Farewell to a journey

Our route to the coast still has 326 kilometres to go. Over the last 200 km we can descend 4500 metres! It was Paul’s idea to include this bonus descent in the route. What a reward that will be for all our climbing. The first day of cycling takes us […]

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TURBOBLOOD

Well-rested, we exchange our ‘suite’ in the Gran Pumpush for the fresh air again. Fortunately, we can leave the ‘highway from hell’ connecting the various mining towns behind us and continue our route on a quiet gravel road along a large lake. We ride out of the town onto the

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La Gran Final

WARNING: The images below may evoke feelings of wanderlust and jealousy as well as existential questions.Tip: get on your bike and go for a ride 😉. There we were, in Huancavelica, as Paul described in his blog here; tired, muddy, cold, hungry. Fortunately, the shower finally gave us really hot

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Peruvian promises

When the sun disappears behind the mountains, the temperature can easily drop by 15 degrees instantly. If we are lucky, we are then ready to dive into the tent. With a bit of bad luck, we still have to set up everything and wash ourselves. We usually do this with

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PASO DE AGUA NEGRA

After a few lazy days in Vicuña, waiting for better weather forecasts at the pass, we get on our bikes. We have 4291 meters of elevation ahead of us in the coming days in an environment without supply options. Yet we have miraculously failed to make an inventory of how

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Barren Dry Heat

Fortunately, our host Federico has mapped out a route for us that takes us out of the city. It’s best to leave something like that to a local cyclist. We pedal along a large busy road, but on a cycle path! This way we don’t have to worry about the

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the southernmost point

At 5:30 the alarm clock rings. Our tent is next to the little bus station in Cerro Castillo (130 inhabitants). We have only 50 kilometers on the schedule, 207 elevation gain. We get up this early especially in hopes of riding these kilometers before the wind picks up. After all,

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Carretera austral part 1

With bags loaded with groceries from Argentina, we cycle to the Chilean border. There the customs officer asks for the “papers” of our bikes. Papers? It’s a bicycle! Eventually he draws up a little document himself. Color: gray, brand: Santos, wheel size: 26″, year of construction: uuhm, 2015? Once our

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A rough trip

After several days of rest at Rio Pico, while the rain poured down with torrents and the snow fell from the sky with large flakes, Paul and I decided to get back on. The rest days provided time for evaluation of the recent tough cycling days, self-reflection, reflections and deliberation.

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Travelling Together

Those who have been following my blogs for some time know that I always made my previous trips alone. It was my ‘first nature’, independence. All the choices up to me to make, every second. All the bears on the road up to me to chase away or conquer. Undisturbed,

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An unexpected visit(or)

Over 900km of asphalt, sand and gravel has passed under my wheels since I wrote the previous blog. That was in Chos Malal, where on the evening before departure Paul and I decided to leave Ruta 40 and explore the “ruta provincial. These roads are generally unpaved and their condition

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On my knees…

It’s been well over a year since my beautiful, cold, challenging, heavy, sunny, rough, wonderful bikepacking tour in Spain and Portugal. I got back half January after two months of ‘riding rough’, but somehow I didn’t hear about that boat laying quarantined off the Chinese coast till the end of

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Rock, mud and pigs

My previous blog ended with my encounter with the intriguing José. The retired director who chose to live simply and study Peruvian natural medicine. Before I left he drew me a map to find a hot spring near Alhama de Granada.   I entered over the ‘camino de los angeles‘

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Bleak and windy Andalusia

That bikepacking is quite different from biketouring is a fact I’d gotten a taste of during the summer. My motivation for this switch was mainly because of the possibilities bikepacking offers to go deeper into (pristine) nature, to visit places where us humans haven’t intervened too much yet and find

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Less kilos, more mud

Seated in a comfortable lawn chair, I catch the last yellow rays of sunlight at the end of a hot day. It’s been 35 celsius today, no wonder sweat dripped down my body as I was racing around town this afternoon delivering meds. My broken sacrum has fully healed and

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A rocky road

PLUM VILLAGE A buddhist retreat had been on my wish- and to do list for quite a while. And here I was, at a two week retreat in Plum Village (founded by and home of Thich Nhat Hanh), some 90km east of Bordeaux in France. I wasn’t a ‘strict’ retreat

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La vida en España

Saturday night, two weeks ago, I got up at 2 a.m. in Utrecht and at 2:30 sharp I got the text ‘I’m here’. My friend and fellow (bicycle) traveller Human had offered to give me a ride to the airport for my early flight to Spain. To our surprise and

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A long climb

THE STATE OF ME It’s been three months since I told you ‘how I burned out riding a bicycle‘. And it’s been over five months now since I broke down, and I finally feel like the end is almost in sight. Since a few weeks I’ve been sleeping a little

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PEDAL

The world premiere of PEDAL was in Canada , October 2017, the Dutch premiere was last night in Heerlen. So now it’s time to put PEDAL online so everybody can watch it! The succes of this short film, that originated from a encounter between filmmaker Scott Hardesty and me at

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To become a real cyclist

It feels like I’m cycling in Central Asia. The landscape is wide and wavy with brown and green tones and a lake here and there. I’m in Connemara. From Killarney I headed north. The first days it was raining continuously. It’s still damp, but apart from some drizzle it’s ‘dry’.

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Céad Míle Fáilte

I arrive in Ireland by ferry in the late afternoon. My only plan for the day is to get away from Rosslare city and harbor and find a place to pitch my tent. In England people told me the wild camping would get easier getting to Wales and even more

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As if I never left

It has only been two weeks since I got on my new bicycle in Tilburg to head south. First into Belgium, then France, England and Wales. Now I’ve arrived to Fishguard, my last stop before getting on the ferry to Ireland. Only two weeks and I’ve seen and experienced so

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Looking back now….

It’s been four weeks now since I landed in the Netherlands. Yesterday I did my first presentation about the ride from Alaska to Costa Rica. Now it’s time to also write about how, looking back at it, I’ve experienced this trip. But I also want to explain some practical stuff

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Southern warmth

In my last blog I wrote about my ‘speed-course: tourist’. In the recent weeks I’ve been able to enjoy the normal daily life in Mexico and with the Mexicans. After a day in Mexico city in which I visited ‘Saptel‘, a helpline for people in psychological need, and strolled around

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SPEED COURSE: TOURIST

If you turn your holiday into your daily life, it’s no longer a holiday. Twelve years ago I got on my bicycle for my first cycling trip. My motivation: independency, to see the world, curiosity, challenge and to grow as a human being. At that time I wasn’t as aware

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The belt

It’s hot! It’s hot! It feels as if a belt is strapped around my head. Another few gulps of water. My stomach feels like a ball that’s pumped up to hard. I’m nauseous but I don’t have to throw up, neither go to the toilet. Blegh! This is no fun!

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Baja California

I bounce around on my bike on a dirt road with washboard relief, up and down, left and right. My panniers clatter an unclear rhythm. My bike isn’t made for this! And neither am I… That isn’t true, my bicycle actually is made for this! But it suddenly doesn’t feel

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COMING HOME IN THE DESERT

*PANG KLANG YEEHAAAAA* in other words: I’M BACK! Recharged, rested, motivated, happy! Wild awake! Two weeks of non-stop camping, vast empty landscapes of steppe and desert, away from ‘civilization’, sun on my face and a book instead of my laptop; that turned out to be the recipe to regain my

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Dripping south

I have to admit that over the last few months ‘crossing the United States‘ started to seem more like a necessity then a pleasure to me. The forecast of traveling through a country where ‘consuming’ seems to be the foundation of the Maslow pyramid didn’t seem very enticing to me.

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6 months on the road

‘You haven’t been gone that long yet..‘ my brother said to me on the phone this morning, as we casually discussed when I might be in the Netherlands again. Amazing how perception of time can differ. Thinking back of leaving my studio in Tilburg, now 7 months ago, and the

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The taste of canada

A trip is like a dish, a combination of ingredients. Sometimes it’s like a three course menu; a memorable starter (where and how I wake up), a sublime main course (the bikeride itself) and a delicious dessert (the arrival and the evening). Other times the full day is like a

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My ALASKA Alaska in video

This whole trip started with wanting to see and experience Alaska. Strongly inspired by ‘Into the Wild’, where Chris McCandless refers to the wilderness, the ‘real’ Alaska, as ‘Alaska Alaska’. I came, saw and experienced! I went without a real plan and ended up spending over 2 months there. I

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It’s a fine line…

..or ‘SAYING GOODBYE TO ALASKA’ About 50 meters before the border was a nice viewing point. I just noticed a sign saying the border closes at 9pm instead of 6pm as remembered to have read somewhere. So I would be fine stopping here even at 5:50pm and look back on

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Getting to know Alaska

Getting ready to write my blog, sitting at my laptop at the Denali National Park entrance, all I can think is; ‘there is so much to tell.’ The more impressions you gain and the more new things you experience the longer the timeperiod seems that went by. I remember reading

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The Last Frontier

A-LAS-KA! ALASKAAAAAAAA!!! Finally I’m here! Finally. I’m in that one place that was on the top of my wish list for so long. After fighting headwinds for two days like crazy, I made only 35km today to get to the only place with wifi along this highway. I thought I’d

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The Iceland Experience

It’s been 16 days now since I started my ‘big trip’. At this moment there’s 988km on the speedometer of my bicycle. That’s not a world shocking amount, it’s not nothing either. In Hafnarfjordur I decided to head towards the west fjords (geologically the oldest part of Iceland), uncrowded and

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From leaving to having left

Hafnarfjörður! What? Hafnarfjörður … that’s Icelandic for “harbor fjord” and Iceland’s third largest city with 27,000 inhabitants! From behind my laptop I have a view over this metropolis, and behind it I see the looming black gray mountains of the interior, still covered with snow. But first we go back

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