EPISODE 18
Life is Wild (Part 1)
Imagine that you are walking down the road near your home town in France when a friend calls you and invites you to join him on a bicycle tour. Since you don’t own a bike, you buy one over the Internet and call it Frieda. You pack your bags and three days later you are cycling with your friend in Portugal. You don’t know it yet, but this is the start of an adventure that will last at least two years, taking you to the tip of Portugal, into Spain, and then by sea, island-hopping across the Atlantic, with Frieda at your side. That is a very brief outline of André Plumeau’s story. On part one of this two-part episode, we will hear about André’s incredible journey from Porto in Portugal to the Republic of Cabo Verde.
Episode Transcript
André: I’m in Nevada, I’m riding the extra-terrestrial highway around Area 51.
Gabriel: That’s André Plumeau, calling in from Area 51 in Nevada and sounding himself like an alien. Following that unsuccessful first contact, I made a second attempt to hear about André’s remarkable journey months later at the San José International Airport. Costa Rica, not California. Have a listen:
And I can hear you actually better now than before. So it’s a win-win.
André: Perfect, perfect, alright. Let’s improve it and just try it.
Gabriel: Yeah, let’s do it. So…
Airport Public Address: Dear passengers… do not leave your luggage unattended at any time…
André: Yeah, I’m so sorry. I really tried to improve the things, but, I mean, thers’s always, always a flaw.
Gabriel: The incessant announcements in Spanish and English doomed that interview, although I did learn that you should leave Costa Rican seashells on the seashore, because there’s a hefty fine if you get caught with them at the airport. After another period of silence, I finally caught up with André at a Wi-Fi-enabled outpost in the jungle. The outcome was a story too fascinating and too unusual to be contained in just one episode.
Sandra: You’re listening to the Accidental Bicycle Tourist. In this podcast, you’ll meet people from all walks of life and learn about their most memorable bike touring experiences. This is your host, Gabriel Aldaz.
Gabriel: Hello bicycle touring enthusiasts! Welcome to part one of a two-part episode on the Accidental Bicycle Tourist podcast. I don’t know if today’s guest, André Plumeau, led an ordinary life in Alsace, France, prior to 2022. However, I do know that during the last two years, he has been embarking on an extraordinary adventure. It all began when André received a phone call from his good friend Daniel and impulsively purchased a bicycle that he named Frieda. In today’s first installment of the episode, you will hear about André’s travels by land and by sea, from Porto in Portugal to the Republic of Cabo Verde, an archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, off the west coast of Africa. Next time, in part two, we will continue André’s voyage across the Atlantic to various Caribbean islands and hear how André and Frieda became separated, bringing the bicycle touring to an abrupt end.
Gabriel: André, thank you so much for being a guest on the Accidental Bicycle Tourist podcast.
André: Well, thank you very much for inviting me and being a part of it.
Gabriel: You are referred to the show by Ida and Tilman, who were guests in the episode “It Takes Two,” from early in the year. And they said they met you on the road. They thought that you made a great accidental bicycle tourist and an excellent guest for the podcast. And so, I just wanted to hear how you got started with your bicycle tour. What was going on?
André: Right on. Right on. Well, that’s great. That’s coming from Tilman and Ida. Indeed, two great personalities I had the occasion to meet during this journey. So yeah, just let’s just jump straight into it. Why I could be a good interviewer for this podcast? Well, I started actually pretty wild and it never started in terms of being a bicycle journey. I’m not a cyclist. Officially, I was just gone for three days walking and then I got a phone call from my former roomie, Daniel. We used to share a flat together for four years. And he said, “Hey, you don’t want to go for a tour on bicycle?” And I was like, “Yeah, actually, why not?” The same day I started to pack my things. Within three days, I packed everything, I planned everything, more or less, and booked a ticket to Portugal, because this is where he was. He already was cycling, and I think at this point he himself already met Ida and Tilman too.
Gabriel: Wow, that’s a pretty quick decision on your part. And where exactly was home when you received that phone call from Daniel?
André: It’s in the northeast of France, close to German border. It’s located in between Strasbourg and Saarbrücken.
Gabriel: Okay, so a small town.
André: Yeah, exactly. In La Pampa.
Gabriel: Well, I just did a small family tour and the destination of that tour was Saarbrücken. So I was just in Saarbrücken and also we went through Strasbourg. We probably pedaled very close to your town.
André: That sounds insane and it’s definitely possible. At this point, whenever you come back to this place, let me know. I definitely know someone who… where you could pitch your tent.
Gabriel: Well, thank you. What nationality is Daniel?
André: Daniel is German.
Gabriel: How did you get a bicycle and all of your gear?
André: I was like, “Okay, he’s in Portugal. Let’s try to figure out a way to get a bike and stuff.” And I just did some research. I don’t remember any more the real name. I think it was Wallapop or something like this. It’s like the local eBay. The bicycle, when I bought it, was somewhere 100 kilometers east from Porto. And this is where I found Frieda. Frieda was the name of my bike later. There was in Porto, reunited with Daniel and with Frieda because he already got the bicycle a day before, since the seller actually sold it, but he was out of the country during the next couple of weeks. So since Daniel already was there, he just picked up the bike. He got it as a delivery, even more hilarious.
Gabriel: Okay. And what about your gear? What kind of setup did you have?
André: So my setup, yeah, this should definitely be mentioned. My setup, contrary to most thoughts and opinions, is pretty low key and so it was pretty rookie. At the beginning, I only had the bicycle and my backpack. And I soon realized that this is not the best setup. So I tried to find a solution and luckily, Portugal had like the big sports brand of France, Decathlon, where I could get a couple of things. So I got some side bags for the rear of the bicycle. I think I was there for what? Three hours probably to really try everything. It was funny because I could go inside in the shop with the bicycle. So I could try everything on site on the bicycle itself to see if it fits well or not. Basically that was it. I had the rear, the two bags, left and right, and I put my backpack on top of it. Most of you might know, probably, the big bags from this German brand with the yellow bags. Well my setup looked like this, but super cheap.
Gabriel: For the panniers, you were thinking about Ortlieb?
André: Exactly. Exactly. So just to list it up so that people can get an impression of what you need or maybe what you don’t need. So the entire bike, the bike was an old frame from Germany, McKenzie brand, from the ’90s as far as I know, and I got the bike for about 100 euros. With this came the bags. I think the bags were around 40. And of course then I bought a lot of different stuff like tubes, tires, a chain. Even with the tools and with the parts, maybe add another 150. So yeah, more or less 400. And everything else I had it from before with like the backpack with a tent and a sleeping bag.
Gabriel: Okay, that was your setup and then you met Daniel, who was your roommate, in Porto and then you started cycling south.
André: Exactly. So I arrived at Daniel with two beers. He was holding Frieda. We were reunited so we cheered up on this. But yeah, it’s true. So we went cycling from Porto, direction south, always direction south, until Faro basically. This was our route, always following the coast, right-handed. We went from Porto. I think the first day was actually a very, very crazy day. I mean, I was not a cyclist and I’m still not a cyclist, right? So I went to Decathlon and then we decided to drive some more because I went there and Daniel met me there later and we did insane 70 kilometers – 70, so seven zero – or seventy… actually a little bit more. It was crazy, but great for the first day. Daniel was swearing that the next day I’m going to have so much pain in my body, but no, actually I was alright. We slept, I think six hours, got up again and was ready to go. I was amazed that I was able to do it. I was not thinking about it. But Daniel also was really surprised since he already was cycling for some time that I can hold up with him. The way down from Porto, actually it rained the first night and it rained the second night too and it rained actually every day. The funny thing about all this is I already did this route and actually the same month, six years before, in a van, and I had great weather. I mean, it was fresh, but not cold. So you need a hoodie and maybe some pants at night. But this time with the bicycles, we got soaked up in the most crazy rainfalls I have ever seen in Portugal. Like it was not funny anymore. So I think pretty quick after the third or fourth day we were pretty exhausted, having actually literally rain every day. Basically you wake up in a wet environment and you pack wet things and at night when you just want to chill, you have to take out the wet things again. At some point it’s not nice anymore. I think we made it actually pretty, pretty quick to Sintra, 300 kilometers more or less, where later I met with Tilman and Ida. Not only Tilman and Ida, but also Domenico. He had an apartment, which was great because we could stay at his place for a couple of days. I think it was a total probably of 10 days or so. Like vacations.
Gabriel: I imagine. And then, after staying with them, you kept going south towards Faro.
André: Yeah.
Gabriel: You made it to the Algarve coast without incident and then you decided to go where next?
André: So yeah, kind of. So we went down from Lisboa to Faro, and from Faro we were heading to Spain. So basically there are two things. So of course, I mean it’s the end of Portugal. But second is Daniel had announced me that he has a kind of a date with his mom for Christmas and New Year’s celebration in Islas Canarias, in Canary Islands.
Gabriel: Okay.
André: We knew that until the 18th of December we will need to be in Huelva, because from Huelva he will take a ferry over to Islas Canarias. From Faro we took off. I started to have huge problems with my bike. I run flat a couple of times really quick. I think in one day, like four or five tubes. It was insane. It was a really unlucky day. And then we were on the road. I don’t remember anymore at night. We had pretty good speed because we really trusted the road. It was pretty new. The pavement was brilliant actually. We had a high pace. I was leading. All of a sudden I hit a huge pothole. And I mean it was a massive pothole. I was happy that I had the bike in hand and it was not freehanding. This could have been at the end, like literally. My front tire and my back tire immediately blew. They blew up and in the back I had definitely, yeah, damaged the rim. Daniel also hit the pothole because he was not ready. I think he was manipulating the phone at this time to change the music. He blew in it too but he didn’t have any major damage of it, except losing a couple of things off his luggage. I think he was just the speaker or something like this.
Gabriel: Two bikes taken out by one pothole.
André: Yeah, then we drove out on the next pullout to check what’s going on on my bicycle. My bicycle was fucked. The rim, the rear rim, it was broken, literally. It had a huge impact so it was not turning round anymore. And also it was displaced on the axle itself. And of course the tube was blown again and so we stopped actually there at this spot to decide to cook something. We had a good evening and a good dinner too and just a broken bike.
Gabriel: Nothing noodles can’t fix.
André: Exactly. Noodles make you happy in any kind of situation, right?
Gabriel: Yeah. Oh wow. What did you do the next day?
André: Well, the next day, yeah, just trying to fix this rim with the stone getting it more straight again with some lever and… yeah, some lever force basically.
Gabriel: I always say, “When in doubt get a bigger hammer.” Maybe you had a bigger stone to fix the rim.
André: Well, if I could have thrown the streets against the rim to make it fixable, yes of course I would have done that. Daniel had a tool to turn the… I don’t know how you call these, the insides of the rims, to tighten or to loose them. How you call this?
Gabriel: Oh, the spokes?
André: Probably. Sounds good to me. Speiche in German?
Gabriel: Yeah.
André: Bueno. So the spokes, to tighten them. We managed something that’s more or less was straight, which in fact was not straight at all. We got the tube in, we got the tire on it and we were able to continue. Meanwhile, I was contacting a couple of shops to get a new rim and stuff and many quoted me it was insane, but then we find a place which was on our route, about 40 kilometers we have to do with the setup of the rim, but we made it. We made it I think in two or three days, because I kept losing air and I didn’t have any tubes with me anymore so that even at the end we ended up because I didn’t have patches anymore. I think this one tube was patched, I don’t know, 12 times or something like this. I even ended up using duct tape. In the same night, one kilometer from the shop, we were at a gas station somewhere to put some pressure on it again, because I mean, we stopped all the time to fix the tube, but also we stopped all the time for me to put air again in the tire. I think we had a pace of one and a half kilometers. That was insane so…
Gabriel: Per hour.
André: Not per hour, but every time before I needed to stop to pump against some air in it with a hand pump, of course. No one really could find out what was the problem. Not even once we were at the place to replace the rim, no one could tell us. They were saying, “Yeah, you’re insane!” But yeah, they could provide a new rim, two new tires, a new tube and what else? I think that was it, more or less.
Gabriel: That’s plenty.
André: And a new saddle, but the saddle was for free. It was actually a funny thing because the saddle had 91, so my birth year on it, so I was like, “Oh, that’s funny coincidence.” But you couldn’t see it at the first because it was all black and only after some time I was wearing down the color and you could see a number through it. I was like, “Oh, that’s surprising.”
Gabriel: And then you headed towards Spain.
André: We’re heading towards Spain, exactly, not in the highest pace because we had actually a lot of time. We spent a couple of time at the beach sometime or at the beach café or at the café as along the road. I mean, we started to drink a lot of coffees inside of Portugal because one, they’re very good and second, actually they’re super cheap. And it’s nice to have a coffee every time when it’s raining. Sometimes we had, I think, 10 times a coffee in a day.
Gabriel: Well, that’ll also give you energy.
André: Exactly, exactly. If it’s not eating a lot, at least you get a bunch of energy to continue. Maybe if Daniel hears this, maybe this was the reason why I’ve always had so much explosive energy when kicking in at pedals. Oh, and then also something happened to Daniel’s bike. He lost a connector, a kind of, I don’t know what it is, on his leather saddle. A very good leather saddle, he said. He’s very satisfied with it, I forgot the name.
Gabriel: Maybe Brooks? The Brooks saddle.
André: The Brooks saddle, exactly. He was a really huge fan of it until this day when we lost the connector and I was like, “How is it possible to lost this kind of connector?” Because it was actually under tension with another screw. It didn’t make any sense that this thing got lost without him noticing before that something was loose. But yeah, we lost this. But it was funny because we were able to manage to fix it to continue for the next, I think it was 10 kilometers, 8 or 10 kilometers. But of course it was a pain in the ass.
Gabriel: Literally.
André: Literally, exactly.
Gabriel: Oh boy, wow. You had your share of problems. Since you said you were going to the Canary Islands, were you then headed to Huelva to get the ferry from there to Gran Canaria?
André: Exactly. So Huelva was one of the two ports where it could have been leaving from and the other one probably Cádiz, I think Cádiz. But we decided for Huelva, since Cádiz was more far away. And actually this was a turning point too for me. Yeah, Daniel was asking me, “So what are you doing for the last days of the year?” And Daniel was like, “Yeah, listen, I was talking with my mom. If you want to, you’re kindly invited to join us to Christmas and New Year’s Eve in Canary Islands.” I was like, “Oh wow, this is a super, super nice invitation. I appreciate that.” But I was pretty broke at this time. The ferry was something about 140 euros, one ride. So I was like, okay, but still I will be stuck on the island. I’m not sure if this makes so much sense for me. But I really wanted to go and then Daniel had a really nice idea. It was making a kind of, how you call this? A shout out or something like this, like to call on an audience on his Instagram. So we decided to do a fund collect, kind of, where you could do a donation if you wanted us to ride together in Islas Canarias, in Canary Islands. He put this online and actually the crowd, like the people were following us or following him – I think especially was the biggest amount of people – enabled me to get tickets to Islas Canarias, to Canary Islands, to go together with Daniel there and to celebrate Christmas and New Year’s Eve together. Yeah.
Gabriel: Wow. And who says social media is all evil?
André: Yeah, who knows? Maybe it’s not.
Gabriel: Well, it worked for you, free ticket to the Canary Islands.
André: Exactly. It was insane. At this point again, I want to thank you, everybody who helped me on this. It was a great opportunity to continue this journey without a plan, basically. The next chapter was OK, Canary Islands, which was at this time not clear for me too. I never knew that I will ever go to Spain with the bicycle. Daniel and me, we made it to Huelva and actually there’s another story. I just would like to tell it because it’s pretty funny and surprising too. To make it to Huelva in between of Portugal and Spain, we had a section which was displayed on the map as being a regular road for us to drive, so we just followed that, not realizing that all of a sudden we actually were on the Autobahn, on the highway. We were in a roundabout and we had, like, this option to go to the real road without toll, without being a highway, so avoid highways on Google Maps. This story actually is about to not use Google Maps when you’re cycling. It’s not the best companion, trust me. We went down to this place and we would have made 40 kilometers plus if we would have taken the legal way. So Daniel and me, we were like deciding what are we doing, do we go to the highway or not. Of course we decided because we were like lazy boys and it was already late in the day and we decided let’s go to this Autobahn because it was 5 kilometers versus 40. I was leading our, how do you say that? Our team. I was front, I was cycling front and I couldn’t see Daniel anymore and he called me, telling me, “Dude, dude, I have the cops behind me, they’re escorting me.” I was like. “What the fuck?” “Yeah, don’t care, just continue, don’t stop, you’re gonna find me.” Of course I went out, but I was like waiting and waiting, waiting for more than 10 minutes, I was like, I was not that much ahead of Daniel. I turned around and I mean I was not paying attention to what really happened around me. It was only one-directional road and at the same time the cops pulled out of the highway. Daniel in front, this was so stupid, luckily we could avoid one ticket but indeed Daniel got a ticket for riding a bicycle on the highway.
Gabriel: How much was it?
André: It was 100 euros.
Gabriel: Phew, that’s pricey.
André: That was pricey, yeah, of course. I mean, we knew about the risk but we were really not expecting anyone to show up.
Gabriel: Couldn’t you say that it was Google’s fault or they were really not very friendly?
André: Okay, they were not really friendly and of course we tried it.
Gabriel: Well at least you only got one ticket and not two.
André: Exactly, at least this was only one ticket. We knew we were playing with fire. I have to admit I still did it a couple of times after on my journey so obviously I didn’t learn enough. Then we made it to Huelva and in Huelva we had our camp on a hill somewhere pretty central inside of the city. As I told you before, I was already doing all this journey, the same path more or less on a van six years before. Then I went to Morocco and I came back, 2018. And in 2018 I was meeting with Eike. Eike is a guy from Hamburg and we used to go and climb in El Chorro which is a southeastern part of Spain. So this is where we met. We met a couple of times afterwards. We actually had a good contact but then came Covid and he got married, he got a child, so our contact got pretty loose. We didn’t have any news from each other I think for two years. And then cycling through the streets in Huelva, I bumped into this van which somehow looked familiar and it had a HH Kennzeichen – HH plate from Hamburg, Hansestadt Hamburg – and I was like, “Hmmm, this looks even more familiar.” And I was like, “Ah, look who is there. Eike.” And Eike was like, “Who’s that? No! It’s André.” And yeah, this is pretty funny because we just met randomly after not having contacts for yeah two, maybe three years, and found out that the same day we have a ferry to take in the same direction to Canary Islands. So that was super hilarious.
Gabriel: Hold on he was on the same ferry?
André: Yeah, he was also on the same ferry. We were on the same ferry.
Gabriel: Amazing.
André: It was super amazing. Also because from Huelva to the actual ferry port by bicycle it was also more time. Thanks to Eike we were able to just load the bicycles inside of the van. We didn’t take anything apart, we just loaded them as they were and made it very very comfortable to the terminal of the ferry, without having to drive, I don’t know, I think it was 12 kilometers.
Gabriel: Nice.
André: Since this day we call two times, probably, a month. Yeah, we got our connection back.
Gabriel: Excellent.
André: In Huelva on the 18th of December 2022 we made it in direction of Canary Islands, yeah Gran Canaria, where we arrived 37 hours later I think.
Gabriel: And then you spent some time off the bicycles with Daniel’s mom and celebrating the holidays?
André: Exactly. We arrived in Las Palmas – I think is the capital of Gran Canaria – and we were supposed to meet his mom in Maspalomas. It’s on the other side of the island more or less. Yeah we cycled the same day so we arrived, wow, pretty early in the morning I think it was 4:30 maybe 5. We first cycled to the beach got a coffee and then decided to ride all the way down to Maspalomas, We celebrated Christmas together, very low key, very nice. We celebrated a very crazy New Year’s Eve together. Like, literally crazy. During this time actually happened something magical. We were celebrating Christmas together, and I think on 27th, it’s the birthday of my grandma, I decided to drive out of Maspalomas and to go to the harbor. I mean I was not feeling uncomfortable because I really like Daniel and of course his mom too. I just wanted to give them a little bit of space and so decided to go to the harbor. We have been on the ferry and we heard people talking about sailing over the Atlantic and stuff like that, and we were super hooked on the idea, Daniel and me. We said like, “Yeah, okay, we could try to do that.” I was like, “But how do people do that?” “I have no idea.” And we kept on listening actually to these people who were talking about this on the boat and Daniel already watched some things about that and he said, “Obviously, they go into the harbour and talk with people.” Okay, so we had a kind of a new challenge, to get over the Atlantic we said. We had actually no idea what all this was about, so I was sitting there on the bench drinking a beer, smoking a joint, and then there was like a boat coming in. It was funny because I was sitting on this bench just in front of an empty lot inside of the harbor. A boat came in and the captain talked to me, if I could just catch the line because he would like to park here. And I was like, “Yeah of course.” So I catch the line, I catch the other line. He went to the capitanería in the marina to do his paperwork and as he came back I was still there, enjoying the view over the harbor and the sea. He was like, “Do you want to drink a beer?” I was like, “Yeah, sure.” “Come aboard.” So I hopped aboard, had a beer, two, a couple more. We kept drinking until four or five in the morning. We were talking about literally everything and then he was like, “Okay next week I plan on sailing south from Canary Islands, Gran Canaria, to Cabo Verde.”
Gabriel: The Republic of Cabo Verde is an African island country consisting of ten volcanic islands. Here’s a very brief history. Portuguese explorers discovered the archipelago in the 15th century and soon settled on the previously uninhabited islands. In the 16th century, Cabo Verde became prosperous due to its strategic position along African slave trade shipping routes. When the slave trade finally declined in the 19th century, so did Cabo Verde’s wealth. Cabo Verde gained its independence from Portugal in 1975 and today the country is a stable democracy focused on tourism and foreign investment.
André: And I was like, “Okay that’s cool,” and he was like, “I like you. If you want to come with me, this is your cabin.” And he brought me to a cabin. I watched at the cabin and I kind of moved in the same night. The next morning, we woke up and it was like, “Have you been serious about what you said last night?” “What, sailing together down to Cabo Verde? Yeah of course.” It’s like, “Okay, that’s cool.” That was a new call for a new chapter.
Gabriel: Had you discussed what to do after the time with Daniel’s mom? Did you have a joint plan or was it completely open?
André: He was planning a bicycle tour around the world on a duration of four years, so his plan was to get back from Canary Islands to Europe to continue cycling along the coast I think, then to get back to France. And I think he said that one year after he started he wanted to be in Istanbul.
Gabriel: Okay.
André: I was like, “Yeah, let’s do this. This sounds nice. I have time. I can do that too.” We were thinking about this and we are considering how tight or how much he sticks to his actual plan, if he wants to change his plan. It was pretty quick that we decided, “Yeah, let’s see if we can find a boat to South America,” because Daniel wanted to go to South America. I was like, “Hey man, if you find a boat I go everywhere.” I always wanted to go to Mexico because of the street food.
Gabriel: Okay. How did your relationship with Daniel evolve during your bicycling time together? You were roommates before but on a bike tour you’re together 24/7.
André: Yeah, we were lucky because we knew each other before, but basically we evolved from kind of strangers to roomies to friends. I think we learned a lot from each other and also about each other. How the other worked in let’s say kind of stressful situations. As you said we were 24/7 together more or less and we were going through anything together. So whatever it was it was shared. When it was raining it was raining not only for him it was raining for me too. If a tube of me was breaking it was kind of tube breaking for him too because his teammate is struggling. Or with his saddle we managed to fix something together and so on and so on. I think during this journey our friendship just got more intense on actually many many levels.
Gabriel: Excellent. After your encounter with this sailor you talked to Daniel and said, “Hey here’s a chance for us to get at least to Cabo Verde and then maybe even further.” How did that go? Did you think he could come along with you?
André: I have been on the boat and the next day I straightaway told Daniel about it. Hey man, for me it was, like, very surprising too, I mean from one day to another. I mean, you were somehow looking for it, but once you have the opportunity, it’s like real, like, you’re not, like, only talking about it, you’re about to take a decision, maybe also for your life. So yeah, I was trying to get a better impression of the boat because I had no idea about the boat ever. I was walking about back and forth and I saw many, many, many flaws of the boat that did not make me feel very comfortable. So this is how I learned that just before they came into the harbor in Gran Canaria they were hit by a storm at Christmas. Six-, seven-, eight-meter-high waves, which broke in into the cockpit and from the cockpit the water got down and stuff. So actually many things have been breaking and, I mean, you don’t know the person so he can tell you everything. Maybe things have been broken since some time and he never managed to look after it. Maybe it’s true that he has really been through a storm but overall it doesn’t make you feel so well. Also as soon as you try to clean up the boat you see a couple of things, closets and stuff on the boat, that you start to ask yourself questions. Once I discovered that we have water inside of the boat I was really not comfortable at all anymore about this idea. I was doing the electric stuff because I’ve been working with some electric installations before. I’m not an electrician but I have a common sense and very good understanding of it. So after two days, for me it was possible to rebuild the entire electric network on the boat, because nothing worked. Not the generator from the engine, not the onshore electricity from the marina. We didn’t have electricity on the boat. However, it was a short circuit. I was able to rebuild it because the 12-volt was completely fucked up.
Gabriel: That doesn’t sound very prudent, sailing with no electricity.
André: It could have happened that it was a short circuit after the water came inside of the boat. I don’t think that he has been sailing without electricity before.
Gabriel: No.
André: This is a funny story inside a funny story. When I came to this harbor, so before I ever met anybody, any sailor, anything, I met a couple of people who were hitchhiking, who were actively looking for a boat to get from Gran Canaria to somewhere else. And it’s funny because I saw them a couple of times later on many other places where I’ve been to. And I realized how many backpackers actually have been there to look for a boat. I don’t want to lie but I think there were at least 150 people looking for a boat.
Gabriel: Wow.
André: For me it was a very easy task, right? I mean I was just sitting there smoking a joint, meeting a guy and he says, “Okay, welcome on board.” Yeah, that was pretty funny. And also later Daniel was in the harbor too to look for a boat and said, “Dude, you have become legend.” I was like, “Why do I have become legend?” “People all over know you as the bicycle tourist who found a boat in three hours.” Yeah, I met other people, like other sailors or captains or whatever. And I was asking one to please come on the boat and to check this. I need somebody else to see this and to tell me his opinion. Maybe I’m – I don’t know why – super anxious about something or blah or bloop or whatever. Because usually I’m not. I mean, I can find an adventure and I take it. But something told me, okay, somebody else should look at it. Before he went on the boat, he was like, “These are unsinkable boats,” and he explained to me that at this time they made this type of boat with a hull which could not sink and stuff like this. This was already good news.
Gabriel: I think every harbor has a boat called the Unsinkable II.
André: And he checked, of course, the inside of the boat. He looked also at my electric work I did. He was like, “Okay, that’s pretty well done.” I showed him the water and he was like, “Yeah, I understand that you’re worried, but you don’t have to be worried about that. A boat without water inside is not a boat.”
Gabriel: Okay, I’m not sure about that advice.
André: Well, at this point I was also like, “Is this a joke now or is this really saying about sailboats?” And what I can tell you today is I have been on 10 different boats in total to get where I finally got off the boat. Every boat has kind of water inside.
Gabriel: That’s interesting. My wife is a skipper, so I’ve gone sailing with her a few times and I don’t think there’s ever been water on our boat, but we also haven’t sailed in the Atlantic. So maybe that could be the difference. Maybe the waves are just bigger in the Atlantic.
André: Well, I cannot really tell because I have only been really sailing in the Atlantic and the Caribbean. On lakes too, but since on lakes we don’t have waves, I cannot tell about it.
Gabriel: I’m curious to find out what was the decision. I mean, you have you, Daniel, and the two bicycles. What happened?
André: Before I left from Las Palmas, the capital of Gran Canaria, back to Maspalomas, I was talking with the captain who told me, “If everything goes right, we leave on January the third.” So kind of in four days. I was like, “OK.” he presented the crew, a guy from Belgium who I met before too, himself. So we were only three on the boat. So I went back to Daniel and to Martina, I think on the 31st of December. We were celebrating New Year and we were talking about what happened on the boat and my impression and things. Daniel, he would like to go to Cabo Verde. He still had a visit from his mom, I think, until the 4th of January. So he didn’t want it to leave with the captain.
Gabriel: So that was it. Daniel was going to stay back.
André: Exactly, exactly. So as I came back to Las Palmas, surprisingly, the captain’s wife – or his girlfriend, I cannot say – came for New Year’s Eve and so she was about to come with us too. We were about to leave from Las Palmas to Cabo Verde. Boa Vista was the destination.
Gabriel: And the skipper was from Spain?
André: The skipper? Yes, the skipper was from Málaga. Ruben.
Gabriel: And this was his boat?
André: Yes, it was his boat, exactly. A really nice boat. And the name of the boat was Life is Wild. Since this day, Life is Wild became the motto of this journey. Actually, Daniel and me, we have been celebrating for this motto, life is wild, for New Year’s Eve, 2023, because, yeah, we were really looking forward to continue this travel together. We made from la vida loca, it was the evolution to life is wild, la Vida salvaje.
Gabriel: That’s not a huge evolution, they are almost synonymous. André, are you there?
André: I’m there, yeah. I was listening outside, we are having a thunderstorm getting close again. It’s common that there is a thunderstorm here.
Gabriel: Oh, okay, back to then the decision about who would go when.
André: So we talked about what is the consequence, if only one finds a boat or if only one leaves, how are we going to continue to journey together. Daniel and me, we decided, okay, I leave with this boat and that after his mom leaves, he’s going to cycle back to Las Palmas too, in order to find a boat. So I left on the third and Daniel, the day after, came back to Las Palmas, where he finally also became a boat hitchhiker. In fact, this kind of task is not so funny with a bicycle, because there is a lot of competition. Many, many people who try to find boats and then you are the guy with the bicycle and people don’t want to have a bicycle on the boat or whatever.
Gabriel: Could Daniel have gone with you had he decided to just leave a couple of days earlier? Would there have been room on the Life is Wild boat for him and his bicycle?
André: Daniel didn’t want to leave from Maspalomas to Las Palmas because of course he had a visit from his mom and she was only staying one more day or two more days. At the same time, so for me, in my opinion, there was room on the boat for one more person and one more bicycle too. In the end, it really came down to they have to meet and to talk to each other, Daniel and the captain. And unfortunately, they never saw each other to talk about it.
Gabriel: Now it’s early January and you set sail for Cabo Verde.
André: I’ve been on the water for seven days, for one thousand six hundred kilometers, sailing from Las Palmas to Boa Vista. So of course we called afterwards. It was difficult because at this time I was illegal in the country. That’s another story. Then we called and we were like updating each other about how’s it going. He was trying to find a boat, but obviously it was very difficult. Later he decided to stop the search. He really got demotivated because the sailing season was over. Like there is a sailing season to cross the Atlantic, which goes usually from November until mid-April because of the hurricane season taking off. So you have to understand that the hurricanes are, like, kind of starting in Africa, getting more power crossing the Atlantic and then impacting. So yeah, in April, obviously he rented an apartment and decided to stay in Canary Islands until the next season.
Gabriel: Those one or two days ended up changing everything because Daniel ended up staying for so much longer while you left.
André: Exactly.
Gabriel: You had said that you had traveled one thousand six hundred kilometers in seven days or something? That doesn’t seem possible on a sailboat.
André: One thousand miles. Aren’t one thousand miles one thousand six hundred kilometers?
Gabriel: Yeah.
André: Then it’s totally, totally true.
Gabriel: But in seven days?
André: Yeah. What are you expecting?
Gabriel: Okay. And you were sailing.
André: Yeah. So tell me, what are you expecting? What are you thinking?
Gabriel: If you’re going very, very fast on a sailboat that’s maybe ten knots, ten miles per hour.
André: I think we had an average of six and a half knots, something like this. We had pretty good winds and we had a very tight course too.
Gabriel: Okay. So six and a half knots, that’s good. That makes sense because ten is very fast.
André: Yeah. Ten is super fast.
Gabriel: Yeah. Ten is very fast. One thousand miles divided by 6.5. That’s a hundred and fifty three hours of sailing divided by seven. That’s twenty-two hours per day of sailing. Then you haven’t stopped.
André: We were sailing twenty-four hours a day.
Gabriel: Ah, you were sailing the entire time.
André: Yeah. We never stopped sailing.
Gabriel: That’s the difference. That’s crazy. So, at night it was just on autopilot and that’s it.
André: So okay. Okay. Okay. Now it’s getting, actually now things are getting more crazy. So we are out on the sea. We just stopped motoring because at the beginning you need to use the engine to get out of the harbor and then we were out and then we started to take out the sails and everything. The captain explained us some things. I mean, I was… I’m super grateful for the captain I had because he managed me to really gain, let’s say a self-consciousness or to gain experience about the thing I’m about to do with ease. So I really didn’t feel uncomfortable at any times. It’s actually the opposite. He was able to put a lot of confidence in me after he saw how I was working. So he explained basic things of the boat, safety and stuff, pretty quickly. I understood it. And then we moved on to more technical things about sails, about how it works, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, many, many things. So meanwhile we were sailing out for the first couple of miles. We later wanted to put on the autopilot and trying to start our autopilot, well, we realized that we don’t have an autopilot.
Gabriel: Okay.
André: So latest at this point, on one side, I was like, it’s good that Daniel is not here. And at the other side, I was like, now we need one more person because this is going to be exhausting. And it’s exactly this. So our crew was our captain and three people: his girlfriend, the Belgium guy, Sylvain, and me. Basically no one, than the captain knew something about sailing. The girlfriend, his wife, girlfriend didn’t do basically anything. I mean, she provided us with food and with drinks. They were super nice, but she didn’t interact with the boat itself. The day was cut into three persons, which is eight, but doing eight hours straight, we decided we’d rather go four hours. So each of us had two shifts during a day of four hours for a total of eight hours.
Gabriel: Sounds like you could also call yourself an accidental sailor.
André: So yeah, we came out, we were sailing. We realized after a couple of miles and hours that we don’t have autopilot. It’s funny because the captain asked us a thing. We literally don’t have any idea of it, but he asked us, “How is this going? Can we manage this? Can we do this?” I mean, I knew about it. We’re going to be on water for seven days. I was like, I have very good management, sleep management. So I was confident about it. I was like, “Yeah, of course we can do that.” At the same time, st this point, I already felt pretty confident and I was like, “Yes, this sounds like a very good adventure.”
Gabriel: I mean sailing a boat is not like riding a bicycle. You don’t just grab onto the helm and steer this way and that way. You have to worry about the wind direction and the wind speed and the angle of the sails and you need to tack and you need to jibe. It’s a lot to keep track of. I know that from personal experience. But still you managed to keep the sailboat on course and you said you only had previous experience on a lake and yet it wasn’t so difficult for you.
André: Yeah, of course. It’s not bad.
Gabriel: I think it’s fair to say you guys were an inexperienced crew, but you still managed to reach the island of Boa Vista on Calvo Verde. This is really developing into a crazy story.
André: This is indeed a very crazy story. If you wan’t, we can make several episodes of it. Whatever is your format, I don’t know about it, but just saying that.
Gabriel: Stay tuned for part two of Life is Wild coming up next time on the Accidental Bicycle Tourist. For those of you who’ve already voted for your favorite moments of the 2024 season, thank you very much. And if you haven’t voted, this is a reminder to please do so. The email address for the podcast is feedback at accidental-bicycle-tourist.com.
Gabriel: The transcript for this episode is available on the Accidental Bicycle Tourist website. I welcome feedback and suggestions for this and other episodes. You’ll find a link to all contact information in the show notes. If you would like to rate or review the show, you can do that on your favorite podcast platform. You can also follow the podcast on Instagram. Thank you to Anna Lindenmeier for the cover artwork and to Timothy Shortell for the original music. This podcast would not be possible without continuous support from my wife Sandra. And thank you so much for listening. I hope the episode will inspire you to get out and see where the road leads you.
André: Okay, we have a lag of six seconds now. Repeat your question, please.