DAKAR MOTO IS A BIKER'S HAVEN

bikers' haven


BUENOS AIRES:


I haven't slept too well. Today I must ride the bike back from Dakar Moto to the city centre. The autopista scares me. I can deal with the traffic ahead. I am scared of a truck or a car smashing into my rear. Rain threatens which doesn't help. I imagine slippery road surfaces and being unable to see clearly through fogged spectacles.
I take the metro and suburban train out to Florida. Eight of us eat a great assado in the workshop at Dakar Moto.The meat is cooked by Javier. Preparing the salad is more time consuming - women's work, no applause.
Is that nit picking?
Yes, I know...Get on with the story.
An Argentine rose grower drives us to the pizza parlor to watch the England-France rugby match. The rose grower helps run his family's nursery in Ecuador. He hopes that he remains a biker but carries a thick scent of inevitable marriage, four wheels, four kids, an expanding paunch and executive desk . That's the way it goes and he knows it.
The match is a breath-taker right to the final whistle.
Lots of hugs and I saddle up and head for the city.
The clouds have cleared. I ride in evening sunshine. Drivers on the motorway imagine that they are competing in a Selectric race.
They weave, overtake on the inside, flash lights, not as a warning, but to express ill temper.
I survive.
Little by little, my confidence returns. No implication here that I am comfortable in the saddle, merely nervous rather than scared witless.
The motorway becomes a fourteen lane avenue. The Gran Hotel Espana is one block off to the left. I park on the sidewalk, take the elevator up to my floor, lie on my bed and call Sandra and Javier. They are part of my Pantheon of Argentine saints, Argentinians who came to my aid when I was badly down and helped resurrect both me and the Baby Honda.
I am deeply grateful...Yes, and a little jealous of Sandra's new gleaming-black Honda 250 trail bike.
Though not really.
I am not a true biker.
The Baby Honda does me very well.
Only forty thousand kilometres separates us from our destination.

SAINT SIMON

BUENOS AIRES: THURSDAY, OCTOBER 11
I have enjoyed a celebratory lunch of tripe a la Madrilleno and a big glass of excellent red wine (US$3.80). The celebration? I have sorted all the photographs of last year's journey and sent those that are relevant to my publisher. I have completed the final editing on a piece for Elli Cobb at Lonely Planet for an antholgy to be published in August and I have emailed my column to 50 Connect. I expect to see a halo when looking in the mirror. I am sure the halo exists, maybe a little dimmed. Global Warming is a worry to the Creator. He is conserving Power.

DON'T AVOID BAD NEWS

BUENOS AIRES: THURSDAY, OCTOBER 11
I have been avoiding newspapers. Local politics is too depressing. Had I read the newspapers I would have known that this is a holiday weekend. I dropped by the Bouquebus ticket office yesterday for ferry passage tomorrow to Colonia in Uruguay. Sunday at 10 a.m. is the first available space! Frankly I am glad. I can ride to the City centre from Dakar Moto on Saturday evening: traffic should be minimal. Sunday, truck traffic will be nonexistent. Good! I don't like trucks, particularly the Argentine variety.

CITY OF THE TANGO

BUENOS AIRES: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 10

My leg is an excellent excuse for giving the tango a miss. Instead I take breakfast in the most famous of Tango cafes, CAFE TORTONI.

TENTATIVE

BUENOS AIRES: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 10
Dakar Motos is in the suburbs. Lunch hour in the rain is a good time for my first ride since the smash. I am nervous as I ride the baby Honda slowly down almost deserted suburban streets. I fear being ambushed. The commissioning editor at Lonely Planet emailed me this morning with some minor suggestions to a piece. The editing is a respectable excuse for delaying my departure. And my book publishers want thirty photographs - a further excuse. My cousins suggest that I stop at their estancia in Uruguay. They go for the weekend. The road is paved bar the last ten kilometres and little used. Maybe my confidence will return after a good run.

DIVIDED CITY

BUENOS AIRES: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 10
Bar a miracle, the present President's wife will be Argentina's next President. A weekend opinion poll reports the two greatest concerns of the voters are economic instability and corruption. The same poll reports that only 2.7% of voters will vote for the President's wife because they believe her to be honest. Meanwhile newspapers report that the equivalent of sixteen-hundred-million US dollars has been spent by the President without Parliamentary permission or oversight. Much of the funds are reputed (by the newspapers) to have been channeled through the Minister closest to the President, a Senor de Vido. I, a foreigner, have no reason to believe the reports are other than scurilous. People make jokes about Un nacion devido. Here are two photographs to accompany the pun.

READYING MYSELF FOR DEPARTURE

dinner & Carmensita being considerate of an old man in his cups

BUENOS AIRES: MONDAY, OCTOBER 10
Javier at Dakar Motos reports that the baby Honda is finally ready. Am I?
My cousins, Carmen and Brian, give a small family dinner for me. I am deeply touched that Tony came. He is not well and the three flights of stairs up to the open-plan living room demanded great determination. My cousins have a young daughter studying film. My youngest son, Jed, studies film. He also speaks Spanish, though of the Cuban variety. I would love for them to meet and keep this sense of family alive for a further generation.

FAMILY

BUENOS AIRES: SEPTEMBER 26 to OCTOBER 7
As a novelist, I hide my beliefs and emotions within an undergrowth of invented detail. My characters suffer. I remain invulnerable. Reporting is more complicated. I have to raise my own head above the parapet. I have been in Buenos Aires a fortnight. I have been occupied mainly with meeting family. Writing of family is both difficult and embarrassing. What do I include? What do I exclude?
Tony Deane was my introduction to these Argentine relatives. I am the younger by a few years (very few).
An outsider might take a quick glance at Tony and recognise a bluff Brit of the old school, rancher, polo player, a Conservative, something of a Blimp.
The same outsider might presume that I, an Old Lefty, must step carefully in Tony's presence.
Ah, well...
On my last visit, Tony gave me a book of naval history, Neslon's Favourite. The book relates the life of the 64 gun Agamemnon and is published by Chatham House in England. Many of the illustrations come from the British Maritime Museum in Greenwich. It is a fascinating and beautifully written account, meticulously researched. The writer shows a remarkable understanding of both officers and sailors. Tony is the author. The book betrays much of who he really is: his openness of mind, his warmth and sincerity, his commitment to his work and his determination and courage in carrying a tough task through to its conclusion.
I suspect that Tony will be embarrassed by this description. It is no more than he deserves. I read his book late into the night and have sent it home for my wife, Bernadette, to enjoy. In my dotage, I will take it down from the shelf and stroke the cover as book lovers do. I will think myself privileged to have known the author. I will think how very fortunate he was to discover a wife in his later years who cares so well and deeply for him.
Enough!
Dangerous stuff, this raising my head above the parapet...

FAMILY

BUENOS AIRES: SEPTEMBER 25 to OCTOBER 7
I have written previously that my very distant Argentine cousin, Tony Deane, used to visit England regularly to play polo and buy pedigree Hereford cattle. He sold a polo pony to my elder brother (another Antony) some thirty years ago. Tony's younger brother, Brian and his wife, Carmen, have shown me extraordinary hospitality over the past days here in Buenos Aires. At their home I have met many of the younger generation. They are a very varied bunch in what they do. One is an immensely successful banker. Another is in Government service and entrusted with the integrity of the coming elections.
Why, I ask: Government salaries are small by any standard; he is a highly qualified lawyer?
He replies that his countrymen deserve better. A better future demands that people of integrity serve the country.
Integrity is a dangerous quality.
He is a brave and honourable young man.
He is also very fortunate. He has the support of a charming and intelligent wife.

DAKAR MOTOS ASSADO

are they having a relationship?

SATURDAY: SEPTEMBER 30
Javier and Sandra have an assado for bikers on Saturdays. I take the Metro and the train out to Florida. An East German is the only other foreigner. He is a computer engineer (mamoth computers), works as a consultant for a couple of years, then does a runner for a year, wandering Latin America on a big bike. Back home his friends think him crazy: all that money he could be earning and hoarding in the bank. Ming would understand; he is about to do another runner. So would the Polish software expert I met last year in Porto Bello, Panama. The Pole was director of a software company in Boston, Mas. He gave lunch to a client in a restaurant over looking a marina and spotted a FOR SALE sign on a small sailboat. He walked down to the marina after lunch, bought the sailboat and never went back to the office.
What do these men have in common?
High earning capacity and discovery that money isn't a sufficient goal. Nor is it a satisfactory foundation for society. There has to be more. The East German talks of social morality. Why is shooting people a greater crime than being responsibile for people starving?
I listen and nod my agreement, drink red wine and eat meat...

COUSINS

BUENOS AIRES: THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 27
My cousin was a banker. One of his sons is a banker. Thursdays are a family get together at my cousin's home. I am proud of myself. I have climbed two flights of white marble stairs at their town house and a circular staircase to a large open plan living room that opens to a roof garden. Twelve of us sit at a square table, three to a side: my cousin and his wife, their two sons and their wives, their daughter and a blond English girl for whom statuesque or trouble are equally accurate descriptions. Various members of my family back home would never ask me to such a dinner. They think of me as inhabiting the extreme left wing of the left and worry that my politics will give offense. I have never been against people being rich. I am against people being poor.

CRASH

BUENOS AIRES: THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 27
I was riding on ice on a dead straight gentle climb. Visibility was perfect. A driver coming from behind would have seen me from a mile back. I would have been a dot in the road, then a man on a bike and finally a man on a bike travelling at a few kilometres an hour, a biker scrabbling for purchase on the ice with his feet and clearly with minimal control. The driver that hit me didn't slow. He sounded his klaxon to warn me to get off the road. I was trying to get off the road when he hit me. I can remember the sound. I think that I heard first the plastic above the rear wheel shattering. I remember my shoulder hitting the ice and the black fender above me and knowing that the wheels of the truck were a few feet back from my skull. I knew that, I was fully aware of it. I expected to go under the wheels. I didn't. I was sliding on the ice. I wanted the driver to slow. I kept thinking why doesn't he brake? Why doesn't he slow? We slid and slid. The klaxon was holding me. The klaxon mounts had snapped. The two electrical cables to the klaxon held. I remember the cables. The driver and the driver's mate dragged me and the bike out from under the truck fender and helped me to my feet. The klaxon was dangling by the cables. It must have been trapped behind my knees.
The driver held me in his arms. He called me hermano and was crying. The Chilean cops came. I told them that the accident was my fault, that the driver wasn't to blame in any way. They accepted what I said. They wanted to get me to the first aid post. They didn't take a statement from the driver. I am glad they didn't. I shouldn't have been riding on ice.
I have made jokes about the accident up till now - how it is to be hit by three trucks - orthopaedic trucks because my back hasn't hurt once since and I had been in continual pain for the four months prior to the accident.
It wasn't a joke. I should be dead. That I am alive is almost inexplicable. Two electrical cables probably made the difference between life and death, between being crushed and being alive. I would have felt the wheels hit the back of my head. There would have been a few seconds of sliding with the tyre against my head before I was crushed. I was fully conscious. I would have felt it all happen quite slowly and known all the time exactly what was happening until the tyres finally crushed my head. I needed to write this down. I have been feeling increasingly shaky. I suppose that I am suffering delayed shock...And being alone now, no longer amongst the guys at the Hotel Argentino, I don't have to maintain an act. You know? The tough upper lip Brit? I got hit by three trucks, Ha Ha Ha...

RELATIVES AND AFTERSHOCK

BUENOS AIRES: THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 27
I have a tribe of cousins here in Buenos Aires. They are cousins at three or four generations distance. Thirty years ago one of them was over in England playing polo and sold my brother a pony at the end of the season. That was the only contact until I called on my way south to Ushuaia and was invited to lunch by the seller of the polo pony and his wife. A brother and his wife were present. They have been sending me emails since the accident, worrying and fussing, wanting me to come stay while I heal, be checked over by the doctors they use. This phlegmatic Brit is embarrassed at writing of how much this family connection and support has helped me over the past weeks. I get weepy. I am weepy. I have suffered a shock. Pepe is up here from Tierra del Fuego and visiting patients. We were in a cab earlier on the way to an art exhibition. He made me face what really happened on the road. I guess he felt it was time - or he was bored by my romanticised account. Now that I have faced what happened I feel sick in the stomach. I want to throw up. My hands shake. As I write, I feel weepy.

DAKAR MOTOS

BUENOS AIRES: WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26
Javier and Sandra of Dakar Motos have a bunk room for visiting bikers and a garden where bikers can pitch a tent. A Scotsman and his girlfriend on a Beemer are staying as is an East German Computer engineer. Mostly I feel a fraud when I chat with fellow bikers. Real bikers don't ride baby Hondas. Being hit by three trucks is a passport to the inner circle. I talk with an Argentine. Javier joins our conversation. Javier enjoys speaking English which irritates the Argentine biker. The biker has strong views. Everything has gone to hell since the return to democracy. Kids lack discipline. They don't work. They don't study. They drink, they fuck, they take dope. Parents are as bad, lazy, always expecting a handout. I recognise the biker. I drove Don's Hummer behind his twin last year in Dallas. Fun to put them in a small room. Would they kill each other before they discovered they shared such similar beliefs?

BABY HONDA

BUENOS AIRES: WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26
The metro runs direct from Avenida del Mayo to the bus and rail stations at Retiro. A Belgrano train to Florida gets me close to Dakar Motos. The journey is easy. Uncomfortable is seeing the hovels teetering on every available piece of wasteland. Poverty is the flip side of Buenos Aires.
Javier at Dakar Motos speaks English. He is a tall man, red hair, a biker from his boots to the top of his head. The baby Honda sits on a mechanic's pedestal. It has no back wheel, no rear suspension. It looks small. It is small. Even in one piece it would be dwarfed by the BMWs, Africa Twins and whatever. Ming's Monster looks small. Ming has given it to a friend. The friend will pick it up next week. Javier says the baby Honda should be ready for next Wednesday.

COSTS?

BUENOS AIRES: TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25
Buenos Aires is a light, clean and beautiful city with many parks. For much of the architecture, imagine Paris late 19th century. What are the costs?
Room with large double bed and a good bathroom half a block off the Avenida del Mayo which is as central as you can get: $19
Big container of fresh fruit salad from the greengrocer on the same bloc: $1.15
Take a left and walk a block and a half to the Chinese: The best ever hot and sour soup: $2.20
I keep a bottle of wine at the Chinese and drink a glass when I ever eat there - often late in the evening to watch a movie on cable TV. $6 will buy a good steak and fries in a brasserie. A cab to most places is $2 or less. Metro is $0.25 a ride. Urban train fare five stops to Dakar Motors to check on the bike is $0.50. I saw the third Bourne movie at a clean movie house: $1.20

GRAN HOTEL ESPANA

BUENOS AIRES: MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 24
The Gran Hotel Espana is my home away from home. The Gran is a misnomer. The hotel is small. I have a quite room and bath at the rear on the third floor. Were cynicism an Olympic support, the manager would be a shoo-in for the Gold medal. I sit in the tiny lobby and chat with the afternoon receptionist, Gustavo. He telephoned Rio Grande as soon as he read of the accident. Such small acts of kindness and concern are heartening on a long journey - knowing that you have the support of friends.

SLAUGHTERING INDIANS

ON THE BUS: SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 23
Eight hours to Buenos Aires, look out of the window and the land is flat. We saw a hill four hours ago. We won't see another. I have read the newspaper. I don't have a book. For sport, I list other similarities shared by Argentina and the USA.

The bulk of the population are descendants of comparatively recent immigration (beginning in the late 1890s).

The bulk of immigrants were poorly educated and driven from their birth countries by war, poverty and persecution.

Both countries slaughtered their indigenous population around the same time and mythologised the killers.
Cowboy and gaucho are equally romanticised.
Both gaucho and cowboy duelled and murdered each other, gauchos with knives, cowboys with revolvers.
Both Chacara and Country and Western music celebrate loneliness and the broken heart.
I discussed similarities with an Argentine sociologist in Rio Grande. He wrote his doctoral theses in Arizona. He claimed one essential difference: North Americans are optimists. They believe in a better future.
Argentines are fatalists. They have no belief in a better future.

ARGENTINE/USA

ON THE BUS: SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 23
We are on an airfield one thousand miles long by five hundred miles wide. Farmers have ploughed bits of the airfield, planted crops and a few trees. Travelling by train from NY to Dallas was the same - totally flat. Look out of the window and you wonder what quirk sited a town where it is rather than ten or twenty miles south, east, north or west. The wastage of land is similar. We Europeans treasure every square metre. A business fails, someone rebuilds on the same site. Not so in small town Argentina or in small town USA. Abandoned buildings abound. Land is cheap. Easier to build new on a green site. So the urban sprawl spreads.

MAPUCHE ARE INDEFATIGABLE

NEGUEN: SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 22
I have a three hour wait at the bus terminal for the AndesMar connection to Buenos Aires. I discover that the AndesMar bus takes an indirect route. The direct route taken by other companies is six hours shorter. Damn! However I will see more of the country and I can't change my ticket. The connection is down at the bus terminal's smart Internet cafe. I eat ravioli in the slow-service fast-food restaurant. Service is slow because the male staff are watching football on TV. I chatted with a young Chilean woman on the bus. She is studying Tourism and Hotel management in Buenos Aires. She was home for Chile's national holiday. Her mum gave her a new laptop. Argentine Customs wouldn't let her through without a certificate from Chilean Customs. She was in tears when the bus pulled out. Now I see her pushing a luggage trolley. She spots me and we hug. She tells me she hitched lifts on a couple of trucks and a car - more evidence of the indefatigability of the indigenous Mapuche. The Inca failed to conquer them. The Spaniards failed. Now the Argentine Customs have failed. We sit together. She tells me to prop my foot up on her luggage. The swelling ebbs from the ankle.