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Published: February 23rd 2006
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Amardillo
This animal scores highly in the list of unusual looking animals that I have seen. However for basic making the average sheep look like Stephen Hawkings. This Amardillo was extremely wiling to pose for me and I will be very surprised if it celebrates its next birthday. After leaving El Calafate I spent three very enjoyable days cycling around Lago Argentino and Lago Viedma whilst listening to the White Stripes to get ot El Chalten. A pleasing combination of beautiful lakes, jagged ice capped mountains and funky rock.
At the end of the first day I turned off the road and asked to camp in Estancia Irene. I was greeted by the extremely hospitable Juan Carlos. He not only offered me a room for the night but also gave me an extremely generous helping of cordero (chunks of lamb), with his own home made bread and a potato omlette that he had prepared earlier in the day and he also whipped out of the cupboard under his stove. After I had very gratefully devoured this we had about 15 minutes of basic Spanish conversation/sign language until my Spanish vocabularly but not my enthusiam ran out. Not wanting to end such a promising evening so prematurely I asked whether he would mind posing for me whilst I drew him. Ffor the last three weeks I had been sketching my feet and my left hand, so far I have resisted the temptation to draw full body self portraits in
Mount Fitz Roy
As you make your way towards El Chalten the view of Mount Fitz Roy becomes increasingly spectacular. case this causes problems at customs, there are also practical limitations imposed by the size of my tent. Juan Carlos seemed a little surprised but agreed and seemed to like the drawing so I gave it to him to keep. The following morning Juan Carlos gave me my first drink of matte (chopped up leaves served in a small cup and sucked with a metal straw. Drinking matte is a social ritual in Latin America with its own etiquette, when you finish your drink you hand it back and more hot water is poured into the same leaves and the other person takes a drink from the same cup). When I explained to Juan Carlos that I slept very well he confirmed that I had indeed slept well and I learnt the Spanish for snoring (roncar).
On the third day of cycling I arrived in El Chalten. Throughout the day the view of the spectacular Mount Fitzroy became more and more impressive and I kept hopping off my bike to take photos. In El Chalten I met up with Dan and Iain two other cycle tourists from the United States also heading north we set up camp and waited
Juan Carlos
Juan Carlos in his kitchen. He uses the oven to bake his own bread. for the next boats that could take to us across the border to Villa O'Higgins in Chile.
El Chalten is famous for climbing and hiking. I have to confess that I am scared of heights and red socks and so am not too keen on either of these activities. But I felt that I couldn´t really leave El Chalten without doing at least one walk. So spent a day walking up near to the base of Mount Fitz Roy. Ended up cowering under a rock with 200km an hour winds making it difficult to even stand up at some points. Lower down Dan, Iain and took shelter in a hut and got talking to a Swiss climber. He had come to climb Fitz Roy and was waiting for the right conditions to do the climb. If the weather wasn´t right he would spend all of his three weeks here waiting and then return to Switzerland. But he didn´t seem to mind this. Even if he did climb the mountain he would only stay at the summit for about 10 minutes. This struck me as slightly odd at first but the more I thought about it the more it made
sense. Although I didn´t agree with some of his views, i.e. a 30 hour climb up Mount Fitz Roy is less dangerous than a taxi ride across Buenos Aires, I was impressed by his attitude and approach. He was simply enjoying the process not the result. I expect that if I ever do get to Alaska I don´t think I will spend too much time in Prudhoe Bay. As a result of this conversation I have decided to tape over my odometer to stop me looking at how far I have gone, and how fast, and concentrate instead on the view not the distance travelled.
Anyway enough Zen philosophy, the border crossing to Villa O¨Higgins is logistically quite complicated. It is a bit like the start of the film Casablanca where the narrator descibes how to flee from Occupied Europe to the United States. It involves taking two different boats and a very challenging piece of singletrack (if you would like more information on how to do this crossing on bike please send me an email).
My fellow cyclists for the crossing Dan and Iain have just finished two years of service in the Peace Corps in Paraguay
Juan
I met Juan in El Chalten. He had just done a 1600km trip south down Route 40 in Argentina on his bike (and with juggling clubs). We swapped caps and he taught me how to walk "like an Argentinian man". He also taught me some quite vivid colloquial Spanish which I have not yet had the confidence to use. working on sustainable agriculture and beekeeping. They are currently cycling from Ushuaia in Argentina to Paraguay. They are doing this to raise money to buy some land in Paraguay for a national park (if you would like more information about their trip visit their website www.planet.py/sanrafael). Their Peace Corps work in Paraguay has prepared them well for the rigours of long-distance cycling. In a short time I have learnt much from them. They are excellent camp cooks, soaking lentils in water bottles, deftly chopping garlic on tupperware and arranging dishes to dry on handlebars. I was gently chastised for scraping their teflon cooking pots with my metal spoon. In contrast over the past three years I have acquired the numbers for 3 different Indian restaurants in Tooting on my mobile phone and am scared of blowing myself up and/or start a huge forest fire with the camp stove that I had been carrying, but not using). Iain and Dan are also extremely financially prudent. They will happily dive into a dense bush rather that pay to camp in a campsite. I am much more willing to enter into the market when it comes to monetary transactions and slope off to
pay for hot showers and sip lattes in hostels whilst they purge themselves in glacial rivers.
The Carterra Austral starts (or ends) in Villa O Higgins in Southern Chile. It is meant to be one of the greatest bicycle rides in the world. It also has the great advantage for cyclists of not being as windy as the road that runs parallel to it in Argentina, Route 40. It can however rain a lot. The first few days were very wet and the aesthetic appreciation of natural beauty was secondary to the more pragamatic appreciation of dry underwear. On a particularly wet day a lady in a small kiosk selling empandas (pasties) and bread aexplained that the rain was due to the fact that the mountains were not happy with the helicopters flying over them to scope out work for a proposed hydroelectric dam. It was a frustrating, a bit like looking at a picture postcard of a beautiful Victorian lady. We wanted to see more than just a dainty ankle. On the fourth day of cycling the Carterra Austral stoped being so coy and lifted her misty rain soaked petticoats to reveal her full natural beauty. Had a
Loo with a view
The standard of Argentinian campground toilets is not universally high. The campground at Lago del Desierto however offers both a stunning view of the glacier and the comfort of an alpine chalet style building. long exhauting and fantastic ride to Cochrane which ended with an amazing ride in the early evening past a completely still lake that had a perfect reflection of the mountain range that flanked it on the other side.
In addition to Iain and Dan am meeting a lot of cyclists from all over the world heading in both directions on the Carterra. News is passed on about good/bad places to stay, boat crossings etc. In the middle of nowhere you meet them. The other day I ran into Justin from the England who has been on the road for 3 and a half years now and has done about 60,000 miles. As he emerged from the forest he looked a bit like an elf-he was wearing all brown and was so tanned it was hard to see where the clothing stopped and he started. Whilst Ortlieb pannier bags seem to be the almost universal common denominator for cycle tourists other more national characteristics are beginning to emerge, for instance for some reason a lot of North Americans seem to advocate carrying a machete.
Anyway the next big stop is Coihaique, Chile about 300km away.
Hello to everyone
Iain and Dan cooking
Iain and Dan were extremely adept camp cooks. There signature dish is called "giso" consisting of rice, lentils, pasta, tuna or corned beef, onions, garlic and stock cubes provide additional seasoning. and thank you for all your emails.
I am trying to raise money for Medecins Sans Frontieres. If you would like to make a donation to MSF please visit my website for more information on how to do this (www.pushonnorth.com).
Push on.
Tim
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