The Amazon pilgrim

On my 29th birthday, I set out on my first ever bicycle expedition. I was a lab rat, working in Boston for a pharmaceutical company and discovered the Transamazonica while reading a National Geographic magazine on my lunch break. A year later I said goodbye to my girlfriend and family and boarded my plane to South America.

The first time I had ever been to Brazil I landed in Belem at the mouth of the Amazon River with a used mountain bike I  bought on eBay six weeks prior. My Portuguese vocabulary consisted of about 50 words, and the weight of the equatorial jungle heat made it difficult to think straight. I was going to cycle the Transamazonica highway alone – over 3,000 miles across the continent joining with the new Trans-Oceanic highway in Peru, to explore the deforestation of the Amazon Basin firsthand.

The TransAm has been cycled to the extent of my trip only four or five times since the route was hacked across Brazil. This was the frontier, which to this day, has very little law enforcement (meaning zero outside of cities) where gold miners still have shootouts in the jungle and pay for rum with gold dust.

Google Maps

My planning consisted mostly of searching for articles on the area and zooming in on Google maps, which meant it was incredibly shoddy. The TransAm seemed to be nothing more than a giant mistake, nearly lawless, all but forgotten by the government that started the project, and now filled with morally reprehensible souls willing to kill for quick profit from the wood and resources found in the jungle.

I had been an avid road cyclist out of college, racing as a category 3, and figured an average of 50 miles a day should be manageable. My lack of experience riding a heavily laden mountain bike on dirt kept me from realising how difficult it would be to cross the Amazon in this way; my naiveté put me in a situation I eventually became accustomed to; riding 8-12 hours a day on washboard gravel or 6-inch dust/sand or mud, over endless hills, in 100+ degree heat. Alone. Day in and day out.

I intentionally planned to cycle during the Amazon’s dry season, since the dirt road is muddy and impassable during the rainy season. On my third day I met an old man who told me the road ahead was like a desert – all sand and horrible for biking – and was cut through Indian territory, as he made a bow and arrow motion with his hands. He was right, for the next 2,000 miles, I battled temperatures over 105F, dust and sand up to my shins, swarming bees, and ever-present ants. Ants truly rule the jungle.

The following 3,200 miles to the Pacific Ocean brought me face-to-face with more trials and thrills than most men see in their entire lives. Deep into the Parque Nacional Da Amazonia I came face-to-face with one of the Amazon´s big cats. I had just finished a 12 hour day on the bike. I was trying to make some good distance through some of the most remote parts of the jungle on the TransAm. My camp was set up and nightfall was less than 30 minutes away as a thunderstorm was just beginning.

Then I heard the punctuated roars. At first I thought it might be howler monkeys that sound like lions at dawn and dusk. I hoped it was just monkeys. I hadmy SAT phone in one hand and a mouldy sandwich in the other. Standing in the road, trying to get a clear signal for the phone. I noticed that about 50 metres ahead of me was a figure. It was a puma, out at dusk, hunting for dinner, and staring straight at me.

By the time I packed up the hammock, threw my sandwich on the ground, and collected my things by the roadside (all the while, looking around me in the bush for the cat) I heard a glorious sound – a truck revving its engine as it climbed a nearby hill.

Safety

I ran in front of the truck, waving and sputtering broken Portuguese, “Onça, Onça! Can´t sleep here tonight. Rode my bike, can´t camp. Can I come with you?”

There were three men in the cab of the fuel tanker truck and they quickly got excited as well. The rain had begun and the road would quickly become impassable, leaving us all stuck right there. I threw my bike and myself on top of the truck and we blasted off down the road. The rain was getting heavier and heavier, the lighting flashing blue in the sky, and the truck started sliding all over the road.

After a few minutes clutching the vent at the top of the fuel container (there was very little securing me atop the tanker truck) I started to think I had jumped from the pot and into the fire. One slide into the ditch on the side of the road and I was going to have a fuel truck on top of me. I have to admit though, it was a thrilling ride.

We went a few miles up the road. The driver was very skilled in the mud. On the uphills I was certain we were finally stuck, just sliding side to side and making no forward progress, but he managed it. On the downhills it was like being on an icy slope. The truck would just slide sideways and I could see steep drop off on either side. The men would get out and jam with wheels with logs and metal bars to keep it on the road.

As darkness fell we reached a thatched hut by a wood plank bridge and river. There were three other trucks there and two light bulbs running off a gas-powered generator. We walked into the structure enclosed by netting to keep the bugs out and the truckers had a good laugh about my situation. That night we all sat at a table and ate piranhas boiled in river water, with rice.

Resu the pig farmer

On another occasion I  spent an evening with a pig farmer, Resu, who literally didn't have a pot to pee in (we dug holes behind his one room shack for our toilet). We ate a dinner of rice and beans that I am guessing had been reheated on the same fire for days. He tended about 40 pigs and lived on the cleared land of a fazenda that he didn't own but depended on to survive. Resu is in his mid-30s, unmarried and uneducated. He left the city to provide for himself on this isolated farm in hopes of saving enough to find a wife and start a family. For food, he sometimes eats his pigs or hunts wild game, including some rare animals, in the jungle about 100 yards back from the road.
 
Eventually I reached the western edge of the Amazon basin in central Peru and began my undulating traverse of the Andes. In two days I would rise from the balmy jungle town of Quinze Mil at 2,300 ft to over 15,500 ft, having to walk my bike like a drunkard in the thin air. For a thousand miles I would descend and climb – sometimes days of climbing – followed by a few hours' descent into a valley,  only to climb back up again the next day.

Through the Sacred Valley and ancient city of Cuzco, through riot-plagued cities and past burned-out buses, eventually to the Atacama desert town of Nasca on the coast of Peru. I ate sheep’s brains with a red-cheeked Andean woman and chugged beers in cold mountain villages with the men.
 
The desert was a wasteland and I was plagued with recurring fevers, sometimes leaving me chilled in bed for 19 hours at a time. I stood at the edge of the continent and took in my first views of the Pacific Ocean where the desert abuts the sea at Paracas National Reserve with dramatic cliffs, sea life, and powerful winds. It was fitting. I was completely alone, walking the bike, with my head down, and going over a hill. When I reached the top I struggled to keep the bike standing in the wind before getting frustrated and dropping it on the ground. To the end I would have to work for every inch across South America. I took a second to breath and walked to the edge of the water. The first thing I thought: about time.

My Birthday

By the time I reached Lima I checked myself into the closest hospital to get tested for Malaria and any variety of parasites. It was almost Christmas, there were lights set up all around the neighbourhood of Miraflores. It felt almost like home compared to the places I had been across South America for so long. I ate at MacDonald’s, got drunk, and gambled a little in the casinos.
 
I gave a few interviews for expat American writers who heard about my story. Some of the questions they asked gave me a good opportunity to think back on the ride. Some things about the people and places I experienced will never make sense or have a greater meaning. That’s something humans have a hard time with in life… a lack of order or reason.
 
When I left Belem it was my 29th birthday. For my gift, my girlfriend made a box of cards with dates on them that I was to open along the way. Inside, they were filled with pictures, cartoons, a guess as to where she thought I would be along the way, and quotes. Every time one of the dates arrived I looked forward to seeing what the cards said and they were a source of inspiration.

My favorite quote, by Robert Cushing, is from the first card, September 24th – my birthday. “The fact is, that to do anything in the world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.”

For more information on Doug and to read his blog and see pictures from his trip, visit:
www.amazonpilgrim.com