Closing in on the 4890 metres summit of Punta Olimpica, The Cordillera Blanca Range, Peru

I wake to a harsh light spilling into my tent. As I peer out into the night there's a glare of torchlight and the shape of a figure just discernible through the gloom, shuffling towards me. I take a glance at my watch - it's 3 am. The light relents as a dirtied face appears at the tent flap. There are gaps in his teeth and a smear of grime across his forehead. He grunts whilst his roaming eyes appraise me and my belongings. I poke my head out of the inner tent to greet the stranger and meet a millisecond of disbelief followed by the biggest sinking feeling of my life - in his hand is a revolver. The clip is half out and displaying exactly four shiny gold bullets. He inserts the clip into the gun and uses the weapon to beckon me out of my tent. In the dead of night, miles from the nearest town, alone in rural Peru, heart slamming into my chest wall - I follow.

Two weeks before red and white flags flapped in a light breeze as I pedalled through a molten stream of traffic and harried pedestrians sloshing through Lima's clamorous streets. The apparent outpouring of national pride over independence day was not all it seemed - flags on public buildings and businesses over the independence weekend are legally required in Peru and those that don't feel sufficiently Peruvian to display the national strip pay a fine. My two weeks in Lima had been spent writing for magazines, visiting tropical disease experts and a community TB project, dancing, more dancing, engrossing myself in the Olympics on the tele and couchsurfing. The Games were still in mid sway in my home country but I was done with city living and ready for the hills.

Between spells of volleyball and table tennis on TV I had been engrossed in my map trying to decide how I was going to get to country 32 - Ecuador. At one stage my plan was to load my bike onto a self built Balsa wood raft and row down a tributary of the Amazon, the adventure I eluded to in my last post, but there were too many obstacles to overcome - the plan is on hold. Eventually a befittingly titled mountain pass caught my eye - Punta Olimpica or 'The Olympic Peak' - if I couldn't watch the Olympics in my home country then this would have to do. It promised to be an epic climb up to 4890 metres and the pass traversed the venerated Cordillera Blanca - the highest mountain range on earth outside the Himalayas. I would get up close and personal with Huascaran - Peru's highest peak, and afterwards it would be a freestyle through Peru's mountainous back country - known locally as La Sierra.

I zipped along the coast to the soundtrack of "GRINGO!" - Peruvians suffer from a sort of 'gringo tourettes' which comes with a silly grin. Soon I met my junction to the hills, the new road was immediately swallowed up by a dense field of sugar cane. Several hours later I was spat out into chili growing country - the hills were orange and iridescent with the drying vegetables. The road climbed continuously from near sea level to over 4000 metres, crossing the Cordillera Negra. The ascent was paved but whilst my legs coped well, my bike suffered and I had seven broken spokes in three days - the salty sea air had probably inflicted the damage. But Peru offered a chance to redeem my lost time through Lorry Surfing. It was a game I played in Ethiopia - a slow moving truck crawls past you up the incline and, with a combination of luck and skill, you grab onto the back and your legs get a break for as long as your arm can take the strain.

Chili country

In the evenings I sometimes joined Peruvians to watch TV in restaurants, one of which had a frowning Jesus and crucifix on one wall and a photo of a pouting model in a g-string decorating a calender on the other. Peruvians might seem outwardly demure but they enjoy a bit of titillation as much as anyone. From about six every night the most popular TV show in Peru begins - 'The war of Girls and Boys' - from what I can gather it's a rowdy competition between a clique of sexy, gyrating girls in hot pants and a posse of tanned, peck juddering hunks. Nobody looks particularly Peruvian and regardless of the outcome of each round, the girls launch into an explicit display of booty shaking to dance music whilst the boys whoop and throw in some pelvic thrusts in response. Meanwhile the young and the elderly throughout Peru are glued to their screens.

Eventually I hit the Cordillera Blanca and began the climb up to Punta Olimpica, past glaciers where huge chunks of ice broke free, fell and smashed into rocks below, past frozen waterfalls and past the snow covered colossus of Huascaran. The civil engineer must have been on some strong medication when he or she planned a route across this range. After a month on the coast I once again had to pedal through the pounding headache of altitude sickness, but the views of Huascaran eased the pain - next to me was the highest point in all of the tropical regions on our planet, and one with a violent past. On the 31st of May 1970 an earthquake rocked this region and an avalanche half a mile wide and a mile long rushed down the side of Huascaran, burying nearby towns and killing more than 20,000 people.

Huascaran

Riding in the shadows of glaciers

After roughing it I was craving a bed and decided to chance my luck by asking at a village church where a cheery bunch of Italian missionaries were there to greet me. Without even finishing my well rehearsed request I was ushered inside and given a tour, offered a shower and guided to the dinner table. Over the meal a young missionary enquired

"Are you a Catholic?"
"I'm afraid not" I replied
"But you are a Christian?"
"Oh yes"

Yes! YES! What the hell was I thinking? I'm not sure why I didn't just confess to my secular ways instead of unashamedly delivering a barefaced lie to God's dedicated flock, but I suspect my brain had been bypassed - I blame my rumbling stomach and my worn out legs. Together they colluded and, in some sort of internal mutiny fuelled by the paranoid vision of another night of noodles in my tent, they had managed to power my lips and vocal cords.

Everyone stands, turns to face the Crucifix and begins to voice a prayer in unison. Crap. I don't know the words. They'll find me out for sure. OK, relax, relax. Just mime or mumble or something. Then silence. Everyone is conversing internally with the Lord, so am I. Please God don't let them ask where I go to church or my favourite bible passage. And don't send me to hell for lying to Christians. Some holy call and response stuff follows, I feign solemn ecclesiastical meditation as best I can, wishing it over. The sign of the cross is almost my undoing as I go right instead of left. Son of God before the Holy Ghost you idiot!

We sit and dig into soup followed by two potatoes and lettuce. These Christians don't eat much, I think, although I'm not too sure what I had expected. I suppose I thought that missionary status aside, being Italian they may have got round to annexing a pizzeria onto the nave of the church. Alas there is not an anchovy, a slab of focaccia or even a clump of fettuccine in sight. Being British and thus eternally afraid of appearing rude, I opt not to ask for more, even though I usually consume about twice as much grub as a non-cyclist and by the looks of them, eight times as much as an Italian missionary. Only one of the bunch doesn't fit the skinny mould - he's enormous - it's perplexing. To stave off hunger I try to figure out why. Perhaps he's just arrived, I theorise. Perhaps he's been here a good while but was previously the fattest man on earth and had to be airdropped into Peru by chopper flying priests. Perhaps after one too many lettuce heavy meals he resorted to eating a Peruvian choir boy or a less dedicated missionary and nobody has noticed.

After dinner my stomach and legs team up once again. Somehow my digestive system has gotten wind of the fried chicken place a few doors down from the parish and has convinced my legs to take action. On the pretence of getting supplies for tomorrow, I'm off to top up on calories. I duck into the restaurant and swiftly order a piece of chicken the size of at least two of the missionaries and devour with gusto. Hood up and I'm out, I think I've made it without being spotted and deemed, rightfully, an ungrateful and greedy liar. I'm full of guilt and chicken. The chicken was good though, maybe even worth a little hellfire. The next night I spot another parish and give an assured knock. Again the priest shows me to my room, asking  
"And will you join us later for food and prayer?"
"Of course I will" I respond, adding, in English, "And God bless you father".
Hell hell hell, I'm going to hell.

God's wrath not yet evident, I wave goodbye and pedal into La Sierra. The last team of generous and thoughtful missionaries had noticed holes in my socks and I left with a welcome bag of new clothes and food. I would need lots of the latter - Peru was about to kick my ass...


At a glance the graph above could represent the heart tracing of a patient about to head to the mortuary or the polygraph of a British politician. In fact this is a graph of altitude verses distance from the Peruvian coast to Cajamarca, the city from where I'm writing this post - a distance of just over 1000 kilometres, most of which was on dirt roads. From hot tropical valley floors Peru's roads flung me dramatically up to empty mountainous grassland and down again. Climbs sometimes lasted two full, exhausting days. In the valleys I gorged on mangoes, got savaged by sand flies and got noticed by everybody - few, if any, tourists choose this route. I rode along dishing out Buenos Dias's to every stranger on my path, who's faces worked frowns as they contemplated the puzzle of why this gringo would choose to ride here. Children asked - "are you from the jungle?" - I'm obviously from far away, and so is the jungle. Their world geography ends at Peru's Amazon basin.

There was no clarity to this world, La Sierra was a haze. Colours were pastel, bleached and subdued with the exception of the Jacaranda which raged an angry violet in the day and lulled to a deep soothing purple in the evening. The odd steaminess made the countryside feel lazy and relaxed but I could never quite join the tranquillity - my sliver of track rode the mountains like a dolphin rides the surf. But I was content in Peru's little visited back garden. Jumbles of livestock shambled past, goaded on by women, sometimes scattering in a panic if I rode past too quick. The men were forever building new homes for relatives and friends, lumping mud into moulds and drying out their new bricks in the sun. Watermelons were lined up in broad rows whilst cobs of corn dried on balconies and women's clothes were hung out to dry, the loud luminescent pinks and greens of the fabric I have seen in combination only once before in an illegal techno rave in a field near Oxford in the mid 90s.

As I eased into the upper reaches of a climb in the late evening fireflies danced around my handlebars and layers of land were exposed beneath me - it was a strange apparition. In amongst the mishmash of interlocking valleys I could still look down upon the spot where I had lunch yesterday, the town where I bartered for mangoes and the field I slept in the previous night. Tomorrow morning I would finish my climb and drop over two vertical kilometres, back into the unabating fever of the tropical lowlands, and then tomorrow afternoon the battle against gravity would begin all over again.

Lights from a small mountain settlement twinkle in the dusk

The slow going in the Sierra left me low on money and I was forced to limit my spending to the equivalent of 60 pence a day, all of which was invested in packet noodles and fruit. From concerned parents I managed to earn three mangoes for examining a three month old baby with a rash, medical examinations for food was a new and promising angle, but my legs were destroyed from all the uphill work, I was desperate for a shower and I was growing ever more hungry. Men continually offered me free lifts in pickups, and I was getting closer to saying yes. As I passed through a small town a young girl was sent over to me by her mother to offer me food and I was soon digging into a pile of rice, lentils and meat. A bag of fresh fruit was a gift 'for the road' and then even a little money was handed my way so that I would make it to Cajabamba - I owed it to them now to keep pedalling. Gradually the roads got better, the gradients more amiable, the children cleaner and the offers of lifts less frequent as I neared Cajabamba - a proper town.

So why cycle every inch? I pondered the question as I pedalled through shabby litter-strewn mining towns that came after the Sierra, places that on the surface there was no logical reason to ride through. Surely I could just buy the odd bus ticket to get me through the drab and dull bits? Nobody would know. I don't though, and I have my reasons. Mainly it's because I don't trust myself. If one day the weather was so bad that I allowed myself a bus ride, perhaps next time I would find a less reasonable excuse, perhaps I would be too tired, perhaps "I just don't feel like it". If I break my rule I risk opening the flood gates to buses and taxis and trains. Don't fancy Honduras? Well maybe I'll just fly to California. Back in 2010 I set off on an adventure to see the world, warts and all. I have never wanted to career through only the airbrushed, pretty bits that I have to share with a million other tourists. I want to form a more authentic impression of our planet. The detritus, the waste and the problems, especially when industry and communities are slammed together, are all part of the true picture and can offer insight into the often awkward balance of man and nature. If I have a choice of course I would elect for the scenic ride but if I stick to my rule and cycle every inch then that choice doesn't always exist, and in a way, I think that's fortunate. Finally it's because I ride for a sense of achievement. When I get to northern Alaska I can rejoice in the knowledge that I made it there from southern Argentina under my own steam.

Fear is everywhere in this world. Everywhere I go I am warned of the 'bad people' who are out to get me. In Peru in particular it seems these boogie men are everywhere and time and again I hear "¿No tienes miedo"- "Are you not afraid?" Banditry certainly exists here, in fact of all the cyclists I know who have taken a flight home without the bike they brought with them, many returned from Peru. In Patagonia I even met a cyclist who showed me a little dink on his bicycle frame - it was from where a bullet had ricocheted off as he tried to escape from bandits on the coast. Locals have plenty of stories too and form rural patrols - The Rondas Campesinas - a band of men who I met on the road who fill in for the police. A Ronda is basically a cross between a country bumpkin and a vigilante, if you can imagine that.

Fear is so often misdirected and an incident on the road to Cajamarca reminded me of this. A fine drizzle was falling onto the tarmac. Up ahead the road turned sharply to the left. As I edged uphill towards the curve a rickshaw came careering round the corner. With too much velocity coming round the hairpin and on a wet surface he lost control and the vehicle sped off the tarmac and crashed into a hedgerow, flipping onto it's side. I went to help the injured -  a pregnant lady passenger with a nose bleed, the careless idiot at the helm was unhurt.

If the accident had occurred thirty seconds later than it did, if I had finished my morning porridge a little quicker, if I had not bothered to stop and check my tent was well packed on the back of the bike, the hedge would have suffered less and I may have been the point of collision. So forget kidnapping and ransom, terrorist bombs and shootings, grizzly tropical diseases, high speed air crashes and the like. The sombre fact is that of the Brits who die from 'unnatural' causes abroad, most lose their lives in Road Traffic Accidents.

Back to the stranger in the night...

My brain is telling me to explain, but my mouth is dry and can't form the words. There had been a storm. When I spotted the lonely house on the hill with a roof that jutted out beyond the walls, I knew it was the only shelter I would find. I had knocked and nobody had answered, I had waited and nobody had come. Finally I had decided to camp by the house, presuming it empty, the gun wielding man introduced himself as Pedro and told me that he was the tenant. Smiling now he ushered me into his home and put the gun aside. I had scared him, apparently. Last month an armed man had appeared at his front door. The bandit had levelled his gun to Pedro's temple. The stranger stole everything in his small and modest home, he had invested in the gun afterwards for protection. He was a miner, he told me. It made sense - around the hills I had noticed small tunnels dug into the rock, these weren't commercial mines, the companies were digging for gold the other side of the pass, this side was a free-for-all. Pedro's family lived in the city of Trujillo a few hundred kilometres away, he worked at night in the tunnels hunting for gold, hence his swarthy face and late return home. He gave me a steaming mug of cocoa and some rice and briefly disappeared. A minute later he was back and unfurled a piece of cloth on the table, two gleaming gold nuggets were displayed for which he told me he will sell in the city for 112 Soles a gram (roughly 30 pounds). I thanked him for the cocoa and rice with far too much enthusiasm, because that's not really what I was thanking him for.

It's only falling water...

"Don't go chasing waterfalls. Please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you're used to."

It was poor judgement - opening with a TLC song lyric, and you're probably wondering whether to keep reading or if your time would be better spent on Facebook, or indeed counting your eyelashes. But stick with me - some waterfalls are more than just falling water, and chasing them is the fun part. Someone should have told TLC.

In a world so explored, mapped, mastered, manipulated, plundered and bent out of shape, a brand spanking new discovery is an ever rarer gift, and in a world so exploited, it's a comfort, too. It shouts that maybe we, the spoilers and the wasters, don't know everything, and perhaps there are more hidden secrets out there waiting to be unearthed. It's even better of course when that discovery is a whopper. At three times the height of the Eiffel tower, Yumbilla Falls in the Amazonas region of Peru is exactly that, yet for decades Yumbilla had been shrouded in foliage and disregard. Only in 2007 when it was officially measured did it claim it's long overdue limelight - Yumbilla turned out to be 895 metres high and the 5th highest waterfall in the world, and last year it earned itself a trail. There are no official tours from Chachapoyas but I contacted the American who built the trail having decided I wanted a sneak preview.

For Yumbilla though perhaps 'discovery' is a bit over zealous and should be prefaced by 'international'. The locals always knew about Yumbilla. And that a new discovery was made here didn't really surprise them anyway and why would it? Because in terms of new discoveries, the Amazonas region of Peru has them in spades. Ancient burial sites, fortresses, long isolated tribes, rare bird species, pre-Inca walled cities - the land around Chachapoyas is the secret garden of South America, and it just keeps on kicking up surprises.

Before I took the time to explore the new trail to Yumbilla I booked a tour to Gocta, another lofty cascade at 771 metres and the 15th highest in the world. It wasn't just the waterfall though I had come to admire, the region also boasts a bizarre bird species that the guides would have you believe is lurking in every cranny. The Andean Cock of the Rock - a species whose vaguely comical name is a good fit for it's bizarre appearance. Bright, unapologetic orange with a head that looks out of shape, like a deformed parrot, maybe one that had flown hard and headlong into a tree in the night. They sold knitted take-home versions in the shops in Chachapoyas, but I suspected spotting one was not really that likely - it was all more of a selling point for tours, a tourist lure.

On the tour, under a sky which threatened rain, I was joined by a trio of Tazmanian backpackers. With the usual Peruvian welcome party - a scrawny dog nipping at our heels - we all took strides towards the waterfall, aside from a ten year old and a fat lady who were given ponies. As the latter eagerly mounted the animal I feared the result would be four splayed legs - like when big people jump onto horses in cartoons - and a rotund lady rolling around like a tipped insect, crying out for help and unable to get up, thankfully though the animal managed to teeter along, ruefully. Next to the reluctant beast was an elderly man, who I found out later was 89 years old, and who was bounding along as fast as the horse, perhaps making his point. Already the animal looked closer to death than he did.

As we made ground the world around us slowly morphed into a more prehistoric one, moss and cobwebs smothered the rock faces, fern replaced banana, menacing cliffs faces were projected from the undergrowth and then after an hour or so the vista we were bent on seeped in through the green curtain around the path and then surged magnificently towards us. We stopped in our tracks and watched the water in free fall, our eyes staying with it until it was a fine spray, a mist, then nothing at all. Cameras were raised and then lowered with a measure of despondency and admiration - from here Gocta wouldn't fit into even the widest angled lens, and this was only the bottom section, there was a 230 metre drop which was above the reach of our gaze. In the shadow of the behemoth I ate and I snapped photos and I thought about how measly the stream was at the bottom, embarrassing even, considering the dramatic statement nature had made just above it. And I watched the old man laugh, and heard the pony groan, like a teenager who's been evicted from bed by his mum before school. And everyone apart from the pony and TLC agreed - it was only falling water, but it was worth the effort.

Gocta Falls

The Andean Cock of the Rock in it's natural habitat (a souvenir shop)

Due to a corrupted camera memory card I am saving the story of Yumbilla on this blog until I have sorted it out.

Bordering on insanity

 

Mamacita and Mama Negra 

I found them on the road in Ecuador - the cutest children in South America. Then I stole her hat, which just looks better on me.

Smouldering in Ecuador

Yesterday was the 330th day I have spent riding my trusty steed Belinda through South America. In fact I have been cycling through the continent for so long now that from a distance, and in a certain light, the pattern of veins on my calves has developed a creepy likeness to Che Guevara's face. But of course there's long, and there's too long, the latter gives way to a kind of stubborn sloth that mires all of your experiences. Craning your neck by more than 45 degrees to admire a venerated and heavenly panorama is preceded by a short internal debate about whether it's going to be worth all the effortand potential neck fatigue. It's The Law of Diminishing Returns or "Travel Burnout", which I think is the most fitting moniker to describe this slow rot. In Cuenca, after a DVD binge that lasted until daybreak and the only mildly unsettling realisation that I had paid no notice of the celebrated and reportedly charming colonial architecture the city is most proud of, I wondered if I was, at the very least, smouldering. In a desperate attempt to regain some notion of familiarity in a life that brings daily change and obliges constant adjustment, my days off now in cities are spent almost exclusively in The Triangle - one point represents my hostel, another is a place with fast Internet and the third is an establishment that sells greasy and generous portions of chicken. That's just how I roll.

In contrast I have become ever more thrill seeking when planning routes on my bicycle - my 'working week', if you will. Put it this way - if this blog stops abruptly and CNN begin broadcasting news about a British tourist abducted by FARC whilst attempting to unicycle the Darian Gap with just a knapsack and flip flops, or if the BBC report that a shark savaged corpse has washed up on the coast of Panama after a tourist attempted an unsupported swim from Colombia to Florida - don't be overly surprised.

So on the way to Quito I spent some time contemplating Burnout and how to avoid it without air tickets home - in case you are wondering how to tell you have reached Travel Burnout, here are some common features of the condition -

• The 'Great Things To Do in...' section of any guide book fills you with a profound joylessness and the urge to never seek advice ever again. For anything. Conversely just the prospect of watching a DVD instills in you a level of ecstasy roughly equal to witnessing the birth of your first child.
• There is a high likelihood you are harbouring several undiagnosed parasitic infections. Following a period of unease, this is now something you are actually quite proud of.
• When listening to stories recounted by travellers you meet in hostels you always interrupt early on by yawning, resting your feet on the nearest surface, lighting a rolled up cigarette and issuing the words "Well, when I was in Turkmenistan..."
  You often then spin a grizzly but mostly fictional tale which ends with...
  "And then we had to burn his arms off!" You let people buy you beers for the duration of the evening
• You wear clothes inside out to get a few more days out of them. And then the right way round again. And then inside out. And then the right way round. Basically - you never wash your clothes (except when you jump fully clothed into lakes which you have decided counts).
• Your sexual encounters involve backpackers who are increasingly hairy, Belgian and who sleep under tarps.
• You have called up your travel insurance company to enquire as to whether your policy specifically covers accidental loss (or sale of) a kidney.
• A graph of miles traveled (x) verses beers consumed (y) is an exponential curve. Whilst plotting this graph you should have been in a museum. God you're bored.
• You have amassed an extensive collection of photos of signposts of rude and silly sounding place names. Never once has this seemed a puerile pursuit.
• To reduce the weight of your luggage you have
• Cut the handle off your toothbrush, and trimmed the bristles
• Removed the fabric of your boxer shorts which goes between your legs creating a boxer shorts-skirt
• Removed all potentially life saving medication from your medical kit (but have since replaced with extra shoelaces and herbal tea).
• You have had to deny knowledge of the whereabouts of seven Israeli backpackers in room 11 in an Argentinian police investigation
• You have developed an overwhelming desire to wedgy all British Gap Year student in 'happy pants'

'Happy Pants'

• You use the phrase "you know that money you owe me..." whenever you speak to old friends on Skype who have never lent you money but used to smoke a lot of weed. It has become a lucrative source of income.
• You substitute showers for what you mentally refer to as 'a dirt scrape'.
• You have given up all hope of remembering people's names and now refer to them by their home towns which are easier to remember. Boston owes you $50 you'll never see again and Stockholms keep breaking your heart.
• You regularly scratch plans to visit historic sights or national parks to philosophise with hostel owners, tour guides, the homeless and cheap rum
• You often wonder whether you had a birthday last month
• Occasionally you have an entourage of worshipful disciples like in Forest Gump
• You have personally encountered several travellers who have since appeared on the TV documentary series 'Banged Up Abroad'
• You have perfected the ability to kill mosquitoes between your thumb and index finger whilst drunk, juggling and asleep
• On at least one occasion after too much rum you have passed out and later came to at a diametrically opposed point on the earth's surface.

The Mission to Quito

The thick navy blue snake weaving a vertical path through Ecuador on my map filled me with dread - I hate the Pan-American Highway, and it hates me. It promises all sorts of unpleasantness - traffic, unrelenting noise, toxic fumes, dirt, drudgery and suicidal ideation. But it's like that job on your to do list that lingers and loiters for months before you get round to it, and if I want to actually make it to Mexico and Alaska, I need to spend some time on the nasty blue snake. The Pan-Am is simply the quickest way to get through the continent and without time spent (or wasted) on these irksome arteries I would outstay VISAs and in all likelihood roll into Alaska some time in December, lose some digits and then swiftly die of exposure.

So my plan - one more adventure and then Pan-Am it (a useful verb, to be said whilst beating yourself in the head) to Quito. From Cuenca I climbed to over 4000 metres once again through the bleak beauty of the Cajas National Park and then plummeted, quite literally, to the steamy climes of a mere hundred metres above sea level. The lowlands which flank Ecuador's Western shores are vast and pancake flat, and are smothered in Coffee and Banana plantations - two of Ecuador's primary economies (alongside oil and tourism). What followed on my route back to the Pan-Am is what I have come to call an Ecuadorian Special. I climbed almost two thousand vertical metres over a distressingly measly 20 km - and yes, that's an average gradient just short of 10 %. To put that in perspective that's a climb with a steeper average gradient, and more vertical metres climbed, and at a higher altitude than any stage ever raced in the Tour de France. Add to this troubling set of statistics the fact that the climb is on an unpaved surface and is pedalled not on a bike but on a sort of human powered tank which weighs 20 kg and carries 40 kg of gear and you will begin to understand the pain involved. And Lance Armstrong needed performance enhancing drugs? The wimp.

Here's an interview I did in laughable Spanglish for the local TV news in Ecuador. Enjoy...

Quito was a good chance to catch up with friends and family via that dazzling and ubiquitous webtool - Skype. It has transformed how we keep others updated about our foreign escapades, it relaxes anxious loved ones, it makes life easier, and I'm all for it - but there is a downside. Conversations that before would have taken place in a private telephone booth, or indeed not at all, now occur with a large and often reluctant audience. Internet Cafes throughout the world are choc-a-bloc with Skype-ers and everyone in earshot is forced to listen to an inquisition concerning the results of Aunt Meryl's biopsy, or the tribulations of a 17 hour bus ride, or the graphic details of Rob's latest stool after that "bloody empanada!". And then there are the forlorn and hapless nineteen year olds calling home to request more money from parents, presumably so that they can invest in dreadlocks, beads and dramatic trousers. But in Quito the conversation next to me took the biscuit.

In Ecuador we have the tearful American girl, and somewhere in the States, and also on her computer screen, the boyfriend. The conversation was a blubber-rich and melodramatic whinge about how she had started her period during a long bus journey and didn't have any tampons. And after he did what must have been a fairly decent job of consolation and empathy their exchange descended into cheesy pillow talk packed with "I just want to hold you in my arms" (wait, I have to dry heave), "I want to feel your heartbeat next to mine" (please let this be over soon) and then a playful bout of

"You hang up!" 
"No you!" 
"No you hang up!" 
"No you!"

Sensibly, during this tragic ending, I fought the urge to bind her to the desk with the mouse cord and spank her with the keyboard as her shocked boyfriend watched on the webcam. Maybe then he'd hang up.

In Quito I was reunited with Tom and James - a lively pair of British cyclists also heading north but now stuck in Quito who had passed me further south. Tom spectacularly stacked it in Ecuador and injured his knee in equally astounding fashion - he's been stuck for over a month now after requiring skin grafts in two operations. I was stuck in Quito too, waiting for bank cards to arrive in the post. My kindly bank - The RBS (which stands for Reliably Bent and Shady) - had been in the midst of a take-over by another bank, Santander. The deal eventually fell through but not before RBS decided suddenly, and with no forewarning, to cancel millions of customers debit cards, no mind that those abroad would be in big trouble once they realised that their cards were now nothing more than plastic mementos for RBS.

The upshot of all this was a mild crisis when arriving into a small Ecuadorian town with no access to money, no actual money, no food, no place to stay, no friends to help me and no means of paying for a phone call to the bank to find out what was happening and call them Bastards. So I presented myself to the police station and explained - I had no back up, I realised, after previously working through my emergency stash of dollars. Eventually I found a trusting Brit, noted down his account details, emailed my very understanding mum, asked her to transfer money and then paid her back online - a total farce, in other words. But it did further strengthen a belief that has blossomed during this trip - that the world really is packed full of people who will help you out. On four separate occasions over the last card-less month I have found people to take money out for me, even though my pitch for help sounds like I'm a practiced confidence trickster on the blag. For all those generous and understanding souls - thank you.

Colombia-bound

Once my cards arrive (please God let it be tomorrrow) I'm out of here and I can't think of a single border I have been more excited about crossing (and there have been more than forty so far) than the next one into Colombia. The mere mention of the country causes southbound backpackers to get dreamy eyed and sentimental. Colombia you see, is everyone's favourite, and for all the best reasons, namely - The convivial people, the jawdroppingly beautiful women, the lush and dramatic landscape, the women, the scrumptious food, the women, the music and the dancing, the women and the women. Yep, I'm really looking forward to Colombia. It's just a shame my boundless enthusiasm doesn't match my ability to Salsa.

On a final note my photographs of the Salar de Uyuni won third prize in the Insight Guides / Independent travel photography competition and for which I won a shiny new camera. For the Brits amongst my readers - the images should be published in next Sunday's Independent (Oct 28th) if you want to check them out.

The sign, sited roadside and heralding a blind corner was a bit perturbing. Why, I had to wonder, did Ecuadorians need this picture? If they didn't understand that accelerating into oncoming traffic on a virtual chicane, a manoeuvre Lewis Hamilton would scoff at, had consequences - namely mangled bodies, crumpled metal, gravestones and grieving relatives - perhaps they weren’t quite ready to be at the helm of an automobile. Perhaps these people should just walk. Perhaps these people shouldn't be let outside at all. Perhaps these people need to be told not to play with tigers and require labels on tubs of industrial strength sulphuric acid specifically warning them not to bath their children in it. Just outside Quito these soon-to-be organ donors swerved frantically, skimming past looming juggernauts and flashing by my panniers before another precarious deflection back into the lane that normal, life-cherishing people enjoy so much. So to my dismay I figured the sign was necessary after all and more questions came to the fore - did Ecuadorian cars come fitted with giant joysticks instead of steering wheels? Would a new sign do any good?“No dying in the road” or “Your family love you” or perhaps a three metre high poster depicting a man decapitated in a traffic accident à la the images on cigarette packets? Probably not.

From the buzz and throng of Quito I ventured north to Mitad del Mundo – AKA the Equator, and my 4th crossing on this bike ride of mine. Obligatory photo - one foot in the Northern and one foot in the Southern hemisphere - and I was off on back roads, Colombia-bound. An evening sift through my panniers turned into a rummage before exploding into a tantrum as I realised my only pair of trainers were sitting somewhere in a Quito hostel and I knew I would be taking a bus back to retrieve them. South Americans are endowed with dainty tootsies and my size, a not unusual one back home, is near on impossible to get hold of out here. When searching for new trainers in Peru the shop staff would stifle giggles, eyeball my feet and take it in turns to point at my (relatively) clown-like plodders. Often they would continue the ribbing by asking if they could see them. I would sigh, remove my shoes and wait whilst they huddled around me, grinning and taking photos on their mobile phones.


Trainers reclaimed I set off again and soon fleeting glimpses of Colombian soil penetrated the twisting Ecuadorean valleys. Not long after crossing the border my new country emphatically answered questions that had been swimming through my mind. Would there be big hills to ride? – YES screamed Colombia’s perpetually rolling farmland and her cresting and crash-landing caminos. Would the girls be beautiful? YES flirted Colombia with cheeky smiles and tossed hair - I got lost in their eyes and resolved to marry one. Well, at least one. Was my gear still waterproof after three years – NO replied flooded panniers, with a splash and a slosh. I'm here in the wet season and like the tropical wet of Tanzania more than a year ago I wake to a golden bath of warm light inside my tent, I eye malevolent clouds with apprehension over lunch, I get soaked through in the afternoon and I peel off my sodden garbs and drain my panniers every evening. And then I do it all over again.

I was once asked in a job interview by a medical consultant to describe myself in one word. One, he said, only one. Choose wisely. An internal alarm sounded as my lips fought the urge to reply “succinct” - an answer that could have secured me the post or resulted in a "Thanks Dr Fabes, we'll let you know. Succinct enough for you?" It's now a game I play with new countries, and the adjective I chose for Colombia?


Feisty are the children who run alongside my bicycle shouting "Meeeeesterrrrrr!"
Feisty are the drivers, the afternoon downpours, the gradients, and the transvestite who propositioned me in the high street at lunch time.
The fields are a feisty green after the rain, the musicians sing with feisty abandon in the streets and teenagers hold each other in feisty embrace in town squares, not caring for their audience.

• Dogs in trousers
• People wearing pyjamas during the day in public places
• The elderly in Spandex

Colombia has plenty of all three and thus I pedalled her rolling roads with a preternaturally wide grin taking up half my face. The pyjama fad may seem an extra bit bizarre when you consider just how fashion obsessed Colombians are, but it brought back memories of my adopted, feisty and fashion obsessed city of Liverpool, where at least half of those pushing shopping trolleys around ASDA on Saturdays had opted for jim-jams or else had suffered some sort of brain hemorrhage and had simply forgotten to get dressed. "Salad, got that, beans, yep. Damn it! I'm sure I'm forgetting something."

Through the shifting altitudes I lorry surfed a bit (hanging off the back of trucks to ascend hills) whilst a green ocean of off-kilter fields slid by. Sometimes a few Colombian kids on BMXs were hanging off the back of the same trucks and we'd chat, laugh and scream when the truck accelerated and boo when it dropped speed.

They are a benevolent bunch these Colombians - I was thinking - soon after I asked a man in the street where I might be able to buy a map of Colombia. Within two minutes he had recruited a local scout troupe and issued strict instructions – I set off with a gang of adolescents in woggles to assist me in my purchase and within five minutes I had my map and was thanking the gang for their trouble. "No trouble!" they assured me with winsome grins and pats on the back. On another occasion I asked the police if they knew of somewhere I could camp. They ushered me into their patrol car, drove me to a local lady's house and then demanded that I camp on her front lawn. The lady had every right to react a little miffed after being told to convert her property into a campsite - but she was Colombian and so just smiled instead with a "mucho gusto, Senor".

There's a blossoming middle class in Colombia  - evidenced on my ride by the many nice cars that glided past, the dearth of motorbikes, the well tended and spacious gardens, the many posh clothes shops and the gravity defying breasts and buttocks - Colombia's booming industry in plastic surgery is world renowned. It all had me wondering where this wealth had sprouted from, Colombia is mineral-rich, has a good amount of oil and of course the international popularity of a particular Nose Drug may have had a part in it. But it's also a country of divisions in wealth, like the rest of South America. The long civil war in Colombia has affected many directly and there are more internally displaced people in Colombia than any country on earth save Sudan. But Colombia is the real comeback kid - many of the roads I have cycled over the last few weeks would have been considered off limits just 15 years ago during an era when many Colombians were virtually imprisoned in their cities.

Carved into rock by the roadside the words translate as 'victory or death'.

Taking advantage of this more recent freedom to explore the back roads I decided to leave the highway to cycle a road with the best epithet on the continent – The Trampoline of Death. Like Bolivia’s more famous Death Road this is a thoroughfare which winds and bounces through cloud forest and boasts vertical drops immediately beside it for the majority of it’s course. Though strangely the Trampoline of Death wasn’t the bit I was most worried about. The bit just afterwards had a fairly specific warning from the UK foreign office - 'Don’t', they said, 'enter the San Augustin Archaeological Park from any of the back roads, use the main road only from Bogota'. A very specific warning and I would be disobeying the scare-mongerers once again. And once again I was faced with the old question I so often find myself battling – brave or stupid? If, for example, I decided to staple my penis to a wolf that could be construed as brave, but undeniably stupid. Venturing through these jungle-clad back roads was a harder quandary to answer.

When was the last time you were alone? Truly alone? When did you last spend a whole day by yourself with no communication or contact with others? No emails, no texts, no phone calls, not even a thank you at the supermarket or a "Dave's not in, sorry. Call back later" on the land line. If I had asked myself these questions back in London I would struggle to find an answer. Now solitude is as reliably constant in my life as punctures and super-noodles and I have a guilty secret - I quite enjoy it. I realise that by admitting this I've marked myself out as the type of weirdo that abducts children from playgrounds or collects cats. The dubious 'loner'. Keep away from Old Fabesy, parents will warn their children, that one keeps to himself. I need company of course, I just have an affinity for the crisp silence as I crawl out of my tent and into my wild camping spot at dawn, and I'm selfish - I like the open spaces and wide skies to be just mine to wander and to smile about. And when I need company - it's never far away, it's easy prey, not like the ever more scarce beast of wilderness.

November 3rd - The Trampoline Of Death

In part the lure is in it's mystery. I can't see where the roads goes, I can't guess, half a football pitch away is an invisible cloud world, a precipice and a sliver of track. Upwards I go as the jungle murmurs it's secret threats in clicks and tweets that echo through the foliage. Each push of the pedals in the not-quite-a granny gear brings me a tiny bit closer to the top of This Hill, but only a tiny bit and I know This Hill will not be the last. Sweat is cascading now from my eyebrows in a salty waterfall which soaks my beard as my bike tyres slowly crunch the gravel. I clear my mind, try not to focus on the climb and let my imagination roam - it's the best way to ease the struggle, and I've had plenty of practise. The jungle recedes, though not literally, as my mind flits and rushes through an old life, a life of constant friends not superficial ones, a life of hospital shifts, of time with my family, of girlfriends, of festivals in the summer and of a reassuring routine. A life that fades with each new border and each new month on the road. 

The path twists up at a gradient a downhill skier would be more accustomed to, my wheeze hits a new pitch and power and I rejoin the jungle reality. Is that the top? Brief elation, then freewheel, then despair as the next ridge rears up and the mountains continue to mock me. I assent and on I go, exhausted now, but there's always more to give. For hill after painful hill it's a case of "Suck it in, I've had worse than this" - it's a mantra that serves me well - after three years of cycling the truth is that I've almost always cycled steeper climbs before, battled up higher passes, rattled over rougher roads, and overcome worse. With each hill in my wake I'm stronger, more adept, and ever readier for the next. This at least is how I reassure myself when a little voice tells me I can't go on, that's its too hard, that I need to stop, rest or retreat.

Eventually I catch a view of the next valley - it's a sight that rewards my perseverance. The jungle enswathes every fold of land for as far as I can see and there amongst it, tumbling through it, the Trampoline of Death. I ready for a bumpy, treacherous descent and know it was worth every drop of sweat and every gasping, suffocating moment, though it was a mental battle more than a physical one. It always is.

A river glints in the early morning light

Was I stapling my penis to a wolf? Possibly. There were army road blocks every 30 km or so staffed by fresh faced adolescent conscripts but so far no sign of those party poopers the FARC. I asked to camp with the soldiers hoping this would make me safer during the night, but they explained that that would in fact make me a target for lurking guerrillas who might take a pot shot from the jungle so I resolved to wild camp instead. In the gathering dusk I spotted a small track, half concealed by a collapsing tunnel of green and disappearing into the wilds. I wheeled my bike into the leafy passage which swept around a couple of bends and ended in a black tarp which hung over a pulley system. From the pulley a zip line was stretched across the entire valley and consumed by a fuzz of foliage hundreds of metres away on the far side of the drop. Only after the sun had slipped behind the peaks and as I crouched in my tent porch and scooped tentacles of spaghetti into my mouth, did I start to consider what it might be for, and the foreboding built. If there was a coca plantation in the next valley this would be one mighty fine and fast way to get it to the road. If you had ever wondered, like me, how drug cartels hide immense coca plantations in the jungle then you just have to come to Colombia – the forest is endless and untouched. You could hide whole cities here. My night was sweaty, restless and long as every rustle of the undergrowth took my heart rate from the normal tempo to something approaching Techno. As the sun rose I began to pack up but a creak made me jump. I swung around aghast - the pulley was turning. Slowly at first and then the creak became a whir as the wheel span ever faster. Someone was coming over from the next valley. Terror beat curiosity hands down and I bundled things into panniers and made off before an unexpected meeting with an amused and lowly local farmer or an unamused gang of hardcore FARC terrorists.

The next day I crossed another police road block. After the usual cheery interrogation they asked which way I was heading. I pointed east. "No problem this way" I was assured "but the way you're coming from", continued the senior of the two "that's a complicated zone". His friend elaborated by mimicking a knife slashing his throat whilst his tongue lolled and head dropped forward in fake death. I gulped and steered the conversation to what policemen in Colombia most like to discuss - girls and football.



Cali was soon on my agenda - the world's unofficial salsa dancing capital and it was time to show the Colombians how to do it - my British hips had my dancing partners entranced and amused, presumably they were cognisant of the fact they had never before seen anyone quite so bad at salsa.

The next day I was approached by a local entrepreneur outside my hostel who offered various services – if I wanted to learn Spanish, get a guided tour of the city or find a good prostitute, he assured me, he was the man who could sort it out. Another Colombian with fingers in pies. Here’s his amusing business card - my guess is that a ‘VIP escort’ is not someone to call if you feel like a nice game of scrabble.


Salento was next - a small town embedded in the verdant, fresh beauty of Colombia's coffee region. Plenty of foreigners flock to enjoy the views or mess about on horses or visit the farms and undulating coffee plantations nearby. It's a town that got it right in so many ways - there's no aggressive restaurant touts, no friction between locals and tourists, no over-charging and no hassle. In other words the polar opposite to Chile's San Pedro de Atacama. Chilled out to almost freezing I set off to Manizales to meet friends of my Mum's who did a sterling job of showing me around (thank you Ana) and then onward to Colombia's second city of Medellin.

Over the last few weeks I've been busy booking public talks for California and during April and May I'm due to speak in various institutions from schools and universities to rotary clubs and outdoor retailers. If anyone reading this post has contacts in California who may be interested in booking me to speak then please send me an email - steve@cyclingthe6.com - and I can provide more information.

In less than a month I will reach the end of continent 3 and board a boat to Panama, soon after I'm looking forward to a New Year's Eve in Costa Rica with an old friend from the UK. On this blog look out for a run down of some weird and wacky statistics from South America and the CT6 Equipment reviews for 2012.

You can't imagine my surprise when I opened a pannier and this guy popped out

Well I thought it would take me nine months, in the end my journey across Latin America by bicycle lasted two weeks over a year. There were a number of excuses I could offer up to explain my tardiness, but mostly it was because I wanted to savour the continent and I fell in love with those rough, high, slow-going back roads that twist and bounce through the Andean wilderness. Last week, as I cruised slowly towards the Colombian coast on the Pan-American highway which spiralled down a shrinking spine of rock, dropping into a steamy abyss, I remembered a friend's description of my South American end point, Cartagena - "nice, but hot as hell". She was mistaken. If Satan himself was holed up in Cartagena for a few days he would demand a room with air conditioning and keep his devil-tail dunked in an ice bucket. Cartagena is supernova hot and had me sweating like sumo wrestlers in crotchless leather suits making sweet love in a Turkish sauna, but I was glad to be here all the same.

Mountains have been the theme of the last twelve months of my life, it will be coastline for the next six. As I pulled into the city, my last of this restless, feisty continent, I had a moment of sentimental reflection whilst my eyes surfed the tranquil waters of the Caribbean and I recalled a similar moment in time from more than a year ago when I stared out at the Southern Ocean towards Antarctica but wondered instead what lay in the opposite direction. Between then and now there have been ups and downs, physical, literal ones and the more metaphysical type too. I have been evicted from my tent at gun point late at night in Peru, I cycled stark naked across the world's largest salt lake in Bolivia, I survived a Colombian road known as The Trampoline of Death, I met a beautiful Australian girl called Polly, I cycled more vertical metres in one week than from sea level to the summit of Mount Everest, I was stabbed in the hand by a drunk, I got lost in the eyes of Colombian girls, I scared myself silly in the aftermath of a volcanic eruption in Chile and I had a flour fight with 25,000 other people in an Argentinian stadium. A rollicking ride. Never plain sailing but despite all the effort, the pain and the fleeting bouts of boredom, loneliness and anxiety, it was worth it.

I'm not entirely sure why I collect useless information about my life on the road, but it has become habit and here are some stats about continent number three...

Time taken - one year and two weeks
Distance cycled in South America - 16,793 km
Proportion cycled on unpaved roads - 31 %
Greatest distance cycled in one day - 182 km (Peruvian coast)
Punctures - 45
Broken spokes - 12
Chains - 2
Brake pads - 6
Gear cables - 8

Tyres - I retired a Schwalbe Dureme after a very impressive 15,500 km, I got through a few Schwalbe Marathon Plus's and now I have the new Schwalbe Mondials on, more than 3000 km and no punctures yet.

Coldest temp - Minus 15 degrees Celsius (Southern Bolivia)
Top altitude cycled to - Abra Loncopata (5119 metres above sea level), Peru
Toughest climb -  La Esperanza to La Miran Alto, Ecuador (unsealed track which climbs 1675 vertical metres over 20 km, an average gradient of 8%)
Most days without a shower - 10



My favourite photos from South America...



I have read 27 books over the last year. Here they are... amongst my favourites are Skippy Dies, White Teeth, Bad Science, Cloud Atlas, The Fountainhead, The White Tiger and Middlesex.



In other news - On the 10th I jump aboard a Catamaran bound for the San Blas islands and then Panama. It will be a sprint through Central America so that I keep deadlines in the US and don't freeze to death come Alaska. There's lots in the pipeline over the next ten months including...

• I have written features which are due to be published in Outer Edge, Cycle, Verge and Wild Junket magazines plus an interview in Vagabundo. 
• I start filming for an exciting documentary called Adventure Challenge next week. 
• In California I am scheduled to speak in more than twenty events, schools and societies including the Rotary Club of Los Angeles and the California chapter of the Explorer's Club (dates and details coming soon).
• This blog will feature my 2012 equipment reviews.
• I will soon launch a new blog called Riding Off-Route which will cover some of the practical details of touring and detail some of the more adventurous routes in South America.
• This blog may even find a new format - as a (print-on-demand) book.

Finally as a happy coincidence I rolled into Cartagena on the Colombian Caribbean coast on just over 40,000 km which I have realised is roughly the circumference of the earth at the equator. So in terms of numbers, I suppose I have pedalled once around the planet. And to celebrate that fact I would love to reach another milestone - so far the supporters of Cycling The 6 have raised almost 20,000 pounds for the medical aid charity Merlin. If you can pledge a small amount and help to break the 20,000 pound mark now that I have completed continent number three, it would be fantastic. If you feel moved to donate you can do so on my fundraising page.

Have a great Christmas and New Year

Paradise Found?



A typical decision in my life circa 2009 -
Mr Jones is complaining of abdominal pain, should I rush him to theatre for an appendisectomy?

A typical decision circa 2012 -
If I buy some mayonnaise today, will it last until Tuesday?

For a time escaping the shackles of meaningful decision making was a cosy spin-off to life on the road though eventually it's becomes nice to have a proper quandary to mull over, and one that doesn't involve dairy produce. Whilst choosing the right boat and captain for the sea crossing from Colombia to Panama may not be on par with deciding the fate of Mr Jones' intestinal system, it was not a decision to be taken lightly. An Australian girl I ran into in Lima had a tale of woe which went something like:

Incompetent, drunk captain = irreparably damaged boat = Titanic-like emergency in open ocean = evacuation into a life raft and loss of all possessions.

Rumour had it that El Capitan had sabotaged the crossing for an insurance pay out on the sunken vessel making 'Disreputable Sea Dogs' another on my evolving list of 'Crazy Shit To Worry About' right below hurricanes, tsunamis, pirates and shark attack. An even more common difficulty on the grapevine was that of boats running out of food mid-crossing, I added this to the top of my mental list, above tsunami, and wondered whether an enforced hunger strike would drive me first to suicide or to mutiny and cannibalism. Just in case I decided that choosing a boat with a chubby captain and tender looking first mate would be a sensible insurance policy.

After a year biking through Africa the name of one craft though steals my attention - The African Queen, a forty foot Catamaran. Tentatively I sign up and arrive early at the harbour, swiftly followed by my fellow sea farers, and after quick meet and greets we head to the supermarket for the much more important booze run. We return to stash our main luggage in the hold and each of us carry a small rucksack for the voyage, mine is 50% beer, 25 % rum and 25% stuff I probably don't need. Our motley posse includes a lanky Dutchman, a Finnish honeymooning couple, a Swizz couple and a duo of hard drinking Aussie lads. Our captain is Rudy, a veteran sailor in his late 40's with blond curly neck length locks and bronzed skin who is donning a black bandanna, Oakley's and surf shorts - my first impression is somewhere between Garth from Wayne's World and a beach bum with more than a touch of pirate thrown in. He's quadriligual, although swears only in window-shatteringly loud Italian, and an incredible chef, a fact that comes to light as he serves up our first meal, Octopus Risotto and I make a mental note - always sail with an Italian Captain. The only other member of crew is Rudy's Colombian totty - a curvaceous, spicy mamacita twenty years his juniorwho sports inch long bright pink nails, a host of bracelets, Gucci sunglasses (one of around twenty pairs hanging up inside the cabin) and has a penchant for marijuana. She is as ocean savvy as your average agoraphobic. All this makes her in my view simultaneously both the absolute best and absolute worst First Mate for an ocean voyage. Rudy, I'm guessing, senses no such dichotomy.



There's something reassuring about the Darien Gap, the hunk of wild, indomitable territory that divides Panama and Colombia. In a world where people have driven cars to the North Pole, have jumped to earth from space and have cycled across the surface of frozen lakes, the Darien is still sin careterra and whilst there are rough trails, most consider the region impassible, at least for the rational of mind. It seems that if I did completely abandoned my senses and began an unsupported swim from Colombia to Panama I might have a slightly better time of it than a land crossing across the same frontier. People might even raise a glass and call me brave at my funeral instead of shaking their heads and muttering "What an idiot!", the only label that could be sensibly ascribed to anyone who takes on the guerrilla-controlled, mosquito-ridden tract of dense jungle frequented only by the ruling drug cartels and the occasional loping jaguar. Unless a local drugs lord has your back, the Darien is the reserve of the careless and the insane. To get around the problem you could fly but for the more inspired there's a better option - for years chartered yachts have made the crossing, ferrying tourists from Cartagena to the coast of Panama and stopping en route at the San Blas Islands, an autonomous region partly inhabited by the Kuna Indians (foreigners having been kicked off years ago) and, this is true, a place in which until relatively recently the primary unit of currency was the coconut. Which is just brilliant.

We haul up the anchor, set sail and stand out on the deck watching the modern stone henge of Cartagena's high rise apartments glide by, like the gappy grin of a madman smiling us off. The send off party soon join us, a school of bottle nosed dolphins that slice through the surf and make brief loops into the salty air. Our enthusiasm for sea life though is soon quashed by the choppy ocean which renders most of us landlubbers aboard unable to walk, converse or move much at all. The Dutchman can't eat fearing a post-prandial spraying of lunch over the ship's side, back from whence it came. It's like standing on top of a prone epileptic, which incidentally there is no good reason to do and is not comfortable, safe or fair on the epileptic.

That night we rotate through 90 minute shifts to watch for ships whilst rolling waves strike the boat at tangents as we wobble through the Caribbean propelled by a sail that puffs and whips and drives us at ten knots into the night. A phosphorescent algae lights up the churning wake of the Catamaran like a disco ball - it's a spooky, surreal time where I hallucinate ghost ships.


Towards dusk on the second day I spot them first - a small grey bump on the horizon and then, like fresh mosquito bites, more and more segue into view. The sun spills it's shine onto the ocean creating a linear blaze of cherry-red, like a celebrity carpet, the African Queen our limousine. The island we pass first is the anticipated vision of paradise - it appears we've been consumed by a computer and are in fact sailing through Windows wallpaper. The San Blas archipelago are so often assigned throw away and cliched labels - idyllic, picture-perfect, breath-taking - but then the islands are cliched by nature representing for many the archetypal tropical paradise. Yes there's white sand, turquoise waters, palm trees, coconuts, yarda yarda, but I yearn for more than just the postcard imagery. Like friends, lovers, nature and travel itself, it's the imperfections that can thrill and seduce the most, and so secretly I yearn for a serpent in Eden.

We are not alone here. Our first guest is a turtle breezing through the turquoise and stretching it's neck to breach the tops of the waves and take the odd gasp of air. Minutes later a manta ray breaks the surface and dives back beneath the gentle ripples whilst a lone pelican inspects us from above, circling and dodging palm fronds. A communal dive and swim to shore ends in a quandary - to admire or to explore? I leave the others gazing longingly into the lustrous sheen of the sun-drenched Caribbean tide and head instead along the shoreline like a castaway exploring a new home. Visually the metaphor works as well.

The Finnish couple have disappeared to a more secluded part of the island, if I was one half of a loved-up couple in paradise I'd be off to do the same, one for the bucket list, despite sand in places you'd rather it wasn't. As I meander insouciently around the island a host of white conch shells appear, semi-submerged in sand like skulls in a mass grave. I move inwards to explore beyond the limits of this beach and my heart drops - behind the first row of palms resides a huge pile of litter and accompanying swarm of sand flies. They are as out of place as a punk in a yoga class.

We anchor up and sail to another island of the San Blas, it's the size of a football pitch, the shape of an arrow head and hosts showy tourists on big budgets in expensive huts who are fiercely busy relishing the sloth of island life by doing exactly nada. There are 378 islands in the San Blas and somebody reminds me of the common dictum "one for every day of the year" which sounds to me like a tag line concocted by a tourist agency and makes me think two things - First, somebody can't count, and second, wow, I wonder if anyone has tried that? The islands vary greatly in size, some precarious mounds of sand with room enough for just a couple of palms, the front line in climate change and centimetres away from extinction. Others, around fifty, are larger and inhabited by the Kuna Indians.

In the evening with settled bellies and surer legs the group bonding can begin, but the sun dashes for cover under cloud and an abrupt tropical storm unleashes it's fury, so we rush out onto the deck to wash off the salt. "Is Raining!" Screams Rudy "Is Emotional!" and he dances around the African Queen babbling incoherently. Afterwards we sit shivering until someone suggests a cup of tea but is swiftly trumped by a call for rum for which we all assent. Rudy declines the mixer on the grounds that Coca Cola is bad for you.

The days progress - Cuba Libre for breakfast, Yellow Snapper (harpooned) and king crab for lunch, Italian cuisine for dinner with beer aperitifs and rum chasers. "Thanks for the food" we all chirp after another gourmet garlic-heavy delight, but meet Rudy's retort "no no no. Thanks for the eat. I'm happy when you are happy". Filling our bellies and the game of endlessly getting tipsy is punctuated by snorkeling and siestas and by now we are all sporting the rosy hue of England's Away From Home Shirt. Exertion? Well yes, some, but here it's relative - snapping coconuts, back flips off the deck, the tiresome chore of switching hammocks.

Relishing a tropical storm on deck

For our third night we anchor down and spend the evening on an island amongst a gaggle of ageing American hippies who's diction is dominated by "heavy" and "far-out". They've been mooching around the San Blas for more than six years, occasionally chartering boats for tourists, and there's something cheesy and reactionary about them, or perhaps that's just my instant distrust of those who openly market themselves with romantic tags. "Hey we're wanderers man" insists one when  I ask where he's from. "Yeah, we're, like, nomads" pipes up another. They are fine musicians though and keep us entertained with Bob Dylan and the rest, but it still feels like a Beach Boys reunion so we head back to the boat and have our own party which fairly predictably culminates in drunken skinny dipping, which is predictably initiated by the Finns. Rudy wears a huge African mask for most of the night and howls with laughter. The group are completely enamoured by his antics - its not that his jokes are belly-clutchingly, foam-at-the-mouth funny, usually in fact he makes no sense at all, but his reaction to everything is an infectious explosion of histrionics so ridiculous and cheering that you can't help but join him.

On the last night Rudy announces that the Kuna Indians are having their monthly knee's up on an island close by. We sail off and soon encounter a very different San Blas, these postcards wouldn't sell as well. There are hundreds of thatched huts jammed into every inch of bustling land where women wash their children, men load and unload boats and children carry out their chores whilst wooden dug-outs ease through the surrounding sea - people living lives rather than escaping them. The Kuna are tiny in stature, spiritual in nature and the women are attired in traditional dress - a vivid concoction of bracelets and colours that scream and bellow and with a nose ring that completes the ensemble. We take the launch to shore, the scene that greets us is the result of one furious moonshine named chicha fuerte. 'Totalled' may not be a proper adjective worthy of the Oxford English dictionary, but its the best one. Sloshed, leathered, blind drunk - they don't come close. Everybody over the age of 8 and not pregnant is off their head, neck and body. They can't talk. Many are comatose. Women are being carried by friends whilst screaming and babbling drunk-speak and kids sway like slow motion boxers in the first round, but with a stagger and a bellowed drawl. There's a religious component to this drunken orgy that I admit I know little about but even so the curious tableau is a touch menacing, a touch sad, a touch hilarious and more than a touch understandable. London at 7pm on any given Friday is much the same, add suits and boozers, though the British can evidently handle their grog better than the Kuna.




On the final day we sail towards the coast of Panama which assaults the sea scape I've grown accustomed to and the montaine spine of Central America protrudes like the fins of a fish, the mountain tops though are lost in the ashen smudge of distant rain. Behind us the freckles of the San Blas fade from view as the blue face of the Caribbean winks us a sly goodbye.

Paradise Lost?

Amongst those who know me well, it's my manifest lack of any sense of direction that is the most illustrious and conspicuous target for mockery. The list of places and spaces I have managed to completely lose my bearings is infinite and tedious so I won't recount it here, but it includes the hospital I worked in for three years, several supermarkets and department stores, most of London and every campsite and festival I have ever made my temporary home. Things are worse than bad - I once slept rough in a field in Argentina when I tried for hours and failed to find my hostel. When people remark "Don't worry, it's impossible to get lost" I sigh, for with that one-liner they have sealed my fate. In my early teens losing my house was a particular favourite pastime and brought much angst to the parents of my friends who drove me around in circles through Oxford and who must have been convinced I was having them on. "How can anyone not remember where they live!" The enduring words of one despairing father. It's a disability, like colour blindness, club foot and Welsh-ness. A miracle then I have made it this far on my bicycle and were it not for that ingenious convenience of The Map, I would still be negotiating my way through Surrey muttering to myself "Now I'm sure I've seen that bridge before. No, wait... was it that bridge?"

So to Panama City, the world's most losable-in city and me, the world's most heinous of all lost wanderers who even St Jude can't save. I set out with a simple mandate - to find a camping shop. And I walked. And I guessed. And I gorped, and I walked some more. And hours slid by, and continents drifted apart. My flip flops pounded the street for so long that erythematous streaks criss-crossed the dorsum of each foot. The oh so familiar feeling of lostness descended as the city segued into a oneness that jeered at my incompetence and repeated it's garbled song. A trio of Kuna women (the same trio?) gabbing by a corner shop (the same shop?). An old lady sold single cigarettes and there were fat people, lots of them, and lots of MacDonalds too. And lots of fat people queueing up to eat at MacDonalds. Complicated maths, I know.

Then for while my misadventure took a more sinister twist - people thinned out, saucer-eyed men marked me out with an ireful stare and scanned the surrounds (for witnesses?). Toddlers sat in heaps of rubbish whilst drunks shambled by using drain pipes for support and houses became rubble-strewn gutted shells, unlivable in at first glance and then - not quite. A couple of drawn and haggard prostitutes slumped by the door of a brothel, one black eye a piece. The city's stink was an overpowering layered assault on my nostrils with wafting excrement, fish, something musty, cooking oil and smog all making fleeting passes. Then back into the drama of a busier part where shouting hawkers out-screamed the taxi drivers who out-honked the roar of engines and a cacophony of Latin infused rhythms from Panasonic shops trumped everything. By now if you had traced my journey on a map you would come up with something similar to the creative stylings of a crackhead on an etch-a-sketch.

It's a little known fact that the ability to give good directions when asked by a stranger in the street is carried by a single gene, located on chromosome 7, and resident in the cell nucleus of around 28% of the population. It is often inherited alongside the ability to find car keys (chromosome 13) and the tendency to wear odd socks (chromosome 8). In Panama though, by some fluke of genomic spread only 0.0000001% of the population possess the gene to give good directions, and he didn't live in this part of town. Thus my task of getting unlost became even harder. Call it a Colombian hangover, but I was not instantly taken by Panama City, a sprawling competition of smells and sounds and clutter. Getting lost though can give you a fresh perspective and there's beauty in the dark underbelly and the cogs of any city if you look hard enough. After hours trudging and mooning through her weird maze, she hadn't won my heart but she somehow made more sense. There was a satisfaction to making the transition from skimming the surface to full body dunk, involuntary though it was, and as I have found many times, having no internal compass can be a blessing in disguise.

Eventually a land mark I recognised for certain this time and soon enough I was back in my hostel. After all that calorie-consuming vagabonding I was tired and hungry so after a quick rest I went out for food. I kid you not, within 15 minutes I was utterly lost once again.

Two weeks of contrast, from the vice-ridden slums of a central American capital to an equally vice-ridden island 'paradise'. Next up is Costa Rica for New's Year Eve with my friend Jess who's coming out to visit me from the UK. And then north once again, always north.

New friends in Panama

I was going to title this post "The Day I Ate a Whole Chicken On The Side of a Mexican Highway" and then I realised that whilst this was no doubt a seminal moment in my life and journey, it's not a tale my followers would cherish, and perhaps I should ask a guest blogger to post. I'm short on stories - it's not Mexico's fault, it's mine. I'm racing through the cunningly disguised Goliath of a country (one in which I will ride further than in the whole of the continental US, unbelievably) and I've crunched more miles this month than in any of the preceding thirty eight. Roast chicken helps.

So a guest post - a way to shine light on some talented soul in the blogosphere. This is the first Guest Blogger featured on Cycling The Six. I get loads of request for guest posts, though most go something like:

Dear Mr Fabes, I am offering some content for your health / sport / travel blog. I make home made placenta cakes from genuine human placenta and would like to share the recipe with your online audience. I charge 1000 US dollars, please deposit into my Nigerian bank account before you publish my award winning blog entry.

Bloggers who unwittingly obey all my rules for writing a GREAT travel blog are not welcome here. So I will headhunt my guest bloggers, and the most affecting, inspiring and mirth inducing collection of yarns I have read of late is I Run Things - the fact that the author is a good friend of mine is beside the point. He fulfils that seemingly simple yet rare ideal - he has a story worth telling and he tells it well. It's about... well, I'll let Olly Davy explain.

London is a great place to train

I love being in control (and need to learn to let go)

Exercise helps with sadness

I became a bore

It’s all about the journey

I need a challenge to feel alive

You can’t ignore your injuries

Death is an opportunity

Human beings are inspiring

Admiring a salt lake on the Baja peninsula of Mexico

Contrary to popular belief football is not Mexico's national sport. It's sweeping. Mexico's women are more intensely devoted to sweeping than a gap toothed, tattoo-branded, wailing Milwall fan is to football. Sweeping in Mexico begins before sunrise and continues well into the night. The same floors and spaces are swept more than a dozen times a day, I know, I've watched this happen. Every so often I am evicted from restaurants - 'you're closing?' I ask, 'Si Señor. For sweeping.'

If they don't demand your immediate vacation then my advice is to have a chair handy so that when the inevitable, indomitable, broom-wielding, wild-eyed, sweeping addict ploughs through you can rescue your feet, or else you risk being swept out of the building and onto the pavement, where upon another fearsome sweeper may sweep you then into the road or gutter, they are everywhere. It's a debilitating and pathological compulsion, one that has destroyed many lives in Latin America. Some seek specialist help...

Hello everyone. My name is Maria, I'm 34 years old, and I'm a sweeper.

Ripple of applause

It started when I was a teenager, I used to sweep with my sisters after school. By 18 I was on my 9th broom and I had a criminal record for stealing dustpans from the supermercado. Later I hid brooms around the house and I lost my driving license for sweeping the foot well whilst doing 120 kph on the highway. Soon I was homeless after the eroded kitchen floor collapsed into my basement, so I hung out with other sweepers in dusty places around town. Eventually my children were taken into care - the school nurse found friction burns on my son Pedro's head, they said I had forced him to get a perm and had been using him to sweep by holding his ankles, I honestly can't remember if I did, I have these black outs. When I come to I am lying on a shiny floor with blistered hands and back ache and I know I've been on another sweeping bender. Today my hands are calloused and I have a permanent stoop, but I haven't swept for a year and three days. Sweeping ruined my life.

I gawped at my map in the kind of shock that comes when you discover that the first Mexican state you will bike through has an area equal to that of Scotland, and that there's eight more states to ride until the US border. Mexico would claim the next two months of my life.

The Sierra Madre to my east stood bold and imposing under a wide sky as I wheezed ever northward, an inspection of my map after each day's riding confirmed I had travelled a couple of millimetres. After almost a fortnight I made it to hippy central, Zipolite, and for three days I camped on the beach watching a parade of beautiful people saunter past, drinking beer with new friends and body surfing in the rolling waters of the Pacific. I take my days off seriously. Then onward once more, at pace, on a road loosely tethered to the coastline, splurging on tacos to keep my legs turning and calling my IPOD into service to tackle the boring stretches.

My bedroom vista

Men and women in Mexico disagree about what is the most mysterious quirk of the bearded gringo in the village with a bicycle. Men have decided it's the money. 'Three years!' they exclaim 'who is paying you?' No, no... I'm just a tourist, I try to explain. "What's your job?", "Well I was a doctor...", "AHHH a rich doctor!" they joke, now satisfied, though what they don't know is that that money ran out ages ago.

Women are harder to appease - they want to know why I have no wife and children. In Mexico I'm far too old not to have these essentials and they prowl around me, hunting for an explanation.
How old are you?
I'm 32
32! Are you gay? They enquire brazenly. Before I get to answer the other lady is nodding vigorously. That must be it, she has decided.
No.

Their studious eyes examine for a clue, looking for some physical deformity, checking for the stench of stale alcohol, a patch of a disfiguring skin condition, anything to explain away my status as a strange over-the-hill singleton. I tell them that in the UK we have kids a bit later on average than Mexicans, and families are smaller. Four is a lot of kids. 'Four!' they shriek. 'I'm one of 167 and that's small!'


I pedal through Mexico in a turbulent time in the country's history, one in which the crack down of the previous president on the drug cartels led to a surge in violence. By the road there are huge signs with the faces of four wanted men, descriptions and aliases, and an offer of 30 million pesos for help in their capture. Every sign I have seen has been vandalised, the images of the men scraped off the metal. One looked to have been burnt. The Mexican mafia has a long reach. There are military check points and regular roadside searches, I try not to wave at the soldiers in case one absent mindedly returns the gesture and is misinterpreted by his comrades as issuing an order to open fire on the gringo.


My next stop was Truncones, a more upmarket beach town for families and pensioners, mainly American. As I set up camp on the beach an elderly man who was dining in the nearby restaurant stood up, but only to a stoop, and hobbled over to shake my hand and offer to buy me dinner. Whilst munching away on red snapper he explained that his wife has died two years ago. He offered then to let me crash in his holiday home, we would share his king size bed, but I turned him down having already set up camp.

He looked disappointed and then at the end of the meal his questions turned more personal, culminating with...

'So what do you do for sex?'
'Well I light some candles, put on some Marvin Gaye, kiss her handlebars, remove the seat post...'
I think my sense of humour was lost on him, worryingly though he pursued his line of questioning.
'So... you only interested in girls?' he wanted to know, leaning forward, his eyes wide and excited. The Mexican women were right then, I'm giving off gay vibes.

Mexico is not a land I associated with incredible wildlife, but check out these photos of the animals I came across en route and decide for yourself...

This Iguana was maybe 3 foot in length. It's very rare to get so close, usually they run off at a furious pace, but on this occasion the iguana had descended a near vertical verge and couldn't go back up. Instead of running he relied on camouflage and stayed perfectly still and I could get to within a metre or so from him

A Crested Caracara

A rattle snake - one of the few live snakes I got pretty close to. As I approached he coiled up ready to strike so I stayed around 2 metres away to take the photo, just out of his range. It was a heart stopping moment!

A Great Horned Owl

An Osprey - there are man made nesting platforms for these magnificent birds all across the Baja peninsula

I passed through a few beaches where the more serious surfers hang out and who drift up and down the coast hunting swells and getting stoned in hammocks when there's no joy. Again, I'm the odd one out. The 'bicycle dude'. I just nod sagely when they moan about 'crumbly' waves and 'half-assed swells'. It's the same when I reach mountains others are there to scale, when I swing past reefs and don't plan to get my PADI, when I'd rather a beer and not the 200 metre bungee jump. I heard a few surfers chatting about Karl Bushby - it was a name I instantly recognised. Who the hell was he? Then I remembered - an ex-paratrooper who set out more than 15 years ago to walk home to the UK from Patagonia. And who, astonishingly, is still going. And who I learnt is based in a town a little further north on the Mexican coast.

I set out to find him, to hunt him down, a legend on the back of a myth, like Stanley searching for Livingstone or that soldier trying to find that mental guy in Apocalypse Now. Except I wouldn't have to brave think jungle to reach Karl, I just had to find the right cafe where he hangs out on the Pacific coast town of Maleque.

It didn't take long - Karl, understandably, is a well known resident. We chatted about his epic journey which began in southern Chile and continued as Karl nonchalantly strolled (well, not quite) the length of South America before things got really serious. He is one of the few people to have ever traversed the Darien Gap (a guerrilla-controlled, mosquito-ridden tract of dense jungle frequented only by the ruling drug cartels and the occasional loping jaguar) which he managed by floating down rivers and scrambling around dressed in camouflage or impersonating a roaming Colombian vagabond. Karl pushed north through Central and North America using a big trolley he called 'The Beast' and for a short time a donkey which according to Karl 'just wanted to eat and rape everything'. Having decided that he wanted to walk every inch back to the UK there was no choice but to trek, swim and use floating sea ice to cross the Bering Straits. Which he did. When he arrived at a remote Russian outpost he was swiftly thrown in jail where he spent 50 days under interrogation. After some high level political wrangling he managed to get a 90 day VISA for Russia, but here the story gets very complicated indeed, and after years of doing sections of the route and returning to his base in Mexico he has been given a five year ban from Russia, he's down, but not yet defeated.

I liked Karl immediately and it was good to see that he didn't have the stormy eyes, the countenance of resolve or speak in the abrupt tones you might expect from a serviceman turned seasoned explorer. He made his separation from a Colombian girl he fell in love with, and the time he met a son he barely knows, sound a world more challenging than facing off polar bears or staring down the wrong end of a rifle in the Darien. When I imparted a choice cut or two from my comparatively tame adventure Karl's eyes sparkled, his face alight, and it's clear that he's a man who's ravenous for adventure.

One thing Karl said to me struck a particular chord - 'The world really is a big place' - he told me. Up until the age of seven I lived in a small village near Nottingham. Twenty two years later I returned to find the vast, sprawling garden of my memory was just a small patch of land, the towering trees I scrambled up and got stuck in were merely average-sized and the grand house where as a little person I ran, rolled and jumped around, a lowly bungalow. Perspective, I learnt, is everything. People who journey everywhere with the aid of fuel and engines may sit and muse that's it's a small world but after 45,000 km by bicycle I know different, and Karl knows it even more than I do. When I think about the narrow corridor I have biked and all those other roads I had no time, desire or reason to ride, all those next valleys, all those distant mountains off my route, all those places with no roads at all, then I see how utterly humongous this world really is. The places I will never venture on my bike easily outrank the places I will and when people study my map and say "wow, you really are cycling the whole world!" I think No, just a little piece of it.

My mum wouldn't like me hanging out with people like Karl. They give me ideas, ill advised ones. I get a stab of envy when I hear of people doing things I don't have the heart, nouse or talent to pull off. The night after I met Karl I returned to my campsite, opened my journey and scribbled "Swim from Australia to New Zealand ...possible???" Cheers Karl. Look what you made me do.

Disclaimer - it is not possible, I checked. Though another big swim might be, watch this space.


I had planned to crew a yacht across the Sea of Cortez to the Baja peninsula but it seemed that strong and determined northerlies would make any chance of a lift unlikely. In the end I crewed a yacht from Mazatlan to Puerto Vallarta (against 'The Bash' - a sailor's term for riding into the prevailing wind) and then the ferry to the famous Baja peninsula. I sailed with Patrick (taciturn) and Kenny (garrulous), two burly Americans, as proud of their life on the seas as they were of their arcing paunches. Kenny liked to show me off to his mates in the marina 'Hey guys you gotta meet Steve, he's cycling round the damn world! Been riding through Africa, and Peru and all them places where folks wear them damn turbans and shit!'

We sailed with the wind 'on the nose' whilst whales breached and turtles glided past. Then the ferry and soon the low, dusty, empty ridges of the Baja came into view and I thought about all the long days and fast miles that the landscape might afford me. I was wrong, of course.

Day after day of headwinds and broken spokes turned all those glorious fast miles into lumbering, dragging ones. I got off the main road in search of adventure but took the wrong turn and ended up pushing my bike through thick sand in a desert where I hadn't seen another vehicle in more than 24 hours. I had no working bike pump and a puncture out here would have meant a 20 mile walk without water. Punishing roads have consequences beyond the mental anguish, namely a saddle sore arse. The serenity of the desert night was pierced by my girly screams as I rotated buttocks whilst cooking pasta in my tent. In the end I had to photograph my own behind so I could assess the damage, what greeted me in the camera's viewfinder was slightly puzzling. My arse had become a perfect replica, on a larger scale, of a sea anemone. A glistening, swollen, scarlet, alien thing. I wish I had taken more care of my saddle, I might post the photo of my sea anemone arse on line with the caption - 'look after your Brooks saddle, or this could be yours' .




Peninsula - it should be a long and thin thing, right? Well yes, but its relative, the Baja is long, thin and massive. More miles than Land's End to John O'Groats and so a lot of sand and cacti between me and the States. Dusty towns came and went, their resident chihuahuas yapping and chasing my wheels. The roads, stubborn and unwavering, sliced the desert into two identical cacti-sprinkled plains. My mind became a butterfly, floating around old memories in the air of the past, and I practised the presentation I plan to give in schools in California, the notes held in my transparent map case on my handlebar bag. My legs spinning on autopilot, my mind spinning too but tiring of the same half-thoughts and musings, always too vivid. Night skies were thick with stars, as they twinkled the heat of the departed sun rose up towards them and mornings were a time for foggy breath and shivering.

Over the last three years I have regressed into childhood and many of the things I used to think of as normal parts of life are greeted with a child-like rush of awe and excitement. Watching a DVD for example, on one of the rare occasions I decide I need a hostel, is like going to the cinema when you're eight years old. After weeks of washing in rivers the first warm shower is nirvana. A bed, cheese, a conversation that doesn't involve telling someone how many miles I ride per day, all these things I have learnt to appreciate. For three years I have owned no mobile phone, no computer, no TV,  no jeans, no deodorant. With the obvious exception of the last, I haven't really needed any of them. Lesson 354: don't take things for granted.

Cacti on the Baja

As I near the States, now just a stone's throw, I am musing about all there is to miss about Latin America, the language for a start. In Argentina I was doing impressions of strawberries to confused shop keepers and a pack of giggling locals, by Mexico I was chatting up chicas, talking politics with disenfranchised farmers and making bad dad jokes. I still make gaping mistakes though - most recently by requesting a 'siete arriba' only to induce mass hysteria and shrieks of delight from the other customers. You learn though, and I now know that a 7up is a 7up in any language. What I won't miss - the NOISE, the dogs, the cockerels, the stares, Americans who arrive in campsites and shout 'Hey you! Do you speak AMERICAN!', getting chilli sauce in my eye, getting chilli sauce on my face whilst recovering from chilli sauce in my eye, signless roads.



So - Two dates for your diaries people - If you live in Los Angeles, or have friends who do, then come down to one of my public presentations...

The Explorer's Club (Southern California Chapter),
When:  Sunday April 14th
Time:   4-6pm
Where: G2 Gallery 1503 Abbott Kinney Boulevard, Venice.

REI Tustin
When: Tuesday 23rd of April
Time: 7 - 8.30 pm 
Where: 2962 El Camino Real, Tustin, CA92782



Both events are FREE so no excuses. I will be selling photography at the end of each.

USA - here I come

I get sentimental when I leave places behind. Some smarting reminder of all that I have grown to relish suddenly stirs and every memory becomes tainted by a sense of loss and nostalgia.

January the 7th 2010: I was shivering and sitting astride my bicycle in the port of Dover waiting for a barrier across the road to lift so I could board my ferry to France, suspecting then that England would next feature in my life in half a decade or more. 'Sorry about this' remarked the lady in the ticket booth 'the barrier's a little temperamental'.
'Oh yeah? Just like my wife!' announced a burly truck driver who was leaning out of his window and grinning inanely. England, I thought, I will miss you. I will miss your quirky humour, your self-effacing satire, your casual misogyny.

It was Mexico's job then to issue me a farewell that would serve as a keen reminder that behind me fifteen months and more than 25,000 km of Latin America would soon be dormant, my bond with the continent broken, my experience over and condensed into a scrap yard of memories. The reminder was a giant duck. To be more specific - a man dressed in a monstrous yellow duck costume who was dancing on a street corner and holding a sign which advertised the pharmacy beside him. He was raving as if his life depended on it, to some salsa infused Latin blend which blasted from speakers at a volume that would ensure it was audible in the stratosphere. So questions - What do ducks have to do with pharmacies? Why is the duck dancing? Who came up with this idea, and how drunk were they?

The answer to these of course is irrelevant - this is Mexico, or more broadly Latin America, and here loud music, dancing and dressing up are all essential ingredients of the Latin lifestyle. So why not use them to get more people into your pharmacy? It makes perfect sense, all except the choice of animal outfit, but probably the duck costume was just the one that happened to be available that morning.

The approaching hassle and hoopla involved in crossing the US border at Tijuana troubled me and I was convinced that US immigration would find some tiny infraction on which to deprive me of my 90 day VISA waver. US border guards don't have a shining reputation in the areas of reason or lenience (or humility, humour, fairness, benevolence or compassion). I believe eye contact with a US immigration official is grounds enough for a good thrashing and a life ban from the USA. Referring to an official as buddy, bub, dude, geezer or my man carries an mandatory sentence of 25 to life in solitary confinement. Potential border guards at interview are made to watch videos of dogs doing human things in hilarious dog trousers. Failure to laugh means the candidate has either no sense of humour, or just didn't get it. Either way that makes them the perfect machine the US government needs to stop all the scary drug addicts, terrorists, job seekers and riffraff getting in. Or at least that's what I believed before crossing the border, I was about to be proved wrong.

Disabled people quite rightly don't wait in line like everyone else at the Tijuana border but instead go straight through to the gate. You would not believe how many disabled people cross this border, call me cynical but I soon became convinced some entrepreneurial Mexican was renting out white canes and walking sticks to those waiting in line just down the block.

Eventually I reached the gate to meet what could only be described as a triumph in personnel selection. You would not mess with this lady, the face of the USA looked fresh from bludgeoning a small group of orphans to death for kicks. Once she signalled for me to move forward I wheeled my bike cautiously past only to hear 'Hey!' I froze and turned slowly, trembling, half expecting her to radio in the SWOT team. 'Just leave your bike here, I'll watch it for you. It'll be easier than dragging it through. So where are you riding from?'. I was so taken aback it took me ten seconds to mumble Mexico, which of course was obvious.

The man who would or would not issue my 90 day VISA waver had the opportunity to add some hilarity to my story but he was nothing like the stereotype either and turned out to be very pleasant, all smiles and quips, though he did linger a second longer than was comfortable over my Syrian VISA which takes up a whole page in my passport. 'Wouldn't want you as my doctor!' he joshed after I told him I hadn't worked for three years. It was a fair point.

I filled in the immigration form, making sure I added ticks to all the right boxes.

'Have you ever been convicted or involved in Genocide?' Yes or No.

"Genocide? well now, let me think, I'm so god damn busy these days. What was I doing Tuesday?.... Let me just phone my PA and check. Hi Jane. Yes I'm fine. Just at immigration, this nice American gentlemen wants to know if I've been involved in genocide at all over the last few years, can you just check in my diary for me? Great. Nothing? Sure? Maybe check under W for War Crimes will you, just to be on the safe side."

The strange tick boxes continued "Have you ever been involved in espionage or sabotage?" Now my guess is that someone clever enough to work as a professional spy for some top secret agency or political movement would not get caught out by a tick box. I can imagine the sweat cascading down the face of a shifty looking panic-stricken man in a large over coat holding a briefcase whose brain is screaming 'yes or no? YES OR NO?! Shit! Play it cool and think goddamn it, THINK!'

So finally into the United States for the first time ever, country number 41 of my world ride and 55 of my life. Not even a cursory search, no drugs dogs, no SWOT team, no white noise or pepper spray, just a thumbs up from the customs guy and a brand spanking new stamp in my now cluttered passport. I rolled my bike out into what I thought was San Diego - immediately there was something mightily familiar about it. I couldn't quite put my finger on it - perhaps it was the many Taco stands, or the Spanish road signs, or the fact that everyone was speaking Spanish, or ALL THE MEXICANS. I was so bewildered I had to return to immigration to check I hadn't sauntered though the wrong turn-style and been directed accidentally back into Mexico, but no, this was the USA. That fact became clear when I ventured into a fast food joint to be served a burger roughly the size of my head and ate whilst cars pulled into the drive-through with wheels roughly the size of an average Mexican family.

People, I noticed, were overwhelming polite in stores, often so sunny in fact they left me dumb struck. Crazy people shuffled around muttering expletives, and there were a lot of crazy people. There were parking meters and malls and joggers and 12 lane freeways and Americans doing American things in their natural habitat. There were benches advertising injury lawyers which reminded me of a sentence by one of my favourite American authors Tom Robbins:

The logic of a contemporary American: “I’m suffering. Therefore, somebody must owe me money. I’m hiring a lawyer.”

Photo courtesy of mi amigo Max, thanks Max

I zigzagged through the southern reaches of San Diego trying to get north without an illegal jaunt down the freeway, listening to golden era west coast hip hop in my IPOD (America's greatest invention, the hip hop not the IPOD) and soon pulled into a cafe outside of which a sign boasted 'Top Gun. Sleazy bar scene filmed here July 1985'. A beautiful waitress called Adra paid for my drink and told me she was getting off in half an hour, if I waited she would ride with me. Three hours later, drinking one of the twenty varieties of on-tap beer amongst the hipsters of Ocean Beach, eating noodles someone else had insisted on paying for, my inbox brimming with offers of places to crash from here to Vancouver, I was chuffed to bits to be in the States.

Life, I was sure, would be suddenly and soothingly easy once in the USA, it would be like taking off a tight pair of shoes. As it turned out, I was half right. Here cyclists are treated as worthy members of the road using community and not like some strange tribe that's getting in the way of progress. Signs emblazoned with bikes declared 'Share The Road' and I felt the desire to pucker up and kiss them. And there were bike lanes, lanes just for bikes, a concept so alien to me now after my journey through Latin America that I almost forgot they had been invented. On each of the two occasions I happened upon a bike lane in South America I had an urge to call up the mayor's office and ask politely if he or she would be available for a hug. Of course on one of these occasions the lane drifted peacefully on for a whole 100 metres before inexplicably terminating at a tree stump.



The USA - a place where I can choose from 17 varieties of peanuts in a store that opens at seven, closes at eleven and has a title to reassure me of this fact. A place in which I don't have to worry if the ATM will spit out my card and keep the cash. A place I can drink the tap water without fear of amoebic dysentery and a place with things called signposts. HALLELUJAH!

Everything is bigger (including some of the people), faster (except the really big people), snazzier, flashier and a whole lot more familiar. But things have got a little more complicated too. I can't afford hostels, though hospitality abounds. Internet cafes and call centres have vanished so I coughed up for my first computer and phone for three years, a pair of jeans would complete the Normal Life ensemble but I don't have the courage just yet. People keep telling me (so far very politely) to take my bike outside when I wheel it inside stores, a habit formed from three years touring countries where I can. And there are rules, so many rules. In California I can't drink a beer on the beach full stop, or get served in a bar without ID despite being more than a decade over the legal age limit. Technically (this is true) I can't even throw a Frisbee on a beach in LA without a life guards permission. America might pride itself on being the country of the free, but it incarcerates proportionally more people, (many, many more people) than any other country on earth. Not all of these opened a beer on the beach, though there are more Ultimate Frisbee players in jail in the US than anywhere else on our planet. And I believe that's a fact.

So America is a confusing place then, and so what? The fact that 'lands of contrast' has become a horrible cliche and features somewhere in the Lonely Planet guidebook to every country on earth is because in reality every country has it's bizarre contradictions. My friends Benny and Jo arrived from the UK and their present, I am sure, was a comment on contemporary America. They brought me a bacon doughnut. Surely nothing better symbolises sweet and savoury America than the bacon doughnut. My palate is still in some sort of irreconcilable civil war.

The Bacon-Spangled Doughnut

The Pacific Coast Highway terminates abruptly on the way to LA, the only options are the freeway (illegal for bikers) and a road through the Pendleton Army Base. A police officer nearby informed me I would need a helmet to ride through the latter, but I thought I would try my luck anyway since I don't have one and so was out of options. The soldier I spoke with seemed to have some sort of severe vocal tick and he would intermittently blurt out "Liability, Sir!" in answer to any of my questions and pleas to be allowed to pass. I retreated to think about my strategy but the police officer came back, now angry after finding out from the soldier with Tourettes that I had tried to get in when he had told me not to. Once he finally chilled out he radioed colleagues to find out the location of the nearest thrift store so that I could buy a helmet for the 13 miles of high liability virtually car-free, pancake-flat, benign bike path where the greatest risk would be collision with my own shadow. When one couldn't be located close by we had a heated debate about my options (which he eventually conceded were non-existent) and I told him I would try the freeway. Incredibly he agreed this might be my best option. He AGREED! Overwhelmed by this I waved him off before he changed his mind, cruised onto the freeway and cycled as fast as I could to the next exit (stealthily past the highway patrol who were writing up a ticket for somebody and didn't notice me). Then I was off and onto a bike path once again shouting 'Phew!'

Now I'm not going to argue that helmets are unnecessary, that frankly, would be mental. In fact if you called me an idiot for not wearing one I might agree with you. In some countries helmets are compulsory full stop and I'm surprised that they're not in California because there are many more outlandish health and safety measures, warnings and mandates in place, a spin off from the litigation heavy society here. As I reached Los Angeles a sign warned me I was entering a Tsunami Risk Zone. Wow. Surely as I've been cycling the coastline of the Pacific rim I have been biking in a 'Tsunami Risk Zone' for more than a year. I didn't worry much about tsunamis before, perhaps I should have? I didn't realise how much danger I was in. And it continued - The host of the planetarium show in the observatory in the Hollywood hills warned me about motion sickness. There are signs in America that warn people about the grave threat of falling acorns. Clearly there are a lot of things to worry about here, strangely much, much more than in the wild parts of Africa and South America I have spent the last three years. I had better be careful.

"Sorry Santa, those are the rules, I don't care about how upset the orphans will be."

First you have to pay for their funeral, and now this

Between San Diego and LA I stayed in a hiker biker camp for six dollars: Thank you USA, I forgive you now for getting me all scared about tsunamis, you have redeemed yourself. These are great little spots inside the State Parks and dotted all the way up the Pacific coast. It was here I met Chris, another cycle tourer who was on his way to a course to learn how to be a tour leader for the Adventure Cycling Association. We biked together the whole of the next day, cycled up through Long Beach, where I must report Snoop Dog was nowhere to be seen, and camped on someones lawn after getting nice and drunk.


The following day I consulted Googlemaps and made my way to Silver Lake to meet some old friends. Googlemaps is a wonderful thing though it doesn't, as I found out, steer you away from gang land territory. 'You are entering the City of Compton' a sign told me, gulp. Having forgotten to purchase 'The Cycle Touring Guide to Compton' I decided to up my velocity.

Benny and Jo are old friends from the UK who were on holiday here and alongside their friend Rachel we busied ourselves taking in the sights - the freaks of Venice beach, the Hollywood mansions and hills, the Getty museum and more before watching Benny perform a gig in Hollywood. Benny AKA Benny Diction is an MC (my mum would say 'one of those rappers'), check out one of his recent videos. Afterwards I stayed with Ryan, a genuinely nice, generous fella and the man in charge of Exploration Challenge, a TV series in production which features yours truly.




I am occasionally looking up at tall buildings in a style similar to Crocodile Dundee when he arrives in New York. I still find myself walking into a room, bar or restaurant and thinking 'Wow, look how many Americans there are in here!'. And soon afterwards 'Oh yeah, right.' But I am adjusting to the American way of life, mainly by a daily habit of consuming my weight in cheese.

Here are a five things I have learnt so far in the USA

• Whilst store keepers are consistently chirpy, welcoming souls they do not like it when people stand by the door walking rapidly in and out in order to activate an automatic voice which tells departing shoppers to 'Have a Nice Day!'
• A sign with the words 'Ped Xing' is not, as I had hoped, advertising the presence of a road named after one of the lesser known (and Chinese) founding fathers. It's just a short (and aesthetically painful) version of 'Pedestrian Crossing'.
• Every Californian is either vegan, or has at least 20 vegan friends
• If I order a tuna (pronounced in the British way) sandwich I will receive a chicken one
• The policy of prescription 'Medical Marijuana' is the most corrupt and bizarre system ever invented (and is tantamount to legalisation) though this topic alone deserves it's own full post.

Pimped up bikers at LA's Ciclavia Bike Ride

As sunset encroached we waded a river and found a multinational posse of trekkers camped out near the hot springs. After lolling in the steamy waters, perfect relief after the time spent on foot, we cooked around a campfire before collapsing into slumber. I woke to find that my legs, unaccustomed to doing much except move in circles, were no longer as functional as I remembered them. Plus, I was in a world of pain.

A Gopher Snake

Yellow bellied Newt

We started with Yosemite Falls, the highest waterfall in the lower 48 states and allegedly the 5th highest in the world, which was funny because I had visited the fifth highest in Peru, 150 metres higher than Yosemite (Yosemite is actually 20th) but natural wonders always get a little embellished by their tour guides. The next day was a tour to Glacier Point and Jack our guide told the legend of Bridalveil falls - looking into the falling water for thirty seconds would mean you will be married in six months. My mum, anxious for a daughter in law and grandchildren one day, nudged me and grinned. Our bus continued past Ponderosa pine trees, the bark coloured a lustrous green by staghorn lichen, which eventually gave way to ghost forests where the larvae of tip moths had laid waste to the life and greenery. As we descended the larger leaved black oak, maple and incense cedar crept back into view. El Capitan was visible again too and Jack told of an 81 year old climber who scaled the granite monster a few years before. It was my turn to do the nudging, my mum considers herself a spritely 62 year old.

Amongst the Coastal Redwoods, California

'Step outside Sir!'
Light fills my tent, the fabric glows blue, then red and back to blue in what I know must be the lights of a cop car outside.
'GET OUT OF THE TENT SIR! NOW!'
'Alright, alright, I'm coming!' I shout back, and I stir my pan of simmering pasta before stepping outside into the night. My tent is pitched by the side of a parking lot - it's the consequence of running out of daylight, energy and scruples during yesterday's hunt for an elusive campground on the Marin headland. Just the other side of the parking lot there's an escarpment and beyond the venerable Golden Gate bridge reaches across the choppy waters of the San Francisco bay. It's a crap place to rough camp, way too visible, and I half expected some kind of comeuppance.

'Show me your hands Sir. HANDS! WHAT ARE YOU HOLDING SIR!'
'It's just some dry spaghetti...'
'SIR, PLACE THE SPAGHETTI ON THE GROUND AND SHOW ME YOUR HANDS'
I follow the order
'GOOD. NOW STEP AWAY FROM THE VEGETABLES'

There are two police officers, the twitchy, vociferous one has one quivering hand pinned to his gun belt. The other steps around me and picks up my knife from where it's sat in a plate of chopped onions. Unconsciously I slide one hand into my pocket.
'HANDS! HANDS!' they bark in unison
'Sorry, sorry'

After collecting some basic details they ask for my passport and I return to my tent to collect it whilst a beady eyed officer follows, watching me intensely, perhaps expecting me to launch into some kind of commando roll, snatch at the packet of dry spaghetti and stab him in the neck with the filaments of pasta. Or perhaps he's spotted the potentially lethal weapon of my broccoli and assumes I will try to bludgeon him to death with it. It would be a slow demise.

There are a lot of guns in the US and a lot of nutters with the inclination to use them, so I can understand their caution, but when dealing with hapless cycle tourists cooking dinner I'm not convinced there's need for these theatrics. Besides, I just don't have the space in my panniers for an AK-47, too bulky. The officers check my passport, let me make my case and quickly calm down. They even give me permission to camp there overnight once I promise to move off in the morning. I had after all chosen a well developed area instead of throwing down my tent down over a meadow of wild orchids and spit roasting a slaughtered elk.


Marin county turned out to be a leafy utopia with streets all named after trees, where rakish middle aged women walked red setters and Afghan hounds and where grand houses lined up after each other, divided by rhododendron. Whilst I perused a menu outside a cafe, trying to decide which sandwich I would choose if I could afford one, which I could not, I definitely could not, a man attired in a waistcoat and sporting a thin goatee offered to buy me breakfast. Afterwards he spent ten minutes calling friends of his further north who could help me out in some fashion or offer me a place to sleep. It's another charm of the US - more often people don't wonder how they might be able to help, the approach is more - I'm going to help, and here's how.

I made tracks north up the edge of California - the sparkling waters of the Pacific reaching out to my left as I freewheeled down to small coves and recruited my friend momentum to attack climbs up and over verdant headlands. June days in California are long and I pedal until they slowly bleed into night. Memorial day weekend arrived and RVs wrestled for space on the winding coastal highway, I among them, trying to hold my own. A campsite marked on my map ended up being a permanent site for these giant RVs without space for the skinflint bikers like me who expect a five dollar fee and a hot shower to sweeten the deal. A man spotted me scoping out the park and waved and shouted in a manner that made me think we were old friends. It turned out Eric just liked to adopt the odd touring biker when he spotted them and I was welcomed into his clique like one of the family. He offered me a spot to camp by his RV, made sure I always had a beer in hand, fed me with the family and that evening his and other families congregated around the fire, the kids played guitar and we toasted marshmallows. My send off was marked by cheers and waves and back pats and high fives and I admit it, I left a touch teary eyed.

Highway One

Towards the northern reaches of the state, California's Highway One veers inland for a time, bent inwards by steep mountains which effectively wall off an area known as The Lost Coast. Locals told me of a redundant logging road I could use to make it over the forested lumps of land that discourage most into making the effort. The junction was unsigned but I met a jeep pulling out onto the main road.

'You're not going that way are ya buddy?' asked the driver
'I was planning to'
'On that?'
'Um, yes, I guess'
'Well, good luck to ya!'

The warning shot was a good call. Most motor vehicles would not have made it. Gradients of 15 and sometimes 20 % turned my quads into fierce enemies of the decision making part of my body that had got them into this mess. Endless climbs precluded descents so steep and uneven that I didn't dare take them at more than 10 km/hr, and still then with the sneaking suspicion I was heading towards spinal trauma and air evacuation. The logging road saw no other vehicles at all and the windless day was an eerie one - I was hemmed in by a forest of Blair Witch ilk, silent and still and foreboding. There was another reason to be on edge here too. Three weeks before my journey towards the lost coast, 200 miles away inland, a woman and her two children were found dead from gunshot wounds in their home. Shane Miller, the husband, father, ex-convict and prime suspect in the triple homicide, had disappeared. He grew up in these woods and the police had found his car two weeks ago, abandoned just a few miles from me now. He hung with a tough crowd and friends knew him as a survivalist with the skills needed to live rough. Reportedly he had a cache of weapons, money and food buried or hidden in the forest. Townspeople I met later on my route gossipped constantly about him and everyone had a theory - that he'd hiked out, that he was still here living wild, that he'd killed himself. I saw police involved in the manhunt with quad bikes and dogs. Was I was sharing the wilderness with him?

The next day can't have been very pleasant for a fugitive on the run, or a touring cyclist. The rain was endless and fell in sheets, drenching the forest and me with it. An American might say I was thrown a curve ball. If that's true the figurative pitcher was a sadist aiming at my nuts. My hands were shrivelled, white and aching with the cold. My feet grew insensate and I began to wonder whether there was a precise definition of trench-foot and how I would know when I had it. The roads continued their undulating torment until tarmac provided a brief respite but once again the road took flight like a bipolar maniac on crystal meth. Soon I realised I wasn't entirely sure where I was and I waved down a vehicle for assistance, the driver was about as Northern Californian as you can get.

'Hi, I'm White Star The Pacifist'
voiced the bearded curiosity behind the wheel.
'Right. Hi White Star. Just need some directions - where does this road go?'
White Star The Pacifist was very helpful in every way except in the art of directing a lost person. He offered insightful and unique quasi-political ramblings. He used words I didn't understand and some I doubted actually exist except in the bizarre world of white star's grey matter. He cursed Tony Blair and made me promise that I hadn't supported the Iraq war. Eventually I gathered from White Star that I had taken a wrong turn somewhere, waved him off and then alone, wet, tired, frustrated, and hungry, thought one and only one thing - Shit. And immediately after that, 'I need a cup of tea'. To that end I descended 400 vertical metres in the wrong direction just to get one, which it occurred to me was a very British thing to do.

I hung out at the store, sheltering under the roof, procrastinating with determination, and daydreaming about a parallel universe once within my grasp. If only I had bought a car instead of a bicycle. If only I had waved goodbye to my mum and turned left, left, left and left and then said 'you know what, I've got a better idea'. I could have been back in a cosy London flat and my life within it. I might even have a girlfriend. My parallel universe comes from a fork in the road which I reached on some forgotten day in early 2007. One road was loaded with predictability, comfort, financial security and convention. The other promised half a decade of banana sandwiches, a forceful dent in my promising medical career and the occasional worry about being mauled to death by a wild animal. But it also came with the allure of adventure and that priceless quantity: uncertainty. The guardian at this fork in my road asked a question I struggled with, the hardest of my life.

'Will it all be worth it?' 

The sacrifices I knew, the gains were more mysterious. A deeply rooted gut instinct pushed me in the direction of a yes but in my parallel universe I am not sitting here, shivering, fed up and lonely. In my parallel universe I answered that question with a no. My alternate self in my parallel universe and me, in this one, have journeyed together. There are some things I know for sure about my other self, others I don't. For example - I don't know for sure what medical speciality I would be working in. I can't say what colour or model of hatchback my alternate self would be driving. I have no idea how big my plasma TV would be. But I do know some things - I know that my alternate self never had to pick leaf litter and pine needles out of pasta because he ran out of water and had to cook with muddy rainwater from a puddle, or that when he did so he thought 'not again'. I can say with near 100% certainty that my alternate self doesn't regularly take a tentative sniff of his socks, grimaces, and then thinks 'probably a couple more days left in those'. My alternate self doesn't I'm sure sneak out of his tent at night wielding a knife because he heard a rustle in the bushes and thinks it may be a recently escaped serial killer. Seriously, that's how ridiculous my life has become.

But when I imagine my parallel universe and the man that lives there, I wonder when work's over, and after he has kissed his parallel universe girlfriend goodnight, whether he flicks on the discovery channel on that huge plasma TV and wonders about a parallel universe where an alternate self traversed the Andes and cycled across the Sahara Desert and through Colombian cloud forest. Ingesting occasional foliage and wondering about trench foot is a good trade off for a life time of regret. It's still raining outside the store, but I'm smiling and thinking that he can keep his plasma TV and loft apartment. I'm happy as I am.
Why do I like these little mini-adventures and the hills - I guess there's something alluring about this type of challenge because it's so dependent on one thing and one thing alone - me. Me versus mountain. If I keep going, I will make it. So many challenges in life are dependent upon extraneous and often unpredictable forces. I don't need people to agree with me, to vote for me, to buy from me, to do anything in order to succeed. There's something reassuring in the type of simple challenge in which you are the only variable that matters. Cycling the lost coast ended up being as much about discovering the coast itself as it was about discovering myself and how much I can handle.

The Lost Coast of Northern California

I rejoined the highway and each day ended in the retreat of another hiker-biker campsite. One night a guy came up to my tent and asked if I wanted to set up camp with him and his girlfriend making it a cheaper deal for all of us. I got chatting with Adam and Kiley around the fire. They had left their home in Colorado for the promised land of California with little more than a car, some stuff and a dog. They had no work lined up, no friends here, no house yet and no solid plan. They had hope and ambition to fill in the gaps. There was something endearing in their spontaneity, and also in their haplessness. They had been camping out for a week hoping a flat would come up on Craig's list and were living day to day. They were broke and Adam was clearly the hustler of the pair, offering incessantly to sell me all sort of things I didn't want or need. I overheard him on the phone to an old friend

'No way man, this is California. I can't be like selling meat from the back of my van like I did back home. People want menus and shit.'

They had lost the bulk of their money on their first day in California after Adam left his wallet in a toilet cubicle, most of his ID with it. Whilst relating their story to me by the fire Adam poured gas from a plastic jerrycan onto the flames which travelled up into the container and set it alight. He swung the blazing can around wildly trying to extinguish the flames whilst I shouted for him to throw it away before it exploded. Kiley threw some sand over the container and the flames went out. They both then laughed in a manner that told me they had no idea how close they had just come to weeks of pain and a lifetime of disfigurement. Three minutes later, Adam did it again.

Adam had spent five years in jail after being caught with 45 pounds of weed and 8 pounds of cocaine after he was caught transporting it for his dad. At trial he decided against ratting out his relatives and took the rap. He was 19 years old at the time. He told me he could get work like that again, 40,000 dollars per transport job, but knowing they would throw the book at him next time he hasn't taken what must at times be a tempting job offer, especially as things are. I felt some sympathy for them, despite their troubles and bad decisions, perhaps because they were so irrepressibly chirpy and optimistic in hard times. I wondered if they would ever make it to where they dreamt they might - the statistics suggest no. The upward mobility in the US that people have historically and rightly been so proud, AKA 'The American Dream', has dwindled and comparatively the US is less a land of opportunity than many other developed nations, including most of Europe. If you were born in the seventies in the US and into the lower 5th of the socioeconomic spectrum, your chance of making it into the top two fifths are about 15%, less than other places. For me though, as an outsider, the saddest thing is that people still believe the American dream is a reality mainly I suppose because canny advertisers still promote it and play on the fact that people want to believe it.

There is something impressive though about people's determination in the US to take responsibility for those around them. I've met children selling lemonade on the sidewalk to raise money not for themselves as I would have guessed, but for their school. Signs advertise a project called 'adopt a highway' where local groups clean up litter in exchange for their name on a signpost. There are book exchanges in corner shops where donations are given to raise funds for local volunteer fireman.

Oregon rolled around. The hills got longer but less steep. I rode past kite surfers on the beach, past dune buggies, past fishermen, through pine forests and everywhere green dominated the vista except to my left where the vast sea was uniformly blue in the mornings, a good sign. When the wind picked up later on in the day the wavetips frothed and the blue expanse became speckled white. My last two days on the coast were savage ones into gale force wind that slowed me to a crawl. I cut inland to Portland - my vision of the city was fashioned almost entirely from the TV show Portlandia - a satire on the odd, hippy-esque and quirky lifestyle of the residents. The show begins...

Remember the 90's? When people were talking about getting piercings and tribal tattoos. People were singing about saving the planet, forming bands? There's a place that idea still exists as a reality, and I've been there.
Where is it?
Portland
Oregon?
Remember when people were content to be unambitious, when people had no occupation whatsoever, when people would hang out with their friends and maybe work a couple of hours a week at a coffee shop?
Yeah, I thought that died out a long time ago
Not in Portland. Portland is a city young people go to retire.

I was determined to get beneath the cliché, and I had the perfect person to help me. Becky was a friend of Nate's, a cyclist I met in southern California. She was an awesome, generous soul who helped shape my experience of the city, and as a consequence Portland is one of my favourites so far. The city was basking in a warm sunny spell and gearing up for a series of cycling events in a festival called Pedalpalooza, it was the perfect time to be there. I met up with the Garths, a couple from Alabama I met back in Argentina more than a year ago who are still touring around the world and now on the home stretch, and then I spent four days doing all kinds of cool stuff with Becky. I spoke at a bike shop turned bar, I joined Becky and her mates at a banging house party with some quality musicians, I sat on a peer in the Willamette river at 4 am, in the centre of the city, drinking good beer. I wished I had more time.

There is something of the stereotype in Portland of course. People really do keep goats and chickens next to their houses in the city. Everyone is tattooed. People do go to clown school. Perhaps the mayor of the city really does sit on a giant beanbag instead of a chair, but I have no way to verify this. But of course there is a whole lot more to it than that, and as it turned out the best way for me to really get under the skin of Portland was by throwing everything off. Literally.

All day, and for a few days prior, Portland has sizzled with anticipation, and on the evening of June 8th bars around the city are choking with those determined to kill last minute nerves the easy way - with booze. Many I speak with have cycled naked through Portland's streets four or five times, and it reminds me what a major event this is on the Portland calendar.

I'm with Becky, we met three days ago. We're tipsy and hyped up, like everyone around us. The sun has set half an hour ago leaving the sky a navy blue as we jump onto bikes and head off towards the start line. Almost immediately we become swallowed up in a jumble of riders pedaling towards the river. More and more converge on the melee every minute from side streets and bars, many painted, waving glow sticks, and a few already naked. There are cheers and yells and whistles and it feels like we're part of something huge and bold and exciting. We hit Hawthorn bridge as a chaotic peloton. Two girls have stopped ahead and are undressing. Glitch-hop belts out from a boom-box on someones trailer, there are more screams. As the riders get denser we get off and walk our bikes into a jostling concrescence of nude bodies, all waiting for the ride to begin. The crowd is so tattooed that blue cheese is a decent simile.

The organizers don't publicize the route, only the starting point. This year it begins from outside the art museum which has been open to the gathered riders for hours, they have been charging entry but not many paid, the fee is a dollar per item of clothing. There's a smattering of voyeuristic pedestrians milling through the riders but nobody seems to care. Every so often a howl erupts from the assembly, a call to action, and soon after anyone who needed a little more inspiration to fling off their remaining clothes does just that. That includes me and in a flash of courage, spurred on by goading from Becky, my boxers are off and stashed in a pannier, it will be several hours until I put them back on. Becky though has set out boundaries - underpants are staying on and a blue star of tape covers each nipple. Within five minutes the tape has been peeled off and two minutes later everything else follows.

Technically we are now breaking the law - Portland's city code reads:

"It is unlawful for any person to expose his or her genitalia while in a public place or place visible from a public place, if the public place is open or available to persons of the opposite sex."

Thankfully though the police issued a statement in the weeks before the ride asserting that 'whilst many participants may violate Portland City Code, Police Bureau will be exercising tremendous discretion'. Tremendous discretion is a lovely understatement, I'm surrounded by an estimated 8150 naked or near naked bodies, and the police couldn't act if they wanted to, and they certainly don't want to.

“But I love you Amy….You Bitch.”

Having heard that series of words, slurred and probably uttered in the aftermath of necking something brutally alcoholic, and after ruminating on them briefly, I suspected they would herald a long, long night ahead. Dave The Drunk Misogynist, as we’ll call him, was not going to unwind this perplexing dichotomy very quickly – that he loves her, but that he also thinks she’s a bitch. Amy, the subject of Dave’s affections and contempt, had locked herself inside a car which was parked on the banks of a river where I had set up my tent, about a day’s ride out of Seattle. Dave, it seemed, wanted to get into the car with Amy.

‘Come on you bitch, let me in. I love you.’

‘Fuck off Dave’ retorted Amy ‘I don’t love you, I love Brian’

The words must have stung ‘Fine, have your 20 year old boyfriend!’ returned Dave.

Dave, lovelorn but ever the romantic, would retreat for a minute or two offering me the tantilising prospect of slumber, only to charge back to the car and pledge his undying love before an impulse to shout ‘Whore!’ overtook him. Eventually after hours of stalemate (between Dave and Amy, me and sleep) Dave decided the best demonstration of his unrequited love for Amy was to deflate her car tyres, which he did, to Amy’s agonized screams, followed by ‘What have you DONE! Dave, what have you DONE!!’ and then softer and softer whimpering as I drifted off belatedly to dreamland.

Two days in Seattle with my second cousin Liz was well spent since it involved good company, the League of Gentlemen on DVD and quite a lot of ice cream. The Canadian border to me was just another boundary, not something to stress about. I saw no potential of being forbidden to enter Canada or any likelihood of it being more complicated than any of the sixty that have come before it. Or so I thought.

After a chain of predictable questions the border guard asked how long I’d been cycling. Three and half years caused his eyebrows to take a vigorous leap towards his hair line, he swiftly wrote the letter B on a piece of paper and told me to go inside the immigration building. The immigration official was a tall, bald, menacing man with a Scottish lilt. ‘Here’s what’s happening’ he declared in a no-nonsense and well-practiced fashion. ‘YOU (and he pointed at me) have to prove to ME (points at himself, in case I find simple pronouns confusing) that we’re not going to find you working in a bar in Canada. I want bank statements, I want papers, I want evidence. So come on then, show me what you’ve got.’

At this point he put his hands behind his head and wearing an expression akin to that of a sadistic child when pulling the legs off an insect, he rested back into his chair and I got the sudden perception that this was someone who had been short changed in life and was wreaking revenge on society, one cycle tourist at a time. I didn’t have much, no bank statements, nothing to prove that I had funds, mainly because I don’t have funds. In the end a job application for New Zealand on my laptop, certificates proving I was a medic and a phone call to my relatives in Vancouver just about satisfied him. It was too close for comfort.

I stayed with MaryLouise, my mum’s cousin, a kind of extreme superhuman who thrashes twenty year olds in half Iron Man contests. She is also very charming and I enjoyed chilling out with her family whilst I waited for a very cool cat to arrive. Claire is an old friend of mine from Liverpool and also a superhuman by way of being a psychologist, PhD whizz, jazz musician, Frisbee champion, purveyor of winks and wry smiles and expedition leader and who is brilliantly dynamic in lots of other cool ways too. We swapped news, went to a poetry slam, biked around Vancouver and prepared for the road ahead. And we wondered a bit about some of Canada’s furry residents…

Bears – there are two schools of thought in Canada. The alarmists like to remind you of the ease at which a Grizzly can out-run you before it takes a minute to chew heartily away on your bone marrow, and there are the more insouciant brigade who like to compare black bears to big dogs and who offer assurances that they won’t give much trouble. Everybody though seems to think bringing a can of bear pepper spray to fend off a creature that gets too close is a sensible idea. I have my doubts. There are very few things in this world more disagreeable than being mauled to death by a bear. One of those things is spraying yourself in the face with extra potent pepper spray, and then getting mauled to death by a bear. Despite my reservations Claire and I headed off to a hunting store to enquire about some sort of defense strategy even though Claire has a kazoo and I have some interesting dance moves and I reckon a well-choreographed performance might repel even the most hulking of Grizzlies.

We get directed to a hunting store which is staffed exclusively by the sort of men who have taxidermied their own grandparents and have mounted them to the walls of their home, and who can’t finish a beer without crunching the can onto their forehead and growling. These are not the type of men you would leave to look after a family pet if you go on holiday. You might return to find they have finished off little Oscar with a crossbow and are sitting in a circle, skinning or spit roasting him.

‘This is essential’ explained one very serious man, holding the bear spray aloft and tilted unnervingly in my direction.

The actual packaging on bear spray. Something tells me it wouldn't work out quite like this

There are times when it strikes me that I've been cycling for a very long time. In Dawson City the revelation came just after I tried, unsuccessfully, to change gear with the grip-shift. I came to an abrupt halt in the baked goods aisle, looked down at my closed hand, which had subconsciously tensed around the handle of the supermarket trolley, and thought - maybe I should have some time off. Thankfully though I did not extend my arm to indicate whilst rounding the corner into the adjacent aisle, nor did I not lock the trolley to a lamppost in the parking lot.

Dawson City has a sinister seasonal split personality, like every other town at these latitudes. In the winter hardy locals and animals hibernate as the temperature drops to minus forty. In the summer it effervesces and teems with life and shudders under the shuffling feet of tourists, who arrive into town like a migration of wildebeest on the prairie. They get shuttled over the Canadian border from docked cruise ships or else have made their own meandering way here on motorbikes or in RVs. They come to catch a glimpse of this infamous wild-west town, clinging to it's heritage, where houses are made of wood, the sidewalk is a boardwalk and there's a nightly can-can show. Since the Klondike Goldrush more than a century ago a tide of misfits are drawn here too, girls with shaved heads and nose rings, burly, hard drinking men. There's even a pub where there continues an old tradition of serving drinks which contain real pickled human toes donated in people's wills. As you chug the crowd chants 'You can drink it fast, you can drink it slow, but the lips have gotta touch the toe.' And I think that says everything you need to know about Dawson.

It was here I met a Swizz couple on bicycles, Aurelie and Layko, who had been riding north from Colombia. They had spent the past few weeks picking morel mushrooms in the forest and had earned 6000 dollars in three weeks, so they bought the beers at the local can-can show where it was agreed - we would all ride together over the Top of The World Highway into Alaska. A boat ferried me across the Yukon river where they were waiting for me on the other side, and we set off on a nineteen kilometre climb up into the tundra. On the way up we passed a couple of Canadians dozing under a tree with so much gear they could have been refugees evicted from their homeland. On closer scrutiny the contents of their tumid panniers and laden trailer became clear - they were carrying enough tools to repair an aircraft carrier, a tent that could have comfortably housed a mormon family, a sitar, a mandolin and a didgeridoo.
'I don't get it!' bemoaned the guy 'it's taking us ages!'.
I almost pointed out his problem. 'Well maybe if you'd left the orchestra behind...'

Eventually the road crept up over the ridges and snaked across the tundra, a rash of spruce filled valleys, concealing remote streams. In the distance the mountains were blue-tinged and bleary, somewhere a wild fire had taken hold in the boreal forest, the smoke mushroomed skyward and looked like the aftermath of a nuclear bomb. Grazing caribou, a reminder of how far north we had come, scarpered as we cycled close by, their white tails bobbing up and down. Grizzly bears hunt the Caribou, so each evening we scanned the tundra and hauled food away from our tents.

Caribou

The Top of the World Highway

I clicked with the Swizz straight away and the days towards Alaska overflowed with jokes and banter. We cycled at the same pace, although they both lived on a bean-heavy diet and were the most flatulent people I have ever met, so riding behind either of them was to invite a face-full of gas whilst evenings were supplemented by the heavy fug and music of their farts.

We approached the Alaskan border post with trepidation - none of us had a US VISA, I was banking on the guard giving me another 90 day VISA waver, even though I knew this was technically against the rules. The Swizz tactic involved responding to every question the border guard asked with a broad, inane smile and the same bright announcement.

You realise you need a VISA?
'but vee are from Svitzerland!'
Yes I know, but you've stayed in the lower 48 for almost three months, is that right?
'but vee are from Svitzerland!'
OK, fine, I got that. Tell me where you're heading?
'but vee are from Svitzerland!'

It worked a treat. Eventually the jaded guard stamped their passport, and mine to boot.

Chicken, a small town just across the border, allegedly got it's name because some official couldn't spell it's actual name - ptarmigan, which is a variety of local bird, and so he just wrote Chicken. I'm not so sure. I think some crafty, longsighted entrepreneur saw the potential of the name change and now Chicken, which really has no right to anyone's attention, has a steady stream of tourists who pose by the town's signpost and buy bumper stickers and rubber chickens from the town's souvenir shop. Every year the bustling metropolis of chicken, population 30, holds a music festival: Chickenstock.

Outside the pub in Chicken were dawdling men whose faces seemed to be hanging from their prodigious moustaches rather than being supported by their necks. They pierced cans of beer with knives and downed the contents in seconds. The road signs around here were peppered with bullet marks. There is an adjective to describe all this, and it's 'Alaskan'.

The road to Tok cut through a crepuscular light as smoke encroached from the nearby Moon Lake wild fire which had been sparked into action back in June after a lightning strike. There was an orange lip in the otherwise leaden sky and the air reeked - not of burnt wood, but of burning tundra. We got through just in time, two days later they closed the road. Wild fires are of course part of the natural cycle here and the fire fighting heroes of Alaska, the pilots who drop water and fire retardant and the hardcore Smoke Jumpers who parachute in front of fires with chainsaws to cut away the bush, only get called into action when the fire threatens people's homes or areas of conservation. Otherwise Alaska is left to burn, and it burns a lot. 3000 square miles go up in flames every year, it often burns in a mosaic because of the underlying permafrost so great fingers of boreal forest are left unscorched, unless the wind changes and the fire can burn backwards, firing burning debris into the air which lands in some remote part of the forest and another fire takes hold.



The sun was blazing for my first few days in Alaska and I had to remind myself that winter here is a very different beast, the notion haunted me. I thought about the minus forty of a normal winter day, that the sun rises for only a couple of hours, that snow stays on the ground here for eight months of the year, and that below my wheels dig just a foot or so and the ground is frozen and will not defrost any time soon.

'There is a kind of biotic riot in the summer outburst of colour, scent and sound... but always the season's opposite haunts you: What about the winter? What must that be like?' (David Roberts, Earth and the Great Weather, pub 1971).

Alaska was famously bought from Russia in 1869 at less than two cents an acre. A bargain if you like bog. Permafrost isn't all that permeable so there are countless mosi-ridden pools brimming with decomposing vegetation, terrain known in these parts as the Muskeg. We cycled too across the flood plains of once epic rivers and I could only imagine the torrent flowing through them come spring. Now, in late summer, there was just a network of cement coloured streams trickling through. The Alaska range poked into view just briefly, ground squirrels scampered across the road and occasionally a moose loped onto the tarmac too forcing some emergency braking from our trio. We made it to Fairbanks where we spent the night in a campsite which was the type that featured, for free, a parade of wacked-out, bedraggled meth heads stumbling past our tents and making slurred, vague and mournful demands for alcohol and tobacco. Ahh, it was good to back in the good old US of A. Canada just doesn't cut it in terms of desperate drug addicts.

In Fairbanks Ben, a great geezer, took me out for a film and food and then Duncan and his family put me up. Duncan had hosted several cyclists this year and had stories galore about my final stretch, the 750 km of road between Fairbanks and the Arctic Ocean, known as the Dalton highway, or more colloquially as The Haul Road. The Dalton is a supply route for the trans-Alaskan oil pipeline and oil fields of the north slope. The 800 mile pipeline runs adjacent to the road, almost always in view, and was constructed in the 70s, at the time it was the largest privately funded construction project in the world. This road north was only open to the public in 1994. The au caurant and urbane of my readership might know it from series 3 and 4 of the reality TV show 'Ice Road Truckers' where the tagline for the season is "In the Dark Heart of Alaska, there's a road where hell has frozen over".

If readiness can be measured by the quantity of peanut M&Ms in a pannier, my God I was ready. I was 2.2 kg ready. There were no grocery stores until my last stop, Deadhorse in Prudhoe Bay, so the Haul Road was an apt monikor as I would be lugging eight days of food and my bike was as heavy as it's ever been. On my second night out of Fairbanks I set up camp by the road only to discover I had lost my spoon, my only bit of cutlery. I'm experienced though, I thought. I'm adaptable. I've cycled from Argentina, I'll improvise. After a spanner, a piece of wood and the lid of a water bottle I was left thinking two things - spoons are amazingly underrated contraptions, and sweet Jesus, I'm hungry.

Now I'm not entirely sure 'trough' is actually a verb but when I say I 'troughed' my plate of steaming pasta and tomato sauce, I'm sure you get my drift. And as my jaw grinded away, lips sucking up tentacles of spaghetti, sauce oozing down my hairy chin whilst I emitted a sound analogous to a walrus having an orgasm, memories danced through my mind of the journey north from Argentina, the literal one and the personal one too. And with my beard steeped in tomato juice and an indiscernible chunk of vegetable lodged in my right nostril, I thought 'Wow. Look at how far I've come'.

Day three on the Haul Road began with the sound of rain drilling onto my tent and the words of Paul and Duncan echoing through my mind. 'It's not so bad' they told me 'unless it rains'. The unpaved parts of the road are coated with calcium carbonate for the benefit of the truckers but the bane of cyclists. When it rains the surface transforms into a brown goo, the consistency of toothpaste, which sticks to everything. That day was a mud bath as the road continued to get churned up by the downpour. I camped by a river and lugged my bike down to the bank, submerged it and scrubbed her clean, the next day was dry and I grew optimistic that the worst was over, the worst of course, was still to come.

Some drivers think they can scold cyclists as an adult scolds a child. In Fairbanks someone yelled 'Hey buddy, get off the road, thems for cars'. It was kind of the occupant to share their opinion, and to take time out of their busy schedule of shooting road signs, scratching their balls and incest. Mostly though I get waves and a thumbs up but occasionally when a motorist has to slow down because there's not enough room to pass and a car is coming the other direction, they get touchy. I won't ride in the gutter and it's better that I test their patience than they test my mortality.

'Hey!' yelled the RV driver who had to slow down on the Dalton 'You should wear something luminous, I could hardly see ya!' What he meant of course was 'goddam you for making me slow down!'. I'm not sure though what was more stupefying about his complaint - the fact that I have a luminous yellow dry bag on the back of my bike, the fact that there were three more hours until sunset or the fact that he was wearing the most enormous eighties-style jet black sunglasses I have ever seen. So I gently reminded him that if he took them off, maybe he wouldn't get locked up for manslaughter.

I arrived finally to the Arctic Circle to get my obligatory shot by the signpost. The Arctic Circle is the southernmost latitude in the Northern Hemisphere at which the sun can remain continuously above or below the horizon for 24 hours. A tribe of tourists shambled past me with a tour guide who was pointing out notable arctic vegetation whilst giving a nature documentary-like narration, but the camera lenses of the crowd became focused on me instead of the flora. I half expected the tour guide to continue...

'And here we have a cycle tourist. It's a solitary male, you can tell from the brown crust of peanut butter in the facial hair. They migrate to Alaska in the summer and are scavengers by nature and will eat vast quantities of anything available, often picking up morcels from the ground, sniffing them, shrugging and devouring the find. This one's been on the road a while, notice the veneer of filth, the wild stare and the pungent odor. We like to keep the cycle tourers wild, so try not to feed them. Look, there, he's scratching his arse, we believe that's a courtship ritual.'

A Shamrock Orb Weever

Parts of the highway have amusing names conceived of by the truckers that ply the road all year - Oil Spill Hill, The Beaver Slide, The Rollercoaster and my favourite - Oh Shit Corner, a place where every trucker has had an Oh Shit moment, one told me. 'Your brakes go out here in the winter and you're at the helm of an 18 wheel toboggan'. I rode next through the truck stop of Coldfoot (singular, the other presumably amputated) where I found myself surrounded by burly, bearded men crowding their plates with fried food. I have never been in the presence of so much denim and heart disease in my life.

I rode past Prospect Creek, site of the lowest ever recorded temperature in the US - minus 80°F. Then through forests of spindly black spruce which can grow over the permafrost until I arrived at the Farthest North Spruce Tree (advertised by way of a signpost and which some joker had once tried to cut down), after which there is only bare tundra, a place too cold for trees to survive in the winter. Until the last tree the road had been bounding through the hills but now came the major climb over the Atigun Pass, crossing the Brooks Range and The Continental Divide.

The Atigun was shrouded in cloud and visibility fell to thirty metres. The headwind was fierce and slowed me to a crawl. By the evening I topped the pass, which had just a light dusting of snow, whilst the slopes of the mountains were yellowing with the coming of autumn. I dropped then, only a little, to a river where I spotted a bicycle and a tent. Leonard was a Canadian biker heading south, I camped next to him. The following day he called over to me as I shivered in my four season sleeping bag - 'Hey Steve, there's three inches of snow, and it's still coming down!'. I unzipped the tent expecting a wind up, ready to scoff, only to find we had been engulfed - it was a white-out.

Climbing the Atigun Pass

I admit it - I had wanted some snow, because I wanted an archetypal Alaskan ending and a suitable crescendo to my journey through the Americas. Be careful what you wish for. I dropped roughly the annual produce of a large Colombian coffee plantation into my mug in an effort to warm me up and motivate me to ride in the snow. Leonard more sensibly decided to hitch hike because he still had to clear the pass.

I set out into the bleak white murk. Snow fell all day and the white mountains, peppered with snow yesterday became completely coated and soon blended perfectly into the cloud. My gloves were hole-ridden and wet, my hands took the brunt of the chill. I stopped for food for just 15 minutes - it was a big mistake. For the next hour my blue hands ached with the cold. I put a jar of peanuts on my handlebars so I didn't have to stop to eat. Soon the mud that had collected on my bike froze solid and my brake levers, gripshift and brake pads were immovable. It didn't matter much anyway - my hands were too cold to operate the brakes or gears even if they did function.

I camped early to get out of the blizzard by a road workers camp. The next day the sun was blazing and the snow had begun to melt, my bike though was in bad shape. The mud had frozen to completely lock the chain, the brakes and even the wheels. I carried it over to the road workers who had a water jet to get the mud off.

The next night I camped with a cheery bunch of bow hunters who fed me the caribou they'd killed on the north slope. They told me of six grizzly bears just two miles from here, munching on blueberries down by the river. When I left the next day in the fog I scanned the gloom for bear-shaped shadows but saw none. Then I remembered there were ten bow hunters out here scouring the tundra for caribou, with my bike I was about the right size and I hoped they didn't mistake me for one of the herd. I wondered if I would end up on the ground, impaled, looking up at a circle of gruff, appraising faces whilst someone muttered 'well, bit of gristle, but he'll have to do'. Perhaps my head would end up above someone's fireplace.

As I cycled over the north slope which was a vast, even expanse of tussocks and pools, up sprang my old compadre - the Shadow Cyclist. 21 months ago in the southern Argentinean city of Ushuaia I watched the same shadow cyclist, sinewy and sinister, stretched out to my right into the wind-blasted Patagonian scrub. As I rode north through the Americas the setting sun to my left would bring to life the Shadow Cyclist and he traveled with me. As my shadow glided over the tundra my mind was a whirlpool of memories, full of the weird places I'd been and the people that coloured them. In the distance the dark blots of roaming muskox could be seen on the plains, and up above snow geese honked as they flew in their malformed Vs and Ws, heading to warmer climes, as I continued to the top of the continent.

The Trans-Alaskan Pipeline

Bow Hunters

A Muskox making sure I didn't come too close

Finally there it was - the town of Deadhorse - my last stop. I arrived with my eyes and face red from the wind, my hair knotted, bike mud-encrusted with a rattling chain and tinkling broken spoke and bare front tyre. I have never been as hairy or as dirty in my adult life. The oil companies, principally BP, don't let anyone ride the three miles to the Arctic Ocean, which seemed a little unfair considering I'd cycled 22,000 miles from the Southern Ocean, but I guess they are too busy taking baths of money and dowsing sea birds in crude oil than caring about meager cyclists. Still though I admit feeling a tingle of pride that comes at each pivotal moment and each major milestone I get to. But temper that ego, I told myself, because two weeks before I cycled the Haul Road a couple of bikers were here too. They are both almost completely blind and had ridden a tandem 20,000 miles from Argentina. Now that's impressive. My favourite part of their story is that they they had to paint their bike white, because every so often they would lose it.

Deadhorse - it's assumed the eponymous horse died of the cold, I wouldn't rule out boredom. Maybe it was a suicide, the horse might have flung itself headfirst into the Arctic Ocean after a week or so here. Deadhorse is a modern day, real life Mordor, and it didn't feel like a place to celebrate. It's the kind of place that might hold the International Agarophobia Society's annual conference. Or it's a place to send recurrent sex offenders. Its full of oil workers, metal freight containers, cranes, warehouses and machinery and nothing else. If there was a cemetery or a penal colony here it would actually add character. Of course none of that stops one of the town's two hotels selling 'I've been to Deadhorse' T-Shirts. The best thing you can say about Deadhorse is that it is what it is, and what it is is a place for industry, not for travelers. There was no bar, Deadhorse is dry, which is just as well because if there was the residents would no doubt drink themselves nightly into a state of prelapsarian bliss in an attempt to forget about where they were. It was, in short, a massive anti-climax. At the end of Africa was the hubbub of Capetown and the glorious towering symbol of Table Mountain, here there was gloom, mud, bogs and ambient despair. There were no dancing girls to welcome me in and put a wreath around my neck, instead an oil worker came over to me -
'You cycled up from Argentina then?'
'Yep'
'Why you wanna do that?'

For two days I sat in the Aurora Hotel where everyone assumed I was a guest or an oil worker and plundered the buffet without ever opening my wallet. I stole so much food, presumably paid for in some round about way by the oil companies - so I felt no guilt, that I could hardly move. It was Grand Theft Edible. That night I sneaked inside a deserted warehouse that was sinking into the permafrost. In the back room was some floor space not covered by the glass and assorted junk over the rest of it, and I made it my home.

Courtesy of British Petroleum, unwitting sponsors of Cycling The Six

I hitch hiked back to Fairbanks after two days in Deadhorse with Ed, every inch the stereotype - a chain-smoking trucker with a paunch and handlebar moustache. He saw me shivering in the snow and didn't think twice about giving me a ride. As the last week of my life flashed by in hours as Ed drove back the way I had cycled, we came across another truck which had broken down so we stopped to help and Ed performed his second rescue. 'That's what we do out here on the Haul Road' said Ed. 'We help each other out.' Alaskans have proved every bit as generous and hospitable as I'd heard they are, though having said that I will never fully understand a group of people who collectively, and one must assume wittingly and without duress, voted Sarah Palin into office.

So what's next - well my plans have been in flux of late but suffice to say things are looking peachy and there will be some important and very exciting updates coming soon. I will spend September here in Alaska where I will be speaking at the Alaska World Affair's Council in Anchorage (20th Sep) and in Juneau (18th). In October I will fly to Australia, continent number five - a full plan coming soon. Expect a long overdue equipment review on this blog and some statistics about my ride through the Americas.

Thank yous - Huge thank yous to Duncan and family, Ben, Ed the trucker, the hunters from Minnesota, everyone who fed me on the Top of the World Highway, and anyone I've left out.

I'm commencing a 60 day crowd-funding campaign in September which will enable me to finish this journey - I will post on this blog in the coming weeks - please have a read, and if I can convince you to help me realise my dream of riding the length of six continents then make a donation, otherwise this blog will be put to bed, and my Mum for one will be disappointed. You can't donate yet but I'll post the link on here when you can. This video doesn't really explain why you should, but it's quite amusing...

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This week I have launched a crowd-funding campaign to help finance my journey back to the UK by bicycle. It's a last ditch attempt to keep me pedaling. And here it is... http://igg.me/at/cyclingthe6/x/4231521

Have a quick read, and if I've convinced you to donate then you can do so. Here's the funky video to promote the campaign...

If you expected some of my usual musings and yarns then I'm afraid you will have to wait until I'm back on the road. This month I've been based in Anchorage in Alaska where I've been making new friends, giving presentations and eating, sweet Jesus, so much eating. So here's a long overdue piece on how my gear has fared, or in reality, an account of how much has actually survived. Hopefully this proves useful for anyone entering the quagmire that is kit selection for a bicycle tour.

A quick admission though - I'm not the kind of all-knowing technical wizard that frequents online communities and opines about the latest products. I don't spend hours bemoaning the durability of specific brands of pannier. I'm not mechanically-minded or very bicycle savy at all. But I can offer a run down of my personal favourites, of what has performed well and what has left me wishing I had run with an alternative.

My kit is well tested. Not a great deal of the gear I started with has survived the 33,700 miles, 42 countries and three and a half years I've been biking. Tents have seen nights of - 20 °C and my clothes have been steeped in sweat in the furnace of deserts. My bike has transported me through humid jungle and windy desert, and over corrosion-inducing salt flats and frosty wastelands. Some of my gear has survived disasters it should never have - a punchy gust of wind heaved my tent skyward and carried it at least 200 metres across the Patagonian plains (my fault). My IPOD fell off my bike and was run over by a car (also my fault) but amazingly still functioned for a year afterwards, albeit with a broken screen. Some gear has even met a gnarly death and in the crocodile infested, roiling waters of an African river resides my MSR stove that one pleasant evening turned into a fireball before and my foot punted it into the murky depths.

So enough about my irresponsible misadventures, let me start with my trusty steed...

Belinda, my bicycle

A custom built Santos TravelMaster



My Santos Travelmaster bicycle came with a price tag roughly the size of a celestial sphere. So the question of course is whether it was worth the colossal dent in my wallet. In a word, Yes.

Generally speaking the Santos has been reliable, sturdy and has lived up to it's reputation (full spec here). I have had no issues with the strong steel frame (I will be very surprised if this ever fractures) and the Chris King headset is, as anticipated, holding out very well. The weight of my bike has been an issue, 20 kg (44 pounds) is definitely a dose heavier than I'm happy with, Santos will probably say it's as heavy as it needs to be, but you can decide whether you believe that's true or not.

I have replaced the Rohloff hub, which houses 14 internal gears, whilst in Africa when part of the shell cracked spontaneously - a fault that allegedly occurs in around one in five thousand hubs. True to form Rohloff and Santos posted a fully built wheel and hub for free to Khartoum within a week so whilst it was frustrating that this problem occurred in the first place, the customer service was exemplary. Personally, even after this, my advice would still be to go with a Rohloff, especially if you're touring for a significant period of time and if you're not a champion mechanic, as I'm not. In spite of the obvious drawbacks (principally the price tag, but also the weight, the lack of a granny gear and the complexities of getting it fixed if it does break) the ease of use trumps all of those things and any other criticism you may make of it. If you're touring for an extended period in more remote locations the draw of the mechanism is even more apparent and when frozen mud in Alaska adhered to every part of my bicycle I was especially grateful to the God of Rohloff hubs.

Perhaps the most impressive components of all have proved to be my rims - which are super strong Tungsten Carbide ones from Ryde (formerly Rigida) and, amazingly, are the ones I started with - so far they have clocked up more than 33,000 miles, a very large portion of which I have pedaled on rough, bumpy roads on a comparatively heavy bike (60 kg of bike and gear and 75 kg of me) - testament to the fact that they do indeed fall into the 'Bad Ass' category and are worth the investment, especially considering I have rim brakes. You can get these in the UK through Chicken Cycles or MSG Bikes. I'm replacing them in Australia before they eventually fail in some tiny, dusty Asian village. My front rim is a Ryde Grizzly, rear is a Ryde Andra 30 Rohloff Specific.

I'm on my 6th chain now, most seem to last 10,000 km or so. I started with an expensive KMC Gold (Titanium - Nitride anti-erosion) which lasted 17,000 km, so better than average, but arguably not worth the extra cost. My first set of pedals were Shimano 530 SPD / Normal which lasted 23,000 km to South Africa, a pretty good endorsement. Afterwards a cheap set lasted less than 3000 km. I'm on my third front and rear sprockets and my third bottom bracket.

My saddle is a Brooks B17 - the vast majority of cycle tourers I've met use a Brooks and for good reason. I'm still using the original saddle I started with and it's still comfortable to ride if I regularly tighten the bolt on the underside (I needed to replace the bolt once after it had rusted). The rivets on the upside of the saddle are rusted and the leather is beginning to break so I'm not sure it will last the entire trip, but it may.

The Cane Creek Thudbuster Longtravel gives you a little suspension in the seat and I reckon it's worth the investment, especially for those determined to ride rough roads as I am. I replaced the rubber corks inside the Thudbuster after an impressive 40,000 km. I was actually wondering whether the Thudbuster had a hand in preserving the rims for so long.

The Canecreek Thudbuster

I have snapped several kickstands - they never last very long - and I can't recommend the one that came with my bike. I've never trialed a double stand, perhaps they fare better. I've recently met bikers using a click-stand and I'd love to try one out - if I do I will report back. Anyone with a good experience with a specific type - please post in the comments section below.

My general advice for anyone contemplating a long cycle tour in out of the way places would be to think very carefully about compatibility and what's likely to be available locally. I don't regret my Shimano V brakes or my 26 inch wheels after meeting other bikers who couldn't find parts for fancy disk brakes or tubes for larger diameter wheels. My bike came with small holes in the rim to accommodate a Presta valve - this makes no sense for anyone on a world tour and after Europe it became impossible to find tubes without Schroeder valves so I used a leatherman to widen the holes in the rim. My advice would be to insist on rims that are designed for tubes with the larger car valves (also better because if you have a bad pump or if it brakes you can use gas stations to re-inflate).

Anyone interested in a Santos should contact MSG bikes who will do Ergonomic Bike Fitting for you. Anyone based in the UK who wants to brush up on their cycle maintenance and repair check out the courses offered at London's Cycle Systems Academy.

Panniers, racks and bags

I use Ortlieb roller plus panniers - I'm on my third set of front panniers and my second set of rear ones and I reckon they did pretty well. The material is extremely tough and waterproof and they are lightweight compared to competitors. I've only ever torn one pannier. If I had any criticism it would be of the plastic clips, some of which eventually snapped and I had to improvise replacements. Also the plastic U shaped clips that you insert and which fit onto the rack always come loose and fall out at some point as the clips themselves bend very slightly. Overall though I would definitely recommend these panniers, there's are plenty of good reasons that they are still the most popular brand around.

I have Tubus racks - a Front Tara which is still going strong and a rear Logo Classic which has just been replaced (after 54,000 km). Tubus racks are the best around and I certainly don't have any regrets running with these.

For the last year and a half I have used a very large (60L) Overboard dry bag which sits on my rear rack - this has reached the end of it's days now but has proved itself I think considering what I put it through. I really like my handlebar bag - an Altura Orkney which has a great design and lets me compartmentalize my stuff inside. I would certainly rate this more rigid bag above the soft handlebar bags made by Ortlieb. I can't really comment on durability yet but it's one year old and going strong.

Schwalbe tyres have lived up to their high reputation and my record is around 17,000 km on a Marathon Plus tour - from London to Tanzania. I particularly rate the Marathon Plus Tour, The Dureme and The Mondial. In Mexico I cycled over a three inch nail which penetrated the tyre but was deflected by the puncture resistant layer. It came out the other side but didn't puncture the tube - proof they also reside in the Bad Ass category!

Camping Stuff

The Exped Downmat - These are very comfy, keep you warm and pack down pretty small. I get about 200 nights camping out of one of these - so whilst certainly not as durable as a thermorest which can last for years, they are a lot, lot more comfortable (test both and you will see what I mean). The material is thick and tough to break, with over three years using exclusively these downmats when camping I have only had one puncture. But there is definitely a weakness in the seams, eventually these fail which distorts the mat and down starts clogging up the air release valve, necessitating a replacement. Once the company finds a way to solve this problem, I am sure they will become even more popular. The hand pump is not a great feature either - the idea is that dry air rather than moist exhaled air is better for the mat, but the pump doesn't really cut it and the mat takes ages to inflate this way.


I'm using the Hilleberg Staika tent, which is a great choice for two people. When I ride solo I always go for a 2 man tent so I can get my gear inside, but the Staika, although marketed as a two person tent, could easily fit three - it's a palace. So for me on my own it's a little spacious but for a couple I can't think of a better alternative. Hilleberg is probably the best tent maker out there so the debate is whether the price is worth it. The Staika has a thick groundsheet, tough material, high quality zips, two doors and a great design. For me it's important that the tent is free standing so that I have the option of pitching on tarmac / sand / snow should I have to. Ideally it's nice to be able to pitch the inner on its own as well, especially when biking through hot countries. Overall, if you have the money, it's a great option.

My sleeping bag is a Marmot Pinnacle - it's one of the few items that has lasted the entire trip. No zip problems yet and I'm still toasty at night. I use a Sawyer water filter which is certainly the best filter I've ever used - its utilises nano-technology so all you do is fill a bag and squeeze the bag so that water passes through the filter into a bottle. Fast, easy, effective (apparently) and much better than pumps with moving (breakable) parts and tablets (which may not kill everything and which require you to wait half an hour or so until the water is potable). I can highly recommend it.


Overall favourites (in no particular order)

1. Leatherman Wave - good for trimming beards, opening beers and scratching arse
2. Schwalbe Tyres - I get much fewer flats with these than other brands
3. Hilleberg Staika tent - Perfect for two
4. Petzl MYO RXP headtorch - Very cool gadget
5. Ryde rims - 54,000 km and counting
6. Endura cycling clothing - probably the best cycling clothing out there
7. Buff - Never leave home without at least two of these. Great for all conditions.
8. IPOD Classic - 160 GB of memory so you'll never get bored of your music, podcasts and audio books
9. Cameras - Panasonic Lumix G1 camera, the machine with which I won this year's Adventure Cycling Association's annual photo contest.
10. A Go Pro - high quality footage for such a dinky camera and the well deserved leader in the field of sports cameras. Make sure to also buy the waterproof housing, spare batteries, plug in mic and figure out a way to attach it to your handlebars.
11. Tubus Racks - Almost unbreakable
12. Sawyer water filter - cool new technology

Other stuff I would recommend

• A thermos flask - I use this not just for it's more obvious purpose of keeping fluids warm but also for keeping water cold. In the tropics, when you are sick of the taste of warm water, you will cherish the decision to pack one of these.
• Business cards with your contact details and blog and ideally with a map of your route on one side so that you're not forever explaining it to people.
• A combination lock - one for your bike with a cable and one padlock for hostels etc. The less keys you have the less keys you lose. Try and get a padlock that's big and sturdy enough not to be easy to break but not so big that it won't fit through the holes in hostel lockers.
• Handlebar mounted compass
• P20 suncream
• Sandals for cycling in hot countries instead of running shoes. I like the Shimano SD66L SPD sandals but they last about nine months - perhaps there are sturdier ones out there. It's best to get sandals specifically designed for cycling - a rigid sole is important.
• A side mirror - makes cycling a lot safer because you can manipulate how people pass you. Here's a great article which describes how - Backward Vision: The Case for Mirrors
• Something that measures altitude if you're planning mountain riding so you know roughly where you're at and don't get stuck camping higher than you would like.
• Moisture wicking t-shirts. Get rid of all your cotton t-shirts in hot countries. That seems really obvious advice since cotton soaks up sweat and takes a while to dry, but it's amazing how many drenched cycle tourers I met in Mexico wearing cotton and suffering because their sweat wasn't evaporating. I have Craghoppers Base T shirts which wick away moisture and are ace.
• A cotton sleeping bag liner - easy to wash, stops your sleeping bag smelling of cyclist, adds warmth and you can use it instead of the bag when its really hot at night.

A note about stoves...

Ask yourself whether you really need a multifuel. If in Mongolia obviously you do because it will be impossible to source gas cylinders, but many places in the world have gas easily available.

The pros of a simple gas stove over a multifuel:

• No maintenance /repair required (my multifuel was forever breaking, esp the pump to the fuel bottle)
• Quick and easy to ignite (no priming)
• Safer (if absolutely necessary you can use them in a tent porch in torrential rain)
• Cheaper (the stove itself, not the fuel)
• Quieter (useful when rough camping and hiding from farmers!).

So following the demise of my Californian tan, my skin now an Alaskan brand of white, and with just the hint of two perky moobs and enough money for the two year jaunt back to the UK (what I have come to think of as ‘The Home Straight’), I went through the well-practiced ritual of goodbye to the last of my American friends. Four flights and almost three days after the retreating circuit board of Anchorage slipped from view, Australia - the world’s largest island nation, winked at me through the plane window amid the predawn gloom. The plane’s nose gently tipped seawards, the rolling waves patterned the once uniform expanse of blue, and then just the amorphous hint of my new stomping ground emerged, where land, sea and cloud were muddled. Beyond the waves I thought, out there in the fuzz, were Australians in their natural habitat. The park. The beach. The pub. Mainly the pub.

I have never set foot on Australian soil. My impression of the place therefore was forged in part from the antics of beautiful and vacuous people in the Australian soap operas I watched as a youth and the three cliché-ridden sources of insight that all begin ‘Crocodile Dun…’ It might be half a world away from the UK and superficially its antithesis – an arid, vast and indomitable continent verses a drizzly, cluttered, dainty isle, but Australia might just have more in common with my homeland than anywhere. It’s not just the obvious – the heritage, our taste for certain sports, the monarchy, a society in which the ingrained alcoholism is worn as a badge of pride. It’s the minutiae too, the less explicable qualities – the Saharan quality to our sense of humour and the (possibly genetic) predisposition to enjoy marmite / vegemite foremost among a range of other shared charms and peccadilloes.

My old mate Eddie (a bonafide girl despite the name, and not the post-op kind) was the familiar ray of light I needed in Melbourne to ease the jet-lag and disorientation. As well as being a blast to hang out with, she is also a masseuse in training, so I set aside my busy schedule to help her by allowing her to practice on me - a tiresome sacrifice. Lawn bowls in the sun with beer yet another testing compromise I begrudgingly agreed to make for the sake of our friendship.

With a goodbye to Melbourne and temporary goodbye to my awesome mate Eddie, I set out towards Sydney. Something was skipping. I decided to heed the advice of a proper mechanic on my way out. ‘Oh man, oh dear me, oh Jesus’ he lamented, taking in the rusty bolts, the cable ties holding rustier things on and the rattling bottom bracket, as if he were a vet examining a lame horse. He issued the bleakest prognosis possible with the words – ‘It’s the hub mate’. Anything else can be easily fixed or replaced in a city like Melbourne, but when a Rohloff Hub goes awry, you just look at it for a while in dismay, sweat, shout something un-blog-able and call Rohloff, hoping there’s someone within a thousand miles who can actually fix one, because often there’s not. It happened though that there was someone – quite literally one man, in the whole vast nation of Australia, who is qualified to open them up and repair them. I learnt that he resides in Queensland but as luck would have it he was visiting Sydney in a couple of weeks. If I could ride that far my hub could be replaced. So off I went, with only 8 of the 14 gears working, northbound on the coastal highway.

I opted first for some back roads through grand Victorian forests, redolent of flowering Banksia, where termites were drawn out of the wood by the heat and fluttered through air that trilled with cicadas. In Australia though it’s the birdsong that struck me most and I was encompassed by all manner of hoots and screeches and whoops so unique that fitting analogies are hard to impart, though the Laughing Kookaburra sounds a bit like a chimpanzee, and another anonymous bird is a decent mimic of a hyperactive seven year with a severe bout of whooping cough who has been given a kazoo to play with.

A Sulphur-Crested Cockatoo

The Superb Fairy-Wren

This one had me in stitches

A Blue Tongued Skink

A dead Wombat

An Echidna (spiny anteater)