TWO YEARS ON A BIKE 3/4
the andes mountains start in colombia and run all the way through the continent on this side to the south in patagonia, it starts mildly in colombia and then in ecuador the mountains have become higher, you've got some very big volcanoes like chimborazo and cotopaxi and into peru the mountain range becomes wider and bigger, some of the biggest mountains are here at huaraz which is about six and a half thousand meters high, and then towards the south of peru the mountain range becomes very wide and it forms the altiplano, which is a bit like the tibetan plateau and then bolivia and the north of argentina and chile, this is all desert above three thousand meters with volcanoes and mountains rising up to five, six thousand meters, and you've got the salt lake is here too, and this landscape i think is the most interesting part of it because then when you go south, the andes becomes more milder and there's still very big mountains i think the highest mountain in south america is here, what's the name again i have to write it down, and then here it becomes a very thin stroke, which is a bit more like the alps in europe and towards the south, like the carretera austral, there's a lot of fjords here and the mountains are lower, and on this side it's very green, on the other side it's sort of desert okay, where was i, south america, colombia, so i landed in bogota and i ended up staying there a couple of weeks for the same reasons i was in mexico city and in san francisco it's another huge city, i think like eight million people, it's a very pleasant climate, because it's high up, about 2500 meters, and one big surprise was that it's the most bicycle-friendly city in south america it has the longest bicycle network and on sundays they would block all of the main roads in the city for cyclists and pedestrians, so every sunday from seven in the morning until two the roads were closed, and it was just amazing to witness everyone was going outside, it was really a moment of the week where it was sort of quiet in the city from traffic and everyone was running and cycling and just hanging out in the middle of the road a great vibe, because the traffic can be very intense in such cities bogota doesn't have expressways or freeways very much, so all the traffic is on the smaller roads i made some friends, paula, who was an activist, yeah she was cool and her friend had a clothing brand and they asked if i wanted to do a photo shoot together with them yes, we had a lot of fun, in candelaria which is the the historic heart of the city with a lot of beautiful murals and colonial buildings, really nice place to stay bogota gave me a lot of energy and after four weeks i hit the road again and went pretty straight for ecuador, because i was looking forward to to some off-road riding and ecuador is known to cyclists for the TEMBR which stands for trans-ecuador mountain bike route it's a beautiful route through the andes and it goes through villages and along volcanoes up and down, high up in the mountains, it's quite an adventure, the route is created by cass gilbert his instagram is @whileoutriding and he has a lot of inspirational content the route starts in a national reserve called, el angel, which is full of these very special plants and it's a plant that only grows in ecuador and a few parts of colombia and venezuela, i believe and it's full of it, and it's beautiful, they have these fluffy leaves that look like bunny ears and it goes up to 3 300 meters, and it goes down again towards otavalo which is a well-known indigenous population, little town where people have these beautiful garments and a really distinguished style of hats and dresses and colors, it's a really beautiful place there's almost no pavement, it's all into the mountains into these local towns, and it's really beautiful but it's tough too because it's a lot of climbing and the road quality is bad, so there's really two sides to it, it's a different game from what i'm used to i've been shipping some stuff ahead, which i'm i'm doing more often now so my macbook and some electronics, and clothes i don't need, i put in the two panniers and i ship them ahead with a courier for a few days and then i catch up again, and it's a good way to lighten the load for some rougher sections we've been climbing up like 600 meters now already, it's been very steep this beautiful view, but it's tough man... i just want to go back to the pan american highway yeah, been walking most of the morning, and resting, walking, and resting a bit of cycling, cursing, i hope it gets better, i just, i'm not feeling right... i'm not feeling like doing this right now it is quite beautiful, i just need to take my time, it's taken me longer than i thought 40 kilometers per day, sometimes 30. today is not going to be much, so much climbing, it's just what it is it's often hard to find the motivation and and stay in the moment, if you are climbing those hills and those are big hills, especially coming from more paved roads like in colombia i did almost only paved roads and you make the progress, it's it's a completely different momentum and feeling and i was happy to make a choice to do more off-road in ecuador because you see much more of the local culture, like the little farms, and the families living there, you meet a lot of people it's really nice but at the same time, there's another hill you have to climb and then knowing that 200 kilometers away there's the pan american highway, which just cuts through the mountains beautifully and you think like, i could make much more progress, but you have to really get into the moment and get up that hill again, it's motivation, so i didn't take the pan american highway there, because i'd heard about this route that goes around cotopaxi, which is one of the biggest volcanoes in in ecuador so the original route goes sort of west from the mountain, close to the pan-american highway, this way and this is where the pan american runs, it runs down there through the valley but it was a good mountain bike track i heard about, that goes this way of cotopaxi all this is a no man's land there's nothing there, just no roads no electricity, no houses, nothing, so it sounded like an adventurous route i wanted to try out look at these cows over there, they're already running for me, how far is it away? 200 meters, 300 meters, maybe more tells something about how deserted this place is buenos dias..!
i don't think somebody's home this is the road which is not much of a road, isn't it? came from there yesterday, camped there it's going really slow because it's so like up and down through little puddles and constantly searching for the road actually, i have to look on my phone to track if i'm still on the right path, so yesterday i was afraid my phone was going to die because if so, i don't know where to go, it's gonna be searching three days i was in this no -man's land, and especially that last ridge i needed to get over, 4 200 meters, it just took the breath out of my lungs like literally, i had to push the bike because it was steep and just 50 meters, and then i needed to have a little break i think i was under fed, i was having trouble with the altitude, it was all new to me this was the first time the andes getting really high and it was just too much yeah, it was some beautiful days of cycling through the backcountry but it was getting rougher because the rain season was about to start, again, i totally misplanned this journey rain season in central america is in summer, so june, july and august but then in ecuador, peru and bolivia, in that part it sort of starts in november and goes on until february, early march, the rain season, so i was in all of the rain seasons but in colombia and ecuador it was okay, it was just starting but it was going to get worse and i was cycling towards chimborazo, which is the the highest volcano of ecuador and actually the highest mountain of the world, if you measure it from the equator because the earth is not completely round, it's slightly wider on the equator and chimborazo is almost on the equator i thought like, ahh this is going to be amazing, the road goes up to 4 400 meters, and i think i'm gonna photograph it, and have drone shots etc but i've never seen the mountain, it was covered in clouds it was looking quite epic though, because there was a huge thunderstorm, a hail storm actually, and at the highest point of the road, at 4 400 meters — 4 400 meters in the rain this is chimborazo quite beautiful isn't it? it's very often that you plan like, i'm going to photograph this and this, and i'm looking very much forward to it but nature takes and gives you never know what's going to happen for navigation there's a few apps i use, google maps, mostly for services, maps.me, which is open street maps and mapout, which is my favorite one, also based on openstreetmap this is maps.me and every day i put a marker of where i spend the night, which gives you an idea how much distance i do in a day, starting from vancouver, and this was more back country so it goes slower here it goes slower as well because it's going up and down highway 1 along the coast, and in the desert on these paved roads i go a little bit faster and especially here in ecuador and peru it went so slow at times, because here i was followinga mountain bike track so these distances are not more than 40 kilometers a day or something yeah maps.me is great if you go for a very small town and you
look for a grocery or a bakery, or any services, and you don't have internet this just shows a lot of detail, like here it's a little town in ecuador, it shows a little bakery there's a hostel here, there's a hostel there, i like mapout because it's visually very very good, you see it's a bit like google terrain, but it has more detail, it's offline so you need to pre-download all the maps and the great thing of this is that you can easily just draw maps for example, you draw a map by dragging it, and it sticks to the roads, right up there maybe done, save, and for example you can draw a few routes and then compare them with each other, because here you can see how long that is what the elevation profile is, just very quickly, and what i like about it is when you've drawn a route you can just click it and it shows just what's on the screen, the profile, so for example if you're thinking like, oh, i want to take a break somewhere there maybe, you could just click and then you can adjust it and look at the section you just selected and then you can see, for example if you're here and you want to get there you can just very quickly see, okay, this is 376 meters climbing and seven kilometers, i could make that before... i don't know, before dark, for example i don't use just one app, i just kind of juggle between the apps beacue they have all their own purposes, and it just depends on the landscape and where you are sometimes a road is not on google maps, for example the road to my cabin in italy the track is not on google maps, but it is on open openstreetmaps map out is only for apple, iphone, but i've known android users they like to use alpine quest, i haven't used myself but i heard it's a good app. i know a lot of people use komoot but i don't know, i started using it in ecuador and i didn't have much internet there so i needed to plan the route in the hostel but i like to be able to change the route when i'm on the road and then you need internet, so it didn't really work for me. but i heard it's a very good app
i just threw up all my food... food poisoning, and i feel everything has to come out so it stops this tour for a bit, i have to take a bus, i'm not gonna cycle up to 4000... 4500 meters i need to take a break it's not a good place to have food poisoning i think i have to go out in a minute again all right, that happens, it's been a while good morning, or not so good morning, i had a fairly good sleep a few times i needed to get out to i've decided to move on and not go back and try to catch a bus, because if i find a bus and i'm not sure if i find it, because they're all very small, so they probably can't take the bike and then it's still gonna take six hours to caraz on these bad roads that's not gonna be fun, so i'm gonna continue, but i have to climb to 4 400 meters which is 600 meters up, and then it's going down from there and in 50 kilometers there will be a little town maybe i'll make that, it's gonna be tough because my stomach is empty and i don't know if i'm gonna keep any food inside, so it's gonna be very tough shitty weather! highest point... oh man, it's so bad, it's so cold here, it's 4400 meters [ __ ] hailstorm okay, it's a little bit more up, i'm gonna go down, i hope it goes dry i made it to corongo, which was the town i was i was heading to, which is also still in high altitude about 4 000 meter, that ride was just... i don't know how i did it on an empty stomach climbing such altitudes, but i guess at some point you just don't have a choice and and you do it, and the weather was horrible, but i made it and then i took a break in corongo for a day, had a very good meal and after that it couldn't be a bigger contrast, the downhill towards caraz, which which goes down for about 2500 meters it's a long downhill and it's beautiful, maybe the most beautiful downhill on the journey again, look at this what i love about this landscape, you jump from different landscape to different landscape within a day where i was yesterday because of the altitude change so many different landscapes.. like this is very dry and red, so beautiful...
once you're in the valley it was 1200 meters where the river runs, it's just so nice and warm and much more pleasant, there's oxygen again, and i cycled up to caraz, which is in the center of the cordillera blanca it's a nice tourist town which has good restaurants, and took a little break there and got a bit stronger, it's a really nice place to to organize hikes and some trips i mean, that area, it's just a storm of mountains, it's such a wild place and when you visit peru you really have to put it on your list i celebrated my birthday, did a ride on christmas day, and closed the year
2022-02-06 19:03
