August 2, 2021 / the Dalton Highway, Alaska
He’d longed to go on a “crazy adventure” for years, and as Liam Garner’s high school graduation day grew closer, the teenager was more determined than ever to make his escape.
An experienced cyclist, Garner, who is from Long Beach, California, had previously ridden from Los Angeles to San Francisco, and realized that he could pedal across the continent without much difficulty if he chose to.
After reading a book by adventurer Jedidiah Jenkins, who biked from Oregon to Argentina, Garner decided that he would cycle from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, the northernmost point in the United States accessible by road, to Ushuaia, Argentina, the southernmost point of South America.
And while many of his school friends were preparing for college, Garner began preparing for the adventure of his life.
Epic adventure
“I spent the entire month after I graduated just getting the equipment and then I left,” Garner tells CNN Travel. “It was really rapid. It wasn’t planned out very hard to begin with.”
Garner was 17 when he set off on a KHS Zaca mountain bike with just a tent, a sleeping bag, around a day’s worth of food and water, some portable batteries, a medical kit, and extra parts for his bike.
He began his journey across the Pan-American Highway, a network of roads extending across the Americas, on August 1, 2021.
The teenager, who had already amassed a significant number of followers from his TikTok video series following his trip to San Francisco, decided to document the journey, which saw him cycle through 14 countries, including Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Colombia, Peru, Chile and Argentina.
“There’s an official route, and then there’s unofficial routes,” he explains. “I basically made my own [route] as I went along. As long as I was going south every day, I knew I was going in the right direction.”
Garner admits that his parents, who are separated, weren’t particularly thrilled about the prospect of their teenage son riding all the way to South America alone.
He says his mother refused to believe him at first and went through “probably eight months of terror” while he didn’t actually tell his father until after he’d set off, as he was so sure he’d be against it.
“He called me while I was in Alaska, and I told him where I was,” Garner explains, before adding that both are now his biggest supporters and avidly follow his progress.
Biking benefits
Although Garner initially began cycling because he didn’t have a car, he now considers it the best way to travel, and wouldn’t have wanted to do this trip any other way.
“It’s the most intimate way to travel,” he says. “You go so slow, and you have to physically work to get to places. So you really gain an attachment to the most random little towns and curves in the road.
“There’s something about being self-sufficient and knowing that you got somewhere on your own two feet. I feel like sometimes when you drive or fly, it’s as if you’re just teleporting to a place. You weren’t outside. You weren’t smelling things. You weren’t touching things.”
The teenager spent around four and a half months biking across Mexico and describes the experience as one of the most significant of his life.
“My whole family is from Mexico,” he explains. “I grew up going [to Mexico] but I never learned the language. So it’s one thing to visit every year, and it’s one thing to live there.
“So crossing the entire country on a bike and reconnecting with my culture and staying with my family and learning the language in the place my family is from was so deeply important to me.”
Unfortunate setbacks
Garner left California with very little money, and says he’s been surviving on a budget of around $430 a month.
He notes that he’s heard people commenting that he’s only able to do what he’s doing “because he’s a straight white, rich guy,” and is keen to point out that this simply isn’t the case.
“I am a first generation Mexican immigrant. And I’m not rich,” he says. “This was self-supported. And it really doesn’t take that much money to do this.
“I don’t want people to think that you need to be rich to bike tour. I’ve met people from all economic statuses.
“People can do it and stay in hotels every night, and I’ve seen people literally just have trash bags on the back of a bike.
“I’ve seen people of all ethnicities, solo and with partners, in every country that I’ve been in. And I have met so many incredible, inspiring women. It’s really available to everyone.”
Garner had a riding companion named Logan for around eight months or so of the trip. However, he departed when they reached Colombia, and Garner traveled solo for the remainder of the journey.
Of the many countries he cycled through, he was particularly surprised by El Salvador, which he describes as “one of the most peaceful, nicest, quietest countries.”
While the trip was full of incredible highs, Garner also experienced some crushing lows throughout the journey.
, CNN
