While on our midlifetrip, we’ve always wondered how it would impact the second part of our life. How life would be different ‘after’ from ‘before’. So now that we’re 5 (!) years later, it’s time to answer that question. We are still very nostalgic about our trip. We still get emotional when thinking about what we’ve done. We keep and keep looking back at pictures, wondering if it was really me, there, with my bicycle in the Annapurna mountains or camping at the biggest salt flat of the world. We keep talking about the things we’ve experienced. We keep on trying to settle in with our former lif ..read more

Today is my last day as Sustainability professional, and if there’s a message I would like to share with the world, then it is this: if we continue to live like we have been over the last decades, we’d better get used to Corona situations. Because nature will always prevail. In fact, we suffer from a serious case of NDD or Nature Deficit Disorder. While biologically we are adapted to live in and with nature, we currently don’t give it any attention. With serious problems as a result: we think we are cleverer than nature, that we can dominate, that we can manage and be in the lead. But that’s ..read more

– first breakfast at home tasted pretty delicious – In september last year, we started our midlifetrip. We often questionned ourselves, why we decided to go for 1 year? Why not 6 months? Or 2 years? And we actually never really figured it out… We just wanted to take a break with the past, and prepare for the future. 11 months later, we understand this was a good guess, and that the time is right to come home. We wanted to travel the world Travelling the entire world in 1 year is impossible. Even technically I don’t think you can manage with all transports from 1 country to another. But we mad ..read more

The moment we made the decision to take this gap year, we also decided we wanted to do some volunteering while at it. Since we gave ourselves the gift of all this time off, it just felt right to not only be on a very long holiday. We wanted to give something back to society, and since we were travelling, it would be somewhere out in the world. It has not been an easy search, but gave us some insights about international voluntourism… – by volunteering you get the chance to connect differently with the local people, like this lovely lady Noémie from the poor Socos region, who proudly showed us ..read more

In Antwerp we know only one peruvian guy. He works in our neighbourhood and is always, always happy. Rain or shine, whenever you see him, he’s smiling, and will make you smile too. After only a few weeks of travelling in Peru, we start to think it comes with nationality. – Peruvian Jorge, working as a courier in our neigbourhood – pic by Charliemag – We started our trip in Peru in Cusco. Very touristic Cusco, as it is the capital of the Inca’s and the doorstep to visiting world wonder Machu Picchu. The entire year we haven’t seen any city so filled with tourists, tour agencies, tourist restau ..read more

Bolivia is not exactly known for being the best cycling country in the world. Or you cycle on the endless sleep-inducing Altiplano, or you cycle on really really bad dirt roads. None of this is very appealing to us, still we had big plans. But they already changed 10 km after crossing the border. – stunning lagunas and volcanoes when you enter Bolivia – The south west of Bolivia is extremely pretty: the National Park Eduardo Avorao has some of the most out-of-this world landscape, with snowy volcanoes and lagunas in the most bizarre colours. You can see wild flamingos and you exit it via the ..read more

We entered Argentina via a stunning border crossing, the paso Agua Negra, which is (untill now ;-)) the most beautiful ride of our lives. Coming down from that pass, we immediately found ourselves in an enormous valley the country is notorious for (the pampas). We struggled to recharge ourselves to cycle on, and have been discussing for hours (even days?) which would be the best route up north. – Argentina is full of enormous valleys. We cycled towards that big snowy mountain in the distance for 3 days. Not really our preferred road. – Google to the rescue? Or not? There are many many cyclist ..read more

– the border between Chile and Argentina – Hello continent number 3: South America. Main reasons to be here are the Andes mountains, the latin culture and a good cause. While some cyclist travel all the way from North to South (or vice versa), we’ll just make some loops here and there to discover the variety of the region. And take some busses in between as we have ‘only’ a few months left. We landed in Santiago de Chile and were immediately impressed by its location in between massive mountains. While they were scaring me a little bit, we made plans to make the crossing between Chile and Arg ..read more

When planning our trip, we had to find a way to connect our main destinations, meaning how to get from Asia to South America. We had 2 options: fly over Europe or fly over Oceania. As Europe would be a little strange in the concept of a world trip, we choose Oceania, and more specifically New Zealand as I had already travelled to Australia. With not too much attention we booked a flight to and from Auckland, with just a few weeks stopover. What originally was a pragmatic destination eventually became a very welcome western break. A language we understand After almost 5 months in countries whe ..read more

We ended our Asian chapter with 1 week of citytripping in Hong Kong. The destination had been on my wishlist for a while, so now we were ‘in the neighbourhood’, we thought it was the right time. And it definitely was! 1 week of no cycling, so those cycling muscles and bum could get some rest. 1 week of genuine city life after 4 months merely spent in rural areas and small sized cities. 1 week of having plenty of choice what and where to eat. 1 week of sleeping in the same bed after changing accomodation almost daily. Bliss! – Hong Kong island at night – Compact city Hong Kong is much more t ..read more