Buenos Aires

Twenty bus hours out of Punta Arenas, I visited Cuevos de los Manos. 9000 years ago any Indian with a problem would take it to the Chief who would advise; "You will find my answer at the Cave of Hands." After many days of searching, risking death by dehydration and wild animal attack across the endless steppe, he would then have to scale the cliffs of the Rio Pinturas canyon to reach the cave. At last he would approach the place of solace and he would see the hand paintings and there would be hope. Under the hands he notices the inscription

´Speak to the hand 'coz the face ain't bothered.'

Well that's my theory, anyway. More erudite anthropologists have come up with other theories but what do they really know?

Ten bus hours out of Cuevos de los Manos, I visited with Juan and Fernanda. In 2001 the small community of Esquel took on a mining multinational over the proposal to mine gold near the town. It all started when the local chemistry teacher thought that the company´s use of cyanide and the local water supply weren´t a good mix. By 2003, virtually the whole community put their hands up and said ´No a la Mina´ and the company was forced to look elsewhere for it´s riches. Spent an illuminating and inspiring few hours with this couple who are using the 'Esquel effect´to empower other communities in the area. They said the keys to success were education, not having one identifiable leader and the presence of ancient Mapuche Indian links to the Earth within the community.




Twenty six bus hours out of Esquel, it´s Buenos Aires. My, what a big country.
A constant presence throughout the trip has been the Calafate berry. A giant Blaeberry from a bush more akin to Juniper, the Patagonian myth states if you eat at least five, you will return one day.

Enough said. That´s that. I´m finished.

Punta Arenas


Simon and I decided we´d go down to the end of the road from here and thus the end of the American landmass. On the way down, I was playing around with the words; 'It was dark before I drove the point home', 'never let it be said this was a pointless journey', 'it was dusk when we came to the point', that kind of thing, but in reality there was no point. Only a gravel road turning into a beach, beech trees turning into Autumn and the Magellan Strait turning past Isla Dawson (Pinochet put his political prisoners here). We drank a Pisco toast to the end of the road.

Lunched on the way back at Cuidad del Rey Felipe. Sarmiento de Gamboa meant no harm. He left Spain in 1581 with three thousand people and twenty three ships to settle the Magellan Strait. Beset by torments, desertion and disease he arrived at our lunch spot with 150 people. The situation got worse so he sailed for help with a small crew but was blown off course by storms, ending up in Brazil. Despite desperate pleas, there was no help so he sailed for Europe only to be captured by the British and then tortured by the French, arriving in Spain an old and deeply sorry man. When discovered, all were dead at Cuidad del Rey Felipe. They renamed the place Port Famine. A place for unfixable regrets.

Had a final beautiful cycle back to Punta Arenas with dolphins accompanying us up the coast. It´s turning cold, now. Need to find a box for the bike. Time to head home.

Degrees South: 53.9

Miles cycled: 1228

Punta Arenas, Chile

' Why then ..does this barren land possess my mind? ...because it enhances the horizons of the imagination.'

Happy Birthday Mr Darwin.



I call them 'headers'. They are the brave souls cycling north on Ruta 9 at the end of this continent. Why do they do it? It's a bit like saying 'Lets canoe the Spey, will we start at Spey Bay or Boat of Garten?' I've just come south with the wind, unstoppable, barely pedalling, Tour de France pace, just without the thighs. Unstoppable that is until stopped by a 70 year old lady who gave me tea as we talked about her husband's Scottish ancestry. Morrisons from the Highlands, the three rowans in an otherwise treeless place gave the clue.

I'm down to my last book; some poetry by Pablo Neruda. On the left page the Spanish, on the right an English translation. Good for learning the language. Well, it is if you want to engage melancholy old men in conversations about Love and what might have been.
"Excuse me, is this Route 9, South?"
"Ah, Ruta 9! That road is like the arm of a girl I once knew in Valdivia, let me tell you."
"Must you?"

Yesterday was something else. I´d been pushed along all day by the wind and was feeling increasingly helpless to resist when over the rise was Otway Sound. This stretch of water leads to the Pacific and a narrow isthmus separates it from the Magellan Strait and ultimately the Atlantic. South America had tapered to this. It was so exciting as I was sucked into this vortex, in this place, by winds which got stronger and stronger. You needed all the tilting and tacking skills of a yachtsman to survive the side winds.

I've been sharing the road with a rare German called Simon. We don´t cycle together, just meeting up to swop stories over coffee and we both survived yesterday. A guy was selling 'El Pinguino', the local paper outside the cemetery we visited this morning and we both laughed at the front page headline - "Viento huracanado" - We had cycled through a hurricane!!




Degrees South: 53.2

Miles cycled: 1130

Puerto Natales



" A man who keeps company with glaciers comes to feel tolerably insignificant, by and by."

Mark Twain




" A man who keeps company with gravel roads comes to feel a significant, intolerable pain in the arse, by and by."

Anon.

Degrees South; 51.75
Miles Cycled; 970

Rio Turbio


Alone is no distant horizon.

'Charmless' is how the book describes this Argentine coal mining town. In the last 250 miles, spread over three and a bit days, there has been precisely one hotel, one cafe - 'View of the Divine Light' - and a garage. My principal activities, apart from the obvious, have been waiting for sheep, scraping clay from the bike and trying to outrun the Nandus (little emus). I've only taken a handful of photos and one of those was a roadkilled armadillo. Arriving here last night, the town held considerable charms. Kind of Pontefract without whippets.

At the garage, at Tapi Aike, I got talking with Enrique who was the ageing owner of the local Estancia. The plains here are so infertile each sheep requires the equivalent of three football pitches for the farm to be productive. He has 20,000 sheep. ¨The young men aren't interested anymore, they want the towns, they want television, they want electricity¨. The stark emptiness of the last three days may well come to define the latter part of the trip. What beauty in flamingoes feeding from a pool, against a backdrop of nothingness.

A couple of words are proving very useful; 'entonces' and 'claro'. The first is an opener, kind of like 'So..' and I find I can spin it out for at least 5 seconds whilst I come up with the words for the rest of the sentence. 'Claro' is an agreeing word along the lines of 'clearly' and I use it a lot when I haven't a clue what's being said. It makes me feel part of the conversation. ¨Claro, claro,¨ whilst nodding the head. Thankfully I didn't use it on the Rio Turbio miners. ¨So, do you think my wife is ugly?¨ ¨Claro, claro.¨ Goodnight Vienna.

Degrees South: 51.5

Miles cycled: 894

El Chalten




Vive Cerro Torre! With apologies for the photo quality, the central spike of a mountain is Cerro Torre. For a teenage birthday, my mum gave me a book. 'Filming the Impossible' contained a chapter on this mountain and it has been in my imagination ever since. In fact, along with cycle tours with my dad, those pages are a key underlying drive for this trip.

Italian Cesare Maestri claimed to have climbed Cerro Torre in 1959. Unfortunately his key witness, Toni Egger, died on the way down and noone else believed him. A hint of the Mallory and Irvine about it, and that's how it would have been, but Maestri returned in 1970 with a drill and bolted his way up, until stopped by the terrifying summit snow mushrooms. Not really giving the mountain a chance, many climbers 'spat the dummy' with him, but ironically now his 'Compressor Route' is the normal way to the top. A Swiss guy soloed it two months ago.

Also in the photo is Juan. Hard to believe with his look of Don Quixote, his jeans and his cycle shoes that he counts ascents of Gasherbrum 2 and Aconcagua among his adventures. He's a gent and patient with my faltering Spanish and we had a great day on the hill.

El Chalten, Argentina.


Finally the boat liked the look of the weather and left Villa O'Higgins and we filled it. First across Lago O'Higgins , with the white peak of Cerro O'Higgins like an expectant bride looking down on us, and then picking it´s way through icebergs (the bride's tears? oh, please!) which had calved off Glacier O'Higgins, before disgorging it´s contents on the southern shore.


Bernardo O'Higgins was the bastard son of a Sligo-born Peruvian Viceroy. Together with Simon Bolivar and Jose de San Martin, they led the liberation of South America against the Spanish in the C19th. He is the key figure in Chilean history, 'El Libertador', and duly his name is plastered on everything.


We were now five. Juan and Anke still, plus Bryan and Sue from New Zealand. I was the youngest by a few years! Twenty five kilometres and an international border lay between the shores of Lake O´Higgins and Lake Desierto, over a hill and along a path. Easy for a sunday stroll but with bikes and broken bridges, fallen trees, mud and steepness, it was a great little adventure. Luckily the farm at the shore had some horses.
Let the photos tell the story!



Negotiating with Glacier O'Higgins





Loading the horses at Candelario Mancillo farm.





First view of Mount Fitzroy.

Leaving Chile.

The descent to Lago del Desierto.
A boat crosses this lake and then a bit of cycling gets you to the town of El Chalten at the foot of Fitzroy.

Degrees South; 49.3
Miles Cycled; 638