It took an entire week to complete the infamous Lagunas Route, a 300-mile [500 km] sandpit that snakes its way along the Atacama Desert dividing Chile and Bolivia. I pored over elevation maps each night in fearful apprehension, and by each morning the road sat up to meet me like a clay-colored fist. Altiplanic dunes changing color by the hour. Stampedes of sand and unrelenting headwind. Nameless jeep tracks through the dust of rocky shrapnel. I kept thinking that the hardest parts were behind me, but they never stopped coming.

Over the Hill of Black Death at +16,100 ft [4,907 m]. Past the Salvador Dalí Desert. Past Laguna Colorada, then Laguna Blanca. When I finally hiked my bike into the Bolivian aduana [customs] exit office, I laid down on the floor in spent exhaustion. Their tiny outpost was the day’s sole escape from the wind which roared outside like a subsonic war horn, specters of emptiness in all directions.

From there I pushed through the remaining daylight hours to reach the Chilean border office in time, a small A-frame structure in the literal middle of nowhere. Immigrations officers cheered my approach, whistling with one fist in the air. Their green army fatigues were sharply pressed. Hair slicked back and cleanly shaven. I shared some dried apricots and they offered hot coffee, advising me to stay with them overnight because the sun was setting and it would be too dangerous to bike further. I rolled out my sleeping bag in the corner and curled up like a dog.

Most people head west from there towards San Pedro de Atacama. But I was too tired for more, not wanting to climb back up the notorious switchbacks en route. I turned left instead, another 75 miles atop dizzying lunar altitudes for Paso Jama, the only open border crossing.

More Mars-like desert. More lassos of wind. Extraterrestrial valleys with mineral lakes in odd pastels. Flamingos and flightless Rhea birds dotted the outskirts. I stopped often but not for photos, just to breathe, turning back at each barbed hilltop to watch the horizon wither in the distance. Again and again, always behind me, like past lives I could no longer carry.

I’ve been cycling from the top of Alaska to the bottom of Argentina for the past 15 months and picked up the revered Trans Ecuador Mountain Bike Route after crossing Colombia’s infamous “Trampoline of Death.” Just 40 miles south of Quito was the Cotopaxi volcano, brooding in a foggy purple nebula of ice melt.

Even while opting for the TEMBR’s less-technical dirt road alternative, the route frequently devolved from coarse softball-sized gravel to choppy singletrack, then meandering deer paths and eventually no route at all. Pits of volcanic ash often swallowed up my 2” tires and forced more heavy pushing. I carried the bike over aimless fields through barbed wire gates and asked local farmers for directions. “Hacia la antenna, arriba allí encontraras una rutita,” one assured with a fist bump and smile. “Adelante!”

As sunset approached, Cotopaxi melted into a soft rosy alpenglow, a deep shade of pink between clay dust and cherry blossoms. At +12,000ft the temperature was plummeting fast and my hands had been turned to stone from the bitter winds all afternoon. I made camp beside a creek and used dried eucalyptus leaves as kindling for a small fire to warm up in the darkness. Their fragrance felt like a luxury.

Continuing south toward Chimborazo, Ecuador’s highest peak. Te veré en las calles!