From Anchorage to Ushuaia by Bike

When we left Port Mc Neil (on Monday), we saw again Natalie and Josh, a young people by bike who we had met on the ferry. We talked a little and they left. They live in Courtenay and wanted to get there that evening … 250km! But we found them again in Woss the same day, in the evening, drinking a beer! They decided to keep going a little, while we decided to stop in Woss for the night. We saw them again the next day on the road. It was raining.

Since Wednesday, we are so so hot: it is about 30°C. Our first summer days! In fact, before now, we were lucky when the thermometer was showing more than 20°C! Traffic is denser now. A lot of log trucks passed us: the forest here is very much exploited in the region. We had our first fears with the traffic … We finally arrived in the “civilization” and it s hard for us, even if we were waiting for that, especially for the practical things (for example, numerous grocery store so we do not have to carry a lot of food with us). The drivers do not care about cyclists …

When we arrived in Campbell River, we saw a cyclist coming to meet us : it was Ed. We had contacted him via the network called “warmshowers.org”: cyclists who host other touring cyclists. Ed came to look for us that day. But we had planned to stop in Campbell River for the night after 60km. When he told us that a bed and a nice diner was waiting for us at his place, we could not refuse … et we have done 55km more! What a long day: 115km, a great diner, a hot shower and a real bed! Those few elements of comfort did a lot of good to us!!

We feel as if we were on holidays as we follow the coast of Vancouver Island. We follow beaches for about 200 km. We had some stops on the way for picking and eating blackberries on the side of the road… There are so many that we feel like making jam as we used to! We also finally had our first summer fruits, 3 days ago (the 12th of august): peaches and nectarines are now in our panniers with tomatoes, strawberries and blueberries!! It is so nice!

After a stop in Qualicum Bay and in Parksville to see the sand castles, we are now in Nanaimo, at Cathy and Lee’s house, members of the warmshowers network.

After 410km in 6 days, we (our bikes and ourselves) will have 2 days off. We are going to the beaches on the west side of the Island. People told us that it was a hard and dangerous road on bikes. So we are going to go there by car.