Crossing the Darien Gap by Bicycle - Ian Hibell.Show Video Details ↓ [music] … … … … … … … … … …Man 1: [music] At last, the greatest obstacle - the Atrato Swamp. At thirty mile wide soggy plain that is thousands of feet deep in places on which lopes of deceiving crust of almost dry land. Attempting to travel from Chile to Alaska by bicycle, three New Zealanders are the first to cross the Atrato. [noise] [noise] [noise] Man 2: First whenever anybody turns around and expresses an opinion including, literally impossible, someone accepts the challenge and generally gets away from it. And that's one reason why we are here. [noise] [noise] [noise] The best day's caddy was slashing and pushing or bashing away through the eight foot tall rubbish, was about two kilometers. That was pretty hellish. You would have to do it in two stages. [inaudible] Second you would return for your bicycle. I think the most depressing part of it, apart from the fact that you're in water, ankle, calf or thigh deep all day long, is that even when you're eating. It's very difficult to find a dry place to sit. You have to squat or just stand and the last thing that you have to do at night, you crawl into your hammock that you put up over the lake. You're standing nearly up to your knees in water and you have the horrible job of getting out of your soaking wet clothes, they've been soaking wet all day anyway, and climbing into a nice dry hammock, which is fine but you knows that the water is waiting for you the next day. Just as deep in just as unpleasant. I mean this has been the part that has gotten us down mentally more than anything else. [noise] … [music] … … |