South America Blog (In Order)

When we came back to Peru I started riding with a Ibex BOB trailer trailer again instead of using panniers as I have for the last few years. It was kind of a return to my roots, since I used a BOB for our first several rides in 2001-2005. So far, I'm happy to be pulling my old friend Bob again. It feels good on the bike.

You may not know it, but since the BOB was introduced, US touring cyclists have often raged at each other about its advantages and disadvantages. As one who has used both the pannier system (front and back racks with saddlebags attached to them) and the BOB, a single-wheeled bike trailer, I thought I could weigh in on advantages and disadvantages.

• I think when you ride with the BOB it's more like riding a bike and less like driving a truck, which is how I feel when riding with panniers.
• The BOB is a bit easier on the bike, since there's one more wheel to spread out the load. The frame of the bike gets almost no strain (and it can get quite a bit going over bumps with the panniers). The rear axle still gets about half the load, but the frame itself gets almost nothing.
• My kickstand doesn't work any more! In general, it's just harder to manage the bike+bob configuration when you're off the bike. I think it's easier to manage when you're riding, but harder when you're off.
  

Read more · Lee más →: Randy switches to a BOB trailer... Advantages and Disadvantages

Click here for all of our favorite photos from this section
After more than three weeks of not riding we are back on the road once again in Peru. We made a two-week trip back to the United States to see all our family members and are glad to report all are well. It was good to see the family as well it was a delight to see all our wonderful friends.

We returned to Trujillo, Peru and stayed once again at the Casa de Ciclistas where Lucho and his family have offered free hospitality to cyclist for 23 years. Randy and I were visitor 998. While staying there, we meet 7 different cyclists from all over the world.

We have now been on the road for 5 days and are taking a rest day in Caraz. The ride from the coast up to Caraz has been amazing, spectacular, a hard ride on mostly dirt road, some good and some awful. The best part is the lack of traffic which permitted us to enjoy the majestic views of the mountains and the river valley we pedalled through.

We rode for one day on the Panamerican highway south to Chao. The road had a good shoulder, big trucks and a landscape which brought to mind the sand dunes of Saudi Arabia. Huge hills, not really mountains, of nothing but sand dunes. Nothing lived in this region, no houses, no people, no business thrived, no birds chirped, no butterfly fluttered by. Read more · Lee más →: Back on the road, Climbing up into the mountains

People often ask us about health-related issues, so here are some answers.

Health Insurance: Since we are from the US, with an immensely expensive and burdensome healthcare system, we felt that we had to carry health insurance that would cover us there. Although we might be able to cover expenses for most types of events in the other countries of our journey, a single week in a hospital in the US can easily bankrupt anyone. So we carry normal (expensive) major medical, high deductible ($10,000) health insurance that would cover us if we had to go limping home for a major chronic illness or something. But that insurance doesn't cover us outside the US, so if we had a serious accident or something, we could end up without coverage. So we also bought health insurance that covers us outside the US (cheaper by far). Our monthly expenses for health insurance are probably the biggest expense of the trip.

Note that "Trip insurance" is not worth much for a trip of this size, since it is not renewable and typically has pretty serious limitations. It's oriented to people going on vacation, not to people living abroad. What we needed (and most travellers will need) is the type of insurance that expatriates buy. The folks at Global Insurance Net make a specialty of this type of insurance, and we were pleased with their expertise and service.

Health Care: We've been pretty pleased with healthcare everywhere we've been. Read more · Lee más →: Health, Healthcare, Health Insurance, and Vaccinations for the big ride

Today we crossed the highest point of our journey so far, and perhaps the highest of the trip. After climbing back up into the Andes (the Cordillera Blanca) for more than a week, we crossed over 15,400 foot (4700 meter) Abra Yana Shalla. We had been working our way up to this, climbing no more than 1000 meters per day as we got into the really high places. Nancy really felt the altitude in a number of ways, so we were trying to be as careful as possible. But we made the last push this morning up into the barren peaks. We saw lots of beautiful scenery in the last few days and will try to get the pictures uploaded within a few days.

Hoy cruzamos el punto mas alto del viaje hasta ahora, y tal vez el mas alto del viaje. Después de subir otra vez en los Andes (la Cordillera Blanca) por mas de una semana, cruzamos Abra Yana Shalla a 4700 metros. Habíamos llegado a esto poco a poco, subiendo no mas de 1000 metros por día cuando entramos a los lugares altos. Nancy sintió la altura en muchas maneras, y por eso tratábamos de cuidarla todo posible. Pero lo cruzamos esta mañana hasta los picos. Vimos mucho paisaje bonito en los últimos días y trataremos de subir mas fotos en unos dias.

Crawling my way up the highest peak,
I wonder if I can do this.
Can I ride my bike up to the heavens?
Or will I die, will my heart give out,
Will I fall off the edge from the lack of oxygen?

I adjust my height of seat
I mount my metal steed
I pedal up the gentle grade,
I take a breath, I gulp another
I want more but the air resists
I chew some coca, I spit out the spines
Round the pedals turn, ever so slowly
My eyes start to burn, my lungs fight
Focusing on the ground ahead,
Listening to my music
Progress is being made,
My vision becomes smaller
My focus sharpens
Making it to the top is my only thought

I miss the sheep dogs attacking,
Three come from nowhere,
The charge shocks me back to reality
I dismount rapidly in fright
My bike protects me from the circling dogs
I throw a rock at the alpha dog
They back away, they retreat
A 4-year-old child chases them
With a bigger rock then mine,
Gracias, niño,

I crawl my way up to the top,
I fight, I want to cry
No, too much energy
My nose is running wild,
Drule pores from my mouth
As I gasp for another breath,
I leave it, to much energy to fix.

I stop for a rest I have resisted,
The air all seems blue,
Sounds and space is distorted
I wonder if I know
Can I count?
What is my birthday?

What is 4 plus 4
It all comes so slowly
I have to go on.
I yell to myself
Pay attention
No crying,
Get on with it
Obediently I pedal on Read more · Lee más →: Nancy's Poem: Climbing over the top

When other cyclists told us we would probably spend a lot of nights in hotels in Latin America, we kind of scoffed at them. As seasoned bike tourists, having camped all over the US and Canada, we figured we'd be camping more than most.

But we have been staying more than 80% of the time in hotels in Latin America (although that number is declining as we get farther south). People ask about this, so we thought we'd tell you why.

Camping in Latin America is different from camping in the US and Canada. There are no (or almost no) "official" campgrounds. It's really rare to see anything like that, and when you do, it's often more expensive than a hotel. And there is almost no "unclaimed" land, like in the western US or Canada. In the US and Canada, if you see a quiet place, you can just set your tent up there (if you're discreet) and nobody will ever know or bother you. In Latin America, almost everything is "owned". One time we set up discreetly behind a horse barn in a Mexican pasture right at dusk. Since we had run out of options, we just set up. We were immediately discovered. Some kids came and checked on us right away. Nobody bothered us, but we were not succeeding at hiding out. Read more · Lee más →: Camping Versus Hotels in Latin America

People sometimes ask us what kind of bike we recommend, and how we manage bike maintenance. Here are some thoughts.

Ride a bike that's maintainable. In Latin America, that means a 26" mountain-bike style bike with standard components (V-Brakes or cantilever brakes, not disk brakes). You can buy 26" tires and tubes in even a small town, and you can find a mechanic who will have at least some tools for working on your bike. In a medium-sized town, you can get a rim and maybe spokes. If you have a 700cm wheel, you may have to send away to the nearest capital city and wait for a few days to get some of these things. Some people with difficult-to-obtain parts have spent lots of money on international shipping (and then on customs duties) and have waited ages to get going again when they've had a failure.

Ride a bike that's strong. It's better to be heavy than fragile. Get 36-spoke wheels (we're committed to this after a long failure of a 32-spoke back wheel in Canada. We haven't had a broken spoke since we switched to 36 spoke wheels). Get straight-gauge, strong spokes.

Carry a few spare parts. You can't carry everything. We always have tubes and patch kits, some spokes and the tools to replace them. Many people carry a spare tire. We don't, at least until now.

Keep the bike clean. We think that a bike that's clean doesn't wear as fast, especially the drive train. About every month, more in dusty dirt roads, less on clean pavement, we take our bikes and clean them and completely clean the chain and drivetrain. Read more · Lee más →: Bike Maintenance In Latin America

Everywhere we go in Peru the children cry out "Gringo!" It has happened in lots of countries, but they're SO enthusiastic about it here. Some cyclists misunderstand this cultural phenomenon and think that "gringo" has a negative context (or only applies to North Americans). It's just not true. Gringo is just a regular descriptive term, and everywhere we've been it just describes people who talk funny, wear funny clothes, have a funny walk, and probably have money. That even includes people from Chile, and can include kids from the city who dress like gringos.

Some people have heard the story that "gringo" was something said in Mexico during the various US invasions, and it referred to the green uniforms of the invading US troops, and they were saying "Green Go Home" or something. Well, it might be true (nobody knows) but is has nothing to do with what "gringo" means today. Gringo just refers to any north-American, European, Japanese, or most any foreigner who looks or talks funny. It's not an insult. Of course, like any descriptive term it could be used as an insult.

Another little Spanish word that confuses cyclists: Adios. You may have been taught that "Adios" means "goodbye", but in Mexico and Central America it means "Hi and Bye", kind of like I think "Aloha" means in Hawaii. Read more · Lee más →: Gringo is not a bad word, and other misunderstandings

Lots of people ask us how we get money while travelling, and whether we carry a lot of cash, etc. Here's an attempt to answer your questions.

Money is obviously a big issue. You want to have enough, but not so much that you might lose it all at once.

These days it's just tremendously easy to get money from ATMs. The only exception to this that I know of is Cuba, and that's a whole different story. But everywhere we've been we're just a few days from an ATM. There are times the ATM doesn't work or won't dispense the amount of money we want, but the ATM has completely put away the use of travellers' checks (a waste of time and money) and the need to carry large amounts of dollars. (FYI: There are actually a number of machines in Latin America where you can withdraw dollars in addition to the local currency.)

Some tips:

• Use a debit card. It costs LOTS of fees to do a cash advance against a credit card.
• Find out from your bank how much it will cost to use your card at an ATM in Latin America. Some banks charge 2% of the advance and perhaps an additional transaction fee. Our bank (Fidelity) charges nothing. (The ATMS/Banks themselves sometimes charge a fee, but usually not. Sometimes there's a US$1.00 fee tacked on the statement. Sometimes there's a fee added at the ATM. Often there's no charge.)
• Carry at least two different debit cards, from different banks. Carry them in different places. Sometimes your bank will (for no reason or for a good reason) just stop letting you get money off of a card.
  

Read more · Lee más →: Finance and Money Management On The Road

We've just had the delight of riding right up into the Andes, over the highest pass of our trip, and over hundreds of kilometers of both paved and dirt road. It has to be some of the best bike touring we've ever done. And some parts of it were probably as hard as we've ever done.

In Huaraz, in the Cordillera Blanca, we looked out of our hotel window at the amazing peaks of the tallest mountain range outside the Himalayas. Huaraz is at about 3000 meters, or 10,000 feet. But from there we began to climb gradually to a pass at 4300 meters, then down a bit, then up to the biggest pass of the trip, at 4700 meters (15,400 feet). It was all incredibly beautiful.

But the best part all along the way was the people we met. There were shy families along the way, tending their sheep while knitting or spinning wool into yarn. One woman let Nancy hold her most prized lamb. We ran into celebrations in three different villages. They roped us into the dancing and the eating and the drinking. It was a delight. We stayed the night camped out with a Spaniard who is "getting away from it all" with a flourish - he and a friend showed Nancy how to pan for gold - and she found a little flake of gold in the Rio Maranon! Now she's rich and can afford the rest of the trip.

In Huánuco Pampa (Huánuco Viejo) we saw not only ancient Inca ruins but an amazing cultural competition, with planting and slingshot competitions along with potato peeling and spinning and rope braiding. Read more · Lee más →: Beautiful Riding and The Rich Culture of the Peruvian Andes

Note: We've posted our favorite pictures from northern Peru here or as a slideshow.

Yesterday we rode about 45 miles up to 4000 meters (13,120 feet) and then down to 1900 meters (6232 feet) on a nasty, loose, difficult dirt road. Randy crashed on the downhill. He scraped up his arm and hip and bruised a rib. I was behind him and when I came up to him he was down on the ground holding his hip, right on an edge of the road 5 feet from a big, big drop. He was bruised up yesterday but feeling better today. Seeing him lying there scared me. By his position, I thought he broke a hip or a leg. All the rest of the day I was upset.

And Randy got his favorite bike tool (a Topeak Alien multi-tool) taken or lost, probably in the midst of a crowd at a fiesta in a little tiny pueblo at the top of the pass. Everybody was pressing around us. We don't know for sure that somebody took it then, but it was gone right then. He had used it earlier that morning. We have to find a replacement for some of those tools now.

And Randy lost his sunglasses somewhere, so was riding all day with no protection against the immense dust of the road.

The dogs, who are always very protective of their territory, seem much more aggressive then usual. Read more · Lee más →: Riding down to Huánuco, A rough day

Dominic in Tierra del Fuego

We are not certainly the only ones who are riding or have ridden their bicycle from the most northern part of North America to the most southern tip of South America. When we started this trip over two years ago we met a young man, Dominic Gill, in Whitehorse, who was riding a tandem by himself so he could pick up riders along the way. He recently finished this incredible journey, in the middle of the frozen Patagonian winter! (By the way: We decided a long time ago that if we're running late to get to Patagonia before the winter sets in we'll take a bus to speed things up!)

Read more · Lee más →: We are not the only riders! Check this out - Dominic Gill

Visiting wonderful archaeological sites along the way has been one of the many joys of traveling through the Americas. Occasionally it requires a good hard hike to get there. We had no intention of visiting the Peruvian ruins of Huánuco Pampa (also known as Huánuco Viejo) but while we were riding through La Unión, the local pride in this beloved site got our curiosity going. We could have taken a 5am bus up to the 3700 meter plateau but we didn't want to get up that early, we needed some exercise on our day off from riding, and it's far more direct to walk, so we headed up the narrow canyon to visit old Inca Ruin, Huánuco Pampa.

I was very impressed on how treacherous this route was but it was a major walking thoroughfare for the local people. Slippery rubble lined the route the first first few hundred meters. It seemed not to bother the locals as they knew this was the shortest route from the high pampa flat plateau down to the town of La Unión 700 meters below. It was a beautiful sunny morning and just the right temperature for this adventure. We greeting everyone as we passed by. "buenos dias!" to the shepherds and the cowboys leading the horses and donkeys laden with recent harvested goods. "Hola" to the school children riding donkeys or hiking down with plastic backpacks on their tiny backs. "Como esta" to the woman riding the horse 6 hours from her farm high in the mountains. The most amazing was the very ancient woman who trekked this arduous route with her cane. Read more · Lee más →: Celebrations and Ruins in Huánuco Pampa

We have been riding in the low desert river valley lands at about 7000 feet elevations. The last 4 days have been been very, very hot, dusty, remote, and buggy. We are very dirty. We are taking time out of today's ride to clean the grit out of our teeth, escape form the high temps. and enjoy the pleasures of civilizations for half of a day in Huanta. A bed, a shower, Internet and food other then pollo frito (fried chicken) and arroz (rice).

It is an amazing land. We dropped down 3000 feet and everything changed from cold to hell. It reminds me of some of the landscape near Tucson, Arizona where various cacti adorn the barren landscape. I am amazed how people can eek a living out of land so barren, devoid of resources and forgotten by everyone including the government. This land once was terrorized by a group of rebels called the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) but they have long ago abandoned this place and left it to the vultures. Very few buses, cars or trucks passed by us in this rugged, dusty, forsaken place. The land is too dry to support sheep but we did encounter shepherds herding goats along with pigs, a few cows, and donkeys. It is so strange to see women in skirts, blouses, fancy hats, a babies slung on their backs tending to their herds and knitting some kind of clothing or such. The women all through Peru knit. They stand or sit and just knit. Read more · Lee más →: Riding the dusty Rio Mantaro from Huancayo to Ayacucho

One of the objectives of our trip was to spend some time volunteering for various organizations, and getting to know the area and meeting the people that way. We volunteered with Friendship Bridge and Kiva.org in Guatemala last year, and Kiva was kind enough to set up a task in Huancayo and Tarma, Peru. Our job was to visit loan recipients, interview them so that we could write update their profiles on Kiva, and verify that the loan data were all correct.

Two marvellous young women hauled us all over the back country of Peru searching out the selected Kiva borrowers. In Huancayo we took more buses in one day than we could have imagined, visiting what seemed like dozens of little villages outside the city. In Tarma they arranged a 4-wheel-drive and a driver to haul us all over creation to find the clients. In one case we spent about an hour and a half climbing one incredible road up to a remote village... and then found that the woman was not home! However, we eventually found her husband and he was delightful. Read more · Lee más →: Working with Kiva and Microfinanzas Prisma in Huancayo

This is an attempt to answer a Frequently-Asked-Question, both at home and on the road: Don't you get tired?

I think there are two different questions being asked. The first is, "Don't you get physically tired riding all that way?". The short answer to that one is: Yes, we get physically tired, and we rest and that solves it.

But the other question people are asking us is, "Don't you get tired of it? or bored?". And that one has a more complicated answer.

Yes, we sometimes do get tired of it. Sometimes the road is the same for a few days. Or the scenery and challenges seem to remain the same. Or the challenge seems a bit too much for a while.

Our standard prescription for a bike tourist that gets discouraged is easy: Rest for some time, and it won't seem so overwhelming. We know of one cyclist who, after riding all the way across Europe in record time, suddenly started feeling like all the people in the country where he was riding were looking at him wrong, like they were out to get him. We think he was tired, and should have slowed the pace, or stopped to rest a few days. But he was on a flight home within a couple of days, having aborted his trip. Cyclists often don't know how tired they really are.

Another thing that's important is to avoid dwelling on the ultimate destination. Our ultimate destination is Ushuaia, in Tierra del Fuego, at the bottom of South America. That's still a long way away. Read more · Lee más →: FAQ: Don't you get tired?

We have just arrived in Cusco, Peru. We will play tourist for a couple of days before going to the famous Inca ruins, Machu Picchu. We took the bus from Ayacucho to Cusco. During the 20 hour bus ride, the views where tremendous from the low river valleys up to the high mountain passes of 4300 meters. The road was mostly dirt, dusty and rugged. The central part of the Peru highlands are desert and dry, bone dry. The rainy season will start sometime near the end of September but for now it has been months without a good rain. I was very glad to be riding in a bus and not having to ride the terrible roads over five extremely high mountain passes and down to the hot dry river valleys. There was no in betweens, either it was up or it was down.

There was one bad thing that did happen. My camera got stolen in the market in Ayacucho right before we where going to catch the bus. I am so bummed and mad. We had our bikes fully loaded and we stopped to buy some bread. I was right next to my bike and Randy next to my bike. I was buying bread and some one distracted Randy with a stupid question which he turned to answer. When I returned to my bike, the camera was gone. There were so many people around and not one person saw what happened. The worst part of getting my camera stolen is the timing. It was one week before we go to the famous ruins of Machu Picchu. I will miss that 10x zoom.

The good news, all the photos backed up except for one day which is nothing in the scheme of things. Read more · Lee más →: In Cusco!

The first thing to think about when discussing security is safety on the road. We're far more likely to be hit by a car or truck than to be held up by a robber. And probably most accidents don't even involve a car. None of ours has. So route choice, careful riding, a good mirror, and the like are more important than thinking about weapons and robbers and assaults.

But we need to think about those things. They happen here, and so here is our thinking.

Some of our advice is easy: Learn as much of the language as you can so you can communicate about security and understand what people tell you. Don't get involved with crooks or narcotics dealers. Pretty obvious.

Then:

• Ask the locals about the security situation and listen to them.
• Don't listen to stories from other travelers unless the events happened to them personally. Only very rarely should you heed anything you hear about a country from people in another country. They just have built-in fears.
• When camping, (at least from Mexico to Bolivia) either camp with a family or in a town if you can. Or if you're stealth-camping, camp where nobody will ever know you were there.
• Try to find out about outrageously insecure areas (the road from San Cristobal to Palenque in southern Mexico, or the town of Paiján in northern Peru come to mind)
• Never leave anything unattended, even if it's locked. There's kind of a philosophy in the Latin world that if you leave something unattended you didn't really want it.
  

Read more · Lee más →: Security and Bike Touring in Latin America