When I arrived in Chile I decided to move away from the cold and high roads of the Andes and pedal along the desert fort a while. Once in San Pedro de Atacama, I started following the Pan-American highway towards the city of Calama, once the capital of the saltpetre mines and now the capital of the copper ones. After stocking up […]
After my frustrated attempt of climbing Mount Huayna Potosí (near La Paz), the South-West of Bolivia offered me the last opportunity to crown my first six thousand meter high peak. The Uturuncu volcano, measuring 6,008 meters high, was only a few kilometres away from my path. It is said to be one of the easiest six […]
Next to our incursion into Los Yungas region we returned to the Altiplano. In the town of Oruro we stopped two days to plan (with the help of a very useful PDF and the website Andes by Bike) the section of Bolivia that made me more excited: the Salar de Uyuni and the department of Potosí. After Santiago de Huari we arrived […]
From La Paz we set off for Carretera de los Yungas, sadly known as the Carretera de la Muerte (Death Road) due to the large number of accidents that occurred until 2007, when an alternative route was finally opened. El clima de la regió varia molt entre un extrem i l’altre, però en ambdós cantons de la ruta és […]
After spending New Year’s Eve in Ayacucho as planned, we decided to start 2017 with an improvisation: instead of continuing following the Andes, we would make a detour to the jungly region og VRAEM, a part of the country that still suffers from the consequences of the armed conflict between the Peruvian state and the Shining Path. Malgrat les […]
From Huaraz to Ayacucho I followed a part of the so-called Peru’s Great Divide that I found in Andes by Bike. Compared to the dimension of Peru it was not a very long stretch (a little more than 1,000 kilometres), but the the rainy season, the mud, the thin air and the accumulated efforts made me sweat for five whole weeks… […]
El Cañón del Pato is a 150 kilometres long gorge that divides the Cordillera Blanca and the Cordillera Negra in two different ranges. The small road that goes from the coast up to the Andes is a very twisty one that climbs and hinges amongst the rocks until it becomes clustered by two huge walls that are separated by only twelve meters… […]
The first weeks pedalling through the north of Peru were quite relaxed. Between Tumbes and Trujillo we rode 900 kilometres passing through several fishing villages and where always stopped to have a ceviche in the market or eat a cheap and abundant meal in a comedor. The stages of those days were basically flat and most of the stretches very well paved. The […]
Ecuador is a small country but it has three completely different climatic zones: coast, high mountains and jungle. I wish I would have get lost cycling through the country for much longer, enjoying its nature and learning about its vast pre-Columbian culture, but I had to cycle to the border with Peru quite fast because a friend of mine […]
In Ibagué I said goodbye to Bernardo and Dean and Dang who went straight to Neiva while I decided to make a detour to Bogotá and visit a Virgin that looked quite familiar to me… From Colombia’s capital I cycled South towards Huila department through very calm and silent roads… Technically, […]
Bicicleta i Manta was born during Raimon Escapa's first long bicycle trip, a journey from Catalonia to Togo. After a couple of years back home, the site finally became what it was meant from the beginning: a travel log from a tour around the world.
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