April 2017
And we’re off!
What happened…
Amanda writes: As you may recall our bicycles and most of our worldly possessions are in Peru. We intentionally left everything there because I had the feeling that if we brought everything with us, we wouldn’t go back. I’m eager to complete South America as there are so many beautiful places to see. And as I review our travels it’s really good we left them there because right at this point I have a hankering to explore Canada. We’ll have to shelve that for a few years from now. So back to our plans. We left Peru to wait out the rainy season and boy oh boy; good thing we did. For anyone who hasn’t seen it on the news, Peru has been hit hard by some of the worst rains and floods in decades and hundreds of people have died. Our last few days in Peru were spent in a beach side city called Trujillo. This city made international news with the picture below of a woman floating on flood debris. I can’t imagine being there now. We have also seen pictures from other cyclists who have been trying to escape the flooding and know we made the right decision. I know Andrew hasn’t had the best time, but some of that I believe he needs to take ownership for because you need to make the best of every situation in life.
This picture made headlines around the world. We stayed in this town in November 2016.
Other touring cyclists Linda & Mike tackling the flooding while we wait it out.
Anyways, to pick up from our last post. First off thanks for all the awesome comments and feedback about blogging. It’s so great to know some of you enjoy it. And now for the next leg of our around the world journey … (drum roll). Toronto. Yup that’s the big news; we’ve flown to the centre of Canada. Well actually it’s not the centre of Canada but most people in Toronto think it’s the centre of Canada. In their defence as a Vancouverite I think Vancouver is the centre of Canada and I probably thought the same when I lived in Calgary. I digress; so here we are going to Toronto. Why you ask? Aren’t your bikes in Peru? Well yes they are.
Initially we started mapping out routes via Toronto because we had an opportunity to sail in the Bahamas with our friend Glenn for about a month. It turns out its not too much more to fly to Lima via Toronto. So while the Bahamas didn’t work out we learned that we could come through Toronto without too much extra cost. Knowing the minimal extra costs combined with the continued rains and washed out roads in Peru we decided to come and visit some of Andrew’s family in the Greater Toronto area. I think Andrew saw how much fun I had with my family in BC and he too took pleasure in seeing some of his family in BC. So we had time to kill and he said he wanted to go and see more of his family in Ontario. So we’re slowly enroute back to our bikes and I am getting so excited! So I’ll leave you with some pictures of what we have to look forward to from other cyclists currently and recently in South America.
Laguna de Paron – Caraz (Peru) by Linda Stuart.
Some of the roads we will tackle when we get back to Peru!
El Chaltén Argentina courtesy of Kyouhei Nagano.
Salar De Uyuni – Bolivia courtesy of Dave and James of Southward Bound.