Colin Bankes-Jones, from Foxdale, is now almost three years into his cycling tour across the Americas.

He started in March 2019 in Montreal, Canada and is now well into Colombia.

The 25-year-old intends to make it all the way to Ushuaia in Argentina - the southernmost tip of the continent.

After graduating with a physics degree from the University of Aberdeen, Colin decided to travel the world on a bicycle - busking with a guitar along the way, and either wild camping in a hammock , staying with hosts he meets online, or (in Colombia) enjoying accomodation which costs as little as £6 per night.

When the Examiner first spoke to Colin in March, he had just passed into Guatemala on his heavily-laden touring bike.

Since then, some of his trip highlights included seeing Aztec pyramids, the Panama Canal, the hidden waterfalls he passes on remote trails, and the ’Ruta de las flores’ in El Salvador, which ’although very hilly was also very beautiful as it is a mountain road that passes through a few small villages and along some mountain ridges all which are covered in the brightest flowers I had seen’.

He talked about the most recent leg of his journey: ’In Colombia I chose to take a route that let me out into the remote mountains and small villages that aren’t often visited by people as they are considered to be in a dangerous part of Colombia.

’I was only greeted by kindness and friendship in these places and it is maybe one of the best decisions of my trip to take this little back road,’ Colin said.

’The road also led onto one of the most incredible valleys I’ve seen that was just a chain of reservoirs that ran the length to one of the largest waterfalls in Latin America along with one of the highest cable car lifts.’

He spent Christmas in Amalfi, a ’tiny little town’ in the mountains.

Asked if he was confident about making it all the way to Ushuaia, Colin said: ’I have a rule that I cannot return to Europe until I reach it - is about 14,000 kilometres from where I am now and given that I usually do about 1000kms per month, I’m thinking I will be down there around April 2023, assuming I don’t have any more problems with border restrictions or medical problems.

One such border issue involved Honduras not wanting any British citizens entering the country, as this was during the time of the Kent covid variant outbreak - so he had to explain in Spanish where he had been over the past two years.

He has also had trouble finding a way to get vaccinated as a foreigner, which poses a problem for entering Ecuador (his next country).

Other challenges Colin’s faced include hills of 22% gradient, which he said were among the steepest he’d seen anywhere in the world.

Asked what he misses most about home, Colin said that aside from the stability of knowing where he was going to sleep, he told us: ’Dare I say it... British food.

’Things like a Cornish pasty or a bottle of cider - both of which are pretty much impossible to get hold of down here’.

He’s now looking forward to seeing the Patagonia region of Argentina and the Atacama desert in Chile, ’where the skies are supposed to be some of the clearest in the world’.

People can follow Colin’s journey on his Facebook page ’The Cicloviakingo’ (The cycling viking).