It’s finally here… the moment we’ve been at the same time excited for, but also dreading a little bit: getting back on our bikes and hitting the road once more!

Luxury is kind of a big word. Our lifestyle isn’t necessarily luxurious, but living in a little town in Peru makes us realize just how luxurious our “normal” lives might seem. In this blog we would like to take a moment to acknowledge the differences between our “western” and “luxurious” lifestyle in contrast to the “small town” Peruvian way of life.

The title speaks for itself! A lot of happy faces here in Peru. Not only ours, but the kids’ faces definitely too. Expect for a few Instagram posts, until now, we’ve never fully explained about the volunteering we are doing. Therefore this blog, to shed some light onto this amazing project.

Hey there! Remember us? Yes, we know it has been a while since we wrote something, or posted something, or made a YouTube video… Are we bad influencers? Yes! Because we aren’t. We were two tired Belgians who took a little break.

It's the final countdown tututuduuu tudututuduuuuuu... We are counting down towards the end of the first chapter in our trip. Because at the end of this blog we'll fly to Peru and not cycle for a while, which brings up some mixed feelings. 

On our trusty steeds we continue our way South, through the Central Valley and into the Wild West. In this blog it gets hot, steep and sometimes a little boring. Like many times before, we've met some really nice people. But that never gets boring! 

No we are not sponsored by Sea to Summit (but hey Sea to Summit, if you're reading this... ), it's just a cool phrase to sum up the past two weeks.

Brace yourself, get some popcorn and maybe a beer or two. Because this is going to be an action-filled blog!

We kind of challenged ourselves with this route. From singletrack mountainbike trails, to sandy gravel roads, over a Rocky Mountain pass and stretches along the highway. We had it all! 

Where did we left off? It feels so long since we've written something, it's kind of hard to start again. The last one ended in Fort Nelson, so from there we'll continue. The Alaska highway got pretty boring when we traveled further south from Fort Nelson. There was a lot more traffic and the scenery became kind of bleak. Yeah, there's really nothing more to say about this part. Apart maybe from the lack of natural water sources! Which became kind of a problem on our second night south from Fort Nelson. It was pretty hot these days, so we drank all of our water during the day, figuring that we'd filter some water when we see a little river or lake when we camp. But these never came... so eventually we camped on a rest stop along the highway with no water to drink or to cook. Miraculously, we weren't that hungry that night so our dinner consisted of an apple and a candy bar. For breakfast we hoped that a car or a camper would stop on the rest stop so we could ask them for some water (Americans and Canadians make a good habit of bringing lots of water with them!). And so our prayers got answered. In the morning a lady pulled over for a short break and we went to ask her for some water, which she happily shared with us along with some peaches. This is a thing that we feel like we've learned so far from being on the road and living without too much excess: if you need something, just ask for it. In Belgium, there is a saying "you have a "No" already,  a "Yes" you can get" (it sounds better in Dutch though). For us, in the beginning, it felt kind of weird or unnatural to just go and ask strangers for stuff like; water, if we could use a phone, their credit card information, etc. But now we just go and ask. If they say yes (which most people rather say), great. If they say no, you just go and ask the next person. No big deal. We actually don't know where these apprehensive feelings towards asking strangers came from. Maybe it's got something to do with living with everything you need right at your disposal, and if you don't have something, you just go out and buy it. Which makes you kind of avoid talking to strangers, which in turn makes you forget how to do it. It's a good skill though, talking to strangers, sometimes you can get yourself in some nice situations. Like we experienced in Grand Prairie with Kent and Beck (read more about it here). If we where still apprehensive about talking to strangers, we never would've had such a lovely evening! And we probably never would have started our YouTube channel. South of Grand Prairie, the road became more interesting, finally!! We could start to see, but mostly feel the Rockie Mountains come closer because we exchanged the flat Prairies from before for more hilly and forested terrain. After one particularly long (5km long!) climb at the end of a 90km day we arrived in a cozy little town called Grand Cache. The fact that it lays on to of a hill makes the views there amazing. In the distance you could see the Rocky Mountains surrounding Jasper, but more closely there where some nice mountains as well. It turned out that the day after we would leave Grand Cache there would be this awesome trailrun called: Death Race. A 125km foot race in the surrounding mountains from Grand Cache. Right then it really started to itch to trailrun again! Unfortunately doing a 125km trailrun didn't really fit into our timeline because we already made arrangements in Jasper. We were planning on doing the Skyline trail, a 45km hiking trail high in the mountains above Jasper. But Fien needed some proper shoes to do them. So once we got there, we went to an outdoor shop where they sold the shoes she wanted (Altra Lone Peak, if you are interested). There we started talking to a stranger again, this stranger was Dave, the owner of the shop. And again, talking to a stranger paid off quite nicely, because Dave helped us out really well (read more about it here)!

It's an official travel blog as of now. We will provide some information about the hikes we did and the sights we've seen in and around Jasper and Banff. So if you're looking for some inspiration for your upcoming trip or you just want some bonus stories, this blog is for you!

This one is probably going to be a little shorter. We've been cruising on the Alaska highway and making good progress while doing so. Our legs and our heads are on autopilot most of the time, so the days even start to blur into each other when we try to think back to specific moments. But we'll find something to write about, don't worry! Rest days are amazing! That's why we took 3 of them in Whitehorse. We stayed with Josef and Dan,  two expats from the Czech Republic who settled down in Whitehorse after doing the same trip as we are doing, only they did it from South to North. Josef was really positive about cycling through Mexico. So we are now looking into fitting Mexico into our route as well! With our legs fully rested and our bellies full of food (we ate so much, you wouldn't believe it if we told you) we continue our journey on the Alaskan highway. A couple of days earlier though, we got the news that there was a big washout on the Alaska highway and that the traffic would have to reroute on the Cassiar highway, which is far more remote and has a lot more climbing. Lucky for us, by the time we left Whitehorse, they fixed the road. A fellow cyclist, who was traveling North, told us he took the Cassiar and that it was really beautiful. Lots of scenery and lots of wildlife. So with that in mind we started reconsidering it, but eventually decided to stick with our plan and follow the Alaska highway. Because our next "big thing" on our itinerary is Jasper National Park, we figured to put ourselves on autopilot and go a little faster towards Jasper and enjoy more time there. Only the first few days we had some bad headwinds and some climbing. But then afterwards, it was like some kind of cycling karma, we had a few days with practically only downhills and lots of tailwind! It's funny how fast you get used to certain situations. We were now used to cycling 100+ km a day, with an average speed around 20km/h (because of our good cycling karma). Unfortunately, like everything in life, all things must come to an end. As we neared the Northern Rockie Mountains, our karma turned. The tailwinds evolved to sidewind and very quickly to headwind. Combine this with some hills and you feel like you're standing still. That takes a toll on your mindset! You're working really hard but feel like you're not making any progress... There must be a life lesson in there somewhere! Something like: don't become too accustomed to a certain situation. Bring some variation in your life, get out of your comfort zone once in a while. Because at some point it might change and you'll have trouble adjusting to it. That sounds pretty good, right? Let's go with that for now. Enough philosophy, back to cycling stories. We took another rest day at the Liard hot spring. And wow, they were hot indeed! The water temperature ranged from 36 to 52°C (!!!). There's one downside though. Because the hot spring flows into a swamp area, it's mosquito paradise over there. We thought we saw the worst of it in the Arctic Circle, but there it was way worse! Luckily, people are much nicer than mosquitos (in general). On our second day there, we were preparing our lunch on a picnic table, we were wearing our hoodies, long pants (even though it was 25°C outside) and our headnets. And a couple just came over and offered us their dining tent, which basically is a big tent with mosquito net walls which we could put over the picnic table. So thank you to that couple (we forgot to ask their names...), you really made our day! Now that we've been further along the Alaska highway, we definitely don't regret taking it instead of the Cassiar highway. We're in Fort Nelson right now and the past few days have been absolutely beautiful! The mountains are amazing and we've also seen a decent amount of wildlife (including multiple bears, moose and mountain goats). We heard the part South of Fort Neslon is a bit less beautiful, but that's ok. We can put ourselves into autopilot again and hope for good cycling karma! So it didn't turn out to be a shorter blog after all! Now, for us, it's fast forward to Jasper National Park. There, Fien's sister Jenne and here boyfriend Jonas are coming to visit us. So we'll take a break from cycling and explore the Canadian Rockies on foot for a while. We are really looking forward to that!!!