I shouldn't have left you.
I'm in the splendidly named Villa O'Higgins. Named after the illegitimate son of a Sligo-born viceroy of Chile and his native mistress. Why the Spanish crown were enlisting Irish dudes to rule their empire I'm not sure, although I suspect it involved the craic in some manner. It's a small town of wooden houses with corrugated tin roofs on the shore of Lago O'Higgins. No ATMs, a few small places selling basic groceries, and loads of onery chickens and proud cockerels wandering the streets. But it does have a municipal wifi network covering the town, and so i'm writing this today. There will be no photos, as this would require me dedicating several hours to each picture I upload, but I'll write down a few things.
Perring back into the mists of time, I seem to remember my last blog was after I'd been to Torres del Paine. Well, since then I've celebrated the new year in a barren semi-desert, sending a few solitary toasts out to folk, been to El Calafate, where I laid up for a while with a cold and a nice case of sunburnt, cracked lips that made eating a painful experience - not the thing you want when an all-you can eat meat grill has been on your mind for the preceeding three days. I then headed out to Perito Mereno glacier to check out some ice. And damn impressive ice it was too. Massive house-sized chunks calving off, crashing into the pale blue waters and sending monstrous ripples towards you, and thunderous crashes echoing off the glacier wall. After that, onward to El Chaiten, and yet more cursing, placating, raging and challenging the heavens and their attendant flatulant gusts. The plan would usually be to arise at 5am and cycle for six or seven hours before the wind became intolerably strong. Then I might spend an hour or two walking over a dry river pan, stepping over the various skulls, vertebrae and femurs of animals swept downstream with the winter thaw, until i got to the lake and could refill my water bottles.
However, eventually, after an early start, I made it to El Chaiten at 8am. The landscape changes markedly in the last 30km or so, from arid grasses every which way, to glacial rivers and occasional stands of trees. El Chaiten is ringed by rocky outcroppings, rising a couple of hundred metres into the air, and has the air of a town half-finished. There are hostels, wooden planked restaurants and artisanal brewery pubs, and a vast amount of unfinished sub-structures for what may one day become cabins, hotels and houses. It's a small town that basically exists for tourists who come to hike around Mt Fitzroy and the surrounding peaks, it's damn expensive to buy food and drink, but it's a pleasant place. The only nod at nightlife it has is a tango bar, which is a great-looking two storey wooden pub, open til six am or so, with a proprieter and proprietess who take the tourists through some tango steps, and resemble the head vampire and succubus from an old Hammer horror film - the women is pretty much a more vampish Mystic Meg (for my UK audience, that one).
Anyhow, I hiked in the Fitzroy range, which is lenga forests at the low altitudes, and ice-blue glacial lakes, rocky scree and vertiginous outcroppings at the upper heights. Some stunningly beautiful places; I've got what even my self-critical personality reckons are some shit-hot photos of Lago Las Tres, and some pretty badly done shots of Fitzroy at dawn. No, I wasn't just getting to bed after a hard nights drinking in camp. Yes, I may have just been getting up for a piss, and dawn was a happy coincidence, but still, it's one of the must-see scenes in Argentina, and my photos don't come close to doing it justice.
Anyway, after this I cycled the 40km ripio to Lago del Desierto, a beautiful ride through forests, mountains and rivers that are pretty much the stock in trade round these parts, only to find that the ferry was 'not working'. Not sure whether this was because the pilots were unavoidably drunk in town, or because of a mechanical fault, but it necessisated a couple of days camping. After I had tired of this diversion, I did a quick reccy on the lakeside track, which was a seriously slippy and steep travck around trees, boulders and streams, but I decided it was doable, if hard. So, packed my stuff into my rucksac, so my bike was easily liftable, and got ready to go overland. However, when I got down to the lake, I realised the boat was finally ready to sail, so took an easy 45 minute ferry, as opposed to the day long portage on the hill trail.
At the other end, you meet the friendly Argentinian customs officials - the less busy the border stop, the less people appear to give a shit about searching bags for contraband onions or salami, and camped there for the night. The friendly german bikers awoke me at 8am to see if i wanted to use the horses as pack animals to take my luggage (a horseman takes over luggage if you want to pay), but, as a man confident in my herculean strength, I declined. If only I had declined and then got out of bed, I would have saved two days. But no. Such is not my way. Instead, after much snoozing of my alarm, I woke at 1pm, and finally got going at half three - I was under the impression that the ferry the other side went this morning, so any rush was unnecessary and pointless. After consultation with recently arrived travellers, I realised the boat returned at 5pm to pick up cyclists, but by that time, such information was definitely pointless, as I was not going to make it. So, I climbed up the muddy hill trail, fording streams, bike on shoulder, scooted over the middle sections, and wheeled down the far side. The reputation of the pass was slightly overplayed - it wasn't particularly hard - but I still had a wait of two nights the other side. So.....I waited, sitting on the dock of the bay, camping in an estancia, and here I am.
So, tomorrow I set off on the Carrera Austral. The root of it, Villa O'Higgins, is a locus for cyclists, passing through from north or south, and the hostel/camping ground where they all congregate, El Mosco, is justifiably famous, a wooden lodge with beautiful art on the walls, whale ribs hanging outside, and a bunch of friendly folk passing through, and an extremely helpful and charismatic owner. Am getting ready to live on straightened rations for the next five or six days - there are no cash machines until Cohaique, so my diet will be pasta, porridge and occasional injections of apples, chocolate and hopefully fish, if my skills are up to the catching. The rivers and lakes are fly-fishing meccas, with trout and salmon thronging the waterways - whilst waiting for the ferry I spotted occasional trout leaping to the surface for flies, so i will see if my spool of wire and small hooks can tempt any fish in - I have no real equipment apart from that, so am going to see if the scaly beasts can be tempted by worms, and supplement my dinner with some protein. Either way, am looking forward to the route ahead - the landscape is a breathtaking combination of glaciers, waterfalls and forests, there are thermal pools, a town with no roads, only wooden walkways, and beautiful camaping spots aplenty.
So....salud! Speak to you all in Cohaique. I'll do a more self-indulgently winding, blathering, blarneying blog then. x
Friday, 28 January 2011
Sunday, 2 January 2011
Torres del Paine or there and back again. Book 2.
There definitely is something heart-warming about the fellow traveller salute most folks in these parts give on the more rural routes. Most people who pass you, at least when you're cycling, will either give you a cheery wave, a toot of the horn, or a stoic two finger raise. Not that kind. Or the Churchillian 'V for victory' (And one point - the Churchillian one is what we'd call the Vs. When did the reversed V's become offensive? Or was Churchill just confused and drunk when he was flashing them?) When I first experienced this custom I raised my arm into the air, fist aloft, and let out an uncharacteristic 'whoop'. The addition of my black cycling glove may have made me look like I'd just won the 400m at the Mexico Olympics, or like I was shaking my fist in inchoate, cartoon rage. So in future, i decided to go with the wave. After getting a little bored of waving every few hundred metres, and feeling a little foolish, this has been downgraded to a more chilled, and less exerting, two forefinger raise. This sometimes accidentally turns into a peace sign, and makes me feel a little like an 19 year old spaniard who likes Manu Chao and has a massive Bob Marley poster on their ceiling, but what the hell, it's a good custom.
Anyways, got to the campsite, slept, next day raining heavily, a write-off. Apart from the fact you never feel like starting a hike in a downpour, visibility was down to 200 metres or so, so decided to wait it out. Had some extortionate beers with some fellow campers in the nearby hotel.
Next day dawned bright, I left my bike chained to a tree in the campsite, hid my saddlebags and unnecessary luggage in some nearby undergrowth, and set off.
There were a fair few other hikers moving off in dribs and drabs from near the hotel's adjacent grocery store, selling goods on a 3x to 5x mark-up from Chilean supermarkets. I still laid in an extra supply of Triton Vanilla biscuits. When it comes to these bad boys, it doesn't hurt to be too careful in sorting out your supply lines. I swiftly outpaced most of these stragglers, and moved onto a gently sloping hill, heading up to a rocky plateau. Map below, if anyone is interested.
To the south, I looked across the start of Lake Nordenskjold, beyond that were glacial hills rolling up to ridges, patches of vegetation featureless at this range, apart from subtle changes in colour, and the shadows of clouds racing across them. I put my rucksac down upright on the trail, and moved down to take photos of a herd of guanacos, serenley watching me approaching. Suddenly a roar started to build from the west, and a mist of water was whipped at fearsome speed off a lake a mile distant, and across the plain. The wind hit suddenly; I was prepared, but my rucksac sadly wasn't, and cartwheeled a hundred metres down the hill. However, it was unharmed, and so was all my equipment. So, I'm going to endorse Osprey rucksacs. Expensive, but rigid and tough as hell. I know my word carries a shit-ton of weight in the trekking community, so I expect to see sales spike pretty soon. Osprey, if you want to 'thank' me, email me, and we'll sort out a forwarding address/bank account.
Just before my rucksac disturbed the tranquility of the scene.
Just after.
Walked up onto the plateau, and the wind started coming again. Rather than the constant winds of Tierra del Fuego, the air would be still, and then a roar would start over the horizon, you'd see water vapour whipping in straight gusts across the lake, and then it would hit you, driving grit and small pebbles into you, and coruscating any exposed skin. Think it involves air being supercooled over the westward glaciers, being forced downwards quickly, and rushing onwards. After this, conditions eased, as the trail went up and over ridges, with small trees whipping their limbs around you. Was a little worried one of these uppity bushes might get ideas above their station, and I might have to put one of the suckers in check, but they seemed more used to the wind than I, and refrained from relinquishing their roots and flying at me. I was keeping up quite a fearsome pace, as despite all learned estimations I was optimistic that i might get to the Grey Glacier that day.
Got to the Alberge Cuernos, photo below.
Crap coffee, but warm place with a stove, guitars hung on the wall, hikers in socks sitting around eating packed lunches (shoes left outside). Good place to chill for hal an hour. On from here to Campiemento Italiano, a free campsite situated at the bottom of a valley leading up to a vantage point surrounded on three sides by the main peaks. The camp was a spread out collection of often raggedy looking tents, expedition quality originally, but many now bowed, weighed down by rocks to frustrate the wind. Most people I spoke to had been there for two days, waiting for some signal to move off, and the folk I spoke to had mostly chosen the early evening of the second day to make the climb to the outlook point at the top of the valley. The camp was dominated by large Israeli groups, fresh out the army, and travelling en masse. In fact, the amount of Israelis in South America, or at least Patagonia, is astounding, for a country of, I don't know, 7 or 8 million people (I don't have wifi here, so my statistics may be slightly off, for which I apologise). Could be all the 30 year old Brits are staying in palatial luxury, being carried about the Chilean highlights in pearled litters in some kind of imperial throwback.
Anyhow, walked up to Campiemento Britanico with my pack, and then on to the outlook post, where you have the Cuernos del Paine to the east, Cumbro Central and the Glacier Frances to the west,a ring of mountains to the north, and a startlingly clear glacial river running down the valley. I've posted photos below, but you can only get a tenth of the feeling of wildness from these. It was a good day, sunny with some scudding clouds, but you just get the idea that in less than an hour you could have winds of indescribable violence whipping around, visibility down to a minimum, snow or hail forming up to attack, etc. Pretty much the feeling you get up high in any mountain range I suppose, but seemed more acute here, even though the heights of the peaks are only around 3000m, which pales in comparison with the Alps, let alone the Andes further north. Anyhow, I meant to keep this succinct and concise, and I'm rambling on at length, so I'll cut to the chase; camped, then hiked back the next day, camped again at a site with such luxuries as showers (the guy nicely waived the fee, i think the whole cycling thing either arouses respect or pity in folk), and set off to, I thought then, El Calafate, at my standard leisurely midday time slot.
Some shots at the top of the Valle de Frances.
Senor Horse at the Campiemento Italiano. Horseback is the only way to get supplies up there, or to chase banditos out from the high passes.
Inquisitive looking thing. Pretty sure it can be classed as a bird, probably 'of prey'. After that, I'm sketchy.
El Calafate is about 280km from Torres del Paine, the roads a mixture of beautiful gleaming pavement and gravelly ripio. It's actually about 50km away as the crow flies, which I did think quite a tempting idea, but the damn birds kept escaping their harnesses. And, unfortunately, carrying a bike over ridges and mountains may have presented me with a few problems, not to mention the fact I would be crossing the border in an unorthodox and undoubtedly illegal manner. So, the road it was.
After an uneventful first 30kms, I was passing through a land with rolling scrub covered hills pushing up against various Torres in the distance, the day was overcast, and was looking like being a long slog towards Calafate. Was coming up on some kind of action on my left - a small, deserted junkyard with a few heaps of corrugated iron and a couple of busted up pick-ups, when I saw a flash of white running towards me, and leaping the fence. It was an enthusiastic looking white dog, sized like a rangy labrador. Didn't seem to be anyone around to call him back, so I let him run happily alongside me for a bit, before trying to send him back to the junkyard. Sadly, I'm not sure my Spanglish commands quite had the required authority, and he certainly didn't look like the brightest dog ever.
So, since there was no obvious casa or estancia to send him back to, and he wasn't responding to any cries of '!Vamos!', there was little I could do apart from let him bound happily alongside me, acting as an endlessly enthusiastic outrider.
This new situation made me extremely popular with the few denizens of the road, and I was getting papped by pretty much every tourist driving past, and the few locals were slowing down to ask if he was mine; I responded in the negative, and tried to see if anyone knew the home of my new friend, but no-one did. Occasionally he would become (even more) excited by the far off scamper of a fox, or the bounding guanacos in the fields - I'd let him chase the foxes, who unfortunately knew how to outwit him tactically by doubling back under fences constantly, but would stop him chasing down the guanacos by shouting '!Aqui!'. I could call him to me, but couldn't send him away. This went on for 30km or so, during which his running ability put my cycling speed totally in the shade - the roads were unpaved gravel, so he could keep pace with me whilst sprinting off to close effortlessly with the guanaco, who are effectively the deer of Patagonia - a pretty impressive dog.
Soon he ran off to the side to investigate what looked like a dead guanaco. He'd certainly died in a strange position - his left back leg was twisted in the top wires of a fence, and his body was slumped helplessly on the floor. I called the dog, who I was oscillating between calling 'Scamp' and 'Mister Perro', back, as I didn't want to be witness to an unsavoury scene of dead guanaco gnawing. Suddenly, the gunaco started spasming on the floor, his trapped leg shaking the fence hopelessly, his other limbs striking the fence posts and wires. Shit. I did a quick inspection of the situation, tested the wires for give, staying out the way of his striking hooves, then felt the sinking feeling that I would have to do something, and whatever it was wasn't going to be easy. The pressure the wires are strung at, and the fact that a guanaco, weighing probably about 100kg had jumped a fence at maybe 20-30mph meant the force had twisted the top two wires together with almost unmoveable tension. Also, the hoof is considerably thicker wider than the leg, like a horse, with a toe (?) at the top of the ankle, so I would have to spread the wires widely to free him, something which a cursory try showed was far beyond my strength. Maybe he was going slower than usual when he attempted the jump, otherwise I have no idea how his leg hadn't snapped.
Diagram -
I thought about breaking the fence posts, but it would have taken ages to saw through with my knife, and would probably not have given me the necessary slack. Also, whoever owned this field might not have taken kindly to me destroying the fence. So, I decided to cycle back 3km to the nearest estancia. Upon arriving there, I was overtaken on the driveway by a happily beeping coach, and as I rocked up at what I assumed were holiday lets, the coach stopped, and 30 or 40 cheery, bearded guys, caked in dust and swathed in heavy, hi-vis overalls leapt out and began running to the nearest cabins (probably the shower block, in retrospect). The two guys left seemed bemused by my tale of a trapped guanaco, which may not have been delivered in exactly flawless, or even decipherable Spanish, and I realised that these were more temporary digs for workers in a nearby quarry. So, I headed back up the road.
No-one seemed too interested in stopping, although most of the tourists returning from the Torres slowed to rubberneck, so I hit upon a plan. I have a big, annoyingly heavy D-lock for my bike, one of those that costs £50 and isn't getting broken or bent without some pretty heavy-duty equipment. So, I realised if I could fit this between the wires, and use a fence post as a twisting mechanism through the D-lock, I could maybe get the wires far enough apart. First try wasn't a success - there were a few unneeded posts on the floor, so i tried twisting with one - it snapped, driving the wires deeper. Poor guanaco. He thrashed some more, but when I spoke to him he actually seemed to understand I was trying to help, and stopped moving. Probably shock more than some kind of Androcles and the lion style understanding, but hey. However, two posts at once did the trick, I pushed the leg through the gap, and after some spasming, the guanaco righted itself and ran off. Result! I felt pretty damn happy, and had a bit of a self-congratulary moment where I slapped myself metaphorically on the back for my caring nature.
Onwards we went, and by 8 or 9pm the dog was flagging - I couldn't reward such stupid loyalty by driving him on, so stopped in a depression (a physical one, I mean!) and made camp, doling out snacks to myself and my companion.
Was woken the next day by some excited barking, 200 metres up the road; a ewe and a lamb had got loose in the road, and a couple of gauchos were trying to lassoo them, using their sheepdogs to help. Scamp was getting involved excitedly, although his presence did not seem to be helping enormously. However, he responded immediately to my command to heel. The gauchos waved good-naturedly, but couldn't shed any light on the providence of my dog.
I travelled onward to Cerro Castillo, a border crossing to Argentina, but it was Christmas Eve, and I had resigned myself to the fact that El Calafate was too far, and I was going to have to head back to Puerto Natales, or spend Christmas in either a dusty one-horse town or by the side of the road. Plus folks back home hadn't heard from me for eight days, and I didn't want to worry them. The lure of the many and varied eating establishments in a tourist town were pretty strong as well.
So, I knocked back coffee and a burger, as all the tourist buses stopped and disgorged their cargo. The wind was now sweeping towards the town, whistling and shaking the windows of the cafe, but I was going to make it to Puerto Natales if I had to push all the way. thankfully, I didn't and the direction changed when I moved into the next valley. One last problem though. Scamp was having more and more trouble keeping up, his evervesence was still there when I stopped to give him water and sausages, but his pace wasn't. He had run about 100km in the last 24 hours, and unfortunately showed no sign of stopping trying to keep up, and I had no way of making him stop. I stopped to check his paws - the pads were beginning to look very red and sore, and his back leg was bleeding, although I couldn't see why, and he wasn't favouring it. What could I do? I couldn't send him towards a nearby estancia - he just refused to stop following me, and wouldn't get into the back of a pick-up that offered to take him to Puerto Natales. My idea was that once I got to PN he could join the ranks of the half wild / half cared for strays on the streets after I sent him off with a nice steak, although I suspect he would have loyally stayed outside my hostel waiting for me. Either way, I couldn't travel with a dog - carrying enough water and food for me alone is hard enough in the more remote, arid sections of road, to say nothing of what would happen when I got to cities and stayed in hostels. So, with a heavy heart, and feeling like a complete bastard, I waited until I got to a part of road with handsome, rich looking estancias and farms each side, shouted vainly for him to vamos to one, and took off as fast as I could, hoping that once I vanished into the distance he would head to one - the land was starting to become more farmed and inhabited, so I hope he has found a good home.
30km later, I got to Puerto Natales, and after being turned away from a few full hostels, and starting to develop a messiah complex, I found a bed at Casa Lili.
Christmas and New Year blog to come soon,I'm on to El Calafate tomorrow. Am in El Calafate now. In the last three days has become hot, sunny. Had an extremely dry and thirsty ride here, and have sunburnt lips. Gonna hide out here for a day or two, eat parrilla'd up meat, and maybe celebrate a belated new year with some folk I know from Puerto Natales - my NYE was spent in parched semi-desert by a deserted dirt road. Hope everyone had a great Christmas, goodwill to all men and all the rest!
Speak to you all soon x
Oh yeah, decided the cravate wasn't quite badass enough. Fine for cultivating a refined english gentleman image in Buenos Aires, but for the frontier regions you need something with a little more edge to it. Time to cut myself a bandana. I'll be auctioning them off at the end of the trip, unwashed. I anticipate a fierce response.
Practising the 'unpredictable maverick' look.
Anyways, got to the campsite, slept, next day raining heavily, a write-off. Apart from the fact you never feel like starting a hike in a downpour, visibility was down to 200 metres or so, so decided to wait it out. Had some extortionate beers with some fellow campers in the nearby hotel.
Next day dawned bright, I left my bike chained to a tree in the campsite, hid my saddlebags and unnecessary luggage in some nearby undergrowth, and set off.
There were a fair few other hikers moving off in dribs and drabs from near the hotel's adjacent grocery store, selling goods on a 3x to 5x mark-up from Chilean supermarkets. I still laid in an extra supply of Triton Vanilla biscuits. When it comes to these bad boys, it doesn't hurt to be too careful in sorting out your supply lines. I swiftly outpaced most of these stragglers, and moved onto a gently sloping hill, heading up to a rocky plateau. Map below, if anyone is interested.
To the south, I looked across the start of Lake Nordenskjold, beyond that were glacial hills rolling up to ridges, patches of vegetation featureless at this range, apart from subtle changes in colour, and the shadows of clouds racing across them. I put my rucksac down upright on the trail, and moved down to take photos of a herd of guanacos, serenley watching me approaching. Suddenly a roar started to build from the west, and a mist of water was whipped at fearsome speed off a lake a mile distant, and across the plain. The wind hit suddenly; I was prepared, but my rucksac sadly wasn't, and cartwheeled a hundred metres down the hill. However, it was unharmed, and so was all my equipment. So, I'm going to endorse Osprey rucksacs. Expensive, but rigid and tough as hell. I know my word carries a shit-ton of weight in the trekking community, so I expect to see sales spike pretty soon. Osprey, if you want to 'thank' me, email me, and we'll sort out a forwarding address/bank account.
Just before my rucksac disturbed the tranquility of the scene.
Just after.
Walked up onto the plateau, and the wind started coming again. Rather than the constant winds of Tierra del Fuego, the air would be still, and then a roar would start over the horizon, you'd see water vapour whipping in straight gusts across the lake, and then it would hit you, driving grit and small pebbles into you, and coruscating any exposed skin. Think it involves air being supercooled over the westward glaciers, being forced downwards quickly, and rushing onwards. After this, conditions eased, as the trail went up and over ridges, with small trees whipping their limbs around you. Was a little worried one of these uppity bushes might get ideas above their station, and I might have to put one of the suckers in check, but they seemed more used to the wind than I, and refrained from relinquishing their roots and flying at me. I was keeping up quite a fearsome pace, as despite all learned estimations I was optimistic that i might get to the Grey Glacier that day.
Got to the Alberge Cuernos, photo below.
Crap coffee, but warm place with a stove, guitars hung on the wall, hikers in socks sitting around eating packed lunches (shoes left outside). Good place to chill for hal an hour. On from here to Campiemento Italiano, a free campsite situated at the bottom of a valley leading up to a vantage point surrounded on three sides by the main peaks. The camp was a spread out collection of often raggedy looking tents, expedition quality originally, but many now bowed, weighed down by rocks to frustrate the wind. Most people I spoke to had been there for two days, waiting for some signal to move off, and the folk I spoke to had mostly chosen the early evening of the second day to make the climb to the outlook point at the top of the valley. The camp was dominated by large Israeli groups, fresh out the army, and travelling en masse. In fact, the amount of Israelis in South America, or at least Patagonia, is astounding, for a country of, I don't know, 7 or 8 million people (I don't have wifi here, so my statistics may be slightly off, for which I apologise). Could be all the 30 year old Brits are staying in palatial luxury, being carried about the Chilean highlights in pearled litters in some kind of imperial throwback.
Anyhow, walked up to Campiemento Britanico with my pack, and then on to the outlook post, where you have the Cuernos del Paine to the east, Cumbro Central and the Glacier Frances to the west,a ring of mountains to the north, and a startlingly clear glacial river running down the valley. I've posted photos below, but you can only get a tenth of the feeling of wildness from these. It was a good day, sunny with some scudding clouds, but you just get the idea that in less than an hour you could have winds of indescribable violence whipping around, visibility down to a minimum, snow or hail forming up to attack, etc. Pretty much the feeling you get up high in any mountain range I suppose, but seemed more acute here, even though the heights of the peaks are only around 3000m, which pales in comparison with the Alps, let alone the Andes further north. Anyhow, I meant to keep this succinct and concise, and I'm rambling on at length, so I'll cut to the chase; camped, then hiked back the next day, camped again at a site with such luxuries as showers (the guy nicely waived the fee, i think the whole cycling thing either arouses respect or pity in folk), and set off to, I thought then, El Calafate, at my standard leisurely midday time slot.
Some shots at the top of the Valle de Frances.
Senor Horse at the Campiemento Italiano. Horseback is the only way to get supplies up there, or to chase banditos out from the high passes.
Inquisitive looking thing. Pretty sure it can be classed as a bird, probably 'of prey'. After that, I'm sketchy.
After an uneventful first 30kms, I was passing through a land with rolling scrub covered hills pushing up against various Torres in the distance, the day was overcast, and was looking like being a long slog towards Calafate. Was coming up on some kind of action on my left - a small, deserted junkyard with a few heaps of corrugated iron and a couple of busted up pick-ups, when I saw a flash of white running towards me, and leaping the fence. It was an enthusiastic looking white dog, sized like a rangy labrador. Didn't seem to be anyone around to call him back, so I let him run happily alongside me for a bit, before trying to send him back to the junkyard. Sadly, I'm not sure my Spanglish commands quite had the required authority, and he certainly didn't look like the brightest dog ever.
So, since there was no obvious casa or estancia to send him back to, and he wasn't responding to any cries of '!Vamos!', there was little I could do apart from let him bound happily alongside me, acting as an endlessly enthusiastic outrider.
This new situation made me extremely popular with the few denizens of the road, and I was getting papped by pretty much every tourist driving past, and the few locals were slowing down to ask if he was mine; I responded in the negative, and tried to see if anyone knew the home of my new friend, but no-one did. Occasionally he would become (even more) excited by the far off scamper of a fox, or the bounding guanacos in the fields - I'd let him chase the foxes, who unfortunately knew how to outwit him tactically by doubling back under fences constantly, but would stop him chasing down the guanacos by shouting '!Aqui!'. I could call him to me, but couldn't send him away. This went on for 30km or so, during which his running ability put my cycling speed totally in the shade - the roads were unpaved gravel, so he could keep pace with me whilst sprinting off to close effortlessly with the guanaco, who are effectively the deer of Patagonia - a pretty impressive dog.
Soon he ran off to the side to investigate what looked like a dead guanaco. He'd certainly died in a strange position - his left back leg was twisted in the top wires of a fence, and his body was slumped helplessly on the floor. I called the dog, who I was oscillating between calling 'Scamp' and 'Mister Perro', back, as I didn't want to be witness to an unsavoury scene of dead guanaco gnawing. Suddenly, the gunaco started spasming on the floor, his trapped leg shaking the fence hopelessly, his other limbs striking the fence posts and wires. Shit. I did a quick inspection of the situation, tested the wires for give, staying out the way of his striking hooves, then felt the sinking feeling that I would have to do something, and whatever it was wasn't going to be easy. The pressure the wires are strung at, and the fact that a guanaco, weighing probably about 100kg had jumped a fence at maybe 20-30mph meant the force had twisted the top two wires together with almost unmoveable tension. Also, the hoof is considerably thicker wider than the leg, like a horse, with a toe (?) at the top of the ankle, so I would have to spread the wires widely to free him, something which a cursory try showed was far beyond my strength. Maybe he was going slower than usual when he attempted the jump, otherwise I have no idea how his leg hadn't snapped.
Diagram -
I thought about breaking the fence posts, but it would have taken ages to saw through with my knife, and would probably not have given me the necessary slack. Also, whoever owned this field might not have taken kindly to me destroying the fence. So, I decided to cycle back 3km to the nearest estancia. Upon arriving there, I was overtaken on the driveway by a happily beeping coach, and as I rocked up at what I assumed were holiday lets, the coach stopped, and 30 or 40 cheery, bearded guys, caked in dust and swathed in heavy, hi-vis overalls leapt out and began running to the nearest cabins (probably the shower block, in retrospect). The two guys left seemed bemused by my tale of a trapped guanaco, which may not have been delivered in exactly flawless, or even decipherable Spanish, and I realised that these were more temporary digs for workers in a nearby quarry. So, I headed back up the road.
No-one seemed too interested in stopping, although most of the tourists returning from the Torres slowed to rubberneck, so I hit upon a plan. I have a big, annoyingly heavy D-lock for my bike, one of those that costs £50 and isn't getting broken or bent without some pretty heavy-duty equipment. So, I realised if I could fit this between the wires, and use a fence post as a twisting mechanism through the D-lock, I could maybe get the wires far enough apart. First try wasn't a success - there were a few unneeded posts on the floor, so i tried twisting with one - it snapped, driving the wires deeper. Poor guanaco. He thrashed some more, but when I spoke to him he actually seemed to understand I was trying to help, and stopped moving. Probably shock more than some kind of Androcles and the lion style understanding, but hey. However, two posts at once did the trick, I pushed the leg through the gap, and after some spasming, the guanaco righted itself and ran off. Result! I felt pretty damn happy, and had a bit of a self-congratulary moment where I slapped myself metaphorically on the back for my caring nature.
Onwards we went, and by 8 or 9pm the dog was flagging - I couldn't reward such stupid loyalty by driving him on, so stopped in a depression (a physical one, I mean!) and made camp, doling out snacks to myself and my companion.
Was woken the next day by some excited barking, 200 metres up the road; a ewe and a lamb had got loose in the road, and a couple of gauchos were trying to lassoo them, using their sheepdogs to help. Scamp was getting involved excitedly, although his presence did not seem to be helping enormously. However, he responded immediately to my command to heel. The gauchos waved good-naturedly, but couldn't shed any light on the providence of my dog.
I travelled onward to Cerro Castillo, a border crossing to Argentina, but it was Christmas Eve, and I had resigned myself to the fact that El Calafate was too far, and I was going to have to head back to Puerto Natales, or spend Christmas in either a dusty one-horse town or by the side of the road. Plus folks back home hadn't heard from me for eight days, and I didn't want to worry them. The lure of the many and varied eating establishments in a tourist town were pretty strong as well.
So, I knocked back coffee and a burger, as all the tourist buses stopped and disgorged their cargo. The wind was now sweeping towards the town, whistling and shaking the windows of the cafe, but I was going to make it to Puerto Natales if I had to push all the way. thankfully, I didn't and the direction changed when I moved into the next valley. One last problem though. Scamp was having more and more trouble keeping up, his evervesence was still there when I stopped to give him water and sausages, but his pace wasn't. He had run about 100km in the last 24 hours, and unfortunately showed no sign of stopping trying to keep up, and I had no way of making him stop. I stopped to check his paws - the pads were beginning to look very red and sore, and his back leg was bleeding, although I couldn't see why, and he wasn't favouring it. What could I do? I couldn't send him towards a nearby estancia - he just refused to stop following me, and wouldn't get into the back of a pick-up that offered to take him to Puerto Natales. My idea was that once I got to PN he could join the ranks of the half wild / half cared for strays on the streets after I sent him off with a nice steak, although I suspect he would have loyally stayed outside my hostel waiting for me. Either way, I couldn't travel with a dog - carrying enough water and food for me alone is hard enough in the more remote, arid sections of road, to say nothing of what would happen when I got to cities and stayed in hostels. So, with a heavy heart, and feeling like a complete bastard, I waited until I got to a part of road with handsome, rich looking estancias and farms each side, shouted vainly for him to vamos to one, and took off as fast as I could, hoping that once I vanished into the distance he would head to one - the land was starting to become more farmed and inhabited, so I hope he has found a good home.
30km later, I got to Puerto Natales, and after being turned away from a few full hostels, and starting to develop a messiah complex, I found a bed at Casa Lili.
Christmas and New Year blog to come soon,
Speak to you all soon x
Oh yeah, decided the cravate wasn't quite badass enough. Fine for cultivating a refined english gentleman image in Buenos Aires, but for the frontier regions you need something with a little more edge to it. Time to cut myself a bandana. I'll be auctioning them off at the end of the trip, unwashed. I anticipate a fierce response.
Practising the 'unpredictable maverick' look.
Monday, 27 December 2010
Torres del Paine or there and back again. Book 1.
Okay, last time i left you i was in a wood pannelled room in Puerto Natales.
Now, probably nine or ten days on, 25th dec, I'm in a chaotic living room/kitchen dining room/lounge affair with about 25 israelis and 15 or so chilenos, some of whom may be part of the extended family that own this place. And I'm still in Puerto Natales.
Not that i have sunk into some civilisation worshipping slump. In the intervening period I have been away for eight days. I have delved into the unforgiving wilderness, pitched my tent by raging torrents and benign lakes, plucked succulent vanilla flavoured Triton biscuits from the bending boughs of nearby shops, and thought vaguely about whittling something once. It's been a journey alright.
Set off from here on the 15th December, cycling on a rutted, gravelly road past some beautifully sited estancias on a long inland finger of the sea loch that puerto natales lies on. I was following a road that from the look of things would lead me via a southern shortcut to torres del paine, not the main road that most of the tourist buses take. After about 25km of slow going, I arrived at the estancia founded by Manuel Eberhard, a German naval hero of the early days of independent Chile. The road turned into a private track that led only to a farm on a hill. Damn. Spoke to a couple of fence erecting guys, retraced my steps.
Dead end sign not pictured.
I eventually reached the right road, which lay parallel to the previous one, but around 3km east. But the sun was bright, if not hot, and the land looked suited to a hotter, more arid land, with Australian style scrub and trees either side, and sheer vol cliffs either side. Towards nightfall the snowy peaks started marching down one side of the road, with the other consisting of lakes and beech forests. With night coming, I found an unlocked gate leading down to a large sheltered lake, which seemed to be an unofficial kind of rough camping site; a few remains of campsites and logs lashed together for shelter were strewn around. I made camp, and took advantage of the abundance of dead, dry wood to have one hell of a campfire to ward of the drizzle.
Spent the next day in the camp too, due to nothing more than laziness. I'd like to say I spent this time profitably, but unless you count making haphazard attempts to play 'When the levee breaks' on the harmonica (and by 'haphazard', i mean 'utterly shit') as profitable, I probably didn't. Oh, I also did some workouts with the differently sized logs lying around, which probably made me look like I'd watched Rocky IV a few too many times, and had seriously misjudged the similarity of my physique to Mr Balboas. Maybe my VHS had a really screwed up aspect ratio.
Me, attempting to beat my cameras timer, and not quite making it.
17th December dawned. Then, probably around seven hours afterwards, I got up. Not quite as bad as it sounds - I'm pretty far south, and the summer equinox is approaching, but still not exactly a statement of intent. I set off for Torres del Paine. The road start heading up pretty swiftly, and deteriorating in quality pretty swiftly too, until I reached a road crew who were driving a steamroller back and forth. The road was constantly snaking upward through a flint canyon, which must have taken a inordinate amount of explosive to blast apart, and an awful amount of work to move the shards elsewhere. Still, I guess it will keep Chile in flint hand axes for centuries, should prehistoric living suddenly come back into vogue. Anyhow, I reached the park boundaries, paid my 15,000 pesos (approx 20 quid), and wooshed across the grassy meadow, and through the winding lakeside road towards the nearest campsite.
Winding road, Torres del Paine masked by cloud in the distance.
There are some photos below of the Torres, the horns, or cuernos, are the structures with no snow on them, the sides too sheer for any powder to find purchase, with the taller, more conventional mountain peaks alongside.
It had a pretty otherworldly, front cover to some fanciful sci-fi book vibe to it by moonlight, like another red moon might chase the silver one out from behind the clouds. Or maybe the solitude is warping my mind. Either way, a beautifully situated campsite, with shelters to pitch tents under, although 10,000 pesos, or £12.50, seems a trifle steep for a patch of earth to call my own. However, it was the only campsite by the road for 33km, and night was falling.
Campsite Lake Pehoe.
The small distances shown on the maps of the region are deceptive by bike, as the roads undulate steeply, and are in pretty bad condition for a fully laden bike. The constant rocks and corrugated sections that the bike cruches along mean that at the start of every day I have to attempt to re-true the back wheel, as the spokes lose tension constantly, and if the rim bends one way slightly this will rapidly deteriorate. The back wheel has most of my weight, and the majority of my luggage resting on it, so it's probably taking over 100kg of weight - fine on a paved road, as there is no crunching downforce, but not on the ripio surface that makes up a lot of Patagonian highways.
Unidentified bird of prey poses in a self-conscious 'i am a far-seeing, noble beast' fashion.
Hosteria just up from the campsite. As close as I could get without taking out a 20 year mortgage or selling my first-born into indentured slavery. These places are seriously pricey.
The following day was slow going through the hills, as I cycled towards Las Torres Campsite, which is the kicking off spot for most of the hikes, but it was a beautiful, sunny day, and I amused myself by fooling about with my camera, taking many over-exposed, lens-flaring photos, and often managing to make my really pretty damn good camera take photos that looked like thirty year old polaroids. I also started having my picture taken from moving cars on a regular basis, which has only been an occasional pleasure uptil now. I like revelling in the idea that people either see me as a lone warrior, struggling against geography and the elements, or as some crazy gringo. Maybe they're just amused at my clothes.
Got carried away adding photos. Appears my blog is too big to appear in one part. I'll post the next part tomorrow. Dx
Now, probably nine or ten days on, 25th dec, I'm in a chaotic living room/kitchen dining room/lounge affair with about 25 israelis and 15 or so chilenos, some of whom may be part of the extended family that own this place. And I'm still in Puerto Natales.
Not that i have sunk into some civilisation worshipping slump. In the intervening period I have been away for eight days. I have delved into the unforgiving wilderness, pitched my tent by raging torrents and benign lakes, plucked succulent vanilla flavoured Triton biscuits from the bending boughs of nearby shops, and thought vaguely about whittling something once. It's been a journey alright.
Set off from here on the 15th December, cycling on a rutted, gravelly road past some beautifully sited estancias on a long inland finger of the sea loch that puerto natales lies on. I was following a road that from the look of things would lead me via a southern shortcut to torres del paine, not the main road that most of the tourist buses take. After about 25km of slow going, I arrived at the estancia founded by Manuel Eberhard, a German naval hero of the early days of independent Chile. The road turned into a private track that led only to a farm on a hill. Damn. Spoke to a couple of fence erecting guys, retraced my steps.
Dead end sign not pictured.
I eventually reached the right road, which lay parallel to the previous one, but around 3km east. But the sun was bright, if not hot, and the land looked suited to a hotter, more arid land, with Australian style scrub and trees either side, and sheer vol cliffs either side. Towards nightfall the snowy peaks started marching down one side of the road, with the other consisting of lakes and beech forests. With night coming, I found an unlocked gate leading down to a large sheltered lake, which seemed to be an unofficial kind of rough camping site; a few remains of campsites and logs lashed together for shelter were strewn around. I made camp, and took advantage of the abundance of dead, dry wood to have one hell of a campfire to ward of the drizzle.
Spent the next day in the camp too, due to nothing more than laziness. I'd like to say I spent this time profitably, but unless you count making haphazard attempts to play 'When the levee breaks' on the harmonica (and by 'haphazard', i mean 'utterly shit') as profitable, I probably didn't. Oh, I also did some workouts with the differently sized logs lying around, which probably made me look like I'd watched Rocky IV a few too many times, and had seriously misjudged the similarity of my physique to Mr Balboas. Maybe my VHS had a really screwed up aspect ratio.
Me, attempting to beat my cameras timer, and not quite making it.
17th December dawned. Then, probably around seven hours afterwards, I got up. Not quite as bad as it sounds - I'm pretty far south, and the summer equinox is approaching, but still not exactly a statement of intent. I set off for Torres del Paine. The road start heading up pretty swiftly, and deteriorating in quality pretty swiftly too, until I reached a road crew who were driving a steamroller back and forth. The road was constantly snaking upward through a flint canyon, which must have taken a inordinate amount of explosive to blast apart, and an awful amount of work to move the shards elsewhere. Still, I guess it will keep Chile in flint hand axes for centuries, should prehistoric living suddenly come back into vogue. Anyhow, I reached the park boundaries, paid my 15,000 pesos (approx 20 quid), and wooshed across the grassy meadow, and through the winding lakeside road towards the nearest campsite.
Winding road, Torres del Paine masked by cloud in the distance.
There are some photos below of the Torres, the horns, or cuernos, are the structures with no snow on them, the sides too sheer for any powder to find purchase, with the taller, more conventional mountain peaks alongside.
It had a pretty otherworldly, front cover to some fanciful sci-fi book vibe to it by moonlight, like another red moon might chase the silver one out from behind the clouds. Or maybe the solitude is warping my mind. Either way, a beautifully situated campsite, with shelters to pitch tents under, although 10,000 pesos, or £12.50, seems a trifle steep for a patch of earth to call my own. However, it was the only campsite by the road for 33km, and night was falling.
Campsite Lake Pehoe.
The small distances shown on the maps of the region are deceptive by bike, as the roads undulate steeply, and are in pretty bad condition for a fully laden bike. The constant rocks and corrugated sections that the bike cruches along mean that at the start of every day I have to attempt to re-true the back wheel, as the spokes lose tension constantly, and if the rim bends one way slightly this will rapidly deteriorate. The back wheel has most of my weight, and the majority of my luggage resting on it, so it's probably taking over 100kg of weight - fine on a paved road, as there is no crunching downforce, but not on the ripio surface that makes up a lot of Patagonian highways.
Unidentified bird of prey poses in a self-conscious 'i am a far-seeing, noble beast' fashion.
Hosteria just up from the campsite. As close as I could get without taking out a 20 year mortgage or selling my first-born into indentured slavery. These places are seriously pricey.
The following day was slow going through the hills, as I cycled towards Las Torres Campsite, which is the kicking off spot for most of the hikes, but it was a beautiful, sunny day, and I amused myself by fooling about with my camera, taking many over-exposed, lens-flaring photos, and often managing to make my really pretty damn good camera take photos that looked like thirty year old polaroids. I also started having my picture taken from moving cars on a regular basis, which has only been an occasional pleasure uptil now. I like revelling in the idea that people either see me as a lone warrior, struggling against geography and the elements, or as some crazy gringo. Maybe they're just amused at my clothes.
Got carried away adding photos. Appears my blog is too big to appear in one part. I'll post the next part tomorrow. Dx
Tuesday, 14 December 2010
addendum : puerto natales
Okay, you've had the sober post, now comes the drunk one.
Now this is verbatim what i wrote in the bar, before i met some friendly French/Columbian/Chilean folk.
I'm gonna give this shit to you pure and simple. And yes tash, i am writing exactly what is down in my notebook.
I quite often question whether it is me doing these things that I do. Not particulaly because they are such outlandish things to do, more because it is in my nature. Am I me? Am I here, cycling in a vast plain? If a bear shits in the woods, with no one there, does it smell, etc.
And so this leads, ineluctably on, to the question, why am I doing this? Admitedly it involves some very obvious pleasures; that of arriving at a city after days rough camping, new places, women, warm food, all these things are obvious.
But hell, I'm a solitary person by nature, unless I'm amongst friends or family. I have tried to put about the notion that I am some kind of introvert, and friends rebuke this idea, probably thinking I am either deluded or trying to carve out a mysterious stranger motif for myself.
But when I'm by myself, in situations such as this (before i started talking to people, yeah?), I am an
introvert. I don't try to make friends in a hostel, unless the other person has something obvious to recommend themselves to me, ie looks, charisma, humour. I'm selfish, and will often immerse myself in books/laptop and headphones, to avoid the old routine of 'where do you come from.....' and will feel mild annoyance when an unwelcome spirit passes my boundaries.
Much like anyone else I suspect.
But yeah, reasons for this trip.
1. To do something epic that I can point to, mostly to myself, that I achieved something.
2. Boredom. If not with a career, but with the idea that a career is the only way to function today.
3. Fitness. Manhood. Surviving in the great outdoors. The Ray Mears method. Climbing. Hunting. Fishing. Spear fishing. Doing tai chi in forset glens (haven't the foggiest how to do tai chi in any circumstance, let alone forest glens).
4. Finding something. Don't know what. Medallions in the Altiplano in Bolivia, enlightenment with the ayahuascas in Amazonia, elves in the deep forest of Chile, something else.
I'm nothing if not a realist.
Let me know if there's anything missing, my comments page looks a little dry. And one question - do I need an Indiana Jones hat? Because I want one. But it's a goddam unaerodynamic thing to carry.
Oh, and in case you think I'm typing this later, and un-drunk, I have the following thing to say - "Oh, and Jons (? possibly Jos) If you're reading this, please why a Blainte chops, makes me think of you. Think I need it on the Chenodenel.
My writing is illegible. Drunk or undrunk. After this i go on to talk about how pissed off Creedence Clearwater Revival must have been that the Stones wrote a much better apocolyptic song in
Gimme Shelter than Bad Moon Rising. But I don't really think anyone needs to hear that (they apparently came out at the same time). I was hitting a pretty scattershot approach at that point - if a song came on in the club, I'd write about it.
Take care.
Now this is verbatim what i wrote in the bar, before i met some friendly French/Columbian/Chilean folk.
I'm gonna give this shit to you pure and simple. And yes tash, i am writing exactly what is down in my notebook.
I quite often question whether it is me doing these things that I do. Not particulaly because they are such outlandish things to do, more because it is in my nature. Am I me? Am I here, cycling in a vast plain? If a bear shits in the woods, with no one there, does it smell, etc.
And so this leads, ineluctably on, to the question, why am I doing this? Admitedly it involves some very obvious pleasures; that of arriving at a city after days rough camping, new places, women, warm food, all these things are obvious.
But hell, I'm a solitary person by nature, unless I'm amongst friends or family. I have tried to put about the notion that I am some kind of introvert, and friends rebuke this idea, probably thinking I am either deluded or trying to carve out a mysterious stranger motif for myself.
But when I'm by myself, in situations such as this (before i started talking to people, yeah?), I am an
introvert. I don't try to make friends in a hostel, unless the other person has something obvious to recommend themselves to me, ie looks, charisma, humour. I'm selfish, and will often immerse myself in books/laptop and headphones, to avoid the old routine of 'where do you come from.....' and will feel mild annoyance when an unwelcome spirit passes my boundaries.
Much like anyone else I suspect.
But yeah, reasons for this trip.
1. To do something epic that I can point to, mostly to myself, that I achieved something.
2. Boredom. If not with a career, but with the idea that a career is the only way to function today.
3. Fitness. Manhood. Surviving in the great outdoors. The Ray Mears method. Climbing. Hunting. Fishing. Spear fishing. Doing tai chi in forset glens (haven't the foggiest how to do tai chi in any circumstance, let alone forest glens).
4. Finding something. Don't know what. Medallions in the Altiplano in Bolivia, enlightenment with the ayahuascas in Amazonia, elves in the deep forest of Chile, something else.
I'm nothing if not a realist.
Let me know if there's anything missing, my comments page looks a little dry. And one question - do I need an Indiana Jones hat? Because I want one. But it's a goddam unaerodynamic thing to carry.
Oh, and in case you think I'm typing this later, and un-drunk, I have the following thing to say - "Oh, and Jons (? possibly Jos) If you're reading this, please why a Blainte chops, makes me think of you. Think I need it on the Chenodenel.
My writing is illegible. Drunk or undrunk. After this i go on to talk about how pissed off Creedence Clearwater Revival must have been that the Stones wrote a much better apocolyptic song in
Gimme Shelter than Bad Moon Rising. But I don't really think anyone needs to hear that (they apparently came out at the same time). I was hitting a pretty scattershot approach at that point - if a song came on in the club, I'd write about it.
Take care.
Monday, 13 December 2010
Rio Grande to Puerto Natales
The last blog ended abruptly. Well, okay, not abruptly. In fact it probably meandered like a muddy, drunk river, winding its leisurely way through the grasslands and depositing many an ox-bow lake along the way.
However, I did end it before getting anything like up to date with where I am now, and for that I sincerely apologise. I just didn't think anyone could take any moreverbose crap stimulating thoughts in one sitting.
So, I'll cover what's happened up until now, as I sit in a cold hostel in Puerto Natales. It's an old wooden place with low ceilings, individually carved chairs, and landscape paintings, photos and maps everywhere. And a small ceramic stove in the corner with a metal flue, but this is unfortunately not in use.
Me now, figured that now I am an official member of the adventurers guild, I can get away with dressing like this,
I stopped in Rio Grande for two days, at the only hostel in town, Hostel Argentino. When you're the only option in town, you don't need to go big on inventive names. Just reassure people that this is an Argentinian establishment, and not, say, a stray Madagascan collective that got swept up on the shore one day. Mostly a workingmans hostel rather than a tourist/gringo one, I'm not actually sure I took any photos of Rio Grande, but if I had, you'd see why. Not an unpleasant place by any means, and a friendly bunch at the hostel, but a total frontier town, and not in a romantic bear-trapping and whiskey bar kind of way. The town was on a windswept plain by the shore, the outskirts all warehouses and tin houses, the centre was wide, bleak streets. This impression was not helped by the constant gale that blew for the two days I was resident, making walking in the streets a matter of bending double and forging on ahead. This was the reason I stayed for so long; if walking is difficult, cycling is nigh on impossible.
Unless it's a tail wind of course. However, it's never a tail wind. The physics of hot/cold air currents just don't work that way here, indeed the direction of wind seems actually dependent upon my direction, in that it will always arrange itself to be hitting me diagonally from the left front quadrant. 10:30, in fighter pilot parlance. So, I get the wind trying to knock me off the road, but also impeding my forward progress, making it akin to trying to cycle up a hill which often tilts suddenly and without warning. Anyone who's every played Super Monkey Ball will know what I'm talking about. Nothing like a pop-culture reference that most people won't get, eh?
I'm thinking this new (? probably not) concept in paranoid meterology, that the distant interaction of hot and cold air with the terrain is taking place with the sole intention to strike me and make me quake with rage, could be my Phd subject. I could be to weather forcasting what Niels Bohr was to quantum physics.
Anyway, I'll probably return to inchoate rants about wind at some later stage. In fact, it's pretty inevitable. I would like to point out, however, since my last blog referenced the importance of wine in its creation, that this rage is a sober-minded thing. It is 11:44 in the morning here, the sun is not over the yardarm, and even basking in the warm glow of a civilised town, it's a little early for a glass of wine.
By the second day in Rio Grande, I had been joined in the hostel by three other cyclists who were heading the same way and had been driven inside by the wind. One of them, a South African lady, Leana, had been on the road pretty much non-stop for 3 and a half years, through Africa, the middle east, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, pretty much all of SE Asia and Australia, which puts my journey in perspective! Anyway, one of them decided to get the bus to PN, one was going to stay in Rio Grande another day, and unsurprisingly, Leana set off some time before my lesiurely start of 12:30pm.
So, it was a steady slog northwards to San Sebastien. Wind was making hard work of it, but not impossibly so. The landscape was pretty uninspiring; endless flat plains, punctuated only by occasional automated gas pumping stations. There were however, slightly more excitingly, a few small cantilever oil pumps dotted about, slowly rocking away. The only real event of note happened when I was cutting my lunchtime dried salami in an inadvisable way with my pocket knife - managed to slice open my left forefinger. Thankfully for music fans worldwide, it was deep, but not deep enough to hit bone or nerves, so you can all rest easy - I will play the piano again. It's pretty much healed now, thanks to my proficency with a tube of Germolene and a dressing. Anyhow, the day ended at San Sebastien, a collection of shacks by the sea, and the point to cross over into Chilean lands. I asked at the petrol station / hotel whether or not I could pitch my tent in their grounds, as the hotel was closed for renevation (to be honest, the place looked like it hadn't been used since the mid-70s). They very kindly invited me to stay in one of the rooms anyway, free of charge.
The landscape of northern Argentinian Tierra del Fuego. Good bits are definitely in the south.
This pretty much sums up all my experiences with Argentinians and Chileans. Almost to a man / woman they have been friendly, welcoming and helpful, whether they are dragging you to the bar to be bought Fernet and coke, helping me carry my bike to the airport bus in BA, and negotiating my passage on said bus with my monstrous amount of luggage (cheers Alejandro!), or helping me fit my front rack in Rio Grande. The mechanic who helped me out with this last one didn't speak a word of English, but still we chatted for a long time about bikes, he showed me a large collection of photos of him cycling with his daughter, and wouldn't let me leave without a postcard of some Tour de France cyclists.
This kind of generosity and genuine happiness makes me realise I really need to do some knuckling down on the whole 'speaking Spanish thing'. I've been learning so far more on a need to know basis, constructing phrases and memorising them when I need to use them, rather than any more structured study. I fondly imagined I would be putting in a couple of hours a night after cycling, but even if I'm not ready to sleep immediately I tend to be so tired that I put off the Spanish in favour of either reading 'Fabric of the Cosmos', about current developements in string theory and cosmic evolution (yeah, languages are so daunting for me that this seems like a bit of light relaxation in comparison), or, at the moment, listening to 20,000 leagues under the seas. I have fond memories of Journey to the Centre of the Earth, also by Jules Verne, from when I was about nine, so I thought this might be worth a listen (i prefer reading, but audio books are a wee bit lighter). My advice to any prospective readers - don't bother. It's more or less just a recital of species of coral, fish, and various underwater flora, including Latin order, genus, family, or a listing of the latitude and longitude of various islands. It's also read by a selection of people who volunteer to record for a free audio book site, which is a laudable endevour, but seems to attract people with either a robotic, mogadon taking voice, or people who have considerable difficulty even reading the words out properly.
Enough sidetracking. Woke up, went through customs rapidly. A no-mans land of 15km awaited, which was bleak, but with a slightly more dramatic, rolling-on forever esque tone to it. There were pink flamingos standing around in the salty lakes, guanacos and cows grazing. Went through Chilean customs. Another stamp in the passport. Set off across the wide expanse of northern Tierra del Fuego. My map shows a paved road for the next 140km, but such a construction was not in evidence. Thankfully, it was a decent ripio, with only small corrugated sections, and thus reasonably easy to cycle on. Even driving rain and hail didn't dampen my spirits, and I made a good 50km until I came upon a hut in the middle of nowhere. I should emphasise that in this time I passed about 4 estancias (ranches), and for the first hour and half passed no traffic whatsoever. Flat lands either side, no vegetation above knee height, occasional sheep. I was ready to drive on, but the hut seemed a good omen. Built for cyclists, or certainly used by them, it had cartoons and time/distance logs on the wall ofwritten by the people who had passed through. Most of them were doing a similarly epic trip - loads of Alaska to Tierra del Fuegos, a few Santiago or BA to Ushuaias. No door, the beds were steel frames, and the stove was a) trashed and b) there was no fuel for 60 or 70km in either direction. But hell, any port in a storm, and this was more than welcome.
The hut and its walls
Oh, and there was porn on the floor. Not a stash, or a magazine. Just a single torn out black and white picture of those parts of a woman that a gentleman like myself cannot mention in mixed company. Wouldn't want my wife or serving folk to hear such speech. I just mention it because of the prevailance in the UK of the species bongobush. It is a well known fact that under any hedgerow, in a lay-by or derelict building, you will invariably find torn out (always torn out, and scattered to the winds, the bongobush only lays its eggs singularly) pages from the Sunday Sport, or even from racier, more artistic publications. Just wanted to let people know that even in a land the other side of the globe, with different customs and sensibilities, the bongobush still prevails. Unless it's some Viz reading cyclist planting them in various locations and taking photos. And there can't be that many of us that fit that description.
Pornography bottom right. I'm not making this blog 18+ for that. If it scars you for life, tough.
Awoke the next day at 6am, intentionally. Was a bright and sunny day, although the sound of the wind whistling through the fence was an unwelcome threnody for the night (okay, i'm actually trying for the 'most pretentious word use' here). Had some porridge, and then some salty pasta and sardines. Water running low. Then set off. The wind leapt to greet me, and I probably struggled on for ten km. I was pretty much alone on the road, but was fighting a constant battle to stay moving both forwards and in the right direction. I'd be leaning into the wind, always ready to steer into the wind as it gusted and was going forwards at a walking pace. A quick walking pace maybe, but not when you count the rests that were necessary. But the most irritating thing, and when I say irritating I mean flashes of dark angry light in the mind, shouting at the sky, yelling anglo-saxon expletives into the heart of the tempest, pulling the handlebars up in such a rage that my heavily laden front wheel would buck into the air like a BMX.....the most irritating thing was being driven off the road into the deep gravel by the wind. I must have looked a pretty crazy sight, balaclava, hat and sunglasses on, waterproof to protect me from the chill, screaming blue murder at the uncaring atmosphere. I made less and less progress, resting more and more, in the lee of a hill, or a rock, as it became apparent that however hard I struggled, I was barely going to get any distance that day.
So, when a retired German couple from Munich pulled up into a motorhome, and asked if I was Ok and did I want a lift to Porvenir, I took them up on it. The shame blossoms again writing this, and if I had really needed to I could have got water from some stream/ditch (the words are pretty interchangable at this time of year up on the plains), or, more sensibly, a nearby Estancia, but hell, this was someway from being fun, or even a fair challenge. Goddam wind. So, I rode with these guys for the 100km until Porvenir, after about 40km the landscape changed into a hilly place with canyons and arryos, it seemed considerably less windy and more hospitable, but hell, I'd taken the easy way out, and I might as well just ride all the way to Porvenir, where there awaited vast, steaming piles of empenadas, chocolate and juices. But never again. Never, for the remainder of this trip am I going to take a lift. I've got to win back my lost honour - films and books have taught me there will be a hard quest ahead, fraught with peril, but it may be possible in the end.
Spent a night in Porvenir, colourful tin roofs aplenty, then took the ferry to Punto Arenas, where I spent four days in a beautifully restful hostel, El Fin de Mundo. I forgot to actually take any pictures, but great, big, single beds with luxurious duvets (had my dorm to myself all but one night), a conservatory area with a massive pool table and murals everywhere, and a tv room where the owner and his friends were constantly playing classic rock. And an effectively all-you-can-eat breakfast with cereal, bread, twenty different condiments, meat, fruit, juice, coffee. Ahhhhhhhh yes.
Didn't really do a great deal, apart from quite a bit of writing, and read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (not nearly as good as Cryptonomicon, which is not a big slight, as I love that book, but still worth picking up).
Of course, I hadn't come this far to sit around reading and listening to classic rock. I've probably done enough of both to last me a lifetime, and will probably have another couple of lifetimes worth under my belt by the time I ascend to Valhalla. Now was the time to leave.
So, I set off on Friday 10th December, and this was the most joyous day of cycling by a long shot. Started off workmanlike, went through a freakish 5km strech where the heavens had obviously just emptied snow and hail several inches deep onto the road and surrounding fields....then just stopped at some invisible border. But after this conditions were perfect. The sun shone! The wind was slight, and was even at my back for one unbelivable stretch! The road was smooth, and went through hills and plains, next to lakes, and mountains came distantly into view by the end of the day. So, this day probably cycled about 165km in about seven hours, then slept in another roadside hut-cum-bus-shelter. This isn't the transient/drifter like scenario it would be in Britain; there are huts opposite every Estancia so residents can wait for buses or hitch, but this is still a sparsely inhabited land, and most of the huts won't see anyone for days or weeks. Besides, unfurling the tent, sleeping bag, mat, bags always leads to inertia in the morning as I lounge around, and takes time to securely fasten everything to the bike again.
The next day, the wind picked up again, and after I had travelled 50km I was a tantalising 35km from Puerto Natales. A ridiculously small distance.....but not cycling into a near hurricane. Seriously. It was pretty damn close anyhow, so I camped behind a ridge, and slept as best I could whilst my tent whipped around me.
The view on the second day out....mountains approaching.....slowly,
The wind was hardly better the day after, but with a whole day in front of me I couldn't afford to lay up, so I inched, metre by metre, towards the town. The spectacular mountain ridges became clearer on the horizon, wreathed with mist and cloud, the bay which Puerto Natales lies on sparkled beneath the late afternoon sun, and the ridge which streaks back from the town loomed, pointing at the journeys end. So I made it in around 8:45pm last night, possibly the happiest I have been so far this trip!
And I only wanted to make friends.....cows flee from my comradely embrace.
Me and Mr Beaver, making sure the message gets through
Approaching Puerto Natales, my glee can be seen shining off-screen,
What the hell.....more me, in current hostel. There's a woody vibe.
Lovely hostel, town full of cafes and wooden buildings housing tour companies. So, I'm going to lay up today, speak to my folks on Skype, hopefully watch Man Utd vs Arsenal, and eat a great deal of grilled meat and drink some wine. And then....Torres del Paine. Distinctive 'horned' mountains, around which there is spectacular trekking country, so plan on exercising some different muscles for a change. Can't wait!
Dave x
PS, Small things that are great -
Peach yoghurt with fruit cake crumbled into it.
Chocolate. However much I am carrying will get eaten. No restraint.
1.5lt of drinkable wine for £2
Kiwis are cheap as hell
So are avacados
Guanacos hoppolling around the forests (yeah. don't bother. it's not a word.)
However, I did end it before getting anything like up to date with where I am now, and for that I sincerely apologise. I just didn't think anyone could take any more
So, I'll cover what's happened up until now, as I sit in a cold hostel in Puerto Natales. It's an old wooden place with low ceilings, individually carved chairs, and landscape paintings, photos and maps everywhere. And a small ceramic stove in the corner with a metal flue, but this is unfortunately not in use.
Me now, figured that now I am an official member of the adventurers guild, I can get away with dressing like this,
I stopped in Rio Grande for two days, at the only hostel in town, Hostel Argentino. When you're the only option in town, you don't need to go big on inventive names. Just reassure people that this is an Argentinian establishment, and not, say, a stray Madagascan collective that got swept up on the shore one day. Mostly a workingmans hostel rather than a tourist/gringo one, I'm not actually sure I took any photos of Rio Grande, but if I had, you'd see why. Not an unpleasant place by any means, and a friendly bunch at the hostel, but a total frontier town, and not in a romantic bear-trapping and whiskey bar kind of way. The town was on a windswept plain by the shore, the outskirts all warehouses and tin houses, the centre was wide, bleak streets. This impression was not helped by the constant gale that blew for the two days I was resident, making walking in the streets a matter of bending double and forging on ahead. This was the reason I stayed for so long; if walking is difficult, cycling is nigh on impossible.
Unless it's a tail wind of course. However, it's never a tail wind. The physics of hot/cold air currents just don't work that way here, indeed the direction of wind seems actually dependent upon my direction, in that it will always arrange itself to be hitting me diagonally from the left front quadrant. 10:30, in fighter pilot parlance. So, I get the wind trying to knock me off the road, but also impeding my forward progress, making it akin to trying to cycle up a hill which often tilts suddenly and without warning. Anyone who's every played Super Monkey Ball will know what I'm talking about. Nothing like a pop-culture reference that most people won't get, eh?
I'm thinking this new (? probably not) concept in paranoid meterology, that the distant interaction of hot and cold air with the terrain is taking place with the sole intention to strike me and make me quake with rage, could be my Phd subject. I could be to weather forcasting what Niels Bohr was to quantum physics.
Anyway, I'll probably return to inchoate rants about wind at some later stage. In fact, it's pretty inevitable. I would like to point out, however, since my last blog referenced the importance of wine in its creation, that this rage is a sober-minded thing. It is 11:44 in the morning here, the sun is not over the yardarm, and even basking in the warm glow of a civilised town, it's a little early for a glass of wine.
By the second day in Rio Grande, I had been joined in the hostel by three other cyclists who were heading the same way and had been driven inside by the wind. One of them, a South African lady, Leana, had been on the road pretty much non-stop for 3 and a half years, through Africa, the middle east, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, pretty much all of SE Asia and Australia, which puts my journey in perspective! Anyway, one of them decided to get the bus to PN, one was going to stay in Rio Grande another day, and unsurprisingly, Leana set off some time before my lesiurely start of 12:30pm.
So, it was a steady slog northwards to San Sebastien. Wind was making hard work of it, but not impossibly so. The landscape was pretty uninspiring; endless flat plains, punctuated only by occasional automated gas pumping stations. There were however, slightly more excitingly, a few small cantilever oil pumps dotted about, slowly rocking away. The only real event of note happened when I was cutting my lunchtime dried salami in an inadvisable way with my pocket knife - managed to slice open my left forefinger. Thankfully for music fans worldwide, it was deep, but not deep enough to hit bone or nerves, so you can all rest easy - I will play the piano again. It's pretty much healed now, thanks to my proficency with a tube of Germolene and a dressing. Anyhow, the day ended at San Sebastien, a collection of shacks by the sea, and the point to cross over into Chilean lands. I asked at the petrol station / hotel whether or not I could pitch my tent in their grounds, as the hotel was closed for renevation (to be honest, the place looked like it hadn't been used since the mid-70s). They very kindly invited me to stay in one of the rooms anyway, free of charge.
The landscape of northern Argentinian Tierra del Fuego. Good bits are definitely in the south.
This pretty much sums up all my experiences with Argentinians and Chileans. Almost to a man / woman they have been friendly, welcoming and helpful, whether they are dragging you to the bar to be bought Fernet and coke, helping me carry my bike to the airport bus in BA, and negotiating my passage on said bus with my monstrous amount of luggage (cheers Alejandro!), or helping me fit my front rack in Rio Grande. The mechanic who helped me out with this last one didn't speak a word of English, but still we chatted for a long time about bikes, he showed me a large collection of photos of him cycling with his daughter, and wouldn't let me leave without a postcard of some Tour de France cyclists.
This kind of generosity and genuine happiness makes me realise I really need to do some knuckling down on the whole 'speaking Spanish thing'. I've been learning so far more on a need to know basis, constructing phrases and memorising them when I need to use them, rather than any more structured study. I fondly imagined I would be putting in a couple of hours a night after cycling, but even if I'm not ready to sleep immediately I tend to be so tired that I put off the Spanish in favour of either reading 'Fabric of the Cosmos', about current developements in string theory and cosmic evolution (yeah, languages are so daunting for me that this seems like a bit of light relaxation in comparison), or, at the moment, listening to 20,000 leagues under the seas. I have fond memories of Journey to the Centre of the Earth, also by Jules Verne, from when I was about nine, so I thought this might be worth a listen (i prefer reading, but audio books are a wee bit lighter). My advice to any prospective readers - don't bother. It's more or less just a recital of species of coral, fish, and various underwater flora, including Latin order, genus, family, or a listing of the latitude and longitude of various islands. It's also read by a selection of people who volunteer to record for a free audio book site, which is a laudable endevour, but seems to attract people with either a robotic, mogadon taking voice, or people who have considerable difficulty even reading the words out properly.
Enough sidetracking. Woke up, went through customs rapidly. A no-mans land of 15km awaited, which was bleak, but with a slightly more dramatic, rolling-on forever esque tone to it. There were pink flamingos standing around in the salty lakes, guanacos and cows grazing. Went through Chilean customs. Another stamp in the passport. Set off across the wide expanse of northern Tierra del Fuego. My map shows a paved road for the next 140km, but such a construction was not in evidence. Thankfully, it was a decent ripio, with only small corrugated sections, and thus reasonably easy to cycle on. Even driving rain and hail didn't dampen my spirits, and I made a good 50km until I came upon a hut in the middle of nowhere. I should emphasise that in this time I passed about 4 estancias (ranches), and for the first hour and half passed no traffic whatsoever. Flat lands either side, no vegetation above knee height, occasional sheep. I was ready to drive on, but the hut seemed a good omen. Built for cyclists, or certainly used by them, it had cartoons and time/distance logs on the wall ofwritten by the people who had passed through. Most of them were doing a similarly epic trip - loads of Alaska to Tierra del Fuegos, a few Santiago or BA to Ushuaias. No door, the beds were steel frames, and the stove was a) trashed and b) there was no fuel for 60 or 70km in either direction. But hell, any port in a storm, and this was more than welcome.
The hut and its walls
Oh, and there was porn on the floor. Not a stash, or a magazine. Just a single torn out black and white picture of those parts of a woman that a gentleman like myself cannot mention in mixed company. Wouldn't want my wife or serving folk to hear such speech. I just mention it because of the prevailance in the UK of the species bongobush. It is a well known fact that under any hedgerow, in a lay-by or derelict building, you will invariably find torn out (always torn out, and scattered to the winds, the bongobush only lays its eggs singularly) pages from the Sunday Sport, or even from racier, more artistic publications. Just wanted to let people know that even in a land the other side of the globe, with different customs and sensibilities, the bongobush still prevails. Unless it's some Viz reading cyclist planting them in various locations and taking photos. And there can't be that many of us that fit that description.
Pornography bottom right. I'm not making this blog 18+ for that. If it scars you for life, tough.
Awoke the next day at 6am, intentionally. Was a bright and sunny day, although the sound of the wind whistling through the fence was an unwelcome threnody for the night (okay, i'm actually trying for the 'most pretentious word use' here). Had some porridge, and then some salty pasta and sardines. Water running low. Then set off. The wind leapt to greet me, and I probably struggled on for ten km. I was pretty much alone on the road, but was fighting a constant battle to stay moving both forwards and in the right direction. I'd be leaning into the wind, always ready to steer into the wind as it gusted and was going forwards at a walking pace. A quick walking pace maybe, but not when you count the rests that were necessary. But the most irritating thing, and when I say irritating I mean flashes of dark angry light in the mind, shouting at the sky, yelling anglo-saxon expletives into the heart of the tempest, pulling the handlebars up in such a rage that my heavily laden front wheel would buck into the air like a BMX.....the most irritating thing was being driven off the road into the deep gravel by the wind. I must have looked a pretty crazy sight, balaclava, hat and sunglasses on, waterproof to protect me from the chill, screaming blue murder at the uncaring atmosphere. I made less and less progress, resting more and more, in the lee of a hill, or a rock, as it became apparent that however hard I struggled, I was barely going to get any distance that day.
So, when a retired German couple from Munich pulled up into a motorhome, and asked if I was Ok and did I want a lift to Porvenir, I took them up on it. The shame blossoms again writing this, and if I had really needed to I could have got water from some stream/ditch (the words are pretty interchangable at this time of year up on the plains), or, more sensibly, a nearby Estancia, but hell, this was someway from being fun, or even a fair challenge. Goddam wind. So, I rode with these guys for the 100km until Porvenir, after about 40km the landscape changed into a hilly place with canyons and arryos, it seemed considerably less windy and more hospitable, but hell, I'd taken the easy way out, and I might as well just ride all the way to Porvenir, where there awaited vast, steaming piles of empenadas, chocolate and juices. But never again. Never, for the remainder of this trip am I going to take a lift. I've got to win back my lost honour - films and books have taught me there will be a hard quest ahead, fraught with peril, but it may be possible in the end.
Spent a night in Porvenir, colourful tin roofs aplenty, then took the ferry to Punto Arenas, where I spent four days in a beautifully restful hostel, El Fin de Mundo. I forgot to actually take any pictures, but great, big, single beds with luxurious duvets (had my dorm to myself all but one night), a conservatory area with a massive pool table and murals everywhere, and a tv room where the owner and his friends were constantly playing classic rock. And an effectively all-you-can-eat breakfast with cereal, bread, twenty different condiments, meat, fruit, juice, coffee. Ahhhhhhhh yes.
Didn't really do a great deal, apart from quite a bit of writing, and read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (not nearly as good as Cryptonomicon, which is not a big slight, as I love that book, but still worth picking up).
Of course, I hadn't come this far to sit around reading and listening to classic rock. I've probably done enough of both to last me a lifetime, and will probably have another couple of lifetimes worth under my belt by the time I ascend to Valhalla. Now was the time to leave.
So, I set off on Friday 10th December, and this was the most joyous day of cycling by a long shot. Started off workmanlike, went through a freakish 5km strech where the heavens had obviously just emptied snow and hail several inches deep onto the road and surrounding fields....then just stopped at some invisible border. But after this conditions were perfect. The sun shone! The wind was slight, and was even at my back for one unbelivable stretch! The road was smooth, and went through hills and plains, next to lakes, and mountains came distantly into view by the end of the day. So, this day probably cycled about 165km in about seven hours, then slept in another roadside hut-cum-bus-shelter. This isn't the transient/drifter like scenario it would be in Britain; there are huts opposite every Estancia so residents can wait for buses or hitch, but this is still a sparsely inhabited land, and most of the huts won't see anyone for days or weeks. Besides, unfurling the tent, sleeping bag, mat, bags always leads to inertia in the morning as I lounge around, and takes time to securely fasten everything to the bike again.
The next day, the wind picked up again, and after I had travelled 50km I was a tantalising 35km from Puerto Natales. A ridiculously small distance.....but not cycling into a near hurricane. Seriously. It was pretty damn close anyhow, so I camped behind a ridge, and slept as best I could whilst my tent whipped around me.
The view on the second day out....mountains approaching.....slowly,
The wind was hardly better the day after, but with a whole day in front of me I couldn't afford to lay up, so I inched, metre by metre, towards the town. The spectacular mountain ridges became clearer on the horizon, wreathed with mist and cloud, the bay which Puerto Natales lies on sparkled beneath the late afternoon sun, and the ridge which streaks back from the town loomed, pointing at the journeys end. So I made it in around 8:45pm last night, possibly the happiest I have been so far this trip!
And I only wanted to make friends.....cows flee from my comradely embrace.
Me and Mr Beaver, making sure the message gets through
Approaching Puerto Natales, my glee can be seen shining off-screen,
What the hell.....more me, in current hostel. There's a woody vibe.
Lovely hostel, town full of cafes and wooden buildings housing tour companies. So, I'm going to lay up today, speak to my folks on Skype, hopefully watch Man Utd vs Arsenal, and eat a great deal of grilled meat and drink some wine. And then....Torres del Paine. Distinctive 'horned' mountains, around which there is spectacular trekking country, so plan on exercising some different muscles for a change. Can't wait!
Dave x
PS, Small things that are great -
Peach yoghurt with fruit cake crumbled into it.
Chocolate. However much I am carrying will get eaten. No restraint.
1.5lt of drinkable wine for £2
Kiwis are cheap as hell
So are avacados
Guanacos hoppolling around the forests (yeah. don't bother. it's not a word.)
Monday, 6 December 2010
Ushuaia to Punto Arenas
Hello! Well, things are underway. But, not quite in the rapid, eating up kilometres like they were chocolate way in which I naively hoped.
Firstly, I rigged the bike up, attached my saddlebags, rucksac, jerry-rigged handlebar bag, said farewell to the friendly folk in the Ushuaia hostel, and left. The wind had been picking up for half an hour, but I thought the rattling, whistling and whooshing must just be sound effects, a bit of atmosphere to create the right 'end of the world' feel for the start of the journey. Left the hostel, went twenty metres down the road to the junction, stopped to wait for a gap in the traffic. Almost got blown over whilst waiting. Checking out the meteorological stats later, the wind was apparently 70km/h, with 100km/h gusts. I decided to wait for the next day. Later experience would prove that I had probably erred on the side of caution, as later events showed this to be a minor squall.
Feeling chargin, and a sense of shame at being so easily defeated, I decided at around 5:30pm to climb the Martial glacier just north of Ushuaia, by which time the wind had died down somewhat (by del Fuego standards anyhow). Enjoying some bracing hail on the way to the foot of the mountain, I then took a path through some beautiful forest towards the glacier, before becoming convinced that I had in fact taken a circular route, and not the summit path as I had hoped. Some ducking and diving work through the forest followed, then a successful effort at fording a small river, and I swiftly hiked up the mountain; time was getting on, and although it stays light until 10:30pm-ish, I didn't really want to be stuck up an icy mountain in the dark.
The Martial glacier is not really a glacier in the stereotypical sense of the word, it is just a large patch of ever present snow at the top of the mountain, which, at around 1200m, is pretty damn small by the Andean standards, of which it forms just about the last outcrop. Still, it appears a lot higher than it is by the conditions that prevail up there, basically by dint of the whipping gales throwing powder into the air, with the microclimate ensuring a constant stream of snowdevils whirling and eddying around the upper reaches of the glacier. This explains my general get-up in the pictures below - it was certainly cold and windy enough to numb any exposed skin in no time at all.
Looking up at the Martial Glacier
Attempting, and failing, to capture the snow eddies
Looking down towards Ushuaia and the Beagle Strait
Me, knew the balaclava was a good purchase
After sledging down from the top on my arse (intentionally, I'm not quite that much of an unco!)
Anyway, the next day I set off for real. Took it relatively easy the first day, and probably only cycled about 80km, not helped by the fact I set off at 2pm after some red wine fueled fun the night before. This, and the fact that I had to climb and descend over the two corderillas that dominate the bottom of Tierra del Fuego, meant I felt reasonably happy at calling it a day. Unfortunately, once I had come down from the spectacular mountains, there was nowhere particularly inspiring to spend the night, so I ended up tucking my tent into a little alleyway into an inpenetrable scrub forest. The problem with wild camping here is that I'm not aware of the unwritten rules that prevail in this part of the world. Invariably, in every part of TdF, you will be cycling along, flanked on either side by never-ending fences 10 metres back from the road. Camping in this 10 metre buffer zone is obviously okay, but did Napoleon leave his undefended baggage train on the main Austerlitz to Vienna road? I haven't the foggiest, frankly, but as a comparable military strategist, I suspect not. So, I chose to camp behind the fence, in a postion where my well-honed senses would be able to detect the tell-tale snap of a branch as an interloper closed on my position. Accordingly, I was plagued by dreams of off-road motorcyclists hunting my tent, which segued into a bizarre mixture of a Streetcar Named Desire and an imaginary 1950s Argentinian gangster movie as my sleeping mind did some calisthenics. Despite this,
I awoke refreshed.
Disturbing glimpse into my unconscious mind nonwithstanding, I offer some pictures of the Corderillas,
Actually, they're all pretty much either between the ranges, or after, but a suitably bleak theme is evident
Not really an attempt to get political, more an attempt to look piratical. One which I fail with flying, Jolly Roger-style colours. Taking one timed photo is enough, so this'll have to do.
Top of Garibaldi pass. Don't know if it's named after the biscuit/Italian general.
Towards Tolhuin
After 40-50km of beautiful cycling the next day, I came to Tolhuin. Water and caffeine levels were low, and the Panaderia del Union in Tolhuin is apparently an unmissable treat in these circumstances. Tolhuin is a collection of loggers shacks, but the aforementioned bakery serves as a central hub for people from miles around; the area for which Tolhuin is the central village probably has a radius of 100km. It has a great selection of empenadas, a selection of cakes and chocolates which would not be out of place on Upper St, and an aviary with parrots, toucans and parrakeets blaring their song out to allcomers. After Tolhuin, I tried to get some distance towards Rio Grande in the remaining daylight hours, and it did indeed start to feel like the beginning of an epic journey. The wind was enough to make cycling difficult, but not impossibly so. More importantly, the landscape was like nothing I've ever cycled through before. The mountains were grand, but in size and scope not too dissimilar to Scotland. After Tolhuin though, the grasslands undulate for tens of miles in every direction. Not in a flat, uninspiring fashion - that was to come - but with endless rivers meandering through the flat plains, hills rising here and there, and forests of dwarven trees bedecked with old mans beard keeping company with the road. In a way it reminds me of the Teletubbies. The land looks similar in places, rising and falling in such vast swathes that everything appears pristine and almost featureless; the only marks on the land at all are shadows and light cast by the sky on the undulating terrain. Depending on your personal bent, you could say it almost looks like the world before most flora and all fauna was created (I'm thinking the Magician's Apprentice by CS Lewis, before the creation of things), or like a gaming
RPG, where the topography and physics engine has been established, but no detail has been added.
I'm aware I'm probably getting the gaming/programming terminology wrong, but hell, that's how it struck me.
Anyhow, camped in a magical forest type arena, photos below. Saw loads of Guanacos stamping their feet and running from me, and a few red-headed woodpeckers flashing across the green woods, then went back to my tent for my camera. Needless to say, such opportunities did not repeat themselves. Also met a very friendly chap and his family from Rio Grande who were having a camp fire and playing football, who told me which side of the road/fence to camp on. Apparently the left (heading north) is okay, but not the right. He also invited me to stay at his place when I was passing through Rio Grande, but I respectfully declined, thinking the next day I would be well north of the city by nightfall. I was wrong, and will go into this, probably, if this blog is anything to go by, at length, but for now I think it's time to stop babbling.
Okay, just to confirm, I'm not in Rio Grande now. I'm not even in Argentina. I'm in Punto Arenas, in Chile. But my travails across the featureless plains of northern TdF are gonna have to wait until next post. I plan to stay for two days when I get to Puerto Natales, 300km north of here, and will update everything then. But yeah, the events in this blog happened a week ago. I don't really go for structured, well thought out blog posts. I make notes in my book when things happen, and then usually, after days rough camping, I get into a hostel, have a few glasses of wine whilst writing, and just write what comes to mind, totally ignoring my notebook. I also mean to detail what I'm carrying at some point, probably in the next post, as this might cast some light on why it is so goddamn hard to cycle with the wind. Basically, with bike and luggage I'm probably carrying getting on for 45 -50kg, possibly more when at full water/food levels. Will take photos at some point of fully loaded bike, but suffice to say, it's quite different from cycling with no luggage, and lifting it over fences/up stairs is a reasonable feat, even for someone of my herculean physique (ha!).
Until later, x
Oh, actually, few more photosof dwarf forest camping ground.
Southern Atlantic in distance!
Yeah? Yeah. Yeah! Cheers for hat P, still going strong after twelve or so years! It's seen so many staunch comrades come and go, but it never gets lost.
Yeah, formatting issues with text and pictures. May sort out in future. Yeah right.
Wednesday, 24 November 2010
I'm serial about this. I'm SUPER serial.
Well, i'm here in Ushuaia. The southernmost city in the world, with the
possible exception of a Chilean burg over the Beagle Straits called Puerto
Williams, which I presume is squeezed out as its population is a paltry 1500.
This does seem a trifle unfair and arbitary, but i guess it stops a family of
hermits (a possible non-sequiter) setting up an inbred shanty town in the South
Georgia Islands and stealing the tourism limelight from Ushuaia.
Ah, looking again, it seems Puerto Williams is a naval base, which seems a good
reason to discount it; Ushuaia is the furthest south people have really chosen
to live, without the threat of desertion charges hanging over their heads.
And, although the amount of signs bragging about the distance to Alaska, Buenos
Aires and Tokyo is large, and the main street is a flurry of North Face
stockists and open ovens with splayed (spatchcocked?) chickens roasting
happily, the city isn't just centred on tourism like a lot of Alpine towns.
There is a quarry on the way to the national park, some kind of industrial shiz
happens here, and there is some kind of container ship action happening in the
bay. Also a couple of, quite honestly, knackered looking military vessels are
sitting around in the bay, one of them listing at what, even to my land-lubbery mind,
appears an unadvisable angle.
Not that I'm knocking the Argentinian spirit for the reclaimation of the Falklands/Malvinas, which appears pretty strong, at least amongst the graffiti-spraying population, who may or may not
be the ones in control of military policy; i don't know how these social
divides work over here. Admittedly, and we're on sketchy ground here, my
limited Spanish interprets most of this sentiment as less 'We'll wade through
inglese blood to seize what is ours' and more 'They will return to us in a
triumphant but nice manner'. Afraid I haven't covered much, or indeed any of
this in my documentation of pretty graffiti i have seen - not sure why this has
become such a big cause of me getting my camera out, but it has.
Also, when my presence in town reached the populace, there were, as you would
expect, spontaneous street demonstrations. Of joy, I think.
Not actually sure what the real reason was. Tried to find out, but my spanish
wasn't up to the task. Friendly chaps though. So a shout out to whatever the
cause is! I'm assuming it's not a violent syndicatist-fascist movement.
Ushuaia is, despite this good-natured bit of unrest (they had their own police
siren going off in the building behind them, the actual police were conspicuous
by their absence), is not a bad place at all. Some of the buildings, like the
ultra-modern airport terminal, and a lot of the hotels, have a kind of
scandinavian look to them, but there are also a lot of almost shanty style
corrugated iron and haphazard breeze block constructions. Basically, indulging
my statistcal geek for a minute, most of Patagonia has GDP per capita of around
$30,000 per year, Buenos Aires is around $13,000/year, and the most northerly
provinces have a GDP of around $3,000/year. So, Ushuaia has grown
substantially in recent years, with a lot of different barrios growing up.
Even so, when I use the phrase 'shanty town' in connection with Ushuaia, it is
not even remotely similar to the closely packed barrios in certain parts of
Buenos Aires; these are larger constructions on the whole, with a hell of a lot
more space around them, merely that the materials and styles have something
similar to them.
Anyways, enough socio-economic banter for one blog post. I went to the Tierra
del Fuego National Park on Sunday. I went on bike. ON BIKE! The bike seemed
to have survived its various sojourns in aircraft holds pretty well, and I soon
had it assembled. Due to my front rack (used for carrying saddlebags) not
turning up before I left the UK, and indeed not turning up at all, even now, I
had decided to get one in Buenos Aires. I left this somewhat late in my stay,
and it swiftly became clear that I couldn't find one. This is not a crucial
point, as i would mostly be using this for extra food and miscellaneous
storage, and would probably encourage me to pick up various unnecessary
paraphanaelia en route. So, pared down, I set off on Sunday. The road to the
NP (national park, i'm not typing it out each time) swiftly turned into a
non-tarmaced road; a few corrugated sections, but mostly hard packed earth,
with dust eddying romantically into the air with passing cars and minibuses.
This may be, as the area points out, the 'Fin del Mundo', but it's not an
unsubscribed or unpopular idea, and people are eager to get a piece of it. As
indeed, am I.
In the usual Ushuaian way, the day had started off (for me at least, as I'd
celebrated with a few drinks the night before) at 10am, overcast, with a flurry
of snow, and 25mph gusts of wind. By the time I was an hour down the road, it
was bright sunshine, although still with the ever-present gusts of wind. It
was only 20-25km to the end of Argentinian Route 3 in Lapataia (more a
geographical idea than a place - apart from a police building, there is nothing
there), although, unlike a British motorway, it ends in a dusty car park with a
few wooden bollards. And there you see this resplendent spectacle before you,
I then cycled onto the wooden boardwalk so I could see the bay,
It was a pretty busy location, and one that did not lend itself to shouting
vengance at the all-swallowing ocean, or to shaking my fist and cursing
Neptune, as I may well have upset several of the children posing for photos.
The opportunity has not gone however, for when I set off in earnest tomorrow, I
plan to cycle down past East Harberton and camp out there, at the end of the
Beagle Straits, where the southern reaches of the Atlantic will be visible, and
I can indulge in such strange and unplaceable fantasies.
All the same, the TdF NP was a good place. Camped out for the first time on
the trip, made a pretty damn good fire, ate a lot of salami, and made what may
become my signature dish; spaghetti, tuna, and a stock cube. I enclose photos
below.
Wild horseeeessss, couldn't draaage me awaaaay......
(authors note, horses may not be as wild as pictured. In fact, almost certainly not wild.)
Ah, the one problem. Bit of a wobble on the rear cassette on my bike.
Tightening the cassette has worked to a point, but still more of a wobble than
I would like. I'm no master mechanic, which some might say is a major drawback
on a trip like this, but wobbles on the rear cassette (particularly when the
freewheeel is engaged) do happen, and hopefully this won't be a big problem.
If it is, I'll have to get to a town, and order a new cassette/freewheel/hub as
the situation warrants, but hey, towns are not too far apart, and this
hopefully will not become an issue.
Anyway, the plan for the next week is to go from Ushuaia > East Harberton > Rio
Grande > San Sebastian > Chilean border > Porvenir > ferry to Punta Arenas >
Puerto Natales. This will be aroundabout 770km, but I'm not planning to rush
it, and will probably take a day half way through, particularly if I find some
incredible spot for hiking or just chilling out around the tent, so this could
well extend to eight or nine days cycle, depending on the state of the roads.
I also meant to spend some time talking about the Museo Fin del Mundo, which
has some fascinating photos of the Yaghans tribe, who were the indigenous tribe
in the south of Tierra del Fuego when the Europeans arrived here. The usual
pattern of attempted missionary conversions and aggressive 'high population
density' diseases took its toll, and I believe there is now only one Yaghan
woman alive and still speaking the original language, It is worth pointing out
that although most of us in the UK abhor the 'imperialist' idea of missionaries
saving the savages from their sin (and I harbour no religous beliefs myself),
the missionaries were often the only Europeans who attempted to protect the
indigenous peoples from the rapaciousness of capitalism, which usually sought
either to exterminate the peoples, or to force them to work as indentured or
incredibly poorly paid workers.
The Yaghans are now famous mostly for the fires they lit, as these were seen
from ships navigating the Beagle Straits (thus the Land of Fire, Tierra del
Fuego), and the fact that they lived in these parts naked. Naked. It is damn
cold here in late spring, with the temperature generally aroundabout 10C in the
daytime, and 3-4C at night, and the ever present gusting wind chills you to the
bone. The winter is not as cold as you might expect, being more of a general
0C kind of deal, and not the ridiculously cold northern continental style
winter, but you can understand how hard it must have been to survive naked. To
be honest, I don't quite understand why they were naked - the museum shows
their bows and arrows, their kayaks, their fishing techniques, and a people in
possession of such technology surely had no technical reason not to use
sealskin/feathers to construct clothes. However, I have not researched this
properly, and will do so in future. Maybe this is just a noble savage myth.
Maybe they were only actually naked in ceremonies, not in everyday life.
Either way, there are some photos which are reminiscent of the Blair Witch
Project in their sepia tinted, low definition way, masked people deep in the
primeaval forest, acting out unknown rituals. There are also heroic photos
with bands of hunters arraigned in furs (because of European influence? Or are
these the northern tribes who wore furs? Should have done more research), and
my favourite one, people listening to a story.
Right, am reasonably full of wine right now, and I haven't checked any of this
for sense or grammar or any of that shit, so I'll call it a day now. Things
may get more philosophical or elegaic when I'm camping alone with time to think
and evolve some kind of 'style', but for now you're just left with this. Hope
this isn't too much self-indulgent bullshit, and at least I've left you with
some facts about GDP per capita. Take care, dave x
PS There are a fuck load of dogs in Ushuaia. A FUCK LOAD. Like 4 dogs per
person.
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