It Was a Good Plan!

Mark Stevens

Description

Sometimes you need a dream, and journeying the length of America's longest road is as dreamy as it gets.Attempting to complete the Pan American Highway during 2020 was, well, ultimately quite extraordinary!In October of 2019, Mark and his partner Selly headed for Patagonia with huge doses of excitement, just a little naivety and zero hindsight. Waiting for them were volcanoes, glaciers, an abundance of wildlife and enduring friendships.Also waiting were riots, breakdowns, a comical Caribbean island robbery and a not so comical fire, hurricanes and the occasional near-death experience. Oh, and the small matter of a global pandemic trapping them inside a Nicaraguan jungle-filled volcano crater, for several months.But then a twist of fate introduced them to 'Mocha', an adorable stray dog who won their hearts and insisted upon commandeering Mark's pannier. Her escape from Central America and back to England will prove just as gruelling as for her human companions.Sometimes, when the world spins upside down, the plans just get better!

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Memoir

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781803138657
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Mark Stevens has been riding motorcycles for almost forty years and in over fifty countries. A PADI Staff Instructor, his love for scuba diving and the underwater world is matched by his passion for exploring the lands above. A twenty-eight-year career, served in the Royal Air Force, has taken him from Alaska to Australia. He lives in rural Norfolk, England with his fiancée, Selly; two dogs; two motorcycles and several world maps!






Copyright © 2022 Mark Stevens

The moral right of the author has been asserted.


Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.


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ISBN 978 1803138 657

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.


Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd



In memory of my dear departed brother. Ian, you may not be able to read this story, but your constant inspiration for me to live ‘two lives’ contributed vastly to making this happen.


Acknowledgements
Sincere thanks go first to my wonderfully versatile and resilient fiancée. Over many thousands of miles Selly has experienced the best and the worst of motorcycling, yet she considers herself no more than a ‘passenger’ sharing and enjoying my dreams. I wish I could convince her otherwise. She might not be sat at the front of the bike, but has endured equally all that I have and is ‘a biker’ in my books (excuse the pun!).
To all those who feature in these pages, thank you so much for contributing to our adventure and wonderful memories. In particular and with good fortune, we thank those of you that we found ourselves stranded with. As a pandemic locked down the world, you turned our 2020 around. We consider ourselves incredibly lucky to have landed where we did, and not just survived this turbulent year, but had it made so very special.
Many of my earliest and happiest childhood memories are of fun-filled holidays abroad. Coach trips to the south of France, living in tents, or flights to the sun-blessed Mediterranean. My brother and I found these trips magically exciting. I believe a seed was planted and certainly geography became a favourite subject at school! I owe a heartfelt thank you to my parents for filling our young lives with so many adventures. My parents often juggled two or three jobs to make these affordable and I now realise how lucky we were, that they made these family holidays a priority for us all.
Final thanks go to you, the readers. Modern living doesn’t leave much room for relaxation, for reading. I sincerely hope you enjoy this book and I sincerely hope it inspires even just one person to enjoy creating an adventure from one of your own cherished dreams!


Contents
Prologue
Those Early Days
Chapter One
The Dream Begins
Chapter Two
We’re Off
Chapter Three
Patagonia Calling
Chapter Four
Into the Andes
Chapter Five
Crossing the Atacama and Altiplano
Chapter Six
Bracing Bolivia
Chapter Seven
Problems in Plightful Peru!
Chapter Eight
The Way to Machu Picchu
Chapter Nine
The Recovery
Chapter Ten
Ecuador-Bound
Chapter Eleven
Colombia and the Darién Gap
Chapter Twelve
Cornered in Central America
Chapter Thirteen
Escape to the Caribbean
Chapter Fourteen
Finding Paradise
Chapter Fifteen
Almost a Holiday!
Chapter Sixteen
Heading for Lockdown
Chapter Seventeen
The Family Grows!
Chapter Eighteen
Hitting the Coast
Chapter Nineteen
Escaping Central America
Chapter Twenty
Taking Flight
Epilogue
Not Quite the End!






Prologue
Those Early Days
A story would ordinarily start at the very beginning, I was once taught. Wanting to share a little background as to how I ended up riding on the Pan-American Highway with this Italian sweetheart, I offer you a condensed love story. For in truth, the beginning of this book was an innocent dalliance of hearts, between a seventeen and twenty-three-year-old, over thirty years prior. I really won’t be offended if you skip straight to Chapter One, though!
In our youth, the light-headed excitement of seemingly being paid to hit the beach was infectious. At least those were our feelings on that scorching hot day back in July 1989. The crammed public bus had several stops along this eight-mile stretch of Medi terranean sand and it really didn’t matter which one the four of us alighted at, for beach shacks, tanned bodies and warm water seemed to stretch out endlessly. It was a Saturday afternoon and Sardinia’s nearby capital had practically emptied to help fill the entire length and width of available space. There must have been 80,000 tanned beach lovers, but I was about to meet just one that would, decades later, turn my life around. Of course, we weren’t literally being paid to swim, drink and throw frisbees at each other, but a weekend away from the nearby air base had to be exploited to the full. Life in the Royal Air Force had had its pros and cons, but deploying to Sardinia a couple of times a year felt epic, and falling in love with this island was effortless. Requiring much more effort was any conversation; armed with a well-thumbed phrase book, an eighties ‘Boogie Box’ and a cheeky grin, I hoped to break the ice with those unfortunate enough to endure close proximity to four deathly white foreigners.
I’ve often wondered how my life would be now if we hadn’t squeezed our collection of four large towels, music, Panama hats and bags into that particular spot. It had looked much bigger from a distance, and picking our way through the maze of colourful beach paraphernalia revealed that most of the sand was already occupied by empty towels, the owners no doubt away enjoying the sparkling blue sea. Squeezing in and trying not to overly intrude, my eyes fell upon my new and nearest neighbour, a beautiful young girl either pretending to be asleep, behind her stylish sunglasses, or actually asleep under the sun’s mid-afternoon rays. For me, in that lingering moment, she was simply as pretty as a girl could be, with long dark hair, deep Mediterranean tan and a clearly wonderful figure. I just knew this first image would be a lasting one. I actually felt my stomach flutter and my heart skip; really, can love at first sight actually exist?
I made a fuss of arranging my stuff and from the sanctuary of my own, though fake, sunglasses, tried to see if our arrival had elicited any small reaction. I just wanted the opportunity to smile and say hello. OK, maybe she was playing it cool, or truly was asleep, or was just wishing I would go away! The four of us hit the water, joking around, throwing balls and frisbees and striking up a game with two female Italians, who humoured our dismal language skills with unhidden giggles. Leaving the water revealed these were also our neighbours, owners of the remaining towels and clearly with Miss Beautiful, who was now definitely awake and in my imaginative mind, seemingly happy to acknowledge our (read, ‘my’!) presence.
She introduced herself as Selly and her companions were one of her five older sisters and a college friend. In truth, Selly was a nickname. Her real name was Selen but it was rarely used by anybody. We laughed and joked into the early evening, played Guns N’ Roses, enjoyed shared smiles and flipped endlessly through the phrase book (‘translating’ smartphones were still waiting to be invented!) to learn what we could of each other’s lives. Selly loved and studied art, especially painting, could enjoy everything from rock to classical music, had read many of the great scholarly works and wanted desperately to travel, but then dropped a bombshell: she had a dislike of motorbikes. She hadn’t actually sat on one, definitely didn’t want to ride on one and didn’t yet know I had ridden my very quick sports bike, quite quickly, down to Sardi