Riding South America Solo

Take your time. Don’t rush. Stop for a minute and just breathe. Right now, I am safe. In five minutes you might not be but right now, you are safe. I’d never been so relieved for this giant mount of dirt-come-sandbank that I was currently using as makeshift refuge and in the dramatic fervor of the moment, I wondered foolishly if I could build myself a mud-brick house and live here forever. Who knew a pile of earth could provide such comfort from the roaring 90km wind gusts of a Patagonian Summer? Pride? Ego? Masochistic tendencies? The desire to make it to Ushuaia by Christmas Day was overwhelming but wasn’t my life and arriving with all of my limbs intact more important? Why the hell did I defy my instincts and leave the hotel knowing that I’d be ploughing into winds of Dorothy Gale sized proportions? I had no intention of filming Somewhere Over the Rainbow 2 out here, but I sure did wish that ‘I only had a brain’. I wiggled around on the Ladybug to see if it would be possible to flick out the side stand so that I could get off and try to shake my limbs back into submission. A couple of fitness gels would be useful to balance out my blood sugar levels. And I was 100% sure I’d punch a nun for a banana. I was running on pure adrenaline and even putting weight down on one foot to steady the bike was a challenge of Herculean proportions. Even if I could reach into the reservoir of my resilience and manage the strength to stand on two legs, I concluded quickly that it wasn’t gonna happen. This desirous mound of earth was shielding me from 90km wind gusts but it was still mightily blustery here and I couldn’t risk a drop and subsequent pick up here in No Man’s Land, on a turbulent stretch of dirt and land somewhere in between Cerro Sombrero in Chile and San Sebastian in Argentina, on the southernmost Island of Tierra del Fuego.

I’d defied my internal compass that morning and packed up the bike against my better judgement and ridden headfirst into the belly of the most perilous crosswinds I’d ever encountered in my life, because “I needed to spend Christmas Day at the END OF THE WORLD.” Idiot. What good was receiving an invisible trophy from my tempestuous ego if I was a smooshed pile of nerves, tangled limbs and complicated claims to my travel insurance supplier? And now I’d stopped, I didn’t want to move again.

Five minutes earlier, I watched a 70 year old weather-beaten Gaucho get blown off his horse whilst attempting to wrangle sheep. If I wasn’t so beaten and exhausted, I’d have found the energy to laugh at the visual of 80 or so fluffy clouds practically levitating off the ground. But I couldn’t laugh.
I needed to retain every drop of my energy, because I still had 80 kilometres to ride until the Argentine border plus another 75km from there to the Fin del Mundo Motorcycle Hostel. And riding 155km going 50k an hour takes a LONG TIME. I took a sip of water and attempted to locate some additional nerves of steel from my unsteady sips.

I’d never felt so far from my comfort zone. I’d never felt so close to my own mortality. I’d never felt so alive and yet so daringly close to ‘one bad lean away from death’. But this was precisely why I was here, to find out what I was made of. And boy was Lady Patagonia was showing me.

I’d left Valparaiso Chile for Argentina and the stunning high Andean pass ‘Paso Internacional Los Libertadores’ about a month earlier. After pledging to vibrant Valparaiso that I would return another time with a month to meander the artistic and grungy streets whilst I fine tuned my rapid-fire Chilean Spanish and took painting classes, I bid farewell to more-Europe-than-Latin-America Chile for now and re-entered the wild and spirited lands of Argentina. Summer was exploding into life and the snow dusted remnants of winter remained on the mountain tops whilst bees pollinated flowers and my grin out grinned the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. My German ‘on the road’ mother Gabi was planning to meet me along the route to Mendoza for a family reunion, and the loose plan was to spend a few weeks enjoying the perfect Mendoza, Neuquen and Chubut regions before I continued south towards Ushuaia and Gabi headed east to Buenos Aires.

Synchronistically, we met right at the border after enjoying the twisting switchback HEAVEN of the Los Caracoles and we weaved our way into the quaint town of Uspallata, riding open mouthed and wide eyed as we took in views beautiful enough to make hardened criminals bleary eyed.

In Mendoza, we drank an abundance of cheap delightful wine and found a reliable mechanic that was able to service my Ladybug, but also delivered some not-so-welcome news that whoever cough Augustin cough changed my bujía (spark plug) had done so incorrectly, which meant that my engine had been somewhat compromised. I stifled my disappointment and inhaled more lessons from the road. Always, always, always trust your gut. And if it’s not broke, don’t fix or tamper with it! We met up with Suraj from India who I’d travelled Chile with and the three of us enjoyed the temperate comfortable beauty of Mendoza for 4 days. The wretched 80 kilometres of ‘ripio’ (gravel) was looming ahead of us, so just north of the town of Malargue, we camped for a stunning night in a green and luscious municipal campsite that slugged us the whopping fee of $1 USD each for an enviable patch of well manicured foliage. We followed up our monetary glee with the most incredible ‘campfire asado’, which Gabi absolutely nailed. As I sat there chewing my 800g of exquisitely barbecued meat with a sensational $3 local wine, I ruminated on my journey thus far; the highs, the lows, the fails and the fist bumps. I smiled. Asado really does heal everything.

Gabi soon went from being my border buddy ‘mother’ to my ‘ripio’ sidekick and we took on the notorious 80km gravel section south of Mendoza towards Barrancas with a ‘can do’ attitude and a pile of sweets. Loose gravel, enormous rocks, very deep pebbles and my central nervous system taking beating after beating after beating. After about 3 hours, I realised that the loose deep gravel was really a metaphor for life and the more I ‘flowed’ with it and relinquished control, the easier it became. Wise rocks. It took us 9 hours to do 100km and I wondered if I’d taken a wrong turn and ended up back in Peru where I would often triple the travel time recommended by Google due to the steep Andean roads and endless roadworks that constantly slowed and halted my progress. As we approached the blessed line where the gravel ended and the asphalt began again, I lifted my arms into the air triumphantly and felt like Rocky Balboa—VICTORY WAS MINE. It might have been a pittance of a victory compared to the stuff Toby Price can tackle but for Lala ‘Asphalt is my Bestie’ Barlow, this was a huge achievement. We tumbled into our hostel room filthy and grinning like idiots. The next morning we met a gaggle of friendly Brazilians on a road trip from Rio including charming Taua; a very tall, endearingly enthusiastic, laughing videographer with very good English and mad a lust for life that was intoxicating to be around. A friendship formed instantly and we vowed to keep in touch and meet up somewhere along the road to Ushuaia. Ever met a person that was human sunshine? Enter Taua.

Gabi and I proceeded to spend a week in the warm embrace of the Rio Negro Province. San Martin de los Andes, Bariloche, Villa la Angostura, El Bolson, Epuyen, Esquel, Trevelin—swooooon! Now THIS was a holiday! The weather was perfect, the sunshine beamed across the tops of snow dusted mountains and we walked, hiked, biked and ate our way through some of the easiest days of our lives. It was unbridled bliss. I tearfully bid farewell to Gabi (who was heading west into Chile) and went and camped for two nights at Los Alerces National Park, followed up by two nights in the proclaimed ‘Hobbit House’ in Esquel where spiders danced in dainty webs above my head as I sipped never-ending cups of tea, watched episodes of Friends and waited until less anarchistic weather greeted me for the big push southward toward Ushuaia.

I knew the next few weeks would be challenging to say the least and the furthest thing from a holiday. It was going to be brutal. I was alone again and ready to meet the fabled ‘roaring Patagonian 40’s’ I’d been reading about for years. Cue the WINDY App becoming my new best friend.

I knew the holiday was over when I entered Gobernador Costa. Entered? Let’s be honest, I was BLOWN into Gobernador Costa on the rim of my flailing wheels. The meal of the trip saved my day and I dined in the finest local establishment from a shuffling old man who I nicknamed ‘Uncle Fester’, who had been tirelessly feeding locals and weary travellers for over 60 years. People! Take note. If for some bizarre reason you find yourself hungry in Gobernador Costa, go directly to ‘Parilla El Petiso’. Some tips: DO NOT pass Go, DO take cash only because I’m not entirely sure the word ‘Eftpos’ has ever been muttered there and for the love of Ricky Martin, eat everything in sight. Even my splodgy penciled eyebrows were salivating.

The next day, I packed up and headed the ‘easy on paper’ 230 kilometers to Rio Mayo. The weather turned halfway through the ride and this almighty turnip head forgot to get her waterproofs out of her lower pannier this morning. This resulted in a miserable ride with several casualties, including my ‘navigation phone’ getting a little too waterlogged because my spark plug was playing up and my motorcycle kept refusing to start. Hell. I lost a phone but gained two new friends from France, Fred and Jojo. After helping me pushstart my moto in the blithering rain on the side of the road, we shared several cabanas once we arrived in Rio Mayo, a delightful melanesia dinner and hours of good company and enlightening tales from the road.

The next few days passed in a haze of slightly less blow-dried early mornings whilst I tried out my new Patagonia tactic: trying to out-ride the wind (impossible) by riding from 7am – 2pm. Rain was forecast and harrowing winds were on the way in the proceeding days… so I made the call to take a detour to the east coast of Argentina instead of diving head and Ladybug first into the infamous ‘Maldito 73’ ripio road. I wasn’t keen to eat a kilogram of dirt and wobble my way through one of what iOverlander dubs ‘the shittiest road in South America that should be F**ing paved by now’* in rain and wind. In good conditions, it would be a nail-biter. In bad conditions, it was suicide.

I passed through Rio Gallegos and arrived in Cerro Sombrero on the island of Tierra Del Fuego on December 23rd. After spending a night out of the wind and in the company of two delightful Americans Scott and Joe, I went against all of my better judgements, loaded her Majesty the Bug and accelerated into the most ferocious crosswind of my life with 90k wind gusts jostling for my nipples. My lips were so chapped from the wind, they now resembled blistered submarines in dire need of some shade, some lip-phatic drainage and copious layers of petroleum jelly. I wailed as I placed every ounce of my 58 or so kilograms of human mass into the ferocity of each pelt from the invisible westerly violation. I cried tears. I dug deep. I prayed. I pep-talked myself within an inch of my life. Honest to God, I thought I was going to get blown off the road and die. But damn it, I made it and when I collapsed into the arms of Silvana from the Fin del Mundo Motorcyclists Hostel in Rio Grande at 3.00pm, I don’t ever recall being so emotionally, physically and spiritually drained. But I’d never felt more alive. Motorcycle travel!

The last days of 2023 passed in a whirlwind (pardon the pun) with the hostel becoming a refuge for 12 or so overland motorcyclists waiting out the 100k gusts that hung around until Boxing Day. It was a jolly nomad ‘orphan’ Christmas and gazing around the enormous dinner table at the beautiful folk from all over the world united by two wheels and a keen sense of adventure, I knew that I was exactly where I was supposed to be. Fred and Jojo even turned up, it’s a Christmas Miracle! The Ladybug and I arrived in Ushuaia on December 26th and I enjoyed several glorious days and nights in the company of Mr Human Sunshine himself, Taua from Brazil. We hiked, biked, laughed and saw in the New Year at the ‘End of the World’ in a gorgeous rustic cabana right on the Beagle Channel overlooking the wild and mystical winterlands of Antarctica.

When it snowed and I was hit face first by a sucker snowball to the mouth by Taua, I couldn’t help but smile in delight at the wonderment and daily adventure that had become ‘my life’. I’d made it to the end of the world. I’d met too many incredible people to count. I’d grown and expanded beyond comprehension and I still had eight months of doing more of this to go! I smiled and swallowed some icy fragments and reached down to collect some fresh ammunition whilst I prepared to launch a cannonball at Sir Sunshine.

I wonder if I could travel this way forever? Life on the road is an addiction that can never be satisfied, an unscratchable itch, an everlasting grin, an antidote to all that doesn’t make sense. I wonder.