Telling tales!

We named our little silver car Tina.

We hired her for a galavant around some last parts of Patagonia we wanted to explore after the cycling was finished. We named her after the country that we had spent most time in on the whole trip. Argentina. Which means silver. And since our little hire car was silver, and pretty tiny, Tina seemed like the obvious choice.

We loved our adventure in Tina. We sped about the country, listening to Christmas Carols from our ipods, laughing at the ridiculous wind that tried to blow even poor Tina off the road or stop us opening her tinny doors and telling each other stories. Stories of our trip.

The End of the Line

What had begun with a wine fuelled idea in a bar in Hong Kong, grown over a more sober cup of tea with the inspiring Tracy and Andy, been planned in a cyclone of lycra purchasing, bike part assembly and internal panicking and then executed through months of leg spinning and general all round japery, was coming to an end.

We were about to head for the finish and conclude our thin red cycling line.

Time and the hour..

Perhaps it all started with the blizzard.

It was, after all, a fairly Shakespearean moment. There we were biking through the beginnings of the Argentine summer, heading for the sea and sand of the East coast, and being bombarded on the sides of our faces by vicious needles of ice. All around us was excrutiating emptiness. It was Macbeth´s `blasted heath´ writ large. If three broomstick waving witches had hoved into view, chucking frogs into cauldrons and chanting in rhyme I don´t think it could have been any more surreal.

I have often thought of Macbeth on this trip. Not because I feel a particular affinity with the regicidal monarch of Shakespeare´s imagination, but because his character says some pretty useful things.

My favourite, when the going was particularly tough, was ´Come what may, time and the hour runs through the roughest day´. Not perhaps something you want to churn out cheerily to your biking companion (who may hit you for your pompous literary mumblings as they push their bike up the day´s ninth gravel slope) but a quiet internal comfort that, however horrible the conditions, at some point the day would stop and presumably so would we!

10,000km

Finally - FINALLY - we left Sarmiento.

That is no particular reflection on what was the embodiment of your average, smallish, perfectly decent Patagonian town.  But to be brutally frank, there is only so much fulfillment you can get out of such a place.  Especially as we became increasingly conscious of the ever shrinking number weeks left of our trip.  And the sense of claustrophobia in a place like Sarmiento is only exacerbated by our well engrained sense of impotence against that wind.

We left fully five days after arriving.  Not many tourists are treated to such an experience.  There are no open top double decker bus tours of Sarmiento.  There aren't even any double decker buildings - they would get blown over.  After the second night, we had done Sarmiento's restaurants.  The liveliest bar in town peaks at 10.00am, when the gauchos doff their berets to fuel themselves for a day's work with shots of something not far removed from unleaded.

A Hitchin' Time Takes Spine

Patagonia, as you may have gathered by now, just wasn´t really designed with bicycles in mind.

Whether it´s good old Zephyrus the rock star, or the Broom of God that we encountered in February in Tierra del Fuego, or the -25c winter temperatures that we have heard about, it does its level best to make two wheels plus two pedals a poor choice of transport.  Either you freeze to death or get blown off the road.

So now that we are right in the thick of it, we are having to resist the temptation to face it off directly.  Swaggering into the teeth of it, with our guns (or paniers) swinging in their holsters, just isn´t an option.  Instead, we are having to outwit it with cunning and stealth and deviousness.  Or at least optimism.

Oh, and motorised vehicles.

The Curious Case of the Padded Pantaloons

Mr Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table.

"Well, Watson, what do you make of it?"

What could Watson make of it? He had been presented with a most singular narrative of which he, at present, could make no sense.

"I am afraid I must desire you to tell me the sorry saga again Holmes. I cannot see any logical explanation."

Holmes drained his coffee cup and placed it carefully upon the saucer. It clinked softly as if to punctuate the silence with a delicacy that directly related to the sensitivity of the matter in question.

Zephyrus

In Greek mythology the god of the west wind is Zephyrus.

Zephyrus is a handsome firm skinned youth with soft curly hair and gossamer gold tipped wings. He is considered generally to be sweet and gentle. He heralds balmy spring days, lightly kisses the cheeks of fair maidens and flutters the fronds of plants and trees in a playful, delicate manner. He is a wind you welcome with open arms.

He is a good wind.

Well, dear lovers of the classics, I have news for you.

NO HE AIN´T!!

He is a bad, bad, baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad wind.

Winding it up again

Our poor bikes.  Martin and La Pinguina, our trusty and beloved steeds for over 9,000km to the Mexican border, must have thought it was about time for a proper rest.  OK, so they had a few days puffing and steaming in California whilst we rambled around in a car.  But almost before the stiffness had eased from their spokes and chains, there they were back in another cardboard box; frozen in a couple of aeroplane holds; shoved in and out of Buenos Aires taxis and then - as if all that wasn´t enough - thrown onto an overnight bus down to Patagonia.  We really should be kinder to them.  They have been extraordinarily good to us.

But there is no rest for the wicked, not even the remarkably resilient steel-framed wicked.  Their holiday will have to wait for now.  They did at least get a full overhaul in Bariloche and looked as good as new.  But we are back on the road again.

Back in Argentina? Gorse we are

And so we reached the end of 10 special weeks in North America.

There was so little to dislike, so many truisms and fallacies about that part of the world disproved to us, so much to love about the West Coast.  The bike lanes and considerate drivers, the Pinot Noir and fresh salmon up North, the Giant Redwoods, the drive-thru coffee stands, the great cities of Seattle, Vancouver, San Fran and LA, the raw and underdiscovered coastlines of Oregon and Washington, the beaches of SoCal.  And just that ubiquitous cycling-is-good vibe pervading that side of the USA.  We met a wonderful selection of characters along the way, and caught up with (and indeed introduced each other to!) several of our most important friends who live there.  And then that mad week of Disneyland, Vegas and LA.

By the time we arrived at LAX on November 14th, complete with our now familiar caravan of cheap/old/unwanted/large suitcases and heavily taped bike boxes, it had almost become a blur.  But one that it was time to move on from.