On the road again…

It’s finally here… the moment we’ve been at the same time excited for, but also dreading a little bit: getting back on our bikes and hitting the road once more!

Let’s take a moment to look at the past. If we take a step back and look at our entire trip so far, we’ve spent six months cycling through North America (and Mexico) and four months in Peru volunteering. If you say it like that, it’s a very short list of accomplishments. In fact there are only two thing on that list… But to us, those two things are really big. We lived so intensely, we’ve done so much stuff, seen so many places and met a lot of beautiful people. It almost feels crazy that we are “only halfway”. To say the least, there are already A LOT of unforgettable memories in these two things and we are very much looking forward to adding things to the list.

We’ve cycled through amazing places like; the infinite vastness of Alaska, the Canadian Rocky Mountains in Jasper and Banff. But also the smoke-filled forests of Oregon, the magical Redwoods along the Pacific coast and riding on a horse with no name through the deserts of Baja de California. Off our bikes we have had some amazing experiences as well: hiking the Skyline trail and the Skoki loop in Canada, taking a trip to the almighty Yosemite valley and our epic road trip with Flo and Rahel (which included a record breaking amount of nacho cheese sauce!). And last but definitely not least: the past four months have been a blast from beginning to end.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: volunteering is really great! Just the idea of doing something for other people without really gaining anything for yourself is kind of special. Not just because it’s a really enriching experience for yourself, but you can also positively impact someone else’s life. It doesn’t always have to be a big and generous act, even if it’s just brightening up only one day in someones life. Sometimes the distraction you can offer on that one day might just as well be enough to change that person’s life for the better… It is something we can only recommend; volunteering of some kind or doing a selfless thing!

If the experience and fulfillment of volunteering alone wasn’t enough, the friendships we’ve made here make the picture totally complete. In the time we have been at Oye LENA our team changed a bit over time, but overall, we always worked with amazing people! The countless banana-oatmeal pancakes, the “casita” parties, the volleyball games and just the time we spent together, we’ll always remember (except maybe some parts of the “casita” parties…).

So from the bottom of our hearts: thank you to all the volunteers! You made our time in Curahuasi awesome and we’ll hope to see you soon and often!

Ok, we were happy, we cried, we said goodbye. Let’s get to it then! Travelling…

Our plan is simple. Get our bikes fixed up (they’ve been sitting idle for four months…), point our front wheel southwards and start riding. Since we feel like we’ve seen the Curahuasi/Cusco region quite well. We have decided to start this part of our trip in Arequipa. It turns out that you can climb some awesome volcanoes there as well. It’s the perfect thing to do while our bikes are being cared for!

After Arequipa, the next big thing is Lake Titicaca, La Paz (Bolivia) and the salt planes in Uyuni (Bolivia as well). Beyond that, we’ll figure it out in more detail while we’re on the road. It’s always better to keep your plans flexible and adjust them based on what the locals say, or on how you are feeling.

What we CAN say already is that our adventure has an end date… we’ve booked our tickets “home” and made some plans accordingly. “Home” between quotation marks because we will be flying to Barcelona and cycle home (which is Belgium for now…) from there. To us this seemed like a more appropriate way of finishing our trip. That way we can truly feel like we ended this trip on, but also definitely with our bikes.