That'll do. After almost 16,000km and 13 months on the road we have arrived home in the Hutt Valley of New Zealand. We arrived in Wellington Harbour on a beautiful day and formed a peloton of friends and family to ride 30km to Baden's sister's house in Upper Hutt to signal the end of our journey. It has been a weird ol' month since we've been back. Baden really misses the cycle touring lifestyle while Shelley's enjoying being inside again. Thanks for listening to our series of podcasts. They've ...
Jun 02, 2016•32 min
We’re almost a stone’s throw away from home in this week’s How Are You? Where Are You? podcast. A lot of road has been traveled between Christchurch and the top of the South Island and we’ve been blessed to meet some brilliant people as well as enjoying outstanding autumn weather. We thought we had left all the beautiful scenery behind when we left the West Coast but the mainland has continued to delight especially when riding the lonely Rainbow Track through the country’s biggest farm. The weat...
May 02, 2016•49 min
The West Coast of New Zealand's South Island covers the distance between the two major cities in the North Island, Wellington and Auckland, but this part of the country only has 33,000 thousand residents and bugger all cell phone coverage. This week's How Are You? Where Are You? podcast follows our journey up the coast and introduces some of the people we met along the way. All of them outstanding citizens. This trip home is blowing any stereotypes we had about the people of this land out of the...
Apr 19, 2016•43 min
Like the hopeful miners of the 1860s New Zealand Gold Rush, we too struck the precious metal while cycling through central Otago. In this 40th episode of the How Are You? Where Are You podcast we follow in the footsteps, or even the cycle tracks, of the kiwi pioneers along the mighty Clutha Mata-Au River where we find signs of the bygone days. What the hills surrounding the Clutha lack in altitude, they make up for in stature. They hem you in as you ride down their valleys. Baden hones his sheep...
Apr 14, 2016•38 min
We became members of a cycle touring gang in this week's How Are You? Where Are You? podcast. As we headed into the remote Catlins region of southern New Zealand we were joined by a couple of good buggers from the States. Brian and Nick taught us a great deal and we had a brilliant time riding through some of the most stunning landscapes these isles have to offer. Laughs and cheese rolls were shared on the journey and Nick's mechanical nous came to the fore when Baden's bike Fausto suffered his ...
Apr 04, 2016•43 min
We've made it to New Zealand and without trying to sound deliberately cheesy, it's blowing our minds. Our journey so far has seen us arriving in Queenstown in the South Island (Te Waipounamu) and riding out into the Central Otago wilderness. We visited the magic of Fiordland and pedalled into the land of good buggers in Southland. This was recorded this a few days ago on Rakiura or Stewart Island - a beautiful blip of land at the southern tip of Aotearoa. Life in New Zealand is expensive but we'...
Mar 29, 2016•40 min
Apologies in advance for a navel gazing episode of the How Are You? Where Are You? podcast. We’re finding it difficult to make sense of our trip and what we have learned. It’s also not easy to try and explain why we have decided to cut our journey short but we give it all a crack for you here. It’s strange to think that were are about to start cycle touring in our own country. After eight years away there’s a whole lot of reacquainting to get done but they reckon the South Island is stunning so ...
Mar 12, 2016•39 min
We have found the end of our road in Latin America. This trip will be London to Lima. After an agonising decision, we have come to the conclusion that a year is enough and in this week's How Are You? Where Are You? podcast we discuss why our bikes will travel in a plane home from Peru's capital. The cycling journey isn't over however. We still plan to reintegrate into life in New Zealand by exploring New Zealand's South Island by bike starting on March 13. Every day is still an adventurous day i...
Mar 01, 2016•45 min
We have left the desert behind and have climbed back into the mountains following the River Santa to Huaraz in Peru's famous Cordillera Blanca. It's the world's biggest mountain range outside of the Himalayas. Seems we can't get enough of the Andes. You get a bit of a cycle touring warts and all How Are You? Where Are You? podcast this week. Our stomachs have been rumbling (in a bad way) and Shelley experienced some strange esophageal feelings while on her bike. Baden's lunch will annoy pet love...
Feb 21, 2016•42 min
We have been hammering it through Northern Peru. How did we get so fit? It seems like a lifetime since we were plodding through France trying to get used to this whole cycle touring thing if you consider a life to be 10 months. Check out the map on our website howareyouwhereareyou.com to see our effort over the first 11 days of February. We talk about why we've been putting the pedal to the rubber-soled shoe if that's an acceptable use of the phrase. There's been a lot of nothing riding through ...
Feb 12, 2016•34 min
We say goodbye to the Andes and hello to the the hot and steamy coast in this week's How Are You? Where Are You? podcast. The Andes gave us one of our most traumatic days of our trip and then one of the most magical. All in the space of two days. We have seen some jaw-dropping sights and try our best to turn the vision into words. Luckily we have some photos to help out. Check them out on our blog at howareyouwhereareyou.com It's sure strange to be sweating profusely again. What a strange enduri...
Jan 31, 2016•42 min
We have climbed to the second highest capital city in the world. Somehow by arriving in Quito we have acclimatised to become human mountain goats with some strange ability to breathe at 4000 metres. Quito took a while to capture our hearts but a walk around the city's historic centre and a visit to the home of Oswaldo Guayasamin, one of Ecuador's most celebrated artists, did the trick. As always we have met some interesting characters on the way here and the transition back to using U.S. dollars...
Jan 23, 2016•38 min
It felt like Colombia didn't want to let go of us and we certainly didn't want to let go of it. We arrived in Pasto on New Year's Day, only 100km from the border with Ecuador. We thought we would maybe rest a couple of days and go on our merry way but Colombia had more kindness and adventure in store for us yet. We ended up staying a week in Pasto (a long time off the bike for us) to immerse ourselves in their Carnaval de los Blancos y Negros. The carnival of the whites and the blacks sounds a b...
Jan 19, 2016•37 min
Welcome to our special edition #Festive500 podcast. The Festive500 is the brainchild of the cycle clothing designer Rapha and is designed to get people riding their bikes between Christmas Eve and New Years Eve at a time when most of us are keen to get on the turps and stuff ourselves full of mince pies. The challenge is to ride 500 kilometres in eight days and we thought we might as well take up the task here in Colombia since we were planning on riding south anyway, although perhaps not this q...
Jan 03, 2016•44 min
It's all about Climbing, Coffee and Christmas in the latest Colombian instalment of the How Are You? Where Are You? podcast. We've scaled some pretty tough hills during our time here but they were all made to look like midgets next to the giant Alto de Letras. We bring you the story of how we inched up the world's longest road climb. Alto de Letras sits at the northern end of Colombia's coffee axis. They're the third biggest producer of the stuff in the world so we've seen acres and acres of tre...
Dec 23, 2015•36 min
We come to you this week from Boggers a.k.a Bogota, the capital of Colombia and the third-highest capital city on this green earth. (If you don't count Bhutan's capital Thimphu, which we ignored in this podcast) It was a long but beautiful slog to haul ourselves up here and what a huge and disorganised city we found at the top of the climb. However, the people have been fantastically friendly and this place has a rich history to explore. On the way here, we stayed in some strange and wonderful p...
Dec 13, 2015•42 min
Seriously, if you are planning to come to Colombia with the sole aim of snorting cheap crap up your nose, you are massively missing out. It's a cycle touring paradise and in this week's How Are You? Where Are You? podcast we team up with our new buddies Shaggy and Lenin to discover all the joys of the beautiful Antioquian countryside. After eight months on the road, a new style of touring has dawned on us and we're bloody excited. We share all about that. We discover a perhaps little known link ...
Dec 01, 2015•45 min
We've just gone and cycled across Central America! How about that? We look back on the best of times in this week's How Are You? Where Are You? podcast. We talk about how to cross the Darien Gap between Central and South America and why we opted to sail in a yacht through the San Blas Islands captained by a maniacal Italian instead of transforming our steeds into pedalos in an attempt to cross these supposedly smuggler-infested waters. Colombia is freaking awesome by the way but hang on for epis...
Nov 25, 2015•35 min
Baden has a run in with the Panamanian health system and his marriage comes under strain in this How Are You? Where Are You? podcast. We're in Panama, slogging our guts out pedal stroke by pedal stroke to reach the nation's capital and the end of the Central American part of our journey. On the way, we get lots of honks and toots, we meet an interesting Oklahoman living off his land, we try to fit a Panamanian hat a top of Baden's significantly-sized head and we give you the crucial lowdown on t...
Nov 12, 2015•41 min
Don't ya just love conquering a fear? Shelley's phobia was a bit of a weird one: the cute, furry, slow-moving, completely unthreatening mammals that are sloths. Tune into the How Are You? Where Are You? podcast to see if Shell could overcome her very own fear factor in Costa Rica. Our bestie Terry the Tent has had a rough ol' time of late. We fill you in on his trials and tribulations involving a frog. All this and more as we take you on a bike trip across Costa Rica, up hill and down dale, scof...
Nov 04, 2015•41 min
Sorry for the delay in bringing you episode 23. We've been on the road pedalling our legs off riding across eastern El Salvador, before zipping through the south of Honduras and travelling the length of Nicaragua to our recording place of San Juan del Sur, down in the south of this interesting land on the Pacific Coast. We are joined by another special guest this week. He's another cycle touring drifter out drifting. Ivan Said (aka Pistache Radioactive Garcia) has ridden here from his hometown o...
Oct 22, 2015•32 min
If you read the news, you could be mistaken for thinking that if you go to El Salvador, you are going to get murdered. Well, it turns out, that you are more likely to have a great time, see beautiful things and meet lots of interesting people. What a boring non-click baity article that would be. On this week's How Are You? Where Are You? podcast we visit El Salvador's Route of the Flowers, cut open and look inside some unfamiliar fruits and reflect on Guatemala's horrific landslide tragedy, whic...
Oct 07, 2015•32 min
"Why would you ever go to Guatemala City?" A common question we've had from other tourists who have been warned off Guatemala's big smoke. Their doubts made us want to ride there even more, and we ended up pleasantly surprised as you'll hear in this week's How Are You? Where Are You? podcast. We also ride the local 'Chicken' buses into the highlands and continue our fascination with this country's rich biodiversity when we meet Fredy Archila, a man passionate about orchids. We hope you enjoy the...
Sep 29, 2015•37 min
We recorded this in Cobán, high up in the Alta Verapaz region of the Guatemala's interior. We've been learning a lot about Mayan culture and a lot about the capability of our legs to ride our heavy touring bikes high up into the sky. New Zealanders have been fascinated by this Central American country ever since Nurse Carrie Burton uttered the line: "You're not in Guatemala now Dr Ropata" in the debut episode of the homegrown soap Shortland Street. Unlike Dr Ropata we are actually in Guatemala r...
Sep 19, 2015•38 min
After a period of gallivanting, we are finally back on the bikes and rediscovering the joys of cycle touring. We have the country and people of Belize to thank for this. Sure it's stinking hot but we are pedalling with coping strategies in place and they seem to be working fine. We visit the amazing zoo, the prison and ride the glorious Hummingbird Highway. Check out our website www.howareyouwhereareyou.com for blogs, photos and extra content including our interactive map.
Sep 07, 2015•35 min
We're having a holiday from our holiday in this edition of the How Are You? Where Are You? podcast. Our bikes are safely stored in our beloved Chetumal (Chets) while we flew to check out a bit more of this amazing country. We traveled to Mexico City and then Oaxaca before washing up on the Pacific coast in Puerto Escondido. We're joined by a special guest this week: fellow Hutt kid Nathan Taare. Check out Nathan's creations here: https://entsound.bandcamp.com while as always you can find us at w...
Aug 28, 2015•38 min
We mention the word "hot" quite a bit in this podcast because that's what it's been here on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. We've been checking out some significant Mayan sites and having fun but the heat ended up being a bit too much for Baden.
Aug 10, 2015•34 min
Our stint off the bike continues with a holiday in Cuba. It's our third time in the country so we discuss our observations as the socialist paradise begins to open up to change. We also speak with Shelley's parents who joined us on tour for the month of July and what went wrong with Baden's cycling plans for Cuba?
Aug 01, 2015•27 min
Recorded under a shady tree in Retiro Park in Madrid, we take some time to fill you in on our preparations for Central and South America. We visited Cenas a Pedal in Lisbon to get help with our bikes and we did some last minute shopping in Madrid for supplies before our flight to Cuba. We also discuss our route, goals for the trip and thank some people who have helped us prepare for the next part of our journey in the regular feature, 'In praise of'.
Jul 21, 2015•22 min
We found an oasis during the Madrid heatwave in the cool waters of our hosts' plastic paddling pool, so we recorded the podcast there. This time we review our whole European trip. We pick out some bests and worsts, count up kilometres travelled and other statistics and discuss some of the things we've been reflecting on since we finished in Lisbon.
Jul 08, 2015•31 min
