Life2 on-tour

10/09/2024

Yes, I know, it is quicker to get a postcard delivered from Mexico, than it is for me (Carl) to create a blog.

But, guess what, I have one right here. https://www.life2ontour.co.uk/blog/qfxw1dnxe4lzhpnc26v1n8gz68x6qb

Please do leave a comment, like , share and all those loverly things the social media algorithms like. Without your help, I will remain a frustrated, undervalued and insignificant blogger. With your help, I will still be all of those things but, at least, more people will know about it. :-)

Palm Springs is a world away from the noisy, polluting V8’s and traditional American trucks and cars that I loved to see and hear.  The roads are full of quiet, fuel efficient, clean and new petrol/hybrid/EV’s - this was the first and immediate sign that this is an affluent area of Californ

08/09/2024

Episode 53 is out.

A pretty tough day. After all it’s not every day that you get run over by a bus…!

Sorry, not sorry for the dramatic title… 😂 😜

Spoiler alert, I didn’t die. 😮‍💨

A very nasty incident with a bus. Having talked to the locals afterwards they all said, without fail, that they are crazy and should be avoided at all costs!...

07/09/2024

You can’t go to Ecuador without going to the ‘middle of the world’.

We spent an afternoon mooching about the equator and standing in opposite hemispheres.

We even had a kiss with one of us in the northern hemisphere and one of us in the southern hemisphere. 😂

Latitude 00°00’00’’

Neither of us have ever been in the Southern Hemisphere before!!

03/09/2024

And Episode 52.

That’s it, you’re all caught up folks.

Remember to subscribe to the YouTube channel and hit the notification bell 🛎️ to receive each episode as soon as they come out.

Guatemala - a country of many experiences.

Enjoy!!

Guatemala is stealing our hearts. Such a beautiful country.Ice 2 Fire is the first leg of our Round the World trip - Prudhoe Bay to Ushuaia.We have sold ever...

29/08/2024

Episode 51 came out last week.

San Felipe de Lara, Guatemala.

Enjoy.

A new country, childish behaviour over a tin of tuna and a beautiful day at a castle by a lake.Ice 2 Fire is the first leg of our Round the World trip - Prud...

28/08/2024

Las Lajas was our last stop in Colombia. 🇨🇴

The Sanctuary of Las Lajas is located within the canyon of the Guáitara River near Ipiales.

The shrine of Las Lajas is renowned for its architecture, for a series of legends involving the appearance of the Holy Virgin Mary, and for a mysterious mural of unknown origin.

According to popular belief, the Virgin Mary appeared to a woman and her deaf-mute daughter in 1754 at the same place where the church now stands. The woman, Maria Meneses de Quiñones, and her daughter Rosa were passing along the river when they sought refuge from a storm. At that moment, Rosa shouted “Mum, the Virgin is calling me!” and pointed to an apparition of the Virgin Mary.

Nobody knows who made the image of the Virgin that is at the back of the church, behind the altar. The image supposedly extends several feet into the stone, but this has not been verified. It attracts thousands of pilgrims every year.

Oh, and there were llamas of course… 😂 😂

Next stop Ecuador!! 🇪🇨

28/08/2024

Episode 50!

Sorry. This has been out for a couple of weeks.

Make sure you subscribe on YouTube to see them when they’re published.

Thank you please please thank you!

Belize is a small but beautiful and friendly country. It gave us several 'firsts' in our round the world experience. Please excuse the couple of blips in the...

25/08/2024

We ended up back at Donkeysunrise for the third time!! 😂

Met BJ and caught up with Tanlon again.

Also bumped into Marc from The Lightweight Adventurers.

But, the absolute highlight of this visit was the full English breakfast by Travellingmotochef Paolo Secomandi.

We first met Paolo up in White Salmon, Washington at the Mosko Moto headquarters where we were invited to a delicious lunch, cooked by Paolo.

So, we were all sitting in the pool one afternoon at Donkey Sunrise, discussing what we missed from home. Carl said he missed a full English breakfast. Paolo asked what was in it and so we told him.

Two mornings later we arrived at the breakfast table and were served an incredible full English breakfast.

You can’t get hash browns in Colombia, obviously, and so Paolo made some.

Such a thoughtful and wonderful thing to do “for my English friends”.

Thank you so much Paolo. It was a fantastic gesture and we really, really appreciated it.

I seemed to have completely failed to get a picture with Paolo and Arianna but hopefully we will meet them again further down the road and we will be able to rectify this.

What wonderful people there are in this world.

23/08/2024

I keep forgetting to share these here, sorry.

Hopefully you’re all subscribers to the YouTube channel though and so you’ve already watched them!

Episode 49 saw us reach Belize and country number 4!

If you haven’t seen it, enjoy!!

We've finally made it into Belize!! We've had a blast in Mexico but time for pastures new.Ice 2 Fire is the first leg of our Round the World trip - Prudhoe B...

22/08/2024

We got a cabin on the mountain for our anniversary weekend. It was a converted sugar cane lorry and was really cool.

Spectacular views and, a huge bonus, it wasn’t baking hot!

Sunset was beautiful and sunrise stunning (didn’t even need to get out of bed!!).

We were even treated to a complete rainbow one afternoon. You don’t often see those.

A really relaxing few days. We could have stayed for months!

We love Colombia. 🇨🇴

21/08/2024

We planned a route across the mountains to Popayán.

There were three possible routes and we thought the north one would be the shortest and also very scenic. We did our research and whilst the area had been known to have its troubles last year, there had been reports of riders not having any problems this year, despite some guerrilla activity reported in the hills.

Our hotel in La Plata happened to be next to the police station and an officer came over to us in the morning to ask if we’d had any problems getting into the town and where we were headed now.

“No, no, no. You mustn’t go that way. It’s far too dangerous.”

The only safe route out of there was the southern most one. Instead of 30km of off road we would have over 60km and the route would take us around 8 hours, not 4!!

We thought about it and decided to follow the advice.

The road gave way to broken tarmac, huge potholes and hard stones. We were rattled to pieces for over three hours. We should have been able to see a volcano from up there but it was misty and drizzly, which made it unpleasant to negotiate.

Add in the fact that this was the trucks main route over the mountain as well, and they took up three quarters of the road and you’ll appreciate that it was fairly hard work.

However, as the dirt and broken roads turned back to smooth tarmac the views through the valley in the dying light of the day were incredible. Absolutely stunning.

We didn’t stop for photos as we really wanted to arrive in Popayán before darkness fell completely.

On the recommendation of another traveller, we treated ourselves to a four star hotel for just £40 a night. It was pure luxury but we felt we’d deserved it.

We also treated ourselves to a bottle of wine with our meal.

What a day and what an adventure. Would we have been ok on the other road? Possibly. But possibly not and when you’ve been advised by the local police that the FARC are operating in that area, you listen to them.

All in all, an epic day of the right sort.

19/08/2024

The Tatacoa Desert, Colombia.

Stunning and beautiful.

No more words needed.

18/08/2024

The road to the Tatacoa Desert proved interesting…

The tarmac gave way to dirt which got quite narrow in places and then we came across a couple of very dark tunnels. Single track and full of pot holes, as dirt is, we decided to walk them first to make sure there wasn’t anything that would take us by surprise. One came out over a bridge with several metal bits of the construction broken and sticking up which needed to obviously be avoided.

Then on towards the desert. It took us far longer than we thought, especially as there were several quite sandy stretches, including an uphill that proved too difficult for me (Isi).

Feeling tested beyond our limits we arrived along a gravel road with awesome views across the desert.

Our cabin was made of walls of plastic bottles painted white. Good insulators against the fierce desert heat.

We watched the sun go down over the desert and then on our way back from a walk the moon looked striking.

We were looking forward to exploring the next day…

16/08/2024

Over the last few weeks, we have really enjoyed being in Colombia. Longer than we anticipated but absolutely no regrets and many new friends made. One reason for sticking around was organising parcels of essentials we need for the next few months.

One such parcel had been sent to a DHL office in Ipiales, where we would collect as we readied to cross the border. Other parcels were sent to Donkeysunrise when we knew we would be in Colombia longer.

Anyway, all the stars were aligning and parcels collected, bikes readied - just the one parcel left to collect.

We arrived in Ipiales just before midday and headed straight to the DHL office, thinking we would have time before siesta shuts down businesses for a few hours. The Google maps pin was right in the middle of the new shopping mall and when I enquired with the information desk, they were ignorant of any such place.

Back to the bikes and I started a 2 hour trawl through emails and DHL website and started an on-line chat - in Spanish... I would type my bit in English in Google Translate, copy the Spanish in to the chat, then copy the reply in to Google Translate to understand what was going on - knowing what buttons to press in what order became challenge enough...

Now, one thing you need to know is that DHL don't have their own systems in Colombia. They have contracts with Colombian couriers to complete the delivery in Colombia. The DHL breadcrumbs stopped in Bogota. However, they did know it had been delivered as they have a copy of the completed signature - Gerald...

At one stage, they insisted they had delivered to where I asked and I said yes - to a DHL office that appears on Google maps AND on their own website but it did not exist. In the end, we had to settle for waiting on an email enquiry which would take 2 business days to respond.

Having walked back in to the information desk, been fobbed off twice and eventually giving up, we resigned ourselves to not getting the parcel and having to let Mosko Moto know the problem.

The next day, over breakfast, Isi said she would ask the hotel receptionist if they wouldn't mind making a phonecall for us, as our Spanish does not lend itself well to phonecalls - a last roll of the dice. He obliged, made 2 phonecalls and then told us (via Google translate) that the package would be here in 20 minutes. We were overjoyed and ecstatic, wondering just how he had pulled off this miracle!

Turns out, the parcel was with someone he knew and they took pity on us.

The stars do align, they just need a little perseverance and patience.

:-)

14/08/2024

This was a personal post by me (Isi) which Carl said should be here as it’s completely pertinent to our journey and expresses many of our feelings.

“When someone with almost 30k followers on YouTube and thousands on Instagram, plugs your trip and even buys some merch, encouraging others to follow along… it’s very humbling.

What’s even more humbling is that, when I thanked them they said, and I quote “Not a problem well deserved, you deserve a bigger following ..”

We also had a comment on one of our videos a little while ago that blew us away.

“However and whenever your journey ends it has been the most honest and inspirational record I have viewed. Your content deserves to be getting millions of hits. ❤”

If we inspire just two or three people to make their dream come true it would be amazing.

Life is short and you don’t always get a second chance. We did and we learnt from that.

Remember my favourite quote from Confucius :

“We have two lives and the second begins the moment we realise we only have one.”

Get out there people, make those big decisions that enable you to chase your dreams and achieve them.

This journey is hard, it’s emotional, it’s tremendous fun, it’s exciting, it’s stressful and perhaps most of all, it’s educational.

We wouldn’t change any of it.

We had a discussion with another well travelled traveller a few days ago. I said that I wasn’t sure that I had found me yet and who I was and his reply was, how will you know when you’ve got there? There are no measures to set so how will we ever know that we’ve reached what we’re looking for if we don’t know what that is?

It’s true. I’m not sure that I know who I am now. After cancer I thought I did know. I was reconciled (eventually) that the new me was not the same as the old me and it couldn’t be. Having been a get up and go person all my life, I found my get up and go had changed and whilst it might still be there in my head, it wasn’t always physically possible. That part, whilst I’ve accepted it, still annoys me.

So, this trip is an amazing journey of being lost, sometimes found, and then lost again.

It will be interesting to know if we know when we have found ‘me’ or whether it’s always going to evolve.

This whole journey still feels surreal and incredible. We have a year of memories already that don’t feel real. I wonder if they ever will…?

12/08/2024

Whilst in Salento we did an amazing at Finca Entresbosque.

We happened to time it right and got a guide all to ourselves. He was so passionate about the coffee and the farm and it was absolutely fascinating listening to all the intricacies and procedures that make good coffee beans.

We donned hats and towels to keep the sun off and carried our own little baskets to pick some beans.

We got to put the beans through the machine that peels them. The beans are then put out to dry in the sun. We’ve seen numerous sheets covered in coffee beans on the ground along the roadside in Colombia, drying in the sun.

We also had a tasting session where we got to learn how proper coffee is made. The right beans, the right roast, the right temperature of the water etc etc.

The flavour of that coffee was nothing like we had ever tasted. So smooth. No bitterness. Just full of flavour. Incredible.

Can highly recommend this farm for a tour. Small, family run business. Most excellent.

09/08/2024

Salento is a beautiful town and we spent a lovely couple of days there.

We walked, we chilled, we drank limonada de coco, watched some of the football with the locals and just generally had a wonderful time.

05/08/2024

Thank you so much to all those that have bought an enamel mug following the Our RTW Trip So Far video we published yesterday.

It is a sturdy little fellow, even surviving a bus crashing into it in Guatemala! They’ve had a year of almost constant use and they’re still in prefect condition.

Other items also available like T shirts, woolly hats, caps, stickers, long sleeved T shirts, neck gaiters and, if an enamel mug isn’t your day to day drinking vessel of choice, there’s a china one.

What’s not to like?

Despite Carl wishing for my early demise (watch the video if you don’t know what I’m talking about) I’m still here and loving life. 😝

https://www.life2ontour.co.uk/shop

05/08/2024

04/08/2024

Episode 48 is a bit different.

On 1st August we celebrated 1 year on the road and our 4th Wedding Anniversary!!

It’s been a week, especially as a couple of days ago the sale of our house was completed as well.

So it’s a bit later than intended.

We have crammed 12 months of travel into 12 minutes with a little animated map and our thoughts about the last year.

Enjoy and don’t forget to chase your dreams. It’s never too late but if you leave it, it may be.

If you haven’t yet then do please subscribe to the YouTube channel. As a well known supermarket says - Every Little Helps.

Our RTW Trip so far... - Alaska, Canada, USA, Central America, Colombia - Ice 2 Fire Episode 48.On 1st August we celebrated one year on the road and our wedd...

28/07/2024

Episode 47 everyone.

Wow! I had tears in my eyes several times while editing this one. Just such an incredible weekend it deserved a video all of its own.

This is why we make the videos. Yes, we want to inspire others (particularly the slightly older ones like us) to chase their dreams and not to leave it too late, but primarily we make them for our own memories.

The detail they bring back when we watch them is amazing and really gives us goosebumps about the incredible experiences this journey is providing for us.

Eduardo and Carla really are among the most special people we have met on this trip.

Thank you so much, from the bottom of our hearts. ❤️

Adventuretours Yucatan

After meeting Eduardo and Carla on the road several weeks earlier, we met up with them in their home town of Merida. We were then treated to an absolutely fa...

27/07/2024

While we were in Buenaventura Carl’s Dad’s funeral happened.

We wanted to find some way of marking his passing that would be special to him and to us.

He was a massive gauge 1 train enthusiast and had one of the biggest track layouts in the country around his garden. He made it all himself.

We obviously love motorbikes.

San Cipriano, just outside Buenaventura, gave us that perfect opportunity.

San Cipriano has a population of just 500 Afro-Colombians and is in the middle of the jungle with no roads leading in or out.

There is an old railway line where trains used to travel. We believe the villagers got fed up with walking out to the next town (quite a way) and so they invented brujitas.

And this is where it’s gets really cool.

A brujita is a cart with wheels that sits on the railway line. To propel it down the track a motorbike is attached to it with just its back wheel on the track.

They hurtle their way, click-clacking along for around twenty minutes before arriving in San Cipriano.

You don’t always feel completely safe but we survived the experience and it was awesome. Something completely different.

Railway meets motorcycle - the perfect combination to remember Carl’s Dad.

On the day of the funeral, we logged in by live link and afterwards we sat on the beach front with our thoughts, remembering him.

The most difficult part of a trip like this is the ‘goodbyes’. You hope they’re temporary but sometimes they’re not.

However, we believe we found the perfect thing to do in his memory and it was a great day and experience.

24/07/2024

We arrived in Buenaventura and that evening were greeted with a gorgeous sunset.

An Afro-Colombian community, Buenaventura translates as ‘good fortune’.

Slightly ironic as 80% of the population lives in poverty or extreme poverty. The city also suffers with endemic violence and apparently, isn’t a safe place.

The houses on stilts in the estuary spoke of the poverty in a stark and humbling way.

Buildings falling into disrepair in the town contrasted with those few catering for tourists.

Our bikes were in a car park (rough ground area) opposite the hotel with 24hr security at the gate.

What we found and experienced was a community that lived life to the fullest they could. They partied most of the night and they were very friendly and welcoming.

We watched one of the Colombian football games in the Copa América and it was a fantastic atmosphere. Everyone happy, everyone enjoying the game with no hint of any aggression.

Everything in life is relative, however, when you witness poverty at this level you do truly appreciate the good fortune of being born where you were.

And when you witness how people live so cheerfully with so much less than you, it is a leveller like no other.

A wonderful place.

24/07/2024

Episode 46 of our Ice 2 Fire series is out over on YouTube.

Head over and have a wee watch.

Yes, we are childish. What can we say? 🤷🏻‍♀️ 🤷 😂

When accommodation gets too pricey you just book a Love Hotel...Ice 2 Fire is the first leg of our Round the World trip - Prudhoe Bay to Ushuaia.We have sold...

19/07/2024

Donkeysunrise just outside La Unión is an awesome place to stay.

It’s run by the fabulous Tim and Isa and it’s not only a home from home for the Overlanding community, but they also run tours, day rides, help with route suggestions, working on your bikes…pretty much anything that you may need or want.

We didn’t take a lot of photos as we were too busy just relaxing, dipping in the pool and enjoying the awesome meals.

We went for a couple of nights and inevitably stayed several more!!

When you get to Colombia this is a must visit place.

As the message on the back of their gate reads - you arrived a stranger but leave a beloved member of the Donkey Sunrise family.

17/07/2024

Episode 45 is out on YouTube folks.

Head over, give it a thumbs up and please subscribe.

The week from hell this one but there’s always a positive…

A week from hell to be honest. Carl was really ill. But as always good things come from the bad.https://www.facebook.com/p/Cabañas-Bambutan-100083108685318/?...

14/07/2024

We’ve had another haircut!!

Barber didn’t know what to make of me (Isi) asking him to do mine as well but after a minute of me trying to say just scissors ✂️ (no shavers) and a short back and sides, he threw himself into it and did a really good job.

Probably the best haircut we’ve had in ages. Think I’ll be going to the barbers from now on! 😂

13/07/2024

Rodrigo at Termales La Gruta really looked after us and was so nice. On our last morning we packed up, got the bikes loaded and went to say our goodbyes. He said he wanted to give us breakfast before we go and produced two lovely plates of fruit. So very welcome.

We had ummed and ahhed about which way to go. Up the hill back the way we had come in - steep uphill but not very long until the tarmac appeared and then the paved mountain road that eventually would take us into Manizales.

Or, turn left and go downhill. Much shorter but all off road and according to some locals, a dangerous road because of wash outs etc.

We kept changing our minds but in the morning while loading the bike, Carl saw locals on a little bike, two up, go down the hill. If they could do it surely we could…

So down we went. It was ok to start with and we dealt with the scary unknown. We’re not confident off road riders and we just took our time.

Then Carl hit a rock, shot across the track and ended up in the ditch! Luckily there was a bank to his left as a lot of the track just had a straight drop down into the valley far below…

It took a little while but we eventually managed to manhandle the bike back onto the track.

The ride did test us to our current limitations of our abilities and others I’m sure, would just ride that road without batting an eyelid, but for us, it was hard, it was steep and it was a real achievement when we eventually got back onto the tarmac.

We managed to take about two hours to do ten kilometres! 😂 😂 😂

We reached Manizales tired, hungry but feeling very accomplished from our adventure.