Alaska Highway

Episode 4 – Hosting Communities

 Recently we have joined two of the travel hosting communities, Couchsurfing and Warmshower. What are they? How do they work? What is the idea behind them?

The idea the spirit behind them is to built a community a net where the traveler and the host has an opportunity to share experiences,  where the mass tourisms is bitten by a closer,  warmer approach between the travelers and the locals. There is a big sense of trustfulness on human kindness overall.

Those communities work over the internet, once you has joined in you have access to look for people along the places you are planning to go, then you have a list of people in those places with theirs profiles so you can read them and contact the people you think have the most in common with you then you can contact them regarding to host you. It is totally up to the host if they want or not to host you and how long and that is arranger on the internet or over the phone.

Our experience as new members is not very big but so far We have to say that is being amazing, it has totally blown our head away all those people who has opened their houses totally to us, sharing their time, food and life with us, with two strangers, and how We have felt with some of them part of their families for a while. It's amazing to arrive to a new place and have a place to stay and people to host you, to share with you and vice versa, definitely is a two ways experience which enriches both parts a lot host and traveler giving and receiving.  Many of those experiences We had come to my mind I've remembered very warmly those two days We've spent with Tony and Sara,  after 16 km of tough uphill looking for their place which was farther and tougher than Tony described to us on the last email,  We were a bit disappointed but when we arrived to their place all this silly feelings were wiped off by these wonderful people who for a couple of days adopt us as part of their family feeding us with great food,  taking care of us,  fantastic conversations,  sharing experiences by the bonfire or those pancakes Tony prepared for breakfast for all the family(us too) and we had the by the terrace enjoining the morning while chatting,  laughing. Experiences like that makes the traveling a unique experience, to us the best you can get out of traveling is to meet all those people.

Or this other one We got to a big town and there was this lovely girl waiting for us to host us for a night at hers and surprisingly after We had a cup of tea with told us I "I' m going to my boyfriend's tonight so you can enjoy the house for yourselves, sleep on my bed better than in the couch so you will get a proper rest and she left us in her place with all her stuff, trusting totally a 2 strangers, waooooo!!!! That is what comes to my head.

These people are opening, widening our way of seeing other people, making us in a way better person than we already were. I have been all those years traveling and avoiding going to hotels or even hostels that are so far from the communities and people who live around them When I have been spending a night or so in one of those "spaces „I felt always as a tourist, having tourist conversations and ending gathering just with other tourists, sometimes it was fun though, but not even getting a small sense of the place you are visiting or traveling through or the people who live there.

Alaska Highway

Episode 5 - Mosquitoes

People joke in Canada that their national bird is a mosquito; not super funny, I know, but true. Mosquitoes of the North (Canadian and the one from Alaska) are world famous.

Before this trip my understanding of mosquitoes habits was that they live in warm places, near stagnant water, bite in the evenings and not necessarily like me (I’m one of those lucky ones whose company, but not them, gets bitten). Well, the mosquitoes here are total exception from that rules. First of all there are at least twice bigger than the one in Europe (they say everything is bigger overseas…), you can find them by the sea and as high as 2000 m a.s.l.; they will bite whether it is 2C or 32C, whether it is early morning, midday, afternoon or in the middle of the night! And they are super aggressive; apparently they can drink over 0.5 l of blood from a moose a day! Poor moose sometimes gets mad and runs where is too cold for it and die.

However, we were lucky not to meet the worst ones. First mosquitoes appear in Alaska in mid May and last until August. And as their reproduce they are gaining better survival skills; each generation grows bigger and more aggressive, so if the first ones take some time flying around you before biting, the later generations just bites. Apparently tourists can barely stay outside by the end of August.

Though they can be vampires, they are not bad everywhere. We’ve been camping all the time and in some places, against all odds (damp and warm) there where hardly any mosquitoes and in others we had to be moving literally all the time to not to bet bitten. However, we both agree that our worst mosquito experience was not when camping, but when cycling; sometimes when we go up a steep hill we are so slow that these little beasts can actually catch up with us and be biting us! So imagine – warm day, us tired, going uphill, trying hard to pedal and breathe to keep the rhythm, eagerly looking at the top of this f… hill and suddenly feeling something itchy here and there, and there, and there...aaaaaaaaaaaa! And there is really no solution – it is too hot to put more clothes on and any repellent we will just sweat out in half an hour.

If it comes to dealing with mosquitoes on a regular basis, human’s creativity goes beyond expectations; or actually I should say tourist, because locals somehow get used to them. In supermarkets you can find the whole section with anti-mosquitoes stuff; repellents, nets (starting from just a head cover and finishing on whole body suit), ‘smelly-smoky’ stuff (apparently coils work the best), there is even an anti-mosquito application for smart-phones! Some people told us also that some type of washing powder rubbed into skin works well…they might’ve tried to trick us though…However, everybody says that, at the end of the day, DEET is the only thing that really works. So how are we dealing with mosquitoes? We have, let’s call it, our anti-mosquitoes outfit, which is long trousers, long-sleeve top and buff to cover head and neck (they will bite through hair and some don’t even have hair…) and sometimes this is enough; but if they are very bad we spray clothes with DEET and use some herbal repellent for face and hands (DEET is apparently cancerous, so it shouldn’t be used directly on the skin and it can melt synthetic fabrics, so cotton clothes are best for it). Nothing creative, but old tested method.

On the early evening of a rainy and cold day of July the 10th we reached Dawson Creek - the historic 'Mile 0' of the Alcan! We have done over 2500km on this one of a kind road that winds through the forests, mountains and along the rivers and valleys of Alaska, Yukon and BC.

It's been very intense experience for us, especially that it was our first 2500km on the road; we know that we haven't been very good at sharing it on the blog (we can blame the wilderness and no access to anything:)), but we promise to make up for it!

So, that's us at the beginning of Alaska Highway (which for us was the end)

On the historic day of July the 10th we were invited for a dinner to celebrate this special moment. So we found the best restaurant in town, called White Spot, that apparently has been running since 1928, and enjoy ourselves as much as we could :)

Marta had Salmon rice bowl, which was grilled salmon with Shitake mashroom, red pepper and ginger sauce; raul ate his best-ever-tried veggie burger (wholemeal roll, roasted mushroom, fresh tomato and lettuce and this huge tofu burger) with home-made chips and we shared a huge plate of salad. Marta toasted with a local lager and raul traditionally with a cup of green tea:)Mmmmm, what a change after eating rice and cheese all the time....

Big thanks to Mrta's parents, who invited us for this dinner

Dziękujemy Mamusiu, dziękujemy Tatusiu!

Gracias Teresa, gracias Miroslaw!

hi everyone,

so the Alaska Highway is nearly finished; we are just 70km away from taking this historical picture at the other end of famous Alcan; if it stops raining (it's been pouring down the whole day today) we will get there by tomorrow evening.

I must say we feel a bit sentimental about this fact, we got used to Alcan, we got to like it, there is something special about this road - the history, the wilderness, its uniqueness, we will miss it...

And the wilderness is gone as well; there are flushable toilets on the rest areas, our mobiles have started to work, the Internet is fast...

People travel the Alaska Highway to go to the wild, to reach the "last frontier", to feel the shiver running down their spine, when their realize the immensity of the nature;

so, when you meet someone on the road one of the first questions is: how much wildlife have you seen? well, we have some trophies to show off :)

Black Bear, seen 14; most of the one we have seen just lazily chew on dandelions

Moose, aparently in plantiful up north; well, we've seen only 4

funny squirrel-like animal that was compulsively eating dandelion seeds

These are little monster; a real threat to our food!

Bald Eagle

Clumsy reindeer (here called caribou); no worries, by Christmas it'll be ready to deliver all your presents:)

Stone sheep, yes sheep even thouth it looks like a goat...

Mosquitos, seen and being bitten by countless number of this little beasts

Raven, plenty of them; important bird for the First Nation people

Bison (here called buffalo)

The best of this week ...

Hi folks,

We are already in BC with not many Km ahead to finish the Alaska Highway more than 40 days on the road, tough work but everything is worth it when you can see and enjoy places like that. It is called the Liard Hot Springs. When you arrive in a place like that to put into word what you see and what you feel is difficult for someone that is not a good writer, the closest we can do it is with those images.The water drips from a white rock reaching temperatures higher than 50C and getting cooler on its way down when it meets a small cold stream. You need just to swim up or down until you gain what is the right temperature for you in this paradise.

When the evening arrived the rain and the cold wind came. That was the greatest of the moments, hardly anyone around us, thunders, pouring down, all this steam coming from the pool creating fog that was covering the pool and the forest around making the place like any of those describes on the Lord of the Rings.

More photos!!!!

hi guys,

surprise! surprise!
check the photo section  (http://theamericasbycycle.blogspot.com/p/thanks-to.html) and enjoy :)
see ya on the road!

Canada, Yukon

Hi folks,

We have been more than two hours trying to work out the new settings to post pictures on the blog unsuccessfully so we are going to post few pics and once we sort out we will be back with more writing and more pics on the top of that also you have to see raul's face most of the time because we did not managed to convert the pictures into JPG

That is our first impression about Canada

xxx and speak you soon

Marta and raul