We left a very soggy England to face a 22 hour journey to Chile including 6 hours in Paris Airport between flights. We arrived hungry & tired but the Chilean guy sitting next to Donna gave her his phone number to call. He wasn't chatting her up just offering assistance if we needed it and sharing his life story. The first surprise in Santiago was when stuck at traffic lights you don't just get someone offering to clean your windscreen but you also get people ...

We decided in December that we wouldn't go back to Europe to continue our tour but head somewhere completely different - South America! However once we started researching it we found so many trekking / hiking opportunities that we wondered how on earth we could make the most of our time there as we travel so slowly on Titty and South America is so huge. In our 100 days in Europe we clocked up almost 3000 miles on Titty but only had 11 days hiking - that was not ...

For those of you who aren't friends with us on Facebook you may be wondering what has happened to us. We have heard indirectly comments such as 'we have fallen off the map, gone into a black hole, dissapeared into oblivion' - not quite. We flew home from Croatia, then had an appointment with JD Tandems in North Yorkshire. The good news was that Titty's frame wasn't twisted or damaged so it was just the rear wheel, mudguard and pannier frame that needed replacing....

This touring lark has turned out to be harder work than we both envisaged. That doesn't mean we aren't enjoying it, but Donna did ask about a month ago for a good rest at some point in the near future - two or three weeks off the bike (and not climbing mountains instead). To put things into perspective I usually cycle around 5000 miles a year (with lots of rides over 100 miles and very hilly), Donna used to cycle 600 flattish miles a year but has clocked up 1000 ...

All those of you that have seen the odd photo / message posted on Facebook recently will already know that we have reached the 100 day mark, cycled on the moon and been hit by a car. We are okay, but Titty is in intensive care. More about the collision on the next blog, let's rewind first. Tuesday we finished day 100 at Novi Vinodloski, 12 countries visited (not 11, my mistake on Facebook), distance pedaled 2832 miles / 4557 Kms, ascent 132,000 feet / 40,000 metr...