ANGLO FRENCH WAR

FERRY: SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 16
Our last dinner on board: sadly, we have entered a war zone. Music is the fuse. The Frenchman is incensed by the non-Japanese Brit student's opinion of the Blues. The Frenchman is totally ignorant of the student's opinion. The student is a typical Brit; ten years of school French and he remains monosyllabic. The Frenchman is typical in loathing the supremacy of the English language. He wishes me to translate his contempt for the Brit student's musical taste and knowledge. I have been translating for three days. The student of Japanese parentage and I are enjoying our own conversation. The Frenchman departs for bed in a huff. Too bad. He is a nice man, intelligent - though somewhat dogmatic. His wife left him a few years back. Not for another man. Perhaps his retirement drove her out. No longer a few evenings and weekends. The full Monte. Imagine, three hundred and sixty five days a year. Bernadette would show me the door...

I AM NOT A POLAR BEAR

cambridge students


CHILOE: SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 16
Cloud finally closes in and as we sail up the east coast of Chiloe island. We view the coast through a thin drizzle. We have no complaints; Chiloe suffers or enjoys an average of three hundred days of rain each year. The Belgian woman and Cambridge student of Japanese parents are determined seekers of marine mamals. The student reads the temperature from a large thermometre screwed to the bridge bulkhead: three degrees centigrade above freezing. Good. I thought that I might be sickening for something. Reluctant to desert, I crunch myself into a corner out of the breeze.

NO WHALES, ONLY A LONE SPHYNX

lone sphynx

FERRY PUERTO EDEN:
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 16
A third morning of brilliant sunshine. I share the bridge deck with two Cambridge University students and a charming Belgian woman. The Belgian scans the sea through binoculars. Both she and one of the students are indefatigable in their search for whales. The student´s parents are immigrants from Japan. They own a Japanese restaurant off Piccadilly on Half Moon Street. I have walked past the restaurant, glanced with longing through the window, accepted the financial realities that forbid my entrance.
The second student studies physics. He wants to study music.
Later I talk with a young couple from the US. The young man is a math student at Cambridge. He has a grant to study at Cal Tech over the summer. Math and physics have always fascinated me: that a mathematician or physicist can have an original thought, think where no one has ever thought before.
The math student should be writing a commentary on an equation. He doesn't understand the equation and doubts that he has the mind for original thought.
His girlfriend studies chemistry at Cal Tech. She has left behind important notes for her summer project. Both are deeply depressed. They cling to their open lap-tops as wrecked sailors cling to a life raft.

MONUMENT TO CUPIDITY

FJORDS AND CHANNELS: SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 15
A statue of the Virgin guards sailors navigating the narrows of English Channel. Currents swirl in from the open sea. A wrecked Greek sugar ship from the 1920s perches on a reef mid channel. The wreck is a monument to cupidity.
The Greek captain reported that the sugar melted into the sea.
Insurers asked whether the non-existent sacks had melted.
The captain had sold his cargo in Uruguay.

VALIANT WOMEN

FJORDS AND CHANNELS: SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 15
4 a.m. and the ferry lies off the one village in 1000 kilometres, the village after which the ferry is named: Puerto Eden. Fishing for King crab sustains a community of some one hundred people. Some are mestizo descendants of the original inhabitants. Those "Indians" also lived from the sea. Men built canoes and fished. Women dived naked for mollusks in water a few degrees above freezing. So physically tough and resilient, they died of despair and alcohol.
I wipe the condensation from my window and try to imagine the lives of these modern residents. Twenty or so street light are the only sign of habitation. Sailing north and south, the ferry passes twice a week.

BOOK NOW

FJORDS AND CANALS: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 14
Book a passage with Navimag now. Out of season would be best for the mature traveller, or the traveller with a distaste for crowds. I have travelled much of my life. The beauty of these fjords is staggering. As always in Patagonia, the clarity of light is extraordinary. Not a house nor single sign of man besmirches the forested shore. Snow caps tower above the forest. The sky is cloudless blue. The barest breeze faintly marks the sea. I look and look and look.
And talk during meals with a retired French scientist who has adopted me as his companion for the voyage.
He is insistent on the superiority of French culture and language (he speaks no other), yet carries four music DVDs of US jazz, Blues and the Doors which he has the Purser play over the DVU.

PRIVATE YACHT

FERRY PUERTO EDEN:

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 14
I am cruising the fjords and chanels of southern Chile on a private yacht. So it seems. We are twelve passengers on a ferry with accommodation and crew for 200. Vast meals of adequate quality are served at a cafeteria in the lounge/dinning room: breakfast at 8 a.m., lunch at 1.30 p.m., supper at 7.30 p.m. Cabins vary in price from economy-dormitory to upper-deck swank. Top berths run at US$690 in a two berth cabin. US$300 buys a dormitory berth. Meals are included. Oldies earn a 20% discount. A guide offers a commentary on geography, fauna and flora in Spanish and English. The ferry sales Friday morning. Arrival in Puerto Montt depends on weather, but sometime between midnight, Sunday, and noon on Monday.

ECSTATIC

NAVIMAG FERRY:

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 14
We sailed at 4 a.m. Dawn and we creep between islets, the channel a bare eighty metres wide. Each island is a Japanese garden of rock tufted with bonsai. The shore is as perfect in proportion and differs only in scale. Above tower the mountains. Rock and snow and ice glow in the early sun. The sea is silk smooth. Duck and moorhens momentarily crease perfect reflections.

FORTUNATE IN CHILE

cute tin cottage


PUERTO NATALES:
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 13
Puerto Natales exists for tourism and the ferry. Foreigners and outsiders own most of the businesses. Why? Because few locals have capital and banks charge 20% on a business loan or mortgage - extortinate in a stable economy with low inflation.
Casa Cecilia is a way station on the tourist route. The owners (Werner is Swiss, Cecilia Chilean) are helpful beyond the call of duty. Mattresses are plump, water is hot and Werner´s bread baked for breakfast is delicious. How much? US$20 for a single. Two bathrooms are a hop away. Last night I ate good fillet of fish a block off the main square at Esperanza. Add a half bottle of good red: US$$10.
Passengers board the ferry this evening at 8 p.m. A tourist with two good legs would spend the day touring the national park, gazing at volcanoes, frozen lakes, waterfalls. Unfortunately all the highlights are a good walk from the track.
I explore the town on crutches, photograph a couple of cute tin cottages and the church. I walk too far, eat a mediocre lunch in a restaurant packed with locals. Better is a sybaritic chocolate shop/cafe a block back from the waterfront: chocolate brownie served with alcoholic cream and excellent coffee. Better still is the welcome on board the ferry. Our guide for the voyage is a young woman. She shoulders my pack and leads me to a cabin with private bath opposite the lounge restaurant. The cabin is two grades up from that for which I paid! I have four births to myself and a large window. Water is piping hot in the shower. The lavatory flushes.
We sail at dawn.
Time for early bed.

EXHAUSTED TOAD

PUERTO NATALES: THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 13
My apologies, readers. I have over walked and am on my last leg. I will BLOG properly from Puerto Octay. Where? At the head of a vast lake north of Puerto Montt.
I board the ferry tonight here in Puerto Natales and disembark at Puerto Montt on Monday morning. A bus takes me to Puerto Octay where I will rest out in the country for a couple of days and gaze at snow-capped volcanoes.
And, yes, I will bring this BLOG up to date with tales of fjords and ice caps, delicious fish, good wine and chocolate brownies doused in brandy cream. And I will post photographs, including one of my naked ankle which right now is as fat as an old elephant´s trunk. Yuk!
I would be in a worse state but for an excellent mattress at Hostal Casa Cecilia.

WIND CHILL

north coast of Beagle Channel
trees permanently bent

USHUAIA: MONDAY, JULY 30
The bike is ready. Pablo has fitted new tires more suitable to snow and dirt roads. He produces a wind speed/temperature conversion table. Add 50 kph to a temperature of –2 and I would be riding at –26. Pablo will call a friend for a quote for transporting me and the bike to Porventur. A ferry runs from Porventur to the Chilean mainland where I can load the bike on a truck north to Puerto Natales.

FEAR OF A COLD CLIMATE

The manuscript of OLD TOAD ON A BIKE sits on Clare Christian’s desk at The Friday Project. I delivered it by hand last Thursday. For the past few nights I have been obsessing over what I left out or forgot to include. In writing fiction, protagonists discipline the content. Writing travel, the writer is the protagonist. I need to be more disciplined. Hopefully I will do better with the second volume.

I fly out of the UK to Buenos Aires on the 19^th.

Have I packed? No.

Am I ready? No.

How do I feel at the prospect of traveling alone from Ushuaia to upstate New York? Scared.

Mostly I am scared of falling ill. Health Insurance doesn’t cover bikers in their 70s.

A fatal accident should be reasonably cheap and convenient for my wife, Bernadette. I carry a Montecristo cigar box in which to mail my ashes home and the eastern section of the cemetery at the Catholic Church in Hanley Swan, Worcestershire, is family property.

As to midwinter in Tierra del Fuego, I will probably put the bike on a truck or pickup to Puerto Natales in Chile from where the ferry sails to Puerto Montt.

Essential, is to check the heater in the cab!

And pick a mature driver, a survivor...