Life2 on-tour

18/01/2025

Episode 69 - what a palaver. 🤪

We had a parcel sent by DHL in the States to DHL in Colombia. Sounds simple, right?Ice 2 Fire is the first leg of our Round the World trip - Prudhoe Bay to U...

16/01/2025

Pucon, with the Villarrica volcano towering above the town, was beautiful.

It will unfortunately be remembered as the place where I (Isabel) received the heartbreaking news that my Mum had passed away.

It all happened pretty quickly so, although she had reached the amazing age of 93, it was quite a shock to us all. I am so grateful that I had a video call with her just four days before.

We were sitting at the edge of the lake, looking at the volcano and watching the sunset.

There aren’t any more words I can find for this post. Travelling is so hugely difficult at times like this. We have both lost a parent this year whilst away. It’s numbing.

16/01/2025

When a friend puts you in touch with someone because you need to get a parcel sent from the UK to Chile, you know good things are going to happen.

Laura connected us with Daniella and Roberto, and Daniella kindly said she would receive our package. After our disaster with DHL (see latest video) we decided to see what Royal Mail could do. I can hear you laughing already but you know what? They delivered and they delivered several days earlier than anticipated and they charged us a quarter of the price!

Roberto was also super helpful and gave Carl a hand to do our badly needed oil changes while Daniella made us a really yummy lunch. The Overlanding community really is a bunch of friends, some of which you haven’t met yet. It’s wonderful.

We did a wine tour. Fascinating to hear the history of the winery and vineyard.

We also caught up with Tanlon! We met back in Colombia at Donkey Sunrise and have seen him twice since then! He was on his way up to Lima to leave his bike and fly home. He arrived in Santiago while we were there so he came to stay with us for a couple of nights. We had an awesome couple of days mooching about Santiago, including visiting the train museum.

When Carl did the oil change on his bike he couldn’t get the sump bolt done up enough to stop it leaking. It was only minuscule but it wasn’t right! He’d had an issue with it on a previous oil change and was afraid to overdo it and completely wreck it. Oil all over an apartment car park really wouldn’t go down well.

So we found a mechanic just round the corner, where a spill wouldn’t matter. The mechanic had a look and tightened it up more and solved the problem. He didn’t charge us anything. “Bikers helping bikers” he said. Thank you so much Jesús and Anthony at Honda Providencia. Very much appreciated.

So, enough living in an apartment and pretending we’re normal people, we must press south.

12/01/2025

Episode 68. That was a bit of a day…

Advised against a route by the police, it turned a four hour day into an eight hour day! We were really worried about not getting there before dark.Ice 2 Fir...

09/01/2025

There’s a few videos out over on YouTube. Have been forgetting to post them on here! Sorry.

Episode 67. Well the title says it all. You couldn’t make it up could you!! 😂 🤪

Carl hasn't got the hang of wild animals yet... 🤣 Ice 2 Fire is the first leg of our Round the World trip - Prudhoe Bay to Ushuaia.We have sold everything (...

08/01/2025

Los Caracoles, meaning “The Snails” in Spanish, is a renowned section of Chile Ruta 60 that traverses the Andes Mountains, connecting Chile and Argentina. This segment is particularly famous for its series of over 20 hairpin turns on a steep incline, resembling the coiled shape of a snail’s shell, which is how it earned its name.

The road ascends from approximately 800 meters to an altitude of 3,200 meters above sea level, offering drivers breathtaking views of the surrounding mountainous landscape.

We had a fun ride up it and back down again (Santiago is our destination at the moment, not Argentina) and stopped for lunch at the Hotel Portillo, a ski resort at 2,880m with beautiful views over Laguna del Inca.

Across the crystal blue waters on full moon nights, one can hear the strange cries that stir the winter calm. Legend tells that the spirit of the Inca, Illi Yunqui, haunts the water tomb in which he buried his soulmate, the Princess Kora-Llé, who had tragically fallen from a cliff during a royal mountain banquet.

The Inca Yunqui, whose grief shook the mountain, believed that no earthly grave could compare with this lake. Shrouded in white linen, the princess was lowered into the blue depths, in the presence of the grief-stricken imperial court. From that moment, the waters were tinted with the emerald shade of the beautiful eyes that the heir of the sun could awaken no more.

Only the sad cries of Illi Yunqui remain to remind us of the story.

Beautiful, don’t you think?

04/01/2025

The Mano del Desierto is a large-scale sculpture of a hand located in the Atacama Desert.

The piece references the human rights violations perpetrated by the Pinochet regime and stands 11 metres tall.

It can be seen from a long way away and is an incredible sight to see, rising out of the desert sand.

An icon and place everyone pulls into for a photo…

03/01/2025

The ride back to Chile from Uyuni was just as incredible as the ride there. Maybe more so from this direction.

Riding alongside a volcano puffing out smoke will always leave us in awe. Nature is incredible.

The vast, isolated landscape really was food for the soul.

We had a moment of “I wonder where that ‘road’ goes” and set off across a sandy track. It got a bit too sandy and Carl managed a very graceful step off as his bike went over! We turned back. 😂

Once back in Chile we headed for San Pedro de Atacama and a swim in a salt lake. A very weird feeling floating. It was impossible to sink. I tried to swim but you can’t keep your feet low enough in the water.

Another first and surreal experience.

02/01/2025

Salar de Uyuni, amid the Andes in southwest Bolivia, is the world’s largest salt flat. It’s the legacy of a prehistoric lake that went dry, leaving behind a desertlike area, nearly 11,000-sq.-km.

We were there in the dry season. In the wet season it has a mirror like effect.

It is an amazing experience, riding along on the vast white expanse. It almost looks like ice, yet isn’t slippy in the slightest. It’s a most bizarre feeling.

This place was on our RTW bucket list and we feel so incredibly lucky that we got to experience it.

With the fuel situation what it is, we then headed back to Chile!

31/12/2024

For the first time in our lives, we can say we have been "on the road" for a full calendar year and, for that alone, 2024 will be super special! There have been some serious lows to balance out the awesome highs, but that's the nature of our travels.

We want to thank all of you that have joined us on our journey. Your engagement has provided encouragement when it were needed, and such kind words, when we did OK.

So, we want to thank you all for 2024 and wish you all the very very best for 2025!

(You can tell this is written by Carl, as it is just 4 paragraphs long and lacking in detail...). ;-) Captions with all the photos.

22/12/2024

We would like to wish all of our followers a very Merry Christmas and an adventurous 2025.

11/12/2024

Here you go folks - Darby and Joan have a day out…! 😂

Episode 66 is over on YouTube for your enjoyment. 😊

Have you ever tasted proper coffee - and we mean PROPER coffee. I bet you haven't. We've never tasted anything quite like it.https://www.instagram.com/finca....

10/12/2024

The border for Bolivia was literally 200m from our accommodation. All straight forward and probably the easiest border crossing so far.

The first 60km were interesting. Dirt road with sandy patches and minibuses and trucks hurtling past you.

Very quickly though, the few vehicles there were disappeared and we were alone in the wilderness.

As the dirt road ended and the nice new tarmac began we rode through some incredible rock formations. They looked like animals perched on the top. Although Carl thought I had just been drinking too much coca tea!! That’s definitely a whale’s tail though…

First issue in Uyuni was sourcing fuel. After the hotel owner saying we wouldn’t find any we found one gas station that would sell to foreigners.

A little insight into the Bolivian fuel situation -

The Bolivian government subsides fuel for local people. It’s very cheap. To sell fuel to foreigners it is more expensive (fair enough) and they have to fill out a form every time because your registration isn’t on the Bolivian system.

Most fuel stations are not allowed to sell to foreigners (and have cctv), others can by filling in said form but they can’t be bothered with the faff, and others can and do. It’s finding those ones that can be tricky. Some will sell it to you in canisters away from cameras.

Because the government subsidise the fuel so heavily they haven’t got the money to buy enough to keep up with the demand, hence the queues, constantly. People leave their vehicles in a queue overnight and go home! And this is every day.

Meanwhile, some locals stock pile fuel, transport it over the borders to Chile, Peru and Argentina and sell it on the black market for three times the price they bought it! You honestly couldn’t make it up if you tried. It’s been like this for at least ten years.

Anyway, we found THE fuel station.

The queues were insane, about a kilometre long, but others had told us to ride to the front. We picked our way through and parked ourselves at the pumps. Nobody minded and it is absolutely fine to do this. They want travellers to get fuel.

There was no petrol but they were expecting a delivery in half an hour.

Two hours later we had full bikes and full fuel bladders. The wait was made fun by Gloria and Milton from Brazil also pulling up and waiting with us. Great exchanging stories and tips.

So, now we had enough fuel to get back to Chile.

First though we were off for a play on the salt flats…

09/12/2024

We headed east towards Bolivia and back up into the mountains.

The desert landscape was vast, remote and we were surrounded by volcanoes!

Ollagüe is an old sulfur mining community which sits on the Chilean/Bolivian border.

It is still a station and marshalling yard on the FCSB railway line.

It has a population of around 300 people including a school but it is a very quiet and empty place. We saw just two people when we had a walk around.

We got a room in a place where we could park our bikes in their back yard and said we would like dinner.

It was served between 7:00pm and 7:30pm and you received the hot pot of the day. It was a chicken stew with rice and a mug of tea. Perfect.

Having seen virtually nobody on our walk around town, the restaurant area filled up just after seven with around a dozen men. No women. We weren’t sure who they were but guessed perhaps either train workers or truck drivers.

There are no fuel stops between Calama in Chile and Uyuni in Bolivia and with a distance of 430km our fuel tanks were nowhere near big enough. We filled up our three fuel bladders with 5 litres each and in Ollagüe we put one bladder into each of the bikes. We hoped this would be enough, especially as the next day we had around 60km of off road to do just after the border, but we still had the third bladder should we need it. We kept our fingers crossed! 🤞

04/12/2024

Peru was awesome and amazing and we really didn’t want to leave. We could have stayed for months but we must keep travelling south.

An absolutely incredible country, we have had some unbelievable adventures here that we’ll remember forever.

We’re now in Chile. Country number 14 on this trip!!

As usual, we managed to make the border reasonably complicated when it didn’t need to be… 🙄

But eventually we were through and our first stop was Arica, on the coast.

02/12/2024

There’s the famous Rainbow Mountain and then there’s all the other ones that not many people see.

Where our motorbikes have taken us we’ve seen so many mountains like this and they’re all incredible.

Nature doing its geology ‘thing’ and it’s stunning.

We happened across this one on a remote mountain pass. Nobody here except us.

02/12/2024

Taking a public tour to somewhere is great. Sometimes there’s no other way to see something. However, we have avoided several ‘big, must see’ tours, feeling that after spending a huge amount of money, we would be left wanting from the experience (we hate crowds).

Leaving Puno, we made our way south, heading for the Chile border.

We took the road directly south and it was spectacular, climbing up over the mountains.

As we approached a sharp left hand bend we thought we saw a fire. Smoke seemed to be coming from behind the mountain, but as we got closer it didn’t look like smoke.

As we started to turn round the bend we looked right, straight at a beautiful geyser!!

“Woah woah” we both said in the comms. How do we get down to that?

There was nowhere to stop on the road but there was an ‘old’ road, now closed to traffic but with a small access for walkers. “Bikes will fit through there” we both said and turned round. Through we went and used the old dirt road to go over the river and back on ourselves, just above the geyser.

You can take tours to ‘famous’ geysers and stand among the crowds but somehow, when you happen across something in nature, unspoilt by tourism, it means so much more.

It was the first time either of us had seen one and feeling like we were the first people to discover this one (there was nobody else in sight for a long time, no passing traffic) we were near to tears. It means so much more like this.

Nature at its best, doing what nature does, with no ‘gift’ shop selling tat, no car park for the masses, no ticket booth…just nature itself in its pure and simple form.

Stunning, beautiful and as yet, unspoilt by man.

With no barriers to stop you going anywhere we were able to stand close to the water edge and reach the hot spray with our hands.

The river carved its way through a small set of caves with several more geysers throughout the rock formation. Our smiles were huge.

I (Isi) was so excited and I had to climb my way through the caves to see more.

I carefully picked my way, making sure I didn’t slip. Safety first! Near the next geyser I saw a rock formation that I could use to navigate my way closer. I stepped on it, and fell in to above my waist…! 🤣 (it wasn’t rocks, it was foam).

My classic Dawn French ‘moment’.

Nothing to do but laugh and strip off at the bike and let the hot sunshine dry everything.

01/12/2024

Lake Titicaca, straddling the border between Peru and Bolivia in the Andes Mountains, is one of South America's largest lakes and the world’s highest navigable body of water, sitting about 3,810m above sea level.

On the advice of our friend, Bastien, we sent a WhatsApp message to Richard, asking if he would take us out on his boat to see the floating Uros Islands, one of the world's most innovative feats of human engineering. They were created by the Uros people to protect them from attacks from the Incas.

Richard brought along his wife, Luz and son, Liam and we had a private tour, visiting islands where we had a personal chat to the residents and heard about their way of life. No crowded tour for us!!

It was very strange walking on a bed of floating reeds. We saw some of the tableaus, hand woven and so, so intricate. We also got a ride on a huge boat made from reeds.

People still live on the islands today. Families live on individual islands that are tethered together. I guess if you have a falling out you can just cut them adrift! 😂

We had a truly fabulous day with Richard and his family and little Liam was great fun.