June 20th, 2010

Signing off for now. Stayed tuned for next adventure., Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, México, Nicaragua, Panamá

Have been a little slack to sign off cyclecor, but have been catching up with my family and perusing some Ayurvedic study in India. I also had some sad news in the last week of my journey, with my auntie Pi passing away. She was on of the reasons for cycling and raising money for mental health, I will miss her and I thank her for all her beautiful lessons. I wanted to thank also thank my family Jimbo, Marg and Jess for being so incredibly supportive (where ever my slightly unusual interests takes me). Jimbo for being my best mate, Mum for her constant advice, positive outlook and words of wisdom and Jess for inspiring and challenging me to be different and the best I can be…

As I am signing off I guess I can reflect on my highlights of my trip including having a gun put to my face in Honduras (left that out from the blog to save my mum (love you) from heart attack), meeting some incredible individuals, learning invaluable lessons about my body and mind relationship, breaking some limiting beliefs about myself, swimming with a crocodile, climbing Mt Chirripo, hitch hiking in Costa Rica and ticking, “cycling through Latin America” off my “101 things of things to do before I die” list.

In a slightly solemn reflection after my journey was complete in Panama City, I realised a few key things including the more goals I achieve the more I realise what is important in my life. The list of goals I want to achieve will continue to grow no matter how many I attain. As a result the feeling of hollowness on completion will reappear until I can understand that the only real success is; to strive for mastery of myself… Other lessons I learnt include
• The majority of people are good (we should not believe or buy into all the fear that the media spreads on a constant basis, go find out for yourself).
• I also learnt that every situation has a lesson and more often than not the more difficult the situation the more powerful the lesson.
• Furthermore it was engrained into me the importance of pushing my limits and living my life (in 2o years I will be more pissed off at the things I didn’t do, compared with what I did).
• I also learnt how lucky I am to be able to travel, expand my understanding of the world through experience, have food and water on my table, walk freely through my neighbourhood, and have a incredible family.
• And finally, ask “why?” more often especially when watching the news or any form of media.

It has been an amazing journey so far and stay tuned as the next adventure is in the planning.

Finally i will leave you with this from R.Shaman. Most people take the limits of their vision to be the limits of their world. A FEW DO NOT>. Remember we see the world not as it is but as we are. What’s your limiting belief about yourself? What bill of goods have you sold yourself as to what’s impossible? What false assumptions are you making in terms of what you can not have, do and be? Your thinking creates your reality. Your beliefs truly come self fulfilling prophecies (because your beliefs drive your actions….the size of your life reflects the SIZE of your thinking). “If you think something cannot occur in your life, then there’s no way you will take the action required to make the goal a reality. Your impossibility thinking mainifiests itself.

Again thanks for all the support

Dream Courageously. Willcadden

March 15th, 2010

Honduras on the horizon (flying), El Salvador

I am currently in a Pizza Hut in San Miguel one of the dodgiest cities I have ever been in. The security guard with a shot gun is looking after my bike outside… This morning we left Usulutan and my calfs, hamstrings, quads, my arse and every bone in my body “said no more”! but my mind said yes…. So off we went. As my good man T.S. Elliot says “only those who risk going too far can possible find out how far one can go”, so looking to pump out the km today… Have ridden 50km this morning and our plan is to get as far away from this city as possible and as close to Honduras as possible…

Andy H would be happy to know that I have had 3 cokes this morning just to keep my mind active, they have seriously saved my life…

I rode another 50km trying to find a Hotel… The only one we found was a autoHotel (aka sex hotel) that you had to pay by the hour… So instead we road up the road snuck into a corn feild and set up camp as the sun was going down. It had a beautiful smell, it smelled like the tropic´s and freedom.

Thanks to everyone for your support, certainly helps with the long days…

Buckle up…

Will Cadden

I have to fly… Honduras is on the horizon and am pumped to hit the bike again…

March 14th, 2010

105km Gringos in the desert, El Salvador

La Libertad to Usulutan 105km… Was an intense ride today cycling through extremely baron and poor countryside… Many river crossing where the river had dried up.

Stopped in a small town for lunch and as we walked through the market on a few occasion’s old women hist at me saying; “pisssssssssst, GRINGO” just to point out that i had white skin and was already feeling uncomfortable… I am slowly getting used to be known as the travelling circus… After lunch Adam and I pushed hard through the middle of the day so we could get to Usulutan 110km from Honduras… I got my first flat which set us back 20minutes… We pushed through the heat and hit Usulutan by 4, and was a serious circus in this town, there are obviously not to many tourist coming through hear at all… We found the closest Hotel we could which is the sleaziest Latin American Hotel I have ever seen… Everyone was hammered and dancing to loud music… confronting.

The girl at the front desk fancied Adam and I and would not stop coming into our room… Great stuff was extremely tired and even though I was bitten by 1000 mosquito and it was really humid I was straight to sleep….

March 13th, 2010

Ahuachapan to La Libertad 100km, El Salvador

Started the day by fuelling the body with massive bowl of oats, 3 bananas and a cup of coffee from El Salvador that Eduardo gave us… Jumped on the bike at 7.30 am (legs were very heavy after all the hills yesterday. It was all down hill to Sonate and we did about 23km in 15 mins… On the way down an old lady called me a stupid gringo hurling a orange at me sconing me on the leg…really positive stuff… As we entered Sonate it was HOT again and felt like the depression had hit this place…

A strange coincidence occurred at the super market… I was sitting outside and a man by the name of Ricardo started to talk to me about what i was doing, he then proceeded to tell me he met someone 2 months ago doing the same thing at the exact spot, my Argentinian friend Fernando… Small world.

After leaving Sonate we headed down to the coast, where the temperature again pumped up to well over 35 degrees and the road twisting, up and down the cliffs making for intense riding… At one point we ran out of water however asked someone on the side of the road and they filled our bottles up… About 20km out of La Libertad we met a couple and there daughter Alehjedria. They ended up inviting us to the beach front apartment in La Libertad, which was beautiful… They gave us a guided tour of the place, feed us Puerto Rican Rum and food… Considering I had not drunk for 10 months, am generally a light weight and I had ridden close to 300km in  3 days I was past out by 8pm with no rum rage.

Alltime. I looked in the mirror for the first time in 4 days and was surprised to see that I looked like a 14 year old Mexican with the hideous growth on my face.

March 12th, 2010

85km into the mountains, El Salvador

Left Eduardo and his son who gave us a bag of fresh El Salvadorian coffee for our travel. His son then proceeded to escort us out of town and introduce us to every cousin and friend on the way out of town. The first impressions of El Salvador…amazing… This impression continued as we flew down the Pan American we pulled over for a break and a lovely gentlemen came over and filled our water bottles up and gave us Mango’s for our journey… About 30km down the road we headed for the hills, cycling through beautiful country side and up into the hills heading for Ahuachapan…

We left Steve here, as he had to cycle back to Guatemala City by the 16th, he ended the day with a beer and a couple of ciggi’s….ha, alltime!

It was intense cycling with the boys, gaining in the end about 1000 plus metres and sweating my t*@%’s off… Started the day at about 9 and ended the day half way between Ahuachapan and Sonate at 5.30pm as the sun was beginning to disappear… We found a spot on the side of the road in the middle of the hills and set up camp for the day… Was shattered and was in bed by 7.30pm…

It is a joke how much I ate today to fuel the body…

March 11th, 2010

Antigua to Gurita Pomera 150km, El Salvador

Probably the most intense day of my life to date, an easy 150km into a new country… Started the day in Antigua Guatemala at 4am jumped on my bike and begun my day cycling down hill to Escuntila…. As I rode out of the highlands and into the lowlands the first thing to change was the smell, it began to smell tropical and my memory jumped around from trips to Borneo, Vietnam and Brazil… The other thing that change was the temperature….HOT… After about 60km as I was passing Tasisco a small farming town in Guatemala I passed 2 cyclist (Adam who looks identical to a fellow Hound member Jarod Solomon and Steve) who were heading the same way. They were just beginning there day and were planning to ride past the border, so even though it would mean a massive day in temperature well over the 30s I thought, why not…

They were very fit as they had ridden over 7000km already, but just fired up and tacked on… The back country is unbelievably beautiful, the people are so friendly, in fact one time we stopped two boys came over with a stick to knocked Mangos off for us to eat.

As we got closer to the border and into the middle of the day it was well over 35 degrees and I lost concentration and hammered myself into the side of the road (really positive with the small amount of energy I had left in the tank)… .

Border crossing was pretty chilled there were a few dodgy characters at the border but we crossed no dramas… Then in new territory, we decided to head for a camping spot at the nearest beach. There were a few military check points who just waved us through with there big bad guns and we took the next turn to Gurita Pomera (no gringos in 100km)…

As we got close to the beach we past a soccer game with two local teams playing and at least 500 people watching. We pulled in and for 5 minutes the game was no longer the entertainment, we were… There were 500 pair of eyes on us, i was extremely uncomfortable at first especially because i was exhausted and had ridden well over 130km… But the other boys were keen to stay and watch… We did so and it was alltime seeing 2 goals, they were amazingly skilful.

After the game, sneaking off before the end for safety reason we got to the black sand beach, and asked a man Eduardo if we could stay on his property… We ended up finding the nicest man in El Salvador who feed us, gave us water, a place to sleep and endless entertainment, in return for some travel stories…

More to come, am in Sanate in El Salvador at the moment (INTENSE to say the least)

Water consumption that day 5 Litres  of water, 3 Gatorades 500ml and 2 Rehydration packs 500ml….

Will Cadden

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