MotoAdventureGal update: Hard decision not to go to Ushuaia

Alisa at the Mitad del Mundo, the center of the world, the equator (Photo: Alisa Clickenger)

"For three years it has been my goal to ride from my house to Ushuaia. It's not sitting very well with me that I'm giving that up as a goal."

That's a bit of what Alisa Clickenger, MotoAdventureGal, had to say when we spoke last night about her planned ride to the southern tip of South America. Alisa has gotten as far as Peru, but now, she says, "I've taken too long. I'm behind the game."

Fall is coming on in South America and Ushuaia, at the southern tip, is farther from the equator than northern New England. Daytime highs now are around 48 degrees and it is the start of the rainy season.

"I could get lucky with weather, but wet and 40 degrees is miserable on a motorcycle and that's what I hadn't put in the equation, the wet."

Alisa started her trip with electric heated clothing but shipped that gear home from Texas because she did not expect to need it any more.

The decision has been a hard one for her.

"I'm not comfortable with it, I'm not happy with it, I just don't want to suffer."

She is still 4,000 to 5,000 miles from Ushuaia and while you could ride hard and cover that distance in just a few days in the U.S., the situation in South America is very different, she says, due to the bad roads and time spent crossing international borders.

Picking up the story

Two weeks ago Alisa was still aiming for Ushuaia. She was in Peru, headed the next day for Lima to have her chain repaired or to buy a new one. We'll pick up her story from there.

Unlike her various encounters with police in other countries, which were fun because the officers were generally curious, Alisa says the Peruvian police seemed "hardened, out to get something from you. I cringe now when I see one."

   At a different spot along the equator (Photo: Alisa Clickenger)

The first time she was stopped she was moving with traffic but was singled out and told she was speeding. On producing her driver's license the officer examined it and said it was a fake, and that there was a big fine for having a fake license.

Alisa freely acknowledges that it was just a photocopy. In planning for her trip she had been advised that one tactic some police will use to get a "mordida," or bribe, is to refuse to return your driver's license until you have handed over the money. Better, she was told, to carry a photocopy and deal with the hassles if necessary.

As for paying mordida, "I never went down that road."

What saved her skin this first time, she said, was a Colombian couple on a motorcycle who came along, eyed up the situation, and butted in. The woman interrupted the police officer to ask Alisa questions about where she was from, where she was headed, and invited her to accompany them to dinner.

"I knew what was happening, the Colombians knew what was happening, and the police officer knew what was happening. I said I'd like to join them at dinner and turned to the officer and asked, 'Need anything else?' He said no and we left."

Later she was stopped again, again for "speeding." First she showed the same photocopied driver's license and got the same story about it being a fake. This time, however, she remembered that she had an international driver's license and she produced that. The officer apparently had never seen one and thought it was her passport and ignored it.

He told her there was a big fine for having a fake license and she would have to go to Lima to pay the fine. Alisa replied that she had a bad chain so she really didn't believe that she was speeding but if he thought she was, go ahead and write the ticket. She was headed for Lima anyway to get the chain repaired so it wouldn't be that big a problem to pay the ticket.

He then asked about her travels and what she did for a living. When she replied that she was a journalist, "Oh boy, that changed everything." She saw the reaction on his face when she told him that and decided to play it for all it was worth. By the end, he told her he had a daughter who wanted to be a journalist and would she give the girl some advice. Alisa wrote her email address on a card, gave it to him, and was on her way.

In Lima she found that the previous mechanic who worked on her bike had mounted the sprocket backward and that was what had caused the master link on her chain to break. She bought a new chain and also had a new horn installed, too. Her original horn had failed just on the outskirts of Lima, and South Americans use their horns a lot.

"I felt naked without it. I now have a nice automotive horn and it's really loud, it's not muffled by a hood."

Leaving Lima the next day, Alisa was not feeling well, so her planned one day stop in Paracas stretched to two and to three. On the third day the hotel where she was staying had a large group coming and could no longer accommmodate her. During this time she had become acquainted with the shopkeeper next door and when her heard about her situation he insisted that she come stay with him and his wife. He also took her to a doctor who gave her drugs for her condition.

Alisa stayed with this couple for a week, sleeping 16 hours a day for the first few days, and by the time she was ready to leave she had lost another 10 days on her already iffy schedule for reaching Ushuaia. She rode on to Nazca, which is where she was when we spoke.

What will she do now?

Alisa is still not totally certain that she won't try for Ushuaia.

"I'm just so torn. Do I just get on the bike and go, ride like hell? I don't have my goal any more. Do I push myself just to say I made it?"

On the other hand, someone on the Adventure Riders site asked her, if she's truly being a motorcycle vagabond, why not just enjoy the journey?

Regardless of her route from here Alisa expects her journey to wrap up in Buenos Aires at the end of April. She's considering going to Paraguay and Uruguay but there aren't many motorcyclists who go there. She's trying to find out why.

"It may be that they're just not on the direct travel route south."

In Buenos Aires she'll have to decide what to do with the bike. Should she sell it there, ship it home, or store it so she can return and complete the trip to Ushuaia?

"The indecision is a bad place to be in and I'm really suffering, but it's not a bad place to suffer," she says, referring to Nazca. "I have various options, and they're all good and exciting. It's true adventure travel, not knowing where you're going."

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