Years of traveling brought me many different insights, philosophies and countries I needed to be (over 90 in total). I lived in Pakistan, went over 15 times to India and when I stopped cycling the world, that was after 50.000 kilometer through 45 countries, I met Geo. Together we now try to be more self-sustainable, grow our own food and live off-grid. I now juggle with the logistics of being an old-fashioned housewife, cook and creative artist loving the outdoors. The pouches I create are for sale on www.cindyneedleart.com
In blogs you probably don’t read how boring a country can be. Experiences must be great, exhilarating and fantastic. Not on this blog. Uruguay has me waking up in the mornings thinking how I can make this day a memorable one. I have to come up with my own ideas to have something like, still far removed from, an exciting experience in Uruguay.
Very often I ask myself the question ‘why?’ This is tiresome, but I need to ask it in order to understand the country and it’s people. I need to ask it myself in order to get answers. And so, now and then, when I allow myself, here comes a lengthy viewpoint of mine…
When I ask people where it is beautiful in natural surroundings, they slowly shrug up their shoulders, their eyes start looking into their minds cabinet, and they come up with no real answer. When I trow ‘Tucuarembo’ in, they reply with a lukewarm ‘yeah, it’s hilly there’ or ‘that is the real Uruguay still, with gaucho’s’ or ‘the road to there is 200 kilometer with nothing’.
When Koen squeezes his fists together, he comes to an abrupt halt in front of the door I sit behind. We meet at the Shell station, a person I have never seen before, with a twinkle in his eyes, moving with the ease of an adolescent youngster, one of 45. He’s having a bright smile, and when I see him I jump of my chair to greet him. Funny, not to know a person except by typed words over Messenger.
Cycling in the Pampa is nothing spectacular. Since December the vast agricultural lands have changed into swamps, large masses of wetlands have become plain lakes. Mosquitoes dwells happily alongside snakes, storks, owls, foxes, nutria’s and everything in between with wings, feet or no feet crawls around, is caught against the speeding wheels of trucks and cars and… receives the occasionally secretive hair cut.
It happens that some don’t know where I am, or wonder where the country I’m cycling through is actually situated, or that I am elsewhere than where some think I am. Confusion all over.
An update of where I am at the moment follows soon, but first this adventure: 3 days out of a truck-driver’s life are the highlight of my trip in Patagonia. I am leaving the gloomy south of Argentina for warmer, sunnier and happier feelings.
German world-cyclist Heike Pushbikegirl asked me to participate in a post about tricks to make life living on the road easier. Although daily life is full with tricks and tips one has adopted over the course of a few years, I came up with 5 (not necessarily life saving ones though).
Do you know that fur of a dead rabbit comes off as easily as plucking hairs from a hairdresser’s floor. Another thing to keep in mind is that when creating artwork after you have collected several different furs you better have enough for you might not find another dead animal with the same fur-coat. Something else interesting, the gland of a skunk is not always activated when the poor creature is caught by a car and so I can give it a haircut without having its stench flowing up my nostrils. Kneeling down a bloody body of a nutria is perhaps not every cyclists wish, I merrily cut some of his hairs.
A bit of a boast…
I would never cycle in the rain for fun, luckily once in Argentina I feel the sun working as a super Prozac on my system. Six weeks cycling in the rain did me no good. But now, all is dandy again and cycling on the hardened mud track, not so long ago a mud pool, I feel life circulating through my veins.
So, what precisely is a micro climate? People told me it is pristine out here, how pure is that? And how exactly does Patagonia looks like? Carretera Austral, everyone who has been to Patagonia talks about it.
Articles and interviews by other cyclists, travelers and reporters on the road. As soon as you, as a cyclist, enter countries like Iran and UAE it may happen you will be interviewed for local newspapers and you might even appear on television. This was never my favourite past-time occupation but the interviewers or people who brought me into contact with the journalists, were very fond of a rarity such as a female on a bicycle.
Cycle-touring designers are keeping in mind that a cyclist returns home after their holiday. Rohloff thinks like this, Magura thinks like this and the Chinese manufactures count on this real hard.
You may call me stubborn, but I have learned that when people tell me something is impossible, complicated, or difficult, it often isn’t. Now, when people tell me there is a meter of snow, I don’t believe it. Even though these people are the firemen to whom drivers ask about the situation on the road. So, when those people tell me to stay until the snow disappears, I continue on.
Meet Alex Chacon What you never see in my blog posts you see now on Alex’s YouTube channel.
Sleep is one of the most important things to enjoy life. Isn’t that equally so for a cycling life?
Easier said than done, the title above. Outside it is cold, or wet or snowy or the combination. Then, having my periods; fiddling with the Cup I incidentally go through a little poop accident right besides my bicycle. And not before long I step into the pile and the brown colored spread is all over my snowy white camp, now beautified with patches of sienna.
Bread on a tiny stove
How to bake bread on a tiny stove. Practice had me bake the perfect bread. Follow these instructions and your camp experience will enhance. Read more…
Thepla
Thepla is an unleavened bread that needs a lot of work and a simple time-off kitchen but is worth the effort.
Paratha on any burner and a fire
When able to carry a bit more weight and not able to buy bread as regularly as you’d wish, this is a good option. Be aware, it is not a fast way of bread making
Campsite recipes
Recipes for the road; easy cooking with common ingredients. Quick, healthy and delicious. Read more…
When raising the word Amish or Mennonites one might be inclined to think: ‘Devout hard working people, women in dark ankle length dresses and men in similar old-fashioned style clothing. They are pious, quiet and live an utmost simple life without pleasures as many of us know them whereby avoiding modernity and social jumble with outsiders.’
5 hand-palm sized non-cycling essentials under $30
Embroidering is listening how the wind howls.
How to make a hobo stove
When stoves break down, often exactly when you really need them, it has you think: ‘This is not the time for you to break down’.
For some occult reason I had given my dad a woolen thermal shirt, woolen socks and a fleece sleeping bag liner when he visited me in the Atacama desert.
The rain, for me at this moment, is a sound of elegant yet forceful fingers tapping on a tight drum, stretched cloth above my head; my tent, my home.
Patagonia towards winter means the start of serious wind. I am heading to a hostile place on earth, this not being part of my plan, I let my happiness guide me. For now, the wind is in my back. Blowing across the vastness as a large cloud, like a passenger in a big haste.
Anxious I was about the climb towards the Cristo Redentor pass. I counted 18 perfect symmetric curves. It turned out to be 30, and I took them in only 1,5 hour. Hail to Cindy indeed!
These brakes are excellent. That is, if you know how to repair them when they snap. I cycled with Magura for about 2.5 years without much problems. They are expensive so I hoped they would have lasted longer…
My sister was a model for some time, on a pearl white beach where the palm trees were outfitted with electricity outlets. She modelled in the sultry Caribbean, she withstood the wind and she splashed into the lazuli colored water as if she were a pro. She never was one, but more than I ever could be.
When there is no thing to look forward to, when all you do is what you want to do, when your current lifestyle exist of what you love to do only, when there is no thing to work for, and every day a free day, even though you might cycle 10 days on end, it start to become rather unrealistic. The difference between you and others is so obvious: yóu are still playing around, already 4 years!
I am a comfort junkie. I don’t mind, and still be happy, without a shower preceding the number of 14 days.
With less tan on my arms I cycle out of Calama, noticing my fitness has plummeted dramatically too. That my belly has gathered more fat is no issue but the wind seems fiercer than ever, or is only because being in towns I haven’t noticed the unfriendly desert weather?
By Laarni from MightyGoods:
How to let go of control, so you can really enjoy a balanced life of adventure
Without Further Pondering: Booked! Dad wants to escape the gloom Dutch winter. I think he should come to me. My sister agrees. She books a flight. And then I start to stress: can dad handle the altitude of nearly 4000 meters, he has a lung capacity of 50 percent and he’s got a cardiac arrhythmia?
In my opinion, having traveled extensively by public transport as well, the journey on a bicycle is even more deep. Because it is slow, it let me experience the world on a very different level, one which is impossible to retrieve while transported by a vehicle, any vehicle that is. And because my moving is done by my very own efforts, I feel superior, but is that really reason to feel so, a not so beautiful characteristic, arrogantly?
Excuses for the earlier, pre-mature publishing of the post, now this post is ready and brimming with photo’s. While I am cycling in the snow, this post goes back to Januari 2017 when it was very warm. And if you still think a desert is boring, think again after seeing this!
Updated March 2025: none of the animal derived pouches are for sale. I placed them in a frame to look at for myself. Plenty others are made and those are all possible to be purchased at CINDYneedleart
Besides cycling, cooking a decent meal and making plenty of selfies, I have one other activity: creating art.
Heike has asked me again for an interview, this time about cooking a meal while cycling. I love being interviewed and had a lot of fun making pictures just for Heike’s questions.
Annechien, 35 years, from the Netherlands. Traveled through 12 countries with a backpack for 15 months. Then she met cyclist John and he kindly demanded her to cycle with him. She did. They cycled 10.000 kilometers through 2 countries for 12 months.
Post ‘Where and how to find water in the Atacama’
When the shiny luxury bus transported me to Lima I passed through the Atacama desert and the only thing I knew was: GO BACK! GO BACK! GO BACK! GO BACK! GO BACK! GO BACK! GO BACK!
Cycling Cindy