That's a good question, one that I asked the people we met who told us about him. To my chagrin, we never actually met him in person.

A customs inspector at the Argentinean border told us he had just crossed moments before us. She had a table full of backyard vegetables he was carrying with him that she had confiscated. She found it funny that he had complained he would have no food until the next town which was a good distance away. We watched the road like hawks (we were driving) but never saw him.

We met two Irish girls in Ecuador who told us they had bought him dinner and drinks a few nights before. They said he wild camped every night, carried a bag of rice, another of beans and washed in streams. They struck me as people who were not easily impressed yet they were wide-eyed with his tales.

Others we met along the way told us third hand stories.... how he crewed on a sailboat to get around the Darien Gap and how his fellow crew members took such a liking to him that they refused to charge him for his passage and sent him on his way with panniers full of food. How his budget was busted at a border (can't remember which) when the guard refused to waive the after-hours "fee".

On a non-bike related note... There was a guy who walked away from his house and spent the better part of a year hitch-hiking across the U.S. with no money whatsoever. He wrote a book about the journey and called it "The Kindness of Strangers".