It's the people, stupid

For us, traveling is more about the people we meet rather than the sites we see. We like to visit places but the true experiences come from interacting with the folks we run into.
The last two days have had some good opportunities for that.


Raul from Venezuela. Imagine our surprise when after returning from dinner in Ipiales, we go out to look at the bikes and there is another F650GS parked right next to ours. The owner quickly found us and it turns out he is from Venezuela and is riding down to Argentina but is riding with the support of his truck with his wife driving the truck. In this fashion he gets to ride a motorcycle that isn't all weighted down and can really indulge in the twists and turns of the roads.
We exchanged emails, and he even may have located a buyer for one of our bikes down in Chile. Hopefully we will run into him again someplace on the road, but he is traveling quickly down to the Southern Tip of the continent in order to beat the cold weather. Maybe we'll see him on his way back up.

Deigo (or Alex) from freakin' New York. Another big surprise in Cayembe. Exhausted from a day of riding we stop at a little coffee shop to get some local baked treats and as we are getting our gear back on we hear: "Washington? No fucking way! I can't believe it." We turn around to see an eager New York City peace corp hick sitting in a truck with an Ecuadorian in the passenger seat. We chat briefly and he invites us out to the dairy farm where he works just north of town. Not ones to turn down an opportunity we find a place to stay (an awesome ranch down a dirt road run by an italian family) unpack our stuff and drive over the farm.
Turns out that Diego is a true Brooklyner who has a bunch of family in Ecuador. His family owns a ton of land in the area including a dairy farm with 130 lovely cows, 3 (or more) dogs, and kittens galore. Diego owns a moving company in Brooklyn and when he gets tired of it, he comes down to Ecuador to work on the farm for a while. This kid has a lust for life that you don't see too often and it was fun hanging out with him for a while.