South America Part 2

In this blog entry, there won’t be any photos. Since it’s been a while since my last post, I have a lot of photos. More than my server will let me upload. This time I’ll be putting it in this link. This is a Google photos album with all my photos in chronological order. I imagine you’ll just keep it open in another tab and reference it as you read. I’ve included most photos of what I described.

After the World Cup game in El Chalten, I took a bus south towards Puerto Natales, Chile where I had been storing my bike while I went backpacking with my friends Michelle and Tobias.

After a 12 hour bus ride, I finally returned to my bike after two weeks apart. Too long if you ask me. I spent the evening unpacking the contents of my backpack and loading it all into my panniers.

In the morning I got back on the saddle and pushed out once again into the legendary winds of Patagonia. The route between Puerto Natales and Punta Arenas was very desolate. In the three day stretch I ran into only two small towns with small kiosks for stores. The majority of that ride could be described as flat, windy and full of curious Guanaco’s.

After three boring days of riding though a very monotonous landscape, I arrived back at Eduardo’s hostel in Punta Arenas. Eduardo was very pleased to see me because even though he invited me back for Christmas, he didn’t think I was coming. We never got each others contacts before I left, so it was all up in the air whether I’d make it back or not. I arrived on the 22nd of December and stayed 15 days in Punta Arenas. This was my time to hang out with local friends and really practice my Spanish abilities. After multiple long hikes I was feeling good about having some time to relax in one place and be with friends over the holidays.

Christmas this year was spent in Eduardo’s hostel in P Arenas. Eduardo and his family spent the evening cooking an asado over the indoor grill in the back shed. A big community gathered for dinner at the hostel, I was accompanied by the majority of the hostel guests and some of Eduardo’s close local friends. We all had a great time sharing stories over the grilled delicious pile of meat and rice. I ended up staying out until 3 in the morning with the Punta Arenas local crew out in the back yard feeling very welcomed into the community and very comfortable, finally, with my Spanish.

In the 15 days I spent in Punta Arenas, I was messaging back and forth with a fellow cycle tourist named Liam on Instagram. Liam and I have a unique connection because he and I are in almost the same situation. We both graduated high school in 2021 and both started our bike trips at 17. He started on August 1, 2021. I started August 4, 2021. He started in Alaska. I started in Europe. We have had such a similar life in the last year and a half, but in such different parts of the world with all our own unique experiences. As it turns out though, Liam was only a few weeks out of Punta Arenas, so I decided to wait in town for him to come by and ride to Ushuaia with him to finish his trip.

Liam showed up around 11 am on January 5th to the hostel, I said a quick farewell to Eduardo, telling him I’d be back in about a month. Liam and I acquainted pretty quickly as we rode to the ferry together.

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We crossed the Magellan’s straight on the two hour ferry from Punta Arenas to Porvenir, back onto Tierra del Fuego, or as I think it should be called, Tierra del Viento (Land of Wind). On the ferry we both had some firsts in our lives, I saw my first ever whales and seals! Liam tried mayonnaise for the first time… CRAZY!

We rolled off the ferry onto Tierra del Fuego (TDF) around 6PM and began to look for camp. I knew that the road ahead of us was 100km of gravel followed by asphalt for the rest of the route to Ushuaia, so I proposed we ride an hour or two before setting up camp so we could shorten our gravel for tomorrow. We ended up riding a very fast 20km that evening with the first 10 being all concrete roads in perfect condition.

We found a beautiful camp on some cliffs above the straight and accidentally stayed up until 1:30am next to a powerful campfire. The reason why it was so easy to stay up so late is because the sun had barely set! We were turning into our tents as the sky finally started to turn a dark blue after a multiple hour long sunset over the water.

Day two of our TDF ride together took a lot of effort riding the gravel from Porvenir to the main road. We spent the day talking on the bikes. We were taking food breaks at the cyclist refugios provided on the road. The refugios looked like they were really nice in their prime, but every single one had shattered windows, stolen wood burning stoves, and stolen ladders to reach the sleeping loft that was about 7ft off the ground. Most cyclists complained about that, I was stunned by the luxuriousness of them, another reminder of how low my standards are at this point. Liam and I were more than happy to walk around the broken glass and kick off the wall to reach the sleeping loft.

One refugio we stopped at though, I was not so fond of.. We were in the middle of eating some meat and cheese sandwiches, when we noticed a big concrete cube structure about 20m away, dimensions ~ 3m wide and long. We walked over to the structure thinking it might be nice to climb to the top and sit on the roof in the sun. Liam pulled himself up first and immediately dropped back down and said “NOPE! You need to see what’s over there…”. I put my hands on the edge and pulled myself up, throwing my body over expecting my torso to land on a flat concrete roof. I looked down and my body was suspended over a one meter deep pile of dead sheep. Needless to say, we wrapped up lunch pretty quickly and set out on the road again.

We camped that night on the side of the pavement of the main road outside a trashed refugio that we used as wind shelter. We decided after eating a big dinner of ravioli to go for a walk off into the pampa. We spent an hour on the other side of the fence that runs parallel to the road, we found skeletons of horses and guanacos and walked amongst heards of sheep to an old dried up lake about a km away from camp into the pampa. We noticed a long white object on the opposite side of the lake bed, so we walked over and found A TARP IN THE SHAPE OF A DEPOSITED HUMAN BODY. We were not having it. Sheep and humans, oh man. The tarp had separate sleeves for arms, a long tube on the bottom for legs and a section for a head just under 2m long. We decided we had to open it to make sure we didn’t find someone in the pampa, especially because we’d seen lots of MISSING posters along the border. So we walked over and looked through a tear in the head section. It was a bag full of sand. Ridiculous.

The next few days on TDF were pretty similar, you’re spending the whole time riding through pretty barren landscapes and staying in or outside the refugios along the route. Our last two days riding into Ushuaia however were pretty unique.

We arrived in Tolhuin which is about 110km out of Ushuaia, when I flew down there in November, Tolhuin was just a days ride for me. When I went through Tolhuin the first time I wild camped along the edge of the airport in a little grove of trees I found. This time, Liam and I had heard recommendations from other cyclists to go ask for a bed at the local bakery. We walked in to the bakery after a long ride of Pampa slowly turning into the mountainous, forested landscape of southern TDF, this bakery was huge! Long lines of costumers and fresh baked goods still coming out at 5PM, they had photos lining the walls of Argentinian celebrities who’d visited and oh my god the baked goods had to have been the best I’ve ever had, Liam said the same.

We walked up to the counter and asked to speak to Emilio, the owner, who upon seeing us knew right away that we were cyclists looking for a bed. In Spanish he said, follow me. We followed Emilio to the back alley where he brought us into the storage room. We walked through a maze of flour sacks and soft drink cans down to the basement where there were four beds covered in pen saying “Thank you Emilio”.

We had a cozy night in Emilio’s finally fully sheltered from the TDF winds. In the morning we walked upstairs when the bakery opened to beat the lines and bought a 15 pastries right out of the oven to have for breakfast and on the ride, maybe even tomorrow morning we thought. Emilio is doing something right there because we finished all of those before our lunch break.

After Tolhuin we set off for the next recommendation we had received. About 70km out of town we’d find a small road going towards a lake, at the end of which we’d find a huge abandoned resort with private abandoned lakeside cabins.

About 2 km before the turn to our private resort, we stopped at a small roadside shop and bought some beers to take down to the lake with us. We passed a local police station on the way down, we’d been told that we need to be careful for the cops since the resort is still private property. Luckily the station looked pretty vacant, so I don’t think they saw us going through. As long as we don’t have a fire, they shouldn’t see us down there since it’s impossible to get to by car. The reason its impossible is because they have a big locked gate you have to walk around through the woods, then after that, they had dug out the road and sent water from the lake through the whole to really make it impassable. Thankfully, we are both experienced in evading obstacles with the bikes.

We spent a while exploring the big main building and admiring the graffiti murals. To enter we walked through the glass doors that had been smashed through and we had to walk through the dark basement up to the main room.

The main room was this massive room with a family sized fire place and sitting area around it with a stair case going up to the hallway with the rooms. Imagine the room from the Shining where Jack Nicholson follows his baseball bat wielding wife up the stairs. That’s what the room reminded me of.

After thoroughly exploring all the rooms, floors and the kitchen we walked back through the shattered doors and wheeled our bikes to our private villa on the lake. There’s a line of 6 or so cabins along the side of the lake, all but one of them is pretty stripped, missing floorboards, windows, ceiling etc. the second to last one was in near perfect condition.

The walls of the cabin were covered in writing from past cycle tourists who had come through. We spent a solid 20 minutes looking through them for the most recent dates and for instagram names we knew who had come through and stayed at the cabin in previous days/months/years.

We spent the afternoon sitting outside enjoying the sunshine, the mountains, the shelter, good Patagonian beer and swimming in the lake. Living the high life, this is what our trip would’ve maybe been like if we hadn’t left as 17 year olds strapped for cash. My new high standards – sleeping in abandoned resorts. This was Liam’s last night on his bike trip from Prudoe Bay, Alaska to Ushuaia, Argentina. A pretty good final night on the road if you ask me.

Liam and I separated for his last day so he could complete his ride in his own thoughts. He went to Tierra del Fuego national park, 20km outside Ushuaia where I planned to meet him the next day.

As I rode into Ushuaia, I wasn’t sure what to do, so I was going around town exploring and looking to get some pesos. As I was riding, this preppy looking guy rode up next to me on his bike and started talking to me. After a few minutes he invited me to his house for some free food, so I followed him down to the end of town to his house. I showed up and he had the craziest place ever! He lived with his parents who were up at their vacation home at the time. His dad sells expensive real estate and seemed to be pretty successful off of that. My new acquaintance’s name was Mate, he showed me all the fancy details of their place, their in home theater, all their Italian imported appliances and coffee makers, their race car and Ducati. He took me back to the back yard where he had his weed plants growing, he rolled a joint and took me into the garage and just revved the Ducati engine while smoking and saying “cool right?”.

Mate was a funny dude. After we left his house we rode out towards the national park and he told me about the history of the area and how all these railroad tracks around Ushuaia were made my the prisoners in chain gangs to make more tracks to bring in more prisoners.

After the afternoon with Mate, I rode to the edge of the National Park and hopped a fence into some forest for a free place to camp.

I had heard that if you get to the park entrance before 7am, they technically weren’t open and you could sneak in for free. So I woke up at 6am to ride to the entrance, not knowing how far I was. Turns out my wild camp spot was only 200 or so meters from the entrance just out of sight. I think I probably slept in the NP that night even.

I successfully rode into the park avoiding the entry fee and wheeled to the designated campground about 10km further down the road. I searched the grounds for Liam’s tent and finally found him in a nice little spot right next to a clear deep river. Since I was arriving at 7am though, he was still sleeping.

When he woke up we talked about his final day on the road and decided to spend the day at the campground along the river doing some exploring, some swimming and watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail. We spent one last night there at the NP before going into Ushuaia again.

Now that Liam’s bike trip was over, his next plans were to meet his long distance girlfriend (Chloe) in Ushuaia and backpack back to California with her via busses, boats and hitchhiking. I was planning on hanging out with them for at least a week as we all agreed to do a backpacking trip in the mountains of Ushuaia together.

When we returned to Ushuaia, Liam and Chloe had booked an airbnb for their reunion, I stayed with Liam there the night before Chloe arrived and left my bike and non essentials there the next day. When Chloe arrived, I left town for the woods with my backpack so I could give them a few days to catch up. I got to hang out in the woods by myself for a few days (sounds sad, but I love hanging out in the woods exploring on my own). I got to climb up and down river valleys with my hammock and sleeping bag on my back and go into town to the big grocery store everyday to pick up food supplies and use the toilet.

After a few days in the woods, I went back into town and connected with Liam and Chloe again. After a day of the three of us hanging out and getting acquainted, we got all our stuff and found a spot to store it as we hiked.

I ended up really connecting with both Liam and Chloe over the next month we spent together. With Liam the connection was almost automatic since we both realized that he and I are really the only two people in the world who we can fully relate to with our circumstances being so unique to most people and so similar to each other. Leaving at 17 years old, within days of each other and both doing the majority of our trips solo and self supported through unknown parts of the world and through unknown times with covid thrown into the mix. Two birthdays on the road away from home while watching our friends stay local and go to school during that time. And Chloe was just an easy person to get along with, very social and we seemed to have fairly similar personalities. Definitely a fun pair to spend time with. I’m hoping to show them around MN when they make their way up to the states again.

We had a beautiful hike in the surrounding mountains, visiting ice caves, glacial lakes, windy mountain passes, all the backpackers favorites. On day three, we were considering going for a stretch of wilderness with no trails, or returning to the main road and hitching to a different part of the wilderness that had hike able trails. As we sat there eating lunch discussing options, we decided to head out and get some food restocks and go to a more accessible place when Chloe nonchalantly mentioned the fact that she hadn’t really pooped in a few weeks. This was very concerning to me and Liam, and the average person… But it didn’t stop Chloe from getting back on the trail elsewhere.

We went back to the grocery store, got some tasty food and then put our thumbs up and set out the the Laguna Esmeralda trailhead.

We did a 1.5 day hike out to this beautiful valley and stealth camped behind a 10m high boulder. We did a base camp day there and hiked up the slate covered mountains surrounding the valley and found our way up to some out of view, not on the map glacier lakes and scurried up a number of cliffs to a big glacier covering a mountain top that was surrounded by cliffs shooting straight up and towering above us.

After 5 total days enjoying the mountain valleys of the backcountry, we returned again to Ushuaia and moved into another AirBnb. Normally I avoid airbnb’s because of their high cost, but in Ushuaia hostels are so expensive that it was actually cheaper to split an airbnb 3 ways and have way better accommodation, plus a free washer dryer.

We had a fun last few days in Ushuaia between two airbnb’s we explored the town and got to know all the local spots. On our last night we were coaxed into a night out on the town by a girl we met at a restaurant. She had recognized Liam from his social media pages and said that she was down there with her family and was getting pretty bored, so we all went out that night dancing between all these local seaside bars.

In the morning, the three of us walked to the bus station and loaded our bags and bikes into the cargo hold of a bus destined for Punta Arenas. There was no way I was going to try to ride in WINDY WINDY Tierra del Fuego again.

As the bus was leaving, I looked at Liam and said ‘Oh dude, what if the bus stops at the bakery in Tolhuin’. The whole next hour we were just hoping that our bus would stop, but we figured it to be unlikely since it wasn’t so far out of Ushuaia.

When that bus stopped in Tolhuin, Liam and I jumped out of our seats and sprinted from the bus stop, across the small town, to Emilio’s bakery. We got there to a room with no customers, we were first in line with our whole bus coming in right behind us. Again we got a dozen. Again they were devoured before we got off that bus. Unfortunately, Chloe can’t eat gluten or dairy, so she was forced to just watch and smell as we ate those tasty pastries.

We spent four days back at Eduardo’s hostel in P. Arenas hanging out with Eduardo, playing cards and walking around the city. No penguins this time though.

From there we split up with the intention to meet again along the Carretera Austral up in northern Chile. So I set off hitch hiking towards Puerto Natales where I’d stay for two nights and do a job interview. Chloe and Liam did the same.

I biked out of town to this lighthouse beacon along the beach and set my rain fly up like a lean to over my bike and fell asleep under that.

In the morning I ran into Liam and Chloe again, awkward moment when you’ve already said goodbye, but you’re going the same way, except for us the same way is a several hundred km difference. We bought a rotisserie chicken and mustard and ate that on a bus bench with our fingers for lunch.

After doing a little walk around town and eating lunch, we said goodbye again and they hitched north bound towards El Chalten to do the Huemul Circuit off my recommendation.

I spent one more night under my rain fly lean to by the beacon and was awoken around 3am to a truck pulling up almost right over me, I was down on the beach and there was a little pull in off the road. The truck stayed there for about half an hour and they never noticed me, I just poked my head out and stayed very still and quiet. I saw them unload and drop off 2 big garbage bags on the beach by me, then they sat in their truck for a while before driving off.

Once they were gone I felt comfortable enough to fall back asleep until the sun came up.

I was awoken again in the morning hours by the voice of a woman speaking accented Spanish saying “Are you okay?” Of course she probably thought I was a ditched body, I was wrapped up in my tarp along a beach, good place for someone to ditch a body. I poked my head out and said in Spanish “yeah sorry”.

She responded in English saying she was a French expat living there and she offered me to swing by her house later for a shower. I said that’d be great, explaining to her that my interview was in a few hours and I needed a place to get clean and use Wi-Fi. She gave me her address and the name of a place I could use WiFi and she went on her way.

I started getting ready and remembered the truck dropping off the garbage bags in the middle of the night. I walked over to the bags, beaches are good places to ditch bodies right? As I turned around a rock and saw the bags, two dead, eyeless dogs faced my out of the bags. These guys had ditched two dead dogs 5 meters down the beach from my head and hadn’t noticed me. Lucky me getting to sleep next to and find freshly dead, partially eaten dog carcasses.

I made it to my interview that afternoon and one question they asked was for me to explain a time I had a responsibility to fulfill, but was put in circumstances where I thought I might not be able to. I started explaining my night, sleeping on a beach in southern Chile under a tarp, being woken up to a truck leaving dead dogs around me, waking up dirty and having a stranger invite me to their house to clean up. As I was saying it I realized I sound pretty homeless and probably shouldn’t be saying this to potential employers. Surprisingly, they said it was exactly the answer they liked to hear (I thought this was sarcasm) and I did end up getting offered the job.

After the interview, I slowly started making my way up route 40 in Argentina to Chile Chico, Chile to cross the border and start my ride on Route 7, AKA, the Carretera Austral.

After 5 painful days riding, hitchhiking desolate roads and eventually hopping on a bus, I made my way up to Chile Chico and started towards the Carretera.

Ah Route 7 was absolutely stunning! It seemed I was always riding past mountains, glaciers, green green meadows, blue rivers, or blue lakes. And one of my favorite route 7 facts is that you can drink all the water right out of the rivers. No need for pumps or iodine or anything, just pure, delicious water.

My first four days on the Carretera Austral were all what referred to here as Repio, basically sand, dirt, big rocks and gravel all mixed into one road with washboard texture, not a cycle tourists friend. But having these breathtaking views around each corner, every one better than the last, I was able to take my mind off the repio and just enjoy my surroundings.

There is one down side to the Carretera Austral and that is that it’s expensive as hell. I believe its more expensive than American prices, I felt like I was being robbed. But you learn how to deal with it, saving food, learning cheap meal concoctions, there’s always ways.

I planned to meet Liam and Chloe in a town called Villa Cerro Castillo, a mountain town on the route where the road changes from all repio to all pavement.

Above the town of Cerro Castillo is Cerro Castillo mountain and glacier, this is what we planned our hike to be. We met up in town, I rolled in on the bike, they on the bus and we went out towards the trail the next morning.

This was a two night route called the Cerro Castillo Circuit, day one was walking to the north side of the mountain and sleeping on the base with an evening pack less hike up to Laguna Duff, a beautiful blue glacier fed lake along the mountain. Day two was to hike to Laguna Cerro Castillo on the south face. Another incredible hiking day, we got to cross over a pass and get an amazing view down the valley with probably 200km of visible land.

On this hike, Chloe’s bowels were functional, but she was a bit slower than Liam and I over the pass. Liam slowed down to hike with them because the winds were strong enough to make the pass a bit dangerous. I told them that I would meet them somewhere over the pass along the trail.

When I reached the pass, I looked down to see a huge glacier rolling down off Cerro Castillo mountain and saying to me, HIKE TO ME ADAM.

So I hiked to it. A little background for you to understand that landscape, When you looked down off the pass towards the glacier, you see the trail going gradually downhill off the pass to the right side along Laguna Cerro Castillo. On the left side of the laguna is a huge cliff, on top of the cliff is the edge of the glacier and above the glacier is the mountain. Now the whole area is all just slate, its really easy to see a human moving around especially me wearing a bright green shirt with my red backpack.

So coming off of the pass, I decided to go off trail and go left through the slate towards the glacier. I figured since everyone looks at the glacier when crossing the pass, my friends would see me and know I was there and I’d just flag them down and they’d follow then we would camp along the glacier overnight. It was a good plan, I did not expect the next thing to happen.

About ten minutes after I reached the glacier, I was fully engulfed in white, a cloud had just rolled in and taken all vision from me. I could only see about 3m in front of my eyes and my friends didn’t even know there was a glacier over there. For the first half hour I was just hanging out taking photos assuming it’d roll over soon and I could wave to my friends.

An hour later I’m still trapped in the clouds, so I decided to leave my pack and run to the trail. It was pretty fun trying to find my way around this mountain with absolutely no vision, but because of that I had no idea where my friends were.

I ended up finding them after 20 minutes of running around the slate in my sandals, I found them traversing a boulder field heading down towards the lake. I called to them from maybe 20 meters away yelling at full volume. I have no idea how they didn’t hear me, but they didn’t. I had to speed run the boulder field to catch up to them and turn them around towards the glacier.

When I told them we were camping at the glacier, Chloe was unhappy. The pass had tired her out and the hike back up to the glacier looked very daunting. Thankfully I convinced them by saying it was probably the best campsite of my trip, and once we arrived they were inclined to agree.

We had a great night up on the glacier drinking water off the ice and admiring the views. Liam and I eventually worked up the courage to scale the ice wall and explore the surface of the glacier.

We had a late dinner, eating right at sunset. All of a sudden another cloud came in and covered us, but since it was during sunset it ended up the cloud was all pink. Sitting on a cliff edge next to a glacier trapped inside a pink cloud is something I never would’ve thought was even possible. It felt like living in a dream.

We went to sleep all sleeping under the stars with our rainfly’s wrapped around us for extra warmth, since sleeping next to multiple square kilometers makes the nights a bit colder. It ended up raining overnight for multiple hours, luckily my tarp kept me nice and dry and warm. I was super cozy all night, occasionally waking up to look at the stars and the dark glacier. Chloe was cold and wet the entire night however. The walk down the next day was not as enjoyable for her, but she still ranked it a 10/10 spot.

After our hike, I biked to Coyhaique in a day and they hitch hiked. Coyhaique is the big city on the carretera austral, the only one with ATM’s and big grocery stores. Some people may remember from my blog entries in Nepal, my friend Enzo, he is from Coyhaique, but currently in Thailand.

When Liam biked the Carretera, he made friends with a hotel owner in Coyhaique who let us stay for free at a fancy hotel in town. A very nice opportunity in the expensive route 7 and after our hike. We arrived at the hotel and after showers headed out for dinner.

While we were hiking, Liam had told me about a place he went to in Coyhaique after a long day on the bike that was a pizza buffet. You pay 11.000Pesos, 13USD and they bring you out all sorts of different pizzas, starting normal and slowly getting expiremental until you’re full and they bring you a desert pizza. On every plate they bring you, they have 4 small to medium sized pizza slices. We lost track of how many we went through, but we agreed to keep each other hyped up so we could eat as much as possible and get our moneys worth. I think Liam and I ate 7-9 plates before getting the dessert pizza. As I mentioned, Chloe can’t have gluten or dairy, so she got to watch us eat. We could barely walk home.

The next morning I said goodbye to Liam and Chloe and headed north again up the Carretera.

Over the last few weeks, I had been in correspondence with some of our family friends, Rick and Tanya. As I grew up, my family always went on at least one bike trip a year ranging from 1 week to 2 months. Rick and Tanya have now been on 3 year plus bike trips, one as their honeymoon and two with their three boys. Now all three boys are off at school, so they’re starting number four. They flew down to Northern Argentina a few months ago, and as I’ve been coming north and they south, we’ve been keeping an eye on each others progress to see where to meet.

Now we were both about a week out of a town called Esquel in Argentina, so I was heading north again up the carretera.

It took me 3 beautiful, rainy days to get to the turn of route 7 that takes me to Esquel. My last town on Route 7 was this teeny tiny two street town with volcano evacuation route signs all over called Villa Santa Lucia. I bought one last dinner for the road and wild camped there on a vacant construction site.

The next morning I followed the Futaleufu river to the town of Futaleufu. This river was incredible. It felt like it had a mind of its own. It was a huge deep powerful glacier fed river famous for whitewater rafting. I found lots of expats living as raft guides in Futaleufu. And it made for a really good swimming spot at the ends of the riding days.

I took a day off in Futaleufu enjoying the river and waiting for Monday for the banks to open because I needed the ATM before crossing into Argentina so I could get a good exchange rate with Chilean Pesos.

I rolled into Esquel a few days ago and met Rick and Tanya at a nice apartment rental. We’ve spent the last few days catching up and sharing stories since we haven’t seen each other in over five years. We’ve been exploring Esquel together and drinking good beers at the local breweries. This is the first big town I’ve been in for a week and a half since Coyhaique, so its been nice to enjoy being dry out of my tent, having grocery stores and all these craft beer places around, not to mention seeing old friends again.

Now I’m all caught up. I’m sitting here on my third rest day with Rick and Tanya, we’re all doing work sitting out in the sun in camp chairs.

Now I’ll share with you my big news that I’ve been waiting to share until its confirmed, no information on any of my social media updates about this year, but after almost 20 months on the road, I booked my plane ticket to the USA a few days ago. Ill be landing in LA where my sister is going to come visit me for a few days. After Clare flies home on the 23rd, Ill start my North America leg. I’ve decided to take the next 4 months to bike from California back to Minnesota. I’ll be taking this time to reintroduce myself to US culture and to prepare myself for my return home soon.

After over a year and a half on the road without returning to the states, the idea of going back to my home country is a bit nerve wracking. The way I see it is that from these travels, I’ve grown up and adapted out of my American mindset in a sense. It’s going to be a shock and an adventure on its own to get back into the US and re-adapt. But yeah, 10 days from now I will be in Los Angeles. Wild!