They say you have to take the bull by the horns. Along with half a dozen Mesquitos, a couple of chickens and my trusted cyclocross I am squeezed into a pipante, the one and only mean of transport to navigate the backwaters of the Mosquitia. Set to finally reach Krausirpe, the starting point of my expedition, my mind just circles around two words „Ciudad Blanca“.
As I keep imagening myself fending off anacondas and escaping from gigantic crocodiles, water starts splashing onto my feet and it suddenly comes to me that my pipante is nothing but a tiny bunk bed in a crowded dormitory… I am in Downtown Vancouver and the water dripping from the rooftop has pretty much soaked half of my mattress.
Cautiously I crawl past the backpacks scattered all over the floor to take a quick look out of the window. Did Rio Patuca really turn into a metropolis within an instant or am I just having lucid flashbacks from what seems to be my new reality. An adventurer on the move.
When you are constantly on the road, in search of campsites, a safe place to stay, you sometimes just drag yourself along. But in that moment when the first sunrays started to hit Lion’s Gate Bridge I knew it had happened. I did something unthinkable. But could I really process it all?
It was another day on undulating terrain while cars on the Sea to the Sky Highway passed me at horendous speeds. There were cyclists all over the place and my legs felt so tired, as if I was swimming in the backwaters of the Mosquitia all night. I was cooked. But it was mental fatigue too that started to creep in. I knew I had survived the storm but still there is so much work ahead in the aftermath …
