Four of us on two wheels

Emilia loves children – I love cycling. We both love adventure and, for a few years now, we have loved each other too. After a cycling and hiking trip in the summer of 2013, we sat in a pub in Wrocław, impressed by our amazing experiences, and made plans for the future:

Our eldest daughter will soon be starting school – but a really big trip together before that would be great! So it has to happen before that. And another sibling would be great too. Now we had to juggle our schedules, rearrange our semester plans and choose destinations with as few nasty diseases as possible. A little later, the plan was in place, and our dream of having children came true in March 2015.

So we've been on the road since mid-December 2015. More precisely: Emilia (25), me (30), Livia (7) and Magdalena (1). Our destination: the end of the world. Our motivation: lots of pasta, iron willpower, penguins and, last but not least, delicious milk. Our chosen means of transport: a Patria-Terra touring bike, a single-track trailer from tout terrain and a step tandem from Hasebikes. Our equipment: durable, lightweight, wind and weatherproof and without any small parts that could be swallowed, please.

Flashback: 11 December 2015. Santiago de Chile, airport. 25 °C.

Sunshine. Exhausted, we stumble out of the plane. After 36 hours with two children and a total of four flights, all we want to do is get to our accommodation and sleep. We stand at the baggage carousel and collect our duffel bags, which have been tied up into handy packages. One, two, three – all here! Then our trailer, which has been made airworthy, also appears. Phew – lucky us, it looks undamaged at first glance.

Time passes – the baggage carousel is steadily emptying, with only a few seemingly abandoned bags sadly waiting to be collected by staff. Again and again, our eyes wander to the oversized baggage door – but it's no use, it remains closed; our bicycles don't seem to have made the same journey as us.

Where could they be now? Still in Panama City, our previous transfer airport? Or perhaps still in the Dominican Republic, where we had a stopover? Doubts creep in as to whether it really made sense to take the cheapest flight with three transfers. Well, in broken Spanish, we report the loss. It's a good thing we took a few courses beforehand, because no one here speaks English. Saddened, we then get into a taxi to the city centre. At least that works.

We booked a nice place to stay through Airbnb, which we are now extending for a few days while we wait for our bikes. After a few phone calls with Lufthansa, the situation becomes clear: something went wrong in Frankfurt, but the next flight will take the bikes non-stop to Santiago. A few days later, after much toing and froing at the airport, I am beaming with joy as I push the two huge boxes in front of me. From now on, everything runs like clockwork, and what begins now can only be described as a true cycling dream trip.

We follow the South American Pacific coast southwards for thousands of kilometres. Ushuaia is our first stop – the southernmost city in the world. Along the way, we encounter enormous diversity: In the rainforest, we battle our way through wet gravel paths; in the Argentine steppe, we brave absolute dryness and load over 20 litres of water onto our tube carriers; the unimaginable Patagonian wind demands enormous effort from us and our tent; and the end of autumn in Tierra del Fuego brings us not only the golden light of the often low sun, but also unpleasant weather with ice and snow. After almost four months, we finally roll down our last descent for the time being and stand overjoyed on the banks of the Beagle Channel!

We are taking a short break here and planning part 2 of our trip: a three-month journey through the Andean highlands of Bolivia and Peru.

Rugged four-thousand-metre passes, incredible child-friendliness, seemingly endless descents, forests of cacti and nights with double-digit sub-zero temperatures await us...