“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,…
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…
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…
It can be complicated to go after what we truly want so it was impressive to meet someone who has swum against the current for a consistently long period of time to fulfill their vision. Charlie Good of Llanganuco Mountain Lodge (introduced through the legendary mutual friend Steven Ruhl) gave up his safe career with…
After reading about Paul’s experience on his route between Cajamarca and Cajabamba (he and his friend were detained by mistrusting villagers for 18 hours in Santa Rosa) it was with some doubt that cycling the dirt road via Jesus was a good idea. However I had the good will of the ‘teniente’ in Cachachi and I could…