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Hard Enduro Paradise – MICHES

After a while of riding Honda XR 650 and Africa Twin 1100 it was a damn fine feeling to mount a 300cc motorcycle. I recently had 2 amazing experiences onboard the Hondas in respectively the Dominican Republic and Colombia but man how fun it is to ride Enduro! This shit never gets old!

I took this photograph with my Mavic Pro 2 drone overlooking the small village called Arroyo Santiago and further in the background it’s hard to see, but that’s Miches. Miches is a village with somewhere in the area of 25,000 inhabitants. So although we didn’t ride in Miches – riding here is referred to as riding Miches. The photograph speaks a lot for itself and these are the kind of mountains that would get any enduro rider out of bed early Sunday morning. I had seen posts about these hills a few times in the past and knowing that these magical mountains existed so close to Punta Cana made me so curious to go try it out.

So I asked some of my enduro buddies if they’d be keen to go and they of course were… lucky me, one of our friends lent me his Husqvarna 300 and off we were! It was raining on off the entire day, my friends were falling non-stop (mainly Lucas and Maxim, Belford kept his cool) and we had so much fun. I of course brought my GoPro and Drone and after a day of editing and 100 liter coffee, this was the result:

I don’t know what a video like this makes you feel, but for me – combining it with my recent adventures on the Honda XR (see those videos here) I feel like I might be onto something. We all know that I love to travel, ride and make videos – and I think I need to explore a new format that combines it all. A format that I haven’t seen before and a format that would be super interesting to try. I’m basically thinking: Hard Enduro Adventure Traveling…

There’s a few people out there that truly inspire me in terms of content creation and one of them is an Australian called Adam Riemann. He runs a super cool YouTube channel and some of his travel videos have been mind-blowing – check this one out below and tell me if that doesn’t leave you inspired to go ride.

Another creator I recently came across – thanks to my buddy Klaus Sørensen – is a skier who makes some seriously cool skiing videos. I was especially amazed by the level of storytelling and map animations. Tools, I’m still to learn. It makes such a difference and the closest I’ve come to map animations are the services relive and mult.dev provide.

Last – but definitely not least – there’s everyone’s female motorcycle travel vlogger darling by the name of Noraly. Noraly is Dutch and runs an incredibly popular YouTube channel by the name of Itchy Boots. Her editing is simple and easy to digest – and maybe that’s part of her youtube success. Her videos are great, she’s charming, speaks very well and in many languages and she does what most people dream about… she lives her dream! In case you haven’t heard of her, here’s one of her recent videos:

Another – and this will be the last for now – inspiring creator is of course Pol Tarres. This dude decided at some point to leave racing to focus on content creation. Not sure if this was his thoughts though, but that’s what it looks like. He’s been able to produce some seriously cool videos with his team of videographers/sponsors and here’s one that I really thought was amazing.

Needless to say, I’m inspired to continue what I’m doing. I’m inspired to continue exploring, riding motorcycles, filming and editing (the last, not so much…). I’m currently on the Dominican Republic and looking at putting together a demo-project. It doesn’t have to be a huge expedition but if I could get out there for maybe 2-3 days/nights and live the Hard Enduro Adventure experience I’d be stoked. On my mind is of course the big mountains in the interior of the country, the borderland to Haiti and Pico Duarte (the highest point of the country). All I need is some capable riders/friends (doing it alone is too risky), some planning, some bikes and a backpack full of tools, parts and camping gear.

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