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April
Nicaragua

April
El Salvador and Honduras

Thanks for all the comments, it’s been fun to look back through photos and share them with other people.

February
Guatemala

The bike pile on the speed boat gave me major anxiety, visions of losing my bar bag overboard and our rear mechs all being destroyed.

I think we’re about in the middle on luggage/weight compared to others we’ve met on the road. We’ve just got rid of some stuff and might try another kit review in Colombia to slim down a bit further.

Having 2 people to share definitely helps keep the load down. We have a big cooking set and a few luxuries like Helinox chairs but are limited on clothes and footwear.

We’ve both spent the last month fantasising about having even more minimal bikepacking set ups and mtb style touring bikes but supply of trendy steel frames is very limited out here. I might try and get a Surly Ogre in Ecuador but we’ll see how it goes between now and then.

January
Oaxaca, Veracruz and Chiapas, Mexico

December
Mexico City to Oaxaca

No problem, I’ll do the rest of the trip later and then try and keep things more current on here as we head through South America

Continued…

October and November
Trans Mexico Norte, Mazatlán to Mexico City

September and October
Baja California and Baja California Sur, Mexico

August
Lake Tahoe to Yosemite

August
Northern California

July
Oregon

July
Washington

Continued…

Instagram has been the easiest way for us to document and upload as we travel, my partner’s account is also in my bio instagram.com/ed_win.

We’ve had a few days off at a Warmshowers in San Jose packing up the bikes so I’ll make use of the speedy internet and do a little photo recap here too.

May-June
Fairbanks to Haines, Alaska (with some time in the Yukon too)

In all the madness and stress I forgot to post an update, we’re doing well and have been riding again for the past month.

We found a flat in Antigua that wasn’t too outrageously priced (some places we looked at were more expensive than our flat in London) and holed up there for 6 weeks. We went to Spanish classes and linked up with other tourers who were passing through. We also a snuck in a weekend coach trip to see Tikal which was amazing to see. Surly came through and sent a new fork totally gratis and I managed to get a new rack ferried over from Europe via friends and friends of friends who were travelling to Guatemala. We rolled out of the city with my hand feeling pretty good and our legs eager to get moving again.

The rest of Central America has been a bit of a mixed bag, lots of hot highway days and camping round the back of fire stations as well as a few amazing wild camp spots and plenty of opportunities to gorge on foraged mangoes from the roadside.

Honduras threw us a curve ball when a dog at a truck stop bit my partner. Spending the next few days navigating the Honduran healthcare system to get a rabies shot was stressful, eye opening and moving to witness. If the bite would have happened in El Salvador just 150km earlier it would have been a routine jab in any village health clinic. Instead we go batted around numerous departments in an under resourced hospital trying to ascertain that they were going to give her the vaccine. From what we could gather this wouldn’t be the routine treatment unless they had reasonable suspicion the dog was rabid - in contrast to many other countries where they’ll jab it in you just incase. I think being us foreigners helped them to bend some rules which we were thankful of, but also highlighted how dire the situation likely is for many people living in the country.

The last week of riding around the volcanic island of Ometepe in Nicaragua and up to the cloud forests in Costa Rica has helped us find our mojo again but we also decided that the relentless heat and prospect of at least a week of highway riding through Panama wasn’t for us. Instead we will ride to San Jose in Costa Rica tomorrow then fly to Bogotá in a week.

We’ve just hit 12,000km of riding and are 3 weeks away from leaving London a year ago. It’s a big moment thinking that we have ridden
across most of continental North America and will soon be entering South America. In some ways I can’t help but think that the journey so far has just been training and preparation for the roads ahead which will for sure be longer, higher, more remote and more wild.

After a week getting the bikes in order in Bogotá we’ll take a bus north and ride the Andean Bear Corridor routes from bikepacking.com, after that I’m not sure how we’ll get to Ecuador but it will almost certainly involve some big hills.

Thanks, hopefully we’ll find some cranks and work something out. Not sure my legs will deal with the relentless climbing without more low end.

What do you reckon about the bb shell tube? Is it a problem to run it without the tube?

Perfect, saves a job. Thanks

It won’t be the end of the world if we can’t find 165mm cranks but it would be nice. I’ve heard from friends that availability in Colombia is good, I just hope it’s not all 12 speed one by.

11-42 10 speed, microshift thumb shifter

Bonus points if you can also recommend a front mech to work with the new cranks, band/braze on.

I need to get lower gears on my and my partners touring bikes, currently have GRX 2x10 cranks (46/30) and front mech and an 11 speed M8000 rear mech.

What is available in 165mm and 170mm with 36/26 chainrings? Nothing niche please, I’m hoping to find them in a bricks and mortar shop in Bogota, Colombia (and also don’t have much money).

M8000 2x11 looks like they would work, any others?

Also we currently have Hope external bottom brackets, is it ok to run them without the internal spacer tube? The one in there at the moment is for road cranks.

Alternatively I could try some kind of cut and shut with a coke can and epoxy to extend it 5mm but I’m not sure it’s worth it.

This is looking great! How long until it’s finished?

I’m definitely stuck in a grass is greener phase at the moment. Mainly because we’ve been forced to stop riding for a few weeks so I’m filling my hours staring at my diminutive 40mm tyres and yearning for more squish.

Once we start riding again I’ll spend less time thinking about bike nerd shit and just enjoy the views.

I need to remember that in 3 months of riding the Trans Mexico route I got 2 pinch flats and only got close to losing traction a handful of times.