Going extreme (in video)

We finally got to a place with a fast enough Internet connection that allows me to upload video. Here you can watch part I and II of the extreme journey across the jungle described in the previous post. I do recommend reading that post first, as like it's always the case, written language can tell things that cannot be appreciated through video. 

I highly recommend watching them in HD and fullscreen. 

Part I

Part II

Going extreme!

 Two of the toughest bike travelers I know, Salva and Adam, both good friends of mine, met in Sulawesi in 2009 and together they embarked on a journey that both described as unforgettable, not only for its outermost beauty, but also for the difficulty and intensity of the journey. When I consulted Adam about the possibility of doing such this ourselves, he said: "The ride through Kalimantan (which he had also recommended) is indeed hard, but the ride through the jungle in Sulawesi is actually extreme". If that had come from someone who has no clue about traveling by bicycle, I would not have payed much attention. However, a comment like this, coming from such an experienced cycle traveler like him had to be taken seriously. Before the time finally came, hardly a day went by without thinking whether it'd be possible for us to do this jungle stretch, I was even unable to catch sleep easily! I wasn't really worried about myself, after all it wouldn't be my first nor my last extreme journey but I wasn't really sure whether Julia was already prepared for such an extreme endeavor. However, Julia and I are very much alike in one particular thing: even when we are not sure if we can or cannot pull something off, we both like to take the shot anyway and go into it to put ourselves to test, even if that means we'll be cursing the whole way due to the strong adversity, because having failed to do so, the thirst for adventure and the need to push our limits, wouldn't allow us to keep living at ease if at least we hadn't tried it . It would mean keeping on living with the unbearable thought of not having tried and the countless "what would've happened if's ...." that would come along with them, this is a very heavy burden and believe me, it is really annoying, you just can't get over it.  The road was there. It was just a we-do-it-or-not question. After all, there were only 120 km or so. Finally, by an unanimous decision, the answer was YES! and f**k it was worth it! 

The road to the extreme

It had been quite a long time ago, still during the planning stages of this trip, that two cycle travelers friends' of mine told me that Sulawesi was without a doubt, among the best islands of Indonesia for cycling, so we got there with the greatest of the expectations. Even though I tried to imagine it, I didn't actually have a very defined idea of what the island would be like. After a full month and more than 1500 km cycled there, an epic journey across the jungle and having turned 35 there, I can confirm that Sulawesi is one of the most spectacular places I cycled in, in the almost 35.000 km I have cycled until today.

Land of buffalos

 We got to Pare Pare after our first long-haul trip on board of the Bukit Raya, one of the several ships of PELNI, the national ferry company of Indonesia that connects most of the islands of the country. 19 hours of quiet navigation on an almost empty ferry with a capacity for thousands of passengers. 

Never ending green

During my years of traveling both as a backpacker and traveler by bicycle, I have been more than once dazzled by what the world has to offer. Its landscapes, its ecosystems and its phenomena are some of the reasons that always make me want to keep going out, to see more, to learn more, to feel more. From the very beginning, Indonesia would receive us with an overdose of emotions, the kind of emotions from which it is extremely difficult to come back from. Difficult because after having been through experiences that make you release so much adrenaline, once you are past them, you cannot help but ask yourself - Will I ever feel again after this? 

Malaysian murderers

 After 24 hs of sailing calm waters we finally reached Sandakan in the Malaysian side of Borneo.  The first time I had been to Malaysia was 12 years ago, although at that time, I visited the peninsular part of it and wasn't traveling by bicycle. Back then, even though the country would be far from being unforgettable, the experience was overall positive. On the other hand, this ride along a part of Borneo, completely changed my perspective. 

 Sandakan is a small and quiet port town in Sabah province. Its population is pretty mixed, most people are malaysian but there are many of Chinese and Indian origin, the latter being a blessing, since they have brought with them their exquisite cuisine and the town is filled with restaurants offering delicious curries at very reasonable prices. 
We started cycling first thing in the morning the day after we disembarked. 360km lied ahead until reaching the border with Indonesia. We had just started the way that would eventually take us to the Equator and you could already feel it. No matter how used to the heat we would have already been, Borneo is hot, hotter, much hotter and by 9 am we would be cycling soaked in sweat already. 

The long way to Borneo

The last good-bye to Manila

After coming back from Palawan we spent two final days in Manila the ugly, we happily said good-bye to it for the last time from the deck of the ferry that would take us to Cebu. Despite having spent our time in the city in extremely comfortable conditions, Manila rapidly climbed up to the top of my ranking of “The Ugliest cities in the world”. Manila, we are definitely not going to miss you, you are the ugliest thing in this stunning country.

It took the ferry 24hs of navigating calm waters to reach Cebu, where we hastily moved from one pier to another to connect with a speedboat that took us to the fishing village of Tubigon in the small island of Bohol. Unfortunately, after all this time of traveling in the country, I dropped my guard due to the wonderful affection of the Filipinos, and at a time of carelessness in the speedboat, somebody dug into my handlebar pannier and took the equivalent to 300 usd that I had stored there for an important expense we had to cover to leave the country. A bad experience that showed me that no matter how wonderful people are, there are always some who are there to ruin the party and we always have to keep and eye on our belongings

We went to Bohol to see a tiny wonderful creature that I had long been yearning to see since I had watched it on TV for the first time more than a decade ago. The tarsier.

Holidays in heaven

 There are always primitive reasons that make us who we are and explain why we do the things we do. In my case, the main reason why I am the adventurer I am is my parents, both of them natural born adventurers, who have taken me to every possible adventure since the time I was born and they raised me not to fear anything, or better said, they taught me how to not experience fear as paralyzing terror but rather live with it moving along all the unknown territories that I might come across in life without being paralyzed by fear. They have fostered in me a thirst for learning and discovery that can never be satiated. Thanks to them I have been able to dream and later realize all the things that I have dreamed and being able to live the life I've been living until today.

Volcanoes, solitary bays and rice fields

Manila the ugly

Entering and leaving big cities by bicycle is rarely a pleasant experience and Manila is not the exception. Actually it is the perfect expression of the immense stress that involves such process. Manila is a huge sprawling city of millions of inhabitants and for both entering and leaving we had to ride all across it. Like it's always the case with poor countries, it isn't a city of harmony but one of huge and harsh contrasts. There are no greys in Manila, it is rich or poor, it is immaculate or filthy, it is spacious or crammed, it is ostentatious or plain misery and unfortunately, the negative connotations are the ones that predominate in the virtually infinite horizons of this huge metropolis. The fact that a big city has big contrasts and negative connotations isn't a surprise, especially in Asia, but many of them, despite having them, they still preserve some kind of hidden beauty in them, some charm, even when poverty and misery is what predominates. Manila doesn't even have the slightest appeal, it is simply ugly from wherever you look at it, from wherever you walk on it or cycle on it.

Cruelty in Paradise

Since we got to the Philippines many things drew our attention and almost all the time, with no exceptions, they were good things. Among all those good things was the lack of interest of the people in football. For me, that I despise football, it was a liberating experience not to have to hear the same reflex response I get from people everywhere I go, every time I say I'm from Argentina. “oh!Argentina! Maradona!” and these days it only got worse because we have a new one, Messi. Being from Barcelona, Julia is also affected by the latter. On the contrary, in the Philippines paradise exists because football seems to be irrelevant. Beautiful. However, after having seen the “sport” that takes the place of football as the national “sport”, for the first time in my life I felt some true appreciation for football and I would've preferred it had been more popular than this monstrosity.

Hello Sir! Hello Madam!

  It is possible that due to its geographical situation, most long-haul cycle travelers decide to bypass the Philippines. With more than 7000 islands spread across the Pacific ocean, The Philippines cannot be accessed by land. In most cases, people have to fly in and out of the country. This alone discourages most cycle travelers because of the costs involved in flying with all the stuff and how uncomfortable that is. It is a fact, we are not comfortable when we are away from our bicycles, let alone stand the nightmare of imagining what may happen to them when careless hands load them in and out of the plane. Although there is one way to enter and leave the country by sea, it is quite limited for the ones who are cycling from country to country. Still, I had been dreaming for years about visiting The Philippines and I wasn't going to let the discomforts of flying discourage me, thus I felt that it was worth it to pay the extra cost and face the unbearable feelings that come at the time you check-in your bike and last until you get it back. Two months later, time would not only prove us that it had been worth it but also that it hadn't been nearly enough time for such an amazing country.

Trapped among whores and casinos

 I had never ever been interested in going to Macau but this time there was, at least apparently, no other choice. Back in 2007 I had experienced the nightmare that it is to arrive in Hong Kong with a bicycle and I wasn't willing to repeat that, let alone now there being two of us. The only reason why we had to go through Macau was because that's the place where the cheapest flights for the Philippines take off from, they are indeed really cheap. That, coupled with the fastest issuing of the Philippine visa at the cheapest price in the region and the fact that, opposite to Hong Kong, you are actually allowed to cycle in Macau, it made the place hard to resist. What I didn't know at the time of arranging the flight is that we would fall into a trap and as the saying (in Spanish) goes, the cheapest ends up being the most expensive in the end.

It took us 12 exhausting hours to complete the 135km that separate Guangzhou广州and the city of Zhuhai珠海sitting across the border from Macau. The road was pretty much a continuation of what I had been experiencing the days before arriving to Guangzhou广州, an endless continuum of factories and evil traffic. Many of those images that can be seen in some investigative reports in the west about the poor working conditions going on in china can be seen live here, right from the road. Or what it is actually more terrifying, one can only see a small bit of it and that very small bit is already terrifying itself. Factories filled with lines and lines of workers probably sitting all day there working double or triple shifts, their housing sitting either right above or right next to the factory. It is only left to imagination what living like this must be like, in this industrial megacenter of the planet. The lives of the very people that work anywhere from 8 to 18hs a day to make real those objects that not only the very few in the world will be able to consume but also those super cheap mass market products that find their place somewhere across the globe. It is a saddening experience and it brings me down to see the degree of inequality that the Gods of the economy of our days promote and strive so so so hard to defend.

From relief to boredom

I won't deny the fact that despite its great beauty, I felt relief when leaving Guizhou贵州. Afterall, it had been a very demanding physical beginning and that's the very reason why the body suffered more than usual and found difficulty in situations that had they happened at any other more advanced stage of a long trip would probably be a lot less strenuous. The province that followed, Guangxi, brought the relief that I had been yearning for during those last days of infinite climbs. However, those easier, flatter and more trafficked roads wouldn't take long to bring boredom.

Right after going into the new province the change happened almost immediately. There were no more climbs. I was now heading south-east following the very same winding green rivers that I had met days ago with the exception that now, the road was almost always flat. I kept riding through a continuum of Miao苗族and Dong 侗族villages, but unlike Guizhou 贵州, here these were found along the shores of the rivers instead of being scattered around intricate canyons of dramatically steep terraced mountains. In every village I could see men crossing villagers in rafts made of bamboo, the very same bamboo rafts being used from centuries ago. In between so much sophistication and development it is wonderful to see these traditional means of transportation still surviving.

 As soon as the roads became easier I was able to start compesating for the distances that I hadn't been able to cycle during the previous 12 days. Now everything was easy and days went by faster and faster. I went from an average of 75km a day to more than 120km in less time and at a fraction of the tiredness by the end of the day. And the best of all was that the knee pain had now completely gone away. One of the greatest things about cycling in this northern part of the province was to cycle accross the citric plantations, where for 40km everything around me was mandarin and orange plantations. There were sellers in improvised stalls sitting by the road every few dozen meters, they sold them at a ridiculously cheap price. It was harvest time and the fruits were incredibly sweet and juicy. There are very few things as pleasant as hydrating with juicy fruits. One day I almost exclusively hydrated myself eating mandarins, 3kg and oranges, 1kg. Fantastic!

Up and down, up and down, up up up..... the endless and exhausting ride across Guizhou 贵州.

It was the mix between an enormous enthusiasm, the excitement of being riding around the world again, the strong need to get to see the “new” stuff, the anxiousness to get to Guangzhou 广州, lying 2300km (1430miles) ahead, on time for Christmas to meet my “co-pilot”, what left me limping by the 5^th day. All this “excess of enthusiasm” hit my knees extremely hard. I had cycled more than 15.000km (9400miles) in the last four years, but due to the more ephemeral nature of those journeys, no matter how hard they had been, especially the ones across Tibet, I had been able to carry less weight. Now, I was already carrying what is typical for any long-hauler. I left home with little over 60kg(135pounds), a moderate weight to start, especially considering the awful weight of my photography gear and related equipment. This weight would allow me to get fit and ready for the times when carrying food and winter clothes would possibly increase it up to 80kg (180pounds) However, at pace of more than a 100km (63mi) a day along roads that were becoming increasingly difficult, it was more than my knees could take in such a short period of time. Needless to say, I couldn't think of a worse scenario, since I was just crossing into Guizhou province 贵州省.

Guizhou 贵州 is officially the poorest province of China but also, proportionally, one of the less visited by both Chinese and foreigners. That is possibly the reason why in my mind it was so enigmatic and because of this, I deliberately traced my route all across it. I entered Guizhou贵州 from its westernmost tip, crossing the river Chishui赤水, reaching the town bearing the same name. I had got to it following a secondary and already very mountainous road of Sichuan province 四川 and at that time I really wasn't able to imagine what lied ahead. I had done my homework and of course I knew it was a mountainous province, what I didn't know yet was that for the next 1000km (620mi) approximately, there were not going to be more than a 100 consecutive meters (300ft) of flat road. Guizhou 贵州 has the geography of a different planet.

As soon as I left Chishui 赤水, cutting across a thick bamboo forest, the changes were immediate. On the way to Xishui 习水, in towns and villages, traffic became noticeably more chaotic, pollution increased, buildings were more precarious, with facades with no finishes or finished half-way. There was no aesthetic appeal of any kind, constructions were not even picturesque, but this is the case in all China anyway. On the other hand, landscape became greener and wilder. The climbs started from the very beginning. The soil became red and I could see very long and thin waterfalls falling for dozens of meters from high up above, filtering through thick forests and bare rock cliffs. After a while, the forest gave way to deep canyons following winding emerald green rivers. From these, I would start climbing up until the ridge from where I would see a new valley, each with its own extra planetary topography. Every climb would bring a new way down to a new valley and the slopes were unforgiving to my knees. With every step I took on the pedal I felt like a sharp iron bar piercing through my knee caps. Sometimes the pain was so bad that I couldn't concentrate on the beauty around me any more. Music, which is usually soothing, helped sometimes but It would still hurt when the punishing slopes became very steep. A series of intricate rice terraces started to dominate the landscape among mountains that seemed to accommodate themselves in the most whimisical way.

 It did not take long for me to realize that when looking straight at the horizon, there wasn't one, because nothing was placed at the same level. Crossing Guizhou贵州felt like being trapped in this massive 3D maze in which movement never occurs in one direction but in all of them, and it sometimes take only a handful of meters to switch from one to the other. Days were almost perpetually grey and the fog was low and thick when I saw, across the river I was cycling along, a fantastic village of traditional houses.

Sichuan 四川. Leaving home.

  No matter how big the enthusiasm within is and no matter how many times one has gone through this process, leaving the place where you settled down for a fair amount of time, is never easy. The comfort of a place called home, the friendships that one has sowed at work, in the neighbourhood, in life in general, the habits and customs; every single one of those little every day life things, they are all hard to leave behind. It's this subtle mix of emotions between the huge excitement of the adventure to come and the sadness that comes with a new detachment from the people and things that were part of one's life.

The night before the day I took off I was incredibly nervous and it was almost impossible to sleep. Caught between the practical decisions that needed to be taken, like packing in the most efficient way and the myriad of emotions involved in being at the verge of taking such a big step in life almost the whole night passed by in no time. It was at 5.30am that I was finally able to lie down. It wasn't really sleeping but more likely a very light rest. It didn't take long for the alarm to ring at 8am. It was time to take a shower and shave for the last time in who knows how many days, have some coffee and take a few minutes of silence to look around home and contemplate to give the heart a last look at that small world I had built in the last few years of my life in China. The time to leave had come once again, to leave not in the sense of abandonment and forget but to leave carrying with oneself all those things that one has gone through in life, the friends, the experiences, the affection that one has harvested with time and love throughout time. Leaving ain't about leaving behind but to keep going with so much more inside, so much more. Some of the best friends that have accompanied me almost from the very first days I was in town were waiting for me downstairs. They gave me warm smiles for the road and encouraging words for the trip I was about to embark on.

Resign and departure

Last day mess. Packing!

Well, for the first time probably I will try to keep a steady flow of posts written in English. Some might be direct translations that I do from my original posts in Spanish, as well as posts written in English from scratch.
I intend this one to be a mix of both.

Since I never wrote in English before, except for the two miserable translated posts bellow, I will brief you. For over 16 years I've been traveling around the world. 7 years ago, back in 2006, I swapped the backpack for a bicycle and since then I've been cycling around the world. My first long journey took me from Tehran to Shanghai along 10.000km (aprox) across Central Asia and the Indian sub-continent. Once I got there, I settled for a year and a half to later find myself moving to Sydney for another year.

 After that, about 3 years and 8 months ago I was landing in Chengdu and despite the fact that it was a transition time for me in terms of relationships, thus quite an uneasy time, I got here full of enthusiasm and overall very happy about being back in China. As it had already been the case since I left my country back in 2006 and started this kind of way of living, I had no idea how long I was going to stay, but oddly enough, very soon after I had got here I had a very strong gut feeling, a hunch, something like a premonition that came from deep inside me and thought: the day that I leave Chengdu, it will be on my bicycle. It was just a feeling and had nothing to do with wanting to leave already or thinking about leaving. I just felt that and I saw it clearly.

Time passed by and I have madly and rapidly fallen in love with Chengdu, and even more so with Sichuan province, its people, its food, its customs, its dialect, its landscapes. I had a job that I liked and enjoyed very much while it allowed me travel extensively around China. In my free time I have cycled thousands of kilometers around rural China and I have undertaken several extreme journeys along the remote Tibetan plateau (which became my place in the world) and Xinjiang province. During all this time and along these thousands of kilometers cycled I have also developed a strong spirit that connects me deeply with the places and cultures I visit while I transit the roads of this world. From a physical and mental standpoint I feel I have reached maturity. I'm still far from something like the ultimate maturity as a cyclist but I'm certainly way stronger and prepared than how I was 7 years ago when I jumped on a bicycle for the very first time as means of transport to travel and I struggled everyday to survive.

Today, after these 3 years and 8 months, just like what I was able to see in my premonition, I'm only hours away from setting off once again on my bicycle, this time for an undetermined amount of time. Once again, I have left the security of a stable job with a good and steady income; once again, I have left the security of a home that every day waits for me with all the comforts at the end of the day or after some short holidays. Once again I set myself to simply drift. And once again I hear the voices: "aren't you afraid of leaving your job with all this crisis going on in the world?" "aren't you afraid of how it's gonna be once you are over with your trip" "aren't you afraid of what you'll do in the future?". Fear, fear, fear.Yes, if I think thoroughly about it, it all scares me, but do we have to be slaves of our own fears just for the sake of sowing a future which ultimately we have little control of?

I ain't good at translating poetry but there's this very nice poem called "die slowly" that it is falsely attributed to the great Pablo Neruda that says something like.

die slowly, the one who doesn't travel,
the one who becomes slave of habit, repeating the same journeys every day over and over
the one who avoids passion and the emotions that come with it

die slowly
the one who doesn't risk the certain for the uncertain to go out and chase his dreams
the one who  doesn't allow himself at least once in his life to run away from rational advice

Fears will always be there with us, but I feel that one has to live the present that one really feels like living, because at the end of the day, it is the only real thing we got. The rest builds itself on the way, and no matter how many illusions of security they will try to sell to us in order to scare us, or even worse, to make us slaves of a system that imposes how much time one has to rest every year, how much time one has to study, how much time one has to work, the ultimate reality is that today, the present time, is the only thing that exists and I believe that it is better to live for what one feels like it is right to do makes one happy. Like a wise friend of mine once told me "we have live with the belief in the things that we believe" . I trust deeply that this is the only way we'll reach to a safe end.

But this journey that I start today, intends to be more than just a trip. It has an end and a goal. What mainly drives it is the need to continue documenting life in remote regions of the world, which is what I've already been doing for the last few years, specifically on my journeys along the Tibetan plateau and Xinjiang. This work will continue for the years to come.

 And because of this, is that once again I leave the illusion of security and the comforts of a stable life (and the ghosts of fear that also come with it) to devote myself to keep discovering this world in two wheels with my camera hanging on my side. I carry my house with me, a few belongings and the roads of the world will decide the rest. I will start here in Chengdu and I will cycle the first 2200km across rural China to reach the coast from where I will fly to the Philippines to later continue to Indonesia. I'll figure out the rest on the way but some of the places included on the journey are Japan, Korea, Mongolia, Siberia and slowly get to the middle East from where I'll cross into Africa to cycle it from north to south and viceversa following both the east and west coasts.

To end this first post I will tell you the most important thing and it is that during this first Chinese part of the trip and on my way to meet my travel, road, life and madness companion, Julia. 
I hope to meet her in about 2000km by the end of this year and from there continue together. Now we are lonely travelers, in plural.

Stay tuned! Adventure starts soon!