Caption, ¨Blotchy bearded bike repairman.¨I should take a moment and add some boring updates on the biking trip (I would skip this post if I were you since I am feeling quite uninspired at the moment). After I left Montañita I biked down the coast some 50 km to a forlorn pueblo on the ocean called Ballenita. Nothing is nice about this town except for the tranquility it offers. I read 100 Years of Solitude, swam and watched fishermen pull in a catch with a net load of about a ton of fish right on the beach. That was incredible.
Caption, ¨Ballenita, this place had all the charm of the inside of a prosthetic leg.¨
I decided it would be a good idea to have some seafood since it would be my last time on the beach for a while and my friend from Guayaquil kept telling me how I have to try the ceviche of Ecuador. I have steered away from uncooked seafood since my Thailand near death experience about 5 years ago. At that time I was motorbiking through Vietnam, Laos and Thailand with a friend from home. We decided on a nice restaurant to celebrate a hard long hot day of motor biking in the north of Thailand. Long story short I ended up losing 10 pounds (4 kilos) in 3 hours when I was converted into a human sprinkler system from some rancid fish. I was so dehydrated my tongue was swollen in my throat and my kidneys were sore to the touch. Luckily I was hooked up to an IV bag or three and was saved from further suffering. A traveler friend told me that after an incident like that your body can go into anaphylactic shock and die if I get the same food poisoning from fish again. So this was going through my mind when I finally found the only restaurant in this desolate pueblo with ceviche, or any food at all for that matter. I decided to risk it.
Caption,¨Foreshadowing 101. I took this photo just an hour before eating the ceviche.¨
Again, I turned into a human sprinkler system but on a much smaller scale. The funny thing is I knew this dirty dish was going to get me sick. I could feel it. I spent the entire night vomiting up rancid fish, clams, and shrimp with a hint of lime. On the plus side I think the pissing out my butt flushed out the lingering parasites that have been dancing and squeezing my intestines for the past month here in Ecuador. My stomach finally feels better, but I still have some lingering issues, but no pain. For me this was the perfect excuse to skip riding and start taking the bus from the coast all the way to Guayaquil, Cuenca and then down to Buenos Aires. I was feeling weak from lack of sleep, dehydration and wiping your bum about 90x in 48 hours is not a good mix with 8 hours a day on a bicycle seat.
Caption, ¨This is what it felt like inside my intestines.¨
It has been decided. Due to ¨The Ceviche Incident¨ and lack of time to arrive in Buenos Aires to meet friends down there for Christmas and New Years I am hanging up the bike until arriving in Tierra del Fuego in the south of South America somewhere in Patagonia. It´s only 120 hours non-stop on the bus from Cuenca, Ecuador to Buenos Aire, and from there another 50 hours on the bus to Ushuaia. Sound like fun? Oh, it should be.
When I finally do arrive in Argentina it will be in the middle of their summer. If I wanted to be a stubborn purist and continue down from Ecuador by the time I biked through Peru, Bolivia and Chile it would already be getting cold in the south. I prefer being a fair weather biker. From the northern coast of Colombia where I started until the southern beaches of Ecuador I have accumulated a respectable, although not fast but enjoyable, 3,000 km. Now I will be heading north from the most southern tip. In all honesty I wanted to avoid being the ´dude´ that bikes all of South America and makes a mission out of it. I prefer to just travel with a direction in mind, but I have had a dying urge to see Tierra del Fuego since I was in South America three years ago, so that is how it works out. I don´t care if I make it back to the exact spot I hopped on the bus in Ecuador. I might not even make it to Peru. I might get stuck in Buenos Aires for all I know. I am open to anything that can and will happen. My plans don´t exist and is one of the reasons why I am doing this insane bus trip and why I only ever buy one way plane tickets- cause you never know. I think it was best put by a Belgium traveler I met three years ago when he told me, ¨Expections, they don´t exist.¨
Now I am in Cuenca enjoying this cozy colonial city tucked in the mountains and the hungry eyes of the local ladies I pass on the street. Not shy, they are. I get to chastise myself for being an idiot while breathing the thin clean mountain air because some where in Montañita my flash stick fell out of my pocket with three months of photos. I know, I am an idiot and deserve it. My only photos that exist are on this blog. The shame is I wanted to make a montage of all the scenery while biking alone through Colombia and Ecuador. This is cheesy but one of the reasons for me traveling is a scene in Forrest Gump. Forrest is sitting at the foot of the bed of a dying Jenny in his old house after having run across the States from coast to coast an endless number of times and he tells her all of the amazing sunsets and sunrises he saw, of the beauty and memories of when he was alone. I wanted those photos but I´ll have to just remember them. Amazingly enough I remember places and people I have met from years ago at the strangest times triggered by a scent or a sound or an angle of a tree branch. Pictures come and go and my heart swells, an impossible smile to wipe off my face and somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind there is a voice saying that these exquisite good times will end with the weight of responsibility sitting on top my head. I warned you it was going to be cheesy.
Caption, ¨If there was time I would have stopped here to get tested. I had every one of the syptoms on the list. No joke.¨
Tomorrow AM I leave for 120 hours of non-stop busing fun (I really do not enjoy buses and find them impossible to sleep on). Only thing to do is pick up the camera and start again.
Caption, ¨Ballenita, this place had all the charm of the inside of a prosthetic leg.¨I decided it would be a good idea to have some seafood since it would be my last time on the beach for a while and my friend from Guayaquil kept telling me how I have to try the ceviche of Ecuador. I have steered away from uncooked seafood since my Thailand near death experience about 5 years ago. At that time I was motorbiking through Vietnam, Laos and Thailand with a friend from home. We decided on a nice restaurant to celebrate a hard long hot day of motor biking in the north of Thailand. Long story short I ended up losing 10 pounds (4 kilos) in 3 hours when I was converted into a human sprinkler system from some rancid fish. I was so dehydrated my tongue was swollen in my throat and my kidneys were sore to the touch. Luckily I was hooked up to an IV bag or three and was saved from further suffering. A traveler friend told me that after an incident like that your body can go into anaphylactic shock and die if I get the same food poisoning from fish again. So this was going through my mind when I finally found the only restaurant in this desolate pueblo with ceviche, or any food at all for that matter. I decided to risk it.
Caption,¨Foreshadowing 101. I took this photo just an hour before eating the ceviche.¨Again, I turned into a human sprinkler system but on a much smaller scale. The funny thing is I knew this dirty dish was going to get me sick. I could feel it. I spent the entire night vomiting up rancid fish, clams, and shrimp with a hint of lime. On the plus side I think the pissing out my butt flushed out the lingering parasites that have been dancing and squeezing my intestines for the past month here in Ecuador. My stomach finally feels better, but I still have some lingering issues, but no pain. For me this was the perfect excuse to skip riding and start taking the bus from the coast all the way to Guayaquil, Cuenca and then down to Buenos Aires. I was feeling weak from lack of sleep, dehydration and wiping your bum about 90x in 48 hours is not a good mix with 8 hours a day on a bicycle seat.
Caption, ¨This is what it felt like inside my intestines.¨It has been decided. Due to ¨The Ceviche Incident¨ and lack of time to arrive in Buenos Aires to meet friends down there for Christmas and New Years I am hanging up the bike until arriving in Tierra del Fuego in the south of South America somewhere in Patagonia. It´s only 120 hours non-stop on the bus from Cuenca, Ecuador to Buenos Aire, and from there another 50 hours on the bus to Ushuaia. Sound like fun? Oh, it should be.
When I finally do arrive in Argentina it will be in the middle of their summer. If I wanted to be a stubborn purist and continue down from Ecuador by the time I biked through Peru, Bolivia and Chile it would already be getting cold in the south. I prefer being a fair weather biker. From the northern coast of Colombia where I started until the southern beaches of Ecuador I have accumulated a respectable, although not fast but enjoyable, 3,000 km. Now I will be heading north from the most southern tip. In all honesty I wanted to avoid being the ´dude´ that bikes all of South America and makes a mission out of it. I prefer to just travel with a direction in mind, but I have had a dying urge to see Tierra del Fuego since I was in South America three years ago, so that is how it works out. I don´t care if I make it back to the exact spot I hopped on the bus in Ecuador. I might not even make it to Peru. I might get stuck in Buenos Aires for all I know. I am open to anything that can and will happen. My plans don´t exist and is one of the reasons why I am doing this insane bus trip and why I only ever buy one way plane tickets- cause you never know. I think it was best put by a Belgium traveler I met three years ago when he told me, ¨Expections, they don´t exist.¨
Now I am in Cuenca enjoying this cozy colonial city tucked in the mountains and the hungry eyes of the local ladies I pass on the street. Not shy, they are. I get to chastise myself for being an idiot while breathing the thin clean mountain air because some where in Montañita my flash stick fell out of my pocket with three months of photos. I know, I am an idiot and deserve it. My only photos that exist are on this blog. The shame is I wanted to make a montage of all the scenery while biking alone through Colombia and Ecuador. This is cheesy but one of the reasons for me traveling is a scene in Forrest Gump. Forrest is sitting at the foot of the bed of a dying Jenny in his old house after having run across the States from coast to coast an endless number of times and he tells her all of the amazing sunsets and sunrises he saw, of the beauty and memories of when he was alone. I wanted those photos but I´ll have to just remember them. Amazingly enough I remember places and people I have met from years ago at the strangest times triggered by a scent or a sound or an angle of a tree branch. Pictures come and go and my heart swells, an impossible smile to wipe off my face and somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind there is a voice saying that these exquisite good times will end with the weight of responsibility sitting on top my head. I warned you it was going to be cheesy.
Caption, ¨If there was time I would have stopped here to get tested. I had every one of the syptoms on the list. No joke.¨Tomorrow AM I leave for 120 hours of non-stop busing fun (I really do not enjoy buses and find them impossible to sleep on). Only thing to do is pick up the camera and start again.
