From Motorcycle Diaries to Bicycle Diaries

Opportunity To Span South America On Epic Cycling Journey with Tour d‚Afrique

TORONTO, July 20, 2010 ˆ Tour d‚Afrique (http://www.tourdafrique.com/), the company that first introduced cross-continental cycling, announces that registration is now open for a 2011, 4,070-mile trans-continent, 80-day cycling expedition called Vuelta Sudamericana http://www.tourdafrique.com/epictours/vueltasudamericana that departs Buenos Aires, Argentina on Sept. 25 and ends Dec. 13 in Lima, Peru.

The epic journey will travel under and around 20,000-foot peaks in the Andes and up the Pacific Coast through Chile enroute through Bolivia to Machu Picchu and then on to the finish line in Lima, Peru.

Cyclists will average 35 to 50 miles per day on rough dirt and gravel roads and up to 100+ miles on good paved roads. One stretch includes an entire day of climbing followed by a wild two hour descent from an altitude of 12,000 feet to sea level.

The per person cost for the full tour is •5,900. The journey can also be experienced as five distinct shorter segments with pricing starting at •800.

Vuelta SudAmericana is one of Tour d‚Afrique‚s five epic tours that include Orient Express from Paris to Istanbul, Tour d‚Afrique from Cairo to Cape Town, Silk Route from Istanbul to Samarkand, Uzbekistan, Amber Route from St. Petersburg to Venice, and Indian Adventure from Agra to Kanyakumari at the southern tip of India.

„Our participants come from all over the world but share one thing: a passion for cycling,‰ said Henry Gold, Tour d‚Afrique‚s founder and director. „Traveling by bike allows you to immerse yourself in a foreign culture, to smell strange and wonderful foods cooking as you roll through a village, to share a home-made beer in a country inn, to feel the temperature drop as you relentlessly climb to the top of a mountain pass, and to observe how the culture and vegetation changes across landscapes. Such experiences create the Zen of long-distance cycle touring. „

Gold had this to say about the Vuelta Sudamericana, „From Darwin's exploration of the Galapagos to Che Guevara's Motorcycle Diaries, the wonders of South America have changed the lives of travelers throughout time. The goal of this tour is not to travel the most efficient line between the opposite ends of a continent, but to explore it by bike. Participants will ride from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans, and climb up and down ... and up and down the Andes. En route, we will visit some of South America's most renowned sites, including Mount Aconcagua, the Atacama Desert, the Nazca Lines, Lake Titicaca and Machu Picchu.‰

About Tour d‚Afrique

Tour d‚Afrique Ltd, (http://www.tourdafrique.com/) is named for its 2003 flagship cycling tour that annually traverses the African continent from Cairo to Cape Town (7,500 miles in four months). Directly and indirectly Tour d‚Afrique benefits third world countries by organizing and staging transcontinental bicycle tours and races lasting 10 days to four months, today traversing all or part of four continents and over 30 countries.

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