A ride through Ecuador’s volcanic corridor Scott cycles in the shadow of Ecuador’s second highest mountain – Cotopaxi It’s 5pm on a Sunday evening and an icy gust is shaking the tent like it’s a flimsy piece of washing on the line. The gusts ripple over thick grasslands that in turn roll into jagged peaks while a shaggy llama grazes nonchalantly nearby. As I shiver into my thick down jacket my eyes move up to the sole reason we’re here in this wild and windswept pocket of the Ecuadorian Andes. They land on the impossibly conical and snow-capped mountain Cotopaxi and a grin spreads ..read more

Tantrums and tales of the TEMBR Cycling through Ecuador’s stunning paramo featuring the unique frailjones The rain’s coming down in a steady stream causing the rustic dirt road to turn from bad, to worse and then to something resembling a river. Any pretence of cycling was left a kilometre ago and now I’m pushing along the ultimate trifecta of cobble stones, mud and incline. It’s a recipe for a tantrum of epic proportions but there’s a very good reason why I’m not exercising my colourful repertoire of Aussie profanity, and that’s because the scenery is stunning. Drop dead, drool-w ..read more

A back-breaking end along breath-taking back roads When the road doesn’t look steep but it is, it really is! The stunning back road between Salento and Ibague. There were just three kilometres left to the top. Three. Measly. Kilometres. By foot it would take just over 30 minutes, hell in a crowded mall on your hands and knees it would take under an hour. But at the rate we’d been going, pushing up 20 per cent dirt grades 10 miserable metres at a time, continents would drift apart before we summited. We were smack bang in the middle of one of Colombia’s most jaw-dropping back roads tha ..read more

A Rollercoaster Ride Through Coffee Country It’s a long way to the top – if you’re pushing! The road from Jardin to Riosucio is tough at the best of times and a muddy grind at the worst. There’s a very good reason why Colombia boasts some of the globe’s best uphill cyclists. And that’s because you can’t pedal far in the biodiverse rich nation without finding yourself huffing up a steep pass with gradients that make you want to hurl your bike off a cliff. Exempting the disastrous ride out of Medellin (read about it here), we’d continued to climb an average of 1,000m or more every day w ..read more

Part 1: A crash course in mountains Mud bath! The back road from Jerico to Jardin in Colombia’s state of Antioquia. “If everything you’ve done up until now is just a warm up – then South America is the main game. I’m telling you, the mountain climbs there are no bloody joke.” It was a few months ago, while scoffing down some fish tacos on a malecon in Mexico, that a fellow cyclist had tried to warn us of what awaited from Colombia onwards. At the time we thought he was having a laugh, or at the very least a bit hysterical. I mean after all (said while puffing chest out) we’d cycled ..read more

Adios amazing Mexico! It’s early – too early – on a Friday morning and I’m slumped in a metal chair waiting for 16 ounces worth of caffeine to work its magic. An announcement blares to life like a starting gun, telling all the other bleary eyed passengers to power walk like angry chickens to gate 53 where flight 2930 will soon leave from Mexico City to Bogota. In the past five years we’ve taken only six international flights (seven if you include the time we were refused entry to China… read about it here) despite having travelled through 26 countries over four continents. It’s a weir ..read more

¿Habla Español? A guide to finding the right school, what it costs and what to avoid Each year thousands of tourists flock to Colombia’s city of “eternal spring” to get a taste of the life, work on their salsa moves and learn the local lingo at Medellin’s best Spanish schools. But while Colombia’s second biggest city is now an appealing choice thanks to the weather, the “easy” accent and the accessibility of courses, navigating the wealth of schools here can be tough. First things first, Spanish schools might be a dime a dozen thanks to the growing “Gringo language tourism” but they ..read more

The colourful city of Guanajuato Donde Vienen? Son Americanos? Shouts followed us down the dirt track as we headed south from the traveller hot spot of Guanajuato into the rustic farmlands that covered the arse end of the state. Since leaving the tourist taco trail a couple of days earlier we’d gone from being ignored to literally stopping traffic as excited locals shouted out to us – asking where we were from and if we were Americans. A secondary road in the backwaters of Guanajuato. Despite being used to this question it was amazing just how much we manage to f@ck up the answe ..read more

Cycling into the heart of the Sierra Madre Occidental in Durango, Mexico IN 1993 the leader of a multi-billion dollar drug empire was brought to his knees during a spectacular arrest at his Guatemalan bolt hole. Being a particularly resourceful drug boss, El Chapo managed to escape from his Mexican prison and return to the Sinaloan Cartel throne. In 2014 he was re-arrested at a fancy hotel in the resort city of Mazatlan. The crafty king of escapes manage to again ferret his way out through tunnels but now, finally, as I type he’s undergoing one of the biggest trials of our times in the States ..read more

Sunset over the Bahia Concepcion in Baja California Sur “WELCOME to the Baja, ain’t she beautiful!” Waving his arms around like a proud father Bob leaned out of the pricy restaurant and shook our hands before again welcoming us to his little town. “You’ll just love it here!” He slurred. “You enjoy yourselves now.” We’d scarcely been back in Mulege for three hours and already a shit-faced, retired American who’d overindulged in 2-4-1 cocktails was waving about his proverbial keys to the city. Keys he’d apparently earned after buying a timeshare in a “cheap” condo in a gated gringo community t ..read more