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