To Salta, Wednesday 4 October
I am in the Argentine. Or I am in Argentina? I prefer the former. Crossing the border was routine, although time-consuming. I have one more border to cross – that dividing Tierra del Fuego. Two young Frenchmen I met at the Bolivian frontier recounted their fears of the complications entailed in travelling by bike. There are no complications. A biker requires proof of ownership, a national driving licence, ample photocopies, patience and a good attitude. Attitude is essential. Officials scent arrogance or impatience or contempt faster than hounds scent a fox. Police are equally sensitive to attitude. I have been treated with courtesy throughout this journey. I have ridden 16 000 kilometres. Other than at a frontier, I have been asked for my papers only once: by a young cop on a bridge in Armenia, Colombia. A sergeant arrived and told the young cop not to be stupid.
I am in Salta. I have a room two blocks off the square at the Residencia Elena. The room opens off a patio full of flowers. Water is hot. The ceiling fan squeaks. The room rate is twenty dollars for a couple. I am alone and pay sixteen and a half dollars. I don’t complain. I have ridden 400 kilometres today over country that is flat and boring. Agriculturally it is well organised in vast fields of sugar, a tall plant with a yellow flower, wheat and citrus. Mountains pretend to approach, only to retreat into the haze. Entering the city is easy. The centre is clearly signed.
Joy is to discover pavement cafés on the cathedral square that serve excellent coffee. I order a fruit salad, sip coffee and people-watch. I have been in a largely mestizo world for the past five months. Argentina is different. You see white people, white, white, white. A tall man selling fruit in the market is as white as an Irish nun in a closed order. Is he scared of the sun, frightened of skin cancer? What does he do at weekends? Watch football on TV?
Two pedestrian streets lead down from Salta’s cathedral square. I stroll through a hippy craft market circa Ibiza 1970. The leather necklaces and pendants, wrist strings and bracelets arranged on carpets are indistinguishable from the wares in every other street craft market. The people are indistinguishable. Their conversation is indistinguishable, as is their certainty in their uniqueness. These people are different. They have dropped out. In 2006 – wow!
One man is Rasta-ing another’s hair – symbol of that, to me, strange faith. Surely only ignorance can explain respect for Haile Selassie, king of kings (a throne he usurped)? Haile Selassie was a murderous autocrat. During the Italian conquest of Ethiopia, he fled to England while the great nobles of the country took to the mountains and fought and never surrendered. I lived in Ethiopia in my early twenties. My Ethiopian friends were desperate to modernise their country. Haile Selassie had many of them arrested, tortured and killed. And, of course, Haile Selassie was Amharic. The Amharas claim to be the only true white race (I am considered ‘red’). They have two words for black people: ‘slave’ and ‘outcast’. Typical Amhara proverb: Should you come out of your house and see a black man, go back in for a black man brings bad luck.
We all have our prejudices. I am in Salta. I am in a recognisably European city of pavement cafés, clean parks and smart shops. Normally I wear cargo pants. I carry my camera in one leg pocket, my wallet in the other. A thief would have to stoop and peel the Velcro flap. This evening I dress in smart corduroy trousers for a smart city (I bought the corduroys in La Paz for five dollars). I have escaped unscathed from the terrorist and bandit territory of indigenous America. I relax.
I have my pocket picked. Ha!
I report the loss of my wallet at the police station on the cathedral plaza. I am recompensed with two kisses. The police officer is young and pretty and kind. She says that I am in great shape for an oldie – that Bernadette must be a wonderful wife to have looked after me so well.
A second police officer groans under the weight of her pregnancy. I recall Bernadette visiting a dear friend on his deathbed. He had been a formidable rugby player in his youth and was a highly regarded gynaecologist. He was dismissive of women’s aches and pains. Dying of cancer, he complained to Bernadette that every part of him hurt.
‘At last you know what it feels like to be pregnant,’ said Bernadette.
I report this tale to Salta’s female police officers. Bernadette is their hero.
In England I belong to the Automobile Association. Here, in Salta, I join the Automobile Club of Argentina. Members gain a discount at ACA gas stations and at ACA motels and selected hotels. The discount on gas hardly benefits the rider of a Honda 125. As for the hotels, even with discounts they are beyond my budget. However, the ACA publishes an excellent guidebook with detailed road maps. The guidebook is well worth the subscription and the ACA logo will look good at home on our car.
Salta, Thursday 5 October
Midnight and I fetch a glass of water from the water cooler in the hotel lobby. Light is dim. The cooler has two taps. One tap appears a darker blue than the other. I put my four heart pills on my tongue, raise the glass, prepare to swallow. The water is boiling. I spit. The darker tap is water for tea or maté. My lower lip is scalded.
I lie in bed. It is half seven in the morning. The room is small and dark and dank. Plumbing gurgles. A man converses in German with his female companion and in Spanish with a member of the hotel staff. The German complains that his bedside light doesn’t work, that the lavatory won’t flush, that the ceiling fan screeches. He wants a discount on the room rate – or his wife or girlfriend demands that he demand a discount.
My bladder is demanding.
And my laptop is demanding. It waits on the table. I hate my laptop. It is ancient and indestructible. It weighs a ton. It travels in the box on the bike’s luggage rack. The box is black. Midday, the box becomes an oven. Heat murdered the batteries. I have to work indoors where I can connect to the power. The one chair sandwiched between the bed and the table has a cracked seat. The crack pinches my butt.
I feel inside my pyjama trousers for evidence of the pinch.
I find three spots.
Before riding, I need to put cream on the spots.
I don’t want to ride.
I have been riding for months.
Tierra del Fuego is a further 5000 kilometres.
And Bernadette believes that I should ride north next year from Tierra del Fuego to New York.
My heart will give out.
I feel for my pulse.
Where the shit is my pulse?
Eight o’clock – I must get up.
The first movement and my years will stick knives in my spine and in my ankles. I will slip on the soap on the wet floor of the bathroom and crack my head open.
Where did I leave my teeth?
I need my spectacles.
Being old isn’t fun.
I want to be home. I want to sprawl on the couch and watch TV and hug the kids (if they allow) and rest my head in Bernadette’s lap and know that soon she and I will go upstairs to bed.
Salta is half the world away.
To Tafi, Friday 6 October
The Altiplano is beautiful to the traveller. He passes by. He doesn’t stop. There is nowhere to stop. In Argentina, village after village tempts. I head south from Salta. Colonel Moldes comes first – surely an odd name for a town? Argentina is full of such names: Colonel This and General That.
Colonel Moldes is too charming to be military. Trees shade the main street. Pillared arcades shade the pavement. I stop for coffee at the Hospedaje Doña Lada. Birds enjoy the palm trees in the small park where a bust of the colonel holds sway. The coffee is excellent. The young woman who serves is delightful. Each passer-by greets me. This is bliss. I could stay a week. Townspeople would talk to me in the evenings. I would learn something of Argentina. Big cities don’t work. People are too busy. I am invisible. I learn nothing.
The waitress brings me fresh coffee and I enquire as to the room rate: eight dollars for a room with private bath.
I paid double in Salta and had my pocket picked.
The gorge of El Rio de los Conchas should be on every traveller’s list. Temperature is ideal. The curves and climbs and descents are set up to perfection for a biker. Take time out to admire the incredible scenery. The walls of the gorge are red rock. The rock has been crumpled and stretched and wrenched. Thorn trees and scrub along the river seem sprayed with emerald dust and lit with strobe lights. I share the gorge with a pushbike race. Cops clear the route. Three riders have a lead of a kilometre over the pack. A couple at the back catch a drag from attendants in a van. An ambulance brings up the rear.
Weird desire: to ride through such beauty with your head down, pedalling crazily and blinded with sweat. The riders may think me weird to be riding a pizza delivery bike the length of Hispanic America.
I intend sleeping in Santa Maria. Santa Maria is a small market town in the centre of nowhere. The road I take is surfaced with ripli. Ripli is Argentinian for corrugated dirt. Honda and I share an antipathy to dirt.
Should I have known that Santa Maria is holding a world conference on camel husbandry? South America is camel country: alpaca, llama and vicuña are members of the camel family. Morales, President of Bolivia, is due to attend the conference. Today he is officiating at a funeral of Bolivian miners killed in a fratricidal battle between miners from a cooperative and miners in the state sector. Miners from the co-op are militant. They detest the subsidies and state contracts that advantage miners in the public sector. Their weapons are sticks of dynamite. The dynamiters are those who welcomed me at their blockade.
President Morales or no President Morales, every hotel in Santa Maria is full. The freeloaders of the international conference circuit have arrived. A pleasant elderly gentleman missing most of his teeth staffs the tourist office in the central square. He is a keen biker and owns an Alpina. He bought the Alpina as a rebuild job. It lies in bits in his garage. It has lain in bits for the past fifteen years. It requires spare parts. Parts require money. He doesn’t have any. And he is getting older. Sixties?
Will my visit rekindle his dreams?
He advises Tafi as an alternative destination: ninety kilometres and two hours of daylight. Does he hate me? Is my liberty salt in the wounds of his disappointments? Why else would he fail to mention that the road to Tafi includes Altiplano and a mountain pass? The sky up there is overcast. The temperature falls faster than lead. My tears snap and tinkle on the rutted tar.
Tafi is a tiny tourist resort. Middle-class Argentinians escape to Tafi from the heat of the plains. I meet with a travelling couple. He is Scots New Zealand, Sara is Italian. We dine together at a restaurant where a gay magician acts as compère. The magician is brilliant. He leans over our table and makes coins and scarves appear and disappear. He works with his sleeves rolled up. Sara and I enjoy and admire. Our companion calculates how the tricks are done.
Meanwhile two men from the next table sing to us. The elder, a grey-haired sixties, sings soft Argentine ballads packed with sob and soul. For a pro, he would be good. As an amateur, he is amazing. The younger, a late-forties Dudley Moore, is equally talented. He plays and sings pop Latino rock. Call a title, he knows the song. I watch his wife. She has seen him perform 1000 times. She has admired him – probably why she fell for him. They are out to dinner, a party of six friends. They are up from San Juan. She hoped for a quiet weekend, a slow cuddle. Now she is faced with the same old need for confidence boosting every entertainer needs and craves.
I imagine the couple back in their hotel room. He asks, How did I do?Did I get the notes right? Did people like me? Really like me? I didn’t stay on too long? They didn’t get bored? Yeah, yeah, yeah …
This is my first party night since eating out with Ming in Cartagena, Colombia. Cartagena was full of holidaying Colombians. Tafi is full of holidaying Argentinians. We three are the only foreigners in the restaurant. We are guests. We want to stay, fine. We want to leave, that’s also fine. We are unimportant. We are peripheral to the economy.
So often on the gringo route, all clientele are foreigners, essential income, prey to be targeted, territory to be occupied. There is no fun in being prey, territory or target. I prefer to be people. In Tafi I am returned to the human race.
To Chepes, Saturday 7 October
I leave Tafi del Valle at seven. One elderly man in a thick fawn coat and wool hat sweeps refuse back into a bin that dogs have rifled. No one else stirs. The city folk of Salta were equally late in rising. Eight in the morning had the feel of six o’clock in an English city. Argentinians siesta and shops stay open until ten or eleven at night. British shop assistants would strike.
The road dips past a lake, rises and then follows a stream down through a thickly forested gorge. The trees are peculiar. The leaves are sparse and small and curled. I have ridden a couple of kilometres before realisation strikes. ‘Strikes’ is an understatement for being smitten visually by a mass of yellow daffodils. The trees are deciduous; this is early spring; I am in a temperate microclimate. Sunrise tints the leaves with pink. One more gift of beauty from South America.
Twenty kilometres further and I reach a tropic floor of cane fields, citrus and wheat. The road crosses west into the next valley. Desert.
I ride 730 kilometres today to Chepes. I see no reason to stop. Present a Texan with a slice of this land and he would refer to it as his ranch. Normal people recognise desert. Vegetation is sparse and grey rather than green. Sand blows across the road and gets in your ears and in your eyes. The road runs straight to the horizon and all the way back to the horizon. A dot on the road finally materialises into a truck. A car driven fast overtakes and remains in view twenty minutes later.
A road sign welcomes me to Florida. A dust track leads off to the right and crosses a disused rail track. I pass a second sign the other side of the road – Florida is history.
The road crosses a dry lake. A fence runs across the lake parallel to the road. Two Aberdeen Angus bullocks walk beside the fence. They halt and look at me. I poop my klaxon. Perhaps they break wind.
Why didn’t I take the scenic route? The scenic route is ripli – Honda and I don’t ride ripli.
Chepes is a road junction. It used to be a rail junction. The railway died. What else can I write of Chepes? Dusty streets, a motorised procession of celebrating football fans. I find a hostal for seven dollars. A big beer and steak dinner sets me back three dollars. The steak is an escapee from a steel foundry. My bedroom has a low ceiling. I raise my arms to pull off my T-shirt, stick a hand in the ceiling fan and spray blood over my bed.
To Mendoza, Sunday 8 October
My wristwatch fell off some time yesterday. I bought the watch in Panama at a street stall for nine dollars. The one window in my room at the Chepes Hostal has venetian blinds that don’t open. I need a morning call. I have parked in the garage behind the hostal owner’s car. She warns me that she has to leave early.
What is early?
‘By nine – half past at latest.’
Is late rising an Argentine religion?
Was Evita a late riser? She did much of her early work in bed.
The road from Chepes crosses desert to San Juan. I count three curves, each less than ten degrees. I stop at the first town. Town? A mini-Lourdes built around a hilltop shrine dedicated to the saint of travellers. Pilgrims arrive by bus. I am served the most disgusting cup of coffee of this entire trip, and the most revolting empanadas, and the toilet facilities are filthy. The saint is a fraud. Were she genuine, she would strike these exploiters dead.
Desert and more desert. Heat hazes the horizon. Out of the haze looms a faint darkening. The kilometres pass and the darkening gains shape and is recognisable as mountains. Further kilometres and a line of green appears in the far distance. The green is a boundary. The desert sprouts vineyards and citrus orchards and serial crops. Modern machinery and concrete have sown the desert with channels to carry the snow waters. This is Argentina: the scale is vast, the irrigated fields are flat. Close by soar the white-capped Andes.
A highway intersection heralds the approach to the town of San Juan. I ride into the town centre in fruitless search of a functioning ATM. I drink cold water, more water and a fresh juice. Then I search for a sign out of San Juan to Mendoza. Lost (or confused), I ask directions of a student in swimming trunks and a T-shirt. He has his dad’s car for the day and leads me to the highway.
The wealth of Argentine agriculture is immense. I cross kilometre after kilometre of flat irrigated fields and vineyards. I don’t recall a climb or dip of more than a few metres. To the right rise the Andes. Only a further 160 kilometres to Mendoza. I long for a visual foreplay of wooded foothills. Instead I get the visual foreplay common to the outskirts of a modern city: service stations, factories, warehouses, used car lots.
Mendoza, Tuesday 10 October
Mendoza is a clean safe modern city of shaded streets and watered parks and squares cooled by fountains. Plaza San Martín is the kernel. I check half a dozen hotels before taking a thirteen-dollar room on the third floor at the Imperial for two nights. The room has a full-size window and hot shower. The towels rate as adequate, the elevator functions, staff are helpful. I write eight hours straight at a table in the ground-floor restaurant (prices are reasonable for acceptable food). Three further hours on the internet and I am up to date.
In late evening, I meet with two young Canadians. They are riding big BMWs equipped with all the gear. The Canadians flew their bikes from Panama to Colombia and have made the trip from Nova Scotia in two months. I have ridden half the distance in five. The BMWs have comfortable seats. The Canadians are searching for a bar where they can drink beer with other North Americans. I prefer a pavement café and people-watching.
The temperature is ideal, no flies or mosquitoes. I think of Mendoza as a European city. I am wrong. In any European city I would see African and Asian faces. Here there remains a thin sprinkling of dark mestizos among older citizens. Among the young, Europe is triumphant, the indigenous visible only in the occasional slight natural tanning of skin and in a bright blackness of eye. Dress is casual. The young are confident in their sensuality. These are beautiful people and they are having fun.
To General Alvear, Wednesday 11 October
The road south from Mendoza traverses flat fields. The mountains are vertical stage flats, almost colourless in the fierce sun, and equally boring. I have been given an introduction to the regional president of the journalists’ union in San Rafael. His cell phone is permanently busy. I wait an hour, give up and ride on.
Olive groves and terraces of ancient olive trees are familiars of European literature. Literature is passé and Argentina is agro-corporation. Kilometre upon kilometre of young olive trees march to the horizon either side of the road. I break for coffee at a service station. A young woman serves me. She is one of four daughters, no brothers. I have four sons and an adopted daughter. We compare ages, occupations.
Twenty or more shade-netted plant nurseries occupy the far corner of the intersection opposite the gas station: baby olive trees fresh from the genetic lab. The owners are Spanish. The town has become dependent on them. These same Spaniards have planted 3000 hectares of almonds. My informant is unsure as to how many thousand hectares of olives have been planted. The young woman tells me that a labourer earns 270 dollars a month and that many labourers are illegal immigrants from Bolivia. She asks what a farm labourer earns in England. I guess at 600–700 dollars a week.
I sip my coffee and wonder what the future holds for the European farmer, the Spaniard husbanding olives and almonds on a few cherished hectares of terrace high in the Sierra del Maestrazgo. Is the Spanish farmer aware of the intention of his compatriots here in Argentina? Perhaps a TV producer could bring them together in a debate. Imagine a judge as chair.
Is investing in the destruction of your compatriots’ living an act of treason?
Or merely sensible business practice?
God bless the global economy, screw the loser.
General Alvear is a small modern town with a large tree-shaded plaza. What did General Alvear do? Why, in Argentina, this obsessive need to memorialise their military?
I find a hotel room, hot water, seven dollars. I check the internet and learn that England has lost to Croatia. For years the English sports journalists and fans have blamed a foreigner, Sven-Göran Eriksson, for any failure of the national team. Perhaps the Swede did well given the paucity of talent.
I eat steak and salad and return to the hotel. A small neat man in his sixties sits on the sofa in the lobby. He wears blue chinos, a blue jumper, blue socks and blue bedroom slippers. His moustache is parted in the middle and teased out into waxed daggers. The manager presents him as her friend (hence the slippers). Señor Hostility would be a better introduction. He settles himself on the sofa in the manner of a fighter pilot settling in the cockpit.
‘You are English.’
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘You English are arrogant. You don’t wish to be part of Europe. You believe you are superior.’
I am pro-Europe – what should I say? I suggest that some Brits are nervous of being associated with nations where political corruption is the norm: that this fear is common to most members of the six nations comprising the original European community.
‘Your Blair is more corrupt than anyone. More corrupt than Silvio Berlusconi. Blair and Berlusconi are friends. Look at Iraq – he is a liar, your Blair. There is proof that more than 650 000 civilians have been killed. What do you say to that?’
Señor Hostility is softening me up. Soon he will shift attack to the Falklands/Malvinas war.
‘I agree,’ I say. ‘Absolutely Now, please, if you’ll excuse me, I have to be up and on the road by six-thirty.’
So sneaks away the cowardly Brit.
South, Thursday 12 October
Seven o’clock and the road leads dead straight across scrub desert. A cold fierce head wind plays smoky patterns of fine sand across the tar. I crouch over the fuel tank and edge the speedometer up to seventy kilometres an hour. The sand gets in my eyes and in my nostrils and in my ears. The road is endless. The country is featureless. Thousands of kilometres remain.
I check the speedometer. I have ridden six kilometres.
I check the speedometer. I have ridden eight kilometres.
I mark a post on the horizon. I won’t check the speedometer again until I reach the post.
A pale spot becomes a truck. The truck becomes a monster. We pass and the bike shudders in the slipstream. Ten kilometres.
I need coffee.
Cochico, at ninety kilometres, is the first place name on the road map. Ninety kilometres at seventy kilometres an hour?
I have been crouching for an hour and my back aches. I sit upright and the speed drops to fifty-five.
Cochico is eight shacks and a police barrier. A kindly young cop advises me to pull off the road below a dead pickup. The shack behind the pickup serves coffee. I look for a sign – only a couple of thin dogs. The door is tacked together from old planks that have been used elsewhere. I tap. A balding head appears and is followed by a hand that scratches the scalp.
The door opens fully and the head extends into a man of my own decrepit generation. He is fresh from bed and hasn’t completed his ablutions. Coffee? Of course I can have coffee.
He welcomes me into what passes for a restaurant: five tables, a bar, a TV, and a fireplace big enough to roast a whole sheep. Three layers of thick fish netting cover the unglazed windows. The netting keeps out some of the sand and most of the sunlight.
The owner seats me at a table and shuffles off to wherever the kitchen is. He returns after a while with two cups. He hasn’t had time or the inclination or memory to wash or brush what is left of his hair. He asks whether I want a biscuit or a sandwich or a slice of cake.
‘No,’ I say. ‘No, I don’t think that I want a biscuit or a sandwich or a slice of cake.’
He sets the cups down on the table and sits opposite me. Where have I come from? Where am I going? How long have I been travelling? Do I have a wife? Children?
He has four children. All live and work near by – except for a daughter, aged twenty-seven, who is away studying at university in San Juan. The other daughter is married to the local ambulance driver. His wife is employed as cook somewhere close by (he expects me to know what or where the somewhere close is). He does the cooking in the restaurant. His kids dump the grandchildren on him. He is extraordinarily contented.
I imagine how good it would be for me and Bernadette to have my two elder sons close by and my daughter Anya running a local stud. Have Josh studying at a nearby university, and Jed at college. Have the door always open. Have my beloved daughter-out-of-law Sarah drop off my grandson Charlie Boo in the morning for me to babysit. Enjoy the entire family at table for Sunday lunch. It is the life I imagined for myself when I was young. I have made a real mess: divorced once, family scattered … and riding a small motorbike.
Any biker riding through Cochico, please stop and pay the old man my respects and tell him of my gratitude. He pulled me out of a black depression. Perhaps all bikers suffer these dark moods one time or another, mostly when they are young and haven’t dressed for the weather or are on the wrong bike for whatever it is they are trying to do. The old man’s contentment did it – his contentment and my pleasure in human contact. I remounted with a changed vision. Instead of kilometres to be crossed, the desert had become something to look at and enjoy. I had been comparing it unfavourably with the game-filled Ogaden that I had enjoyed in my youth. The Argentinian desert is no better or worse, neither prettier nor less attractive. It is different. That is all.
Either a light rain or a heavy dew must have fallen in the past weeks. The road is raised and the runoff has left green strips of fine grass each side of the tar. Three small coveys of a dun-coloured game bird, somewhat resembling guinea fowl, peck at the earth among the green grass. A small falcon with a white under-tail and white beneath the wings hunts the road edge. A small pink flower grows in patches. No names – and I am struck, as I ride, by how little I know of the world in which I have lived. I am old for a learner. I need to move along at a fair pace.
What began as a bad day becomes a great day. I stop for lunch at a shack in the middle of nowhere. The trucks and pickups parked outside are a good sign. A score of drivers occupy two long tables laid with tablecloths. A young pregnant woman serves platters of steamed trout and bottles of red and white wine.
I am pointed to a table without a tablecloth and am offered steak and salad or salad and steak. I choose the steak and salad. A driver, not of the party, joins me. He is familiar with the place. The pregnant woman’s daughter, a six-year-old, kisses his cheek and fetches him a clean tumbler and a bottle of soda. The driver is anxious to be on the road ahead of the wine drinkers. Our food is served at the same time and we leave together. The rear tyre punctures right by the gas station in the next town. A neighbouring puncture specialist fixes the tube for a dollar sixty. I ride on through Nequeen and take Route 237 towards the mountains and San Carlos de Bariloche. Late evening and I am drenched by a couple of sharp rain squalls. The evening sun lights the underside of charcoal cloud above the lake at Villa El Chocón and transforms the water into a shimmering sheet of slate-coloured glass. The light on the water is intense and the far shore is hidden by the glare.
Villa El Chocón is a lakeshore tourist resort. The cops at the cop station warn me of the prices and recommend a hostal back on the highway.
Hostal El Alamo is a find. Any biker riding by should stop. The beds are perfect. Bathrooms have power showers. Tap water is potable. The lady of the house is welcoming and a great cook: ten dollars for the room plus four dollars for a dinner of delicious lasagne, fresh salad and a crème caramel.
I share a table with the only other guest, a man of interesting views. Self-educated, he is a building contractor. He finds modern society immoral. He places much of the blame on female liberation. Women, once educated, lose respect for their working husbands. They find their husbands limited and boring. They prefer the company of their educated female friends. Soon the women are out drinking together and smoking. Prostitution is the next step. The contractor tells me of a dance hall in Buenos Aires. A factory building, it holds 3000 couples. By two in the morning none of the women can dance – all are inebriated, all are for sale.
The contractor’s father was killed in an earthquake when the contractor was a young child. He believes his father came from Syria or Iraq. Iraq is the birthplace of civilisation. Now look what the British are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have killed 650 000 civilians – they and the Americans. The British in Australia were worse than the Spanish in America. Recently 300 Aboriginal bodies were discovered. Their British employer had murdered them rather than pay wages due – a common occurrence.
The contractor believes that the rich have instituted a great conspiracy. Consumerism is part of the conspiracy. Women are the chief targets (yes, we are back to women). Fifty-two percent of world income is spent on women. Cosmetics are the largest item. Women are weak and easily influenced. They have no resistance to temptation. Read the Bible. Remember Lot’s wife.
So the contractor continues while I nod my understanding and marvel that his wife hasn’t cut his throat.
To Bolsón, Friday 13 October
Another great day west on Route 327 from Villa El Chocón to the mountain resort of San Carlos del Bariloche. Bariloche? I wonder at the name. Was it born as Barry’s loch?
Argentina excels in road signs. SINUADO is my favourite. Sad that they don’t include SENSUADO. Any biker would know the meaning: sweeping curves, smooth dips, curving climbs, perfect camber, views to die for. Today’s menu features rivers and lakes, dark, forbidding moors, pine forests and finally the snowfields. A familiar face observes me from the far side of a fence. He is a young chap, not fully grown, red coat, white nose.
I pull into the curb, dig out the camera and approach through coarse grass.
‘Where are you from?’ he asks.
‘Colwall,’ I reply.
‘In Herefordshire? That’s close to Ledbury.’
‘Four miles,’ I say.
‘I believe that’s where my great-great-grandfather came from,’ he tells me.
‘Very probably,’ I say and take his photograph.
He is embarrassed at having spent so much time with an old fogey. Off he trots to join the rest of the herd.
Route 237 crosses the river only once before Bariloche. The gas station on the far side of the bridge has the appearance of a restaurant but isn’t. Ride a few miles further and you find a restaurant down on your left beside the river. You can’t miss it. It is the first building beyond the bridge. Don’t stop. I was charged ten dollars for a half-full bowl of lentil soup, yesterday’s salad and a small bottle of water.
The approach to Bariloche passes through a valley maybe half a mile in width. Black mountains rise on each flank, fierce crests of bare rock. Rain squalls scythe across the valley. The squalls pass and I catch glimpses of snow in the distance.
I am in want of the intimacy of a village. Bariloche is a town and too big for my tastes. The architecture is a jumble of concrete, cuckoo clock and the worst of Marbella Spanish. Pines edge the lakeshore. Above shine the ski slopes. Lift cables bisect the pistes. The road swings south towards Bolsón, a further 126 kilometres. I follow a second lake and a third. Pine forests end at the snow line. Rain closes in. The road climbs. Rain turns to sleet. My feet are soaked, toes and fingers numb. Sun finds a cleft in the clouds. The peaks glisten while I remain in semi-dark. My cheeks suffer a bombardment of ice crystals. I raise the speed by ten kilometres an hour to intensify the pain. I must be crazy. I even stop to photograph the peaks. I kneel beside the road and steady the camera on the crash rail. There, on my knees, illumination strikes. Bike size is of no account. Nor is speed. Age is immaterial. This is the test. The pass mark is having fun. Enjoy yourself under these conditions and you may wear the label proudly: BIKER.
Or lunatic.
Bolsón is a cute tourist town surrounded by mountains. Prices are high. So are the mountains. We are in early spring and the snows are retreating towards the summits. The tourist office finds me a hotel at fifteen dollars. I have a large pleasant room. The double bed has a comfortable mattress. The radiator is hot. The shower runs hot. Double windows open onto a neat garden. Add the luxury of a writing table. The brave resilient Honda sleeps undercover in the garage. The bike will rest tomorrow while I catch up with my blog and correspondence.
Patagonia, Sunday 15 October
Now for Patagonia. I leave Bolsón early and head south 193 kilometres to Esquel. The road climbs out of the valley to cross bleak treeless uplands. Flurries of rain turn to sleet near the crest, where two cops wait for something. The cops are wrapped in balaclavas and frost-retardant. I ask what happened to the central heating. One cop says, ‘The government forgot to pay the gas bill.’
Esquel is the terminus for the antique narrow-gauge railway that once connected with the Buenos Aires–Bariloche main line. Paul Theroux named it ‘The Patagonian Express’. In the seventies, Esquel was a hippie haven. Now it is a fashionable resort. Hippies on the make made good and now shop with platinum-grade credit cards. I top up with gas, coffee and mince empanadas before heading south to Tecka.
The road follows a wide flat river valley of vast sheep paddocks. Trees grow along the river. I startle a flight of green parrots. What are parrots doing up here on the Altiplano? And why haven’t the farmers planted shelter strips to improve the grazing?
Tecka doesn’t look much on the Auto Club map. So much for maps: Tecka holds a treasure. I turn off the highway onto a dirt street. Tin-roof bungalows are sealed tight against the wind. The road becomes tar and I spot pickups parked outside a gas station. The gas station is out of use. The drivers are here for Sunday lunch.
A true restaurateur is a miracle to be discovered by grace of God and in the strangest places. Evidence starts with the greeting. In Tecka, the owner gives the impression that my arrival is the truffle on the toast of an already charmed existence. A good, solid man in his mid-fifties, he wears a white apron and a broad welcoming smile. Sunday is his day of rest: will the plat du jour suffice? A simple gnocchi?
Simple?
The gnocchi are al dente. The sauce is a combination of tomato, garlic, spring onion, herbs, wind-cured ham and Italian sausage. The quantity is as vast as Argentina. It is served in a dish cradled in a basket woven of willow wands. It is divine. So are the fresh-baked bread rolls.
Travellers, forget your schedules. Stop here and eat.
I ride out of Tecka into a full gale. A moment’s inattention and the wind would slam me off the road. I consider turning back. A wonderful restaurant – maybe there is a great bed. However, Patagonia is famous for its winds. What I consider a gale is probably the standard Patagonian breeze.
Gobernador Costa is a further sixty kilometres south on Route 40. The streets are empty. Those out for a Sunday stroll have been blown away. I stop for gas and coffee. A pretty young woman operates both the gas pump and the espresso machine. She asks where I am going.
‘Sarmiento,’ I say.
‘That’s 260 kilometres,’ she says.
I agree.
‘There’s a gale blowing,’ she says.
I’ve noticed.
‘You should stay the night here,’ she says.
‘Patagonia is famous for wind,’ I say. ‘Will there be less wind tomorrow?’
‘Of course there will be less,’ she says. ‘This is a storm. We don’t always have storms.’
She fails to convince me. A fresh storm tomorrow could bring a more intense wind. Weaken, and I could be stuck for weeks. I don’t have weeks. I have a flight booked to Madrid out of Buenos Aires on the thirtieth.
This is sheep country. Cattle would be blown over and even the sheep face away from the gale and crouch for shelter among the sparse tufts of coarse grass. I bow as flat to the gas tank as is possible for an overweight blue balloon in a rain suit. The nearest pollution must be hundreds of kilometres away. I am struck by the clarity of light and the extraordinary depth of blue in the sky. The blue is reflected below in the lakes at the approach to Sarmiento. The lake at Villa El Chocón was the same amazing blue. So was Lake Titicaca. I have seen parrots today. I have seen flamingos graze in ponds alongside sheep and Hereford cattle. Awareness that flamingo breed in the Andes fails to make their presence any less surprising. Those long thin legs should freeze and snap.
Now, in the evening, the road descends from the bleakness of the uplands and I pass by the lakes. Waves break on the beach and the gale beats the water into foam. Seen in the distance, even the houses of Sarmiento seem to cower. Half a dozen cars are parked by a bridge on the outskirts of town and masochistic Sunday fisherman with fly rods struggle against the wind along a willow-sheltered riverbank.
I turn off the road at a sign offering B&B. Dogs greet me kindly. A woman shows me a bunkroom. She rents the room with its six beds and use of a kitchen for twenty dollars. I don’t have use for six bunks. Nor can I use the kitchen. My logic confronts her prices. My logic fails. I take a room in town at the Hotel Ismir for fifteen dollars. The room is miserable. So am I. I am tired. I have ridden 600 kilometres. I have hayfever or a streaming head cold. I shower and walk a couple of blocks in search of a restaurant. Joy is foreign to Sarmiento in a gale. People huddle and watch TV. Bungalows shrink within themselves. The Hotel Colón is a rarity.
I spy, through the window, six men at the bar. I suspect that they missed morning church service and have been at the bar much of the day. How will they view an intruder? A Brit?
I pass by on the pavement half a dozen times before gaining sufficient courage to risk an entrance. A set of aluminium doors leads into a porch, from which more doors open to the bar. The doors are ill-fitting. They grate and squeak and clatter. An army tank would make less noise. Conversation ends. The six men at the bar turn on their stools and inspect me. So does the owner. So does his wife.
I hold my hands above my head in surrender. ‘I am a Brit,’ I say. ‘Am I allowed?’
‘They allow horses,’ says a man in a flat leather gaucho hat.
The Hotel Colón in Sarmiento is the type of dump any respectable biker hankers after. The bar is the right length. Six people and it doesn’t feel empty; twelve and it doesn’t feel overcrowded. Sarmiento is a small town. I doubt there are more than twelve serious barstool occupiers. The six in possession are middle-aged. They have been on the same conversation for a while. Maybe it began yesterday or last week. It is one of those conversations that expand over time and develop threads that go nowhere and die a natural death. Mostly what is said now is in allusion to what has been said earlier and you would need to have been in on the conversation early to understand its direction – if it has a direction.
I sit at the far end of the bar, order a small beer and watch the last few minutes of a football match on TV. The conversationalists seem content with my presence. The pool table to the left of the bar hasn’t been used in months; it is there because this type of bar requires a pool table. The girlie advertisements for beer exist for the same reason. They are expected, as are the three tables, each with four folding chairs, arranged along the wall. The barstool residents would be uncomfortable were they absent.
A young couple occupy the table closest to the door. I guess that they are students. She wears spectacles and is perhaps the more confident (or the more pressing) of their relationship. The obligatory guitar case protrudes from among the bags and backpacks heaped on the floor. I wonder whether the couple are waiting for a bus – or for a parent.
I imagine Josh or Jed calling home. ‘Dad, can you pick us up?’
I wonder whether my sons are aware of the happiness I find in being asked. To be of use is a joy, no matter the time of day or night. I will bitch, of course. Bitching is expected. I don’t ask how many ‘us’ is. I don’t ask whether the girl is a friend or a girlfriend. Asking would be an infringement. Of course I want to know – not to judge, but because this is part of who they are. However, I do wish that they would sit a while in the kitchen once we get home, let me cook them something, talk to me, let me share a little of their lives. They tend to hurry straight upstairs to their rooms.
I guess it’s my age. I’m sort of odd, an embarrassment. You know, having a dad in his seventies? And, yes, I am odd. I do odd things. Riding a pizza delivery bike 600 kilometres through Patagonia in a gale on a Sunday is more than odd. Perhaps I am a little crazy.
I ask Mrs Hotel Colón if there is a restaurant open nearby. She asks whether a steak and fries would satisfy. A steak and fries would be just dandy.
I drink a second beer and nod intelligently to asides from my barstool neighbour. The asides refer to the general conversation. A mystic would find them obtuse.
Mrs Hotel Colón summons me to a small dining room. She says, ‘I put a couple of eggs on your steak.’
I thank her and ask for a third beer.
Three beers and dinner cost seven dollars.
Room rate for a single with bath is fifteen dollars. Should you ever pass through Sarmiento, you know where to stay. Take a right at the park, ride three blocks and turn left. The Colón is on your right. Don’t bother with the conversation. It will be incomprehensible. You are a year or two late.
The coast, Monday 16 October
Wind buffets the Honda and I crouch low on the ride to Comodoro Rivadavia. Ahead lies the South Atlantic. I intended servicing the bike at the Honda agency. Comodoro Rivadavia appears deserted. Wind commands the streets. Dust devils snake across the tar. I stop for fuel. A lone truck pulls into the gas station. I have hit a national holiday: Mother’s Day.
I turn south on the coastal road and halt on a cliff top. A fine sprinkling of minute wild flowers on the grass verge is the first sign of spring. The wind has brought clear skies. The sea is dark blue. Curling lines of surf, whiter than white, burst over the rocks. My camera is buried beneath layers of clothing. I pry through the layers. My fingers are numb and the wind whips the camera case over the cliff.
Caleta Olivia is an oil town. Here, too, the wind is in command. I stop at a small hotel near the plaza. The owners emigrated from Andalusia so let me call it the Hotel Andalusia. The wife appears from the kitchen, books me in and retreats back into the kitchen. I open my laptop on a table in the bar-lobby and work into late evening. The wind drops and the young come out to play. The women wear the standard uniform of the young, jeans or trousers supported by their backsides, two inches of bare belly, shoulder tattoos. The guys wear swagger and grease their hair against the wind. Piercings are in, mostly ears and eyebrows, a few noses, no lips that I notice.
The politics of Argentina have been tawdry in the extreme. Politicians are held in contempt and search for heroes with whom to associate themselves. Statues memorialise great men in even the smallest village. Caleta Olivia memorialises the oil field worker. An enormous statue dominates the central plaza. The statue is a direct descendant of Soviet art. Mother’s Day and pizza parlours are doing great business.
I sit up late back at the hotel and talk with the owner. He is a short stocky man with square farmer’s hands. He wears a tweed cap indoors and out and a dark suit. He is an only child of a farmer in Andalusia. Life on the land was hard when he was young. He sold his inheritance and has lived in Caleta Olivia for forty years. He was back in Spain for the first time last year. He sat in the village bodega and chatted with the friends of his youth. So much had changed. His friends own tractors and employ labour. They have a secure state pension and free health service.
Would he rather live in Spain?
He tilts his cap forward to scratch the back of his head. Then he shrugs and spreads his hands to indicate the hotel. To whom could he sell it? The middle classes lost all their capital in the recent crash.
To Puerto San Julián, Tuesday 17 October
The land between Caleta Olivia and Puerto San Julián began as a plateau. God got bored and chopped the plateau with the side of his hand every fifty kilometres or so. Rivers run through the valleys. Which direction the rivers drain depends on the angle at which God chopped: east into the South Atlantic or west to Lago Argentina. Geographers and geologists don’t care for God and will give you a different explanation for the topography.
The road runs straight as a ruler across the plateaux. Have the wind in your face and you barely move. The clarity of light leads to confusion. You can see forever. You presume three bushes are a clump. The clump splits: the first bush is a mile closer than the second and the third is a further mile distant. A service station is the first stop at 150 kilometres; a new swanky hostal has been opened on the right a hundred kilometres short of San Julián. That’s it. I may have seen a small tree. If so, it was a very small tree. Crossing the terrain on a small bike, you need to keep your mind occupied. God as a landscape artist served me well.
Most towns on the Patagonian plain seem built by the three little piggies. Along comes a wolf and he’ll blow them away. Puerto San Julián is different. It possesses solidity and permanence. Being away from the highway and on a point, it is less of a transit stop than other towns. The citizenry are proud and make the best of where it is. A community of 18 000, it has three football clubs and a fives court. I tour in search of a hotel and find a monument out on the cliff front. The monument is a fighter plane from the Falklands/Malvinas war. The Hotel Municipal faces the monument. It is a good hotel. The room rate is higher than my want. Going elsewhere would be a retreat. I have been in Argentina for three weeks and have avoided the war. I am a Brit. The war is something I need to confront.
I do my internet work at a bar. The bar is the headquarters of the San Julián Athletic Club. The club’s football team continuously exceeds expectations for a small-town club. Two walls are required to display the trophies. The trophies are massive. I chat at the bar with two young men. I had presumed that much of the town’s wealth would come from the sea. They tell me that the fishing fleet is in the hands of a small clique and is of little benefit to the town. Mining supplies the major income: silver and gold
I am in a fishing port. I want to eat fresh fish. A tour group of elderly couples from Buenos Aires has booked the best restaurant. A table will be vacant at half past ten.
I wait in the hotel and talk with the manager. She is a reminder of the schoolteachers who told me of the US invasion of Panama. She has the same soft voice as she tells me of the young soldiers sent to the Malvinas. Poor boys, how they suffered. Most were from the north. They had never experienced cold and they had neither suitable clothes nor adequate food.
I reply that I recall reading of British officers’ anger at discovering the condition of the Argentine soldiers and their contempt for Argentine officers, many of whom abandoned their men.
I walk back down the cliff road to the restaurant. Wind grabs at my jacket. I imagine the ancient Argentine battleship, the Belgrano, torpedoed. For how many minutes could a sailor survive in the freezing sea? The sinking was criminal. Both Brits and Argentinians were culpable. Surely a warning could have been given – through the US? Or was reasoning impossible with Galtieri and his officer clique? Galtieri was a graduate of the notorious School of the Americas – something to dwell on as I exchange the icy South Atlantic wind for the warmth of a restaurant famous for fresh fish.
The two bus drivers and the tour guide for the oldies invite me to their table. We chat of road conditions and distances and the countries we have visited. They insist on picking up my dinner tab and give me a ride back to the hotel in the double-decker coach. I lie in bed and think of the vile headlines in England’s popular press. A good Argie was a dead Argie. And what of all those Brits who, over generations, have settled in Argentina?
To Santa Cruz, Wednesday 18 October
Morning and I am forced on foot to tack against the wind as I view Puerto San Julián’s monument to the Argentine airmen killed in the war. The fighter plane seems so small, little more than a toy. I stagger under the wind. The South Atlantic rollers are white with foam. I imagine the sailors of the Belgrano, human flotsam. I circle and find the names of the dead inscribed on black plaques:
HEROES OF THE MALVINAS
Argentine or Brit, there were no heroes – only victims: victims of political ineptitude and politicians’ vainglory.
I face another day of wind and cold and vast distances. I am accustomed now to the dress code for springtime in Patagonia. On the bottom half I wear underwear and long underwear, two pairs of pyjama bottoms, thick jeans and rain trousers. The top gets three undershirts, cord shirt, three jerseys, leather jacket, scarf, windproof rain jacket. I pad the front of the jerseys with newspaper.
Next I load the bike. One bag goes on the gas tank. I wedge a second bag into the gap between the seat and the cargo box. Maps, spare gloves and the Automobile Club guidebook go in rubber webbing on the box lid. I struggle into the backpack, settle the helmet and security glasses, pull on wool gloves and leather gauntlets. Ready.
Passers-by stop to watch this large blue balloon in a crash helmet prepare to mount. I know their thoughts.
Will the old weirdo get his leg over?
Will the bike fall?
Safely seated in the saddle, I kick the starter, no throttle: Brrrmmmm …
I smile at the disbelievers, raise a disdainful paw, toe-tap the Honda into gear and ride off into the sun. And ride – and ride – and ride …
I have seen a red lake and a green lake and blue lakes and dry lakes. I have shouted at fat married couples (birds) to get off the road. I have talked to Hereford cattle and road-repair gangs.
I whirl an arm to de-numb my fingers, stretch my legs, wriggle my toes. I bow to lessen wind buffeting by passing trucks, wave to gauchos, slalom the broken white line. I check my watch and the distance travelled against the distance remaining to the next gas stop. One hundred kilometres is the beginning of a countdown. One hundred kilometres is only sixty miles. Eighty kilometres is fifty miles. Twenty kilometres is nearly there.
My dismounting technique is ungainly – more a semi-fall sideways. I hobble to the lavatory and fumble deep within all the folds of clothing for something to pee with. I sip black coffee in the gas station caféteria, munch a sandwich, chat with whoever asks where I come from. These are the moments that make the trip worthwhile: so many different people, all content to share with me a little of themselves.
I fill the tank. Backpack, helmet, glasses, gloves: Brrrrmmmm.
Ahead lie a further 150 kilometres.
Is it fun?
In truth?
Fun is the wrong word.
Challenge comes closer. In my seventies, can I ride 22 000 kilometres on a small bike the length of Hispanic America? The start of each day is hardest. I wake and lie in bed and contemplate the distance ahead. One more night in a strange bed. Broken sleep. Every part of me aches – back, knees, ankles. I want to give up. I fumble for spectacles and the lamp switch. Check the ACA route guide. Tomorrow I will be on the final page. Get up, you old fool. Take a hot shower.
Santa Cruz is the provincial capital. It is packed with visiting officials and people needing to speak with officials. And it has the province’s main hospital. I try six hotels before finding a bed. The shortage puts the room rate up to twenty dollars. I find a restaurant that professes to serve fresh fish. When will I learn? When in Argentina, stick with beef.
Tierra Del Fuego, Thursday 19 October
There are no gas stations between Santa Cruz and the border. Fill up in town. Wind as usual. The landscape has more shape; scrub has given way to vast grass paddocks. The grass is thin and tufty. Sheep graze alone rather than together. Despite the cold, this is springtime. Lambing has begun. The young butt their mothers’ udders.
A road sign points left to Tierra del Fuego. An ostrich inspects me. He is one of eight. The other seven look the other way. I meet half a dozen trucks. The road dips. The channel lies ahead. A sailor is about to close the ferry ramp with a chain. He waves me on board. Drivers ask where I’ve come from. The driver of a new 4x4 pours me coffee from a flask. I go to the office to pay the ferry fare and am given free passage. I stand on the raised walkway and watch as we approach Tierra del Fuego. Rather than exhilaration, I feel relief. My journey is almost done.
I have four borders to cross: out of Argentina, into Chile; out of Chile, into Argentina. A young Argentine cop at the first border discusses the Malvinas war. He was a child, too young to remember much, and is uncertain as to the background of the conflict. He is certain that war was unnecessary. England and Argentina are friends. Many English have settled in Argentina.
‘It was the politicians, the generals,’ he says.
I share my thoughts of the monument in Porto San Julián: that there were no heroes, only sacrifices.
He agrees. ‘Those poor boys from up north sent down there without proper clothes.’
Paperwork at the Chilean border takes half an hour. I have 180 kilometres to cross before reaching the next frontier. The first thirty kilometres is concrete; the rest is gravel. Gravel would have defeated me at the outset in Mexico. Now I am semi-expert and ride the dirt at sixty kilometres an hour. The knack is in staying relaxed and not tightening up when the wheels slither.
Expert or not, dirt is exhausting. Oncoming trucks drag clouds of dust and cut visibility to zero. When overtaken, I pull off the road and wait. I have reached serious sheep country. Not all are fenced and I beware of lambs bounding across the road. At last the Chilean border, a quick formality, and then eighteen kilometres to Argentina and a paved road.
I am half an hour at the Argentine border. I fly home at the end of the month and intend storing the Honda with the Honda agent in Ushuaia. The customs official tells me not to worry. The bike is on a temporary import permit for six months. I should show the permit to the customs at the quay in Ushuaia. I am very tired and consider stopping the night at the Automobile Club’s hostal at the border. Doing so would leave me a long ride tomorrow into Ushuaia. I ride on.
What stopped me closing and fastening my bag properly? The bag that rests against my back and that holds all the bike’s papers and the duplicates? The bag that I have unfastened and unzipped four times today at four frontiers?
Exhaustion?
Or did I relax with the journey almost finished?
I stop for a pee midway to Rio Grande and discover the document pocket gaping. I have lost the bike’s registration papers, the temporary import permit and the Argentine Automobile Club guidebook.
I have been on the road the best part of six months and have been so careful.
Weeping won’t help.
Maybe a sheep will find and eat them.
Shit!
Shit!
Shit!
There is a lot of water on the approach to Rio Grande. Early evening and mist smokes off the lakes and ponds and streams. Cold closes in. Visibility drops and my spectacles fog over. The fuel gauge is on reserve – this is a first in 22 000 kilometres. There must have been a gas pump at the Automobile Club hostal. Why didn’t I stop? Had I stopped, I wouldn’t have lost the bike’s documents; I wouldn’t be cold and tired and depressed. I wouldn’t be scared of running out of gas and being stranded in the dark in the middle of nowhereland.
What has happened? Is it simply that I am near the end and want to get the journey over with? Or have the cold and distance finally reached into my brain and flicked the off switch?
I fill with gas, take a right at the Liverpool Pub, an immediate left and a second right on the main avenue. Hotel Argentina is the low, single-floor tin building on the right. I can’t miss it. Graciela has worked it over with a bucket of yellow paint. Graciela is the owner. She has adult children and has kept young. I find her reading tarot cards at the kitchen table in company with three women friends. I ask whether they are a coven or the Rio Grande chapter of the Feminist Union.
‘Both,’ says Graciela.
Two student-age young men join us at the table. They are expert in that student skill of both being there and not being there while taking up considerable space.
Graciela tells one to take his cap off in the house so she can see his face and tells the other to shift his feet off the chair.
I love her.
I remark on a monument to Argentine ownership of the Malvinas coexisting with the Liverpool Pub. One of the coven tells me that the cost of maintaining the Malvinas will be too great for Britain. In a matter of years the islands will be absorbed by Argentina. She talks of the islands as if they are uninhabited. On TV the news shows a battle between two political factions. The factions are participating in the reinterment of Perón at San Vicente. Most are armed with staffs and baseball bats. One man fires a pistol. Imagine a kelper, a Falkland Islander, watching on TV. Would he or she wish to be part of such political mayhem?
Rincón de Julio in Rio Grande is across the highway from the gas station. Julio is where the locals eat, those serious about food. Be there before half past nine of an evening or you won’t get a table. I had intended dropping by the Liverpool Pub for a pre-dinner drink. The pub is closed. A cop is on guard at the door and a couple of officers are out back searching the grass. Disappointing – I wanted to ask the owner whether he had named his pub in honour of the city or the football club, whether he had visited England – and how he felt about Las Malvinas Son Argentinas at the next intersection.
Dinner at Julio’s is excellent if you enjoy meat – although the cook apologises for the lamb chops. They will have to wait a few more weeks for this year’s lambs.
I stroll back past the Liverpool Pub. The cops remain in occupation. The kitchen at the Hotel Argentina is welcoming. The coven and the students slope off to watch a couple of rented horror DVDs. Graciela and I sit and chat of this and that. Hotel Argentina is the best budget option in Rio Grande and Graciela gets the travellers. Most are good and easy. Some are weird; some have experimented with too many herbs and crystals; a few suffer from tangled wires in their heads.
A young Frenchman stayed two months. He believed that Graciela was the Virgin Mary reincarnated. He was John the Baptist. He tended to stare at Graciela; this put her off cooking. Imagine attempting a mayonnaise with someone gazing at you, someone with such expectations. Virginal is a tough demand when you have three grown kids and have suffered a recent divorce.
I sit there in the kitchen utterly content while Graciela tells me of her life. She is both extraordinarily youthful and very adult. She has humour and she reads books.
I have been biking five months and have enjoyed no proper (nor improper) female company apart from those few days in Nazca. I prefer a woman’s company. Men don’t do it for me. I miss Bernadette. I miss all four boys. I want to cuddle my grandson. And I want to visit with my daughter. Yeah, yeah, yeah … get to bed, you old fool. It is half past one in the morning and you ride to Ushuaia in the morning. Thank you, Graciela.
Ushuaia, Friday 20 October
I ride out of Rio Grande with regret. The Hotel Argentina has been good for me. Losing the bike documents dumped me into a deep depression. Graciela dug me out. Wind is standard in Patagonia. So is the cold. I ride across sheep country, cross rivers, pass by ponds, see the occasional farmhouse tucked into a clump of trees, wave to a Hereford bull (he ignores me).
The tail end of the Andes squeezes in from the west. Snow-caps march across the horizon. A forest of strange conifers trails moss. A huge lake opens to the right. I enter a First World War battlefield. It is a scene of grim devastation in which shattered trees are tumbled one on another. The few trunks standing are stripped of branches; their peaks are sheared and ragged and resemble the rotting teeth of some huge prehistoric animal. What happened?
Honda and I are on the final climb of our journey. Snow closes in. Sunlit summits shimmer. I stop for lunch at a restaurant on the right of the road. The owner quizzes me. Where do I go next? Where will I leave my bike? At the Honda agency. I, in turn, ask what happened to the trees. Beavers did the killing. The beavers were imports from Canada.
I cross the final pass to Ushuaia. A few flecks of snow sting my cheeks. Snow turns to rain as I dip into town. Ahead lies the Beagle Channel. I stop at the Hostal Cruz del Sur. The owner, Luca, is Italian. He is a friend of Graciela’s. Today is his birthday. He is thirty-three. Luca shows me to a bunkroom. Bunkrooms are unsuitable accommodation for an old man. How will I manage the climb to an upper bunk in the middle of the night?
I cross the street to a hotel with rooms that have private baths. I look back over my shoulder and see Luca watching me. Luca’s Argentine friends are preparing the barbecue on the pavement. Luca has invited me. I feel a traitor. I circle to a grocery and buy three bottles of red wine.
I unload the bike and ride out of town to the Honda agency. The owner of the restaurant where I stopped for lunch has called to warn of my impending arrival. The manager expects me. The owner of the agency also owns a warehouse and cold store. The bike is to be garaged there. I ride back to town and park on the waterfront. A passing tourist takes my picture. I leave the bike in the warehouse and catch a cab back. I walk up two blocks to the Hostal Cruz del Sur. Steaks sizzle on the barbecue. Luca hands me a glass of red wine. My journey is done.
Except … except that Bernadette believes that I should ride north next year. Although only as far as my daughter’s home in Duchess County, New York. Bernadette swears that I’ll enjoy myself – that I’ll have fun.
Oh God, oh God, why hast thou forsaken me?