A Mini-Guidebook to Cycle Touring in the Yucatán: Cenotes, Beaches, and Tacos
At the end of last year we did an excellent five week cycling trip around the Yucatán. In this blog post I put together some notes and recommendations about the route and practical tips related to traveling around the Yucatán. I hope you will find them to be useful for planning your own trip, by bike (or not). Scenic cycling between El Cuyo and Las Coloradas It was definitely hot at times, especially on the road from El Cuyo to San Felipe when we were fully exposed to the sun the whole time. We took plenty of breaks to rest in the shade, drink coconuts that we found on the…
A Mini-Guidebook to Cycle Touring with (Two) Young Kids
Four years ago I wrote a detailed mini-guidebook to cycle touring with a baby/toddler. Since then we have had a lot of changes in our family, and two major additions. The first addition was our second son Kai who was born in 2018. The second addition was our cargo bike, a bright yellow Bike Friday Haul-a-Day (AKA Big Bird), that joined our family shortly after. In addition, time goes by, and our older son Neil (now almost six) grew and started riding his own bike most of the time. Two important additions, a baby and a cargo bike! In 2019 we did two overseas bike tours in three different countries.…
A Mini-Guidebook to Cycle Touring Maui: A Figure Eight From Heaven
When we started planning our trip around Maui, we found it difficult to find information online. This mini-guidebook should hopefully answer most practical questions about cycling around Maui. For the story of our trip, see our other blog post. Basically, if you are already inspired to cycle around Maui, this is the place to get the nitty gritty details. If you are looking to get inspired, read the other post. On Maui the weather changes far more when you go from one end to the other, than it does when the seasons change – it rains about 20 times as much on the wet side (the Eastern side) than it…
A Mini-Guidebook to Cycle Touring with a Baby/Toddler
Recently a few people asked us about cycle touring in general and more specifically about cycle touring with a baby. Since the questions keep piling up we figured we’d put together a blog post about our recent experiences of cycle touring with our son Neil. Neil turned two in February and we have cycled with him in four overseas countries and have also done some short trips close to home, in British Columbia, and the nearby Washington state. Every time we go on a cycling trip with him we are amazed by how easy it is, and even though the worries keep on building up before the trip, once we start…
Travel Tips: How to Travel on the Cheap Side
The most common question we are asked about our travels is: “How do you afford to travel so much?”. Our usual response is that we don’t travel nearly as much as we’d like to… More seriously, here are some tips on how you too can travel cheaply for long periods of time. Most people think Hawaii is expensive, but our two week trip to the Big Island was one of our cheapest yet. We spent a total of $20 on our accommodations. How so? Well, we spent most of the nights camping for free at county campgrounds or on deserted beaches, and a few nights with hosts from Couchsurfing and…
Central America Route Notes
By popular demand, here’s the approximate route we took on our five month cycling trip from Panama to Belize. As well, we’ve written down detailed route notes below, by country. We tried to take quiet backroads when possible, to stay off the Pan-American Highway, although this “highway” is sometimes as quiet as a small backroad. This is the “dry” version, focusing on the technical details: which places we stayed at, roads we took and would recommend (or wouldn’t recommend!), and some food recommendations. This post would probably only be interesting for people planning to cycle tour in Central America. We also have the much more interesting blog posts about each…
A Mini-Guidebook to Cycle Touring in Central America
The Number One Question: Why? This is often the first question we are asked, and perhaps the most difficult to answer. Why do we cycle tour? Why travel at all? Lots of books and articles have been written listing reasons to travel. The truth is that there are many reasons, but no particular reason at all is necessary. In other words, go out and explore the world, even if you don’t have a good “reason”. You are guaranteed to be rewarded, at least if you take your time, live in the moment, and keep an open mind and attitude. Why travel to Central America? It’s an unbelievably dense region both…
