I am staying in the famous La Paz Casa de Ciclista; perhaps best described as an open home for travelling cyclists (the homeless?). There aren’t that many in the world but virtually every single cyclist that travels the Andes seems to pass through here. Over the years, it has housed an eclectic mix of various characters from all walks of…
Exhausted after hauling my bike around the Ausangate circuit, it was only appropriate that I should immediately set off to Bolivia without rest. This time in the fine company of Swiss cyclist Rachele who midway through her South American travels decided to turn her adventures into a long distance cycle tour. After strapping a couple of gasoline…
“Is this fun?” I think to myself stopping briefly to gasp on Ausangate’s thin air and ponder the value of my efforts. Stopping means no forward progress so I quickly get back to work and continue to haul my laden bike up the steep grassy slopes. I feel slightly dizzy due to my lack of good acclimatisation but, at last,…
Whilst hiking through the jungle recently I stumbled across some rather pleasing looking buildings. Even though photos of this iconic structure have been published an inordinate number of times and 8 versions of almost identical photos probably exist somewhere on the web, I can’t quite help myself. Llama interlude More photos of MP With two days of travel effort it…
Keep going you lazy ****. Just find the damn groove. Don’t blow yourself up by going too fast but equally don’t stop altogether; find the sustainable pace that’s not overwhelmingly painful that allows you to keep making progress. Even if you’re hardly moving it’s better than stopping and making no progress whatsoever. If you know you can’t…
I skipped 20 kilometres. So what? You may well ask. Out of 30000km (or whatever on earth it is), who really cares? Surely doing 99.99% is good enough? Not for a long distance cyclist it isn’t; skipping even small parts of a trip is a surprisingly hard pill to swallow. Due to the same stubborn mentality that enables him…
Famous for its healing properties, ‘purging’, psychedelic visions and mental revelations, I headed back into the jungle near Iquitos to explore the notorious ayahuasca ‘medicine’. Although I had no particular ailment to cure, my interest had been sparked by hearing of the positive life altering experiences of others. A reputed retreat centre was chosen rather than try a random…
Unsatisfied with the shortness of my trip (!!) on the 30th August I decided to head North and fly out of Lima in completely the wrong direction. The Amazon jungle is a significant part of the South American continent so I had felt uncomfortable about the idea of skipping it. The seed had been sown when passing the turn…
Huaraz is a great place to rest and restock. However it has a problem. It is right by the monumentally distracting Cordilleras Blanca and Huayhuash. A short planned stay of a few days can easily turn into a few weeks. Throw in an inconvenient bout of suspected pneumonia (self-diagnosed) and of course the standard tedious upset tummy and suddenly…
Possibly one of my best hikes ever. With some reasonable navigation skills and experience, the opportunities for deviating from the main routes and exploring Huayhuash’s mind blowing landscapes is very extensive. Here is The Third Circuit…