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“Now I remembered that the real world was wide and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had courage to go forth into its expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils:
- Jane Eyre

Boating and Biking to the Southern Hemisphere

Rob Lilwall
2007-12-01 15:03:42

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but it is even more unpleasant when you are alone, far from home and you haven?t had shower for a few days (and your head is spinning nauseously with images of imminent robbers, kidnappers and murderers).
3. One night as I lay in bed in a hosts house, I awoke to find somebody in my room rummaging though my things. I greeted the suspicious intruder with a friendly hello, at which point he bolted from the room and dashed out of the front door? unfortunately taking my wallet with him, but at least leaving me unharmed.

But there are many, many great aspects to the Philippines. The palm tree lined coastal roads, the gentle beaches, the clear seas, the smiling people. As it was so crowded everywhere, it was a rare nightfall when I was not offered a bed and a meal in a local church, village hall, or home. In fact I only had to put up my tent once in the whole country. A TV station who followed my ride with regular updates of my progress ensured that many Filipinos knew what I was up to before I even arrived.

Eventually, after a couple of weeks riding and then a bit of a wait on the southern coast (during which Christine managed to escape from her hard-working law firm to visit for a few days of extremely pleasant hanging out), I was given some deck space on a cargo ship heading across the sea to Indonesia. The cargo consisted of hundreds of sacks of little carbon brushes (apparently for cleaning ore from the mines), half a dozen aspiring business men and their wives, and one rather disheveled English cyclist. The crew took good care of us with big meals of rice and fish?and as we passed underneath smoking volcanic islands they would periodically chant their Muslim prayers Mecca-wards, kneeling and bowing their faces into the boiling western sun as it slinked below the empty, shimmering seas.

From my entry-port in Indonesia, I caught a passenger ferry to skirt around the edge of the archipelagos to land me finally on the Island of New Guinea. ...