Pueblo
They’ve been together for nearly two years. And we do mean together.
Side by side on bicycles for thousands of miles across Europe.
In a rowboat for 145 days crossing the Atlantic, the two of them never more than a few feet apart during that crossing, 24 hours a day for nearly five months.
And huddled inside a small tent in Siberia for many, many nights, fighting the numbing cold by getting naked and sharing body heat.
At the end of this month, their stunning journey to circle the Earth will be over. They will arrive back at their starting point in their hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia, the first people ever to have done it entirely under their own power. Rowboat, bicycle, ski and foot. Some 26,000 miles of non-stop togetherness intended to bring attention to global warming.
And Colin Angus, having survived hurricanes and a grizzly bear and an ocean freighter that sliced through the waves within 3 feet of their rowboat, is starting to get nervous.
For at the end of this remarkable journey with fiancée and co-adventurer Julie Wafaei, he will, for the first time, meet his future father-in-law. And try to explain just what the heck the two of them have been doing during all this togetherness.
Wafaei smiled.
“They’ve never met,” she said. “And my dad is very strict. I’m an only child. He’s a career military man.”
Across the Pueblo hotel room in this brief stopover before they were to pedal into Denver and on to Vancouver on the final leg of their remarkable trip, Angus sat quietly, eyes wide, listening and pondering that big meeting.
“All I can think is that her father is going to meet this big, hairy guy,” said the wild-haired, scraggly-bearded Angus, who last conducted any meaningful grooming in May 2004. “The meeting with the grizzly bear was quick and unexpected. Meeting her father has me a little more scared.”
But, oh my, the tales they will have for Wafaei’s dad. Starting with that little jaunt across the Atlantic Ocean in a 24-foot rowboat, setting off last September from Portugal, an ocean crossing timed to avoid the stormy season off the coast of Europe and the hurricane season to the west.
Oops.
“We hit two hurricanes and two tropical storms,” said Angus, 34, who has made two documentary films and written two books about his previous adventures, one down the Amazon River and the other on the Yenisey River of Mongolia and Siberia.
During their Atlantic crossing, the eye of Hurricane Vince passed within 95 miles, hammering the couple’s small boat with waves of 30 feet. A tropical storm off the coast of Costa Rica near the end of the crossing churned out 50-foot waves. During the harshest days and nights, they huddled together in the boat’s tiny cabin. But mostly they stayed outside, rowing, sometimes together and sometimes alone, for up to 18 hours a day.
And yet, they say the ocean crossing was the best part of their adventure.
“The marine life was stunning,” said Wafaei, 31, a molecular biologist who met Angus at his book-signing session in Vancouver in 2003. “There were small striped fish that stayed with us for weeks and ate food from our hands. There was a great white shark, about a 20- footer. And whales. And a giant hawksbill turtle that thumped the bottom of the boat and stayed with us for a long time. And so many birds.”
Oh, and schools of a sleek and beautiful fish called dorado.
“They were,” Wafaei said, “delicious.”
They caught the dorado with hook and line and developed recipes along the way. Dorado chile. Dorado stew. Dorado soup. And Angus’ favorite: dorado macaroni and cheese.
And then they hit shore in Costa Rica and lurched around for a week.
“We had sea sickness when we started, and in Costa Rica, we had land sickness,” said Wafaei. “Our legs did not work. Not at all. We stumbled and staggered for several days.”
“I’m sure,” said Angus, “that people thought we were drunk.”
They’d ridden bikes across Europe before the ocean crossing and then, from Costa Rica, began a 100-mile-a-day bike ride through Central America and Mexico. They hit the U.S. a few weeks ago.
On or about June 1, the journey will end. In Vancouver, Wafaei will hug her strict military father. And then she’ll turn and say, “Dad, this is Colin.”
Who, if he has any sense at all, will never, ever speak of those long nights in the tent in Siberia.
Staff writer Rich Tosches can be reached at rtosches@denverpost.com.
