Getting Started!

Hey everyone! We have just arrived in Bogota, Colombia!! It was easy – only took 3 flights, 27 hours and tying a bike to the roof of a taxi, but we made it! Phew! If only getting here was the hard part. We leave Bogota on the first leg of our huge journey in two days. Before we go, we thought we’d share our preparations with you all.

Back in Canada, about a year ago, we started planning this insane adventure and I’m not sure it felt completely real until now. First, we started with planning the route which took months. Then, moved on to organizing the massive amount of gear we needed for the journey. (Tom made a video of our gear throughout which I suppressed giggles, and we’ll share it on this soon! The video was more of an excuse to put off cleaning our apartment than anything else but it’s worth a watch!) Next, we booked our flights, got injections, bought travel insurance, reassured our terrified parents and started fundraising.

Our Route Map

We are raising money for Oxfam and we can’t believe that people have been so generous. Before we even left Canada, we had reached our target of $5000 (shout out to Kiev Reynolds for tipping us over the edge!) We are still fundraising throughout the journey as Oxfam does very important work in this region and we want to do all we can to support them! We chose Oxfam because they work with local groups and form partnerships with people on the ground for a real grassroots form of development. In today’s globalized world, teaming up with people who experience the effects inequality every day is extremely important and really the only way to make change a reality.

The most important things we got for this trip were our tent, sleeping mats and sleeping bags. They’re important because they were FREE! The nice people at Johnson’s Outdoors, in Ontario, kindly donated these items to help us on our way.

This whole year of preparation came to a head only a few days ago, back in Vancouver. We started disassembling the bikes and putting them into the boxes for the flights. Anyone who has ever played Tetris for four hours straight can understand the frustration this brings! I was far too excited and nervous to be much help, as you can see.

Tom continued with the packing and we emptied our entire apartment to just two bikes, two suitcases, two back packs and a ukulele.

 

We have been a bag of emotions the last few days – saying goodbye to everyone in Vancouver, getting crazy excited and having those terrifying moments of fear. One of the last things we saw in Vancouver was a drawing on the ground near our apartment and we decided to just go with the flow and embrace this madness!

Until next time,

Rach and Tom