Tag: Bikepacking

South America Blog Posts

Week 19 – Getting sick in the Bolivian Amazon

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In my last vlog I had just finished a long journey north through the Beni region to Pando. I arrived at a very basic hostel and was finally getting some rest. Although, there wasn’t a shower and only a long drop toilet. I took a rest day and I wasn’t feeling so good. I thought it was just because I had been cycling so far all week. So I relaxed and made sure I was eating and drinking enough. In the evening I cooked myself some fish pasta. My usual energy boost meal on the road.

A rude awakening

I woke up in the middle of the night feeling weird. I thought that I needed to throw up. So I got some clothes on and ran outside. After a few seconds of standing bent forward in the grass it became apparent that I didn’t need to throw up. I needed to get to the toilet. As there’s no running water in that village, there’s just a long drop toilet. I walked to the end of the field to a wooden hut. Opened the door to see a wooden box raised from the ground with a hole cut in the top. As my headtorch flashed over the ‘toilet’ I saw maybe a hundred cockroaches scatter into the darkness. I have to say that I didn’t sit on this wooden box. I opted to use it like a squat toilet. At least this way I only had the risk of a cockroach running on my foot instead of across my bum cheeks or up my back. So yeah, it turned out I had somehow picked up a case of food poisoning.

A difficult decision

The next morning I felt pretty rough. I just wanted to relax in bed, drink something nice and eat some easy to digest foods. The only problem was my location. I was in the middle of nowhere, no running water and a room with no door. I checked the map and saw that the next town was 75km further down the road. I didn’t feel like I was comfortable enough to recover in the place I was staying. So I decided to go for it. Cycling 75km without eating anything. I told myself that I could take it steady and when I got to town I would have access to all the things I might need.

A hard days ride

It turned out to be a long, hard day. The road surface wasn’t so bad and the scenery was really nice. But I was struggling to appreciate it in the condition I was in. I kept zoning out, just slipping into my own mind and cycling. I would catch myself doing it and try to force myself to take in my surroundings. I stopped in each village that I passed through and drank an energy drink to keep me going. Eventually I got to the town of El Sena. I managed to negotiate a really good price for a decent hotel room. Probably just because the owner felt sorry for me. But I was finally in a comfortable place. I took a shower and bought drinks and bread. Then I just settled in for a couple of days of recouperation.

Spending time in the village

For a day or so, I felt really weak and pretty low emotionally. But once I was eating properly again, my strength came back and with it came my positive energy. The day before I was planning to leave, I got a message from Yuri. He mentioned that he had a friend in a village a days ride from El Sena and that I could go stay with him. So that was how I was introduced to Rozen. The next day I cycled out to meet him and stayed with his family. They were all so friendly and welcoming. They live in a beautiful little village called Mandarino. All the neighbours came over to say hello and the kids were amazed to see my drone flying around. It was really nice to experience a small taste of village life. So peaceful and laid back. Rozen explained how much he preferred this lifestyle rather than working in town. As he put it, when you work in town you got to work and come home to sleep. But now his life is spent with his family. His son is like a close friend and he can give his daughter a lot of attention as she grows up. They make some money selling things from a small shop on the front of their house and they are happy.

Pit stop in Puerto Rico

As the week was coming to an end, I headed to the next town along my route. A small town called Puerto Rico. I took a rest day before heading out again. The next leg of my journey would take me through the rest of the Pando region, through the South of Brazil and over the border into Peru. But we can talk about that next week.

South America Blog Posts

Week 18 – The long road north to Pando

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At the end of my last vlog I arrived in the town of Santa Rosa. I wasn’t looking forward to the next part of this route. Yuri had told me that it was a bad road. Not necessarily because of the road surface, but because it was boring. Knowing this, I tried to get a bus up to the end of the road. Unfortunately, after waiting for more than an hour, I was told that the buses on this road don’t take bicycles. So I tried to stay positive and set off to cycle north.

The Long Road North

The road I was had to take was from Santa Rosa to El Triangulo. This doesn’t actually take me all the way to the Pando region. But the junction that turns to get there. Its 350km of road that is under construction. As I cycled north, each section was in a different stage of construction. Mostly just bare earth. But some were compacted with several layers of earth. Yuri was right. It was boring. Really boring. Even though I was technically in the Amazon, the area near the road had been cleared for farmland. Mostly farmers raising cows and horses. But this meant that there weren’t any trees, so no shade. Some sections were really windy too, as there weren’t any trees to act as a windbreak. Not may people live in this area. So there are long stretches of nothing, then a small village with maybe 5 houses. I ended up camping every night on the way north. But as there weren’t any nice camp spots out on the road, I would ask in each village whether I could camp in front of a shop or restaurant.

My first Amazonian Village

Each day I would wake up and cycle as far north as I could, keeping in mind that I wanted to camp close enough to a shop so that I could buy supplies. My last night on the road before getting to El Triangulo, I arrived in quite a large village. The village was called Los Cayuces. I saw a hostel there on google maps. So I assumed it was quite a big village or small town. But when I arrived, the locals told me there wasn’t a hostel, or a restaurant, or even a local shop. But they said I could camp there and they offered to cook a meal for me. This ended up being one of my favourite places in Bolivia up to that point. It was a real Amazonian village. It reminded me of Africa so much that I felt right at home.

Not Finished Yet…

As I set up my tent, I had an audience. A group of children from the village were stood watching what I was doing. Then the next morning, I flew my drone a little and the children were curious to see that too. I really love these environments. The houses, people, nature and climate just make me feel like I’m back in Africa. But I had to leave and get to a place with mobile phone signal and electricity. So I cycled to El Triangulo. This was supposed to be my final stop for the week and I was ready to take a rest day. But when I got to El Triangulo I realised that this wasn’t a good place to take a rest day. I know that I have compared towns to truck stops before on this trip. But this place is literally a truck stop. But because it is so remote, its expensive. They were asking around 40-60 Bolivianos for a room. Just a bed, no lights, no electricity. I just couldn’t bring myself to pay. So I ended up camping outside a restaurant again. This was my 5th night sleeping on this road, but I needed to keep going before I could rest. I looked at my map and could see that there was a village on the border between the Beni and Pando regions. But it was another 50km. Bringing my weekly total distance up to 400km this week. So I set off the next morning.

On the Border of the Pando Region

The road to the Pando region was pretty bad. A dirt road with a lot of corrugations. But the area surrounding the road was a lot better than I had for the week up to now. The 50km went pretty fast and I found a place to stay. The village is called Peña Amarilla. It’s right next to a bridge over the Beni River, which is also the border between the regions. The village doesn’t have running water, so the hostel had a long drop toilet and I had to go to wash near the bridge. It looked like a storm drain, but everyone in the village collects water there to take to their houses. It was a new experience for me to shower in a place like that, but I just got on with it. This I headed back to my room and settled down ready for a well earned rest.

South America Blog Posts

Week 17 – Doing repairs & riding San Borja to Santa Rosa

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After I arrived in San Borja with the French couple, we had planned to separate as they headed to Trinidad and I continued north. After spending so many nights in the tents, we decided to take some rest days before leaving town. In my case, this wasn’t just to rest, but also to take care of some repairs that I needed to address. Riding on the rough road surfaces over the last few weeks had taken it’s toll on the bike. I am guessing the vibrations just worked things loose. So it was mostly just a case of tightening some bolts. But there was one problem that I really didn’t know how to take care of.

A Damaged Tyre

One day on the route to San Borja I noticed a huge lump in the wall of my front tyre. I never experienced anything like that before, so I posted some pictures in Facebook groups to ask for advice. After reading through a lot of comments I spoke to my friend Charlie, who I met while travelling through Africa. He has a lot more knowledge about bicycles than I do and actually owns a chain of bike shops. So I went with his suggestion. I wrapped a bank note around the innertube of the tyre where it aligned with the defect. This worked for a few days, but then it came back. When I took the wheel off again I saw that the bank note had split into several pieces. So I went for a slightly stronger solution. First I lined the inside of the tyre with duct tape. Then I cut a small piece of plastic water bottle to around the size of the bank note. Charlie had warned me that the plastic would puncture the tube. So I followed some more advice from Facebook. I covered the piece of bottle with more duct tape. That seems to have done the trick and its still holding up to now. I also contacted the manufacturer and they said they would replace the tyre. But I won’t be holding my breath.

The Back Road to Santa Rosa

I decided to take the route that I am on, after meeting Yuri in Uyuni. He said that one of the highlights was the road from San Borja to Santa Rosa. This is a back road which doesn’t show up on Google Maps. The road surface isn’t so great, but the road takes you through the countryside. Passing cattle ranches, forest and marshland. The route took a couple of days and I spent the night camping in a small village called Santa Elena. It’s such a beautiful village. There were horses, pigs, chickens, dogs and cats just wandering around free. It was also a great camp spot as there was an outside toilet and a tap with running water. I took a ‘shower’ using the tap before getting some food and heading to bed.

Lots of Wildlife

The second way was amazing. I started to see more wildlife along the roadside. Animals that I had never seen in the wild before. The first was an armadillo. But it ran too fast for me to take any pictures. Then there were Capybaras. Lots of them. Some in the road and they would make a loud noise when they were running away. Something like a dog’s bark, but a lazy old dog with dementia or something. Then I saw a large bird that looked like an emu or ostrich. But maybe the coolest thing was when I got closer to my final destination for this week. I was crossing a bridge when I heard a noise. Something moving in the water. I looked down to see that the river was full of Kaimen. It was a great way to end the route as I got into town. The only issue now is the road north. Yuri told me it was a bad road. Not necessarily the road surface, but just a long boring road, 350km. But that is for next week.

South America Blog Posts

Week 16 – Caranavi to San Borja with some new friends

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After I arrived in Caranavi, I took a couple of rest days to sort out a few things I needed to do. Firstly, I needed to fix my gears as they had been playing up since the ‘Death Road’. But I also needed to do my usual weekly blog and vlog posts. Luckily the gears were an easy fix. The front gears were just jammed by a bit of grit in the mechanism. But I actually took the time to watch some YouTube videos and learned how to adjust the gears on the front and back. They aren’t set up perfectly, but they are much better than they were.

Meeting New Friends

I have also been having some problems with my center stand. It keeps coming loose with the vibrations on the rough road surfaces. So I needed to buy a hex key big enough to fit. When I was walking back to my hotel, I noticed two touring bicycles locked up in the lobby of a hotel across the street. I went in and asked if they belonged to some tourists, they did, but they were out in town. So the next time I went out of the hotel, I called in again and asked if they were back. This is how I met the French couple, Lea and Armand. We had breakfast together the next day and it turned out that they were heading the same direction as I was. We agreed that we would share the road for a while.

Some Great Camping

I had hoped that coming down the ‘Death Road’ would take me out of the mountains. While it did bring me down a lot of altitude, there were still a lot of mountains still to cover. We headed out of Caranavi and we realised that we would be passing over a mountain pretty much every day of the next week. We didn’t hit a mountain every day though. We took some rest days along the way. We also had some great camping spots beside rivers and waterfalls. It was really nice to travel with Lea and Armand. It gave me motivation to push over some mountain roads, but also camping with some new people was a lot of fun. There were two camp spots that were particularly good. The first was next to someone’s house in a mountain village. The guy who owned the house was a musician and he played some music for us. Then I played his guitar while he played his local instruments. He taught me a traditional Bolivian rhythm on guitar. It was a lot of fun and completely unexpected. In the morning we also met his 96 year old mother. The second great spot was next to the river in Sapecho. We swam in the river and I took the opportunity to take a bath and wash my clothes in the river.

Clearing the Andes

The road north was sometimes beautiful and sometimes terrible. The road surface was sometimes smooth and good condition, then it would just stop and we would find ourselves going over rocky roads. I think it would have taken me a lot longer to follow this route if I had been alone. Not that I felt rushed, but being with other people can give you that little extra motivation to keep pushing up the hill rather than stop. It took us almost a whole week to finally get out of the Andes and onto the flat plains of the Bolivian Amazon region. It feels so good to be able to cycle so easily on the roads, even if they are in bad condition. As the week came to a close, we arrived in a town called San Borja. This was our last stop together. Lea and Armand would be heading east to Trinidad while I would be heading North towards Cobija and the Brazilian border. But we all decided to stay in town for a few rest days before we separated.

South America Blog Posts

Week 15 – Down the Bolivian ‘Death road’ and to Caranavi

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The Bolivian ‘Death Road’ got it’s name from the number of traffic accidents that happened on the road. Most of them occurred when vehicles tried to pass each other on the narrow roads and rolled down the mountain. The road was built to link La Paz with the Amazonian areas of Brazil. It was started using labour from prisoners of war from Paraguay. Because of the number of deaths on the road, the Bolivian government completed a new road in 2006. Since then the road gets very little use, other than tourists on bike tours who are driven there from La Paz, go down the hill then are driven back to La Paz again. So the road is actually very safe, peaceful and beautiful to ride down.

Heading down the ‘Death Road’

I started my week by waking up in the viewpoint at the top of the ‘Death road’. The view was amazing, especially as I hadn’t been able to see more than a meter in front of my face the night before. Before I set off, I waited for the tour groups to leave so that I could take my time without them passing me. While I was waiting, I met a couple who were travelling in their small campervan with their 9 month old baby. It’s always nice to meet and chat with fellow travellers, especially when they are coming from the direction you are heading in. They recommended a riverside camping spot further on my route. We wished each other luck and then I started cycling down the road. The views were so refreshing after the desert landscapes I have been in for the lase few months. Tropical forest covered mountains with birds singing in the trees. Really wonderful.

I got to the checkpoint which is maybe half way down the road. That’s when I noticed that I had dropped my powerbank somewhere on the road. I left my bike at the checkpoint and started walking back up the mountain to see if I could see it. Luckily the ambulance driver, who waits at the checkpoint, was kind enough to drive me up the hill to look. It’s a good job that he did, because the powerbank was right up near the top of the road. I was so grateful. I didn’t know what I would do without the powerbank. Without it I can’t use my solar charger and can’t recharge any of my equipment. I thanked him, passed through the checkpoint and then found another viewpoint that I decided to camp in for the night.

The road to Caranavi

In the morning I sat listening to the birds singing and made some recordings of the sounds before I packed up and continued down through the mountains. I spent a day resting in a hostel in the valley at the bottom of the road before taking the road to Caranavi. Honestly, there isn’t much difference between the standard of the ‘Death Road’ and the rest of the road to Caranavi. Both of them are terrible and gravel covered, passing through mountains. I thought that passing down the ‘Death Road’ would take me out of the Andes and that I would be on more level ground. But I was mistaken. The Andes gently get smaller and smaller for hundreds of kilometers yet. It was a long days ride to Caranavi and when I arrived, the city didn’t look nice at all. It basically looked like a huge truck stop. But I stayed there a day or so and it looked a lot better with a fresh pair of eyes after a nights sleep. The city is sat in the mountains, with wonderful views as you look out of the city. It was while taking a rest day here that I met a French couple who were also cycling into the Amazon. We decided to travel together for the next week as our routes will separate in a town called San Borja. They will head East to Trinidad and I will head north. But we can talk about that next week.