It is rarely a couple of loose bolts.

Dec 1

After a nice quiet night and a great sleep, we ate breakfast a tiny restaurant that served great eggs with grilled cheese sandwiches. We thought tostados was toast, but grilled cheese was an ok upgrade. I remembered that I had to tighten a couple of bolts, and to my surprise the one loose bolt in the skidplate was actually broken off, inside the frame insert.

Hmmm, how am I going to get that out? I asked Frank if he had a drill, which he did, but no metal drill bits only masonry bits. There was a small hardware store just down the street so I set off in search of drill bits, I forgot to ask Frank how to say "drill bits" in Spanish, so once at the store the game of charades was on. Luckily they had a set of bits hanging on the wall and through some pointing I communicated that I needed metal bits not the wood bits I had pointed at. The center punch was a little harder to act out, the store owner was very patient and we narrowed it down to “punto”, but he did not have any so he gave me a nail. Dad would be proud, makeshift tools are his specialty and some of that training has stuck. I managed to center punch the bolt and drill it out. Meanwhile Frank had gone down the street to the Machine Shop to see if they had an easy-out, although he did not know the Spanish translation of “easy-out”. To my surprise he came back with the shop owner Henry, now this is service, he looked at the situation and started chattering in Spanish. Frank translated and then Henry left to get supplies, this was going to be interesting I thought.

Henry returned quickly with a handful of bolts and a socket set, but no easy out or taps. He explained enthusiastically that he had made these bolts special for the Police bikes. The police ride Kawasakis and apparently they vibrate out bolts so Henry came up with a solution to make slightly oversized stainless steel bolts to thread into the aluminum frame. He figured it should work on a BMW as well, sound logic I suppose and in about 5 minutes the skid plate was securely mounted, but possibly never to be removed again. Luckily I don’t have to remove the skid plate to change the oil like on the 800’s. Henry would not take any payment, but only wanted a Souvenir of Canada, we have him a couple of stickers that we usually give to children and a loonie. We snapped a picture and said our goodbyes with a handshake and a “Muchas Gracias Senior”.  The serendipitous thing about this whole repair was that Frank was the perfect translator, he knew of the machine shop down the street but had never met the owner and somehow managed to find him on a Sunday when the shop is closed. Amazing.


(L-R) Frank, Myself, Henry

Now it was time to make some miles, we repacked the gear and headed off in a Westerly direction, I say that only because the GPS for some reason would not display the map for his section of the country. The paper maps were not much help either, so we just looked at the larger picture of the country and knew we needed to go West...ish. The route wound its way through a National Park that was being enjoyed by many people, I suppose  because it was Sunday there were more people out and about. There were good road signs that helped us navigate our way to Santo Domingo without any maps, we pit stopped here for the night. The next morning before we knew it we could see the Pacific ocean beyond the beach town of Pedernales. The terrain has changed as well from lush tropical jungle to a more arid desert –like area. There are cactus and other shrubs that remind us of Southern Arizona.


The town  of Pedernales itself seemed more like a fishing village than a beach resort town. The main streets were either paved or brick but the side streets were mostly rough dirt, there were a few nice looking Hotels but overall the town looked tired. The Malecon was well planned and there would be lots of room for vendors and tourists during peak season, currently it is the off season so it is not very busy at all. We stopped to take a picture and a Naval officer in a car stopped to warn us that this was a “Red” zone. Which means that it is a high robbery or theft area. I was a little shocked at this as we were on the main beach, but none the less we heeded the warning and promptly got out of there. We were not impressed with the town anyway.

First time on the Pacific Coast this trip.

Riding South along the coast was interesting, we had read about some of the best beaches being in this area and the new concrete highway made it an easy ride. The Ecuadorian infrastructure has been getting alot of attention in the last year or so, the Presidente has been opening up the country to larger economies of the world like China and Russia, allowing them to come into the country to conduct business, but not without a hefty entry fee. The Chinese have paid something like $2bln USD and Russia about the same. The Presidente has been using this money to build much needed infrastructure. There is also a plan to build a super-highway across the Ecuador to Brasil, whichwould shave 21 days off of the shipping  route from Brasil to China. The goods would be trucked across Ecuador and then shipped across the Pacific. Very progressive thinking for a small country, with some big neighbors.

We were somewhat surprised to see large condo projects seemingly in the middle of nowhere along the coast, no town, no services, just a beautiful coastline and nothing else. As we passed through some of the towns we noticed a fair bit of this happening there as well, and by the time we reached Canoas and Bahia de Coraquez we were in full on expat territory. We seen this huge bridge that was calling us to cross it and half way across we could see a Hotel with a Canadian flag waving. This looked like a friendly place to stop for the day, and the next, and part of the third.