Dog Blog

On the 10th of September 2014, in the small town of El Callao, Venezuela, our hearts broke as we said goodbye to The Pack Track's most popular member. Skyla lost her long fight with cancer. Skyla fought hard to the end. 10 days earlier she was wiggling in the grass and chasing her ball as she had always done. Then over night she fell ill and required daily visits to the vet for intravenous fluids and vitamins, surgery to remove a couple of lumps and a late night blood transfusion. The vet in El Callao, Alicia, went above and beyond to help Skyla. She treated Skyla morning and night for three weeks, made late night visits to our hotel to check on her and always had time to receive our phone calls and meet us at our hotel or clinic when required. Being the only white people in the small community of El Callao, our presence was quickly noticed and people learnt that we were staying in town due to our sick dog. Alicia mentioned that people in town were asking after Skyla and her progres...

The MV Kimbia, a 70 year old dilapidated ocean going passenger and cargo transport ferry, is said to be one of the oldest ships in the maritime public transport industry. It services the communities in the Northwest region of Guyana, a region only accessible by boat due to the whole area being a marshy swamp land interspersed with river systems. The ferry ride is usually around 25 hours but inclement weather can extend this voyage to 30-36 hours. The trip is very much a third world transportation experience; grossly overcrowded, terrible sanitation, all kinds of animals and next to no consideration for safety. Guyana is a developing country on the north coast of South America. It has a population of around 750,000 and is the second smallest country by land mass in South America. By the time we reached Georgetown, the capital of Guyana, and had spent a few days exploring the city, we had seen everything we wanted. This took us about a week in total and from this point onwards, we w...

After the intensity of the World Cup we were looking forward to a slower pace. From Brazil we were free to travel wherever the road would take us. A few days in Boa Vista, Brazil, gave us some time to discuss our overall plan for South America and we decided that it would be best to travel anti-clockwise around South America, reaching the bottom (Ushuaia) around the end of November. It gets very cold down there so for riders its recommended to head there in the warmer months, December to February. We picked Guyana for our next stop, an English speaking country and that was the limit of our knowledge of the little South American country with population around 800,000. It was a pleasant ride to Letham, the border town of Guyana, and we stopped along the way to grab a few snaps, easing into our new routine (taking our time). The border crossing wasn't too complicated, there was some paperwork for both Skyla and the motorbikes. What did surprise us was the temporary permit the immigr...

This is the route report for the road from Lethem on the Guyanese side of the Guyana/Brazil border to Linden near Georgetown in Guyana (the road from Linden to Georgetown is sealed). Our travel occurred at the end of July, towards the end of the wet season and so includes some of the worse conditions you could face along this route. We were advised at the border that this route could be done in a day. we are sure this is possible for someone experienced and knowledgeable of the road, but we were neither and had plenty of time.  The total distance is around 450km of unsealed road, a combination of dirt, mud and sand, through some very beautiful jungle. The terrain was mostly flat, with a few low gradient hills as you approached Linden but accompanied with better road surface due to the logging companies in that region. In no rush, we rode a little over 100km a day. This worked out really well with camping locations. Adjacent to the road is thick jungle which makes camping 'just any...

In September 2013, back in Australia, we had noticed that Skyla's lymph nodes on her neck had significantly enlarged. It occurred at the same time a rash appeared on her belly. Skyla often gets a rash on her belly when she gets in to long grass so we treated the rash and thought the enlarged lymph nodes was due to her body fighting the rash. After a few days the rash went away and instead of the lumps decreasing they got bigger so we took her to the vet. Skyla was quickly diagnosed as having Lymphoma, a cancer of the blood, and was referred to the Sydney's Animal Referral Hospital (A.R.H.). We were given the following heartbreaking options: leave her untreated with a life expectancy of only 30 days; put her on steroids to possibly get 90 days; treat her with chemotherapy and get 12-14 months; or try the new and very expensive bone marrow transplant treatment with a 30% chance of success but a potential cure. We didn't need to discuss the options. We both agreed that we would thro...

We did the hard yards to get to Brazil and it was definitely worth it. Being in a football nation such as Brazil, following world cup games with people from all over the world and to top it off attending games in top class stadiums was an extraordinary experience that we will never forget. The day after we arrived in Manaus, Stuart's dad (Alan) flew in from Australia. He landed at around 10:30pm and travelling with him was our new Heidenau K60 Adventure Touring Tyres and 21 valuable tickets to world cup games. Tyres were very expensive and timely to receive in South America so Stuart cleverly devised a plan to order them on ebay, have them delivered to Alan's home in Australia and make sure Alan packed light so the weight of the tyres would be within his baggage limit. It was a great plan for everyone except Alan who had to lug the tyres around in transit to and from airports and flight transfers. We did really appreciate the effort and it was a big cost saving for us – thanks Alan....

Imagine if you will, a land where petrol is free, a night in a luxury hotel costs $5 while $10 gets you a room in a fully equipped resort. A good meal is under a dollar and a first class road network connects cities with practically no traffic. Wouldn't this be an adventure riders heaven. Would you believe us if we told you that such a place does exist? Well it does and it really is a riders paradise. As well as costing peanuts to live, it has some of the most amazing scenery and ecological sights in the world; prehistoric plateaus, beautiful waterfalls (the tallest in the world, Angel Falls, amongst them), the Amazon, the foot hills to the Andes mountain range and picturesque beaches. Where is this place? The beautiful Venezuela. The first thing we needed to know about Venezuela was that there is a parallel currency exchange market (i.e. black market). It was actually illegal in Venezuela and they were cracking down, however, the price of everything in the country was set on this ...

The Darien Gap! A 50km stretch of jungle separating Panama in North America from Colombia in South America. The jungle is so thick that it isolated the Mayan civilisation from the Inca's. Although a few well equipped adventurers have had success in navigating through the harsh environment, most attempts have failed. Plans to join Panama to Colombia by road through the Darien Gap have never eventuated, mainly because of the terrain but also because of the poor relations between the two countries. How then would The Pack Track get from North to South America? There are essentially two options, fly or sail, each with its pros and cons. Flying can be done in a day whereas sailing takes 5 days. The price is very similar with flying only fractionally more expensive than sailing but our main concern was Skyla's comfort and well-being as we didn't want to put her in a crate again if we could avoid it. The sailing options include the traditional single hull or catamaran sail boats. However,...

By the time we reached Costa Rica we had put around 6,000 miles (10,000km) on our bikes since leaving Texas. That means it was time for a service. Luckily, back in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, we met Ricardo by chance. Janell was standing on the balcony of our hostel in San Miguel checking out the view with Skyla when a gentlemen yelled from bellow "Are you going to Manaus?" Followed by "come downstairs", so we did and introduced ourselves to Ricardo. Ricardo had been told about us by someone following our journey and made it his business to come and find us. He invited us to take a walk around San Miguel during which time we exchanged stories and he sold us on spending a few days in San Jose, Costa Rica, where he knew a good mechanic if we needed any work done. We arrived in San Jose late on the 14th of May 2014. In fact it had been dark for some time and lightly raining. We had only a street name to find our accommodation and after riding around for some time with no luck, decid...

Never do a border crossing on an empty stomach. We'd done it a few times now and it makes a hot and slow process so much worse. Crossing in to Mexico we were lucky to have two experienced travellers with us, who both spoke Spanish. The countries that were to follow – Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua – progressively got hotter and slower, taking anywhere between 1.5 hours to 5.5 hours. Janell handles border crossings for The Pack Track. She is the most organised out of the three when it comes to paperwork and is picking up Spanish phrases a little faster than Stu and Skyla. To cross a border (a bridge over a river in most cases) we have tourist visas, motorbike permits and live animal import/export (that's Skyla). The process involves moving from the immigration and customs queues in one country to get stamps and permit, then moving to the administration buildings of the next country to get more stamps and permits. Sometimes you pay some money. Interestingly no...

Three sore bottoms pulled in to a tropical Cancun at 4:30pm. The Pack Track left the bustling city of Oaxaca on Wednesday, with the goal of checking in to our accommodation in Cancun by 5pm on Friday. That's approximately 1400km in three days. Why the hurry? Glad you asked! Stu's younger brother (Greg) who moved to Canada about 18 months earlier was flying down to spend 4 nights with us. It had been a very eventful, exhausting and at times stressful three days but definitely worth it to see two brothers reunited!! As with every place we'd been in Mexico, we were sad to leave Oaxaca. Within the city itself there are beautiful churches to visit, arts, culture, interesting foods to try and you can lose yourself just walking the streets watching the locals go about their daily tasks. Outside the city and within a 20km radius are ancient ruins dating back to 500 BC. We visited Monte Alban, Dainzu and Lambityeco. The entry price to each site seems to be proportional to the size of...

Janell lay there upside-down calling for help, head resting on a concrete beam which ran along the bottom of the deep gutter, her legs sticking up the steep incline holding up 250kg of bike. The bike was also upside-down with fuel pouring out of the breathing tube. Stuart quickly pulled his bike up and ran to her assistance. He took the weight, enough for Janell to slip out from under the bike and then allow it to fall about 1.5m to the bottom of the gutter. Luckily there was no signs of injury, although Janell was in a bit of shock, holding her broken rear-view mirror and cursing Skyla who was the reason for the emergency stop. So what had lead to this situation? Our stayed in Oaxaca had extended two nights longer than initially intended; this time of course is never wasted as there is always more to see. The reason however, for this delay was slightly complicated, but was essentially caused by not having Janell's motorbike title. We'd waited around long enough in Texas and decid...