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"How many roads must a man walk down? How do you persuade yourself to leave a nice warm bed to begin cycling when 17848km of road lies between you and Alaska? This was the question rolling around my head as I lay in a nice warm bed in Ushuaia (pronounced: Yorkshire accent "us"-"WHY"-"a") with 17848km of cycling lying between me and Alaska. ´Ruta 3´ began in a deserted carpark
on a damp sea shore, an inauspicious beginning for the long road North
but I was thrilled to be there, to be in Patagonia at last. For years
names such as Ushuaia, Cape Horn, Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia have
held some kind of magic for me. They are names that bring a smile to
my face, quicken the pulse and prompt thoughts of crazy adventures and
emails to friends such as Eric Newby´s famous telegraph "Do
you fancy Nuristan in June?" "El Fin del Mundo" is a colourful hotchpotch of pink and blue and green and orange corrugated metal buildings beneath black snow-covered peaks on the shore of the calm, grey Beagle Canal. Tourism flourishes there but not, I imagine, due to the city tour, of which highlights included Mr. Pastoriza´s old house: "a man who worked in a sardine canning company. The project failed because the sardines never appeared". Or Mr. Solomon´s general goods store: "it became very famous because of the variety of it´s products and closed in 1970". I rode through temperate dripping forests, tatty and lichen covered, deep and mysterious like ´The Lord of the Rings´. Green rivers with curves of perfect camping flowed into quiet lakes. Patagonia, like Mr. Kipling, makes exceedingly good lakes. I soon left behind the mountains of Southern Tierra del Fuego and moved into the classic Patagonian pampas- flat, soggy moorland under an enormous sky. The distances in Patagonia are virtually unimaginable to anyone raised in the efficient compactness of Europe. Occasionally there is a solitary Estancia (farm), red roofed and white walled. Stopping to refill my water bottles I am often treated to a great bowl of mutton soup and a drink of maté (grass flavoured tea basically!) bubbling constantly on the old kitchen stove in the well-worn farmhouses. At one Estancia a father, son and grandson on dappled brown horses come galloping home together for lunch, three generations of gaucho (cowboy) hungry after a hard morning{s ride tending the cattle and sheep.With the flat pampa comes the notorious Patagonian wind, so fierce in my face that for two days I was unable to cycle and had to walk with the bike. On one day I could not even walk into the wind and lay huddled under a bush for several hours waiting for the wind to ease enough for me to stand up. On days like these Alaska feels a long way away! The assault of the wind feels so personal; it is like a playground bully who delights in not leaving you in peace. It pushes you around, roars in your ears, messes with your stuff, pulls your tent apart, and seems only to delight in any tantrums it provokes. Trees are scarce round here and what few there are are bereft of branches on the windward side with the trunk and all the branches growing horizontally down wind, fixed into an extravagant kind of blow-dry´n´gel style. The cycling has been brutal and as winter approaches it is unlikely to improve. Sweet music to all of you who, from your office, cursed my gentle wanderings through sunny Africa, I am sure! But I am not totally alone in this wind. With me is ´Clare´, the cute girl from a shampoo bottle label stuck onto my bike by a Canadian guy who figured I needed a bit of female company. I also have a sticker of Che Guevara, not for his revolutionary ideas for students T-shirts worldwide, but rather for his early expertise in the art of Wildman travel (read his book "The Motorcycle Diaries"). Finally there is ´Buster´, a dangly fluffy monkey with an idiotic grin undiminished even by the headwinds suggesting that he has suitably few braincells to enjoy this ride North. I may be a bear of very little brain, but headwinds do bother me. Tierra del Fuego is shared between Argentina and Chile. I left Argentina with it´s many road signs reminding everyone that "Las Malvinas son Argentinas" (The Falklands are Argentinas) because the road North on the mainland passes through Chile. Most vehicles in Chile are either pick up trucks or "A Team" style vans and many pull over to offer me rides. But, like an idiot, I just keep on riding (or walking or lying under a bush). There is too far to go to take the easy option.I passed several minefields. Not only did these help persuade me not to camp just yet and to ride on a little farther, they also provoked much laughter as I recited episodes of Blackadder in World War 1 to myself (see below). In Africa I promised myself that I would never ever
complain again about being cold. Currently I begin cycling at dawn before
the wind becomes too strong. So I murmur "How delightful"
to myself as I surface from my warm sleeping bag into a dark dawn of
numb hands and feet and two wooly hats. Surely frying in the Sudan wasn´t
that bad?! -----Excerpt from Blackadder. If you are not familiar with this, please do yourself a favour and track down the video! Purists please forgive me if I am not quite word perfect!Scene: a secret mission in no-man´s land, WW1.Captain Blackadder: "Where are we, Lieutenant?"Lieutenant George: "Looking at the map we appear to be in a large field of mushrooms"CB: "This is a military map. It is unlikely to list interesting fauna and fungi. What do the symbols mean?"LG: "It says ´mine´. So whoever made the map must own the mushrooms as well"CB: "Or we are in a minefield"LG: "Ahh... Sir? What do we do if we step on a mine?"CB: "Standard practice, Lieutenant, is to leap 100 feet in the air and scatter yourself over a very large area..." www.roundtheworldbybike.com roundtheworldbybike@hotmail.com
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