Inspiration Comes From The Heart Of Iceland

March 20, 2005

"I think I'd like to cycle Argentina", I said to another cyclist a few Summers back, whom I met in the heart of Iceland. "No: Argentina is very flat and boring; and the South, Patagonia, is completely empty of people" said he disapproving, going on to say "Chile though is a nice country". He had cycled much of South America while I on the other hand had not been out of Europe.

Two years on I was applying for a new passport. My old passport had lots of blank pages, only having a few stamps for former Eastern Block countries. Seeing this and with the cyclist in Iceland in mind, it began to seem fairly pointless having a passport if not to travel further. While waiting for my new passport, I got to thinking about parts of the world beyond Europe, and soon I became overwhelmed with one desire, the desire to broaden my horizon by cycling somewhere faraway. I read many books on these places and soon before falling asleep at night, I was traveling in my mind to New Zealand as well as South America: my real ambition however was to cycle through Southern Africa. Though my cautious side said that Africa would be too dramatic a step at first, so I resigned to the idea of South America being a stepping stone as well as an actual desire to visit the place. Later that year, having flown off to Argentina and while in Patagonia, I met Felipe from Italy with a lifetime experience as a Doctor all over Africa, that put it very well; "In South America, you can plan what you're going to do tomorrow. There is good infrastructure and all that. In Africa, it's chaos! You cannot plan anything."

The original idea when I'd made-up my mind was to cycle-tour in Chile, but as the capital, Santiago is on the continent's Pacific side, it seemed at the time less convenient for flights out of Europe, so I booked a straightforward flight to Buenos Aires. Throughout last Summer and early Autumn I rode my bike around Ireland, Scotland and Southern Norway, using a newly purchased tent and new camping-gear in preparation. Then one day in October, I flew overnight from Autumn to Spring in Buenos Aires, where there was warm china blue skies, violet jacaranda trees, distinctive yellow and black taxis, vain fashion and elegant cosmopolitan people, and the carne, the slabs of steak. I got the impression that life there was a little too good. However while leaving, I saw a different reality from the bus-window, passing not only down-at-heel inner-city neighbourhoods, but shanty towns, reflecting that a lot live on or near the breadline. A situation made worst by the country's recent economic crisis.

Gran Buenos Aires is a city of 13 million. The country as a whole has a population of 36 million, which with a land area of three million kilometres-square means extremely thin population cover. Reaching the suburbs and open fields, eventually leaving the capital behind, I was bound for Neuquen down in Patagonia, perhaps the most sparsely peopled territory on the planet. I was soon to find out the veracity of what the cyclist said in Iceland, as the bus drove on and on and on, the view out the window becoming unbelievably featureless, flat and open to a far off horizon. It was like a still green ocean. The sun was sinking and set; then a full moon rose and I continued to look out on the pampas as the bus drove on into the night. Sleeping well in my seat, waking just as it was getting light, the green had given way to a landscape like a gigantic brown Scottish moor: no trees, no rivers, no hills, just immense brown open space as far as the eye could see. Intimidating to look at in the early grey light, the only thing growing behind the stock fence which ran along the long straight road was waist high thorns. An hour past in which I watched the sunrise and many hours followed looking out with no change apart from cows and their calves looking back over the fence at the bus passing. Then an hour before the 1100 arrival time on my ticket, the road began descending into a valley, which I reckoned to be the valley of the Neuquen river.

I looked out now on well trained apple orchards, fruits and vines in symmetrical rectangular fields divided by straight rows of tall popular trees, like pale green fingers in lines. The broad flat valley was enclosed by white crags and cliffs, and was full of human habitation, as the bus passed through quite a few villages, pass fruit warehouses with stacked boxes and forklifts out front. And before long we were moving along city-streets. My 17 hour bus journey was at last coming to an end. At the bus-station, a smiling old Indian woman with silver hair platted to her waist, came over and held the bike steady as I fitted the panniers; then contemplating where to from the bus-station, a young man that said his name was Jorge, volunteer to show me around, and so straightaway I felt welcome.

"You're going to cycle across Patagonia", said Jorge while having an expression on his face which told that he thought me naive, continuing, "Well good luck. Do you know that there is nothing for hundreds of kilometres, just desert. There's even stretches along the Atlantic coast where there isn't a house for five hundred kilometres."

He was right, both on the desolated nature of Patagonia and my naivety. However I was learning, by blunder, and any deprivation wouldn't overshadow the incredible adventure that lay ahead while cycling out of Neuquen that bright warm Spring day. I was bound for San Carlos de Bariloche which happened to be Jorge's home-town. He talked as if it was the best place in all Argentina.

From day one the wind was my constant companion. Almost always it would begin shortly before noon. That first day out of Neuquen it blew up strong while approaching a junction, where I was forced to turn off west in the direction of Zappala, described in my guild-book as a windy high-plateau mining town, as continuing southwest meant an impossible headwind. On day two, the wind rose an hour after a late start and came from the west: that impossible headwind which I'd avoided yesterday was reality. Sand drifted over the road and blew up in twisters, and Is reduced to a painfully slow grovel. Increasingly gusts brought me to a standstill where I struggled to stand upright, while gains of sand rained on me. Other times gusts pushed me suddenly without warning across the road. Luckily, the traffic was light, being the odd passing oil-worker's pickup with a fair few minutes in-between; one of which came to my rescue when it slowed and pulled over ahead of me. The driver got out and piled my bike into the back. At the time my Spanish was basis but the driver told me his name was Juan. Reaching over he grappled with an untidy shuffle of papers on the dash in-front of me, and put in my hand a colour poster, a big picture of a mountain-bike-racer in full flight on red and white taped-off forest trail, with bold wording, "Bariloche Ven 19, Sab 20 y Dom 21 Nov....". So Juan was into mountain biking. It was good to be in out of the wind anyway as we swung out overtaking a slower oil-worker's truck, Juan blaring the horn in salute, while ahead through the windscreen I saw the snow covered peaks of the Andes for the first time.

Beyond Zappala, the countryside transformed from arid scrub-land plains, to grassy river valley with craggy hills to the side. It was cowboy country with rust-colour, white-head cows, herded by horsemen dressed like Clint Eastwood in Spaghetti Westerns.

November the first was a short cycling day, forty kilometres all downhill to San Martin de Los Andes, a rustic frontier town nestled in a deep wooded alpine valley. The rain then came on shortly before noon so I spent the afternoon siting it out in a cafe, a fly on the wall to the German, French and English cliental sat round the other tables. It was nice to pour another glass of beer and watch out the window at those ambling along the street in the soft persistent drizzle. The rain ceased in the evening, with a fair ray of late sun as I rode to the municipal campsite. Next morning was bright with a sharp frost nipping at the fingers which were soon painfully numb. I entered a cosy bar feeling nausea with arms folded, hands in armpits to regain circulation. The hiss of the espresso machine was comforting. I chose the biggest looking breakfast on the card: Americano, consisting of ham and eggs, tostados and a strange sticky brown spread, much like toffee, which I later learned was Dulce de Leche.

Not long after leaving San Martin, storm clouds rolled in quickly blotting out early sunshine, and soon it was raining; cold rain which changed to snow after winding up the wooded slope from the lake, and thereafter I rode all morning in a thick gloom of floating snow flakes, and whitening roadside, feeling terribly numb. It eased briefly around midday with a ray of sun, whereupon I stopped at a roadside cafe, hoping to get in and warmed up, but it was shut, deserted of all life. Across the road, there was a school and alongside, a smart wood-frame house, therein the garden, apple trees were in full blossom and daffodils out in the snow, but there wasn't a soul about. I went and sat under a tree a little way along lunching while the sky darken, and soon it was snowing again. I cycled for only an hour in the afternoon, until descending to a wide glassy lakeside where I quickly got the tent up and got in the sleeping bag meaning only to warm-up, but soon dropped off, waking after a beautiful slumber about six o'clock, dry and warm to a glorious sunny Spring evening. Before moving, I remained still listening to a curious cow breathe heavily against the tent's fly and a calf bellow for it's mama from in amongst the lakeside scrubbery.

A week later and about 480km south, Is intrigued by the strong Welsh identity in Trevelin, enjoying my visit to Naim Maggies Welsh Tea House, with home made breads, jams, cheese and cakes. Twenty-seven kilometres over the hill and down, nestled in a deep bowl between three great hills, I waited out a few days unsettled showery weather, camping in a backgarden campsite called "El Mochilero", there I met a Dutch traveling couple and we spent our evenings in a bar called "Media Luna". Then leaving Esquel on a Sunday morning, felt like leaving civilisation forever. Ahead was two thousand kilometres of arid steppe: endless road across empty space.

Typically I would see a faint blue ridge suspended in mid-air on the far horizon. That would be in the morning, by noon, the ridge would be darker blue and no longer separated from the horizon, and later it started to look brown; then, by nightfall I would reach the hill. Other times, the flatness would give way when the road reached and dropped steeply into a massive hollow with a willow tree enclosed snaking river through the flat middle. Lines of tall popular trees, waving in the wind, surrounded estancias which survived on the lush riverbank pastures. And then it was a climb back up the other side to the dry scrub-land for another long-long stretch. There was little traffic, and days when no cars past at all. I remember the Saturday afternoon after having left the isolated village of Gobenor Gregorios that morning. I had completed a 140km detour east off the main north-south route in order to rest a few days and restock. A few kilometres short of the tee-junction back on to the road south, near the gleaming turquoise sheet, Lago Cardial, I stopped and marvel at the silence in that broad bleak valley, bound by brown hills. Looking ahead to the mainroad I saw, a mini-bus traveling from my right, slowly across to my left; the only sign of human life that day.

I met a German cyclist on the last day riding into Ushuaia a few days before Christmas. He found a hosteria in town while I camped up until the New year at Ushuaia Ruby Club, where a jovial Yuletide was had, having met up with other overlanders on motor bikes and in vans. Some of them having come all the way from Canada, nevertheless I thought my relatively shorter ride across Patagonia was a feat in itself.

In January I cycled North on the Carretera Austral, an outstanding landscape in it's own right. Forest, turquoise lakes and swift glazier rivers had a greater tourist draw, but it was the brown steppe which had a more lasting impression on me.

Doing like everybody else with a photo for posterior. This was the lease impressive part of the tour.

John from Nebraska: formally a sport's doctor or so he said; now a hobo on a motorbike, having ridden from home to Alaska and from there to Ushuaia. On January 2nd he was setting off again, bound for Buenos Aires where he hoped to sell the bike and fly home.

The big bends: sandbars and smaller channels of Rio Vedima at Chalten.

Summer morning, long shadows and baled hay near small settlement of Rividavia.

A thundering summer evening near the village of El Maiten by Rio Chubut.

Lived in until 1998, by an old man of Chilean origin that moved in as a child with his family a short time after it's more famous occupant, Butch Cassidy fled circa 1907.

Cuevas de Los Manos in valle de Pinturas, 50km off the main route, Ruta40, in the heart of Santa Cruz, a Provence the size of France but with a sparse population of just under two hundred thousand.

These two guys where staying in the hostel in Buenos Aires when Is there in Oct 2004.

It wasn't much fun Being a Tractor-Driver in 1910 when this was in use. A 100 year on, it sits idyl on Gobenor Gregorio's main drag as a memento to the village's pioneers.

By coincidence I stopped for lunch here and noticed the significant of the place as the onetime abode of Butch Cassidy.

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