Different Parts of Everywhere
79 FOLLOWERS
This is our stories about travelling the world on our bicycles and the fun games we play along the way
Different Parts of Everywhere
4y ago
PERU, 3rd-7th November 2019
“You’re very tall,” I said to Max as I welcomed him off his bus from Lima onto the busy streets of Churin. His was very tall, surprisingly so (that’s why I said it), but I hoped he didn’t take it the wrong way. It was, after all, the way I greeted beautiful blonde girls that I wanted to seduce, something Max would know very well as someone who had read my books and even proclaimed them a motivation for him to pursue his own journey around the world by bicycle. It was a journey that had already had one false start: earlier in the year he’d ridden from his home in Mai ..read more
Different Parts of Everywhere
4y ago
PERU, 28th October – 1st November 2019
It turned out I was not very good at cycling without
Dea. It had been barely an hour since we’d said our first goodbye and the 12
kilometre cycle to Margos was not going at all well. I’d failed to restock on
water before leaving town, thinking I would just find some from a stream and
purify it, as we’d done the previous days. Unfortunately all of the streams I
passed were muddy and the water didn’t look at all appealing, even with the
addition of purification tablets. So I just kept on going, hoping to find clean
liquid somewhere, as the road began to ..read more
Different Parts of Everywhere
4y ago
PERU, 26th – 28th October 2019
I had been longing for this moment for months. To cycle the quiet and tough mountain dirt roads in Peru had been a dream since we began cycling south through South America, something of a highlight and a promise of once again cycling and camping in these remote and wild places, that are so rare on this planet. My now long lasting wrist problems had had this dream hanging by a thin thread for nearly two months, but since I had managed to get through the first week of cycling with only minor discomfort I was optimistic that I was well on my way easing back into ..read more
Different Parts of Everywhere
4y ago
PERU, 11th-25th October 2019
After three
rest days in Pucallpa (we really did need a rest after that last boat journey)
we were finally ready to get back on our bikes, with a continuous four and a
half months of cycling ahead of us to Buenos Aires, all being well. Our time in
Pucallpa had been usefully spent, finding some plastic sheeting to act as a
temporary replacement for our lost tent flysheet, and ordering a new tent to
provide a more permanent solution. We’d ordered the tent to Maine, which wasn’t
exactly on our route, but would be kindly brought to us by a Maine resident named
Max ..read more
Different Parts of Everywhere
4y ago
PERU, 24th
September – 11th October 2019
Iquitos is the largest inland city in the world that
is not accessible by road. You can only get to it by plane or by boat, or by
hacking your way through the jungle, I suppose, if you’re into that. We’d taken
boats of course, in case you’re not keeping up, down from Coca in Ecuador, and
at some point we would be continuing south to Pucallpa where we could find a
road again. We’d have to do this second leg of our river journey on one of the
slow cargo boats, five days of non-stop heat and noise, crammed in with scores
of other passengers, many of whi ..read more
Different Parts of Everywhere
4y ago
ECUADOR-PERU, 21st-24th Septemer 2019
We were
down at the riverfront in plenty of time to board the first boat of our river
journey. This boat was a rapido, a fast, sleek passenger ferry that would take
us from Coca, where the road ended, to Nuevo Rocafuerte, the last town in
Ecuador, in about seven hours or so. We’d already bought our tickets a few days
earlier for $30 each, which seemed like a good deal considering it also
included passage into Peru the following morning too, though we weren’t sure
what was going to happen with the bikes. But figuring out what to do at the
crowded docksid ..read more
Different Parts of Everywhere
4y ago
ECUADOR,
27th August – 20th September 2019
After taking a couple of days off to give Dea’s
wrist a little chance to recover, we rode the last 28 kilometres to Tumbaco. We
opted to take the highway, which was in some ways a shame as it meant we missed
out on a gravel bicycle path, but it proved to be the right choice to protect
Dea’s wrist as there was a good shoulder and even a paved bike path for the
last few kilometres to Tumbaco. This town just east of Quito was destined to be
our home for the next couple of weeks, and more specifically we would be
staying at the casa de ciclistas run by ..read more
Different Parts of Everywhere
5y ago
ECUADOR, 21st-26th August 2019
“I know
that guy! That was Gerald!” Dea exclaimed suddenly.
“Yes, I think it was,” I concurred, having noticed the long blonde hair as it
passed the open door of our hotel room on its way to the bathroom, and now
again on the way back, I was confident it was Gerald. He was one half of an
Austrian couple who, defying the odds created by their landlocked nation, were
keen surfers. We’d met them way back in El Salvador and not really kept in
touch, yet if our suspicions were correct the universe had by some bizarre
coincidence now placed them in the room next to ..read more
Different Parts of Everywhere
5y ago
ECUADOR,
16th-20th August 2019
The border
between Colombia and Ecuador was one of the most extraordinary we’d been
through, particularly on the Ecuadorian side, where the immigration building
and its surroundings had the look of a makeshift refugee camp. Everywhere sat
families with their backs propped up by their meagre possessions, kids running
around, their little faces dirtied from life on the road. This appeared to be a
sticking point for those heading south, entry into Ecuador was not guaranteed,
and it was with a little embarrassment that we were shepherded to a special
line where ou ..read more
Different Parts of Everywhere
5y ago
COLOMBIA, 7th-16th August 2019
We had a
couple of possible escape routes from the predicament presented by my bad
stomach and the limited amount of time we had left in Colombia. The first was
to apply for an extension to the 90 days we were permitted to stay in the
country. We could even apply for this online, and we did so from our Isnos
hotel, but it would be at least a day before we would hear anything back. The
other was to scrap the Trampoline of Death and go directly south to a different
border into Ecuador that went down into the Amazon Basin and didn’t involve
nearly so much climbin ..read more