Quito

A tale of triumph over adversity, the adversity mostly being provided by me.  I'm now in Quito with a whole (working) bicycle and ready to hit the road, sort of.  Managed to lose my bank card on my last evening in New York so now have $200 to my name until that gets sorted.  Bike went together fine at the airport under the expectant gaze of various taxi drivers, cleaners and society at large whom, my limited spanish seemed to suggest, thought I was mad.  I was immediately upstaged by the massive tandem/trailer rig that was being built alongside (they also had all the right tools and stuff, and didn't pinch flat their inner...)  I cycled into town with the owners of said tandem, who set off from Alaska in June, they have an infinitely superior blog here.

Anyway, I'm off for some long overdue sleep and hot food, I'll write something more when I've actually done something, also it is very nice of you all to 'follow' me, makes me feel a little less like I'm talking to myself, I appreciate it.

Few pics of a rainy Quito up now.

New York

Auspiciously I'm trying to write this first post with a resounding hangover, about half an hours brainstorming between Alex and I resulted in no good titles (just lots of innuendo), so I instead have a terrible title that will only make sense to about 3 people and is entirely indebted to Andrew Pilkington.


Luckily Alex has decided to set up a parody blog, so you can go and read all the details there.


Anyway, on a more focused note, I'm actually off to South America on Monday, landing in Quito and hopefully going to spend a few days at a cloud forest reserve before I actually do any cycling, then heading south, through the 'avenue of volcanoes' then down to the Amazon rim, then back up to Cuenca, before heading into Peru, though I'm sure you'll have heard something else from me by then.


Here's some photos from New York: