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In the Beginning

If anyone was to ask us the question, and people do, - “how did the idea of trying to find Manchester come about” we can’t really tell them. Its one of those things that just evolved. If we were pushed to put our finger on the moment the seed was sown we would have to say it was over 3 years ago while we were deciding on where to go next whilst riding an overloaded motorbike around South America.

We were in Juliaca, Peru; a crossroads town and one of those towns you know you shouldn’t be in as soon as you get there. We were heading for Bolivia and had the choice of going around Lake Titicaca by the north shore or the south. It’s the highest navigable lake in the world and has stunning scenery to match. As we studied our battered Russian maps Liz’s eyes strayed to places further afield. “Bloody hell, there’s a place called Manchester here!” she said, or at least words to that effect as I recall.
Having ridden a motorbike around South America for over two years we were under no illusions that we could get ourselves and the bike anywhere near Manchester in Bolivia without killing ourselves in the process. The Amazon jungle is not the easiest of places for two people on one bike to get around so any idea of going there was quickly forgotten. We took the north shore route into Bolivia and continued our ride south through the Americas.

In two and a half years of riding a motorbike around North, Central and South America the one place we didn’t really spend any time was the Amazon. In part it was because we’d become tired of being eaten alive and suffering from heat rash whilst in the jungles of Belize, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Panama. We’d been bitten by snakes and dragged half a tonne of motorbike into the Darien Gap and that was enough. Our Amazon experience amounted to a couple of weeks when we rode over the border of Ecuador and into Brazil without knowing quite where we were. Once we realised we were a couple of hundred miles into Brazil without visas or passport stamps and we felt it was prudent to get out of there as soon as we could before we got ourselves locked up.

Two years later and back in the UK we had itchy feet again. We got the same old Russian maps out and began to run our fingers over them with new ideas in mind. We knew we wanted to try and get to some of the places we couldn’t reach with the motorbike and we knew that it was the rivers of South America that would take us to those places. A host of areas were considered that fulfilled the criteria of remoteness, wildlife and a bit of challenge. It was at that point that the Rio Manuripi and Manchester joined the list along with other places including the tributaries of the Napo running out of Ecuador, the Rio Mirim of northern Peru and the Pantanal region of Southern Bolivia and Paraguay to name a few of the places we considered. We actually settled on the Pantanal, with its incredible wildlife and open tapestry of lakes and began planning in earnest. However, the whole time that we were putting effort into getting ourselves there it felt like something was missing.

What was missing was an ‘A’ and a ‘B’. A starting point and an end. There was no journey within what we were going to do. It gradually dawned on us that we would soon fall into a pattern of drifting around without any purpose. Eventually an email from a friend, another map and one of those “what are we doing?” conversations (that invariably involves a bottle of wine) we decided to look at things again. I have no idea if it was Liz or I but one of us suggested trying to find Manchester again. And here we are.