Crushed dry and unreal, papiermâche mountains under a pinkening sky. And the billowing yellow grey clouds turn blue and dark, and the grass I see is golden. Though I see it as a small bright square in a blackened border.
I am sleeping under the road again. Though it is only as the full fat light of the setting sun shines through my shelter that I realise I am seeing for the first time today. I have spent 10 hours blind and pedalling - stoned tired eyes, not a grimace, not a smile, as slowly the gravel road runs below.
I will sleep as well under the road as in a bed. Better perhaps. And I won´t be scared as the motor of a truck slows and stops above me, nor excited by the dawning day.
For hours, like a desert, I have seen nothing but soup and risotto and garlic bread and salad. Close-ups, steaming and constant. And a vague notion of meeting up with Joe and seeing Debbie again in El Calafate. And then soup and garlic bread and risotto.
People say in the desert that, for lack of external stimuli, the mind turns in on itself and you can see some true essence of your soul. Well, I´ve seen it - and it´s soup. If I wanted something better perhaps I should have brought more food.
Now, in the sun, face golden, but unseen, soul of tomato and basil soup, stoned eyes and legs untired, I have reached it again; the rarely mentioned danger of travelling. I am used to it. The world changing every day. And now, and now, I don´t see it.
Monday, 31 October 2011
Chile
Soggy bark. Bearded moss. Dripping wet. Silver misty droplets. Squelching mud. Soaked hair, hands, feet. And the sky, a constant drizzle, grey.
Six days of constant rain and wild camping, and my fingers and toes and skin are wrinkled, as though I live in a bath.
After a month of no rain in Argentina, the dry harsh air had traced light dusty, spider-webbed marks all over my skin. Now after 6 days in Chile I feel like I´m becoming an amphibian. Only that I have less inclination to crawl back into a cold wet tent than a toad perhaps might have.
I stop at a shop in Mañihuales. "This may be a strange question," I say "But I´m looking for the ummm... the cyclist hunter?"
"Aaah, Jorge! El cazador de ciclistas! La casa de ciclistas!" And they draw me a map to his house, and I arrive on a bicycle laden with things dripping wet and soaking.
When the door opens I don´t say anything. Jorge smiles a real smile and hugs me and tells me that I´m the first cyclist of the year. And his wife Diana and daughter Nickole come to greet me. "Come in, bring you´re bike, this is the kitchen, there´s a shower and hot water - you can wash and dry your clothes. This room´s used as a church, but not until the weekend. Help yourself to cake. Do you want a cup of tea? This is your house - you musn´t pay anything. We´re happy to have you here."
And in such warmth, in the cold wet grey of the Carretera Austral in early spring, I make myself at home in Jorge´s house, and flick through the pages of messages left by the many cyclists who have stayed there over the last three years, and begin to write my own.
Six days of constant rain and wild camping, and my fingers and toes and skin are wrinkled, as though I live in a bath.
After a month of no rain in Argentina, the dry harsh air had traced light dusty, spider-webbed marks all over my skin. Now after 6 days in Chile I feel like I´m becoming an amphibian. Only that I have less inclination to crawl back into a cold wet tent than a toad perhaps might have.
I stop at a shop in Mañihuales. "This may be a strange question," I say "But I´m looking for the ummm... the cyclist hunter?"
"Aaah, Jorge! El cazador de ciclistas! La casa de ciclistas!" And they draw me a map to his house, and I arrive on a bicycle laden with things dripping wet and soaking.
When the door opens I don´t say anything. Jorge smiles a real smile and hugs me and tells me that I´m the first cyclist of the year. And his wife Diana and daughter Nickole come to greet me. "Come in, bring you´re bike, this is the kitchen, there´s a shower and hot water - you can wash and dry your clothes. This room´s used as a church, but not until the weekend. Help yourself to cake. Do you want a cup of tea? This is your house - you musn´t pay anything. We´re happy to have you here."
And in such warmth, in the cold wet grey of the Carretera Austral in early spring, I make myself at home in Jorge´s house, and flick through the pages of messages left by the many cyclists who have stayed there over the last three years, and begin to write my own.
Patagonia.
To be clear, we were not talking about the necessities of farming, or those small places to keep out Old Killer Thomas More and Nasty Marx, but fences the length of small countries, stretching without end, and locking up mountains, and all the sky above, and the desert far beyond. Taut rotten wood and wire across rivers and streams, with the water always escaping and being caught again; owned to unowned to owned again, and always by the very, very few.
"There are just two things I don`t like about Argentina - the wind and the fences. And I guess you can`t do much about the wind." But always along the road the wire fences run, without public right of way, stuck in a world that moves. Like an international border that stops one walking because two hundred years ago an old man drew a line.
I spend my days riding parallel to wires, and thinking You´re ugly wires You´re ugly wires and wrong.
While all the world is blocked away, in a landscape so huge I feel contained and ordered in my movements, when movement has come to mean freedom. And I am one of the lucky ones in a world where the freedom of movement for all is a forgotten, ignored, repressed, basic human right. We were born walking and stopped. We survived because of our adaptability that we are slowly surely losing standing still.
"There are just two things I don`t like about Argentina - the wind and the fences. And I guess you can`t do much about the wind." But always along the road the wire fences run, without public right of way, stuck in a world that moves. Like an international border that stops one walking because two hundred years ago an old man drew a line.
I spend my days riding parallel to wires, and thinking You´re ugly wires You´re ugly wires and wrong.
While all the world is blocked away, in a landscape so huge I feel contained and ordered in my movements, when movement has come to mean freedom. And I am one of the lucky ones in a world where the freedom of movement for all is a forgotten, ignored, repressed, basic human right. We were born walking and stopped. We survived because of our adaptability that we are slowly surely losing standing still.
Tuesday, 11 October 2011
Homecoming!!!
Just a quick entry to say... I´m almost finished and I´m coming home!!!
There will be a BBQ at St Aubyn Arms Pub on Saturday 12th November at 1pm in Praze-an- Beeble , Cornwall.
Would be great to see you there!!!
Friday, 23 September 2011
Argentina
It starts with an absolute unthinking happiness. An effortless movement; more sailing than cycling. Carried through a sunny day on an immense and blustering wave, I feel its hands upon my back, and I am pushed all along the great flat road at fifty kilometres an hour, not even the light and ticklish touch of an air resistance on my face.
After Peru and Bolivia, I have fallen into a heaven of small and wonderful things. The bread here is fresh not chewy and stale, there is cheese that tastes of cheese, and olive oil, and apples that are not powdery deceptive lies, but apples, and meat that melts, doesn´t stretch and string and crumble as old worn out leather boots, and wine, cheap wine, that doesn´t make you grimace and wince and shudder at its scent.
Everything is good. Glossy, shining supermarkets, shelves piled high with food. Clear cold drinkable tap water and strong hot showers. Signposts, cleanliness, order and receipts. Queues and politeness and priority seats for the elderly. Real coversations, interest and an understanding of what I am doing, and time to stop and talk and do nothing. Everything is good. And the wind keeps pushing at my back. The sun glints off windscreens, hands wave, horns sound and carry me easily south.
And then there is a change. The wind flails and twists around. And it is there in front of me, its cold breath fierce like a wall and fighting. And whipping up sand. And robbing happiness with an inhuman unkindness, and with a relentlessness slowly emptying me of everything.
After Peru and Bolivia, I have fallen into a hell of terrible things. Food is expensive and markets have disappeared, to be replaced by cold impersonal fluorescent lights, and loyalty cards, and car parks, and queues. And billboards everywhere saying stupid things. And everything closes for four idiotic hours in the middle of the day. And the countryside is a monotonous desert full of sand and nasty plants and barbed wire fences, and wild camping is a nightmare. And traffic jams and roundabouts and ring roads.
The wind sweeps me off the road, over and over, and I can´t lift my bike against it. I´m on my knees and screaming, furious angry words in capital letters, that tumble lost behind me, and I´m learning that the wind here doesn´t listen, even when you scream.
The wind keeps pushing and holding me down, and like a play thing, like a plastic bag, like nothing, I´m thrown all over the road. The sun that glints off windscreens laughs, and the hands that wave and horns that sound smack only of schadenfreude, and I am fighting slowly south.
After Peru and Bolivia, I have fallen into a heaven of small and wonderful things. The bread here is fresh not chewy and stale, there is cheese that tastes of cheese, and olive oil, and apples that are not powdery deceptive lies, but apples, and meat that melts, doesn´t stretch and string and crumble as old worn out leather boots, and wine, cheap wine, that doesn´t make you grimace and wince and shudder at its scent.
Everything is good. Glossy, shining supermarkets, shelves piled high with food. Clear cold drinkable tap water and strong hot showers. Signposts, cleanliness, order and receipts. Queues and politeness and priority seats for the elderly. Real coversations, interest and an understanding of what I am doing, and time to stop and talk and do nothing. Everything is good. And the wind keeps pushing at my back. The sun glints off windscreens, hands wave, horns sound and carry me easily south.
And then there is a change. The wind flails and twists around. And it is there in front of me, its cold breath fierce like a wall and fighting. And whipping up sand. And robbing happiness with an inhuman unkindness, and with a relentlessness slowly emptying me of everything.
After Peru and Bolivia, I have fallen into a hell of terrible things. Food is expensive and markets have disappeared, to be replaced by cold impersonal fluorescent lights, and loyalty cards, and car parks, and queues. And billboards everywhere saying stupid things. And everything closes for four idiotic hours in the middle of the day. And the countryside is a monotonous desert full of sand and nasty plants and barbed wire fences, and wild camping is a nightmare. And traffic jams and roundabouts and ring roads.
The wind sweeps me off the road, over and over, and I can´t lift my bike against it. I´m on my knees and screaming, furious angry words in capital letters, that tumble lost behind me, and I´m learning that the wind here doesn´t listen, even when you scream.
The wind keeps pushing and holding me down, and like a play thing, like a plastic bag, like nothing, I´m thrown all over the road. The sun that glints off windscreens laughs, and the hands that wave and horns that sound smack only of schadenfreude, and I am fighting slowly south.
Monday, 5 September 2011
Southwest Bolivia.
"Pzzfk," he says. It sounds like pzzfk. With the eyes glazed and shining, and white frothy saliva collecting in the corners of his mouth, head rolling on neck, tottering on legs, and feet small-stepping - the ground a ship at sea. "Pzzfk," he says again, the watery swimming eyes staring through me.
"Pzz... pzzfeeto," he says, his hand held out.
He looks up, I shake my head, and he stays there, fixed, with a smile.
"Pzzfk?" I ask. "Pzzfk. Qué es eso?" Though I know what it is I ask him anyway. Beggars where I come from stand in front of whole carriages of people and offer eloquent accounts of misfortune, hide intoxication, and write succinct messages on appropriately impoverished squares of cardboard. They don´t just stumble and ramble, "quizzf..quer...que quiffz" at your face.
"Pzz... pzzfeeto," he says, his hand held out.
"Pesito? Para qué? Para emborracharse más?" And he smiles, almost toothless, head rolls, eyes close, and he gathers himself and nods, once - and his head hangs staring at the ground. Yes. A peso to get more drunk.
We are standing in undeveloping Bolivia. On the altiplano that stretches across the south west corner of the country, and turns its back to the internationally adopted race towards round abouts, supermarkets, pension schemes and ring-roads, sign posting, heating, sanitation systems and all those thing by which we measure development.
It is doing nothing. It is too cold and too poor. It is sat outside a hut, staring at a sandy, washboard road, and across at deserted buildings and broken glass, throwing stones at a dog to teach it something, shouting at children, hitting a goat with a stick, and sitting outside a hut waiting for the men to come home. And the men are drinking the 96% alcohol that I use as fuel for my stove. And the villages are dead and empty, or dying. And the countryside has moved to the city.
Tuesday, 9 August 2011
Salinas de Garcia Mendoza, Bolivia
It was the first time it pleased me to see a street parade in Bolivia. Although perhaps street parade is the wrong term. Around the corner, as promised by the deafening, blasting brass, the drunken horde stumbles and dances. Gigantic women made only of pork fat, and young stick thin boys. Ancients all of wrinkles, sun-blackened , hardened skin. Men with shining, round brown faces, huge bellies and dirty shirts. Wide-skirted-bowler-hatted-women. And all of them in some wonderful drunken oblivion.
One of the pork-fat-ladies tears from the crowd, half-dances to the music, and waves a plastic bottle of about four litres in the air; almost empty, the last remaining contents swilling around, lime green, with the movements of a flabby arm. Others behind her wave glass bottles, those too, half empty, the glistening golden dregs of 5pm.
A sober plaza watches the parade. The melody is simple and repetitive, but the band are struggling. Round, sweaty faces, and staggering feet. The band wear white sashes around suit jackets - on them written the numbers, 2009. And though the music wavers, slows down, falls apart, and finds itself again, each player seems to be enraptured as though you might be watching something brilliant.
The pork-fat-lady is drawn back in, unfalling and backwards, glee or drunken joy shining on her face. What is remarkable is that the crowd of all ages, shapes and sizes has become one thing - one gloriously drunken being that has forgotten how to dance, its many legs keeping vaguely to a beat, its hands waving bottles of all kinds, and its many faces beaming, as the afternoon air grows cold.
The same sequence of notes stumbles slowly up the street and I go back into the cafe and carry on talking to Alexis.
"Every day?"
"Everyday this week."
"What´s it for?" I ask, referring to the several gigantic drunken beings marauding outside.
"It´s a festival for... for..." she doesn´t know. "We have so many festivals in Salinas." Alexis asks around the cafe. Nobody seems very sure. A middle-aged man, sat alone, offers a a vague answer. "It´s a festival for a saint."
"It´s a religious festival?" I don´t know why I´m surprised, but I am.
Alexis wants to go to Paris. She wants to go there more than anywhere else in the world. She likes the way they talk.
"How do you say te amo in French?" she asks.
"Je t´aime, I think," I say "but maybe that´s more like te quiero." and the words stick out and hang loud in the room. People glance round to look at the gringo who just said ´I love you` to a 17 year old girl he just met, and drunks make obscene gestures, laughing behind her back.
A perfectly timed crescendo outside fills the cafe; a wail of trumpets drowning out all words, and the attention commanded falls away.
Alexis wants to go to Paris, but doesn´t have any money. And I have that thousandth conversation - the one that goes, it´s much harder for you than us, and I´m sorry I was born in Europe, but if you really want to, and you really try, it´s possible.
"Yes," she says. "It´s my dream to go. I´ll try." There is silence. "Where do you go tomorrow?"
"The salar. It´s beautiful, right?"
"I don´t know."
"You´ve never been?"
"No."
"But you live here. Why not? It´s supposed to be one of the most incredible places in the world."
"I don´t have any money," she says, looking straight at me.
"It´s 10km away. You can walk. I´m cycling there tomorrow. You don´t need any money." And she doesn´t say anything and I begin to doubt that she will ever go to Paris at all.
As I fall asleep later tireless trumpets, tubas and trombones sound. Still the bottles fly in the air, now in the frozen black of night, and shouts filter through the window from the street.
In the morning I wake to the same tune. Outside, a man already falling about alone is directed again towards the gathering hordes, and as he joins them I see that the drunken being is already alive, and haggard.
One of the pork-fat-ladies tears from the crowd, half-dances to the music, and waves a plastic bottle of about four litres in the air; almost empty, the last remaining contents swilling around, lime green, with the movements of a flabby arm. Others behind her wave glass bottles, those too, half empty, the glistening golden dregs of 5pm.
A sober plaza watches the parade. The melody is simple and repetitive, but the band are struggling. Round, sweaty faces, and staggering feet. The band wear white sashes around suit jackets - on them written the numbers, 2009. And though the music wavers, slows down, falls apart, and finds itself again, each player seems to be enraptured as though you might be watching something brilliant.
The pork-fat-lady is drawn back in, unfalling and backwards, glee or drunken joy shining on her face. What is remarkable is that the crowd of all ages, shapes and sizes has become one thing - one gloriously drunken being that has forgotten how to dance, its many legs keeping vaguely to a beat, its hands waving bottles of all kinds, and its many faces beaming, as the afternoon air grows cold.
The same sequence of notes stumbles slowly up the street and I go back into the cafe and carry on talking to Alexis.
"Every day?"
"Everyday this week."
"What´s it for?" I ask, referring to the several gigantic drunken beings marauding outside.
"It´s a festival for... for..." she doesn´t know. "We have so many festivals in Salinas." Alexis asks around the cafe. Nobody seems very sure. A middle-aged man, sat alone, offers a a vague answer. "It´s a festival for a saint."
"It´s a religious festival?" I don´t know why I´m surprised, but I am.
Alexis wants to go to Paris. She wants to go there more than anywhere else in the world. She likes the way they talk.
"How do you say te amo in French?" she asks.
"Je t´aime, I think," I say "but maybe that´s more like te quiero." and the words stick out and hang loud in the room. People glance round to look at the gringo who just said ´I love you` to a 17 year old girl he just met, and drunks make obscene gestures, laughing behind her back.
A perfectly timed crescendo outside fills the cafe; a wail of trumpets drowning out all words, and the attention commanded falls away.
Alexis wants to go to Paris, but doesn´t have any money. And I have that thousandth conversation - the one that goes, it´s much harder for you than us, and I´m sorry I was born in Europe, but if you really want to, and you really try, it´s possible.
"Yes," she says. "It´s my dream to go. I´ll try." There is silence. "Where do you go tomorrow?"
"The salar. It´s beautiful, right?"
"I don´t know."
"You´ve never been?"
"No."
"But you live here. Why not? It´s supposed to be one of the most incredible places in the world."
"I don´t have any money," she says, looking straight at me.
"It´s 10km away. You can walk. I´m cycling there tomorrow. You don´t need any money." And she doesn´t say anything and I begin to doubt that she will ever go to Paris at all.
As I fall asleep later tireless trumpets, tubas and trombones sound. Still the bottles fly in the air, now in the frozen black of night, and shouts filter through the window from the street.
In the morning I wake to the same tune. Outside, a man already falling about alone is directed again towards the gathering hordes, and as he joins them I see that the drunken being is already alive, and haggard.
Friday, 5 August 2011
Bolivia
I have a dream that my teeth are falling apart. It´s a recurring dream. Nothing much happens. The time scale is unclear. I usually see myself as though in a mirror. I am inside white walls. It always starts as a chip in one of my front teeth. Nothing causes the chip. It is more like my teeth are crumbling by themselves. Then I notice more chipped teeth. Some teeth are broken in half. The front ones by now are no more than small triangular spikes. I never feel the pieces of teeth inside my mouth, but I feel them break away. I am always annoyed in the dream that my teeth are falling apart.
When I wake, I bring my hand to my mouth and am relieved to find my teeth in tact.
It is 2.43am. Outside it is minus 15°C. And inside it is minus 15°C as well because the zips don´t work anymore on my tent. The frozen midnight breeze swirls around me, invisible in the night, like a cold unwanted ghost. I think I am having this dream because almost everything I own is breaking.
It is camping equipment, and people are supposed to go camping for 2 or 3 weeks, not 28 months.
In the morning I swear, half laughing, half actually angry, at the cold and useless sun, and the bottled blocks of ice, at the leaking mattress and rusty pans, panniers full of holes and ripped open tyres, and at the spaces left by lost things.
I am jumping because jumping warms you up, and I´m too cold to do something useful. I am singing Smiths´songs, well bellowing and shouting, because around me there is nothing and nobody, and I can see all around for miles. And in the bright cold light of morning, singing, screaming and jumping, I realise I am happy. And not just that, but excited too, about where I am going next, and where I am, and it´s a very simple joy.
Hours later I have packed my tent, and a man rides past on a rusty bicycle, herding one hundred llamas. Exactly, he tells me. We complain about the cold, and he asks if we can swap bikes, and I tell him, no. I tell him that in England with all those llamas he´d be a rich man, and he tells me that in Bolivia with all those llamas he isn´t.
I cycle in knee deep water, above salt. A body of water that has swallowed the sky, reflecting it perfectly back. I am lost on the salt, and the sun sinks, and all around me only white, and tiny mountains far away. In the cold white dusk, giving up trying to find out where I am, I pitch a broken tent and sleep.
When I wake, I bring my hand to my mouth and am relieved to find my teeth in tact.
It is 2.43am. Outside it is minus 15°C. And inside it is minus 15°C as well because the zips don´t work anymore on my tent. The frozen midnight breeze swirls around me, invisible in the night, like a cold unwanted ghost. I think I am having this dream because almost everything I own is breaking.
It is camping equipment, and people are supposed to go camping for 2 or 3 weeks, not 28 months.
In the morning I swear, half laughing, half actually angry, at the cold and useless sun, and the bottled blocks of ice, at the leaking mattress and rusty pans, panniers full of holes and ripped open tyres, and at the spaces left by lost things.
I am jumping because jumping warms you up, and I´m too cold to do something useful. I am singing Smiths´songs, well bellowing and shouting, because around me there is nothing and nobody, and I can see all around for miles. And in the bright cold light of morning, singing, screaming and jumping, I realise I am happy. And not just that, but excited too, about where I am going next, and where I am, and it´s a very simple joy.
Hours later I have packed my tent, and a man rides past on a rusty bicycle, herding one hundred llamas. Exactly, he tells me. We complain about the cold, and he asks if we can swap bikes, and I tell him, no. I tell him that in England with all those llamas he´d be a rich man, and he tells me that in Bolivia with all those llamas he isn´t.
I cycle in knee deep water, above salt. A body of water that has swallowed the sky, reflecting it perfectly back. I am lost on the salt, and the sun sinks, and all around me only white, and tiny mountains far away. In the cold white dusk, giving up trying to find out where I am, I pitch a broken tent and sleep.
Monday, 1 August 2011
Wednesday, 20 July 2011
sucre
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