World Travel

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World Travel
Cichon

to travel

World Travel

World Travel
My dream of life

?? Every day I go on an adventure is worth more than 1,000 ordinary days! ?? For almost two years the American Mariola Cichon was traveling between Alaska and Tierra del Fuego, in Europe and Africa ?? until a serious accident in The Gambia ended their journey around the world. For now, at least.

11/20/2003

A wide, completely pristine beach stretches in front of me. I set the engine of the Kawasaki off, look around. Huge, bottle-shaped baobabs provide shade, brown, football-sized fruits hang from their branches. As if out of nowhere, a huge bird suddenly lands in the crown of the old tree right next to me, flaps its wings wildly, utters loud screams. I guess I broke into his turf. Then I hear another voice. ?? Sir, do you want to buy a monkey ???

A boy, around eight years old, is standing behind my motorcycle, in his right hand he is holding a rope with which he is leading a sad-looking goat. I take off my helmet. The little boy stares at me with wide eyes, is speechless for a long moment ?? a woman riding a motorcycle! ?? Isn’t it forbidden to trade in monkeys ??? ?? I don’t know, sir … sorry … madam. He’s still very young and lives at my home.


World Travel


Cichon

World tour, MOTORRAD 25/2003

The boy’s reaction is no longer unusual for me. But on the contrary ?? In the last 19 months of my journey between Alaska and Tierra del Fuego, in Europe and in North Africa, I have quickly taken advantage of the fact that a woman traveling alone on a motorcycle still seems to be something special all over the world? the surprise effect helped me a lot in some sticky situations. In Colombia, for example, as soon as I took off my helmet, I was allowed to pass through the countless roadblocks and blockades set up by the police or the army and sometimes even by guerrillas quickly and without being disturbed. In most of the other countries that I got to know during my journey of almost 85,000 kilometers so far, the “Women Bonus” also helped. very.
The boy’s voice brings me out of my thoughts back to the beach in Gambia, Africa. ?? I can sell you a parrot. ?? ?? No, I’m sorry, I’m really not interested in pets. ?? My beach acquaintance disappears with sad eyes
between the trees. I inevitably have to think of an encounter that happened in Honduras about a year ago.

World tour (2)


World Travel


Cichon

World tour, MOTORRAD 25/2003

I was on my way to Trujillo on the Caribbean coast. The road ran through thick, tropical green for a long time. Suddenly this boy was standing by the roadside with his arms raised. He had something green in his hands.

I stopped ?? and discovered that they were three large and extremely vivid iguanas, wrapped in a wriggling heap. Immediately afterwards the boy’s mother appeared and offered me the animals for the equivalent of five US dollars. When I said no, she praised the extremely tasty meat of the animals that her son had only caught that morning. In order to save the beautiful creatures from the saucepan, I finally negotiated the woman down to about four dollars. Unfortunately nothing came of the purchase after all? Another passer-by stopped and bought the iguanas for six dollars. As travel provisions.


World Travel


Cichon

World tour, MOTORRAD 25/2003

The bird in the treetop seems to have accepted me in its territory by now. His screaming has subsided. The Kawasaki’s radiator fan has also finally stopped working. The only audible noise is the rush of the waves. The wind has increased a little in the meantime and is driving fine sand into my face. A feeling that I know from the desert. My thoughts wander immediately, taking me to the Mauritanian Sahara.

It was just under 20 kilometers to Chinguetti, a formerly important caravan town on the route to Mecca. The road finally turned into a sandy, very demanding track from a driver’s point of view. I often fell, and I found it increasingly difficult to get the motorcycle upright on the loose ground. But somehow I got deeper and deeper into this world from constantly towering dune fields, grandiose beauties modeled by the wind. Towards evening the setting sun made the mountains of sand glow almost fiery red in an unreal light. The mesmerizing effect of the Sahara is unique; and yet the mood at this moment resembles a moment that I was able to experience in the South American sister of the Sahara? in the Chilean Atacama Desert. When I had sat there on a high dune in the evening and the red-hot land surrounded by volcanoes stretched out in front of me, I realized that it had been right, despite all the difficulties, to leave my hometown Chicago for a while, just around the corner to travel the world.

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