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

Villa O´Higgins



The end of the Carretera Austral. A frontier town. For the last four days nothing but stunning scenery, porridge and pedalling. Oh, and other cyclists. I teamed up with two Spaniards, Martin and Juan plus Anke from Germany. Martin is a Biology teacher on unpaid leave - you´d think those work-shy holidaymakers got enough time off already. Nice to have company in the evenings.



In the ´80s Chile was pushing it´s road and people in this direction towards Argentina hoping to link up to it´s Southern territiories. Hard to imagine a war raging amidst these peaks, lakes and glaciers. Thankfully the Pope stepped in, everyone said twenty Hail Marys and Chile ended up with the frontier town Villa O´Higgins.



Had my closest encounter yet with a mighty Condor as it came at me over the trees like Ian Paisley, all white collar and beady eye. Apparently if you play dead in the road they come even closer.

For motorised folk Villa O´Higgins is the end of the road but for pedallers and pedestrians there is a way through the mountains to Argentina. Nothing is certain but it can be done using boats, horses, a path through trees and a lot of struggling. As I write, it´s breakfast time and the boat is cancelled for today due to the weather so a day of waiting lies ahead.

Cochrane

Face down in the dirt, surrounded by dogs. Not how I´d imagined the first day back on the bike ending. For the first time all day I was actually going at a decent speed when they came at me across a field. Four bloodhounds and a wee shitey thing. Poor quality hunt sab. footage played in my head. Foolishly I took my eye off the road to persuade the nearest one I wasn´t a fox and I was heading for the dirt.

On the positive side, it stopped them barking and they scattered. Only the wee shitey one hung around, taking a pee, making it´s point.

A hard day all round. From early it was dry and hot with no shelter, numerous ups and downs and a road best described as corrugated iron with a gravel topping. Then in the afternoon the wind woke up in a bad mood and, when gusting, the only option was to stand and hold on as it lifted the gravel surface of the road and pelted it against your legs.

On the positive side, it beats marking jotters and my legs are nicely exfoliated. No more wind stories. Only a fool brings a bike to Patagonia and then complains about the elemental nature of things.

Fell in with some jolly roadmenders, drinking Mate. Its a herb which grows in Northern Argentina and you fill up your gourd with it, add water and pass it round. There´s a straw with a filter on it so you only get the juice. It´s an important social event and I felt honoured as we sat round the flask of hot water which continually tops up the tea. First impressions were akin to sucking the dregs out of a sodden ashtray. It´s meant to be curative and in a sense it was as it cured any desire in me to try it again.

That was yesterday, this is Friday. Ahead lies four days on the remotest section of the Carretera Austral, to the end of the road. No internet access. Lucky you.

Degrees South: 47.25

Miles cycled: 461

Buenos Aires

It´s warm for January. 30 degrees C at midnight. Oh for the cooling caress of a Ben Nevis spindrift avalanche. The sensible portenos (locals) come out at night.

We arrived yesterday by way of two remarkably similar overnight bus journeys. Stereo snorers directly behind and a ´courting´couple directly in front on both nights, the only difference being on the first journey Kirsty didn´t set about the snorers with the complimentary pillow. Oh, and the young lovers actually knew each other before the first journey started.

We spent the day between buses in a bit of real Patagonia. Ask tourists what they know of Patagonia and we´ll reel off lakes, glaciers and peaks. However, the vast majority of Patagonia is flat, featureless former sea-bed between the Andes and the Atlantic. Miles and miles of nothing. ´If nowhere is a place, Patagonia is nowhere.´ On our day we took a fossil trail across a bit of it. Shadeless, dusty-hot and we´re looking at a 15 million year old Penguin skeleton. An hour later, down at the Atlantic, in similarly arid conditions we´re in the middle of the largest Penguin colony in South America. Half a million Magellanic penguins in burrows, under bushes, on the beach, in the sea, under foot, not one of them related to our fossilised friend apparently, and not an iceberg in sight.

We´re in transit just now and after a special night of Tango stories, open air opera and midnight dining, today Kirsty flew homeward and I´ve another nightbus on the cards.

Dogs of Patagonia

Puerto Montt

You travel to the far end of the world and you end up in a boat on Loch Maree.



There´s two things I loathe about travelling; carrying heavy luggage for no good reason and boats.

The Navimag ferry from Puerto Natales to Puerto Montt is the longest ferry journey in the world and a necessary one as the Southern Patagonian Icefield lies between the two towns, effectively cutting Chile in two, except by boat. On it´s way the ferry goes through the narrowest navigable channel in world shipping, across the Gulf of Distress, stops in at the only settlement, Port Eden, cutting through a maze of uninhabited fjordland (English Narrows, White Strait) past glaciers calving into the sea, shipwrecks and an active volcano or two. It takes three days. Sometimes fear and loathing have to be swallowed along with the sea sick pills.

To relieve the boredom and presumably to stop us all throwing ourselves into the sea, our entertainment officer, Marcel, was giving lectures, including one on glaciation. Yeah, like that´s gonna work.
"And now I´d like to move onto Glacial Deposition and the differences between fluvioglacial and glacial deposits."
"Man overboard!"
As a geography geek and teacher though, the whole ship is a moveable classroom (with a few non-geographical feasts thrown in) and it was illuminating for me to be listening to the lecture in Spanish on Ice Ages and Global Warming and find myself thinking "I don´t know what he´s on about ... but nice pictures."

We were very lucky to have two very calm and clear days lounging, playing bingo, reading Agatha Christie and staring as Wester Ross floated past. It was incredible how Scottish it looked at times. Well, apart from the ice-clad volcanoes.

Puerto Natales

Torres Del Paine National Park. Not part of the Andes. A huge intrusion of magma (yellow rock in photos) pushed up the overlying sediments (dark rock in photos) and then they were left out in the wind and rain. Just concentrate on the physical geography and don´t worry about the ´human´interest.

Chile Chico.


The joys of the world wide web and it´s cafes. Out of the wind, comfortable seats and cheaper than a coffee house.


This is the end of Kirsty´s cycling road. A time of much content. It seems mildly appropriate to have ended up on the shore of South America´s second largest lake, in Argentina known as Lago Buenos Aires. An incredible wind sped us here yesterday, so strong we hardly pedalled the uphills.






Patagonia Sin Represas! Car stickers, coffee table books, posters and billboards all proclaim this message wherever we go. It encourages people to imagine the worst, environmentally, with a view to conserving their wild nature. Compared with a similar area in Europe, the Spanish Pyrenees for example, the places we have cycled through seem relatively untouched. We´ve seen three wind turbines, one mine, two radio masts and a healthy collection of National Parks in 500km.


200km of this arterial road we´re travelling is, however, in the process of being dynamited and widened, ready for it to ´fir up´with tar. I can´t imagine such improvements are to give a few dozen cyclists an easier ride. Such are the plethora of green energy resources down here (we didn´t need to pedal uphill!) that Patagonia is surely set to become another battleground between the conservers of habitat and the conservers of carbon.

My bike stays here. Our rather circuitous route is now by bus, plane, ship and foot to the glaciers and penguins of the far south before swinging back towards Buenos Aires. Will the wind have changed direction when I´m back in two weeks?

Degrees South: 46.5

Miles cycled: 344 miles