Back on the road after the blown tire incident, we decided to ride to Boquete: a small picturesque town high up in the mountains surrounded by amazing views and a few volcanoes. Interesting fact: according to The Lonely Planet, Boquete is the number four place for US retirees, leading us to meet quite a few Americans with whom to share our experiences
Leaving from San Felix where the tube was repaired we rode to David, a much larger city, in order to find some spare tubes for the KLR and a new chain for Shaun's Wee-Strom. Riding into town, eyes peeled for a bike shop, a very familiar Harley Davison rode past. We pulled into a parking lot for a bike shop and the Harley pulled in right behind us and off hoped Gilberto our mate from Bocas Del Toro; fancy running into him again! After briefing him on what had happened since our last meeting we told him what we were looking for, and he knew exactly where to go and led us to the place that had everything (almost) that we needed. There we bought spare tubes for the KLR and even got a chain for the Wee-Strom which was changed right there and then. Our bikes were now good as new, however; this would not last for long. We told Gilberto about our plans to ride to Boquete and do the volcano hike (the only place in Central America where you can see both the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean at the same time). He offered to guide us there and so we headed off together, following Gilberto through the rain (our ever faithful companion) to Boquete
Upon arrival we were all very hungry and Gilberto led us to a very nice restaurant called Baru and shouted us lunch (thank you very much Gilberto). We then searched around for a hostel and settled on Hostel Mamallena, conveniently next door to the restaurant Baru, for a couple of nights. We got in and decided to completely unload our bikes as we had heard of a trail that we could ride that went 5 km up into the mountains and 5km back. Our small room very quickly became even smaller with everything we had on our bikes now situated on the floor, under beds, and on hangars all over the room; we created a walkway to the bathroom and to each bed and that was all we had to get around. One thing you don't usually think about when undertaking a journey like this on motorcycles is the stench that all of your gear acquires.. Now all of that stench was in our small, single window room. Needless to say, we spent little of our time in the room and mostly had the door open in the effort to aerate the room. The next day we rose and had breakfast at a little coffee shop across the town square and watched the world go by. Ready for the mountain we geared up and headed off on our now very light and zippy motorcycles, our faithful pack horses now felt like Ducati's.
We got to the head of the trail and set off gung-ho, supremely confident in our ability and now with the feeling that our bikes were pro dirt bikes. Down the first hill there were no incidents, however; we were quickly finding out that the trail that we thought was mostly dirt, was in fact mostly wet river rocks with some mud thrown in. What goes down must come up, so after reaching the bottom of the hill we now had to ride up a rather steep hill to continue on. After a quick break to get the camera's sorted and make sure the bikes we ready, Tim rode up on the KLR without incident. Once clear Chris followed on his Wee-Strom once more without incidence. Now came Shaun on his Wee-Strom, powering up the hill (if you were to go slow there was no chance of making the top) everything was going well, into the fist corner with the bike bouncing all over the rocks the rear end bounced and changed the direction of the bike.. Straight into the dirt wall and ditch. Shaun later realized that the throttle lock had been bumped on thus making it impossible to roll the throttle off in time. Shaun's leg was pinned beneath the bike and the wall, thankfully he was uninjured however, the bike was well and truly in the ditch. About 5 minutes of lifting and dragging the bike out on its side it was finally out, and in relatively good condition. The only damage was to the right foot peg which had snapped but thankfully stayed on. Slightly shaken, we continued on in the hopes it would get less rocky, however; further up the mountain only got steeper and seemingly more rocky. Up the next hill following too closely behind Chris who stopped about 30 feet up, Shaun had to stop so to not run into Chris. Stopping on a rocky mountain has its own intricacies, if you don't use the rear brake or can't you will slide. This fall was more of a slow lay down of the bike nevertheless, it snapped off the left foot peg. So after some patching, Shaun's Strom now has a KLR rear foot peg as the left foot peg and can be considered a "hybrid". At this point we re-evaluated the ride and came to the conclusion that wet rocks, nearly bald road tires, and our bikes could not quite handle this degree of off road. Only 1 mile in, we decided to turn around and head back; we came upon the last hill without any crashes and prepared to ride up. This time Shaun led the way and powered up it sticking in the middle of the road after learning quickly about how bouncy the bike got on wet rocks. The bike leapt and bounced over the rocks making it most of the way up the hill until the rear bounced off the rocks and into softer dirt, which it instantly dug into and threw him off the bike landing knee first onto a rock. Unfortunately the kneepad in the protective pants Shaun was wearing shifted to the side as soon as it hit the ground so it was more or less knee meeting rock very quickly and hard. After rolling in pain for a while, with a few strong words thrown in, he got back up and lifted the bike up; Chris rode the final 20 feet to the top with Shaun following by foot. Shaun rested at the top whilst Tim and Chris went back to their bike and rode up. A wrapped knee later we were on the mountain road heading back to Boquete, where Shaun rested the remainder of the day and iced his knee. Lesson of the day: there's a good reason that dirt tires were invented..
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