Tim and his KTM Vs. Nature - Ep03
[Music] [Music] hey everyone welcome back to no tears frontiers diaries uh today we have something super special we're going to have a championship match between mother nature and tim and we'll see who wins in the end i think you might already have a sneaking suspicion so it's it's pretty much about the most difficult roads that we've we've been down the most challenging roads and i would say the number one contender that i personally found to be the most difficult was uh when we went through the pass just south of husqvarn oh wascaron pass in peru [Music] yeah that was definitely challenging but so worth it that was one of the most beautiful places we've ever been for sure thankfully we were with another two-up couple on another ktm called the adventure hacks we love them best friends for life um super motivators i don't know if we could have gotten through it without them but uh it was uh a pass south of wascaron on the way to onion i like to call it onion i think it's so a section that cut through the andes that went to a really high altitude which by that point we had already done a multitude of times so we were pretty accustomed to the high altitude yeah but this particular time it had rained uh a lot and so the road just turned to just a mud pit it was just slosh um i think we were about 14 000 feet up which is quite high so in that type of mud you know it was really a struggle hey it was a struggle there's no amount of like there's a lot of debates about which tires are best when when you're in just stew tire tread doesn't really matter when it just kicks up um it just became like a tire slip it was a slick it was just spun and certainly like a racing test it was hard to get traction um but uh we were we were climbing up this pass with we couldn't even turn around at that point in time because the gas we had spent to get where we were our final destination was closer if we could get there we didn't have enough gas to go back but uh with with the motivation of the hacks um [Music] they definitely pushed us through it didn't help that he dropped his bike zero times and why this is my number one contender is because i was just i was just like a fish out of water yeah it was marissa jumped off her foot was still hurt from our power slide in in peru a little bit further north i had torn the ligament in my foot but i had jumped off i was helping push the bike um in that mud like my shoes became like moon shoes i mean huge platforms like lady gaga style extra four inches full of mud walking around like this it was really nasty stuff but we did get to the apex of that nasty muddy it wasn't a road at that point it was just it was it was awful but uh as soon as we start to descend life returned back into me you know we saw the small town what was that was it only on oh i don't know it was a small i don't even know if it's on the map but we saw these lights you know come out and we were all excited because we knew that we had finally made it um even though we made it alive yeah it was night time by that time it was night i mean that's how long we spent up there at the top of that mountain i was ready to pitch a tent and live there and become a llama herder at that point we did see lots of llamas they seemed to be the only other people out there but they weren't people yes you can smell them any reason to not go further even though we we made it well we we we spoiled it we lived through all of these but yeah what would you say the score for that one was i would say nature would be definitely brendan brendan won well he would always win and then nature versus tim yeah i lost by a lot i think the second on our list round two round two would be uh sunny pass oh [Music] if you want it you have it you love it you know it when you hate it you can share it [Music] is [Music] so that's right between lesotho and south africa and it's well known in south africa for being one of the most difficult roads not only is it a lot of switchbacks going up this mountain but it's really really steep and full of these loose rocks all it does is just loose rock you know i mean we i can nev i've been through some crazy stuff before traction is my my number one friend that can either make or break you know my day and we had already gone into lusutu and did a big superman s through the country which was amazing the kingdom of the sky lived up to his name but uh we ended up going down sani pass so gravity you know is an additional force that is is against me yeah and we do have quite a bit of weight yes so we were you know and and all of these oh yeah and you were sick oh i had african tick bite fever yeah i mean i don't know if you can win this one because you were all the odds eating disease oh yeah it was necrosis it was it was negrosis but uh it was gross so so here i am going down literally and physically down the pass sharp turns my my front tire would get chalked up and just loose gravel and then dropped the bike it was a semi-benefit because marissa got to jump off and take some really cool footage of me successfully navigating there was a couple times where you know she would have to trudge her way down to me to help me lift the bike back up but uh yeah lifting the bike up in high altitude is just a killer lifting your bike up when you have a high fever and a fleshy disease is is really hard but uh very beautiful very amazing sooner you know than later it did seem to level back out to somewhere where i can actually spread a smile on my face and not just you know i wasn't in constant fear but i was just don't drop the bike you know and but uh but i think as far as the score goes on that one that's a tough one because we made it nature yeah but nate i dropped the bike a bunch of times yeah it was a it was it was two against one i had a tick bite yeah yeah yeah right nature definitely won that score's not doing too well no there's got to be a winner in here somewhere oh that route that was uh tanzania [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] there was simon right and you know who you are if you're watching this but uh he is from tanzania and he's from arusha and he suggested this awesome path that goes up uh the it goes up to mambo viewpoint um i forget the names of the mountains there but it basically just goes up the side of a mountain there's a side of a mountain that you can crawl up and then there's a road on the back end that you can you can ride up and uh proper road like a proper well proper roads are still you know but uh he said no you can totally do it you know kind of just in in passing so it didn't sound like it was going to be insane i did speak to his father who was also there and he said i don't know man like i wouldn't i wouldn't do that yeah um that was probably the right call because i think it is totally doable two up on a motorcycle this large but we had all of our gear with us and i think that just pushes it over the limit so we we did a nice little loop around mount kilimanjaro which was awesome it was a good teaser for the day successful you know nice gravel and dirt roads beautiful scenery and then we get we we make this turn off and we can see you know this cliff wall in the distance and i'm thinking how is this motorcycle going to get up that that cliff wall like where's this hidden little passage um the the right there was also really cool because it was just a single track sandy path and on the right of it was this little gorge this little 10 foot canyon by 10 foot it was a trench a trench that you ride right next to like feet away and so you know steady carry on the sand there got pretty nasty and i was just hoping that you know it would get better as we started ascending which it did the sand got better sand got better but then the single track did not you know it remained just it was just a donkey trail it was a donkey trail and we saw donkey herders coming down as you know because my bike kept on overheating as we crawled up and so you know we'd take little breaks and pull over into shade you know and these these people walking down with donkeys would look at us like why why are you here this is not you should not be here but uh yeah it got difficult and then it got even extremely more difficult at some sections there's completely nose dived down so steep in sections i mean there were just huge washouts and so it would have to go down there's the washout and then up the other side it's down um it's where kind of like in a an apex of the the side of the ravine so you have to go down and make an immediate right turn and then crawl back up all with like this crazy drop off on your right yeah try to push me backwards yeah that's good i'm gonna gun it let go of everything so [Music] you know and again in the really tough sections anywhere i just have marissa jump off because you know it's just not it's not safe um and she gets cool footage and there was a cliff edge right on the side the whole time but it was beautiful we got to a certain point where we we got above the clouds and so when we looked out it was just this mountain this little cliff view and then just a sea of clouds that went out into the horizon and on another one of our stops to let the the bike cool down a little bit uh you know we're sitting there and i'm exhausted i'm hot i'm sweating you know i take off my jacket and all that it was hot and i'm just like man i don't know simon brother like this was this was pretty pretty pretty extremely difficult you know and i'm sitting there i'm pumping myself up of like you know but you did it no tear you you know you got us you got us up you know just a little bit more a little bit more i don't see how anybody can do this like this was an achievement and like as i'm mentally you know patting myself on the back we hear this little motorcycle start chugging off the side you know and i'm like well it's a tiny motorcycle so they you know it's easier to control but then there's a woman sitting side saddle on it with her baby just loosely strapped in like a handkerchief on her back and you know they just they trot by and they wave and it just crushed all of my excitement that i had had for myself but we finally we made it all the way up to the top we did which was amazing we found a very simon was very correct on the place that we should stay that night it was fantastically beautiful mama viewpoint looked out again to another scenery of you know it was like that thing in the lion king that little oh yeah that little ledge and then africa in the distance and there's cloud coverage and every once in a while a little peak would poke its head out of the clouds and that was amazing i dropped my bike zero times on this crazy crazy route i think this is a success that to me is a success for me and a boat aboard a rider with the mother with her infant on the back yeah they're all winners for all of you guys so i'll take that thing next up i'd say was a double header between between me and nature um in bolivia ooh bolivia so the first full of challenges the first bout was again we were with the adventure hacks awesome but the first bout was when we decided to do the bolivian salt flats [Music] [Music] we wanted to get to the sections where it was this thin layer two millimeters of water that provides this reflection of the sky and anything against it it's just a mirror so you are you're just riding on a mirror and it's insane it only happens at one time of year so we were fortunate we thought for being there at that time of year we're like oh we got this mirror effect it's going to be so great well and it's cool too i mean the salt flats dry are amazing as well they make these really cool hexagonal patterns the little stop signs um until the end of the horizon in every direction that you look it's the largest salt flats on earth yeah you can google bolivian salt flats and then change the view the satellite and it's just this huge white splotch on earth that you can see from from space and while you're in the middle of that little white splotch you can see from space you can close your eyes and you're not going to hit you're not you're you're flat you're level you're not going to hit anything you know you can close your eyes for two minutes you almost hit brendan that yeah but that was just pure stupidity yeah that was that was not smart but uh no but it is amazing out there and it's very disorienting you don't really know which direction to go in yeah like i use offline google maps but you can't really plug in any points because there are no points all you're really following are like other people's tire tracks and you can only hope that they knew where they were going um you just threw the directions you pick a cardinal direction and or you know like between the handlebars i said well there's a mountain way over there between the thumbs keep it in between the thumbs you know um and then we finally found the the section where there was a little bit of water on it and it turned into just utopia it was just writing on a [Music] it was dream it was like riding through heaven on the clouds it just looked and felt like there were clouds everywhere around us it was a surreal experience some of the coolest footage we've gotten on this whole old journey um so amazing but along with heaven was was hell because i think any we're from chicago i think anybody from chicago knows that salt is bad for your vehicle and writing and nothing but salt water and slush is there's it's going to erode any electronics any you know any part that's greased won't be greased anymore you know um and we were we would ride staggered with the hats and they would go up front and it got really nasty in sections where that's the last place in the world there i'd want to drop my bike but on one of the times when i was i had overtaken the hacks they pulled up to me and they pulled me over and said pull over pull over pull over and i looked and my tail pipe had completely crossed it over with with salt leaving just a little tiny exhaust hole for it and then as i examined the rest of my bike i could just it was just this it was like the salt was a living creature and it was growing around the motorcycle yeah it was taking over and crystallizing everywhere it was it was nuts and we originally planned on camping somewhere out in the middle of nowhere one of these they call them islands even though there's no water well except whatever but uh yeah but as soon as i looked at my motorcycle yeah we and i looked at each other and we said yeah we're not we got to get out of this it's motorcycle death out there it will kill your bike um thankfully i did not drop my bike in any of this madness or else i don't think you did get it into a big puddle i did about three feet deep of like the saltiest water on the planet yeah brendan that wasn't good was ahead of me and he had made it to dry land the salvation where where we needed to be and he dismounted his bike and he started running at me waving his hands i was listening to like axel rose welcoming me to the jungle so i didn't really hear anything that was going on around me but uh as he's waving his hands i finally slow down and right before i stop my front tire just submerges and three feet of the sludge and you know i unclicked my senna i was like what what did you want to tell me he's like i want to tell you don't go this way but this is bad it was way too late but uh we got you out of that i had to push you out of that puddle i took out my multi-tool and started yanking chunks of salt off like teeth sugar coming off we got to a salt motel that had a car wash and we i spent two hours washing my bike and i still i only got 75 of the salt off um you definitely messed the bike up from that salt yeah well it eroded my kickstand sensor which is a whole other story yes but uh and also the radiator that which we didn't find out until we landed in africa yeah so that was so i don't know who won that one nature or tim i think it was a tie i think so too because you did really drop the bike we survived the elements the bike had a little bit of issues but overall we had an incredible experience teamwork yes yes that's a bit of stupidity yeah we made it but so yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna say that so i think round two of bolivia would have been the lagooners route [Music] so [Music] do [Music] and the south west section on the border of chile of chile yes beautiful amazing unbelievable like sci-fi landscape seismic scenery that you think of like yellowstone it's just amazing and these flamingos that live in the super saline lakes out there smells pretty bad when you get to these mineral lakes but uh super colorful they're pinks and reds and blues very high altitude writing through there the problem was remote it was very remote there were no gas stations no stores no towns i mean it's part of like water area there's places to camp that you can get to but there's no gas there so we had to carry all of our gasoline all of our water all of our food for three or four four by fours paradise and yes right on the edge of true recycle ability i think because of the sand yeah and but it was it was absolutely amazing but once once you get into these again it was like the the the salt flats there's not just like one place to go you just kind of had south road per se yeah there's but there's where other large vehicles have tore up the the ground and people do like to travel down the same routes or so this beautiful scenery isn't all just torn up by one guy driving one tire track to the left you know throughout the year but uh that's really sandy and again it's just this hidden camouflaged you're on compact stuff and then snap you know you're not um you get into these trenches that you have to pick one this channel that is you know a foot high and like the width of it is too narrow to be like oh well let me just change lanes you know you'd have to like stop turn your tire and gas it to try to you know make it over this mound always an adventure i was just on the edge of my seat the whole time i was so nervous that we were going to crash at any moment because of the sand because we did it we did yes and again we were with the hacks there were our south american counterparts and he dropped they were superheroes zero times he he was riding down one of these tracks and he got all squirrely and he was about to fall and you know i pulled up next to him like nice and slow brother take it easy you know and i guess it you know like james dean and you know 10 feet later i i lost momentum and i fell over and he pulls up and looks down at me like the pathetic man child i am and had to hop off and help me lift the bike back up but uh yeah that was another one where you know you drop the bike once it sucks and you got to pick it up you drop the bike two times it starts eating at your mentality and your physical abilities it wears away your confidence it's high altitude it's hard to pick up that bike and in sand i mean your your your feet like half of your yeah or cushioning half of your you know energy is being taken away because your feet are sliding such loose material yeah it was very difficult so who would you say won that one even though we did make it out alive oh that woke me yeah that was i would say nature won but i still think it was i would fight that fight again and happily lose all of these yeah i would i would they're all worth it it was absolutely amazing i think my track record overall it's not very good isn't the most impressive but nature definitely won you have to watch out for nature for sure you know and you know and i i do realize that some people might say well you're you're overloaded you got you got too much stuff um you know but i do want to make the point that we put ourselves out there yes it was difficult but man we we saw that we saw that hill on a cliff and we climbed it and we had a smile we saw you know the the laguna route and and the difficulties and the barrenness and and we rode through and yes it was difficult but we got to the other side and it was it was high fives well i wasn't always smiling it wasn't over the entire fives but i did want to quit on occasion but it is you know i mean battles that we we took and we learned from and it was a great experience definitely and i i wouldn't trade my motorcycle for for anything smaller um it's just i just want people to know that you can you can do it it may be difficult but you know uh you're not restricted to just 250cc motorcycles you know there is i mean i'm sure i did things on this ktm that ktm would be like we will not cover that if you do that we are not going to you know cover you but sure but i think you know it just deepens our respect for nature but also allows us to keep the courage to go out there and do these things um because it is worth it in the end it's just so beautiful and amazing yes we wouldn't trade it in for the world so you know again a horrible stupid cliche but you know it's not about how many times you fall over it's about how many times you get back up you know and yeah and uh i'm glad i'm glad that we've gone through what we've gone through and you know it makes us excited for future difficulties there's been plenty of times where in the middle of the road i've said why are we here we need to try at all costs and never find ourselves in the situation yeah and then the following week we're like oh my god we're in the same situation you know but but it's all been been very exciting and uh worth every worth every drop well i hope you liked this video if you did please give us a thumbs up and hit the subscribe button below and we will see you next time peace [Music] everybody [Music] you
2021-05-04 17:30
