hi , i´m not entirely sure anyone is reading this so i will be brief.
10 days ago i made it to Rio , and unfortunately alone, andy and wei ling are still on their bikes but have taken a longer route to rio so will be there in a few more weeks.
i guess this blog does not really capture the scope of a trip on a bike for one year, all the highs and of course the obvious lows ........ i.e ¨breaking up¨ with my traveling companians.
i just finshed filling up my fifth notebook with my musings of the trip and unbelievely i have written something like 600 pages in the last year and to be quite honest i think the only person who will read it is my dad and even then only because he can speed read ........ and maybe me when i am an old man( or at least an older man).
new york was in fact so long ago that it feels like a different trip altogether, i have been spending my evening retracing the route and trying to send an email to everyone that looked after us on the trip , and not surprizingly that list is very long and of course the majority i have no way to contact, so really this is the only way i have to say thank-you to all those people who hosted us, who fed us , gave us directions and didn´t hit us on the roads,
a great trip with ups and downs .
now i am in guatemala and trying to learn spanish ,
and i will be home for christmas
Andy
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
it´s been a while
hi everyone,
yeah it´s been a while ,
when i last wrote i was just about to start two weeks of spanish study in the beautiful lakeside village of San Pedro in Guatemala. hummmm a huge amount has happened since then.including the beaches of El Salvador the deserts of Honduras and the lush tropical jungles of Costa Rica. it is amazing how diverse the land in central america is , the only common factor being that it is always very hot.
3 weeks ago we made it to San Jose the capital of Costa Rica to visit a friend of Andy and Wei ling´s who runs a Macaw Sanctuary , these amazing birds are huge and noisy and very endangered and we spent 5 days helping to feed , clean, de-worm and de-tick them , amazingly these birds are worth about 25,000USD a piece and i did consider smuggling one home - however it turns out speedo do not make Macaw Sized budgie smugglers - which i guess it not surprising since they are mostly made for Australian men !!
after Costa rica we headed to panama city checked out the canal ( of course) and then went to the San blas islands on the Caribbean coast of Panama , from there we caught the Stahlratte ( steel rat) a german run yacht to Colombia , of course 2 lines does not quite sum up the experience of spending 4 days sailing around beautiful tropical islands while drinking imported beer and swimming at every opportunity . the Captain of the ship was Lugwig - a fat 45 year old german lifelong sailor - know as Lulu to everyone he made this trip one of the highlights of our trip. however even more amzing was that last night at a pizza bar in cartagena i bumped into Lulu again and his 23 year old -supermodel like- colombian girlfriend . i{m thinking of coming back to cartagena when i finish this cycle trip .
anyway . that´s it all in a nutshell, please check out andy´s blog as he has actually been recording things along the way and has lots of photos,. and even though it would seem i have forgotten about all my family and friends because of my complete lack of communication- i can tell you that that is untrue - it´s just that being on holiday is hard work and very time consuming
next week we will be in Venezuela-
ciao
Andy
--
"Don't expect people to listen to your advice and ignore your example."
www.andysballbustingadventure.blogspot.com
www.libertytoredemption.wordpress.com
yeah it´s been a while ,
when i last wrote i was just about to start two weeks of spanish study in the beautiful lakeside village of San Pedro in Guatemala. hummmm a huge amount has happened since then.including the beaches of El Salvador the deserts of Honduras and the lush tropical jungles of Costa Rica. it is amazing how diverse the land in central america is , the only common factor being that it is always very hot.
3 weeks ago we made it to San Jose the capital of Costa Rica to visit a friend of Andy and Wei ling´s who runs a Macaw Sanctuary , these amazing birds are huge and noisy and very endangered and we spent 5 days helping to feed , clean, de-worm and de-tick them , amazingly these birds are worth about 25,000USD a piece and i did consider smuggling one home - however it turns out speedo do not make Macaw Sized budgie smugglers - which i guess it not surprising since they are mostly made for Australian men !!
after Costa rica we headed to panama city checked out the canal ( of course) and then went to the San blas islands on the Caribbean coast of Panama , from there we caught the Stahlratte ( steel rat) a german run yacht to Colombia , of course 2 lines does not quite sum up the experience of spending 4 days sailing around beautiful tropical islands while drinking imported beer and swimming at every opportunity . the Captain of the ship was Lugwig - a fat 45 year old german lifelong sailor - know as Lulu to everyone he made this trip one of the highlights of our trip. however even more amzing was that last night at a pizza bar in cartagena i bumped into Lulu again and his 23 year old -supermodel like- colombian girlfriend . i{m thinking of coming back to cartagena when i finish this cycle trip .
anyway . that´s it all in a nutshell, please check out andy´s blog as he has actually been recording things along the way and has lots of photos,. and even though it would seem i have forgotten about all my family and friends because of my complete lack of communication- i can tell you that that is untrue - it´s just that being on holiday is hard work and very time consuming
next week we will be in Venezuela-
ciao
Andy
--
"Don't expect people to listen to your advice and ignore your example."
www.andysballbustingadventure.blogspot.com
www.libertytoredemption.wordpress.com
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Ahh Diaharrea - the up side!!
Well , i have to admit something , and it's a little embarrassing - i have been lying to you all......
because lately, I have just not been enjoying riding up hills as much as i have been making out , I'm not sure just when or how it happened but it did. You hear of this kind of thing happening to other people's relationships , and i always thought that the love that hills and I had was just too strong. But I guess after so so many hills on this trip that the thrill just slowly went. When even a 5 hour non-stop slog up a hill over 60 kilometres and 2000 metres elevation does not excite you, you know that something is seriously wrong. When a hill like that poses no challenge what is the point of even getting out of bed.
So anyway I had been living this lie for the past few months , every time I got the top of the hill I would holler and shout and say how "great it was" and "check out that view" and "it's great to be alive" etc etc but the truth was it was all a show , really there had been about as much thrill for me as putting my tongue on a 9V battery.....
I was having what I can also describe as the biggest crisis of my life , especially because i could not see a way out ....... when....... the answer literally entered my mouth in the perfect shape of a prawn (fried in garlic and butter)..... let me explain
For many years i have lived my life by several simple rules - I have only one regarding food and it is to " only eat seafood at restaurants where you can physically see the ocean" ( thus you can guarantee the freshness of the food) ... however several weeks ago i broke this rule and had shrimp at a place that not only could I not see the sea it was in fact so far from the sea that scientists believe that it could be the place that Noah's dove found on olive branch because it was so far from the sea even god couldn't be bothered covering it with water. Anyway it was a long way from the ocean and i did ponder this as i ate those prawns. 3 hours later as i was bowing down to my toilet and re tasting the prawns ( still so delicious) and at that time I had no idea that this would reignite my love for hills.
You see --- when you bike you have to eat to have energy , however if your both your top and bottom holes are purging themselves every 30mins you can't hold on to your energy and suddenly even a minor rise in the road looks like the Swiss alps and the amount of effort to get to the top-- drains you both physically and mentally and dare i say it spiritually , it was like I was seeing mountains for the first time and as what they really are - the spawn of the devil!!! at the the mere sight of them my legs trembled , my heart sank and i fell into pits of despair. I was reminded of times when i was 10 years old and my father would strap a pack on my back (that was twice my size) and make me walk up hills with him only feeding me dry biscuits and rice and calling it a fun..........AND....... he was RIGHT it WAS and IS fun !!! just like those days when i was a wee tacker, my passion for hills was forcefully and unexpectlying reignited over those days of diarrhoea where getting to the top of every hill would have challenged Hercules himself and the thrill of making the top was as genuine a feeling as man can have.
I realised that it wasn't the hills that had changed but it had been ME!!! I had got too strong for them and it doing so had become so proud and horty......... all i can say is that i can´t wait to be an old man and so frail and feeble that even the walk to the letterbox in the morning will represent a physical challenge worth celebrating.
Anyway , we are in Guatemala now and at a Spanish school for a few weeks before moving on
check out andy's blog for lots of photos etc.
Andy
--
"Don't expect people to listen to your advice and ignore your example."
www.andysballbustingadventure.blogspot.com
www.libertytoredemption.wordpress.com
because lately, I have just not been enjoying riding up hills as much as i have been making out , I'm not sure just when or how it happened but it did. You hear of this kind of thing happening to other people's relationships , and i always thought that the love that hills and I had was just too strong. But I guess after so so many hills on this trip that the thrill just slowly went. When even a 5 hour non-stop slog up a hill over 60 kilometres and 2000 metres elevation does not excite you, you know that something is seriously wrong. When a hill like that poses no challenge what is the point of even getting out of bed.
So anyway I had been living this lie for the past few months , every time I got the top of the hill I would holler and shout and say how "great it was" and "check out that view" and "it's great to be alive" etc etc but the truth was it was all a show , really there had been about as much thrill for me as putting my tongue on a 9V battery.....
I was having what I can also describe as the biggest crisis of my life , especially because i could not see a way out ....... when....... the answer literally entered my mouth in the perfect shape of a prawn (fried in garlic and butter)..... let me explain
For many years i have lived my life by several simple rules - I have only one regarding food and it is to " only eat seafood at restaurants where you can physically see the ocean" ( thus you can guarantee the freshness of the food) ... however several weeks ago i broke this rule and had shrimp at a place that not only could I not see the sea it was in fact so far from the sea that scientists believe that it could be the place that Noah's dove found on olive branch because it was so far from the sea even god couldn't be bothered covering it with water. Anyway it was a long way from the ocean and i did ponder this as i ate those prawns. 3 hours later as i was bowing down to my toilet and re tasting the prawns ( still so delicious) and at that time I had no idea that this would reignite my love for hills.
You see --- when you bike you have to eat to have energy , however if your both your top and bottom holes are purging themselves every 30mins you can't hold on to your energy and suddenly even a minor rise in the road looks like the Swiss alps and the amount of effort to get to the top-- drains you both physically and mentally and dare i say it spiritually , it was like I was seeing mountains for the first time and as what they really are - the spawn of the devil!!! at the the mere sight of them my legs trembled , my heart sank and i fell into pits of despair. I was reminded of times when i was 10 years old and my father would strap a pack on my back (that was twice my size) and make me walk up hills with him only feeding me dry biscuits and rice and calling it a fun..........AND....... he was RIGHT it WAS and IS fun !!! just like those days when i was a wee tacker, my passion for hills was forcefully and unexpectlying reignited over those days of diarrhoea where getting to the top of every hill would have challenged Hercules himself and the thrill of making the top was as genuine a feeling as man can have.
I realised that it wasn't the hills that had changed but it had been ME!!! I had got too strong for them and it doing so had become so proud and horty......... all i can say is that i can´t wait to be an old man and so frail and feeble that even the walk to the letterbox in the morning will represent a physical challenge worth celebrating.
Anyway , we are in Guatemala now and at a Spanish school for a few weeks before moving on
check out andy's blog for lots of photos etc.
Andy
--
"Don't expect people to listen to your advice and ignore your example."
www.andysballbustingadventure.blogspot.com
www.libertytoredemption.wordpress.com
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Merry Christmas
Hi everyone, i just saw that my last blog entry was almost a month ago , so I thought it was time to clog up your inbox again.
Anyway merry Christmas and happy new year, we are almost 6 months into our trip now and I really thought we would be finished by now but infact are not even half way.
we spent Christmas at a beach on the west coast of mexico and apart from giving myself a christmas sleep in ( i got up at 6.30 instead of 6) we also spent plenty of time in the water and generally relaxing our sore legs, Andy got me a great lucho libre mask( the mask of the wrestlers of mexico) and as a joke i decided to wear it for a day - little did i know ........., everywhere we went i got the respect i have thought i always deserved, kids stopped throwing stones at us , dogs ran in the opposite direction ( and if they did open their mouths it was only to weakly mewow) , shop owners gave me the price locals pay for coke , and woman everywhere lined the streets adn threw their underwear in my direction, , i made the sollom oath to wear the mask for the rest of the trip until a chance meeting in a town square with a real wrestler -- at that point it become clear that the mask comes with certain expectations - i.e to wrestle others for the entertainment of the public - this is when I took of the mask and got on my bike and left town under a hale of stone throwing kids and chasing barking dogs - all i can say is _ lesson learnt!!!
Today we went to the local attraction of a giant sinkhole ( much like harwards hole - for those in NZ) , it was simply amazing and of course for a tiny sum of pesos i also abseiled down into the hole , now i think at this point i should say that i have a bit of a problem with hieghts (which somehow i had forgotten since my last abseiling experiance in alice springs where passing tourists had to pull me up a 50 metre cliff i was stuck half way down) so it was probably not the best idea. About 20 metres down an 120 metre cliff I realised I was only attached to a single steel bolt that had been attached to the cliff 5 years ago and with a guide who spoke no english. My life didn´t really flash before my eyes but I did think that although i´m not to young to die i am certainly too beautiful to die , however i did make it to the bottom where there was an amazing limestone cave to see with probably the most pristine stalitites and mites that i have seen which made the testicle pinching abseil worth it .... did i also mention that there were cave painting to see on the way down that my guide told me were 10,000 years old .....
Mexico is simply amazing but I hate to think what would happen if OSH and DOC ever got here , i think abseiling with no safety rope and crwaling through pristine caves while taking flash phots of ancient cave painting would probably be impossible.
Anyway , next week we are in Guatamala and another spanish school for a few weeks,
Andy
"Don't expect people to listen to your advice and ignore your example."
www.andysballbustingadventure.blogspot.com
www.libertytoredemption.wordpress.com
Anyway merry Christmas and happy new year, we are almost 6 months into our trip now and I really thought we would be finished by now but infact are not even half way.
we spent Christmas at a beach on the west coast of mexico and apart from giving myself a christmas sleep in ( i got up at 6.30 instead of 6) we also spent plenty of time in the water and generally relaxing our sore legs, Andy got me a great lucho libre mask( the mask of the wrestlers of mexico) and as a joke i decided to wear it for a day - little did i know ........., everywhere we went i got the respect i have thought i always deserved, kids stopped throwing stones at us , dogs ran in the opposite direction ( and if they did open their mouths it was only to weakly mewow) , shop owners gave me the price locals pay for coke , and woman everywhere lined the streets adn threw their underwear in my direction, , i made the sollom oath to wear the mask for the rest of the trip until a chance meeting in a town square with a real wrestler -- at that point it become clear that the mask comes with certain expectations - i.e to wrestle others for the entertainment of the public - this is when I took of the mask and got on my bike and left town under a hale of stone throwing kids and chasing barking dogs - all i can say is _ lesson learnt!!!
Today we went to the local attraction of a giant sinkhole ( much like harwards hole - for those in NZ) , it was simply amazing and of course for a tiny sum of pesos i also abseiled down into the hole , now i think at this point i should say that i have a bit of a problem with hieghts (which somehow i had forgotten since my last abseiling experiance in alice springs where passing tourists had to pull me up a 50 metre cliff i was stuck half way down) so it was probably not the best idea. About 20 metres down an 120 metre cliff I realised I was only attached to a single steel bolt that had been attached to the cliff 5 years ago and with a guide who spoke no english. My life didn´t really flash before my eyes but I did think that although i´m not to young to die i am certainly too beautiful to die , however i did make it to the bottom where there was an amazing limestone cave to see with probably the most pristine stalitites and mites that i have seen which made the testicle pinching abseil worth it .... did i also mention that there were cave painting to see on the way down that my guide told me were 10,000 years old .....
Mexico is simply amazing but I hate to think what would happen if OSH and DOC ever got here , i think abseiling with no safety rope and crwaling through pristine caves while taking flash phots of ancient cave painting would probably be impossible.
Anyway , next week we are in Guatamala and another spanish school for a few weeks,
Andy
"Don't expect people to listen to your advice and ignore your example."
www.andysballbustingadventure.blogspot.com
www.libertytoredemption.wordpress.com
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