Wrapping Up

We are now back in the UK, reflecting on our trip and pondering what we learnt from our adventure.

Whilst peddling and feeling philosophical, we came up with four guidelines for life that we tried to live by and reckon are worth hanging on to:

1. If the sun is up, you should be too; and preferably outside
2. Mornings for endeavour, afternoons for snoozing
3. If there is an outdoor body of water, swim in it
4. Ideas that feel a bit scary are probably worth exploring

We've also produced a final video, which is a bit thematic. You can watch it by clicking here.

In a rather shorter video, Ali undertook a project in vanity and beard growth during the trip - with a little help from a friend (kudos to Greg), below is a timelapse of said growth:

And last, but not least, last year we followed the progress of a team of scientists, engineers and adventurers who made their way by dugout canoe Into the Okavango. We were so inspired by their magical photos from the delta as they documented the wildlife.

Last year, Ali woke one Sunday morning to the sound of birds performing rituals, and splashing in and out of water. Perhaps a little dazed and even somewhat hungover from the wedding we'd been at the night before, it took him longer than you'd expect to wonder what this fantastic bird life was doing outside the window of our B&B in Grimsby! Of course it wasn't, Lizzie was listening to a field recording from the expedition.

We were so taken with the ability to close our eyes and transport ourselves to the banks of the delta, that we want to try something similar for you. Our recordings are not particularly high quality, but hopefully these little snippets will allow you to experience for a moment the wonderful bombardment of another of our senses whilst away:


Listening to the morning birds from the comfort of our tent on the banks of Lake Nicaragua in Ometepe, Nicaragua


And more of the same in Semuc Champey, Guatemala


Crickets and cicadas by the road as we pedaled through huge Jurassic Park-esque forests in Costa Rica


Camping next to a church in Guatemala where no-one except the priest spoke Spanish - however, the resident church band decided to start practicing as we tried to go to sleep and they DEFINITELY knew the word "Alleluia". This is recorded from within our tent.


Encountering howler monkeys for the first time whilst camping up at Tikal, an eerie Mayan ruin in Guatemala


The typical morning chorus we had on most days as we pedalled along


Sounds of the jungle at night in Costa Rica


And last, but not least, this bird which sounds like a bomb in a Bruce Willis film about to detonate


Thanks for reading. Cheerio.

Arrival

Quito is a name we’ve been saying for months, so much so that it had started to assume a magical quality, becoming a place of folklore. But now we are here!

After 5,700km and 60,400m of elevation (stats matter!) we’ve stopped pushing on our pedals and our wheels have stopped turning.  Our bikes are in boxes and we are rediscovering food beyond rice and beans.

The reality of completing our goal hasn't really soaked in yet, so before we get carried away saying emotional things, here is our video from Colombia and Ecuador. It's longer than usual, but with the added bonus of hearing our voices.

The end of the line

Embracing arrival

The welcome committee

Life after rice and beans

Ecuador

Like Colombia before it, Ecuador has mesmerised us with its landscapes. We are higher here, our whole route over 2,000m and Quito itself at the whopping 2,800m, making it the second highest capital in the world. You really feel the difference the altitude makes, especially when going uphill, when our conversation is reduced to even fewer words and more grunts than normal. Andean peaks poke their heads out above the masses and it's been amazing to see the snowy tops of a few giants whilst we chug along in the heat.

Feasting on the panoramas

One result of the landscape and the time of year has been the wind. We’ve been lucky not to experience any soul destroying head winds, the unseen monster that reduces you to a pitiful crawl, but it has been a new experience for us to be badgered and hassled by a gusty cross wind which catches the panniers and tries to sweep your bike out from under you. This has been alarming on roads where we are fighting unseen elements and uncomprehended laws of science to hold our own in the space between the traffic on one side and the ever ready jaws of the gutter which yawn open on the other. Thankfully the switchbacks and weave of the road along the mountain edges mean that we change direction regularly and so we are only exposed to these cross winds for short sections at a time.

Riding the line

Politics and economics in Ecuador are at an interesting point. When the present government entered office in 2007 they switched the ratios between profit to oil companies and tax to the government (the 87% that previously went to the private companies becoming the 13% the government had taxed and vice versa). This has funded a huge program of investment in schools, hospitals and (where you'd expect our interests to lie) roads. We spent an afternoon singing as we whizzed down 40km of smooth new road, cut incredibly into the rock with a confluence of several valleys set out beautifully beneath us. We only cursed as we hit a section still being built when the dirt from the construction was picked up by the aforementioned wind, momentarily wrapping us in clouds of dust as we stumbled blindly on.

A new road beautifully cut through the desert rock

Sadly, not all roads are new and
the Ecuadoreans used to like
building with cobbles

Whilst the programme of investment has been well received, not all reports of the government are positive. With a significant push to focus on Ecuadorian commerce we see so many signs on the road saying ‘buying clothes/cheese/guinea pig, buy Ecuadorian first’. This advertising campaign is backed up by heavy import taxes, so whilst ‘buying local’ works for the great products and produce readily available in Ecuador, for anything that's not produced here (cars, mobile phones etc), the price can be prohibitively high.

Buying Ecuadorean can mean buying amazing fresh
fruit juices so all is not lost

Some also criticise the treatment of indigenous communities, whose homelands often coincide with the places that are being heavily mined to generate wealth from natural resources. That said, something is working because compared with 10 years ago the Ecuadorian economy is booming. One phenomenon which testifies to this is the influx of migrants from Spain, flocking to Quito to lap up the job prospects which are hard to find in Spain.

How can you not dawdle in the mornings with
views like this to stare at?

As the final leg of our trip, we've only scratched the surface of Ecuador sticking to the mountains, but hearing wonderful things about the jungle and the coast (perhaps for another visit?!). We've enjoyed our final nights of being out in the hills with our tent as our home (when it wasn't blowing away in the wind); waking up to the changing colours of the mountains in the early morning light, fixing ourselves for the day with the smell of good coffee and pottering (with exponentially diminishing amounts of efficiency) through our morning routine.

Quito is looming.

Paving the Way with Leather

On this trip we have met such a wide range of people living such different lives.  This has fuelled recurring and meandering thoughts about the choices we make and how different life can be. Just to be clear, we both love our jobs and, you may be surprised to hear, are really looking forward to returning to them and the different sorts of challenges they present, so no rash decisions to be made here.  Nevertheless, we’ve been interested, inspired and in some cases incredulous at meeting all sorts of individuals and families forging their own paths and demonstrating just some ways to live that differ from the relatively well trodden route that many of us find ourselves on.

We met one American family in Guatemala who were two years into a trip sailing down the west coast of the Americas with their 4 and 6 year olds; an old Belgian guy who had an unrelenting obsession with orchids, spending his life travelling around the world in search of specimens, chartering helicopters to drop him into deepest, darkest Venezuela in search of an elusive sample; an American who’d stumbled across a quarry of petrified wood, taught himself everything he could about handling it, sold his business and moved to Panama on a whim (without his wife who doesn't like humidity and mosquitos) hoping he could ‘make something happen’. These are all people who feel brave, they are finding their own way; as Antonio Machado says “Searcher, there is no road. We make the road by walking”.

The most recent example we have found is a friend who was a mechanic on our ride through Africa in 2013, called JJ. Prior to the trip, he had managed a bike shop in Canada and joined the support crew for our journey whilst he was at a bit of a crossroads in his life. He has always enjoyed working with his hands, and early in the trip he had obtained a piece of leather and had worked it up into a journal cover.

JJ's original journal cover and how it looks now -
some progress made on the stitching! 

At the end of the trip, the Tour Chef somehow ended up purloining JJ’s backpack - they say necessity is the mother of invention and a necessity to carry his stuff led JJ to source some leather in Mozambique and make a backpack. Over the next few months, people saw some of JJ’s handiwork and asked him where he got it - the response of “I made it” often leading to a request of “Can you make one for me?”. People were willing to pay JJ for what he loved doing - working with his hands, creating something beautiful and long lasting. A few months of meandering led JJ to South America and his improving leather skills helped fund him to Otavalo, in Ecuador - somewhat of a home of artisanal crafts.

Otavalo is quite a mecca for handmade goods, exploding in colour every Saturday on market day, and merely bursting at the seams on other days of the week. He has found a real niche, tapping into a rekindling desire the world over for well made goods that will last, whilst filling a gap for leather backpacks and other innovative designs.

Some of JJ's goods on display at his workshop

JJ and team

Some leather rolls awaiting their fate

As with the other examples above, JJ has certainly not followed a well trodden path - he has found something he loves doing, worked hard to identify a market and establish a brand and is able to produce something everyday of which he is proud. Maybe this is the story of every entrepreneur; but meeting these examples encourages us to prod and poke around our lives and keep challenging ourselves that we are actively shaping our path rather than just going with the flow.

Colombia

At the start of the trip, the first month felt like forever. Everything was new, stimulating, exciting, challenging. Our brains were working overtime to process it all. Nothing was routine. After the first month, somewhere in Guatemala, we remember looking back at all we had experienced and wondering how we could possibly handle another three months the same. As we previously mused here, once we developed a routine around the bike touring aspect of the trip, this gave us more brainpower to process the ever-changing and stimulating environments and interactions and time sped up.

What extra brainpower looks
like - next to a statue by a now
extinct tribe

We have just completed a month in Colombia and it has flown by. This is the longest that we have spent travelling around one country but it has been an extreme pleasure and our favourite country on the trip.

It has delivered in spades on landscape. In the north, we enjoyed lush, green pastures; blue, brown and red rivers; tree-lined, shady boulevards to cycle along. Further south we passed through desert, up and down the Trampoline of Death and around volcanoes.

Lizzie + Vistas

Animals +Vistas

But it has been the mountains that have left such a strong impression. Once in the Andes, we cycled through seemingly impossibly remote villages, wondered at the ethereal sense of clouds hugging mountain sides and were moved to tears by some of the spectacular views that summiting the mountains entail. Every day the views were different, constantly making us exclaim in delight. We couldn't find enough words to describe the different formations, valleys, ridges and outcrops we were seeing and didn’t have the capacity to capture and hold the memory of the splendour of each one. The only option was to be utterly present, drinking it all in and feeling their magnitude.

Mountain Views

We urge all of you to visit Colombia if you get the chance. This is not only because of the landscape, but also the people. Aware of the reputation of Colombia, as a lawless and violent kingdom of drug kingpins, the people we met were especially welcoming and warm-hearted to travellers - although, this seems to be their nature anyway, they were keen to know what we thought of their country and to make our experience a positive one.

On our second day of riding, we were checking directions and some ladies opened their door to us, offered us a chair, a coffee and a chat, whilst we made up our minds. Later that day, a young man on a moped pulled alongside us as we rode and we chatted in broken Spanish. After a while he sped off, only to return ten minutes later with three wooden butterflies which he gave to us. “Butterflies represent liberty, and on your bike you are free”, he said to us as an explanation of his unsolicited gift. When we stopped at a shop later, someone put cardboard on our saddles to stop the sun from making them uncomfortably hot; and that night, the firefighters at whose station we camped shared their pizza with us. That was just one day.

Kindness on Day 2

Throughout Colombia, passing cyclists have ridden with us and chatted warmly about their country; more than any other country, passers-by frequently stop to ask us what we are doing and offer words of encouragement. Farmers have invited us into their houses for food and to spend the night if we wanted. Nowhere have we been where kindness and hospitality have been such a matter of course.  

That kindness and curiosity has at times been accompanied by a desire to take our photo. We’ve met many Colombian tourists, out and about visiting their country, and we have become a feature of many of their holiday snaps. On those occasions we’re often being tourists too, visiting a lake or a church. Perhaps more entertaining has been when we’ve been papped on the road, dirty and tired, standing alongside our new friends and grinning for their photos.  This has particularly been shopkeepers, cyclists and policemen. On one occasion a sleeping child was thrust in a photo with us; he managed to remain 80% unconscious for the experience.

Colombia is also much more of a cycling nation than those in Central America. We’ve enjoyed the mornings when our route has coincided with a local favourite, and the masses are out for their pre-work ride. On these occasions we are left for dust by the light weight roadies, but the cheery ‘bueeenas’ (apparently a warm rather than lazy version of ‘buenas dias’) and their sometimes slowing down for a chat gives us energy and keeps us chirpy even on the longest climbs.

Colombia is well ahead of the rest in its making provision for cyclists. Major cities such as Bogota and Medellin had cycle paths in the city as early as the 70’s and on Sundays they close a number of key roads to traffic turning them into ‘cyclovias’ for cyclists, walkers, runners etc. We wonder if London could handle losing the Euston Road every Sunday?

The final thing that deserves a mention is the food. On this whole trip we’ve felt so aware of moving through areas where different produce is prevalent.  In addition to the staples, each area has its speciality. This has the bonus of meaning certain food is incredibly ripe and fresh, but it can also mean it's availability is fleeting. Often on the road we battle between the desire to cover some miles and the urge to stop to pick up an incredible snack we’ve just seen for sale by the roadside (hungry or not, sampling the culinary delights is all part of the experience). For three days you might see reams and reams of a certain fruit for sale and then suddenly it's gone. Unfortunately you just don't know when that moment will be. Never has that been more devastating than when we stuttered our way past the town of Santa Rosa where succulent chorizo swung from roadside stands; but on an awkward stretch of road we hesitatingly pedaled on, only to later learn that this town was both the cherub of the chorizo region and marked its southernmost point. We've not had a whiff of chorizo since! 

The roadsides are littered with stalls selling
huge quantities of fresh fruit - usually too much
to fit on our bikes...

Agua Panela (a sugar cane-based hot drink) with
cheese - a great mid-ride snack, especially if it's cold

On to Ecuador and new flavours we go.

Las Lajas - a very scenic church built into
the hillside near the border with Ecuador

El Trampolín de la Muerte

The first time we heard a cyclist mention this name, it didn’t take us long to translate it and quickly put it in the pile of “Why would we bother doing that? Anyway, it’s not on our route.” Then the name kept cropping up, often with the words “must do” in the same sentence and it, like so many other physical challenges we have taken on, turned from a ‘No’, to a ‘Well...maybe’, to a ‘Probably’ and finally to a ‘We can’t cycle through Colombia and not ride the Trampoline of Death’. This was in spite of our knowledge, painfully learned through experience, that cyclists, and cycle tourers in particular, are very bad at admitting that a route they chose was more pain than it was worth and have a fine collection of rose-tinted glasses in every hue imaginable.

In addition, there were some other reasons to change our route from the Western spine of mountains to the Eastern, namely there was less traffic, better views and the Tatacoa Desert. By doing this, the Trampoline becomes a necessity to get back to the Western spine and the road into Ecuador.

In the same bracket as the more famous “Death Road” in Bolivia, El Trampolín de la Muerte has a cooler name and far fewer (none, in fact) backpackers on rented mountain bikes rocketing down it. It involves four climbs and descents, with the first half on gravel which makes it tough, especially coupled with the fact that it rains most of the time.

Boing, boing, bounce - the Trampoline's profile

The first day entailed climbing from 600m up to 2,300m and we set off out of the small town of Mocoa, enjoying asphalt for the first 15km which rudely disappeared as we exited a small village and the gradient kicked up a few notches.

The Dreaded Gravel Sign

Lizzie Going for Her Navigation Badge

It wasn’t long before it was raining heavily and we were pushing. The gradient, combined with wet, slippery loose gravel, heavy touring bikes and legs that, for once, didn’t do what was asked of them meant we were on and off the bikes for much of the first couple of hours. The clouds sat densely around us, occasionally parting to give us a hint of views that would make this slog worthwhile. Slowly but surely we gained altitude, stopping repeatedly to let the buses and trucks rocket past us - the 400m drops on one side seemingly causing them little anxiety; often there was no barrier as frequent landslides mean they are swept away, making it challenging for the Trampoline Repair Crew to keep up - we could see why the road got its moniker, proven by the multitude of crosses with people’s names as we moved along the road.

This qualified as a "clear" view in the first few
hours of the ride

There were several river crossings which
we didn't always manage dry footed

Although we nailed some

After a few hours, the rain abated and the surface became more favourable so we were able to ride the majority. At times, we could see the road snaking above us, in seemingly impossible places, only to find ourselves up there a while later. We passed an army checkpoint with a wonderfully cheerful soldier who was halfway through an 18-month stint manning this desolate spot; he told us the clouds rarely parted and it usually rained on him, making his optimistic disposition and laughter all the more admirable. 

A Moment of Cheer as the Clouds Begin to Part

Soon we reached the summit of the first climb and decided to call it a day, camping behind a restaurant that was serving the passing trucks in need of a break in concentration. As we watched coverage of the Olympics in a restaurant, 2,300m up in the Colombian mountains, miles from the nearest village, the clouds totally cleared affording us the most spectacular views back down into the valley, sharing with us the winding road that we had come up.

View from the Top

Throughout the day, this blogpost had written itself in my head in many different guises - at first it was frustration at the bike tourers who told us the trampoline was a ‘must do’ as my legs and early stage hypothermia begged to differ; this morphed into our more well-trodden attitude of ‘it doesn’t have to be fun to be fun’ and we’ll be very proud in hindsight; as we stared out over the amazing views at the end of the day, it settled into the tone of ‘it was hard but the views are like nothing I’ve ever seen.’

View Back Down to Mocoa

Homeless Man Acosts Lizzie

An Interesting New Toy
for the Chickens 

The following morning we were readying ourselves for the pay-off from the first day’s effort. The clouds had settled back in but it wasn’t raining. There would be less climbing, the tarmac would restart before the third climb and we would be surrounded by stunning mountain vistas on all sides - it was basically going to be like Gorillas in the Mist. 

No Gorillas, lots of mist

Sadly, my bike decided there hadn’t been enough ‘Muerte’ on the Trampolín de la Muerte and at the start of the second climb, my derailleur committed hari kiri, jumping into my wheel, bending and snapping off. It looked pretty brutal and we managed to flag a passing truck down - it was an Ecuadorean adrenaline sports guide, who had been scouting waterfalls and the like in Colombia to throw himself and paying customers off. Fortunately, there was space for us and our bikes in the back and we had a bumpy ride to Pasto, the next big town and the end of the Trampoline. The views from the truck were truly stunning and, although happy to be speeding towards a resolution for the dead derailleur, we were thoroughly gutted to not be savouring them in the minute detail you can achieve on a bike, as you crawl slowly up the hill.

At the moment of clambering in and installing ourselves in the back of the pick up, it felt like the right place to be; breezily noting the surface of the road, gradient, remoteness and so on, as we swerved up the slopes. However, relief subsided and frustration set in when we found a bike shop to resuscitate the derailleur and realised it wasn’t as bad as we first thought, and that we had the means in our bodge bag and spare parts bag to repair it ourselves. We wondered whether we should bus back out to re-do the route…such little time and distance had been required for us to join the ranks of those rose tinted tourers!

Depressed Derailleur

This has left us with a profound sense of disappointment that we missed out on some stunning, albeit challenging (bounce three and four on the trampoline wouldn’t have been easy - reaching 3,200 metres), riding. It has also left us second guessing our haste to flag a truck down rather than spend time assessing the problem. This was probably affected by the narrowness of the road and the volume of trucks passing, which didn’t make it feel like a safe place to perform open heart surgery on the bike; however, it probably would have been fine.

In order to finish our mourning and get some ‘closure’, we have decided to add an extra two-day loop to our remaining route, around the foot of a volcano, which we read has similarly spectacular views and is also challenging in that it has a lot of climbing. So, whilst we weren’t able to ride all of the Trampolín de la Muerte, we will more or less have managed to get the views and the physical challenge, whilst learning that I need to talk more kindly to my bike and ensure that he doesn’t try to pull a stunt like this again. 

Tonight I Will Have Desert

We couldn't possibly get tired of the glorious mountains in Colombia, but when we heard that we’d be passing pretty close to the desert, our memories of a night under the stars in Jordan’s Wadi Rum tempted us to divert our course and take in the Tatacoa desert.

But time is running out. We'd worked out how long to allow in Colombia based on taking a bus for around 500km through an area that is considered unsafe, but rerouting via the desert and a couple of other spots means adding 700km back in (and incidentally an additional 5,000m of climbing). Those aren't the sort of numbers that disappear in the rounding, so we've known for a while that at some point we were going to have to take a bus, and this section seemed like the moment to do so.

Whilst it might sound like a refreshing break, taking a bus when you have large, unwieldy and rather fragile baggage (like a bike) is actually quite stressful (for us and the agitated conductor who has 17 other oversized bags to cram into a tiny boot). It turns out the timings are also completely out of your control and the bus took significantly longer than advertised, so when we were unceremoniously evacuated from the bus by the side of the road in the small village of Aipe at 5.30pm we found ourselves in the unusual position of chasing daylight.

Google maps (ever our guide) showed a river between Aipe and the village of Villavieja, from where you enter the desert, with no bridge; nevertheless, we were confident that humanity can’t live so close together and be satisfied with merely a cheery wave from one bank to the other and so we believed there would be some way to cross (other than a 40km detour to the nearest marked road crossing). When the village ended we pedaled on, along a sandy track through some grazing land.  The sun had softened, the mountains on our right were now just silhouettes, having lost their contours in the fading light and the air felt heavy with the onsetting dusk. It felt great, out of the stuffy bus and on to a new adventure.

Rushing to the River

After 7 or 8 minutes looking for signs we were going in the right direction, we reached the river bank. A friendly man was watching the evening go by and confirmed we were in the right spot for a boat. Twenty or so minutes later and a canoe appeared upstream, replete with a motor and a motorbike as cargo - we knew we’d be ok.

A slightly anxious wait for the last boat of the day

The sky was drawn out with deep and pale evening blues as we clambered in, not unloading our bags but simply lifting our bikes fully laden into the look out position at the front of the canoe. The final moments of visibility from the daylight aided us over the sandy dirt road up from our landing point, onto the asphalt where we were greeted by a few street lamps and a teenager who sidled up on his BMX. ‘Desierto?’ he asked. I've been struggling with this, as the Spanish word for true is ‘cierto’. “Is what true?”, I wondered. Ah, yes, desierto. Straight on.

In moments we were out of town, and it was magic. The moon was half full but there were so few clouds in the sky and such limited light pollution that it was incredibly bright as we pedalled out into nowhere.

It was a blessing that the road was good because we wouldn't have been able to spot the potholes. We were just rattled by a gauntlet of cattle bridges which happily reflected the shine of the moon so that we could anticipate them from a distance. Over the 30 minutes or so it took us to ride out it grew darker but also brighter, as the final rays of light behind us left the sky and our eyes adjusted as the light of the moon strengthened.

The land felt so open, and even in the dark we could see we were now in cactus territory. The whole experience was so different to our normal cycling conditions that when we saw a fire off to the right, the tall orange flames licking upwards creating a glow, we could only imagine that it must be some sort of exciting ritual taking place (rather than the more likely burning of waste).

There were no buildings, so the only lights we passed were those of the odd motorbike which would temporarily blind us before our eyes quickly readjusted to lap up the greater visibility we had in the darkness.  We started to identify a small collection of lights and were sure it would be the observatory, our camp ground for the night.  We were surprised to find a throng of people there but, despite the pleasure of the ride, we were pleased to have arrived.

The crowd were there for a ‘tour of the sky’; the highlight of which was undoubtedly getting to look through a pretty mean looking telescope to see the surface of the moon in remarkable detail, as well as the ring around Saturn. Starstruck (not in the A-list celebrity sense) we slept outside of our tent, enjoying the view every time we rolled over in our sleep. The downside of this was that all of our exposed flesh was feasted on by midges and we both looked distinctly like we had chicken pox in the morning.

Spot the Meteor

In the morning, we had the extreme pleasure of waking up in completely alien surroundings, which looked like the surface of Mars. It's a real treat arriving somewhere spectacular in the dark, all sense of the gradually shifting scenery hidden by the darkness, such that waking up entails the surprise of a completely different landscape to the one that said farewell to the sun the previous evening. The desert was a labyrinth of red rock, punctuated by cactii with the odd bird perched imperiously on top. We ambled around them for some time, happily snapping photos before enjoying a nice return ride out of the desert, which didn't hold any of the ‘seen it all before’ that an out and back normally entails.

Sunrise Desert Style

An Alien Landscape

Enjoying Seeing the Desert

Back to the Lush Green by the River

Now back to the undulating mountains all the way to Quito.