THE AMERICAS

20,000 MILES
1985 R80 G/S
1983 R80 ST
13 Countries
6.5 months
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TO US, A MOTORCYCLE HAS ALWAYS BEEN the ULTIMATE SYMBOL OF TRUE FREEDOM. WITH IT, WE COULD GO ALMOST WHEREVER WE WANTED, whenever we wanted.

We started with small trips, just a couple of HOURs OUT OF THE CITY. soon they becAme too short, leaving US day dreaming about riding IN THE SAME DIRECTION for a very long time.

WHY THE AMERICAS?
Matias' parents —Stella and Mario— are Argentinean. They forcefully emigrated to Barcelona after the Coup d'etat in by Videla in 1976. Years after we went back to visit the family but before this trip I only visited a small part of Argentina, and a very small area of Santa Caterina in Brazil. For us, Central and South America were completely unknown to them and as well his parents cultural heritage. Joel had only spent time in Brazil and US in the American continent.

Having the advantage of speaking Spanish and the fact that the whole land mass is connected from Brooklyn to Ushuaia made it an obvious choice, there's no better adventure than to explore the unknown.

SECONDARY ROADS
Right before starting to plan this trip I was in Buenos Aires for a few days. I was walking around for hours, feeling the homogenization of the capitals. I felt that every city wants what the other has, shops, brands, restaurants, music, cars, clothes. In this world of connectivity we see what we lack but it's harder to see what we do, which it's what makes us unique.

In the remote mountains of Peru, this men ride 4 hours each way every time they go to work in Abraham's gold mine.

I thought about it for a while and came to the conclusion: If we wanted to truly understand the individual character of every country and it's people, we were going to have to navigate far from the capitals. The country side, the cultural roots, the unmolested landscapes, have to live outside the fast-paced, homogenized metropolis.

The true character of a country lies in it's people, it's native culture, and this one lives far from the cities.

Utopia, Guatemala. Riding as light as possible and learning off-roading skills can take you to the most incredible places.

SELF-SUFFICIENCY
Part of the challenge that we set up for this trip was to be as self-sufficient as possible. We wanted to be able to be completely independent and not have to rely on accommodation, restaurants, repair and tire shops. In 2012 we took a trip to Toronto from Brooklyn and we experienced how painful can be to wait for someone to change you tire. We waited 6 hours because the guy was 'busy', we said: Never again! So we learned how to change a tire, fix a flat, maintain our bikes and repair and rebuild most of the regular issues of this 1980s BMWs.

Emergency night camping in a mine in Peru, we didn't get to see where we really where until the next morning.

So it became clear that to reach the further parts of every country we would have to adventure ourselves into the more ISolated AREAS which meant we would mostly USE secondary roads. the roads that every working man and woman use every day to move though theIR land.

"after all, people are the salt of the earth."

—WIM WENDERS