If you thought that the Transpantaneira was challenging, you certainly don’t want to ride the road between San Matias and San Ignacio, it is a 300 km highway to hell. Deep, sandy stretches everywhere… not only on the straight road but also in curves which ended pretty bad.
I almost made it and thought already about enjoying an ice cold beer at the hotel bar. 30 minutes before arriving in town I was too confident and went too fast into a curve while I did not see a deep patch of sand in the middle of the road coming up. I could not react anymore and was directly driving through, bringing my bike out of line and straight into the so called “arena” at the far right, which is very deep sand. I could not do anything anymore and saw the crash already coming… I was driving around 50 – 60 km/h when I kissed the ground. Ready to impact, I was bracing myself, took a deep breath and contracted all my muscles in a natural reflex. The bike was almost falling on me and my visor of the helmet said “hello” to the sandy “arena”, leaving some ugly scratches behind.
After not even two seconds on the ground, I knew I had to react since my petrol containers might have been damaged and leaking petrol. This was fortunately not the case but the wind shield and the headlight protector got totally smashed, leaving just some broken pieces behind. Furthermore, the support of the side panels which I just repaired two days ago got totally out of shape due to the shock and the panels were more or less hanging loosely attached to it. I urgently had to fix them in San Ignacio… Luckily I was watching the Youtube video regarding a tequnique on how to pick up heavy bikes and I managed easily to put it back on the wheels (I guess the adrenaline was helping). Thereby, I got into the knees, took the bike by the back- and front handle and pushed it with all my strength back on the wheels. I immediately pushed the bike off the road since I knew that cars would be going way too fast on this highway of hell.
While collecting the broken pieces, I saw a car coming by and by surprise I met again the Brazilian father and son who I met in the morning at the same hotel in San Matias, doing a road trip together. They stopped immediately and were giving me first aid, some pain killers, muscle relaxing agents, cold water and a patch on the back (the father also had an accident a while ago and suffered even more pain. He gave me his last doses which brought me pain-free to my final destination). Not enough that I had an accident, a black wasp was flying into my jacket and stung me two times into my neck. Great, what a day!!!!!! Pumped up with adrenaline, I removed my clothes in order to see if I might be more seriously injured. Luckily I only had a couple of bruises at my shoulder, scratches at my elbow and leg, a bit blood but nothing really serious.
The two guys offered me a lift into town which I refused but not before checking the engine still runs which was gladly the case. I got hit by reality and thousands of thoughts were running through my mind, what in case this would have ended more seriously and in a remote area with no-one but me. I guess, this was also the reason why I wanted to make my way to San Ignacio myself, just to proof I can do it without the help of others.
I was astonishingly in a good shape and decided to treat me well for the next two days and stayed in a 5 star hotel, called the Mision. An amazing hotel with a swimming pool in the middle of the courtyard, simply a perfect place for recovering.
In the evening, I decided to go into town where hundreds of people were celebrating their country’s national day. A good opportunity to eat some street food and I went to a popular burger place as it seemed. Since I was really hungry I ordered two burgers and ate them with pleasure. Back in the hotel I went immediately to bed since I was literally dead. I did not know what was waiting for me next. The nightmare of this day just did not find an end and a few hours later, I woke up in the middle of the night. My stomach started to be painful and my hands and feet were starting to get itchy. I had to go to the toilet… One minute later my whole body started to get extremely itchy and sweat was running down my body like the Iguacu waterfalls. I felt miserable and wanted to die! I got up and saw a sick man in the mirror with red eyes and now also itchy and thick lips… I realised I had a serious food poisoning and was looking for my medication which I could not find immediately. I could not stand up very long before it knocked me out and I was laying on the floor… resting there for a couple of minutes I got luckily slowly better again. I took a shower and fell into bed again. What a nightmare!!!!! What a horrible and unfortunate day!!!!!!
