Today is May 22nd, 2025. On the 7th of March, 2023 I left my home in Toronto for Faro, Protugal. This blog is the story of my trip.

Bike packed up in a box, gear meticulously curated over hours and hours of packing, unpacking, repacking and imagining the time i’ll need a Life Straw, or a parachord or a glass bottle of perfume. Spoiler… I didn’t need any of that stuff… The plan for day 1 was simple. Land in Faro at 10:30am, put my bike together and cycle to Albufiera campground about 50kms away for the night. Let’s do it!

Woke up to a dewy morning, there was a bit of rain overnight and the tent was indeed proven to be waterproof.. woo woo! Only sixty kilometres today but it took almost six hours. The first bit of dirt roads and my Salsa Marrakesh, soon to be named “Maria”, did great! As expected… but also a bit slow, crawling along at about ten kms and hour… I may have had something to do with that…