Too long i didnt wrote any news here....
The end of my journey is almost near, but i should write a quick update of the last months.... for those who want to read it>>
To read the full blog pages of my journey, check my site> http://wprinsen.web-log.nl in Dutch unfortunately....
After leaving Santiago de Chile we started to ride along the Chilean coast all the way up to the north. The first few days the scenery was nice with still some green bushes and small forrests. We visited the city of Valparaiso. This is one of the most remarkeble cities ive seen on this trip, with a center full of art and graffiti in big contrast with the big container port wich is just right next to it. After some more days following the coastal Panamericana Highway, wich runs all the way from Tierra del Fuego in southern Chile to the north of Colombia, we reached the beginning of the driest desert in the world: the Atacama Desert. In this desert it never rains and has the clearest night time skies of any place in the world. We spotted many international space observatorys on hilltops. It was difficult to find water and food here and the distances were extremly long. One stretch was 400 km of No Mans Land with only 2 foodshacks for truckdrivers in between. I did this stretch alone because my friend was injured in his knee. I had to take 10 liters of water on board, bags of bread and cheese and canned tuna to survive this jouney. The scenery is like on the moon, nothing lives here, but in the lonely nights camping out there i felt excited to be in such dramatic place on this planet. After reaching tourist hot-spot San Pedro de Atacama, in the north of Chile, we visited the highest Geyser field in the world on 4800 meter, wich was impressive. In Calama, a mine city, we visited the biggest coppermine in the world, with a crater of 5 x 3 km wide and 1 km deep. The giant ore trucks here where definatly the coolest vehicles ive ever seen!
We continued to Bolivia on a 600 km long very bad dirt road. We crossed 4000 meter passes and cycled on different salt flats surrounded by smoking volcanos. At one point we reached the Salar de Uyuni, the biggest salt flat in the world, 12000 km3 big, a massive sea of salt. It took us 2 days to cross this sea of salt and we camped on a cactus filled island in the middle. A highlight of this journey!!!! After some more days of cycling in beautifull high altitude scenery we reached the city of La Paz, the governmental capital of Bolivia. This city is my favorite in SA because its here were you can see traditional Andean culture at his best. The city is scatterd along a big canyon with beautifull steep streets and little alleyways. We visited the famous San Pedro prison. This prison is unique in its own way because everybody can enter there and visit inmates. We visited 2 Dutch inmates who doing time for cocaine smuggling. In this prison there are almost no rules and no guards, only at the gates. There are cocaine labs inside and everybody is high on dope. We spend a whole afternoon in this crazy place and learned a lot about the brutalitys that are going on there every day. We even bought marihuana inside the prison and smoked in the prisoncells!!
I left my bicycle in La Paz and travelled by bus to Cuzco in Peru where i met the girl from paris i met in Nepal and India one year ago. ( yes, the romance is still going strong!) Together we travelled around the Cuzco valley, the Lake Tititcaca and the jungle in Bolivia for one month and had great fun! I visit the famous ruiins of Machu Picchu too, wich i hereby can NOT recommend!! Its an overpriced overrated tourist trap where some corrupt Peruvian investors make a lot of money! I started cycling with my mate one month later from Cuzco. We had some rough mountain roads in the Peruvian Andes but the friendly mountain people and the amazing scenery gave a better view of the real Peru, much better then the touristic Cuzco valley. We crossed 4 mountain passes above 4000 meters, saw thousands of Lama's grazing on the highlands and finnaly descended down to the coast to Nazca. Nearby Nazca are the famous Nazca lines, wich are up to today still an unsolved archeologic mystery. We've seen a few of the lines and also some of the figures wich where made in the desert 2000 years ago for unknown reasons. We continued to Huacachina, were we did some sandboarding. Lots of fun!!!! A few days more cycling through the coastal deserts and we hit Lima. A gigantic metropole, the beating heart of Peru. It isnt as bad as they say, there are still some OKE neighboorhoods, but the rest is dirty brown slum! After less then a week in Lima we continued to the north coast, still riding the Panamericana Highway. The people and towns in the northern part of Peru were really nice and friendly and were a lot different then the highlands and southcoast. We celebrated christmas in the Sechura desert, while camping out there. New Year we celebrated in Mancora, a surf beach 100km south of the Ecuadorian border. Mancora was laidback and was good fun. We eat the San Pedro cactus and drank Ayahuasca, wich was both a good experience.
A few days ago we crossed into Ecuador, where we finally hit the tropical climate. Hundreds of km's banana plants and finally green scenery, wich was a relieve after thousands of km's dry desert cycling. At the moment were again in the highlands of beautifull Ecuador, 188 km left to Quito, wich is gonna be my final destination......
14 country's in 3 continents and 24139 kilometers of cycling so far, and a total of 20 months from home! My money is almost finished so i have to go back, FINALLY!!!
14 januari i fly London, and from there i will cycle home to my town, just north of Amsterdam. The journey was awesome, and changed my life and view forever. I met loads of cool people, saw interessting cultures and seen amazing nature. This journey gave me so much inspiration and is also a prove that the world isnt is as bad as they (Media + TV) say. Nothing happend to me anywhere, people are friendly everywhere no matter in wich country you are!! If i had more money i would continue this journey, but going home back to my work, friends, family and music is also a good thing!!! Im eager to check the brand new Intergalactic FM!!!! See you all soon on board!!!
Lets go Back To The System!
See ya'all at the IFM party!
Some youtube action and photos:
cycling Salar de Uyuni >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mX6hRUcoOcI
cycling Chilean/Bolivian border >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW_oM3RmGsk
Lama invasion >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2hQvtNTnuY
Chasing Lama's >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGYWbKXZboE
Cycling Atacama desert >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbOPWjcGeUA
El Tatio Geysers >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXES
Photo's >>
Chile > http://wprinsen.web-log.nl/photos/chile/index.html
Bolivia > http://wprinsen.web-log.nl/photos/bolivia/index.html
Peru > http://wprinsen.web-log.nl/photos/peru/index.html
Ecuador > http://wprinsen.web-log.nl/photos/ecuador/index.html
cycling around a planet called 'Earth'
