The Boston Phoenix ran a column on page 6 this week briefly highlighting my trip. So far this is my first print article after many attempts at contacting various publications. There are a few statements that are off (for instance I biked east to west) but all in all its cool to see the story as a tangible entity in my hands. If you’re in the Boston area find a red Phoenix box and check it out.

You can find an online copy at Boston Phoenix as well. Here is a link to the article titled The Bicycle Feat.

This is a rough elevation profile from Puerto Maldonado, in South East Peru in the Amazon basin, to Nasca which is located on the coastal desert. The profile shows the rise into the Andes, the numerous ups and downs as I crossed hundreds of miles through the range, and the descent back to sea level around the city of Nasca.

The last day in the Andes I had a roughly 60 mile downhill ride from 13-14,000 ft. You can see from the profile there is one final climb to the Pampas Galeras before the profile shows a smooth curve downhill to below a couple thousand feet elevation.

This is a cross section from a day on the Transamazonica between Novo Rapartimento and Pacaja in Brazil. My first day on the Transamazonica proved to be intensely hilly. The TransAm was filled with brutally steep, frequent, but short climbs. Looking back I remember them as being much more demoralizing than the gradual climbs in the Andes.

My longest day was between Humaita and Porto Velho. I made over 130 miles due to the smooth pavement and flatter road. Here is the profile for that section of the ride.

Speilberg and the Coen Brothers haven’t come knocking quite yet but while on the trip I shot quite a bit of video and still photography that I wasn’t able to upload onto the website due to the impossibly slow connections. Now that I am back I’d like to use that choppy on-the-bike-video and remaining still photos to hopefully make a short film… with some help.

This is still very much in the embryonic stage so there isn’t too much to report right now. However, I have made contact with an excited film making maniac who will be sorting through the files to see if something can be pieced together.

Mat Tucciarone from New England Institute of Art will be working with my raw photos and video footage, along with some interviews he’ll be shooting, to put together a documentary about my trip. Both Mat (with one T) and myself are pumped about this project.

Check out Mat’s site: http://www.mathewtucciarone.com/

Now its fine dining, gambling in the casinos, and classic martinis for me. I pedaled into Lima, the ending point of my South America adventure, and wheeled the bike into my hotel. It all felt rather abrupt and unceremonious. With my final few days in Lima I am indulging in urban luxuries, reflecting on the ride, and even giving a few interviews!

By the time I had reached Lima I was ready to get off the bike. With my fevers becoming almost nightly I promptly walked into the Good Hope ER in the Miraflores neighborhood of Lima and for 45 USD I saw a doctor, was tested for malaria, and had results in about 2 hours. The results were negative so I will get tested for other parasites once I return home to Boston.

In the meantime I have been exploring the coastal portions of Lima. This city is absolutely immense with a wide variety of neighborhood flavors. Miraflores, where I am staying, is very beautiful and borders the Costa Verde with ivy covered cliffs over the ocean where hundreds of surfers and para-gliders can be seen everyday.

Hummm, well I guess not para-gliders everyday.

I have been asked to be interviewed by a few American writers living in Lima who want to cover the story and maybe pitch it to some magazines. This is pretty exciting for me and it would be cool to see an article in a hard copy form. We shall see…

Some of the questions I’ve been asked have giving me a good opportunity to think back on the ride. For the most part I have been thinking forward about the upcoming legs of my trip or even just on the day’s tasks at hand, but no more! It’s time to think back and sort out everything that’s happened. Some things about the people and places I’ve experienced will never make sense or have a greater meaning. That’s something humans have a hard time with in life… a lack of order or reason.

Being in Miraflores is already preparing me for coming back home. There are Starbucks, MacDonald’s, KFC, Pizza Huts, and Christmas decorations everywhere. I have to admit it has been fun treating myself to some of the things that were nowhere to be found for the past two and a half months.

I took the bike for one last roll around town today before it gets broken up and boxed for the plane. I gave away my camping gear and warm clothes that I bought down here and generally have been site-seeing and relaxing. The shoe shine boy below wanted to ride my bike, wear my watch, and check out my shades. He looks like bonafide Policia.

The Antigua Miraflores Hotel is a nice last resting place here in South America.

I am looking forward to getting home and enjoying Christmas with all the people I missed. This trip has consumed my thoughts for the past few years and now it’s completed. I think a lot of luck, help from complete strangers, and the support of everyone back home, especially my parents and girlfriend Sara, has made this a successful journey. Now it’s time to take a short while and absorb what has happened before looking to the future.

The first day of this trip, when I left Belem, was my 29th birthday. For my gift Sara made a box of cards with dates on them that I was to open along the way. Inside, they were filled with pictures, cartoons, a guess as to where she thought I would be along the way, and quotes. Every time one of the dates arrived I looked forward to seeing what the cards said and they were a source of inspiration.

My favorite quote, by Robert Cushing, is from the first card, September 24th, my birthday.

“The fact is, that to do anything in the world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.”

… and that, my friends, is the end.

I stood at the edge of the continent and took in my first views of the Pacific Ocean. The desert abuts the sea at Paracas National Reserve with dramatic cliffs, sea life, and powerful winds. I felt a true sense of accomplishment.

There have been a small handful of cycling days on this trip that I would consider easy, or comfortable. I can remember about two off the top of my head. Reaching Paracas was not one of those two days. The prevailing winds are from the north to north west along the coast and as I approached the shoreline the famous Paracas winds were directly onshore and in my face.

It was fitting. I was completely alone, walking the bike, with my head down, and going over a hill. When I reached the top I struggled to keep the bike standing in the wind before getting frustrated and dropping it on the ground. To the end I would have to work for every inch across South America. I took a second to breath and walked to the edge of the water. The first thing I thought: about time.

Where are you ocean... here I come!

The ride out from the PanAm Sur ended up being 20 miles one way and took me about three hours with the headwind. This was my longest stray from my route but was well worth the effort. The scenery is starkly beautiful and the sense of place was unmistakable. I had miles of coastline to myself for the night to fully appreciate how long the ride has been. I still had a couple hundred miles more to Lima but I had made it to the ocean.

I spent the afternoon wandering further away from the access road looking for a nice campsite. I also took the opportunity to pose on an assortment of cliff tops and various spits of land.

The salty smell of ocean air reminded me of home.

I had been fighting a fever and the runs all day (I am guessing my gut is housing a wonderful myriad of parasites at this point) and was eager to get settled before sunset. I found a shallow cave on a cliff over the ocean where I could hear the waves breaking, and after dark, sea lions barking. I set the tent up close by in the soft dusty ground.

After dark I was outside the tent messing with my panniers I had placed in front of the carved out rock when I heard a scuff noise in the distance. I pointed my headlamp and 50 meters off I saw a moving figure. There shouldn´t be anything out here. I´m not alone.

I kept the beam fixed on the figure and jogged towards it to make sure I never lost sight. As I got close I realized it was a lone man with a large bag. He had a baseball cap down and kept his eyes shielded from my light. I think we both scared one another. I didn´t consider I came out of nowhere, rushed him, and blinded him with my light. He kept asking, “Who are you? Who are you?”

His name was Gabriel and he was from the nearby town of Pisco. He fished off the cliffs at night and hitched a ride back every night around 9pm with some other fisherman. I told him I was just camping for down below and had ridden my bike out here. I think we both were relieved we weren´t about to murder the other.

Paracas is home to the Hubolt Penguin, the Inca Tern, flamingos, Andean Condors, marine cats (never heard of these), pelicans, turkey buzzards, and the Black Ostrich. This time I only saw condors, pelicans, terns, and some other bird life. There are also these crabs that are about the size of a mans hand and can climb quickly up sheer rock. They were very interesting to watch scatter around out of the water.

I fired up the SAT phone and shared my location with my parents and girlfriend.

Yes Mom, I had something to eat for dinner tonight.

From Paracas I had under 200 miles to Lima along a stretch of the PanAm I had driven before. I knew I was in for heavy truck traffic, headwinds, more fevers, and less than rewarding scenery. However, for this night I was satisfied.

"TASTE IT!!!!!!!!!!!"

Just when you cross the Andes, almost cross the continent, you start feeling pretty tough. Then you get put in your place… twice in a few hours. I started north out of Nasca into a brutal headwind through the desert and met some fellow adventurers along the way.

The rig on one of the desert lines stretching to the horizon.

About 12 miles out of Nasca I stopped at a lookout to observe some of the famous lines made by the ancient Nasca culture. As a few tourists took my photo I saw a proper fellow cycle tourer approach from the distance. I raced down from the lookout to see what he was up to. His name was Sam:

Me: Hey, where you coming from?
Sam: Oh just Palpa (town a few miles north of our location).
Me: Oh, are you just starting your trip?
Sam: No, no. I am two years in.
Me: Woah! Jesus.

Sam used to be in high finance selling bonds in London. The market started to tank, his girlfriend went to Switzerland for her Phd, so Sam left on a real world tour. He started in Turkey and cycled back through the Mediterreanan to London. He then flew to the US and cycled East to West (the US was his second favorite leg after Sumatra!). I asked how the people were in the US as far as hospitality and he said in the middle around Missouri and Kansas he met some of the most outgoing people in the world.

After a bit through British Colombia and down the West coast all the way to L.A. he flew to New Zealand. Around NZ and about 600 miles through Australia before touring “You know, all of South East Asia and Sumatra.” Then it was a flight to Colombia to start his North to South of South America. No big deal Sam.

The desert drawing board just down the hill.

I won´t bore you with next stretch through emptiness with nothing but glass in the road, roaring trucks, and sand blasting headwind that absolutely desiccated my body. I was looking forward to riding in the desert but to sum up the riding of this day… it sucked.

I was a few hours into the desolation when there was a green shack selling warm drinks. I pulled off the road and out of the wind for a few minutes when lo and behold another tourer! I was laughing, two in one day… Jesus. Now Sam has quite a trip behind him but Mark Beaumont shook my hand and gave me his business card, it read: ADVENTURER. It was no joke.

Me: “You going to Nasca today?”
Mark: “Yeah. Wait, what?”
Me: “You headed to Nasca?”
Mark: “Where´s that? I thought you asked if I came from Alaska.”
Me: “You came from Alaska!”
Mark: “Yeah.”
Me: “Jesus Christ!”

He is a documentary film maker for the BBC and he constructs his own adventures that are fully funded by the BBC. He has a production team create TV series out of the footage he shoots and they plan ahead interesting things for him to do along his route. Big deal Mark, my girlfriend does that for me too.

All joking aside this dude is a stud that makes me look like his little brother in the first photo of the post. On his trip, Cycling the Americas, Mark will be mountain climbing the highest peak in North America and then cycling to the highest peak in South America and climbing that in the same season. It´s never been done before, he´s riding alone, and he has already climbed Denali in Alaska and cycled all the way here to southern Peru. He has 2600 more miles to make to reach Mount Aconcagua in Argentina by January 1st.

After hearing this story I felt like I needed a business card: Doug Gunzelmann, AMATEUR.

We chatted for awhile when the little girl, the daughter of the Señora who ran the joint, pointed to a greasy smear of roadkill on the pavement and said it was her dog with a big smile on her face. Wow. They raise them tough around here, maybe the landscape put some gravel in her guts.

Further down the road I was running out of gas again when I pulled over for a rest at a small restaurant. I saw a man in dirty clothes propped up on his bag reading an ancient copy of Reader´s Digest in Spanish. He asked if I spoke English and proceeded to ask me about the birds in the US. “Do you have turkeys, wild turkeys, not domestic ones.” Yep. “And pheasants? How about the woodpecker. Have you eaten a woodpecker.” I told them they were kind of small and I never heard of people eating them. “Oh no, I think I mean woodcock.” Yep Jorge (his name), that makes more sense.

We then switched to Spanish so he could understand my trip, then once he found I spoke some Portuguese he nearly jumped in my lap as he had lived in Brazil for 8 years. He was very curious about my time through the Brazilian Amazon, and whether I spent any time with shaman, or if I had taken Ayahuasca, an Amazonian psychedelic plant that shaman use. He also wanted to know in general what I thought of colors.

Jorge quickly combed his hair for the photo and dropped the comb by his right foot.

Sorry Jorge, my trip was an actual physical journey. I told him about the cougar and puma I saw and he wanted the exact location. Never mind that it was about 2000 miles back in the middle of nowhere over a month ago, he needed to find them! I gave Jorge my website and he gave me his, although I can´t get it to load (www.pasiónyagoniaenelpariasoamazonico.blogspot.com). It took him three times to write the letter W, even though each attempt was correct, and he seemed to reflect on his first name for a few seconds more than anyone would after introducing himself.

That aside he was very nice, spoke nearly 3 languages that I heard, and I´m sure has a lifetime of experiences that are interesting and insightful. He´s taken a different path to say the least and I would have stayed longer to listen to more of his writing that he read to me from a journal but light was fading and I needed to get somewhere (very un-Jorge-ish of me).

I also passed my 3000 mile mark for the trip. This pic shows the digits in front of some spectacular scenery.

So to the desert oasis of Huacachina for a rest. The desert here looks like the movies with giant yellow sand dunes. It is very tough to walk in and some of the dunes are extremely steep. I went for a 3 hour hike to snap some photos and didn´t make it more than a few miles away.

Desert outside Ica. Don´t lose your direction... you´ll die!

Thinking back on the fellow cyclists I met and their achievements I remembered Alexandre. I bet Alexandre and I could give them a run for their money laughing the whole way!

Nasca desert at sunset... feels like a Mars-scape out there.

I´m writing this post after spending 19 hours in bed with a raging fever, maybe too much street meat? I made it over the Andes and have descended down into the Atacama desert, the driest in the world. “It feels good to be out of the rain.”

From the town of Puquio it was just under 100 miles to Nazca, home of the famous Nazca lines dating as far back as 200 BCE carved into the desert floor depicting animals, shapes, and lines. There were some large climbs in between but ultimately I would be losing nearly 13,000ft along the way.

Once I ascended to 4330 meters of the Pampas de Galeras, and the thousands of Vacuñathat reside there, I had a nearly 60 mile downhill ride. The temperature soared as I went down and the scenery changed to pure austere desert. I had great views of the largest sand dune in the world, Cerro Blanco. It sits just outside the city of Nasca and is 3860 ft high and 6791 ft above sea level.

Cerro Blanco can be seen behind me.

I spent Thanksgiving eating a pizza and having a beer in a touristy bar in Nasca. However, I have seen turkey´s in Peru on a few farms, they were quite large too, but I have never seen them prepared as food.

Once I am rested and shake this fever I will head out to the desert oasis of Huacachina, then follow the Pacific coast until I reach Lima. I´m looking forward to exploring some of the desert along the way and reaching the ocean, marking a true trans-continental ride. Until then I am fascinated by the severe emptiness of the desert landscape.

No hay nada.

I am all for people protesting for their rights. I don´t mind a riot now and again. But for the sake of God why all the glass? All travelers on inflated tires suffer… even the common man. An otherwise beautiful day of riding was punctuated by 5 flats!

I managed to get to the bottom of the valley below Abancay when my rear tire went mushy. I hate that feeling. I have to take all my panniers off to flip the bike over get the wheel off. Then, due to my wheel set, I have to wrestle the tires off the rim, usually skinning a few knuckles in the process and made doubly hard in the rain. Then I have to inflate the new tube with my travel pump… which takes roughly 300 pumps. That adds up to 1500 pumps for the day.

I had gone through all my spare tubes and had to start using my patch kit. I was following a river uphill in a very scenic gorge with a tail wind. The ride would have been one of the most pleasant and productive had it not been for all the flats. Glass was embedded in the tires and would go unnoticed causing multiple flats.

After 10 hours I managed to reach Chalhaunca 75 miles upriver on two patched tires at a mushy 35 psi a piece. As I came into this small town the streets were again nearly paved with glass. I got off and gingerly walked the bike through the mess as people hurled glass bottles into the road behind me. All the llanterias, or tire repair shops, had cars, bikes, trucks, and motorcycles lined up in front of them. It seemed the only thing the Paro protesting was accomplishing was making a miserable day for the people driving around town. I bought another patch kit and spent the night repairing all my tubes.

Out of Chalhuanca I had 20 more miles following the river up before I zigzagged west up to the Altiplano. This is a high plateau at roughly 14,000 ft. The scenery is stark, the weather is windy, and there are lots of Alpaca and Vicuña roaming around.

Vicuña are a more slender and rare species similar to an Alpaca or Llama in appearance. They live on the upper slopes of the Andes and have the finest wool in the world. They can also survive on very little water which is a good feature on the arid western slopes of the Andes.

Once over the edge of the plateau I had about 30 minutes of sunning cycling before a headwind kicked up. Even on gentle downhills I was reduced to walking the bike, head down, through the wind as slow as 2 mph at times. There is nothing to stop the wind up here and when it blows you feel it.

The wind brought rain (this wasn´t arid Altiplano) and I was shivering with all my clothes layered on. I went over a pass at 4300 meters before descending into a valley where I planned to camp with my new tent. However, the small valley was the resting spot of a small town and its Alpaca grazing land. The town did have one restaurant with a bed available for rent… it was the dog´s bed and I have never slept in a dirtier room in my life. I wanted to leave town and camp but daylight was up, I was soaked, and the road out of town was straight up again.

The town was called Marcapampa and was a typical Andean highland village. There was no electricity this night, there is no wood or anything to burn so no fires, and it was pouring rain. What a dark, miserable, and cold night. I don´t want to live on the Altiplano, that´s for sure. I have been here before, a year ago, and am always astounded at the hardships the people who live here must face to survive. The Alpacas are their livelihood and gawking at a gringo was their entertainment during my stay. Everyone spoke in Quechua, giggling with each other, but I did catch “Los Estados Unidos” enough to know they were laughing at me.

Maybe its my fashion sense that gets people laughing?

I made it to Puquio, in another valley off the Altiplano, and passed some interesting sights. I have seen caves in the cliff sides ever since arriving in the Andes but these ones looked like they were being put to use. It looked very Hobbit like and a good place to have a campfire and a few beers with some friends. Most likely livestock used this as shelter during bad weather.

You never know what a day will bring you. When I left Cuzco the day wore on like any other with long climbs and long descents. Traversing the Andes proved to be alot of hard work. At the end of the day I had been ascending for about 4 hours when I arrived in the small town of Curahausi with a flat tire when I got an unusual invite.

I´d like to say it´s enjoyable to coast for 30 miles through narrow valleys watching the foliage change from highland scrub to lush green with cacti and palm trees. That in and of itself is fun indeed…but of course it´s not in and of itself. Every time I descend for over an hour I pray it will end, and lessen the elevation I will inevitably have to climb again.

I want to make it clear that once you get into the Andes its not a nice rolling ride until you descend on the coast. It is a constant steep rise up one mountain side followed by a steep fall into a valley on the other side. Each time thousands of feet are gained and lost. You kind of have to go mentally numb when you finally stop coasting at 30mph and have to start huffing and puffing uphill at 3mph.

When I nearly walked into Curahuasi I stopped at the first roadside stand for a coke. There were two men there, a boy, and the woman who ran the counter. I chatted it up with the men when they asked if there were roosters in the US. Then they asked if we have cock fights. Nope, it´s illegal anyway, I told them.

Well it was my lucky day for in just 45 minutes Curahuasi was hosting a cock fighting extravaganza with competitors from all over this part of Peru. They told me to head over to the stadium to see the show.

There were maybe 20-30 fights lined up and taking place in this arena made just for cock fights. The birds would come out tended to by their owners and briefly displayed for the crowd. Then large barbs were tied to one leg of the bird while the crowd made bets amongst themselves based on which bird seemed stronger when displayed (usually between 20-100 Soles, divide by 3 for dollars).

When the birds were ready the owners would briefly hold them close enough so they could peck each other and get riled up. Then they were placed on the ground about 4 feet from each other and everyone was made to sit down so as not to obstruct anyone’s view (the host made sure everyone was sitting still and the band was quiet before a fight could start).

Sometimes the birds would just peck around on the ground and ignore each other until forced together. Once the fights began they were over quick, usually in less than a minute. A bird would fall to the ground with its feather bright red with blood and that was the end. The owners took the birds away and the crowd went back to chatting and drinking beer. To be honest there wasn´t much enthusiasm about the matches. On TV people always shout and shake fists full of money at the cage. I wanted to get the crowd to show a little more pizazz. I watched a few fights, had a chicken and rice lunch (I breiefly wondered if I was eating the losers), and took off once the rain rolled in for the night. I had to prepare for more climbing the next day.

At times I´d take a minute to look back at what I had been climbing all day. Sometimes it looked more like a mini-golf course than a road, with pavement going in every direction. Leaving Curahuasi I would climb for three hours and still see perfectly where I had started the day´s ride. Once I got to the top I would take a minute to eat something and dress for the long cold descent. The pass before the city of Abancay took me a total of 7 hours to climb, four hours the day prior and three the following day.

Usually the drop from a pass is somewhat treacherous with hairpin turns, rockfall, rain, and traffic. As I fell into Abancay I noticed quite a few hazards in the road. The further I got the less they seemed to be from natural causes. Eventually I was certain I was headed into some sort of trouble in this city.

The streets were filled with broken glass, smoldering tires, trashed cars, and lots of broken glass. Great, I am wet and exhausted and now I am in a war zone… I don´t want to be repairing flat tires from all this glass damnit (this would prove to be quite a problem later on).

Every window in the city courthouse was completely smashed and laying on the sidewalk. Military police, federal police, and city police were lining the streets in full riot gear with shields and machine guns. Almost everything was closed with the protecting metal doors pulled tight over store fronts and restaurants. This was Paro… a district wide protest for better wages and human rights. Signs were posted in front of businesses stating “Closed for Paro.”

I rolled up and down the streets with glass crunching underneath nodding hello to the various armed personnel. I found a Chifa, or Chinese restaurant, with the metal doors closed only halfway down. People were eating inside so I climbed under and had an interesting Peruvian take on Chinese food.

Strong rains had forced everyone, even the police, inside by nightfall at the city was a ghost town. I enjoyed the surprises at the end of each day.  Something completely unexpected had spiced up otherwise arduous days behind the handlebars.

I descended out of Tinqui in a cold rain with a fever on my way to Cuzco. After a few hours of long descents and high rises I could see the fertile valley of the pampas thousands of feet below and prayed my brakes were going to land me safe and sound far below.

I climbed again up to about 14,000ft but this time it was clear, sunny, and dry. There were a group of road workers just after the summit as I began my way down who warned me to go slow and take it easy. I couldn´t believe how far down I was to fall before arriving in Urcos to start the traverse over to the ancient city of Cuzco. I had given my brake pads a quick glance the day prior and assumed they´d hold up.

As I descended I rode the bike like a motorcycle, looking through the hairpins to where I wanted to go, not where I was going. I wasn´t passed once by a car and had an easy time passing 18 wheelers as they crept their way down the slopes. When I finally arrived at the base in the town of Urcos I could take off all my cold weather clothes as it was down right hot in the valley.

After a few hours of riding and waiting out a thunderstorm in a gas station ( I wanted to stay dry since I wasn´t feeling well) I made my way through the miles of urban sprawl into the Plaza de Armas in the historic center of Cuzco. I sat in front of the cathredal until a tourist came up to talk to me. This was the first English speaking person I´d spoken to in person since getting on the plane in New York in September. He was British and had ridden his bike from Vancouver to San Diego before decided it was too dangerous to proceed further south via bike. I had him take a pic of my arrival.

As we conversed other tourists came up to have their picture taken with me and the bike. We both got a kick out of that. This city is crawling with sight seers from all over the world and rightly so. Cuzco is a very beautiful city with an incredible history dating back to the Incas. The city is a World Heritage Site and most of the visitors are here either coming or going to Machu Picchu as well.

There will be no Machu Picchu for me this time but I´ll be spending a few days here to recoup and re-gear for the next leg further across the Andes and down to Nazca in the desert. There are many more high passes left, including two around 15,000ft and a run along the altiplano at 14,000ft that will require me to camp most likely. I bought a used tent from one the of tour shops, a durable parka shell and pants in the market, and proper gloves. My jungle hammock, mosquito netting, and machete are fairly useless at this point and I wasn´t able to sell them to the tour operators either.

My slick new sweater and some flawless Inca stone work.

I´ve been asked to find some new Alpaca slippers for my woman so off I go to see if I can acquire a pair before I leave.