Back Where He Started
After two years, one humbling medical emergency, $250,000 from sponsors and his own savings, and his expedition partner's acrimonious departure, Canadian adventurer Colin Angus has become the first person to circumnavigate the globe under his own power. A book is due out next spring. In the meantime, some highlights to keep you hooked.
June 1, 2004
Angus, then 32, and Tim Harvey, then 26, pedal north from Vancouver on the first leg of a planned trek to Moscow, accompanied by Julie Wafaei, Angus's fiancée of two weeks. Things go awry immediately, as forest fires and border agents force them to slip into Alaska in a battered canoe. Wafaei returns home.
September 2004
After getting blown 250 miles off course, Angus and Harvey make it to Russia in an 18-foot rowboat, which they abandon after tiring of being blown toward the rocks.
Fall 2004
The men hike 400 roadless miles of bogs and mountains. Angus suffers a urethral stricture (think a kink in his hose) and a severe infection. He retreats to Vancouver for surgery.
February 2005
About six weeks after rejoining Harvey in Siberia, Angus nearly dies after becoming lost and benighted in a raging blizzard with a windchill of 148 below.
March 2005
The adventurers set bikes on the Road of Bones, a dirt highway in eastern Russia built with Stalin-era gulag labor. It's the first road they've seen since Fairbanks, 3,100 miles ago.
Early Summer 2005
A growing feud between the partners escalates into rancorous accusations. Angus says Harvey with-holds gear. Harvey says Angus wants to travel with Wafaei instead. The Vancouver-to-Moscow expedition ends bitterly, with the two setting off on separate routes home. Wafaei flies over to join Angus. They cycle the 3,355 miles from Moscow to Lisbon, Portugal, in 49 days.
September 2005
After shoehorning five months of supplies into Ondine, a $25,000 oceangoing rowboat, the lovers set out, expecting to reach Miami in about 100 days. But two hurricanes and two tropical storms force them to change course for Costa Rica.
November 2005
While at sea, the two rely on fish for food, but a monster mahi-mahi breaks off Angus's last good lure and weights. Miraculously, the lure pops out of the fish's mouth and floats to the surface, where Angus recovers it. Freakier still, he finds his missing weights in the belly of another fish.
January 2006
After 121 days at sea, Team Wafangus arrives in St. Lucia, resupplies, and sets out for Limón, Costa Rica, 1,500 miles away. They also discover that Angus's passport has expired and that Russian crooks have tried to pilfer from his bank account.
March 2006
Wafaei and Angus bike through Central America and Mexico in 40 days. Nicaraguans threaten them with machetes and bull-testicle soup, the former wielded by thugs eyeing their gear, the latter served as a common delicacy. They navigate through much of Mexico using a photograph they took of a map painted on a restaurant wall.
Spring 2006
After biking from Mexico to Canada in just over three weeks, the two arrive home in Vancouver on May 20, 720 days after Angus left.
Sometime in 2007
Angus and Wafaei's wedding and honeymoon. "We were joking about a cruise," says Angus, "but now we're talking about rowing from the North Sea to the Mediterranean to see Europe at a more relaxing pace."
