TWO YEARS ON A BIKE 4/4

TWO YEARS ON A BIKE 4/4

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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

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