A fellow traveller Brian, who is currently motor biking with his girlfriend Fie from the UK to Thailand (see trailsoftheunexpected), knowing my fears about my trip emailed the contact details of Mary who he had met up and travelled with for part of her motorcycling odyssey through Central and South America.

Last night Mary was kind enough to give up 1 hour and 48 minutes of her time while we talked about her experiences over the phone. It was brilliant! She travelled for a 1 year and 9 months after buying a bike in California. When she went out there she had only just gotten her license and as she put it, she wobbled her way around Latin America. She only had two accidents where she came off her bike a bit battered and bruised mainly from going too fast in unfamiliar terrain (sand) but was basically ok.

My biggest fear about this trip is my motorcycling ability and Thumper breaking down (btw I have renamed my bike from Tractor to Thumper. Now that the carburettor manifold is fixed it doesn’t sound quite so tractorish. Also I think that a single cylinder motorcycle is called a thumper, the name reminds me of Bambi’s best friend and gives my bike a much more get up and go name. Someone that rides a bike that is air cooled like mine is called an Air Head but I don’t think that I want that as a nickname. Air Head Annette isn’t really how I view myself). Mary was riding a brand new F650 GS and her only mechanical problem was fixed under warrantee. This is where we differ (Thumper being 12 years old and having broken down repeatable) but as I have learnt from my bike problems it is a good way of learning about your bike. The small amount of motorcycle maintenance I have done and taking my manual will come in handy.

The best news was that Mary never had a puncture in the 38,000 miles that she did and regardless of the age of the bike a tyre is a tyre!

On a personal level Mary said that even as a blue eyed fair haired female travelling alone that she never experienced any serious harassment and felt that people in Latin America were much more polite than in the UK where we seem to have lost a bit of respect and consideration for our fellow humans. And that Latin men would view it as shameful to yell at females in public and gave an example of a police man shouting at her to move her bike and was majorly embarrassed when he realised that she was female and ended up helping her move it when he did realise she wasn’t a bloke.

The only thing she had nicked was her tank bag when accidentally leaving it on the bike (would happen anywhere) and while in Mexico she wasn’t even locking her panniers to her bike.

My second biggest fear is getting lonely. Mary said that for the first two weeks of the trip she was having serious doubts about whether she had made the right decision and at the start staring down a long highway, miles from anyone that you know she came close to experiencing the depths of loneliness but then made friends along the way and enjoyed it enough to stay on the road for almost two years.

Mary’s favourite countries were Mexico, Columbia and Peru. Her parting words where, you will have a blast and the most important things you need to take with you are a positive attitude and a compass.

ps. I made my 6:30am flight today, handed out bags in the security queue to my fellow female travellers for makeup and was rewarded by a pretty sunrise.

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