HAMISH

I have offended Hamish. He is a Border terrier aged 18 months. I posted his photograph yet ignored his existence when writing of my family.

HAVENS

Reintegrating after a long solo journey (in this case, six months) takes a while. Journeys have direction and imperative: Get up, get dressed, get on the bike. Each day brings new people and fresh interactions. The countryside changes as does the climate.

Now I am static.

I am back home in England. We - my wife, Bernadette, Jed (17), and Josh (20) - live in Herefordshire at the foot of the Malvern Hills. Jed is a freshman at junior college. Josh is a freshman at Leeds University – Spanish and International Relations.

Our home, a 300 year-old cottage, lies down a narrow lane. The cottage is set in a large garden. Roses, clematis and ivy compete for wall space The lawns need mowing (right now, the ground is too wet). A gate opens onto the village cricket field. A cedar tree shades that corner of the garden. A line of oak trees divides the cricket field from surrounding farmland.

Idyllic?

Yes - though my judgment is prejudiced.

And I have been lulled into inaction.

The great American essayist, James Baldwin, wrote: Havens are high-priced. The price a haven dweller must pay is in deluding himself that havens in fact exist.

FREEDOM LOST

OCTOBER 24

I have journeyed for six months. Traveling by motorbike freed me from other people’s schedules. I decided my own route and my own timetable. I found agreeable hotels at each halt, rose and went to bed at the hour of my choosing, ate when and where and what I wished…an utterly self-centered existence.

Store the Honda in Ushuaia, farewell to freedom. I must suffer the sadistic clutches of Aerlineas Argentina and Air Madrid.

First I have five days in Buenos Aires. I have a reservation at the Grand Hotel Espana off Avenida de Mayo (80 Tacuari). I was due to arrive in the early evening. I will now arrive closer to 11 p.m. I call from Rio Grande and beg the manager to hold my room.

THE USSR IS ALIVE AND FLOURISHING

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 22

Fly to or from Argentine Patagonia and you fly Aerolineas Argentina. Fares have doubled over the past six months. Foreigners pay a premium. There are fewer flights. Tourism has taken a hit. I am booked on a 3.30 flight to Buenas Aires. My Japanese roommate has been to the airport. All flights from Ushuaia are cancelled. A transfer coach leaves for Rio Grande airport at 2.30. My roommate’s ticket has been stamped. We grab a cab. The young check-in clerk wears a two-day beard and arrogance familiar from the USSR. Ushuaia is closed. The transfer coaches are full. Come back tomorrow.

I find a young woman employee (I am better with women). I act panicked and physically feeble. I am traveling with a Japanese – a male nurse. He came earlier to confirm our flights. He left my ticket at the hotel. His seat on the coach and the flight from Rio Grande are confirmed. What am I to do?

The woman disappears to a back office with my ticket. I wait thirty minutes. Meanwhile I listen to the Soviet apartachic enjoy himself. The next flight? How would he know? Perhaps tomorrow. Perhaps the next day. So he dismisses families desperate to get home to BA.

The woman returns. I am confirmed on the coach and a flight from Rio Grande to BA.

Two hours and thirty minutes to Rio Grande: the airport terminal is deserted; all representatives of Aerolineas Argentina are out to lunch. Rain squalls flee across the runway. We passengers wait forlorn and bewildered. The elderly sit on steps leading to a closed cafeteria. Mothers feed babies, placate toddlers, screech at teenagers. An hour passes. Tempers rise. Finally three check-in clerks appear. We queue while they chat and talk on the telephone and shift papers from one side of a desk to the other. I am first to crack. I call through the open door to the glass fronted office: “It would be good manners to tells us what is happening - or that you don’t know what is happening.”

Even as I speak, I fear that my fellow passengers will judge me one more arrogant Brit. My sally is greeted with applause.

RESURECTION

Hi to all you readers. Writing to you has become a habit. The first section of my journey is done. I plan returning to Ushuaia in February to ride north through those countries I missed or avoided on the road south: Chile, Uruguya, Paraguya, Brazil, Venezuela. Meanwhile let me relate my return to England and my search for sponsers. The first leg was unsponsered. Those few I approached judged me mad. I would fall off my perch before the first hill or be crushed by a truck or bus. Why associate themselves with certain failure?

MY JOURNEY IS DONE

ushuaia



SATURDAY, OCTOBER 20
My thanks to all you readers of this diary. You have been my companions over the past months. Now my journey is done. The Honda is in store. I would like to write that she is safe. However she has a friend at the warehouse. Her friend is a red 250 Honda Trail bike, very macho. I instructed the staff to keep an eye on the situation.
Once home, I must organise the journey north from Ushuaia to Duchess County, New York. I will blog progress. And I will be publishing on the web. Don't give up on me...

I AM A SCAVENGER OF PEOPLE

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 19
Luca’s birthday party is less rowdy than I had feared. The Cruz del Sur is on the backpacker gringo trail. I am the oldest guest by some forty years. I drink red wine and eat good steak and listen to the “kids”. Their journeys are different to mine. They seek nature. They trek through national parks and scale mountains and stand in awe at the foot of waterfalls. I am a scavenger of people. Cafes and restaurants and gas station cafeterias are my hunting field. I listen to prosaic tales of Latin American life and search for evidence of where our thoughts and preconceptions differ. I do the same at Luca's birthday party - listen.

END OF THE WORLD (PART ONE)

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 19
I share the bunkroom (four bunks) with an absent Japanese. I unload the bike and ride out of town to the Honda agency. The owner of the restaurant where I stopped for lunch has called to announce my impending arrival. The manager expects me. The owner of the agency also owns a warehouse and cold store. The bike is to be garaged there. I ride back to town and park on the waterfront. A passing tourist takes my picture.

LUCA'S BIRTDAY

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 19
I cross the final mountain pass to Ushuaia. A few specks of snow sting my cheeks. Snow turns to rain as I dip into town. Ahead lies the Beagle channel. I book into the Hostal Cruz del Sur. The owner, Luca, is Italian. He is a friend of Graciela’s. This is his birthday. He is thirty-three. Luca shows me to a bunkroom. Bunkrooms are unsuitable accomodation for an old man. How will I manage the climb to an upper bunk in the middle of the night? I cross the street to a hotel with rooms that have private baths. I look back over my shoulder and see Luca watching me. Argentine friends are preparing the barbecue on the sidewalk. Luca has invited me. I feel a traitor. I circle to a grocery and buy three bottles of red wine.

VICIOUS BEAVERS

final climb


FRIDAY, OCTOBER 19
Honda and I are on the final climb of our journey. Snow closes in. Sun-lit peaks shimmer. I stop for lunch at a restaurant on the right of the road. The owner quizzes me. Where do I go next? Where will I leave my bike? At the Honda agency. I, in turn, ask what happened to the treees. Beavers did the killing. The beavers were imports from Canada.

WAR ZONE

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 19
I have gained a day. I had a Friday yesterday. Now I discover that today is Friday. One day in six months is no big deal. I ride out of Rio Grande with regret. The Hotel Argentina has been good for me. Losing the bike documents dumped me into a deep depression. Graciela dug me out. Wind is standard in Patagonia. So is the cold. I ride across sheep country, cross rivers, pass by ponds, see the occasional farmhouse tucked into a clump of trees, wave to a Hereford bull (he ignores me).
The tailend of the Andes squeezes in from the west. Snowcaps march across the horizon. A forest of strange conifers trail moss. A huge lake opens to the right. I enter a World War One battlefield. It is a scene of grim devastation in which shattered trees are tumbled one on another. The few trunks that remain standing are stripped of branches; their peaks are shared and ragged and resemble the rotting teeth of some huge prehistoric animal. What happened?

GRACIELA

graciela, self and a
german fellow guest



FRIDAY, OCTOBER 19
I eat an excellent grill and stroll back passed the Liverpool Pub. The cops remain in occupation. The kitchen at the Hotel Argentina is welcoming. The coven and the students slope off to watch a couple of rented horror films on TV. Graciela and I sit and chat of this and that. Hotel Argentina is the best budget option in Rio Grande and Graciela gets the travellers. Most are good and easy. Some are weird; some have chemically recalibrated their brains; a few suffer from tangled wires in their heads. A young Frenchman stayed two months. He believed that Graciela was the Virgin Mary reincarnated. He was John the Baptist. He tended to stare at Graciela which put her off cooking. Imagine attempting a mayonnaise with someone gazing at you, someone with such expectations. Virginal is a tough demand when you have three grown kids and have suffered a recent divorce.
I sit there in the kitchen utterly content while Graciela tells me of her life. She is both extraordinarily youthful and very adult. She has humor and she reads books.
I have been biking five months and have enjoyed no proper (nor improper) female company apart from those few days in Nascar. I prefer a woman’s company. Men don’t do it for me. I miss Bernadette. I miss all four boys. I want to cuddle my grandson. And I want to visit with my daughter. Yeah, yeah, yeah...Get to bed, you old fool. It is 1.30 a.m. and you ride to Ushuaia in the morning. Thank you, Graciela.

JULIO'S IS THE SEMI SHACK NEXT DOOR

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 19
Rincon de Julio in Rio Grande is across the highway from the gas station. Julio is where the locals eat, those serious about food. Don’t try the smart restaurant attached to the expensive hotel. Julio’s is the semi shack next door. Be there before 9.30 or you won’t get a table. I had intended dropping by the Liverpool Pub for a pre-dinner drink. The pub was closed. An cop was on guard at the door and a couple of officers were out back searching the grass. Disappointing - I wanted to ask the owner whether he had named his pub in honour of the city or the football club, whether he had visited England - and how he felt about LOS MALVINAS SON ARGENTINAS at the next intersection. Dinner was good.

A WITCHES' COVEN

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 19
I fill with gas, take a right at The Liverpool Pub, an immediate left and a second right on the main avenue. Hotel Argentina is the low, single-floor tin building on the right. You can’t miss it. Graciela has worked it over with a bucket of yellow paint. Graciela is the owner. She has grown kids and has kept young. I find her reading Tarot cards at the kitchen table in company with three women friends. I ask if they are a coven or the Rio Grande chapter of the Feminist Union.
“Both,” says Graciela.
Two student-age young men join us at the table. They are expert in that student skill of both being there and not being there while taking up considerable space.
Graciela tells the one to take his cap off in the house so she can see his face and tells the other to get his feet of the chair.
I love her.
I remark on a monument to Argentine ownership of the Malvinas coexisting with The Liverpool Pub. One of the coven tells me that the cost of maintaining the Malvinas will be too great for Britain. In a matter of years the islands will be absorbed by Argentinia. She talks of the islands as if they are uninhabited. On TV the news shows a battle between two political factions. The factions are participating in the reinternment of Peron at San Vicente. Most are armed with staves and baseball bats. One man fires a pistol. Immagine a kelper (Falkland Islander) watching on TV. Would he or she wish to be part of this society?

LOS MALVINAS SON ARGENTINAS

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20
The gas gauge shows zero as I creep down the highway into Rio Grande. Visibility is down to fifty meters. My eyesight is lousy without spectacles. I can´t see to the far side of a traffic circle. I turn uphill. The engine cuts out as I park on the grass below a two-floor bourgeois house. A plump lady in green jumpers and plastic curls waters a flowerbed below the terrace. I call up to her, asking where the gas station is.
She sees an ancient greybeard astride a Honda – a greybeard in a helmet and wearing enough clothes to outfit a small tribe. The shape must perplex her. And how so much stuff can fit on such a mini-motorbike.
I ask again as to the whereabouts of the gas station.
She wonders what language I am speaking. I am too weird to be talking Spanish.
I try again: “Madam, please, where is the gas station?”
She recognises a mixture of panic and irritation – a real turn off. She shrugs and parks the small watering can on a ledge on the terrace and goes back indoors.
First I curse, then I kick the starter. The engine fires. I make a U turn and am confronted by a large notice: LOS MALVINAS SON ARGENTINAS
Three life size soldiers sculpted in khaki concrete or plastic or, possibly, bronze, threaten me with rifle and bayonet. They stand on a blue pattern that could be a representation of the islands. How would I know? I am not one of the very few English people familiar with the Malvinas. The Malvinas are an Argentine obsession.
The engine cuts out. I am blocking the road. A car stops. The driver asks whether I am lost.
I reply that I need gas.
He tells me to keep going up the highway. The gas station is on the left. If I miss the gas station in the fog, I will face the Liverpool Pub at the next intersection. The Liverpool Pub is too far.

BRAIN DEAD

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20
There is a lot of water on the approach to Rio Grande. Earley evening and mist smokes off the lakes and ponds and streams. Cold closes in. Visibility drops and my spectacles fog over. The fuel gauge is on reserve (this is a first in 22,000 Ks). There must have been a gas pump at the Automobile Club hostal. Why didn´t I stop? Had I stopped, I wouldn´t have lost the bike´s documents; I wouldn´t be cold and tired and depressed. I wouldn´t be scared of running out of gas and being stranded in the dark in the middle of nowhereland.
What has happened? Is it simply that I am near the end and want to get the journey over with – or has the cold and distance finally reached into my brain and flicked the off switch?

MAYBE A SHEEP WILL EAT THEM

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20
I am half an hour at the Argentine border. I fly home at the end of the month and will return in February to ride north. I intend storing the Honda with the Honda agent in Ushuaia. The customs official tells me not to worry. The bike is on a temporary import permit for six months. I should show the permit to the customs at the quay in Ushuaia. I am very tired and consider stopping the night at the Automobile Club’s hostal at the border. Doing so would leave me a long ride tomorrow into Ushuaia. I ride on.
What stopped me closing and fastening my bag properly? The bag that rests against my back and which holds all the bike’s papers and the duplicates. The bag that I have unfastened and unzipped four times today at four frontiers. Exhaustion?
Or did I relax with the journey almost finished?
I stop for a pee midway to San Julian and discover the document pocket gaping. I have lost the bike’s registration papers, the temporary import permit, the FootPrint guidebook and Argentine Automobile Club member’s guide.
I have been on the road the best part of six months and have been so careful.
Weeping won’t help.
Maybe a sheep will find and eat them.
Shit!
Shit!
Shit...!

DIRT

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20
Paperwork at the Chilean border takes half an hour. I have 180 Ks to cross before reaching the next frontier. The first 30 Ks are concrete; the rest is gravel. Gravel would have defeated me at the outset in Mexico. Now I am semi-expert and ride the dirt at 60 KPH. The knack is in staying relaxed and not tightening up when the wheels slither. Expert or not, dirt is exhausting. Oncoming trucks drag clouds of dust and cut visibility to zero. When overtaken, I pull off the road and wait. I have reached serious sheep country. Not all are fenced and I beware of lambs chasing across the road. At last the Chilean border, a quick formality, then 18 Ks to Argentina and a paved road.

FOUR BORDERS TO CROSS

tierra del fuego,
no big deal




FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20
I have four borders to cross: out of Argentina, into Chile; out of Chile, into Argentina. A young Argentine cop at the first border discusses the Malvinas war. He was a child, too young to remember much and is uncertain as to the background of the conflict. He is certain that war was unnecessary. England and Argentina are friends. Many English have settled in Argentina. “It was the politicians, the Generals,” he says.
I share my thoughts of the monument in San Julian: that there were no heroes, only sacrifices.
He agrees. “Those poor boys from up north sent down there without proper clothes.”

FERRY TO TIERRA DEL FUEGO

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20
There are no gas stations between Santa Cruz and the border. Fill up in town. Wind as usual. The landscape has more shape; scrub has given way to vast grass paddocks. The grass is thin and tufty. Sheep graze separately. Despite the cold, this is springtime. Lambing has begun. The young butt their mothers’ udders.
A road sign points left to Tierra del Fuego. An ostrich inspects me. He is one of eight. The other seven look the other way. I meet half-a-dozen trucks. The road dips. The channel lies ahead. A sailor is about to close the ferry ramp with a chain. He waves me on board. Drivers ask where I’ve come from. The driver of a new 4X4 pours me coffee from a flask. I go to the office to pay the ferry fare and am given free passage. I stand on the raised walkway and watch as we approach Tierra del Fuego. Rather than exhilaration, I feel relief. My journey is almost done.