Hi, I’m Alex Jonker, 26 years old, living in the Netherlands and the lucky man doing this beautiful cycling trip. After a study Economics at the University of Groningen I started working at HEMA, a big retailer in the Netherlands. I’ve been working as a businessconsultant doing an SAP implementation, but if you know what that is, you would understand my ideas after 3 years working.

I always wanted to do (at least) one more big trip in my life. But where and what en how was the question. As I am very sportive, Marathons, Triathlon (www.almere.nl) Climbing mountains (Kilimanjaro-Tanzania, see www.devogel.net and Aconcagua-Argentina, see www.aconcagua.com) and obviously lots of (race)cycling I was looking for a combination of travelling and sports, result is clear. But the Idea to go all the way from Alaska to Argentina was not an afternoon brain-wave.

In February 1998 I decided to do a cycling trip starting in Alaska and going down as far as San Francisco. The plan was to go in the summer of 1998. The first internet-page about this trip was about a trip from Anchorage to Calgary... But then....step by step.... you read more and more... the travel virus is growing and growing, you find out that it is possible to go all the way to Florida (Alaska-Vancouver-San Francisco-Miami). Everything is relative though, so Panama was not that far anymore. I decided to wait one more year and to go all the way from Alaska to Argentina (I love that country so much, not because of that mountain).