"The ticket to nowhere was a gift from my grandfather.

My grandfather. An extraordinary and terrifying being.

I think I had just turn eleven when he gave me the ticket."

(Luis Sepulveda 1995)

At the age of 28 we are going to put the 11 year old's ticket in to use. We are not going to

claim that we are the only ones who have cashed in this symbolic entity, but Sepulveda's

dream of the unknown are as alive in us as in the 11 year old. It is one of the driving forces

behind our trip and this site.

I got my first atlas at the age of ten, and travelled around the globe several times within the

safety of my room. With an early interest in maps and a grandfather with whaleteeth as

evidence of his stories of whalefishing along the coast of Tierra del Fuego, South America

have long been an unattainable dream. From that time on the adventurerer's spirit has been

simmering beneath the surface, and only been allowed to run free a couple of times.

In fear of making this introduction too pompous, we will now elegantly glide into a more

practical presentation of our trip.

The thought of biking in South America was lit a few years ago, when Knut Morten

introduced the idea of biking through Chile. The original idea was to bike from the southern

most point of Chile to the nothern most point, but as time past by we got more and more

ambitious. Ambitious to the point where we now are including almost all of South America in

our travelling plans.

The preparations have been going on for a year and a half. In the beginning as the simple

exchanging of ideas, for later on to be escalated to more practically oriented decisions.

This planning have been done a lot of the time by mail or by phone since we have been

students of different universities. Knut studying at the University of Aarhus and Knut Morten

at the University of Oslo.

Still the most important part of the preparations have been done on the bike. This includes

many relativly long training rides, varying in distance from daytrips in Norway and Denmark,

Malasya and Singapore ( Knut Morten ), to last summer's final test when we biked from

Kirkenes to Oslo. This was a trip of approximately 2700 km. ( If you are interested in

reading more about this trip, you can look it up in our section of previous trips. Here you will

find a map, a travelogue and some pictures from this trip).

After returning home to Oslo this last summer with no more injuries than a couple of sore

knees, the fall hunt for sponsors got under way with the first stumbling emails. Fairly early in

our search we got a positive reply from our biggest and most important contributor,

Intersport Norway. Without their help our expences would have been

much higher.

The media coverage and sponsors very often go hand in hand. For coverage we started by

agreeing to send our local newspaper some travelogues, but have since then included some

other arrangements. A lot of the coverage of our trip will be through our website. Through

which it is also possible to contact us.

Our route will in most parts keep us along the South American shoreline. We start the 12. of

february in Rio de Janeiro, and ride southward through Uruguay and Argentina. Then we turn

around and go back north through Chile, Bolivia, the Amazonian rain forrest and Venezuela.

All together 8 months and approximatly 15000 km. Venezuela will probably be our final

destination before we have to get on a plane back to Norway. This suggested route is by no

means etched in stone, and will probably have to give way to some improvisation as we

travel.

The purpose of our trip is something as selfish as enjoying our own experiences, and we

want to share these with the readers of this site. It is possible to write your name on a list

which in turn will notify you when our site is updated.

We hold the 11 year old's ticket in our hand and can hardly wait to get going...