The Ruta 40, that is the road we were looking forward to. The road that will lead us south along the foothills (and sometimes over the ankles) of the Andes. The road we could follow from Mendoza. At 5224km, it is one of the longest roads in the world. It …
Inside it drips on the ground from the wet clothes, outside it drips from the sky. That’s not as bad as it sounds. Inside, laundry is hanging to dry over curtain rails and open closet doors, outside it is raining for the first time since we left Buenos Aires, right …
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 …
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‘ …
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 …
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 …
‘Mwaaahooohaaaaaaaaa…’ Yawns… Stretches out… Is it here? Has spring arrived? Green surrounds me, sunshine warms my face and a few drops of rain land on my tanned bare knees. I squinch my eyes looking at my screen. Yes, spring! I may not have been hibernating, but I just looked at …
I’m writing you from a warm apartment in Tilburg (Holland). I’m ‘lucky’ cause I found a comfortable place to stay for almost 6 months. But if you’d told me one year ago that I’d be here today (forced by my body) I would’ve cried my eyes out. Today it’s exactly …
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 …
Three weeks ago I got on my bicycle in the morning heading north. I was gonna ride across the French Pyrenees to the Atlantic and then head towards Morocco through Spain and Portugal. But that night I ended up back in my ‘old’ bed in the house of the Heraclitus …
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 …
Between (re)organising all the travel and cycling gear I’ve collected over the years in my mothers attic, packing my panniers and picking up the last bits here and there I just manage to sit down for a blog. After 6,5 months in the Netherlands and the many supportive messages I …
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 …
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 …
As I’ve told you in my previous blog, my arrival back in the Netherlands (due to a broken collarbone) didn’t go very smoothly. Two days after I arrived I broke down and spend three weeks in a haze. When in the third week the curtain of fog lifted again I …
(this post was writen on december 18, 2017) When I received an email four weeks ago with the subject ‘Dubai Travelers Festival‘ and starting with ‘Under the patronage of His highness Sheikh Hamdan Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum – Crown Prince of Dubai.’ I wasn’t sure what to think. …
After three ‘turbulent’ flights I arrived in Calgary in (two) pieces. Stan, who follows my blog, picked me up from the airport. This Polish man opened his home to me and before I put down my head we had a (typical Polish) lovely light meal of bread and butter, different …
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’. …
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 …
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 …
2 months in the Netherlands after 13 months living as a nomad. What’s that like? First of all, it’s great to talk my native language again. No matter how fluent my English is, it’s still different to express myself in the language I grew up speaking. Ever since day two …
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 …
On the sofa, in the living room of my mum’s house in Tilburg, with the Tour the France on TV in the background, it’s hard to imagine that two weeks ago I was riding my bike in Honduras. But I was. I rode into Honduras after crossing through beautiful El …
Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras. Countries that would let many father- and mother heart shake with anxiety at the thought of their child traveling through ’em. Countries that are famous for their high murder rate, their drugs trafficking and gangs. The hearts of my parents shook too when I told them …
The infamous Northern Triangle and a visit of a TV crew Lees verder..
BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP.. My phone wakes me up. Since I arrived in the south I get up before sunrise every morning. I pack my stuff, have breakfast and try to be on my bicycle as soon as it gets light. I write ‘try’, because it seems to get light earlier every morning …
On rocky roads and how to warm a nomadic heart Lees verder..
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 …
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 …
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! …
‘Before I tell you my story, I want to take you with me on one particular part of my travels. What’s the hottest temperature you’ve ever been in? 90 degrees, 100? Can you remember how hot that felt? The feeling of being baked. The sweat dripping into your eyes. Clothes …
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 …
Not a sign in sight to point me the way to the border. I decide to ask a pedestrian; ‘How do I get to Mexico?’. He shows me the way and within minutes I pass by a short traffic jam waiting for their turn with customs, still, not a sign …
*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 …
With sunglasses on my nose, a tanktop on and a clear blue sky above me I’m looking out over the white mountains of the Sierra Nevada. Behind those mountains lies Yosemite National Park. All roads crossing the park are closed due to snow. ‘Sierra Nevada‘ is Spanish for ‘snow covered …
2016 In 2016 I took a turn. An unsigned turn without a street name, an unpaved road not to be found on any map or GPS. Without certainty about where it would lead, what the surface would be like, if it could be a dead end road, have side trails …
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. …
‘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 …
It’s 4 p.m. when I arrive at the (closed) campground in Yahk. Yahk, as I was told, is a village of about 40 people scattered over three gasstations, two closed hotels, two closed privately owned campgrounds and a few houses. As I’m pitching my tent the rain sets in, it’d …
9 days, that’s how long it took before I felt good enough to get back on the bike. 9 days in which I felt a little bit better every day, but in which my head would still go a bit hazy and blurry in the evenings. At the end of …
My latest blog I wrote on October 9th. The next day I was going to start at the Icefiedls Parkway. Nonetheless I didn’t get to post it until October 13th, still in Jasper. This blog is about what happened during the days in between. Saturday night October 9th I’ve just …
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 …
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 …
Right at the moment when I open my laptop to get started on my new blogpost the emergency alarm rings. My heartbeat trips for a moment while my brain immediately starts working and determining my position. What’s the procedure? Where can I go? Half a minute at most tell the …
..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 …
It’s me! As I got out of the shower and looked in the mirror I saw it, like I do every time after a hard, extreme, showerless, multiday ride; Hera! I’m surprised to see I haven’t changed at all and at the same time I look like a new person. …
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 …
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 …
Last april 6th, exactly 1 year after I rode my bicycle intro Germany at the start of my Europe-Asia trip, I received an email from Mustard, a Czech digital content agency. Škoda (car brand and sponsor of many bicycle events) would like to make a promo with me for their …
Hafnarfjörður! ‘Aah! Hafnarfjörður!!’ Exactly, that place where I got on my bicycle 4 weeks ago, butterflies tickling my stumac. That’s where I arrived two days ago to complete my one month in Iceland by writing a blogpost and organizing my stuff for the flight to Alaska. I cycled a lot, …
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 …
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 …
