Kyle signing off... for now...

I only arrived home about 24 hours ago and I already don't know what to do with myself. Life seems a little mundane and a little less exciting when you're not in new countries discovering new places, meeting new people and having new experiences. Our trip from The Bay Area to Buenos Aires and all the places in between has made an enormous impact on me and my outlook on life. For example an unconscious decision that I made today: Despite the overcast weather in Napa, I thought it would be a good idea to go for a little ride as I hadn't been on a motorcycle since April 10th the day I sold my KLR. Sure enough just as I was leaving the Napa town limits the rain started and I began to get wet; however instead of turning around to go home and get out of the rain, I kept on going I didn’t even really think about it. It was not as if I had to be somewhere or that I had a particular destination, I was just out for a cruise. I had this funny feeling as if I wanted to get rained on just so something exciting might happen. 4 months ago I would have surely turned around towards home to wait out the rain. As it happened I only got rained on for about 20 minutes before the clouds cleared and I had a beautiful afternoon ride. But the point is that my attitude has changed, I didn't think about this situation the same way I had in the past.

Maybe Clay and I experienced a lot of rain riding in Colombia and Ecuador and maybe these experiences made me more comfortable riding in the rain, so I felt it wasn't such a big deal to get wet and cold, or to risk crashing my bike on the slippery pavement. It probably is true that our experiences in Colombia and Ecuador made us better wet riders and therefore I was not hesitant. However I also know that my change in attitude is larger than just my example, my whole perception of risk has changed.

I will admit about a week before going on this adventure, I started to get a little scared, a little nervous and a little worried about the whole thing. In my mind I backed out about dozen times. After all how many people do you know who have ridden their motorcycles from America through Mexico and Central America then passed by the Darien Gap on a sail boat only to continue on through Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. And it didn’t help to have people tell us that we were crazy to do something like this. I had friends tell me not to go through the Baja because tourists were being kidnapped. I had people from work tell me that I was going to get Malaria and Yellow Fever in Central America. All over the news there have been reports of drug violence in Mexico and of course Colombia has a reputation. Along the way we even had locals telling us not to go to the next country because it was too dangerous. Most people who I told my plan to just didn’t believe me; they probably thought I was smoking dope. Of course after your best friend has committed to go along and after you’ve bragged to just about everybody that you know that you’re riding to South America you pretty much have to go through with it. I mean in reality I would have done it if I hadn’t told a sole and in the back of my mind I knew all those naysayers were completely full of hot air because most of them haven’t been out of the state. As it turned out, neither of us got kidnapped or got Malaria or Yellow Fever, we just had the best time of our lives, ate some of the most interesting foods, met some of the nicest people and saw the most beautiful scenery. So I guess the take away for me is: listen to yourself first and take some risks in life.

I think it takes guts to leave the comfort and safety of our routine lives and really risk it to experience something new, but the pay off for us was huge. I’ll be blunt, I’m damn proud of what Clay and I accomplished in the last 3 months.

PS Clay could be right… I may be dreaming up another adventure, if I am you all might read about it here.

Clay Signs Out

Like all great things...my trip must now come to an end.  It's a bittersweet moment for me, as I'm pretty excited to get back home to some of the people and comforts that I've been missing, but at the same time I've seen so many amazing new things that it's made me yearn to continue exploring.  Three months seems like a good amount of time for me to be gone though.  I seem to have gained a little more respect for a lot of the little things we have back home that I took complete advantage of before the trip.  I'm sure this sounds biased, but I've come to a self realization that no matter how crazy things get back home with the economy or politics, the US is still the greatest country on Earth, at least in my eyes. 

Maria and I are leaving Buenos Aires tonight at 9pm on an American Airlines flight in which we will surely be cramped out of our minds for 16 hours to SFO.  I get a kick out of thinking that it took me 3 months to get down here but less than a day to get back.  Kyle and Kathryn are staying a few more days and leaving BA on Monday.  So...this looks like my final blog update on the Slingshot for now, I am really hoping that Kyle gives us a signout as well.  Thank you all so much for following along on our blog, even if you didn't sign in and tell us who you were :)  I hope that our blog was a little inspiring for some people out there to have some travel explorations of their own.  I also hope that our trip proved that while its always good to listen to warnings, your concerns shouldn't stop you from seeing some of these amazing places that the earth has to offer.  People have been so kind to us everywhere it really blows my mind.  

Anyways, that's it for me.  Thanks again for reading and check out some of the pictures below from our last week in Argentina.  I think Maria is going to do some captions for me, as I am blogged and captioned out.  Stay tuned for Kyle's entry and possible some additional entries, as rumor has it that his leave of absence was extended til June and there are already hushed plans to ride his motorcycle across the states.  Maybe he will continue to bless us with his awesome blogging capabilities...but I didn't tell you that.  Bye everybody!!!  See you all soon!!!

This is the hostel we stayed at in Iguazu Falls, Hostel Inn.

Here's the group at the falls, 20 hour bus ride north of Buenos Aires, on the boarder of Brazil.

This is another section of the falls. We hit the park at the low season, so some of the falls were a bit dry.

The Clan House Hostel where we are staying in Buenos Aires.

This is a protest that has been going on for the past few days, they are protesting for Socialism.

Last night we took Tango lessons and also saw a show. We had a blast!!

Kathryn and I learning some steps....

The boys really got the hang of it!!!

The professionals.

Kyle's moves were so good they asked him to dance during the performance!!!

I just got lucky.

Here is La Caminitos in La Boca, it is a bohemian neighborhood in B.A.

No caption needed!!!

The cemetery in the Recoleta neighborhood, Evita is buried here.

It was amazing to look through the chambers at the coffins!!

Clay enjoying his last afternoon in B.A.

Kyle a little too excited over Clay's departure......