come by in the afternoon and they would tell us to come back the next day. 

Coca tea is common in Peru and Bolivia.  I had to try it since it's illegal at home!  We stayed in Puno for two nights... because we got turned around at the Bolivian border for not having our visa prearranged.  When we got turned around they said we had to go all the way back to the consulate in Puno.  We, of course, arrived on Friday afternoon on the eve of a long holiday weekend.  The secretary gave us a list of things we had to acquire before they closed.  We did our best and got there a few minutes late, but she stayed late to process us.  Phew!

Lake Titicaca!  The world's highest altitude navigable lake and our first stop on the Bolivian side.  

La Paz... Is just nutty.  We found ourselves on an absolutely terrifyingly steep road.  It was so steep that our brakes couldn't keep is from rolling backwards, and it was twisty too!  This photo was taken while we were coming down from our adrenaline high.

Death road is out there!  We went from the desert of Peru up to the lush mountains of Bolivia.  Our hotel was just shy of the city of Croico.  By the time we got in it was cold, raining and dark.  I told Ryan we had to stop at the first hotel that had a hot tub and a restaurant.  Of course, that was the first place we checked and we stayed in the most expensive hotel of the trip that night.

Not gonna lie, even though death road is a tourist attraction now, it's still a hell of a road.  It's not so deadly now because most of the traffic is on two wheels.  I could not imagine what it would be like driving trucks on this road.  Or with two way traffic.  It would be absolutely horrific.

Even though it was winter in South America we rarely ended up in super cold weather.  The worst parts were the mountain passes.  But they were so beautiful and interesting that they were worth it every time.  We had to go through this pass both to and from Croico.  The first time we had dense fog, snow and rain all at the same time.  The way back was sunny but super cold.

Uyuni has a railroad graveyard.  It felt very "Latin America" to have a big pile of railroad cars but it was odd to find them all in one place.

Uyuni is home to the Bolivian salt flats and is also home to several hotels made of salt.  They have "no lick" policies but it was important to me to know for sure.

The one we actually stayed in was flooded in the streets all around.  In the morning all of this was ice... And it was the second day in a row we had to push my bike into the sun before it would start.  I eventually got my oil changed in Chile.

The Uyuni salt flats hold a bit of water in the rainy
Season and it creates an amazing mirror effect.

That's Ryan back there... picking up his bike.  You never want to go down, but look at this place.  It's the middle of nowhere!  Thank god Ryan was uninjured.

My first impression of Chile was not a good one.  We had to buy gas from a store that sells them from plastic bottles that didn't open until "sometime around 5:30," and when they did finally open it took about half an hour of bartering to figure out how much gas we were going to get and how we were going to pay for it.  It was the most "Latin American" place we had seen yet.  Things looked up quite a bit when we moved on.

Chile was full of interesting surprises.  The cities were very far apart and there wasn't much in between them.  We found this abandoned ruin city just off of the highway.

Another surprise!  It wasn't on our radar as we were driving south but all of the sudden we cane upon the Tropic of Capricorn!

First actual equipment failure of the trip.  My electric glove malfunctioned and burned me!  Fortunately I only needed the glove one or two more times before the end of the trip.

We were so worried about coming up this road we looked into changing our border crossing.  This is the pass between Santiago and Mendoza and is often closed due to weather throughout the year.  Sometimes they require snow chains, sometimes it's closed for several days.  Looking into it, the other borders were even worse so we had to give it a shot.  The roads were clean and dry and wide and swooping.  Turned out to be an easy run!

Our 15th border!

Mendoza!  Malbec!  This was a fun night.  By the time we made it to the hotel we had to just have dinner there too but we very much lucked out.  They have a private chef that comes every night to cook for the guests and it was delicious.  And we drank a lot of wine...

The end of the trip was pretty rushed.  We made it to Buenos Aires and the next morning we had to pack the bikes for air freight.  It was a really neat process but it felt like we were giving up a part of us.

Finally made it to Ushuaia.  It was, of course, disappointing to not make it on the bikes but it meant a lot to be there.  We celebrated with a king crab caught locally.

End of the world!

Ushuaia

These cigars made the entire journey with us.  It was often a challenge to keep them safe but it was a lot of fun to smoke them at the bottom.

The Last Little Bit

Looks like my last update was way back at the Bolivia-Chile border. From there, we were back into fast-forward mode right up through the return flight. I'm currently sitting in the airport in Atlanta, awaiting the final flight to KC. It is really good to be back in the US: easy communication, easy lines (we're no longer in the long, "foreigner" lines), easy to drink water...

So, since the last post, we enjoyed the quality highways of Chile and Argentina...

...crossed the high-but-not-as-scary-as-reputed Los Libertadores pass into Argentina...

...returned to that crossing the next day for our TVIPs (temporary vehicle importation permits)...

...savored Malbec in M
Mendoza...

...packed and shipped the motorcycles...

...flew to the End of the World...

...and ceased being southbounders.

There are a lot of mixed emotions during this homecoming. Having been out of the country for 3.5 months (with the exception of about a week in Alaska and 3 days in the conterminous US), it's great to be home. I find that my mind is still in "Spanish mode" when interacting with officials, store personnel, random people around me, etc. I also find myself still in travel mode.

This trip was such a blazing fast trip: each day, we were packing, thinking about a destination and accommodation for that night and/or the next day, driving, unpacking, and prepping to do it all over again. Again, with just a few exceptions, we were on the move daily. And during those exceptions, we were working on how to get unstuck and back on the move. It was a pretty grueling schedule for 100 days. And, as Nick pointed out in Ushuaia, the ending is bittersweet. Very glad to get to Ushuaia, but sad that the bikes didn't join us there. Even so, it was clearly the best decision when the time came.

Many thanks to those who've followed along. Considering the haste of our journey, it was really difficult to keep up with the blog. With that in mind, I expect to keep going with blog entries as I re-hash, explore, and unpack memories in the weeks to come .Would love to continue to get your feedback!

Adventure on!