At the beginning of 2018, the three of us, Lachie, Scott and myself, Pat, got on a one-way flight from Australia to Chilean Patagonia. All we had were backpacks and 20 hours of Spanish podcasts.

We had finished university a few months back, and before becoming productive members of society, we decided to see what mischief we could get up to in South America. We had a vague idea that buying motorbikes and riding across the continent would be fun, but that was about as far as our planning got.

We’re no strangers to a good time in the outdoors before this trip, with most weekends consisting of surfing, hiking or climbing trips. But last year was a whole other story. After three months of hiking and hitch-hiking down in Patagonia, we were sitting outside a tiny café in El Chalten, Argentina, stealing their Wi-Fi when we finally pulled the trigger. It had taken countless hours of browsing bikes on Horizons Unlimited and ADV Rider, but we were finally about to set off on the cross-continental ride we'd talked about. Now, all we had to do was learn how to ride them.

The Dumbthings crew climbing in Peru.

With no idea about bikes, we were lucky to end up with three dual-sport stallions, a Suzuki DR650, Yamaha WR250R and a Kawasaki KLR650. The lack of knowledge, skills and common sense didn’t dampen our excitement, and we were soon blasting northward in search of winding mountain roads and straight desert highways.

The next 10 months saw us tracing the Andes up Argentina and Chile, doing a lap of Bolivia, losing ourselves in Peru, blasting through Ecuador and finishing up in Columbia. With little to no plan, we had no schedule to hold us back from the side roads and misadventures that often become the most cherished memories. Visa expirations were our only limitation, and even they didn’t always stop us.

However, for us, it wasn’t just a motorbike journey. When we set off at the beginning of 2018, we had no idea what the year had planned for us. We went off in search of adventure, but we came back with so much more. We learned a new language, shared humbling moments with amazing people and explored places we could have only dreamed of previously.

We spent two weeks living with an indigenous community deep in the Amazon, climbed a handful of 5,500m peaks in Peru, froze our butts off camped under the stars at 5°F in Bolivia, and got lost in the desert (twice) in Argentina. We hiked more than 600 miles, rode more than 15,000 miles and spent more than 200 nights camped under the stars. So many of best experiences didn’t involve actually riding the bikes, but none of them could have occurred without their ability to take us off the beaten track, to camp wherever we wanted, to breakdown in the most inconvenient locations and meeting some amazing people as a result.

Sleeping under the stars in Bolivia.

Plenty of mistakes were made along the way, from the utterly stupid (riding the bikes naked on the Salar de Uyuni) to the unlucky (a flat tyre on our second day). But to us, that really captures the essence of travel. It’s a learning experience. Whether you learn about the world, it's people, or just yourself, it is travel's ability to change your perspective that makes it special. It’s by no means a vacation, and it sure as hell would have been easier to jump on a tour bus. But easy isn’t really the point of adventure riding is it?

The crew navigating narrow canyons of South America.

While 2018 may have come to an end and we’ve parted ways with ‘Dozer, Sea Biscuit and Thunder Kitty (our beloved bikes), the adventure is by no means over. We're just now finishing up a two-month jaunt around Mexico and will be each scattering to different corners of the globe for the foreseeable future. But even though it felt like 2018 was as good as it gets, we’re still going to try and top it with the next journey.

With a year or two to regroup and regather, we’re looking at 2020 or 2021 for the next big shebang. The jury is still out but ideas are as varied as attempting to sail around the word, overland Africa, bikepack the middle east, but there’s one that is looking more tempting with every passing day… a multi-year motorbike journey. The route? From the bottom of Africa, up to Europe, across Asia and back down the Americas. Why not?

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