Long Live Long Rides, Pat and Ralph

You can view it complete with mini slide shows of each country we visited by clicking on this link  http://epicbicycleadventures.com

Also, please click  the links on the right hand side on the new site for any adventures you may be interested in.

Mucho Gracias, Crystal!

Pat - see, it's only this far!

(PLEASE VIEW OUR TOP 2 PICTURES FROM EACH COUNTRY AT THE END OF THIS BLOG.   ONE PICTURE THAT IS NATURAL BEAUTY AND ONE THAT HAS SOMETHING MADE-MADE IN IT!!! WOW, IT WAS HARD TO CHOOSE!!!)

Sorry our blog is a bit late.  Our lives have been rather hectic, to say the least, since the end of our adventure.  It is amazing how much time and effort goes into jump starting your life after abandoning it for 20 months!

We spent a week in Ushuaia, Argentina after completing our 18,000 mile trip (Wow! We actually did it!  It still hasn’t sunk in!)  celebrating with other biker friends, cleaning bikes and gear and cramming everything into 2 cardboard bike boxes for the flight home!  We flew out of Ushuaia with a stunning backdrop of the snow-capped peaks of Tierra Del Fuego.

Upon landing in the Dallas airport, we were surrounded by a level of cleanliness and efficiency we hadn’t seen in a very long time.  There was even a sign directing you to the bathroom!  And the bathroom was clean – I mean squeaky clean – and the toilets had seats and toilet paper!  Soap in the dispenser! – Cold and hot water in a fully functioning sink!  – paper towels! – and a hand dryer that blew hot air!  Wow!!!!  And – AND – The next bathroom was just as clean and well equipped!  AMAZING!

Another amazing thing about the airport – we could ask a worker for information or directions and they knew the answer!  And – the directions were RIGHT! We could actually get to where we wanted to by following the directions of only ONE person!  Truly amazing!

After landing in Denver we spent several days in Boulder with our daughter Crystal .  We were totally amazed at the hotel where we stayed.  The room was 3 times larger than what we were used to, had a fridge, microwave, large TV, coffee maker, blow dryer, iron – even a table and comfortable chairs, and once again – an amazing bathroom with all fixtures fully functioning, complete with toilet paper, kleenex, soap, shampoo, cream rinse, four bath towels, four hand towels, four wash cloths – and yes, a toilet with a seat!  No begging the hotel receptionist for a roll of TP and yes, please may we have more than one towel!  Most homes in Latin America weren’t this well equipped, let alone a hotel.  Also included in the stay was a full breakfast buffet – and get this – it started at 6AM!!!  It all came at a price though – the room was twice as expensive as in Ushuaia and four to eight times more expensive than South America in general.  But you know what?  We were ok with it – more than OK.  It was fabulous!

Dining out was a pleasant adventure too.  Restaurant employees were courteous, we had an incredible array of tasty dishes to choose from, service was lightning fast, we got served along with all the locals not the last ones in the joint to eat!  No chicken feet in the soup and, to our amazement – all the bathrooms had toilet paper!!!

But what blew our minds the most was when we entered a supermarket.  Before us was isle upon isle filled to the brim with all types of foods.  Not just 1 type of cheese, but 40.  Not 2 brands of energy drinks, but 20!  And a produce counter the length of a city block full of all sorts of fruit and vegetables with not 1 of them moldy or rotting!

Target and REI were equally mind altering, with a vast array of gadgets and not 1 gadget, but 20 different versions of 1 gadget.  Pat was totally overwhelmed with the task of deciding which gadget was best to buy.  Ralph was very happy to have a chance to pick the gadget that best worked for him out of the array of 20 spread out in front of him.

It was great to spend time with Crystal whom we hadn’t seen in 8 long months.  We had lots of catching up to do and it was so much fun wandering around Boulder with her and choosing from the many great restaurants there!  We headed home to the Roaring Fork Valley and Carbondale.  My, how Carbondale has changed.  A bunch of nice new buildings have appeared – and lots more folks commuting around town on bikes – a very pleasant sight.  It was great to also see our other daughter, Alicia and her husband Beck and meet the 2 new additions to the family, Deitz and Micky!  It is a pleasure to be able to be able to pick up the phone whenever we feel like it and call either of our girls for as long as we want.

For the first week we were back in the U.S. it was like the first day of first grade – lots of new things to learn (what’s a touch phone!?! Who put all the stop signs up on Main Street?) But we gradually got moved into what seemed like a beautiful gargantuan house, surrounded by all our “stuff”.  We got rid of a huge amount of household items having decided to simplify and reduce consumption.  After all, we spent 20 months with our entire wardrobes taking up less space than most people’s underwear drawer, so we can certainly do with less stuff than before the trip!

We also have been spending time with our friends, telling them about the trip.  Every time we answer questions about the trip, images flash back into our minds and all of a sudden we are back on our bikes on the trip again.   We are often asked “What was the best part of the trip – the most memorable, if you had to pick one place?  From the stark barren tundra north of the Arctic Circle bathed in perpetual sunlight, to the glacier-capped peaks of southern Alaska and British Columbia full of animals that actually eat you (grizzles – and – don’t forget – mosquitoes!), to the broad mountain valleys and welcoming people of Montana, to spectacular Yellowstone and Teton National Parks of Wyoming, to the majestic peaks of Colorado (and snowstorms), to the summer-like temperatures and friendly town of New Mexico, its hard to pick one spot.

We will never forget the tasty food and beautiful colonial cities of Mexico – nor their narrow, shoulder-less roads crammed with big pickups and crazy drivers.  The colorful chicken buses and colorfully dressed friendly people of Guatemala, the hugely rolling mountain roads of Honduras and the banana-stuffed ferry we took across Lake Nicaragua will always be remembered.

The beautiful contrasts of Costa Rica – from lush, green cloud forests full of colorful Tucans, howler monkeys, exotic hot springs and a spewing volcano to sandy, palm tree-lined beaches on the Pacific coast boasting flocks of huge scarlet mackaws were fantastic to experience.

Riding thru a real live tropical downpour, an interesting and scary wreck for Pat, and a crammed sailboat ride through the San Blas Islands and across the Carribean Sea made Panama very interesting.

Columbia will always stick in our minds as lush, green and full of the friendliest people on the trip – a pleasant surprise for us after all the negative media hype it receives.

The red and black volcanic peaks of Ecuador majestically jutted up a full l mile above the already high 13,000 foot surrounding pampa, their images forever tattooed on our brains.

And of course there’s Peru, whose populous can be best described as the obnoxious, bratty neighbor kid down the block  – always jeering at you, never friendly perpetually immature and obnoxious, filthy, and always an inch from being decked by Ralph with his 4 foot stick he carried throughout the country.  We must admit though – Peru also had some spectacular scenery.  It was there that we rode our bikes to a dizzying altitude a full 2000 feet higher than those Colorado 14ers everyone scramble up (remember – with a 100 lb bike – Ralph won’t forget!)  The Cordierra Blanca and Macchupichu were mind blowing.

From the high alti-plano ( the lowest elevation we biked to in Bolivia was the elevation of Vail pass!), to the sparsely-inhabited-by poverty–stricken-farmers in tiny-dusty-brown-adobe villages, landscapes to the unworldly salt flats and spectacular colored lakes, Bolivia was very unique.

Northern Argentina was toxically hot and extremely boring, but we probably won’t be able to pry it from our memory.  It started to really get pretty in the lake district.  We’ll never forget the fine wine, food, and hospitality in all of Argentina.

Southern Chile was fantastic, from the deserted and naturally gorgeous Carratera Austral full of lava lamp turquoise colored rivers and lakes, to the unbelievably spectacular peaks of the Torres del Paine.

Southern Argentina boasted the extremely jagged Fitz Roy range along with the fast moving, brilliantly white and blue Moreno Glacier.

We will never forget all the interesting people we met and friends we made throughout our epic journey.  They made it that much more exciting, rewarding and unforgettable.

So to answer the question – The whole thing – the entire trip was amazing.  And sometimes it’s hard to believe we actually did it.  We sometimes stare at the globe and say,“Damn!   We    did    it  !!!

Jamie(Ausie), Matt(Nebraska),us and David(S. Africa) Fin del Mundo!!!!

And now for “The rest of the story”!

We left Puerto Natales after 2 days of rest and socializing with the many other bikers riding this part of our trip. We have met so many bikers in the last month of this trip and have yet another “small world” biking story for you. While biking from El Chalten to El Calfate (last blog – sorry, forgot to tell this one then), we met a Swiss lady biking north. She asked us where we had started our trip. When we told her “Alaska”, she said, “My boyfriend also started in Alaska and I am biking to Bolivia to met him“. Turns out it is our friend Damian who we met in Canada the first time and have run into 2 other times on this trip! (Crazy all the connections with other bikers in a distance of ONLY 18,000 miles, across 2 continents and half way around the world!)

T h i s o n e s f o r Crystal ! ! !

From Puerto Natales it is was a paved road going east across the pampa, the dry, barren, boring grasslands of Argentina. We were fully expecting to be blown to our next destination by the Patagonian wind we had heard so much about from bikers who had traveled this section already. Well, the wind decided to take a day off, in fact, several days off, while we pedaled toward Punta Arenas. The locals all said it was very unusual to have a day without wind in Patagonia which is known for being one of the windiest areas in the world! So we used our own power and pedaled on! We rode one side road to get off the boring pampa and went along the Skyring and Otway Sounds. It was great to hear and smell the sea again! On this section we were joined by a very strong Brazilian rider, Andre. He was interesting to talk with and he was amazed we were as old as his Mom and had biked so far! Just before reaching Punta Arenas, we camped along the rocky beach of the Straight of Magellan. It was amazing to think, we were camped on the waterway that nearly 500 years ago was the route Magellan took to pass from the Atlantic to the Pacific on his voyage around the world. We remembered way back to 5^th grade history class, how back then when we imaged what the area must look like, and now – Here We Are!

searching for Magallen

 

Once in Punta Arenas, we took a combi and visited a penguin colony at Seco Otway, where we got to observe over 1000 penguins waddle around on the rocky beach and the adjacent pampa. It was surprising to learn that they dig burrows in the ground beneath the low bushes to get shelter and raise their young, then by the end of March they swim all the way along the southern part of the continent to Brazil for the winter months and in the spring arrive back to the same spot they were born to start the cycle all over again by hatching their own eggs and start a family. We also found out there are many, many species of penguins and some are small, some tall and some in-between! This colony was some of the small ones known as the Humbolt penguin.

Penguins

penquins

and more penguins!

The next morning we caught the ferry across the Straight of Magellan and landed near Porvenier on that little “whoop-de-doo” at the southern tip of Argentina you see on maps of South America. We had finally made it to the last land mass on our trip – the island of “Tierra del Fuego”! Suddenly it seemed we knew everyone on the boat, we were joined by bikers we had been with off and on for the last couple of weeks – Carlos (from Spain), Emily (from France), Rike & Malte (from Germany) and Andre (from Brazil), and all with Ushuaia as our final destination! We all stocked up on supplies for the 3 day desolate ride across the windy pampa of Argentina and once again had hardly any tailwind to help us along. By the end of the day the wind did pick up and we had to ride until we finally found a small gully to camp in, down out of the wind, complete with green grass and a puddle of water. Shelter from the wind is a precious commodity, so we considered ourselves lucky to find this spot. Water is also scarce, evident by the fact that we actually used the murky water in the puddle (which we filtered first and then boiled and used only for cooking and coffee). Carlos did mention, after taste-testing his meal as it was cooking, that he was having “mud chicken”.

Tierra del Fuego - less than 300 miles to go!

The next morning, shortly after we had woken, Emily and Bernard (from Germany), came blowing by (they had camped 20 km back). Surf was up!!! We finally have the great Patagonia tailwind!!! Yahoo! After a quick breakfast of oatmeal (yes, again!), we nearly effortlessly pedaled east to the border and entered Argentina at San Sabastian. To give you an idea of how strong the wind was blowing, Ralph decided not to pedal starting from a standstill and got blown 3 miles over gently rolling terrain without a single pedal stroke!

We followed the Atlantic coastline down to Rio Grande and the next day on to Toluain. We stopped there for some empanadas, and of course some great sweets too, at the famous “La Union” bakery. At this point it was beginning to get dark and 5 of us bikers had to find a place to camp. We ended up having to bike out of town about 3 miles, but found a “Wizard of Oz “ type meadow of 1′ to 2′ tall flowers with trees all around to protect us from the wind! Emily pitched her tent in the “hobbit-type” forest, Rike, Malte and us chose the flower meadow. It made for a soft bed!

Which way does the wind blow?

almost there!

getting closer! - getting COLDER!

Paso Geribaldi - almost 4,000 feet - now back down to sea level!

We started out our final day of riding (can you believe it?  The FINAL DAY of riding!!!) pedaling along the beautiful and long Lago Fagnano with absolutely no wind – a blessing, since we were headed straight west, the direction the wind usually blows from. This day found us biking in forested country and surrounded by low mountains – beautiful! As the day progressed so did the clouds and the rain. Biking up Paso Gribaldi we were greeted by the rain and chilly wind, had a bone-chilling very long descent down the other side and rolled into Ushuaia, the southern-most city in the world, fittingly cold, wet and tired! Fortunately, Ralph had the luck of finding a tiny bottle of Champagne (the size of a beer bottle) at a store several days ago. At the welcome sign we popped the cork and toasted to the end of the longest ride of our lives! It was a great mooment – we had finally made it to the destination we had been focusing on for over 1 ½ years. It actually didn’t seem real – didn’t seem possible! We were finally here!!!!!

Here we are 18,000 miles later!

Once in Ushuaia, we met up with 3 other biker friends we had met along the way that actually did the whole trip from Alaska too and 2 of them, Matt and Jamie finished the morning of the same day as us! David finished the second part of his trip on his BMW motorcycle and had started the trip with Matt and Jamie in June 2007. Along with a few other biker and backpacker friends we celebrated our accomplishment into the wee hours of the morning!

We are spending this week here in Ushuaia, cleaning and packing gear, resting, eating good food, but mainly decompressing from the trip and getting prepared for the shock of the real world again! We chose to put the bikes in a box, instead of ride them back, and fly into a world that we have not been in for 1 2/3 years. We are very excited to see our children, sleep in the same place for more than 3 nights, do our laundry in a machine, not have to dry our laundry on our bikes, throw our dishes in a machine, buy more than 1 roll of toilet paper at a time, have a wardrobe bigger than 1 pair of pants, 2 shirts, 1 pair of socks and 2 sets of biking clothes, have something other than oatmeal for breakfast, be able to park our butts on something other than a bike seat – preferably much more comfortable (a chairlift bench will do just fine for Ralph and a sofa for Pat), do something other than go south every morning, toss our bikes in the garage, take time to read our journals about the trip, look at more than 6000 photos of this awesome journey, reflect on the sheer magnitude of what we have done, and maybe, just maybe, start writing a book about our Epic Ride!!!

Here are some statistics from our trip:

It took us 20 months and 4 days (613 days) to ride 17,794 miles from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska to Ushuaia, Argentina! How much vertical? LOTS! We had 35 flats – that’s 1 flat/1000 miles/rider. (Not Bad!) We got about 5,000 miles out of each tire and drive-train. Our gear, especially our bikes, held up wonderfully. Moots, DT Swiss, Mavic, Patagonia, Northface, Stevenson Warmlite, Schwalbe, Granite Gear, Trico, Thermorest, OR, MSR, Pearl Izumi, Zoic, Hind, Sock Guy and Shimano make wonderfully durable gear – without them it would have been a much more difficult trip.

 We will most likely do an after-trip follow-up blog after the dust settles, for we are sure to have some reflections on the trip as a whole which we would like to share with you. Thanks for being part of our journey, your interest and input made it all that much more exciting!

Bikin’ On (not in the near future tho!)

Ralph & Pat

waiting for the ferry

After a relaxing and social rest at Hostal Mosco in Villa O”Higgins with lots of other bikers, we hopped the ferry with 8 other bikers and loads of tourists across Lago Villa O”Higgins, a 30 mile long spectacularly turquoise lake. From it’s south shore we tossed our gear on a horse and rode, waded and swam (at least Ralph and the camera got to swim while crossing a creek) our way crossing back into Argentina at the crest of a shallow pass, catching some sweet single track on our empty bikes – haven’t done that in too, too long! We took another ferry across Laguna Desierto and camped in the trees next to a neon turquoise river (reminiscent of lava lamp turquoise). After a rain-soaked night, we pedaled to El Chalten, catching some incredible shots of Mt. Fitz Roy as the clouds lifted. We were also able to test our submersible riding skills because large sections of the road were flooded.

Mt. Fitz Roy

In windy, touristy El Chalten (hoards of backpackers come to trek around Fitz Roy) we camped at a campground among more tents than we have ever seen in one place, all hunkered down behind fences, hedges and trees to hide from the strong Patagonia wind. Mind you, we grew up in North Dakota, so we are used to wind. But Patagonian wind – now that’s wind! It is not uncommon to get steady 60 mile/hour winds! Trees and bushes all grow with a permanent tilt to the east.

The next morning we left town heading toward El Calafate on the Argentinian pampa. We once again had wonderful views of the Fitz Roy range. We’ve seen a mountain or two on this trip, but Fitz Roy is the most spectacular peak so far. The whole range looks like the readout of a seismometer during a major earthquake. The pinnacles are light gray granite with 3000′ – 4000′ sheer vertical cliff faces – unbelievable! They are surrounded by one of the largest ice fields in the world, the Campo Heilo Sur. Back out on the pampa we saw loads of hawks, a few eagles, a fox, some wild llamas and Patagonian emus. The emu is of the ostrich family, is gray and stands 2′ to 4′ tall at the back (toss in a couple more feet for the neck), and can rocket across the pampa 3 times faster than we can bike.

At the municipal campground in El Calafate we ran into Matt and Jamie, two bikers that started in Prudhoe Bay several weeks after us, and that we first met in Peru three months ago. It’s surprisingly a small world in the biking community. We had several days of R&R, and also viewed the Moreno Glacier nearby. The Moreno Glacier is one of the most active glaciers in the world, advancing an average of 6½’ per day! It has moved across a large lake, dividing it in two. Since it is so active we could hear it crack and pop frequently and saw several large chunks calve off into the turquoise water below. The glacier face is at least 50′ tall, is comprised of a multitude of 10′ -20′ tall pinnacles of white ice/snow above a light turquoise/white ice base. Add in the towering snow-capped peaks surrounding it and you have a spectacular photo!

Moreno glacier

morning sunlight on Moreno glacier

HOLA!

just another great day for a bike ride -in front of Torres del Paines

and another !

The Torres is a mecca for trekking. The campgrounds at it’s base are full of backpackers getting ready to depart or returning from 1-2 week treks around the park. Also a number of bikers park their rigs, put on hiking boots and hit the trails. We have found that while biking toward and around the mountains on our journey we are more than content admiring them from camp. We never get the same awe inspiring views hiking as we do approaching on our bikes. At the Torres campground we re-met Matt and Jamie and two new German friends. The six of us biked around the eastern side of the park. We were fortunate to have clear blue skies – something that doesn’t happen very often in the park – to view the incredibly beautiful peaks as we rode. We camped at the Pehoe campground with a stunning view of the peaks before leaving the park, taking a rolling dirt road to Puerto Natales, a small, friendly fishing port.

¨The Crew¨ in front of Torres del Paines

Jamie and Malta

W O W !!

At Puerto Natales we took a couple days off and actually slept in a bed for a change. Our friends opted for the campground which became a hopping place as more and more bikers rolled in to camp. We had a barbecue one night with 12 other bikers doing anything from 2 week to 2 year trips. We even met a couple from Missoula that are planning to climb Aconcagua, South America’s highest peak (23,000′+). He is an Adventure Cycling employee. Coincidentally, the founders of Adventure Cycling did the Alaska-Ushuaia trip in the 1970s (an amazing feat since mountain bikes were really not even invented yet, so they made their own!), and were the inspiration for Ralph to do this trip. Back in the early 1980 s´, while students at MSU in Bozeman, we went to a slide show presentation of their adventure, and from that day Ralph knew he HAD to do this trip! It only took him 25 years to raise two children, raise enough money, and most importantly, talk Pat into joining him. Pretty fast wouldn’t you agree? Once again we were blown away by the coincidence of all the chance meetings of people we have connected with in the distant and recent past on this trip.

From here we will travel across the windy pampa for the last 500 miles of our trip toward Ushuaia, the finish line! Stay tuned!

Bikin’ on. Ralph and Ralph

hanging glacier Colgante

 Again, we traveled through more beautiful forest and past large, long, clearer-than-you-can-imagine lakes.  We left the pavement after 1 ½ days near Epuyen and headed toward Los Alercas National Park.  We hit a horrible headwind along with a gravel road under construction, which slowed our pace to 30 miles in 6 hours!  Let us tell you about South American road construction.  The continent has many narrow dirt and gravel roads that are in dire need of improvement.  Paving one of these roads is done in an amazingly illogical manner.  Instead of working on a 10 mile stretch for several months from start to completion, they usually tackle a 20, 50 or even 100 mile section and seemingly work on it for years.  Layer upon layer of road base ranging in size from sand to 10” boulders is laid down (dredged from the river!) and haphazardly compacted, then left for an eternity before final re-grading and paving. We think this is to allow plenty of time for settling as thousands of trucks, buses and cars shake, rattle and roll over it for several years doing the compaction for free.  Where does that leave the lowly biker?  We are left bouncing, spinning, cussing and of course, sucking up tons of pulverized South American real estate that billows up as the endless vehicles pass. 

Back to our story – we got to the park, got a beach-front campsite with stunning views of snow-capped peaks across the super-clear blue water.  The next day we rode past 2 more large lakes, each of them crystal clear and surrounded by fantastic peaks.  After a day off in the small town of Trevelin we crossed the border into our 14^th country on this epic trip – Chile.  We spent New Year’s Eve in the border town of Futaleufu (no, we did not make that name up!)  with 5 bikers from New Zealand.  While we were having lunch that afternoon, Pat told the group that she thinks we will be able to be entered into the “Guinness book of World Records” for being the oldest couple to have ridden bikes together from Alaska to the tip of South America – and still stayed married!  No sooner than the words tumbled past her lips did a British couple come strolling up to our table and say, “great to see more bikers!”  As it turns out, they are on a 3 month trip now, but had done the Alaska – South America trip 7 years ago – at age 57!!!  Poor Pat was shattered!  We had a great time sharing biking stories and rang in the New Year toasting cocktails on the plaza under the Christmas lights. 

 New Years Day found us biking a little later than usual along the River Fu, famous world over for kayaking and rafting.  Now at 48 degrees south of the equator, we have daylight until 10 PM again, so long days are not a problem!  We could see the volcano Chaiten puffing out a couple small plumes of smoke from its earlier eruption near the end of last year !                                                                                                           We camped on the beach of Lago Yeicho at the end of the day.  The water is so clean in this part of Chile that you can drink it right from the lake.  We still filter it, but we do drink straight out of the small creeks coming off the mountainsides. (We guess that Montezuma never made it this far south!) 

Cerro Castillo

 Part way through the second day of the new year (WOW – it is hard to believe – we have gone through 2 calendars on this trip and are into the 3rd!) we hit the famous Carratera Austral, the narrow road built in the 1980′s to boost tourism and commerce into remote, wild and spectacularly pristine southern Chile.  It runs south to Villa O’Higgins and slices through some of the most spectacular country on the planet.  We spent the next few days pedaling south through thick forests, valleys of remote cattle ranches and small villages, next to more crystal clear streams and lakes and the occasional towering peak. 

Pat taking a little break!

Lago General Carrera

caves formed from the water at Lago General Carrera

Since we entered the lake district of Argentina, and now all along the Carratera, we have met loads of bikers touring.  We usually meet 2,4,6,8 bikers per day.  They are from Argentina, Chile, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea, Philippines, the USA, but mostly from Europe.  In fact, we have joked that we doubt there is anyone left in Holland and Germany, they are all in South America biking!  What is even more interesting is staying at a hostel where we all share the same kitchen and try to communicate in 4 or 5 different languages and come up with something to eat!  But we exchange much information about the road ahead and behind and share our adventures with each other, which is great because in the past we would not see another biker sometimes for weeks. 

 One whole day was unpleasantly spent pedaling through a steady rain, ending in a bone chilling descent into a river canyon.  At the bottom, we ducked under a bridge to get out of the rain, change into warm clothes and make hot drinks.  We spent the evening there and set up camp nearby.   The next morning we woke up to fresh snow on the spectacular rugged mountains!  Burr!!!!  We took a 12 mile detour off the main road and visited the unique village of Tortel – unique because all the buildings are elevated, built on pilings, there are no streets, no cars and the only way to get around town is by foot up and down endless steps all along boardwalks!  The only road into the remote village was completed only 4 years ago.  Up until then, the only access was by airplane or boat. 

boardwalk town of Tortel

We are now in the tiny town of Villa O’Higgins, on the very narrow part of the South American continent and can almost see both the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans.  From here we have many more rivers to cross, ferryboats to take, bikes to push up steep hills and then on through the strong winds of Patagonia to our final destination of Ushuaia!  We are now praying for strong tailwinds (wind in Patagonia can get up to 150 miles per hour, so we may make the last 800 miles very quickly!) to blow us the rest of the way south and onward to see the penguins.

Bikin’ On,

Ralph & Pat

16,074 total miles on trip to date – 1678 miles in Argentina

´60s vintage Ford Falcon - there are bizillions of these in Argentina

From Mendoza we biked south for 60 miles through something different– TREES! Tons of tall poplars planted along the roadside in front of fields of garlic. We were passed by truck after truck heaped with harvested garlic. Then it was back to more of what we’d reluctantly grown accustomed to in Argentina– DESERT!   (We thought biking in the desert would be sooo easy after dropping in altitude from Peru and Bolivia 10,000 feet, and it was easy,  except for the sweltering heat, tarantula’s, scorpians under the tent, lighting and hailstorms to outrun, no shelter, strong headwinds, not much water and marginal food and supplies.)

Now that´s a lotta garlic!

One of our curious readers asked if Ralph could do his trick on his left foot – so here it is – TADAA!!!  And Pat, always the competitive one, will now try it with no feet!!!

At Aguas del Toro, a pretty reservoir behind a hydroelectric dam ,we were invited by a very hospitable Ricardo, his family and friends to stay for the night in a cabin and join them all for a delicious barbecue of steak, homemade sausage, homemade brats, etc.

The next day after more miles of desert,we came face-to-face with a thunderhead that rapidly grew as we tried to out-bike it. We were caught on the very edge of it, but still got pelted with stinging pea-sized hail accompanied by buckets of rain. In the Argentina desert of course, it doesn’t rain very often. But when it does, it really downpours, causing the ditches to run full like rivers of chocolate milk and flows of mud and debris across the highway.

YIKES!!! here comes the storm!

Note the kilometer post shows only 3022 K to Ushuaia!

creepy crawlers of the desert!

The next few days we rolled through more scrub desert – yes it is no more exciting than it sounds – camping most every night. One night we even found a spot with a small stream with a patch of grass to camp at. We haven’t had green grass to camp on since north of Salta. It was a great treat to be able to walk barefoot around camp. Most nights though, we would camp near or under bridges at river crossings. They are nicer than they sound. It is usually cooler by the river, the breezes follow the river valley, the bridge offers shade from the sun, and we can usually be out of sight of passing traffic. One afternoon we had a herd of curious goats watch our every move from a safe 25 yards away. We should mention, besides miles and miles of sand and scrub brush, the desert is home to many herds of domestic goats (and occasional sheep), that graze free-range style. Occasionally we would see gouchos herding them, but usually they would be wandering unattended. Another animal we have seen frequently since the mountains of northern Peru is the parrot. You may think like us, that parrots live in the jungle, but we have seen big flocks of parrots (up to 100 in a flock) all throughout the mountains of Peru, the river valleys of southern Bolivia,and now throughout the desert of Argentina. Parrots in Peru were the typical bright green and of typical size, while the parrots of Argentina are up to 18 “ long and are colored dark green/gray with lighter color accents on their heads and tail tips. All of them are extremely noisy with an unnerving screech. Creepy crawly little things also make the desert home – scorpions and 4” hairy tarantulas – making walking to the john behind a bush an exciting adventure.

parrots on a wire watching and screaching at us!

Just past Las Lajas we started to climb, and by the end of the day we were in the high country heading toward the ridge of the Andes near the Chilean border. The creeks and rivers turned crystal clear, the air turned cooler and Pat began to smile again! The first night in the mountains we camped in a grove of huge “monkey-puzzle” trees – trees we saw throughout this mountainous area. They have branches that are covered with green needles that look like leaves from an artichoke. Each branch is up to 4 feet long, brilliant green, and swoops downward, then curls up toward the tip looking like a monkey tail hanging from the tree. Many of them only have branches near the top of a very tall trunk making them look like a giant sprung umbrella.

monkey-puzzle trees

A roadside shrine provided us with warm bottles of water and we took another shrine bottle shower (Randy needs to sign them up for “Warmshowers”)! Throughout Argentina, people leave bottles of water at makeshift shrines along the road. This was started as a memorial to a lady supposedly sought her soldier husband, and while traveling through the desert died of thirst. Her body was found 3 days later in the desert with her baby still alive and nursing. So now people have created thousands of these shrines alongside the roads throughout Argentina and you will sometimes see up to one hundred or more bottles of water laying in and around the shrine. We’ve heard some truck drivers never miss a trip without stopping to leave a bottle of water! In a pinch we use this water for showers and for drinking (after filtering it). We feel since it was left symbolically to save a life, it is okay to save ours with it.

We continued south, following the Andean ridgeline that separates Argentina from Chile, through mountain valleys that are strikingly similar to the Colorado Rockies. Many of the flowers are the same as we see at home. We followed several river valleys and eventually got to San Martin de Los Andes, a quaint town with Swiss chalet-style buildings. We spent Ralph’s 52^nd birthday at beautiful cozy cabana near a large lake at the edge of town.

beautiful flowers of Argentina

After that nice, relaxing break we headed south on the beautifully forested Seven Lakes Road past crystal clear blue fjord-type lakes and equally clear creeks. We got caught in a rainstorm but found shelter in a picnic pavilion at a campground on the shore of a large lake. The rain continued to pour hard into the night, so we and 6 other folks spent the night sleeping around a toasty warm pot belly stove. We woke to an amazing thing we hadn’t seen for almost a year now, SNOW – all the way down to our little shelter. (We were praying for a white Christmas – but it was only December 20th, so a little earlier than we expected!) It was absolutely gorgeous, but made for some brisk riding.

From there we wound through the woods and along more lakes, spending a night at the wonderful Italian Hostel in Villa La Angostura, and eventually got to Bariloche. There we met our friend David from South Africa and his friend Mo, both touring on motorcycles. We also met our friends Randy and Nancy who are biking the same route we are, and 2 Swiss biking couples. One Swiss couple has done the same route we have, but had a baby along the way (they took 3 years off in Vancouver), and their son is now 5 and rides in a cart behind his dad’s bike or rides his bike that is attached behind his mom’s bike! Needless to say both Mom and Dad are in great shape. We had a fantastic International Christmas dinner with everyone.   (Actually it was a BBQ in the backyard on the green grass with roses blooming on the bushes! )  It was wonderful to be surrounded by great friends on Christmas when we were far away from family.

Yeah - lakes and mountains again!

From here we only have about 1600 miles left on this incredible journey. We will head south through a bit more of Argentina, then probably spend New Years biking on the Camino Austral in Chile (a road that meanders along the Pacific ocean side of the Andes).

Ho – Ho – Ho – pe you all had a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all!!!

Bikin’ On, Pat & Ralph

Only a little over 3000 miles to go!!!

We crossed the border of Argentina, our 13^th country on this epic journey at LaQuiaca. The first thing we saw was a highway sign, “Ushuaia 5131 Km”, only a little over 3000 miles to go!

wild landscape in northern Argentina

Upon entering Argentina we noticed some real differences that we did not see in the last year throughout the rest of Latin America! We actually had a very clean hotel room with a hot shower, heated floors, 2 bath towels, 2 hand towels and toilet paper without even have to beg for them! What a country! To further amaze us, we had a great dinner at a local restaurant. A thin steak the size of a plate topped with thin slices of ham, cheese, tomatoes and oregano (think of a pizza whose crust is a steak – actually really tasty!) with mashed potatoes and liter-size dark beers – a biker-size dinner that wasn’t greasy and filled us up! And – And – AND – the waiter brought everything as quickly as in a U.S. restaurant, which is unheard of in the rest of Latin America where the wait is typically around an hour from when you order. We met a very helpful Argentinian couple with blue eyes and blond hair (this is very different, because we only saw people with dark eyes and dark hair for the past year!)

We started the ride in northern Argentina on the high puma – the high (11,000′) arid, windy grasslands. From here we dropped steadily through a desert canyon of fantastic sedimentary rock outcrops – steeply pitched flatirons of red, yellow, orange, green and tan. There were also 20′ to 40′ tall cactus studded with huge starburst-like 10 inch diameter white flowers – absolutely gorgeous! Each day brought strong headwinds in the late afternoon, which we soon found out was typical of this area, so we decided to adjust our schedule to be done biking before they kick up – meaning up at 4:30 and biking by 6:00 AM. Yes – it’s as fun as it sounds.

23 degrees south

Are we in Utah?

more Utah looking country

On our third day biking in Argentina we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn. It seems like only yesterday we crossed the Equator with our friend Christian. After steadily dropping through more of the beautiful desert canyon we ended up on a single lane road winding through tobacco country, then forested hills where we spent a night camping on grass in a municipal campground. Green grass – we haven’t camped on green grass since Colorado! Argentina is full of good, inexpensive municipal campgrounds. From here we dropped down into the town of Salta, where we finally met Randy and Nancy, whose website www.hobobiker.com we’ve been following for the whole trip. They have ridden here from Inuvik, Canada and have been a wealth of information and support for us!

One day off in Salta and we were turning our wheels south again through yet another desert canyon with red rock walls that reminded us of Utah, then on to Cafayate, a nice touristy desert town surrounded by vineyards. Have we (hic! hic!) mentioned the wine in Argentina – some of the best red wines we’ve ever had – and cheaper than bottled water! Tough choice! From Cafayate, we dropped even lower (now we are biking around 2000′ in elevation which seems easy after being around 12,000′ in all of Peru and Bolivia!) and into very hot desolate desert, until San Blas, where it felt like we passed through the gates of Hell (over 100 degrees with a hot blast furnace wind – and that was at night, when we were trying to sleep! Nearly toxic heat! After talking to some locals, we decided to get off Route 40, the road we had been taking, and veer east, then south to avoid more super hot desert. We rode to La Rioja on “the road of silence” – not much traffic there!

WINE

bordom after miles in the desert!

Leaving La Rioja on Thanksgiving day in 75 degrees by 7 AM led to another problem with Argentina biking! Thrown into this toxic, hot mix is the fact that we are traveling through sparsely inhabited country. There are very few villages along our route to get food and water and to further complicate it Argentinians take siesta time seriously. Most stores and restaurants are closed from noon until 6 PM or later (most restaurants don’t even open for the day until 9:00 PM!) about the time we really need food and cold drinks. So, needless to say, about the time most Americans were sitting down to a big fat turkey dinner, we were in the middle of the desert in a 95 degree concrete bus shelter eating white bread pastrami sandwiches and chopped up warm veggies!

Thanksgiviing day - we were grateful for a bus shelter out of the hot sun!

and grateful for the full bottles of water people leave at the shrines all thru Argetina.

Through this section, we did some big days – up before daylight, biking by daybreak to try and get in lots of miles before the afternoon wind and heat got us! We were lucky though, and had 3 days of clouds and and some rain which is unheard of in this area, and made it to Mendoza, which is almost 1100 miles into Argentina! We will head south after a couple days off.

From here we look forward to biking out of the hot desert which will take another 7 or 8 days, then will be in the Lake District, which will be a welcomed switch, with hills, trees, lakes and snow-capped peaks to gaze at once again.

Argentina is very different than the rest of Latin America that we’ve seen so far. The people of Argentina are very helpful and friendly. Even though it feels more like a first world country here, over half the population still lives in poverty, seen mostly in the countryside. We still see some horse-drawn carts, mud huts alongside the roads and some primitive methods of farming, but there are many more private vehicles driven here and real live grocery stores! Argentinians have the schedule of vampires and Edgar Winter – “they only come out at night!” Most towns we ride through during the day are totally deserted with shops all closed up – like a scene out of “Twilight zone”. Then, about the time we are in our tent or hotel room drifting off to sleep, the whole town wakes up and goes full bore until the wee hours. Definitely not geared toward the biker’s schedule, instead, adapted to avoid the desert heat and/or a thriving economy.

Like Ralph says, “A bad day of biking still beats the best day at work!”

Bikin’ On,

Ralph & Pat

From here we had a smooth ride downhill for another 15 miles to the end of the peninsula, where we boarded a cargo barge to cross to the mainland only a half mile away.  These rickety wooden barges, looking like they were built 100 years ago, carry cars and even buses across all day long creaking to and fro, taking 30 minutes to cross!

From here we rode 80 miles south of the lake (had a great tailwind) and stayed in El Alto on the flats above LaPaz, the capitol city of Bolivia.  The next morning there was a protest march through the streets.  Thousands and thousands of indigeous farmers were marching for land reform.  They took up 3 solid lanes of traffic and marched past our hotel for almost an hour.  (Many of them marched from Lake Titicaca, 80 miles, during the few days before).  By the time they reached Lapaz, they were over 1 million strong!  Their march was sucessful in getting congress to address their issues!  The protest and marching continued for the next 3 days! We didn´t mind the marching because it totally stopped traffic, so we were able to bike on traffice-free roads to Potosi, over 400 miles into Bolivia, in a quick 6 days! 

 From Potosi we bused back to Cusco, Peru to meet Ralph´s sister Linda and her friend, Maggie to hike with us on a trek in the Andes.  We spent the next 5 days hiking the Salkantay trail to the amazing Inca site of Machu Picchu.  Machu Picchu is one of the 7 wonders of the world, built in the 1400´s and then abondoned when the Spanish invaded in the early 1500´s.  It was grown over with vines from the nearby jungle thus was hidden and never destroyed by the Spaniards, then re-discovered by an archeologist from the U.S. in 1911.  Amazing how they built this city on top of a nearly vertical-sided mountain 600 years ago with very intelligent precision!  (This is hard to undertstand when modern-day Peru still has toilets that do not even flush in most places and most people live in mud houses with dirt floors!) 

Ralph and Lin above 15,000 feet! (air is thin!)

Machupicchu 11-30-08

After busing back to Potosi, we biked southwest for 3 more days to Uyuni on dirt-gravel roads through high red rock desert country at between 11,000 and 13,000 feet with a strong headwind and of course, lots of dust in our face!  Uyuni is at the edge of the ¨Solar de Uyuni¨ (Uyuni salt flats).   From here we took a 3 day round trip tour in a jeep, covering 500 miles of desert in southwest Bolivia. 

The Salt flats are the biggest in the world covering about 7,000 square miles!  It reminded us of the frozen lakes we use to go ice fishing and skating on in North Dakota — flat and white for miles and miles!  We visited an island of amazing giant cactus in the middle of the salt flats and stayed in a hotel made completely out of salt blocks (beautiful white walls!).  From here we travelled south onto stark rolling desert hills with steaming volcanoes.  The colors were surreal pastels (pinks, yellows, oranges, moss greens, white, tans).  We visited Lago Colorado with snowbanks of white mineralization (borax) that looked like ice and snow on the red water!  In the shallow lake were hundreds of pink flamingos!  We also visited an aquamarine colored lake, as geyser basin with boiling mudpots and sulfurous fumaroles, sat in nearby hotsprings- sipping wine, saw many llamas, vicunas (a wild cousin of the llama) and even a couple of emus (cousin of the ostrich!).  It was a wonderful 3 day tour booked through Andes Salt Expeditions.  We got to just sit back and enjoy the ride for a change!!!  They did all the meals (llama for lunch one day!) and provided places to sleep.  We were fortunate enough to have 2 other couples on the trip to share great stories, music and wine.  Mirka and Maciek from Poland and Sue and Rob from London were all great company to share on this long and rough adventure ride!  It was great fun and thank you all for making the trip a life-time memory for us!

Salt, not snow!

Cactus island looking out onto Salt flats!

Ready, set, fly!

Salvador Dali painting?

surreal landscape

From Uyuni, Pat met up with Mirka and Maceik for the 6 hour train ride to Tupiza, while Ralph biked the next 2 days thru the canyons where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid were gunned down by the Bolivian army after a robbery 100 years ago on Nov 8th!  This area is reminiscent of the wild west in the U.S. with bizarre geological formations, deep gorges, cactus forests against red rocks, dry dusty roads and endless wind!!!!  The bike route Ralph rode yoyoed between 11,000 and 14,000 feet – yahoo!!!  (Pat made a good choice!) 

Tupiza was the low point (elevation -wise) of our trip through Bolivia.  It sits way down at 10,000 feet!  From Tupiza we headed for the border climbing out of a beautiful red rock river canyon back up onto the altiplano, crossed through Villazon and into Argentina at dusk.  There we were greeted by a sign, “Ushuia 5131 Km”.  It is amazing to think that we only have about 3000 miles left to ride on this amazing journey!

Bolivia was a very unique country.  Most of it was high, dry altiplano desert.  We usually had a flat, straight road ahead of us with mountains far in the distance on either side.  We almost always were above 11,000 feet!  NIghts were cold and crisp and days were warm, but certainly not hot.  The air was parched dry and we both developed the “Bolivian hack”, a cough brought on by super dry air and lots of dust.  The landscape of southern Bolivia, especially the salt flats area, was surreal in its pastel colors and stark expansiveness.  It is like no other place we have ever been.  Harsh, stark beauty! 

Bolivia had far fewer people than Peru, but they appeared to be more poverty-stricken.  The people were much friendlier, which was a welcome switch.  The food was very bland and most meals were devoid of anything green.  Definitely, the stark scenery was the contry´s highlight for us. 

Only 2 countries to go!!!!!     Bikin´ On!      Ralph & Pat

Views, views and more views!!

A two day rest in Ayacucho was much appreciated.  Ayachucho is a small city with a nice colonial central area.  The town was rather touristy – which was a pleasant switch for us, since we`ve been out in the high country for a while and away from civilization.  Touristy town translates to international restaurants!   At this point we can´t even think about tolerating another typical Peruvian meal:  tough thin steak,  greasy fried chicken or equally greasy trout, over a bed of white rice, accompanied by the greasiest french fries you can imagine and not a green thing in sight!   This seems so bizarre to us when we are riding past fields of fruits and vegies every day!  Peruvian food has been the worst of our whole trip, so we took advantage of the restaurants here and had some great food!  We finally had spinach and green salads, great hamburgers (we hope it was beef and not llama or guinea pig!), and super desserts –Peru does know how to make desserts!  Their lemon pie stands  5” tall and is out of this world!!   We were also able to spend more time here with Anna and Alberto, the bikers from Spain we met. 

After leaving Ayacucho we headed into more high country to the south, and  climbed to 14,000´ onto the Pampa (high, grass-covered rolling hills at or above 13,000´).  We really enjoy the regions of Peru that are above 13,000´ because there are very few people living that high.  We see many elderly women here hearding their small flock of sheep and watching them graze day in and day out and at night hearding them back to their pen near the small rock and grass covered roof that she lives in!  This high country is much less decimated by overfarming and overgrazing and consequently is much more natural and pristine. 

Candy for the little boys!

The lofty altitude, although very pristine, also exposes us to big weather.  We spent a few tense late afternoons outpedaling  gargantuan thunderheads.  One night, literally seconds after setting up our tent and diving in we got caught in a major hailstorm.  When it was all over there was 2” of pea-sized hail covering the ground everywhere and our tent almost flattened!

after the hailstorm at 13,500´feet

Our week of camping and biking between Ayacucho and Abancay, made us feel much like yo-yos on bikes, climbing up to 14,000´, plunging down to 6,500´ at river crossings, then you guessed it, climbing back up to 14,000´.  We did this 3 times throughout the week, all on dirt and gravel roads that ranged from rough 4×4 type to super-smooth hardpacked dirt roads.  The scenery was incredible,  with snow-capped peaks in the distance and a feeling like we were biking on top of the world!   We finally hit pavement near Abancay, where we regrouped for a day at a beautiful  hotel.  It had endless hot water!!!  After days of camping we took some long showers!  We also got free wireless there, which is almost totally unheard of in Latin America.  It was wonderful to order bike parts, surf the web and make Skype calls in the comfort of a quiet hotel  lobby instead of the typically insanely noisy, dirty, hot internet cafes.

crosses in the sky

Peruvian lady weaving with backstrap loom

carrot washing process by stomping with feet in ditch of water along side of road

After Abancay the biking seemed so easy.  Pavement makes a huge difference!  We got to Cuzco in a couple of  days and once again enjoyed all the tourist town food.   We had never really enjoyed the tourist towns on this trip until Peru.  Now we look forward to them for our sanity, allowing us to hide in the crowd of white faces.  While in Cuzco we ran into a lady from Aspen, 2 guys from Telluride, friends we had met in Ecuador and their friend, and Dominique, a British biker  whose blog we had followed earlier on our trip.  He rode a tandem bike from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego and invited anyone to join him for an hour, a day , a week or longer, riding on the tandem with him.  He finished his trip several months ago and is now in Cuzco working as a guide.  Was great to share stories with him!

From Cuzco we decided to bolt for the border at Lake Titicaca.  At this point we  were really ready to be done with Peru:  the greasy food, the poor quality  of service and of any goods we bought, but most of all we were fed up with the typical Peruvian´s predjudiced attitude toward us.  It was relatively flat, easy riding.  I guess we are used to the altitude – I just said “easy riding” – we biked the whole time between 11,000´ and 14,500´ on this section!  The rural locals got particularly nasty along this stretch.  Middle school-age and high school-age kids would throw rocks at us and even tried a makeshift roadblock to stop us.  Ralph´s 4´stick (for dogs and the occasional Peruvian) came in handy to rapidly dissolve the roadblock.  Waving it high above his head while barrelling toward them at 20 mph worked nicely.  After riding through this section, we ran into 3 Argentinian riders that were trying to hitch a ride north to avoid this area, because the kids would actually rob cyclists who stopped at the roadblocks.  I guess we were lucky. 

After that incident we decided to hop a bus to the border.  Ralph was really fed up with Peruvian “hospitality”  and was ready to bust heads.  We don´t know what the inside of a Peruvian prison is like and Ralph decided he didn´t want to find out.  So we ended up at the border the next day, paid our $135 entrance fee (most other countries along the way have been free or at most $35!), and biked into Bolivia, the 12th country on our great adventure!  We biked along Lake Titicaca, a place whose wild name ranks right up there with Tegucigalpa and Timbuktu!   We will bike into Bolivia as far as possible before bussing back to Cuzco to meet Ralph´s sister and friend to hike to Machu Picchu near the end of the month.

Bike on!  Pat and Ralph