On the 6th of April 2005, cousins Jamie Mackenzie and Ben Wylson set off on their bikes on a journey which will take them to over 50 countries and to every one of the worlds great continents, all without the use of an aeroplane.
Thursday, May 03, 2007: Twenty times the speed of bike boing
In Arequipa, that mountain town of bed and grapes, our friends and family flooded us with words of love and concern. The general outside consensus seemed to be that the fourth Peruvian Doctor's diagnosis of Salmonella was dubious and likely to be incorrect; symptoms just didn't match up. Once again, we found ourselves clueless as to which life-threatening illness had struck Ben down. Worried that whatever it was might come back to finish him off, the two of us stewed in our Arequipan hotel room and wrestled with various plans of action. In the end we came to a decision -one of the hardest in F.W.E history- and opted to get out of Peru, to leave South America altogether and find a western Doctor with the facilities and know-how to put all of our minds at rest once and for all. There was an obvious problem with this decision: it would mean taking an aeroplane, the ultimate FWE faux pas. However, our decision to fly is easily justifiable: 1. a plane would take us away from our unbroken line over land and sea around the world, but it would also return us to the spot we took off from. Therefore, no ground lost, no ground gained. In other words, when we start cycling again, our line will remain unbroken.
2. we needed to know whether not Ben's life was in danger. Please note: Ben's life is point number 2. May this stand as testament to the importance of our quest.
With our decision made, the next question was, where do we go? Of course England was not an option; going back to Blighty really would feel like defeat and spoil our homecoming in 2008. That left one other option, our second home, Melbourne...
After being trapped in Australia and trying our hardest for almost a year to find a ship across the Pacific Ocean to continue FWE, we 'bike boys' -as the Melbournians came to know us- thought we had escaped when we found two spare births aboard the BBC Ecuador. But we were wrong; just under three months later, having spent 35 days at sea going bonkers, and riding a minuscule 500 ks, we were headed back!
In Arequipa we came to see our return to Melbourne as a positive failure. It was really as though our South American attempt number one had gone a little wrong and we were popping back down under to re-group and collect our thoughts. Both of us saw the funny side of the situation and we began to look forward to getting back to see all our old friends. We even made plans to sell our publication, the highs and lows of the last three months.
Quickly we found and booked up a flight from Quito, Ecuador via Miami, La and Auckland. 50 hours of bus travel stood between us and the airport. We went into action, packing like crazy. Jamie did the heavy work and even loaded up the bikes so that all we had to do was trickle down hill to the 'Flores' bus station. When we left the Peruvian maids at our hotel were visibly moved; they'd lived through our ordeal with us, had seen the doctors coming and going, had worried with us.
With Bikes squished into a tiny luggage compartment the first bus followed a dreadful looking barren road to Lima chock-a-block with heavy traffic. From our comfortable seats we thanked our lucky stars that we were not cycling it. We have learnt that often the worst experiences bring the best conclusions.
In Lima we waited for a day at the bus station to get another bus, this time an international service to Quito. That final jaunt was thirty hours. Bums ached after two. Slowly the desert became the tropics and all memories of our viral nightmare were left firmly behind us. Ecuador was lush, more developed than Peru, a refreshing change.
A few days of taking it easy later, we stowed the bikes and half of our gear at our hotel in Quito and took a taxi to the airport.
"Blast those hunks of metal that jet along at hundreds of miles an hour guzzling the same air a horse breathes for a life time in a second; bugger those expensive, noisy, functional, synthetic juggernauts of the skies..." We had made our last stand against the plane, but later we admitted -off the record- that we'd be stuffed without them and that they are one of man's most marvellous inventions. It felt so good to sit back in a Boeing 737, to accelerate down the Quito airport runway at 20 times the speed of bike. Having cycled on and off for two years, flying took our breath away. We lifted off and began to soar higher and higher over the misty Andes until the traffic on Ecuadorian roads below became invisible and all you could see were grey lines on the landscape. Then even the lines disappeared. Our plane gave us a beautiful bird's eye air- perspective; dark, stark realisations of scale. The world is vast, we reveled in I'm-an-insignificant-speck sentiments.
Four hours later we touched down in Miami to pick up our connecting flight to LA. As we passed through customs, security asked us a thousand questions. Jamie nearly took a charge from a cattle prod for not being co-operative when an officer asked him –as we had our bags checked for the umpteenth time- "Where are you going, sir?" "Melbourne," replied Jamie. "Where's that?" asked the guard, his accent twanging. Jamie smiled and continued to walk thinking the guard to be joking. A baton stopped him in his tracks. The guard's eyes narrowed, he pointed his stun gun at Jamie's chest and said, "Sir, I asked you a question. Now are you going to give me an answer?" He had a mean look about him. Jamie looked forlornly back at the guard and said, "Australia".
By the time we got into LA we were 12 hours into the trip and were already exhausted. We still had 16 hours and another stop in Auckland ahead of us. Ironically this was to be Ben's first-ever long-haul flight; before the L.A - Auckland flight he'd never flown out of Europe.
The first day back at OZ base saw a visit to the Doc. He confirmed straight away that Ben had had Meningitis. He advised, "I'm going to get you to relax for a month. That means no strenuous exercise! I want you to come back to me then for a blood test to check that you don't have any organ degradation.. Ben, the decision you made to leave South America was absolutely correct. You have had a very serious illness and I can tell you that if you had been here in Australia at the time of diagnosis you would have been rushed to hospital in an ambulance. Meningitis is not to be taken lightly. I hope that you don't have any further problems. Please rest."
For the last week we have been taking it very easy, but now is the time for a little bit of not-too-strenuous action in the form of book selling next to the bums' bench, Brunswick Street. If you are in the area, do drop by to have a chat and pick up a copy of your own.
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