2011: A Bike Odyssey

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A twenty two hour bus ride from Buenos Aires and five hundred miles from the nearest person who knows me ('no tienes amigos?' asks a puzzled waitress), I push down on the pedals of my hired bicycle to begin my 110 km journey through the Andes, passing by seven enormous lakes in the process. I do not own a bike in England; I have spent the last month inhaling steak. The first twenty kilometres is an uninterrupted ascent into the mountains, and after two of those my internal vocabulary has been reduced to 'wow' and 'oh no' in equal measure, a curious development that remains in place for the next two days. In glorious sunshine it feels as though I have these autumn coloured mountain valleys entirely to myself, and yet its not long until the 'oh no's begin to outnumber the 'wow's, and my delirious decision to take the trip begins to appear...delirious.
Overlooking a sparkling Lago Machonico I stop, gasping, frantically unwrapping salami and cheese sandwiches. After gorging I feel a moment of pure bliss approaching, until a buzzing alerts me to a wasp´s interest in the salami residue that remains around my lips. Attempting to remain calm, I perform a few casual flicks which have no effect whatsoever, and before I know it I´ve lost it, dancing around the viewpoint slapping my own face. People have got out of their cars to take pictures of Machonico and they´re now turning round to stare. The wasp flies into my bread bag, and placing the latter carefully on the ground I proceed to stamp all over my own food supply until I´m sure the wasp is dead. I´m almost certian that I let out an audible cry of victory as this took place. I look up to see a woman grinning, her camera pointed in my direction. And so, remounting my steed, I pedal off more exhausted than before, minus half a loaf of bread and an entire loaf of dignity.

For the next few hours a power struggle emerges between uphill periods of despair, when all I want is to be curled up with Adri watching South Park, and sudden downhill euphoria, which sees me rushing past vast expanses of water and snow-capped rock, shouting wildly for only horses to hear and knowing that Cartman will appear all the sweeter for having been forced to wait. My memory is like that of a goldfish at these times; I will myself into repressing the basic formula, now reversed, that what goes down must come back up. My sleeping spot is on the shore of Lago Falkner, and without a torch I´m forced to obey the cycles of day and night. As soon as darkness falls I shut myself up in my tent and decide to draw out the ridiculousness of my situation by acting out Bohemian Rhapsody as it blares through my headphones. I can´t remember an ending, and so either this frenzy lasted all night or I succumbed to exhaustion.


Next day. Rain. Heavy. Paved tarmac gives way to waterlogged dirt track, and my Adri/Cartman longings return and last uninterrupted for the whole day. Every car that passes gives me a thumbs up; there are cries of 'suerte amigo' and one woman even has the cheek to take photos of me in her rear view mirror. I would protest, but I´m moving too slowly to get near the car. Pushing up a hill in the rain I´m hit by a mini existential crisis. Why am I here doing this? Why does this seem familiar? Suddenly its too much, and at Lago Correntoso I pull over to contemplate these questions further. In the middle of a field next to the lake, a woman stands alone in a hut stirring steaming hot vats of jam amongst hundreds of geese. This fully confirms my suspicion that I´ve gone insane. She sells me a fanta and I nearly burst into tears of gratitude.

Back on the bike a moment of sheer beauty comes from nowhere. Looking to my left I see Lago Espejo, the Lake of Mirrors through a gap in the pine. Due to the bad weather the far end of the lake is shrouded in mist, and this already gargantuan body of water seems to stretch on for eternity, silver and restless amongst the clouds. Basically Lord of the Rings fans, this is the Grey Havens. I´m arrested by the scene, until a car pulls up and out jumps a man asking me to take his photo. He speaks good english, and somehow we start talking about my studies in England. To my horror he works in arts management, and so, implausibly, I find myself in the middle of the Andes, in the middle of a storm, in the middle of a conversation about my views on the relationship between art and economics. Pedalling away the bike feels like a getaway vehicle, and like the jam-making fanta-selling creature of the lake, I´m almost tempted to think that that quizmaster didn´t actually exist.

Inexplicably I see a sign marking Villa Longostura as ten km away. This can´t be true; it must be a trick. And yet my fear of failure has panicked me into a misjudgement of distance. Having been so worried about collapsing at the side of the road, I now find myself wheeling into Longostura at the end of the second day. If nothing else I am a neurotic, but occasionally this neurosis bears fruit. I still have to return my bike and tent - jumping ona bus its exactly the same road in reverse, and settling back in my seat in wasp-free bliss I smile at every bump in the road that is causing the couple in front of me so much discomfort. But the Odyssey´s not over yet: in San Martin every hostel is full for a holiday weekend, and as I search for a bed by reassembled bike falls apart. I leave you now with an image of myself, covered in mud and sweat, scrabbling around in the road with bike parts at one in the morning, as teenage girls abuse me at leisure, my spanish not being strong/insulting enough to permit me a response.

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