My hat is off to any bicyclist following that route. I met a bicycling couple in French Guiana, and what took me two easy days had taken them a week (including a lot of pushing the bikes through gumbo mud). Seemed like whenever I started to feel slightly rugged and adventurous in South America, I'd immediately see a bicycle doing the same thing as me but without benefit of internal combustion. This included stuff like riding through sudden snow squalls at 15,000 feet in Bolivia, and fighting the winds on Ruta 40 in Patagonia. The takaway lesson: adventure motorcyclists sometimes need practice at staying humble.
Mark
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