A bit of a boast…
Author: Cindy
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
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The Big Depressing Patagonian Fuss
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.
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Now, Does Cycling Brings happiness?
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.
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Update: Views You Never See
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.
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Baking bread in camp
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…
Baking bread in camp
Simple and more refined bread patties, in a frying pan (a pot will do too) or buried in a pile of burning embers.
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Baking bread in camp
Cycling South America and it’s long stretches made me start trying several ways of preparing bread. I was in need for fat. On fat you can cycle, long and without feeling empty. Now, unfortunately I can not do without bread as a diet avoiding grains is difficult while cycle touring, and besides, it is more expensive.
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Short Update: Meet the Mennonites
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.’
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Happy Notions for the New Year
5 hand-palm sized non-cycling essentials under $30
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Creativity in Patagonia
Embroidering is listening how the wind howls.
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Build a Hobo
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.
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The Sweet Solitude
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!
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Review: Magura Hydraulic Brakes
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…
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A word about selfies
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.
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And desert as dessert!
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.
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Can Someone Please Hit The Brakes!
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?
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MightyGoods Interview
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?
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Flirting with Pacific
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!
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Roadside Scratch
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.
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Rooted in Desert: The Atacama start
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!
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Review Optimus Svea 123
The Svea was designed in 1920 and the technology is simple. A design that is not the best option to choose for a stove on an extended cycle trip. The Svea is currently used in Sweden and Japan for stationary use or as a working antique stove with a nice look. An Optimus Nova would have been a better choice, since that is a modern liquid fuel stove for mobile use.
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Review Hilleberg Soulo
More or less 900 euro, the Hilleberg Soulo is a great one person’s tent. It withstand fierce winds, it adds about 4 degrees to the outside temperature and it has enough space not to feel imprisoned.
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Review Optimus Nova
First and foremost, after cycling more than 4 years, only a few brands are so good that I chose them again, would I have to. Therm-A-Rest, Cumulus and Optimus.
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Review Rain Jacket Patagonia
2025: bought the exact same jacket. Reused the old one.
2024: the jacket starts to rub off its inside protection layer in the neck. This means the rain drips through and the jacket can no longer be used in heavy rain.
2023: the jacket is still very much in use. Though, naturally I try to avoid rain.
The very last moment before I would set off to South America, including rainy Patagonia, I decided I needed a new rain jacket.
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My Daily Dosage of Desert: 2500 KM
First thing I do is escaping Lima and celebrating my alone time. I am back where I belong, having returned from a little detour, a failed deviation.
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Atacama Desert
Atacama desert
First and foremost: cycling slow means having to carry more supplies as the distance from town to town is taking you longer. Being more heavy is even more slower. For a fast one with minimal load everything changes, but for one thing…
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The Stolen Happiness of a Cyclist
I meet with Seth, whom I met for the first time 14 years ago. He is coming to Peru and we can meet if we like. Back then, 14 years ago, while I was using the computer in a Nicaraguan internet-cafe he sat next to me and kept talking. Until he got my unspoken message and said: ‘Shall we chitchat later?’ I was surprised by the words ‘chitchat’. We were young backpackers, in our late twenties, traveled on and off together between Nicaragua and Costa Rica on a bus. I thought I could do that again. I was wrong.
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Very Short Update
I have battled the head wind of the Atacama desert in Chile.