Cycling around the globe – part I

My journey started in the 21 countries of Europe, which welcomed me mostly by rain. I was soaking wet almost every day and it was never too hot. I can’t say Europe isn’t interesting, but it is not all that hospitable. I stopped in an unusual place named simply A. It’s a place on the most southern part of the Lofoten islands, known mostly for fish and everything that goes along. I was looking for whales – and found them – as well as Vikings and beautiful breath taking scenery. Still I said – farewell Europe and continued pass Iceland to the top of Americas. My path then took me from Alaska to Cancun in Mexico and onwards to Cuba and the Dominican Republic, where I stopped for the first time and realized, my life was passing me by too quickly. Cuba really is a country, where everything is passing by slowly – even in banks. This is a slow and leisure life, both on Cuba and in Dominican Republic. From here on I started enjoying, not just passing kilometres. This is where my exploration of the world really begun. 

 

I than went on for Puerto Rico and Jamaica, where I even helped to rescue people from a burning bus, got a cold and got over it thanks to a lemon, rum and some pills. I went on to visit all the countries of middle America and then from Venezuela to the most southern point of Argentina (Ushuaia).

 

The place that really stayed with me is Patagonia, which is to the very south of the South American continent and has the most extreme weather – I experienced those too. 

 

I remember strong gushes of wind waking me up and my tent snuffing my face. I was so tired I just kept on sleeping even with the wind of 80 km/h I kept sleeping to wake up into a turbulent morning. I thought it wasn’t down yet, but it was 7.46 already and the strong wind kept coming. I was hurting with fatigue, but opened the tent and started looking around. Dry tumbleweed was all around the straights, with only a few grass, trees and mountains visible.

I didn’t have to dress up, for I fell asleep in my clothes. It took some doing to pack my tent back. Next I got rid of my bodily fluids, most of it gone with the wind. The wind was so strong I barely made a speed of 13 km/h all the way until noon, when I stopped at some road workers who were repairing the macadam road. I filled up with water and got a small snack, so I kept on with the wind finally weakening. But the calm was quickly over and the wind started pressing even stronger. My other enemy was the rocky road. Fighting the wind your wheels dig deep in the soft road and that little something in your head, which kept you ticking through the snow and rain, heat and unknown uphill, just snaps.

 

I sat down in a gutter to get some shelter from the wind, covered my sweaty head with a hood and put my head between my knees. It hit me at that point – why did I go to Patagonia if it wasn’t part of my original plan? To locals warned me about the strong winds blowing from the south all through January and February, but I kept going – why? But as always, I stuck to what I was up to and went on! I was stubborn enough one more time. Strong wind face on all the way to Tierra del Fuego – the land of fire, the meeting point of the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean, where the fire god gave me two days of wind in the back, all the way to the end of the world. My eyes got misty, for I have just completed the longest road on the planet – the Pan American road that took me from the land of Eskimos (Prudhoe bay, Alaska) town to the Magellan’s fiery land of the Yaghan. 42 windy days you never forget.

 

Next stop Oceania (New Zealand, Australia and Tasmania), where I ran into a group of opal miners who came from the former Yugoslav republics. They were very happy to see me, for they were only missing a Slovenian, to have representatives of all six republics. There was a pig roast, čevapčiči and Serbian music for a party till the early morning.

 

I also experienced Tazi (as the inhabitants of the island of the Tasmanian devils call it), where until 1933 also the Tasmanian tiger lived (now found only in pictures and legends about this ferocious beast). It’s the smallest Australian state, far to the south, between the South Ocean and the Tasmanian Sea. It was an isolated country with thousands of English prisoners and biggest criminals. But it’s now a really friendly and eco-friendly country, covered with 19 national parks stretching over one fifth of the island. There are white sand beaches to the east and the world oldest forest to the west, where I found trees millennia old. It was the first time I monkeyed around with the kangaroos and their smaller relatives the wallaby. About a minute after making a few photos I got knocked out by a kick of an old and wise kangaroo. I was lucky enough not to really get hurt. In the night Tasmanian devils re-enacted the next part of Silence of the Lambs for me, ripping apart a kangaroo road kill right outside my tent. They were crushing bones with bites four times stronger than that of a pit-bull. And the sounds they were making reminded me of a human massacre. A peaceful and quiet Tasmania, scarcely populated, is really cycling friendly; unfortunately they just don’t run out of hills. I saw the better part of the island from Davenport on north to the prisons of Port Arthur; and from the beautiful Bruny islands, to the oldest forests of the central mountains; as well as the capital Hobart with the "Salamanca market" open only on Saturdays. After Oceania I made a round trip to East Timor, south east Asia and to China, where I visited the Beijing 2008 Olympics at about half of my journey.

 

The ancient myth of the land of rice and bicycles is busted. Rice is rarely on the menu, rarer than with southern neighbours. And the bicycles are replaced with electric hybrids, so you don’t see Chinese seating it out on the pedals. This highly modern country does not seem isolated and separated from the outside world at all. I kept asking myself, how many years ahead of us are they? They have the largest airport in the world, largest wall, and largest port and lately they are economically among the strongest countries in the world at the cost of human greed. 

 

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