Apr 29, 2015 |
Another day, another new country. The joys of travelling in Western Europe is that there are lots of borders! After a short few days in Belgium, I found myself at the end of the Vennbahn and in Luxembourg. I also managed to make it 3 country highest points in 3 days following on from Vaalserberg and Signal de Botrange with a visit to Burrigplatz. The Vennbahn doesn’t advertise itself for this, but all 3 points are remarkably close to it, with the diversion to Burrigplatz/Buurgplaatz taking
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Dec 5, 2014 |
From Loja it would be about 750km to Quito. I could have gone on a shorter route through the mountains, but I decided instead to drop down to El Oriente, the foothills of the Andes where they drop into the Amazon. I figured it would be flatter than the mountains, and also I wanted to visit my friend Nick, who had not only hosted me on my first day in Mexico, but also I’d ridden with in Cuba.
There was a climb into the clouds out of Loja, on rather steep roads (as seems to be the Ecuadorian
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Nov 28, 2014 |
There are only night buses from Huaraz to Trujillo, so it was that, having finished our Thanksgiving dinner, I headed out at 9pm to the bus terminal. Rather than the normal ridiculousness about how I definitely couldn’t put my bike on the bus, they told me to put it in standing up and only had to take a couple of bags off so it could stand better. One thing that’s harder to avoid is paying a fee, although at least I managed to haggle the fee down. The bus would take me from the mountains
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Nov 27, 2014 |
The route from Huánuco to Huaraz was paved not that long back, and there are no direct buses. I said my farewells, strapped my foot up, and rode over to where the cars left to La Union, the half way point to Huaraz. As it was just a regular car, we just strapped the bike on top, although took a pedal off first to stop it digging into the roof. It was a tight fit in the car, and a 4 hour drive, but the road was beautiful. It was just wider than a lane with constant blind corners, and so even though
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Nov 14, 2014 |
After 2 nights in Jauja, and with my foot still hurting, I resolved to take a bus to Huánuco. I had a Warmshowers host organised there, and I was fearing that it was going to be a few days until I got back on my bike. With the flight from Quito on the 18th of December, I also needed to get going and so instead of riding up to Cerro del Pasco, which at 4300m claims to be the highest city – although Potosí officially has that record, although everything I read suggested it was just a very
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