We know it as @Natxopalso known as @260litrosin social networks. He is of Argentine parents, born in Venezuela and raised in Spain, but he attends us from Quito, where one day the bicycle put him just a few weeks before the pandemic broke out and with it the confinement.
"I'm from San Sebastian, but for the last five years I've been a citizen of South America. The Covid crisis caught me here, in the middle of my trip, and I ended up settling in Quito," he tells us in detail. The fact that he has been in the capital of Ecuador for so long does not dilute his traveling essence: "My DNA is nomadic, I have had the traveling gene in my blood since before I was born, always on a bicycle. It is my companion, it has always been present in my life".
Leaving everything behind
His relationship with the bicycle, however, had a before and after a little more than five years ago, in one of those decisions that are not circumstantial: "I left everything behind, that is, I left a comfort zone that included work, partner and my city, Donostia... a conventional life, in society. I decided to sell everything I had, even my surfboards, and go out to see the world by bike.
A radical change as a result of events that mark: "Put yourself on stage, year 2016, a key year: I lost my father, I had a heartbreak, my job was not working... I broke with everything". He went around the world map with the index and "I don't know why, maybe because I was looking for my roots" he ended up in South America.
He took the skinny and went to Calafate, in Patagonia, from where he traced a route to Cusco.
Why Calafate-Cusco?
Because that was as far as the money would take him, at least in the first calculations. Although he would not be alone: "I called my friend Simón, I told him about the plan and to my surprise he signed up. We crunched the numbers with what we had saved and calculated between six and nine months of travel.
That was the initial plan, then came a turn of the plan, but not a conventional one, but a 360-degree turn, the road that was heading north, turned around: "Once in Calafate, instead of heading north, as planned, we went 500 kilometers south, towards Torres del Paine in Chile. On the way south, we met many people who had been traveling by bicycle for years".
Another twist in the script, the money available: "Our spending forecast turned out to be wrong, we had money for much longer, so we realized we could stretch the trip. On that trip we considered going all the way to Alaska. That's where the 260-liter project came about." A project explained on Instagram, with thousands of kilometers lived and counted through South America and a story of suspensions points.
Project 260 liters
260 liters recycling had its origin in all those roads that they found on their trip, "very dirty and left, with garbage in the ditches. I find it very sad that these things happen and we wanted to help raise awareness about the damage we do to the world with so much garbage. Riding our bikes and with our audiovisual expertise, we approached different organizations along the way in order to do waste collection days. We also activated the "Share the meal" project, an application for micro-donations for food plates in different projects around the world".
There was always Gobik. "They came in almost before we started our journey, through social networks, because of the way we told our project, and they supported us in a very effective way, with material that took us away from having to pay for it" Nacho confides to us.
900 nights of travel
The road, although twisty, followed its course, and finally took a northerly course. Along the way, they sowed memories in every stretch they passed through with their bicycles: "Of the 900 nights we spent on the road, we paid for 10%, the rest was either in a tent or in the homes of people who, along the way, offered you their house to stay in. We, in gratitude, stayed a few days in their house for a week to return the favor by helping them in works they had or simply working in their garden".
What started as a 9-month journey turned into a 3-year one.
"The trip ended in Quito, where we were caught in the pandemic. We arrived in the city in December 2019. Around those days I met my girl, the one who is now my wife, who was working with a wedding planner who, seeing what we were publishing, invited us to try to collaborate. We decided to stay, make money and then continue with the trip. With the pandemic, everything was cut short.
A few months later, another twist in the script: "Simon decided to go back to Spain and I, as I was not tied to anything there, decided to stay. During the days of confinement, I changed my mind, I went from being a bikepacking traveler to competing as an athlete.
Ultradistance in gravel
"I had a hard time to be honest," he admits, "but I started racing. I thought about doing triathlons, like my brother, but I got injured a lot and focused on cycling. I found out about ultra-distance gravel races and I fell in love with them. On my solo rides, I was already doing up to 150 kilometers and the change didn't cost me much at the beginning".
But the first competition wasn't just any old thing: "I signed up for an ultra-distance race with my 16-kilogram travel bike. I had a hard time, but I got a good result. It got me hooked like the worst drug in the world. I kept training, got to know gravel and since last year I've focused on ultradistance".
"I have to confess that I was very skeptical about gravel until I got my first bike and it opened up a whole new world for me, combining asphalt and dirt in a way that you can't do with MTB and road. Right now I have a MTB and a gravel. I'm doing ultra-distance races in Ecuador, Chile and Argentina, while I work in the audiovisual world, linked to the world of cycling and outdoor. It's a great luck to be able to combine them," Nacho concludes while thinking about his next trip, always on a bike.
RangeFreeride of Gobik
Gobik has an exclusive collection Freeridewith garments for other ways of understanding cycling: gravel, all mountain, enduro, Freerideebike.... Light and resistant, with a wide pattern to favor the use of protections. Finishes "cargo" in bib inside, shorts and T-shirts, designed so that you can carry small items with you even on longer outings.
Nacho has been using many of them in his routes and adventures, with extraordinary results. You can see all of them in this link:
