TWO YEARS ON A BIKE 4/4
hey guys, welcome back to the final episode of this book presentation, it's been a while i did the first three videos in amsterdam in january, and i've been so busy working on the cabins here but let's get to it, what you just saw was ayacucho, a little festival which i basically bumped into, i didn't didn't know it was there, and this whole area is very interesting, the sacred valley, cusco, this colonial town, built on the remains of the incan empire and machu picchu, so the stories there are so rich, and you're at the edge of the andes and the steamy mountains which go down into the jungle so it's very green and humid and then you have the rainbow mountains there too which is this area of high altitude, beautifully colored mountains, all kind of like purple and reds it's a difficult place to be, because it's so high up, this hike goes up to 5 000m (16400ft) but it's incredibly beautiful the people there, the indigenous local farmers that are herding alpacas on those high altitudes and those super colorful garments, it's an incredible part of the world, the south of peru and as i was heading south the rain season dried up, it's also a much more drier area, the south of peru and it's the high point of my journey both literally and metaphorically speaking this is so amazing it's near 4 800 (15800 ft) meters it's a bit like rainbow mountains but in a different flavor, it's more like blue, aqua colors, green so beautiful it's interesting because these places are photographically stunning, but physically it's very demanding, and also mentally you are just so alone, and so vulnerable out there that it is like... sometimes i think i do it for the photos... it's kind of a paradox because many times i'm there i'm sort of excited, but i want to get away as fast as possible, because i'm i'm not happy to be there... it has to do also with your state of mind if you're okay to to be alone for a long time, most of the time i am, like 95% of the times i don't feel alone at all but i do feel alone when i've spent some time with people i've established more of a connection sometimes a deeper connection, and i mean this process of letting go again sometimes it takes a bit longer, and if you're then in these kind of places, hauntingly beautiful it's sometimes difficult... it feels like a paradox i was heading to this place called ticsani, volcan ticsani, it's a beautiful volcano and i was going to climb to the top, because the snow had dried up, which is at 5450m (17900 ft) so i got up i was camping at 4 950m (16200ft) sort of underneath a rock, which gave some shelter for the winds and this place looks like mars, it's very deserted it's just rocks and sand and i couldn't sleep, because on these altitude it's very difficult to get to sleep because the air is so dry and there's almost no oxygen so all the liquids in your head kind of dry up as you're trying to sleep, and you get dizzy i got up at 2 30am, it was still dark and i was just making some food, and i started the hike up and at sunrise i reached top, it was incredibly beautiful, it's the highest place i've ever been i stayed a few days in la paz which is the highest capital in the world together with el alto, which is its neighboring city at 4000 meters (13100 ft) and it's a cool city, because you can travel around using these cable cars there's a few lines that cover the entire city and you just hover above the chaos, it's quite amazing and it's quite a contrast with going out of the city, using the roads because it's just full with mini buses and traffic, it's just madness... it's different from cities in north america and europe where traffic is a bit more regulated, where you have the freeways for cars, only fast traffic and then you might have bike lanes in european cities, but here everything is on the main highway buses, mini buses, cars, pedestrians, animals, everyone is trying to find its way to where they need to be, it's kind of both equally fun and stressful to get out of the city on a bike like that, because it takes almost a full day once you're really out of the city tailwind! it's going pretty fast, i might break my personal record today which is 154km (93 miles) on a loaded touring bike, i left la paz this morning, not very early but i might be able to do more than 150 today , if i keep cruising like this this is really nice tire just exploded, i think, it was empty in seconds so i'm gonna try to fix it, but i'm afraid it's exploded yeah so i left la paz two times on my way to the salt lakes because the first time my tire exploded, it was a very big hole in the tire so i needed to get back, i hitchhiked with a little bus, and at the bike shop they glued in a piece of plastic quite a big piece, from a PET bottle and over that a big piece of rubber on the inside of the tire and i was good again, i was running tubeless, but then the second day out of la paz it happened again, in another location, i think there must have been some glass on the road and i lost a lot of sealant, but eventually the sealant fixed the hole so i was good, and i headed on towards the salt lakes salar de uyuni, the biggest salt lake in the world i'm just looking how far it was from la paz because in the back of the book you have the cycling log, which shows how much distance i had cycled every day, so it's a whole list here... so la paz... 13 000
yeah that's about 300, 400 kilometers salar de uyuni was high on my bucket list for a very long time, even before the journey, and it's just this incredible white open space it was going to take me about two or three days to entirely cross it and i wasn't sure it was dried up, because there's like half a meter of water in the rain season and i was just after the rain season, so the middle is first dry and the edges are still a little bit wet, but you can get on it, and it was simply spectacular and when i was a few kilometers in, i... the amount of sunlight and reflecting light on the salt just made me dizzy, and it was kind of warm too, it was strange, at 3 300 meters there was no wind, it was extremely quiet, i had a little break there to just boil an egg and get some food inside, because i was feeling dizzy this is how you eat an egg on the salar there's your salt nice salty eggs it's hard to describe, i mean, you're really lost in time and space as you cycle because there's no progress, no visible progress sometimes i just looked at my phone, at the dot, to see where i was and what my progress was because that's the only thing you can kind of see to calculate the distance another day on the salt lake, it's so incredibly beautiful, the moon just came up i think today is a full moon, or tomorrow, but it looks pretty full sunset this is such a huge place amazing sunset, this is the second night and this night i'm gonna sleep actually here on the salt see if i can smooth this out a bit to sleep comfortably i'm just looking for words to explain how amazing this is, i was just running around this is so big, it's so incredibly beautiful, this vast open air... and the moon is right above me, which lights up this wide open space my little tent and my bicycle... i cycled here..! so quiet, so large... it's like the clouds are surrounding me, it looks like the clouds are everywhere everywhere there... when they rise up, and then there's this open black space here
and the moon yeah it's really beautiful... this is the most beautiful place i've camped, it's so special it's just salt, a flat horizon and a sky, that's just what it is i'm trying to hear something, but it's all in my head there's nothing here, nothing... i still burn, i'm burned by the reflection probably of the salt, yesterday i cycled without my jacket and my shirt, i just burned instantly, it hurt so bad in the night, so that's why i'm keeping my hat up, but even with my hat i just burn from this side, and this side. so this is the last day it's been quite an amazing three days on the salt, it's going a little bit slower than i thought but it's only 50 kilometers (31 miles) that way then there will be will be a town, colchani, i think and after that uyuni, where i'll take a break and then i head further south ahh, it's really beautiful, i really enjoy this alright, let's move on the rest of my time through bolivia was just equally breathtaking, this whole area is just about 4 500 meters (14800 ft), and it's just otherworldly, there's geysers everywhere, salt lakes, mineral lakes it's all desert, nobody lives there, there's a few refugios that are there for tourism, basically but nobody permanently lives there and it's a rough ride, it's all those washboards, sandy roads, but it's it's breathtakingly beautiful the same paradox as in in peru... it's just beautiful, but tough to be on a bicycle i had a moment of profound happiness when i entered chile because the roads are much better there, so after days on washboard roads, i crossed the border and the road was paved, beautifully paved road, and it was all going down from 4 800 meters to 2200 meters san pedro de atacama, which is a lovely tourist town, with great restaurants a really nice hotels so it's a nice place to have a little break there, and i remember just crossing the border and going down, the sun was setting, this long downhill road, and i had the feeling i could see the entire country, and i had the feeling i could see the end of the journey it was a beautiful moment of, sort of, arriving home, sort of, arriving into safety and comfort just being friendly from here on it was slowly getting easier, and i was starting to see the end slowly, because it was still 6000 km (3700 miles) to go but the highest parts were behind me and argentina and chile are more european countries they're more developed so there's better restaurants better food, great wine, especially in the north of argentina you got this beautiful combination of still high altitude and these red deserts, but in combination with vineyards and there's a lot of parrots, like the green parrots there, and yeah, it's easier..! it's beautiful
the climate was quite nice too, still sort of summer-ish, lower altitude you know, sometimes you're cycling through a place and you think, why have i never heard of this before it would be a national park if it would be in the us or canada, or europe but in south america there's so many places still unexplored, or they are known to the to the region of course or to the country, but they're not internationally famous, as for example zion national park or any other national park, and i kind of like that idea, it makes the travel more special and unique not everything has to be shared, and location tagged it's good to keep things sort of a little secret i had some trouble with my tire, because the wire bead broke loose, i think i pumped it up too hard when i was in peru, because these big tires you're not supposed to add too much pressure to it so i was stitching it all the time, and i needed to cycle on low pressure, it was hard because i wanted to make some distance and every time it tear out further, so i was just sitting there stitching it okay this was stitched last time, it has glue on it, oh sorry... yeah now this part has come out there you go, so you get a big bubble here as i was gaining distance southwards, it was slowly becoming winter, and it was slowly becoming more recognizable i was really seeing the end, and i was having trouble to stay focused because i thought the high point of the journey was behind me, and i thought i had seen it all i've been through deserts, i've been through the highest mountain passes, the deepest gorges, through the jungle... i thought i was ready, but there was still a few thousands of kilometers to do, so it was difficult to be in the moment, and it happened very often that i thought i don't want to do this, maybe spending life on the bike is just not so nice and um, because it is not so nice if you're not really into cycling, you know i felt i was done. but i had to move on, because i didn't want to be the guy that álmost cycled to patagonia i needed to finish it for myself, i needed to dive into winter again, i was traveling off season, it was getting colder and colder so i teamed up with sophie and jeremy, a couple from france, i knew they were doing a similar journey and we'd been in touch, but we never had cycled together, so this was a good opportunity to sort of breathe new life into the journey, so we cycled together for some days and we stayed in close contact, not every day, there were sections they did it on their own, and i did my own routes but we kept meeting up which was really nice, camping together, sharing stories together but winter was rough...
the last big adventure was paso mayer, which is a border crossing from chile to argentina the last part of the carretera austral, which is a beautiful road through remote mountains and nature and it's a popular destination in summer, i was there in winter, and in summer there's more options to cross the border, there's ferries going there's just more ways, in winter there's nobody there it's just quiet, and there's this one border crossing which is basically for locals, farmers because you cannot go there by car or by motorized traffic, because there's a pasarella, a cable bridge, this narrow, like very narrow i was with sophie and jeremy before, i was cycling together for a few days, but they were ahead of me because i was, i don't know, i was doing some things on my laptop i needed to finish that morning so they were basically half a day or a day ahead of me, i wasn't sure if i was going to meet them and the weather just got so bad, it was just raining and raining, and the rivers were high there were multiple streams i had to cross, but it was just... so much water, it was so miserable, yeah, it was quite a memory... so this is the most unofficial border crossing i've ever done i've just crossed the fence to argentina it's been raining like the whole day so it's very wet, and it's 20 kilometers (12,4 miles) like this until the border crossing, or the duana argentina oh my god... this is deep this is [ __ ] deep i'm not sure if i have to cross here or, i think i have to my toes are freezing, water is near freezing temperature where do i go... oh man i'm so tired so many times that i lost the trail, pushing through those big bushes, it's been tough and it's been raining all the time, i just ate something, and found the bridge, right there run boy... so i made it to the other side and the argentinian gendarmeria were very nice, they let me sleep inside on one of their bunk beds, and gave me a meal, and i could dry my stuff there, it was really amazing they never meet people there, there's nobody coming there, especially in winter and i was lucky that they were resupplied the next day so i could hitch a ride with the other gendarmerias back to the main road which was still like, about 70 kilometers further through no man's land and flooded roads and rivers, it was crazy, with so much rain which turned into snow the next day, so i was in the back of this army truck with some plates of corrugated steel on my lap... it was a crazy ride
oh god this is a tough one, oh my god, this is a big river i can't imagine to cross this with the bike so i thanked the guys, and i moved on my way, i camped somewhere along the road and after that it was drier because this is the argentinian pampa, which is sort of a desert, known for its relentless winds but that's mostly in summer, in winter it's a lot more quiet down there, it's cold but it's easy cycling it's just smooth roads and i was just cruising down towards the south wow... oh this smells good perfect view, so happy to camp here, this is just outside the park that's it, 20 000 kilometers, more than two years on the road, i made it... the end of the journey was sort of a blur, i mean, you know you reach the end and ushuaia sort of the quiet end of the line, there's not much happening there there's winter sports there, but i had no plan to do anything touristic, so i just arrived there i started packing and i needed to get out of here, i wanted to go home i wanted to rest, i wanted to process everything, the whole journey, i wanted to see my family the journey needed to stop, and i was glad to finish it, i would be happy about it a bit later once i was starting to look back to this beautiful journey, this beautiful memory those are the best days, the best years of my life, they've given me so much so many friendships, so many experiences, so many beautiful things that i've seen it brought me just to the next level in my life, you know, because i believe life is a series of events and one thing leads to another, and for me that probably started when i quit my job 12 years ago, which is already a long time, which was very scary at the time, and i didn't know how things were going to work out, but i started freelancing, and i write in the preface in more detail, about this series of events that led to my bike journey and i probably wouldn't have bought these cabins in italy in the mountains without this bike journey because it taught me to... that i enjoy living outside and more connected with nature so i think everything is connected, if you do something scary today you'll get creative, and tomorrow you'll be inspired, and you'll find solutions and you move on from there. if you do nothing today, tomorrow will be exactly the same, right. so thanks for buying the book, the signed editions have all been sold out, but it's available on amazon and different web shops, so thanks again for watching the series and i'll be heading on with the cabins, there's a lot of work to do, it's snowing right now but i guess i'll see you soon, ciao.
2022-03-17 06:00
