Haven’t written in a while and wanted to take the time to update everyone on some of my adventures in South America...

Today I was reading the paper and there was an article about droughts in Bolivia. While Bolivia is the country making headlines, Ecuador is also have many problems and towns here have to shut down electricity for set times during the day. Apparently Bolivia is in even worse shape and if water problems are not solved, "El Alto, a poor city near La Paz, could be the first major urban casualty of climate change"...

I am writing from the Galapagos Islands where I have been spending my time since finishing the ride. The Galapagos is one of the main attractions of Ecuador...

Yesterday i arrived in Quito after 4.5 months and 12000 km on the road. My father was waiting for me at the finish line...

Since leaving Loja, we have been traversing the jungle. While I walked around tonight I saw Christmas lights on the houses, which just looked out of place but beautiful in the this very tropical climate...

I last wrote a little past Lima, where I was staying in a campsite next to ancient ruins. What an awesome place. From there, we road along really tough dirt roads for two days before getting to a campsite just outside the town of Chimbote...

(Sidenote before I get started: Be sure to check out Pierre Boivin's comments on 12000km.org on the Canadiens fan site HabsInsideOut.com!)

We left Lima by bus because of the city being very dangerous. After a bit we got out and cycled the rest of the way to the Reserva National Lomas de Lechay. This was a really cool national park, because...

Since the last time I wrote in Paracay, we rode to the town of Pucasana continuing north up the pan-american highway. Pucasana was a nice, small fishing village along the Peruvian coast. In between, we passed through Chincha Alta which is the capital of afro-peruvian music...

My mind frame at this point of the trip is largely the following: I’ve seen a lot of things. I’ve cycled around the perimeter of South America. I’ve gone through the desert, across the Andes, over bad roads and through salt flats...

I last left off describing my ride in Abancay when I was on my way to Yacca. Yacca was a very small town and we had a quiet campsite overlooking the mountains - a good place to be camping before the hardest two days of riding on the whole trip...