Bikepacking Through Latin America with Adam Pawlikiewicz Mesa

0:01Adam Pawlikiewicz Mesa:For me, it's always been super important to figure out what it is that I'm capable of. And the first time I ever did a bike trip across the U.S., all of these things were completely like I should not have been able to have done them. You know what I mean? And yet somehow I figured out a way to do it. And I love these types of, I guess, challenges because they often really force you to reevaluate what you really think is possible and what it is that you're capable of doing. Adam Polakevich Mesa is an endurance mountain athlete who has spent the last several years bikepacking through Latin America and the United States.

0:38After graduating from college, Adam had a job lined up as a financial consultant in Washington, D.C. But before he started work, he took a bike trip that shifted his perspective and opened up a new path for him. Today, Adam is a full-time athlete and visual storyteller. He's documented his journeys across remote regions in Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil, capturing the stories of local people and their cultures along the way. I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios production presented by Capital One and the REI Co-op MasterCard. Adam Polikevich Mesa, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living.

1:22I think you're all the way in Colombia right now, yeah?

1:25Adam Pawlikiewicz Mesa:Yes, yeah, here in Montevideo in Antioquia, just kind of like central Columbia, Andes. So I primarily work as a visual storyteller, both photographer and filmmaker. And I recently moved back here to Columbia in the last month. Where were you living in the United States? Where did you grow up? So I mostly grew up in Colorado Springs, actually. That's where my dad still lives. And that's where I would say my love for the outdoors really began. I mean, anybody that's been Colorado can attest to that. I mean, the mountains, they're absolutely stunning and beautiful. I realized later on in life that not everybody had rock climbing for their gym class or whatever, right?

2:06Adam Pawlikiewicz Mesa:So we grew up with just a natural appreciation for the outdoors. And then into my adulthood, it just grew more and more and more. So when did you start biking for long distances? is. When I graduated from college, I had a dream, like an actual dream, like I slept and had a dream that I was biking across the US. And this was in 2013. And I was like, Oh my god, I'm the first person to have thought of this idea. This is such a great idea. I should do it. And I told my friends about it. And then I start researching on the internet. And I see that there's a huge history of people biking across the US.

2:43Adam Pawlikiewicz Mesa:It's been done since God knows when and that people have been traveling by bike since the beginning of time, since bikes have been invented. Right. But anyway, I really loved this idea that just randomly came to me. And I was like, well, I have a few months before I was going to start my big boy job, which was the consulting firm in DC. That was my job straight out of college. Was it like Bain or one of those? It was Deloitte. Deloitte. Okay. So I was like, okay, I have a few months. I was like, I'm going to go back home to Colorado. So I spent that whole summer painting houses. And I was like, I'm going to save every dollar.

3:14Adam Pawlikiewicz Mesa:I'm going to buy myself the cheapest bike I can buy. I can buy myself all the camping gear and whatever else I would need and budget myself just enough cash so that I can pay for, you know, oats, spaghetti. And I think it was like sandwiches, you know, for I budgeted, I thought it would take me about 30 or so days to go from Colorado to Virginia, which is where I graduated from school from. And that was my idea. And then I did it. And I hadn't been biking since I was a kid, you know, like for fun right um and the third day that i did this trip i ended up doing 100 miles and it was in in kansas so it wasn't that like much but i was just like floored at how like relatively accessible this was for somebody who didn't really have a lot of cash and it was such an awesome way to travel and see the country that i grew up in but i have no like family family ties to and that was what I really wanted to do.

4:14Adam Pawlikiewicz Mesa:I was like, I really want to get to know the United States and see what people live like, you know? And I don't think that there's any better way to do that than to travel by bike because you travel just fast enough that you get to see a lot, but just slow enough that you really get to experience a place. But I would say that one experience that really sticks out from that particular trip was like there were so many people that went out of their way to help me out. and this is a pretty common experience for anybody who travels by bike, is that the world really seems to open up to you because of how vulnerable you are.

4:51Adam Pawlikiewicz Mesa:These communities do just totally open up. They were so floored that people would bike across the U.S. They would always give me a place to stay. I would pass through so many churches where the pastor would let me just sleep inside the church, which was better than sleeping outside. I'd sleep in the back of bike shops. Like it was just like I don't think that many people get to experience this type of humanity unless they're really that vulnerable and put themselves out there that much. And as soon as I get to Deloitte, you know, I'm like super dark from being outside every single day in the summer.

5:22Adam Pawlikiewicz Mesa:Everybody's talking about what did they do that summer. Some people had other jobs. And I was like, I was just a bum on my bike getting to know the country. And it was just the conversation that kept coming up in every conversation I had with people. It was the thing that lit me up the most. And eventually after working there for like probably a year, year and a half, I realized this is not where I belong. This is just, it's going to be the quickest way to depression. It's just not for me. And so eventually I was like, no, I got to figure something else out. And so I was living with a friend at the time in Washington, DC, who actually worked in National Geographic.

5:58Adam Pawlikiewicz Mesa:He was one of their photo editors, my good friend, Tyler. and he had done like a bunch of beautiful photo projects like in Nepal. He did all these amazing things and I was just like dude I didn't even know people could have that job and I always messed around with cameras and I was like kind of you know it was a hobby at the time but it wasn't something I considered to be a profession. So I ended up quitting that job at Deloitte and after talking with my friend Tyler for many many months about the bike trip that I had done across the U.S. it ended up falling that that summer was the 40th anniversary of the trans America trail, which is the one that goes coast to coast.

6:38Adam Pawlikiewicz Mesa:And he wanted to do it. And I was like, cool, I already did Colorado to Virginia. How about you do that section and I'll join you in Colorado and we'll finish the route. Cause he wanted to do some of it on his own as well. And so that's what we did. So he quit his job like a month before I did started biking across the country. And then the day before I was going to fly out to Colorado, he ended up getting hit by a car, actually. And luckily he survived, but he had pretty bad injuries. And I remember us calling his sister, like a bunch of our friends in DC, calling him to check up on him. And the only thing, he was like heavy on drugs.

7:16Adam Pawlikiewicz Mesa:And he was like, Adam, we're still doing this. Like, don't worry, we're going to get it done.

7:2630 days after the crash, Adam met up with Tyler and they rode their bikes together from Colorado to Oregon. During that trip, Adam learned a lot about documenting stories through photos and video. For the next five years, he worked in the outdoor industry on various marketing and social media teams. In his free time, he competed in bike races, Ironmans, and even ultra marathons. Then, in 2021, Adam was laid off from his job at a cycling brand. He took the news in stride and decided to go all in on becoming a full-time athlete and storyteller.

8:03Adam Pawlikiewicz Mesa:As soon as that layoff happened, I called up my friend Leo. He's Brazilian, and he had just recently moved back to Brazil. I told him, I was like, hey, dude, I just got laid off. I really want to do another project. Let's figure something out. And he was like, well, there's this really historic route in Brazil called the Estrada Real. it was a in a historic trail system that was built by the portuguese when they came to brazil to basically extract gold and diamonds from the mountains and take it all the way to rio to then ship back to portugal and it's a beautiful like it's even though it's a very sad history it's now been adopted by the country as a huge tourism route that people will bike uh they will ride their motorcycles through or just travel by car through and you pass these beautiful colonial villages and because the country has really taken it upon itself to like make this a form of tourism now many of these smaller towns are are really thriving in many ways because of the tourism that goes through and so we ended up doing that trip kind of on a self-funded capacity i was an ambassador i still am for a bike packing brand and so i basically used my budget from that to cover the cost of my trip for the Estrada Real.

9:19Adam Pawlikiewicz Mesa:But we basically treated it like our own project. Like, hey, let's take a bunch of photos. Let's pitch to magazines. Let's see if we could put some video out with it. But that was just like another way for me to see if I can make the whole bikepacking and film, photo, whatever thing, a career. And so that's kind of been the trend ever since that particular trip, the Estrada Real.

9:48For Adam and his friend Leo, bikepacking the Estrada Real felt like the perfect mix of adventure and challenge. This historic route was built by the Portuguese in 1697. Spanning 1 ,000 miles, it winds through the mountains and subtropical forests of southeastern Brazil. It's absolutely stunning, but significant portions of the road are not clearly developed, which makes bikepacking through this area particularly difficult.

10:21How many miles a day were you doing? How long did it take you?

10:26Adam Pawlikiewicz Mesa:Sure, it greatly varies because, you know, for me, the priority oftentimes is story. And we do really like to push ourselves, yet at the same time, we really want to make sure we do, like if there's a beautiful town we pass through and the light's not great maybe we wait a while so that we can get the images or the the story that we want to see or if a person on the side of the street offers us you know a place to stay we're going to take it because this is how you get to connect with the culture so it varied a lot but it was anywhere from like i don't know 50 60 miles a day to 100 plus miles a day certain parts of the country were way easier to go through than others.

11:06Adam Pawlikiewicz Mesa:But this entire route is off-road. It's all gravel roads, farm rural roads where you're passing through, you know, ranches where there's horses, cows, you know, all of that. It goes through Minas Gerais and then part of Sao Paulo and part of then into the department of Rio de Janeiro. What'd you learn about Brazilian history and culture on this ride? Yeah. So unfortunately I don't speak Portuguese that well. Leo did most of my talking for me. I try to speak in Spanish and some people understood. But the thing that I really learned the most about that experience was just the, yeah, I don't know.

11:44Adam Pawlikiewicz Mesa:It's shared humanity, you know, like almost in any place. But the people there were just very, very open and kind, super humble. Like the food quality is just outstanding. The landscapes are really, really interesting. Like there would be certain areas where it was just like a deep, deep red desert, you know, dust. And then you'd get to these like, what would probably seem similar to like Yosemite rock style faces in the middle of like, kind of a jungle environment. Like it was really bizarre, because somewhat humid, but also super dry the next day, like, and then you're going in and out of these smaller towns, and then into these massive cities, right?

12:29Adam Pawlikiewicz Mesa:Because Latin America has massive, massive cities. Because I remember even one night we were riding into the night because we were just trying to get to the next place where we could stay and get like a proper meal. And it was just like a total grind on this like paved highway. And we were like in the middle of the night, just like hugging each other's tires, one behind the other, trying to rush as fast as we could because there's semis like flying by you. So like that kind of stuff also happens and you kind of have to remain very flexible when you ride or travel in this type of way.

13:08Adam and Leo made a film out of their journey and released it on YouTube. The video is called the Estrada Real and it shows just how gritty and beautiful the trip really was. You can see them crawling under barbed wire fences, carrying their bikes across rivers, bushwhacking through thick forests, and navigating everything from quiet, muddy roads to chaotic highways. The ride wasn't easy, but it was worth it. And somewhere on that road, the pair came up with a motto that stuck with them. At the end of this film, there's a motto. Can you tell us this motto?

13:46Adam Pawlikiewicz Mesa:Yeah, it's probably Chase Regrets. that's really the way that we, I think, um, think about these bikepacking experiences and, you know, both Leo, Leo's, you know, not from the U S the English is probably a second or third language as well. And I think that a lot of people maybe would not understand that phrase the same way that we do, but oftentimes the way we said it to ourselves was like, let's pick the route that's going to create probably a lot of turmoil or like, it's like a, like a suffer fest kind of, but it's going to end up resulting in probably the experience we'll remember the most.

14:24Adam Pawlikiewicz Mesa:And that's oftentimes how we make our decisions, which is not always the smartest way. I will admit to that because it's put us in some predicaments in the past, but as always, we figure a way out through it. Every year, Capital One and the REI Co-op MasterCard Program proudly donate$2 million to the REI Cooperative Action Fund. The fund supports hundreds of nonprofit partners that are creating a more equitable outdoors for everyone. You've even heard some of their stories on the podcast. In addition to supporting the REI Cooperative Action Fund, Capital One and REI have partnered on the REI Co-op MasterCard, bringing card members excellent card benefits that inspire more outdoor adventures.

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15:38A few years ago, bikepacker Adam Polakevich Mesa decided to pursue his passions as a full-time career. He became a dedicated endurance athlete and a skilled photographer and cinematographer. After traversing the Estrada Real in Brazil with his friend Leo, the pair decided to take on another huge bikepacking adventure. In 2024, they set out to ride over 400 miles through the Andes Mountains, from La Paz, Bolivia, to Cusco, Peru. Unlike a lot of routes here in the U.S., this journey was not well marked. Adam and Leo often found themselves passing through very difficult and steep mountain terrain, unsure if they were even on the right path.

16:25Adam Pawlikiewicz Mesa:So we basically were planning on going from La Paz, Bolivia to Cusco, Peru, following what was known as the Quiapac Ññan, or sections of it, because it's not necessarily fully documented. And there were some wild sections of it where, I mean, this road system was built on foot, right? It's not really made for rolling wheels. so you have these epic staircases that drop 3 000 feet into a valley and so it's a super it's not made for a bike let me put it that way you know so you're either hiking down or trying to compromise and ride your way down or there are sections where we get up into the mountains and we're just freestyling descending off of the side of a mountain and it's just like a sand rocky gravelly mixture that you're almost like surfing down.

17:18I mean, it was like a moonscape environment.

17:21Adam Pawlikiewicz Mesa:I don't even know how to describe it. Some of these places were, I can't even believe that we got to see a lot of these places with our own very eyes and that we actually tried to ride ourselves through them because it was super remote. I mean, very, very remote riding. What were the logistics of this trip like? Were you just camping on the side of the road? Sure. Yeah. On a logistical level, I'll talk you guys through it. So yeah, the way we plan this route is oftentimes looking at a bunch of different maps, like GPS softwares, Ride With GPS, Komoot, Google Earth even. And then also looking online to see other accounts of people who have done something similar.

17:59Adam Pawlikiewicz Mesa:Bikepacking.com has a bunch of routes that talk through these different regions, some of which that we rode. but then the most important you know thing that we often look at is what do the locals say and recommend and oftentimes we were riding through various mining roads that took us from one mining community to the other because a lot of these regions in the high altitude mountains in both Bolivia and Peru are all mining regions so we were passing through very interesting towns I don't know how else to say it, where the only people that are there are those who are mining and their families. But yes, so most times, especially on that trip, it was predominantly we were camping.

18:42Some of the route took us like into the mountains where there is no trail system.

18:46Adam Pawlikiewicz Mesa:So you just go until the sun starts to essentially set. You make your little meal based off of whatever dried meals you have. Hopefully you have enough water to make the meal that day and the following morning. and then you keep hiking or riding until you get to the other side of the pass, ride down and hopefully every, we essentially always carried about three to five days worth of food and water. Food, I would say. Water, we could get away with maybe two days worth of water is what we were carrying. So our stuff was very heavy but it's hard to logistically figure this out. Some people would argue you should go faster and lighter.

19:25Adam Pawlikiewicz Mesa:Others people say you should carry more but there's always a cost benefit to each of those approaches. where would you even fill up on water? Yeah so when we'd pass through community we'd fill up or if we found a home in the middle of nowhere they usually maybe had a water source that they could at least offer it up but more often than not we were actually filtering from like any water trickle we could find I mean streams there was a lot of spots on the map that we would see like there should be a lake here there should be a river here and oftentimes we'd come up either to a dry water source like you're describing or a river that's completely polluted either by the mining you know situation or just because there's no trash infrastructure in much of these regions and it's just covered in trash and so we'd either you know risk it till the next spot or we'd filter it and uh hope for the best but you know both leo and i got sick multiple times on this trip we each lost 15 pounds each on this trip.

20:26Adam Pawlikiewicz Mesa:Cause yeah, you're, you're, and it's physically very demanding. So we were ravenous because all you can find in many of those regions is alpaca and potato. That's it. Um, and that's not something you can really like carry on your bike. You kind of can, but up to a certain point. So it was, it was rough. Do you have any stories from that trip that have stuck with you? Yeah. So I was really hoping for like a cultural moment and we definitely got that where we ended up coming to this community and I had thought from a distance that they were shearing the fur of the alpaca you know to sell into the city or whatever this was closer to La Paz and we end up getting closer and closer and you know Leo grew up in Latin America mostly in Brazil and he has a much more reserved personality type than I do where I often trust pretty quickly he's a bit more reserved in that sense and I was having this negotiation with him I was like, I know we're in the middle of nowhere.

21:22Adam Pawlikiewicz Mesa:I know we're on like the last bit of our food. And we were getting nervous about where we could get our next resupply. And we were in the middle of nowhere. And there's like a group of men with all this alpaca. And he was like, I don't think we should go there. Like, we don't have any weapons with us. We're not going to protect ourselves. You know, we're too hungry to really do anything. And I was like, no, no, no, it's going to be fine. It's going to be fine. And we happen to get closer and closer. And I start to realize that they're not shearing the fur, they're slaughtering the animal. And so, you know, after some time talking with them, we ended up pulling out the cameras.

21:55Adam Pawlikiewicz Mesa:They were super cool with us documenting the entire experience. And this man tells me about the whole, you know, how they've lived for centuries in the culture and tradition of, you know, how they go about slaughtering the animal, because you really witness something interesting where it's not just them, like, you know, killing the animal, but they're also capturing the blood in this massive stone bowl. And then they use that blood to pour it at the entrance of the mines to bring safe passage to all those who enter, because mining is a huge part of these communities' lives now. But this alpaca essentially brings safe passage and good tidings to the people who essentially bury these under the foundations of their homes.

22:39Adam Pawlikiewicz Mesa:And this is how they've been doing it for centuries, forever, really. And so they're describing this whole process as they're slaughtering the animal before our very eyes. So like that type of an experience, like, I don't know how else you get to experience something like that unless you really put yourself into a position where you're really out there. As Adam and Leo made their way through the Andes, they had high highs, but also some low lows. The lack of clean water in combination with the challenging terrain and altitude really wore them down. To make it worse, they were just a day away from their final destination in Cusco, Peru, when something unfortunate happened.

23:24Adam Pawlikiewicz Mesa:I think now that I'm in my 30s, you know, I'm realizing that chase regrets is kind of sometimes a bad idea, because I ended up crashing really bad at the end of that trip, and I busted my wrist at like 15 ,500 feet. And so how did you ride to get to a hospital? So we ended up hiking and slightly riding like with one hand. My wrist was broken like upon impact, super painful. But because of how high we were and how late it was in the day, we ended up camping that night. I slept like, you know, 10 minute increments maybe and just waited for the sun to rise so that my friend could get up and then get out.

24:09Adam Pawlikiewicz Mesa:and Leo did a lot like he had to you know help take off my shirt clean myself a little bit you know check the wrists and everything and then kind of make a makeshift splint and then we basically started hiking at first you know light and then started making our way down to where fortunately that place where I had crashed I had actually done a very short bike pack around that area like a few years prior in Peru and since I knew the area a little bit I knew that there was a town So it took us, you know, a handful of hours to get to the campsite. And then the following day, like eight or nine hours to get to the closest road, which then we could get a guy to taxi us into a small town that had a bus going to Cusco, which was still a three hour bus ride.