Riding the Americas

by Alastair Humphreys

  Published in 2014

  by Eye Books Ltd

  29 Barrow Street

  Much Wenlock

  Shropshire

  TF13 6EN

  www.eye-books.com

  ISBN: 978-1-903070-87-1

  Copyright © Alastair Humphreys, 2014

  Illustrations copyright © Tom Morgan-Jones, 2014

  Journal typeface based on Grace McCarthy-Steed’s handwriting

  The moral right of the author has been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Printed by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY

  For Ben and Jack

  Contents

  Tom’s Route Round the World

  Banana Crisis on the High Seas

  Patagonia: Land of Big-Footed Giants

  Adventures in the Andes

  Bolivia: A High, Cold World of Wonders

  The Witches of La Paz

  The Marvels and Mysteries of Peru

  Lunchtime in Ecuador

  Cycling Through Colombia

  Canals and Crocodiles

  Volcanoes, Jungle and Desert Mirages

  Hollywood and Giant Redwoods

  The Sea-To-Sky Highway

  The Tom-Tiki

  Alaska: The Final Road To The Midnight Sun

  The Boy Who Biked the World: Part 3

  Your Journal

  About Eye Books

  About the Author

  Tom’s Route Round the World

  Banana Crisis on the High Seas

  Tom was sweating. He was nervous. Really nervous. He jiggled up and down, fidgeting from one foot to the other. If you were looking at Tom, you might have thought that he was desperate for the toilet. But this was even more serious than that! Tom was in a hurry, perhaps the biggest hurry he had ever been in. And nobody seemed to care. It appeared – as he bobbed up and down looking at his watch every single second – that everybody was moving in slow motion.

  A man strolled about, looking as though he had not a care in the world. A lady was standing still and shaking her shoulders to the beat of the music in her headphones. Standing still! How could anyone have the time to just stand and stare in one place?! Oh dear, oh dear, thought poor Tom. I really am in trouble now. I really am late ...

  In front of him was the cause of Tom’s problems. A little old lady. To anyone else, she appeared to be a nice, kind, slightly slow old lady. A little bit like your own Grandma, perhaps. Tom was behind her in the queue and she was taking an age to pay for her shopping.

  “Come on!” screamed Tom inside his head. “Hurry up! Please!”

  He was too polite to actually shout this out loud, though he very much wanted to. He was trying everything he could think of, all his superhero powers of firing laser beams from his eyes or shrinking her to the size of an ant, or making her explode. But nothing he did seemed to work. Because Tom did not have any super powers. He was just a normal boy. The little old lady was in absolutely no hurry. Tom’s journey round the world was about to come crashing to a halt. He couldn’t decide whether to scream or to cry. So instead he just jiggled a bit more, sweated a bit more, and looked at his watch again and again.

  He was going to miss the boat.

  “Don’t miss the boat, young Tom!” were the last words Captain Horrocks had said. “We can’t wait: we leave at high tide.”

  Captain Horrocks was about to sail across the Atlantic Ocean on his small yacht, Damsel. He had kindly invited Tom to join his crew on the adventurous crossing from Africa to South America.

  Tom had set off from his home to try to ride his bike all the way round the world. He had already pedalled from England to South Africa. Now he needed to get across the ocean so that he could cycle up the Americas. Tom didn’t want to travel by aeroplane – there is no adventure on an aeroplane, only soggy food and annoyingly small TV screens. So Captain Horrocks’ invitation to sail to South America was an exciting opportunity. The chance might not come again.

  Captain Horrocks and his crew had been hard at work to get the boat ready. Everything needs to be in good condition before you set out to cross an ocean. They repaired everything that was broken, checked the sails, checked them a second time, tested the water-maker that turns seawater into drinking water, and stocked the boat with piles of food. Everything was ready. Everything, that is, until Captain Horrocks remembered that they had forgotten to buy bananas.

  “Batter my barnacles!” shouted the captain, who enjoyed a colourful selection of seaworthy swear words. “We can’t head out to sea without bananas!”

  “Grease my jellyfish!” he continued. His face was red with anger behind his bushy white beard. “Which fool was in charge of shopping?”

  “Errr … you were in charge of shopping,” replied Sailor Sam but quietly, for he was scared of the captain’s anger.

  This took Captain Horrocks by surprise. It was his fault that there were no bananas on board. Suddenly he looked embarrassed rather than cross. The captain waved his arms around a bit more and looked at his crew, hoping to catch someone’s eye and think of a reason to shout at them. But all the sailors were looking at the floor, or looking at their fingernails as though fingernails were suddenly very interesting indeed. They knew, through years of sailing the high seas with Captain Horrocks, that they should never catch his eye when he was cross.

  As Captain Horrocks couldn’t find anybody to shout at instead he said quietly and politely,

  “Young Tom, would you be so kind as to run along and buy bananas, please? We need a lot.”

  Tom was delighted! He had been worried about the lack of bananas – they were his favourite adventure food.

  “Of course! I love bananas.”

  “Excellent. But make sure you’re quick. We set sail in an hour. We won’t be able to wait for you if you’re late.”

  And that is how Tom ended up fretting and fidgeting in the checkout queue at the supermarket. He had filled a trolley (one of those really big ones) with nothing but bananas. He piled them as high as he could, a huge teetering, tottering pile of lovely yellow fruit. Tom was standing in the queue waiting to pay whilst the little granny rummaged ever so slowly through her purse looking for her money.

  At long, long last the invisible daggers and laser beams that Tom had been firing from his eyes seemed to do the trick. The old lady found the coin she had been searching for, paid for her little basket of shopping and left. Tom emptied his pockets of all the South African money he had, paid in seconds, and sprinted back to the boat. It’s hard to sprint when you’re carrying hundreds of bananas, but that day Tom managed it.

  He arrived just as Sailor Sam was loosening the ropes that tied the boat to the shore.

  “I didn’t think you were going to make it!” Sam laughed.

  Tom was too out of breath to speak. His chest heaved and he was panting like a dog. Passing the bananas onto the boat, he jumped aboard. The boat edged away from the harbour wall, and Tom smiled. They were off! He had made it – in the nick of time – and they were on their way. The adventure had begun!

  Tom had never sailed across an ocean before, so he had a lot to learn. But ther
e was plenty of time: about 4000 miles of sea lay ahead of them. So on this first day he got busy with one of the most helpful things you can do on a busy sailing boat: not getting in anybody’s way!

  People were hauling ropes, heaving armfuls of heavy flapping sails into position and shouting a lot. The bananas were tied in big bunches out of the way at the back of the boat. They were next to Tom’s trusty bike and gear. Tom’s panniers (the bags that attach to his bicycle) held everything that he would need for his trip around the world. Battered and dusty, they had come a long way since he left England. Tom sat on the edge of the boat – known as the gunwale (rhymes with “tunnel” and has nothing to do with either guns or whales) – dangling his legs over the whooshing blue waves.

  Tom looked back at the city they were leaving behind. He could see cars driving along the roads and people sitting in the cafés that lined the seashore. Cape Town was the most beautiful city he had seen so far on his journey round the world. He saw a girl eating an ice cream and waving at the boats. Tom waved back at her.

  “I wish I had an ice cream,” he thought. It was hot under the big African sun. “I really, really wish I had an ice cream.”

  What Tom did not know was that the girl was thinking to herself at that very same moment, “I really, really wish I was out there on that sailing boat.”

  Above the cafés on the shore was a cluster of tall skyscrapers, their windows glinting in the sunshine. And behind the skyscrapers soared the impressive sight of Table Mountain. If you see a picture of Table Mountain, you can easily recognise it, as it has a flat top like a table. Sailors can see Table Mountain almost 100 miles out at sea. It is one of the oldest mountains in the world, more than 600 million years old.

  There is an animal that is very common on the mountain called a dassie. It looks a bit like a guinea pig. But its closest relative is actually an elephant!

  The waves’ spray soaked Tom and he licked the salty taste of the sea from his lips. The yacht was leaning over on its side now, “heeling”, as the wind pushed against the sails. But what was this? He became aware of a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach. A sort of squelchy, gurgling-type feeling. Yes, something very odd was happening down there in his tummy. Something not very nice at all.

  “I think,” Tom muttered to himself, “I think … I think I am going to be …

  BLEEARGGGGHH!”

  Without any warning, Tom was sick. He leaned forward and heaved as his lunch – chewed up and disgusting-looking – came spewing out of his mouth and into the sea. Seasickness is caused by the movement of a boat rocking up and down. Some people get the same sick feeling in cars. Tom felt horrible.

  Captain Horrocks was steering the boat, heaving the massive steering wheel from side to side to keep the boat straight amongst the bouncing waves.

  “Are you OK, young Tom?” he shouted into the wind.

  “Ugh …” was all the boy could reply.

  “Well, flip my flying fish! You’re seasick, aren’t you?”

  “Ugh …”

  “Your face is as green as a Brussels sprout!”

  “Ugh …”

  Tom could not be certain, but he thought that Captain Horrocks might be trying to hide a smile …

  And at that very moment –

  BLEEARGGGGHH!

  Tom was sick again. He couldn’t believe how much disgusting stuff was coming out of his stomach. And there was no hiding it now – the skipper was laughing very loudly indeed!

  “Ho! Ho! Ho!” laughed Captain Horrocks who, with his big tummy and bushy white beard, did look a bit like an ocean-going Father Christmas. “It’s very mean of me to laugh at you when you’re being sick, young Tom. I’m sorry. Boil my bosun, I know how horrible it can feel.”

  “Ugh …”

  “I’m only laughing because I remember the first time I set out to sea. I was sick as a dog and green as a cabbage. But by the morning you’ll be fit as a kipper, I promise you.”

  “Ugh …” replied Tom. And he crawled down below deck to his bunk bed.

  But it was true.

  As the sun rose the next morning, Tom was relieved to notice that his stomach, like the ocean, was calmer.

  “Fry my flippers!” shouted Captain Horrocks, with a twinkle in his eye. “You be looking much happier today!”

  Their boat was out of sight of land now. All around was nothing but enormous, empty ocean.

  “I feel much better, thank you,” answered Tom. “Being seasick is terrible. But now I am very, very hungry …”

  Captain Horrocks laughed.

  “We’ll have ourselves a feast of a breakfast, my boy,” he said. “And then we’ll set about turning you into a proper sailor. How does that sound?”

  “Fantastic!” cried Tom, with a big smile.

  Patagonia: Land of Big-Footed Giants

  Alaska: 17,848 km.” Tom looked up at the signpost and sighed. Alaska was his final destination. And 17,848 kilometres sounded a very long way to cycle. It was a very long way – more than 11,000 miles, more than a third of the way around the globe.

  It had been a thrilling moment when, after weeks at sea, Sailor Sam shouted, “Land ahoy!”

  Everyone on the boat had turned to look; the first sighting of land is always exciting for sailors. Hills! Trees! Other people! They had made it safely across the Atlantic Ocean. Tom had waved goodbye to the crew and grizzled old Captain Horrocks, then climbed onto his trusty bicycle. It was time to ride! But when you spend weeks at sea, your legs get a bit wobbly. It takes a while before you can walk normally on dry land again. It’s even harder to cycle. So Tom weaved and wobbled as he pedalled away from his friends on the boat.

  Now, looking up at the signpost, the thrill of being on land was fading. There was just so much land! Tom’s plan was to ride from the bottom of South America all the way up to North America and eventually to Alaska, further than he had ever cycled before. His legs felt tired just thinking about it. Surely a normal boy couldn’t cycle that far? Tom wasn’t a superhero. He wasn’t really strong. He was just a boy.

  The signpost was on Tierra del Fuego in Patagonia – Spanish for “Land of Fire”. It got the name because the first European explorer to arrive here saw from his ship the campfires of the Yaghan people who lived here. The explorer’s name was Ferdinand Magellan. He believed that the native people who could survive in this wild land at the very bottom of the world must be giants, at least twice as big as normal humans. The name “Patagonia” means “Big Foot”: this was, Magellan imagined nervously, a land of giants with huge feet.

  Patagonia ... The Land of Big-Footed Giants ... The Land of Fire … This was going to be some adventure! Like Magellan, Tom felt nervous himself.

  Patagonia is the land right at the bottom of South America. It spans two countries, Argentina and Chile. But the borders between countries were invented long after mountain ranges and mountain tracks appeared. So, for the next few thousand miles of his 17,848 km journey, Tom would be zig-zagging in and out of both Argentina and Chile.

  He sat by the sea and ate a banana sandwich, thinking about the distance that lay ahead. Booming waves burst upon the pebble beach. The strong wind tugged at his clothes and messed up his already messy hair. An albatross – the bird known as the king of the oceans because of its three-metre wingspan – circled effortlessly overhead, gliding through the wild wind. Tom gazed out to sea. The cold grey-green water seemed to stretch southwards forever. There were no cities or trees or flowers across that ocean. Across the ocean lay only Antarctica and the South Pole. Tom could see why this tip of South America was described as the End of the World – El Fin del Mundo.

  He looked up at the albatross. Albatrosses can fly the whole way round the world. The fastest one took just 46 days to do it: much, much less time than it was going to take Tom on his bicycle. Tom called up to the albatross.

  “Good mornin
g, Mr Albatross, Mr Albert Ross. Please can I call you Albert?”

  He felt a bit silly talking to a bird, but there wasn’t another person for miles and miles and miles. So he kept talking.

  “Albert,” Tom continued, “I’m on a journey round the world, just like you. I’m going to be the boy who biked the world. I need to cycle to Alaska and I’m really nervous. It’s so far. I don’t think I can do it.”

  Albert swooped down a little closer.

  “I’ll be OK, won’t I?”

  Tom probably imagined it, but he was sure that the great bird winked at him and waggled his wings as if to say, “You’ll be fine, young man. Just get started – that is always the hardest part. Begin. Go! Go now, and find yourself a fabulous adventure!”

  Tom knew that if he imagined having to ride 11,000 miles then he would probably be too scared to do it. Instead, he had to think only about riding the very first mile. Tom knew that he could ride for one mile. That was easy and definitely not scary. And once he had ridden that mile? Well, then he would ride a second mile, and then a third mile and then a fourth mile. And on and on he would ride, mile by mile, gradually nibbling away at the 11,000-mile journey. If something feels too hard to do, then just take the very first tiny little step. “One mile? That’s easy,” Tom said to himself. “So don’t be too scared to begin. Just go!”

  He smiled and climbed onto his bike. He fastened his helmet, then pushed down hard on the pedals. Tom was on his way! The next stage of his adventure had begun! He could not have known it that first morning, but ahead were hot deserts and mountains higher than he had ever seen. He would push his bike through deep rivers and muddy forests. He would even visit a country that enjoyed eating guinea pigs. This was going to be the most difficult, the most exciting part so far of Tom’s journey to become the boy who biked the world.

  Just for the fun of it, Tom shouted at the top of his voice, “Alaska! Ready or not, here I come!”

  But his voice sounded tiny in the emptiness and, for a moment, he felt lonely out there all by himself. Tom cheered himself up by telling the only joke he knew about Alaska. It wasn’t very funny – it was one of his Dad’s. But it was better than nothing.