A 34-year-old robotic engineer from Guatemala is pedaling a unicycle through Utah this week as part of a planned 30,000-mile journey from Alaska to Argentina, and he says the kindness he has found along the way has made it hard to leave. Raúl García expects to travel through Provo, Cedar City and St. George over the next several days, a route local unicyclists helped him map out.
García's trip, which began June 1, 2026, has already carried him far beyond Utah's borders. According to KSL News, he started learning to ride a unicycle four years ago after a young unicyclist from the United Kingdom who was touring the world inspired him to pick up the sport. That inspiration appears to trace back to British rider Ed Pratt, who completed the first recognized round-the-world unicycle tour in July 2018, pedaling roughly 21,000 miles across four continents over three and a half years and raising more than £300,000 for charity along the way, according to centraljersey.com.
García's own journey began in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, and has brought him to Utah. Per the KSL report, García plans to travel south as the colder months set in, relying on a pay-as-you-go strategy: he works, saves money, lives cheaply, and moves on once he hits his financial goals.
An Adventurer With Deep Roots in the Outdoors
García's love of long-distance travel didn't start with a unicycle. The KSL article notes he has a longstanding interest in adventure, having visited Guatemalan volcanoes with his father several times a year and taken numerous bicycle-travel sabbaticals before ever attempting this trip. He has said a bicycle trip can restore hope in humanity, a belief that seems to be holding up on the road.
That philosophy has played out in Utah, where García said the people he's met have been kind and have invited him to join in their activities, according to the same KSL account. He has also said he has found it difficult to leave the state, a sentiment that echoes his broader belief that people share a need for kindness and kinship, and that they willingly help travelers because they want to experience adventure vicariously through them.
Pedaling for a Purpose Beyond the Road
García's journey is not simply an endurance feat. He hopes to promote sustainable energy for small businesses in remote rural Guatemala, and he volunteers his time on the road to raise awareness and funds for an effort that converts old bicycles into working machines. That effort centers on Maya Pedal, the Guatemalan nongovernmental organization García works with, which repurposes secondhand bicycles into human-powered machines for communities where electric energy is unavailable or unaffordable, per KSL's reporting.
Maya Pedal was founded in 1997 in San Andrés Itzapa through a partnership between the Canadian group PEDAL and local mechanics, formally becoming Asociación Maya Pedal in 2001, according to the Curry Stone Foundation. The organization builds what it calls bicimáquinas — bike-powered blenders, water pumps, generators, nut-shellers, corn-threshers and laundry machines, as KSL describes them. The Ecologist reports that Maya Pedal's corn threshers can degrain up to 15 corn husks per minute, while its pedal-powered water pumps can lift 30 liters of water per minute from wells as deep as 30 meters, all without electricity.
Why Pedal Power Still Matters in Rural Guatemala
Maya Pedal's machines are intended for communities where electricity is unavailable or unaffordable. In San Andrés Itzapa, a local Indigenous women's collective has put that technology to direct use, running a Maya Pedal bicycle blender to produce organic aloe shampoo and reinvesting the proceeds into family support and local reforestation projects, as reported by The Borgen Project.
Maya Pedal receives donated bicycles from the United States and Canada.
Thousands of Miles Still Ahead
García has said his journey could take three or more years to complete, with Utah marking just one stretch of his Alaska-to-Argentina route. The Pan-American Highway network runs roughly 19,000 miles from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to Ushuaia, Argentina, crossing about 14 countries — though it remains physically broken by the 60-to-100-mile roadless stretch of rainforest known as the Darién Gap between Panama and Colombia, according to the Daily Express. Travelers must transport vehicles across that gap by sea or air, though how García plans to navigate the obstacle remains an open question.
García's trek also lands amid a broader moment of interest in single-wheel endurance travel. A 65-year-old Sandy resident raised about $14,500, and an electric-unicycle ride covered nearly 3,500 miles. These efforts reflect Utah's connection to long-distance unicycling and its varied causes. For García, the cause remains rural Guatemala's small businesses and the pedal-powered machines helping keep them running without a plug.
