Cycling The Globe

Distance: 84.15 km
Ride time: 5:45:38
Average: 14.60 km/h
Max speed: 46.33 km/h
Total: 29089 km

I was on my bike early, eager to cycle the final kilometers down through the lower Andes Mountains and arrive at the Pacific coast. It is amazingly more than 5 months since I have last seen the ocean!

For a guy who was born at sea level in Denmark, it made me feel very good to smell salt water again. I love the mountains because they are very exotic to me, but the ocean is where I feel at home.

I cycled into the town of Camaná for an early lunch. The town was bigger than I had expected with a central square, market, and many restaurants. I don’t like to eat fish when I’m far away from the ocean (the lakes and streams I pass are often very polluted) but today I celebrated being reunited with the ocean my having fried fish for lunch.

Then it was time to cycle into the unknown again. The next town my map mentions is some 230 km further up the coast. I’m not sure if I will see much civilization in between.

I did indeed find myself in the middle of a desert as I began my way north on the coastal highway. The place very much reminded me of Jordan, Egypt, or somewhere in the Sahara… I had to remind myself that I was indeed still in South America.

The sun made some rather spectacular colors in the sand as it was setting out there in the Pacific Ocean.

I was aiming for my usual 100 km today, but the day ended with a steep climb away from the coast and into the mountains again. I was quickly running out of both daylight and leg power, so when I found a small plateau overlooking a valley far below, I decided to call it a day and put up my tent once again.