Riding the Americas

by Alastair Humphreys

  Tom was used to being stared at. He looked different to the people in South America. The best way to stop people staring was to begin chatting. People then realised that he was just a normal boy and not some weirdo from another planet. Tom walked towards the family. He smiled and called out, “¡Hola!”

  They smiled back. The girl, who was about the same age as Tom, said, “Hola. ¿Cómo te llamas? Hello. What’s your name?”

  “Me llamo Tom. I’m called Tom.”

  “Me llamo Cava. And this is my brother Apo, and my Mum and Dad – Mamá y Papá. ¡Bienvenidos! Welcome!”

  Tom had been learning Spanish. It’s the language spoken in most countries on the South American continent. He practised whenever he could, and was getting quite good by now, even if he sometimes had to ask people to speak more slowly.

  Cava continued to ask Tom questions. Where are you from? What are you doing here? Why do you have a bicycle? The boy smiled because he had been asked these same questions so often along his journey. Tom explained that he was cycling round the world by bicycle – “Estoy dando la vuelta al mundo en bicicleta”. He was English – “Soy Inglés”. He slept in his tent, ate cheap food, and loved the life of adventure – aventura.

  “Tengo hambre y sed,” Tom said. “I am hungry and thirsty”.

  He asked their Dad whether he could please buy some food – comida – and have some water – agua.

  “Dear Tom,” laughed the Dad. “I don’t even have enough food to feed my family. My wife and I never eat lunch so that our children may have food to eat. But you are our friend. So of course we will share ours with you.”

  “Amigo, my friend,” Apo smiled. “Why don’t you stay in our house tonight? You must be tired after cycling all the way from England. Just help us clear this field and we will be finished for the day. We will have a feast. We will have fun!”

  Tom smiled, said thank you, then bent down to help weed the field. They all chattered away and the afternoon passed quickly. After helping to milk their llama, Tom spent the night in the family’s small home. They ate and laughed and shared stories about their different lives.

  Cava’s family was poor and their house was very small. In fact, there was only one room. They cooked on a small fire made from twigs and dry llama dung. The walls were black from smoke. There were two wooden chairs in the room, but no beds. When it was time to sleep, the whole family and Tom lay on the floor and wrapped themselves in blankets to keep warm.

  The night outside was cold and still, and the moon was bright.

  The next morning Tom filled his water bottles from the tiny stream behind the house and packed his things ready to continue riding. The family were wrapped in their ponchos to keep off the cold. Their breath steamed and ballooned in the freezing dawn air as they waved, calling out,

  “Adiós, Tom! Goodbye! ¡Buen viaje! Have a great trip!”

  “¡Gracias, amigos! ¡Adiós!” waved Tom.

  The family returned to the field to work another hard day. They chatted about Tom. They found it funny that Tom’s family didn’t own a llama, and they couldn’t believe that in his country people bought their food in shops rather than growing it themselves. That day Tom cycled fast, smiling all the way. He was grateful for how kind Cava’s family had been. Cava and Apo also felt happy. It had been nice to be able to help somebody else.

  Tom was on one of the bumpiest, most annoying roads ever. His bike rattled, everything in his bags rattled, even his poor head rattled. You can get an idea of how bumpy this road was. Try this:

  Open your mouth and say “aah”, like when you go to the doctor. Now shake your head as fast as you can from side to side. Your voice goes funny, everything looks blurry, your head starts to hurt and you start to worry it might even fall off! That’s what Tom’s ride felt like every day in Bolivia.

  He was in a wild and empty area now. No plants grew. The ground was flat grey gravel. An icy wind whistled across the land. The track was in really bad condition. For days he had to walk, pushing his bike. The wind blasted his face and his hands and feet were numb with cold. When he set his tent up at night, he had to pile rocks around to stop it from blowing away. In the morning all Tom’s water bottles had frozen solid. He had to keep them inside his sleeping bag to stop them from freezing.

  Bolivia was a hard place to ride through.

  The land on the altiplano is very dry. So Tom was surprised one day when he saw a small lake in the distance. He was even more surprised when he got close: the lake was green, as green as emeralds!

  Rising into the sky behind the lake was a volcano, its summit covered with snow. It was a calm day and the volcano reflected onto the green waters of Laguna Verde below. Then Tom spotted steam rising into the air. Curious, he went to see what it was. He found a geyser. The heat beneath the surface of the Earth – the same heat that leads to volcanoes – heats up underground water. As the temperature and the pressure rise, boiling water spurts up. Here, clouds of steam rose high into the cold air. Pools of hot water bubbled like jacuzzis. It was a weird but beautiful place, like being on another planet.

  After the green lake, Tom found one that was even stranger: a red lake! The red colour came from tiny red algae in the water. Thousands of pink flamingoes stood on one leg in the shallow red water. Flamingoes were one of Tom’s favourite birds. They have really long legs and a long neck shaped like a letter “S”. Their pink colour comes from eating algae in a lake.

  Among this high, cold world of wonders, the highlight was the Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt flat in the world. Millions of years ago it was part of an inland sea. But gradually the water dried up until all that was left was the salt. For 200 miles in every direction there is nothing but dazzling white salt. There are no roads or villages, no trees or animals, not even any insects. Tom pedalled carefully out onto the salt. It felt odd to ride on, crunchy. But the salt was flat and hard and Tom found he could cycle quickly across it. It was much smoother to ride than the bumpy mountain roads he had been on recently.

  It would take three days to ride across the salar, so Tom carried plenty of food and water because there were no shops or taps or even streams out there. He rode all day, then stopped at sunset to camp. After pitching his tent, Tom went for a walk. He walked for a few minutes away from his tent. He spread out his arms and whirled slowly round and round. In every direction, for as far as he could see, was nothing but flat white salt and an enormous blue sky. It felt as empty and remote as the Atlantic Ocean.

  But the ocean is usually noisy and is constantly moving.

  The salt plain was so still and quiet that Tom could hear himself blink. Try that yourself now. Be as still and quiet as you can. What can you hear? The wind? A car on the road? The quiet hum of lightbulbs? Tom could hear nothing at all. It was a magical feeling. He turned to look at his little tent. It seemed so tiny, over there in the middle of the salt plain. He felt very tiny himself, and very alone. Darkness was falling, so Tom ran back to his tent. He felt cosier and more comfortable once he wriggled into his sleeping bag. It might look like a strange house to most people, but for a boy biking the world, this tent and this sleeping bag were all he needed to feel at home. Above the tent, a shooting star raced across the dark night sky.

  Because everything looked identical out on the salt flat, it was easy to get lost. Tom tried an experiment. He closed his eyes and cycled without watching. You can’t normally cycle like this without crashing into something. But here, there was nothing to bang into. So Tom pedalled for 30 minutes without watching where he was going – can you imagine trying that at home?! When he eventually looked up, Tom had veered off course and was riding in totally the wrong direction!

  “Woohoo!” he cheered, straightening his course using his compass. The excitement of trying new things and going to new places never goes away. Tom smiled happily as he rode on towards La Paz.

  The Witches of La Paz


  La Paz is one of the highest cities in the world. It lies in a massive bowl-shaped dip in the earth, surrounded by mountains. As with many cities in poor countries, a huge shanty town has sprouted up on the outskirts. Almost one million people live here, in homes ranging from small cement blocks to shelters with roofs made of plastic sheets. He thought of his own home in England and felt thankful that he did not have to live in a homemade shelter on the edge of a busy road.

  Away from the main roads, the streets in the centre of La Paz were steep and cobbled. Market stalls were squeezed into the narrow streets, adding to the chaos and the noise. Small children had the responsibility of trying to sell the few spare vegetables that their parents had brought to the city from their farms. They needed money to buy the things they could not grow themselves. They crouched on the pavement next to their sacks of carrots, chilies and other vegetables. Some smiled at Tom as he passed; others were too busy trying to make a sale that they didn’t have time to chat.

  The best place to chat to local people is in a café. Whenever Tom was in a town he always ate in cafés. Banana sandwiches are the food for heroes, but whenever possible, he tried to eat a variety of foods, as he knew that to be really fit and strong it was important to eat a good mixture of fresh foods. Tom usually enjoyed trying new foods in different countries, but still shuddered whenever he remembered the blood and milk mixture or the fly burgers in Africa.

  The cafés he ate in throughout South America were simple places, with just a few small tables and plastic chairs. There was always a radio playing loud music, and there was never a menu to choose from. You just ate whatever food had been cooked that day. Often this was a big bowl of chicken soup. When he dug down to the bottom of the bowl with his spoon Tom would find the day’s surprise ingredient – perhaps a few pieces of potato, perhaps some chunks of carrot. But one part of the chicken soup was never a surprise: there was always a chicken’s foot floating on top! Local people thought this was the best bit (“una pata de pollo” in case you ever want to order one yourself ... ). They slurped and said “mmmm” as they happily sucked on the scaly foot. Tom was not so keen. But an easy way to make friends in those cafés was to give your chicken’s foot to another customer to enjoy.

  One of the spookiest places in La Paz was an old witches’ market. Many people in Bolivia still believe in ancient medicines, spells and superstitions to bring them luck or to help them recover from illness. The market was a fascinating but quite creepy place. Tom pushed his bike amongst the stalls, squeezing through the noisy crowds as stall owners shouted out the health benefits of whatever they were trying to sell. There were candles and incense to use at funerals. There were sacks filled with dry herbs, piles of leaves and berries, and a dusty pile of old, dead armadillos. These were the ingredients for magic spells. There were also large heaps of dead baby llamas. These had been dried in the hot sunshine until they were shrivelled and flat. Some people believe that if you are building a new house you should bury a dead llama in the foundations to bring good luck to the new home.

  Tom shivered. When he put up his tent each night, he definitely didn’t want a dead llama nearby, even if it was supposed to bring him luck. It was time to ride. He bought a big bunch of bananas, and pedalled out of La Paz.

  The Marvels and Mysteries of Peru

  On the border between Bolivia and Peru is Lake Titicaca, one of the highest lakes in the world. Shortly after he arrived, Tom met a man called Sergio on the shore of the lake. Sergio was short and skinny with a sun-weathered, wrinkly face like a raisin. His white teeth shone when he smiled.

  Sergio was a boat builder from the Uros people. He built boats for the fishermen who worked on the large lake. Hardly any trees grow in this part of the world because they are too high up, the soil is poor quality, and it gets very cold. So the boat builders of old had to find an alternative to making their boats out of wood. Instead of wood, they used reeds.

  Reeds are tall, thick grasses that grow at the shallow edges of lakes and rivers. Sergio had a sharp, curved knife that he used to chop big armfuls of them. Then he wove and tied bundles of the reeds together and shaped them into boats. On Lake Titicaca, not only do people build boats out of reeds, they also build their villages out of reeds, and these float out in the middle of the lake! Sergio invited Tom to visit his island village, and they paddled out to see it on a little reed boat.

  To build a floating village, you have to lay down a massive base mattress of reeds. It needs to be thick enough to float, even with homes and people on top. All the homes on the floating base are made from reeds, too. It was a beautiful sight – the lake blue and cold beneath the bright mountain sky; the ladies of the village working in big colourful skirts – green, red, blue – with bowler hats shielding their faces from the sun.

  After Tom visited Lake Titicaca, the mountains began again. Up he went, down he went on his bike, day after day after day. Up, down, up, down. Arriba, Abajo, Arriba, Abajo … The road was leading Tom towards one of the most famous and beautiful ancient places in the world.

  Machu Picchu was built as a royal estate by the Incas 600 years ago. It sits high on a steep, narrow mountain ridge. After the site fell into ruin, it lay forgotten for hundreds of years. By the time the explorer Hiram Bingham discovered the ruins in 1911, it was completely covered in jungle. Tom was excited to climb up to see Machu Picchu for himself, but he was also a bit jealous of Hiram Bingham. Can you imagine how exciting it would be to find a forgotten city hidden in the jungle?

  “Wow!” Tom thought, imagining himself hacking through jungle to discover an ancient city.

  The buildings at Machu Picchu are made from enormous chunks of stone that fit together perfectly, even though the builders didn’t have proper stone-cutting tools. They had to carry the heavy stones all the way up the mountain, without even a wheel to help. As the wheel hadn’t been invented yet in South America, they used levers and ropes made from grass. What hard work that would have been! Tom got tired just cycling up to the ancient site. And he had two wheels to help him and no boulders to carry.

  As Tom rode on through Peru, he reached one of the most puzzling sites in the world. Nazca is a dry desert area. About 1500 years ago, the Inca people who lived here made a series of lines, shapes and pictures of animals in the desert. They did it by removing the red pebbles that are the surface of the desert and digging a shallow trench. Underneath is earth that is paler in colour, and so it shows up as a line. Because it almost never rains here, the lines have not been washed away over time.

  The shapes are huge. There are pictures of a hummingbird, a spider and a monkey, each at least as big as a football pitch. What is most peculiar about these patterns in the desert is that you can only see them from the air. It is a real mystery why the Inca people created these patterns when they didn’t have aeroplanes or even hot air balloons to be able to look down and admire them properly. Nobody really understands how or why the Nazca lines were made. It is quite a riddle!

  Lunchtime in Ecuador

  Ecuador is a country that sits right on the equator. The Spanish word for “equator” is “ecuador”. The equator is an imaginary line around the middle of the world, separating the north of the planet from the south. Tom arrived at the equator for the second time on his round-the-world adventure. He had ridden across it before in Africa.

  Countries on the equator do not have different seasons, or times of the year when it gets dark very early or very late. The sun rises at about 6 o’clock in the morning and the sun sets at about 6 o’clock in the evening, every day. The weather is more or less always the same. It’s usually hot.

  The equator is hot because the sun shines directly overhead. (Places that are the farthest from the equator – the North Pole and the South Pole – are very cold.) When you stand on the equator you are exactly the same distance away from the North Pole as from the South Pole. You are also probably going to feel boiling hot and dream that you could
be somewhere a bit colder, like the North Pole.

  Have you ever noticed, when you let the water out of the bath, how the water spins down the plughole in a spiral? If you live in the north of the world – the Northern Hemisphere, it’s called – the water always spins anticlockwise. And if you live in the south of the world – the Southern Hemisphere – then the water spins clockwise as it goes down the plughole. The direction of spinning changes as you cross the equator. If only Tom ever had a bath, he would have been able to test this for himself!

  Although Tom didn’t miss baths, he did miss his family and always messaged them when he got the chance, sharing his stories and photos. They liked to hear from him too. But today Tom decided that he had better not send a message. His sister would not be happy with what had happened.

  Because today, Tom ate a guinea pig.

  And back home, Tom’s sister Lucy had a pet guinea pig – Mr Squiggles. Lucy loved Mr Squiggles very much.

  Tom hadn’t meant to eat a guinea pig.

  He felt rather guilty about eating a guinea pig. Guinea pigs are very cute.

  The lady in the café had told him that lunch today was “cuy”. Tom didn’t know what cuy meant, but he was really hungry so he just said “yes, please – si, por favor”.

  When the cuy arrived at the table, Tom realised that he had just learned a new word in Spanish. An entire guinea pig, barbecued and served with chips, looked up at him unhappily from his plate. Tom tried not to think about Mr Squiggles.

  But he also had to admit that the guinea pig tasted surprisingly delicious.