Going The Distance

Gaiman is a perfect little village. The sun blazes, a fat river runs through it flanked by lazy willow trees.

The mad thing about it is the fact that it is a Welsh settlement. Dragon flags emblazon signs, flags and buildings; many of the written words are in both Spanish and Welsh, and every so often, you’ll hear the gentle lilt of spoken Welsh. Very bizarre.

I’m afraid that I’m going to have to write more about this when my brain is not totally hollowed out by 8 hours on the bike. We got a great interview with the town’s most beloved couple with 58 years of marriage under their belt and both fluent Welsh speakers.

Alvina and Virgilio Zampini, despite their surname, are pretty much as Welsh as they come in these parts. Well, Virgilio (as the name might suggest) is son of an Italian father, but his mother is pure Welsh. Alvina’s parents came over on the 1860 boatload from Wales. She grew up speaking Welsh and still speaks Welsh today to her children and in her home. When we asked in town who to interview, everyone without fail pointed to these two: married for 58 years, both have written detailed books about the Welsh story here in Patagonia, one of Alvina’s books is 200 pages of detailed family trees of each of the families in the Welsh settlement.

We knock on the door of their home. It’s opened by a well-dressed, kind-eyed elderly gentleman. We explain what we are after (“This is a very unusual request, but we hope you’ll indulge us…”) and he smiles patiently. After we finish the shpiel, his wife arrives and asks us into her home, then to repeat our request. It turns out the kind-eyed Virgilio suffered a serious stroke in 2002 and has not been the same man since. That said, he seems to me to be very with it – he has full mobility, helping Mike with stepladders and the like. He also seems to understand everything, though his wife explains that he will only ever say small amounts.

We interview them about their story. Alvina grew up in Gaiman, speaking Welsh at home, and went to BA to study to be a nurse. She left behind a fiance, though when she returned, he had married someone else. Cheeky blighter. At that point, she met her first cousin’s son, Virgilio, who had just returned from the seminary at Rome. With the dispensation of the church, they were permitted to marry (as we flicked through the scores of family trees, it was obvious that fewer than 10 children per family is a rare thing). They married and moved to teach at a school for orphans where no one else wished to teach. The two of them lived in the wilderness with no electricity or running water for 4 years, but loved it. They had each other.

They had 3 children, moved back to Gaiman where Virgilio became a history teacher at the local school. This allowed him to write his books, he studied to get his masters in the evenings which meant little time for the family, but again they got through it. He taught at the school until his stroke 8 years ago.

Alvina is small and incredibly warm. She rests her hand on my arm at the end of every sentence, she refers to me as “querida” (dear one) from the moment we appear in her life, and generally, I can imagine she is a wonderful grandmother. When she speaks in English, which she speaks fluently but says she has little occasion to use, she speaks with a charming Welsh accent. She’s wonderful. She talks to Mike and I about the arrival of the Welsh in this harsh land where the winds blow hard and it rarely rains. The Welsh got the permission of the Argentinians to settle and cultivate the land, and they were the first settlers of this land – even the indigenous people were based on the West coast of the South American continent. The Welsh established themselves, and made a go of it. Some moved across to the more fertile, more Alpine Western part of Southern Argentina, near the Andes in a settlement called Trewellyn, but some stuck it out. Totally fascinating. The village is lovely too, I can see why it would be an attractive place to live.

The couple are enchanting. Though Virgilio speaks little, his eyes suggest that he understands, and he will often look over at Alvina with total adoration, then lean his head down on her shoulder, smiling. She refers to him as “Rubio” (the blond one) and looks after him without smothering him. She says that he is not given much more time to live, but that he’s better now than he was after the stroke itself – though not like the man he was before, a fierce intellect. There is so much love in this home. When I ask for advice, Alvina says she can’t give advice, every couple has its own secrets. And in that, she is not wrong, but she is adamant that even after 58 years, she knows no more about the secret of marriage than we do.

More driving. The wind now is so strong that it is pummelling us from the west. All we can do, as we are blasted and Mike has to apply every ounce of dedication to moving us forward (his cheek is lifted and twisted by gusts of wind), is think about Mark Beaumont doing this on a bike. With no hard shoulder and a sidewind which is taking 30kmph off our speed.

We eventually arrive in the picturesque Welsh village of Gaiman.

After another long driving day of real heat and flat, endless landscapes, we make it to San Antonio Oueste. The first time we have seen the sea since just after Nazca in Peru, and the first time we have seen the Atlantic since New York. Amazing, we’re finally covering serious ground!

The Atlantic – actually in Puerto Madryn, but the sea was harder to find in San Antonio Oueste

We leave the armadillos and head into town to wait out the worst of the heat with a bit of email catchup. During which time, a text comes through from Mark on our English mobile saying that he has broken a spoke 15km outside Santa Rosa and needs us to collect replacement ‘nipples’ for him (the bits that hold the spokes in place). Fine, glad to help. Except that all shops, especially in this heat, shut for a huge chunk of the middle of the day for siesta. Thankfully, as we ask for directions to a bikeshop, a man on the street says he knows of a shop which is right beside the owner’s home, so we can just ring the doorbell and wake him up. Which is what we do: Mike is asking for nipples from a man with his nipples out. (After Mike tries to ask for ‘pezones’ – nipples in Spanish – to the man’s discomfort, it turns out the Spanish word for bike nipples is “nipples”, pronounced ‘nipp-lez’).

We catch up with Mark – again! Shame! – about 30km outside town. Even with a broken bike, he can shift it. Mark, post-this Aconcagua climb, is a lot more like us in his attitude, and with the heat and the broken bike, we all decide to head to the National Park 5km down the road, write the day off and spend the day with some beer. (Well, we do. Mark has a glass)

Swimming in the disturbing cloudy pool, beer and chat. A great evening with the great company of Mr B – unusual for a man who spends months with only his own company to be so fascinating. Just in case we didn’t say earlier, Mark holds the world record for the fastest cycle round the world. When he puts his mind to something, he’s pretty damn good at doing it.

At one point, Mark says (to me), “Do you ever miss female company?” to which Mike replies, in a heartbeat, “Yeah”. At which point the two of them fell about laughing. Git.

The bastard was that both Mark’s bike and our own got thwarted by the espinas (thorns) which fall from the trees in the park so both of us have to replace flat tyres. Very irritating.

We leave Mark to finish his awesome feat and head off to the windy south.

One of our ambitions here in Argentina is to get an interview with a gaucho couple. A full on, costume-wearing old school Argentinian cowboy and his wife. My father helped us by getting hold of the rural association here in Santa Rosa, in La Pampa, and asking them to help us find a couple. They came up with a suggestion and so we arranged an interview.

Only when we arrive do we realise this is not exactly ‘on brief’: a wonderful couple, but young, who run a dairy farm but certainly don’t have gauchos on their farm. Hey ho, lovely people and a nice chance to see the local countryside.

They keep lots of local animals because they work with local schools and the children come to see the animals. And so it is that I meet my very first armadillo.

I’m in love.

In Spanish, an armadillo is a “peludo” – literally, a “hairy”. And hairy they are! First, our new friend Ramon brings out Marta, a large female armadillo. She’s curled in a helmet-sized ball and he holds her up by her claws to uncurl her. He plops her down on her feet and she just sits quietly. Ramon tells us that they are native to La Pampa and they eat chickens. At the side of their armour, bony rib-like extensions grow out which he says they use to cut the chickens’ necks once they have leapt on them. It’s hard to imagine the sluggishly docile Marta leaping on anything, even the chickens agree as they stroll leisurely round her.

Then Ramon brings out her little son, Ernesto. I’m gobsmacked by how adorable this little fellow is, scarcely bigger than my palm. When Ramon puts him on the ground beside his mother, he shoots off like a little bullet and the chickens and geese scatter with a flurry of panicked sqwawks. Ramon quickly scoops him up. Ernesto is not mad keen on this so curls into a little ball and promptly fires out a poo. I then get to hold him. More poo. This is my kind of guy.

Ramon then shows us his favourite trick for the kids: putting a chicken to sleep. He picks up a big black hen, takes her neck and forces is under her wing, he then holds her tightly with both hands and, with his arms stretched, he rotates her in big circles. Her head emerges reluctantly at one point and Ramon shoves it back under the wing and starts the process again. After about a minute of rotating her round him, he puts her on the ground and it is as though the chicken is dead. He lifts her leg up and lets it drop heavily, completely lifeless. The chicken remains in this state for about 2 minutes, then lifts its head out from under its wing, open its vacuous eyes, orientates itself bewilderedly, then wanders off. Extraordinary. Ramon explains its dizziness that does it, but that the kids genuinely believe the chicken is asleep and they love it.

3 wheels bad, 4 hooves good

We do an interview with Erica and Sergio who run the place. They’re both blond, good-looking and 3 beautiful Aryan children run around the place. It’s not really the crusty-faced gaucho who we were hunting for, but hell, why not do an interview since we’re here. 11 years of marriage after 8 years of dating. They first met when she was 14 (hence the 8 years of waiting) and he was 16. She never ever wanted to live on a farm, but somehow he convinced her and they live on a gorgeous place. Last year, they decided to take guests too, so have opened up a little spare house where visitors stay and live on the farm with them. The morning we are there, a French couple are staying and they have just returned from a ride across the Pampas to start the day.

The two of them laugh together often, say that setting the farm up has at times been very hard, but that it’s all good. They have three children: 2 boys (11 and and a girl, 5. The boys are both Argentinian champions at triathlon in their age categories. Pretty rad. Sergio is a triathlete and at the end, he likens marriage to an endurance sport saying that there are great parts of it when you feel like everything is going well, and there are harder bits where you have to put your head down, focus and get through them together. I like that analogy, having been a marathon widow for a while when Mike was training for the Marathon des Sables 2 years ago. Not, mind you, that I’m an endurance athlete!

We catch up with Mark Beaumont, the man doing the same journey as us (in the same time) but on a bike. Oh the shame of that sentence… “we catch up with Mark”. Here is a man who not only cycles like shit off a shovel, but has managed to climb the two highest peaks in the Americas (Denali in the North, Aconcagua in the South) – and still he’s ahead of us. I blame Bolivia.

On this boiling day, he’s cycling in the bright sunlight and going pretty damn fast. His hair is considerably bigger since we saw him last, apparently the producer of his BBC programme wants continuity. Plus, Mark can’t be arsed to find someone to cut it.

We set up a few shots and film him then agree to meet him in the nearest town, Santa Rosa.

Mike then heads into town to find a mechanic. Mike and his mechanics. He leaves Mark and I for a few hours while he changes the jets back to sea-level (125 / 40) – he acknowledges that he should have done so earlier (bad boy). He also fixed the silencer of the exhaust – which had been hanging out like a haemorrhoid  for the last couple of hundred kms. And changes the oil, motor, gear box and transmission.

Now time to cover some ground. The bottom chunk of Argentina just stretches on and on and on with little happening between settlements. We need to put some serious driving days in so that we can start to cover it. So off we go.

Driving days are fairly dull to report: I’m down in my little bath-shaped world, Mike is navigating everything that the road, the weather and the locals throw at us. I’m in charge of what we listen to – a headphone splitter means that we can both listen to the same thing. We love our podcasts of late – the hours and hours of driving pass much faster when divided into hour long chunks of riveting chat.

The difficulty with this batch of driving days (to and from Cordoba) is the heat. The temperature is a sweltering 39′c which makes for very sweaty days in the sidecar. The wind blowing into our faces as we drive is oven-hot and there’s not a cloud in the sky.

I enshroud myself in nuclear-bunker-wall quantities of suncream.

We pitch our tent just off a petrol station forecourt and pass a night filled with the rumblings of trucks and the crapping of birds on the tent. Good times.

Camping at gas station, Malena. View of tent.

Camping at gas station, Malena. View from tent.

Ale’ left us. We knew the moment would come, but it was deeply sad as we watched his little motorized 250cc hairdryer whizz off down the sunny Cordoban streets.

We had arranged to have lunch with Mike, the Englishman we had met at the Argentinian border. He was staying at a lovely looking 4* hotel called The Windsor in the centre of town. When we arrived, he insisted on treating us to a room for the night. What utter utter bliss: a bed wider than 3 pillows’ worth and so enormous that Mike and I swam in it.

The four of us, with Mike’s girlfriend Lidy, headed to the home of the best asado in town and settled in for the afternoon. We then stumbled back, watched a film, and slept like logs in an ocean of bed. Bliss. Thank you Mike.

Mike and Liddy, driving into salta

‘Jackson’ is a very useful word coined by our incomparable friend, Austin Vince. He has ridden a motorbike round the world twice so he knows his shit when it comes to life on the road. www.mondoenduro.com

Jackson – a noun and a verb. Definition: a random human being.

That’s it. A random human being. I had the pleasure of hearing Austin using the word in Moab, Utah, when we were looking for someone to take a photo of the four of us (with Lois, his wife) and he said “let’s ask this Jackson here” and pointed to a guy at a nearby drive-thru cash machine (which is a blog entry in itself, but not now…)

The reason that I bring this up is that ARGENTINA IS FULL OF JACKSONS. I love the place, don’t get me wrong, but they really really love the bike. Every single time we stop – to get petrol, to get directions, to ask about a hotel – the Jacksons SWARM. Mike left me to buy a bottle of water a couple of days ago and when he came back, there were 15 people around me. Amazing. “De donde vienen?” is always the opener (where are you from? – though with badly spelt Spanish) then it gets on to ‘where are you going?’, ‘how many cylinders is the engine?’ (these Jacksons know their shit) and ‘what brand is this?’. All of which, I have finely polished answers to in Spanish.

The intransitive verb use is “to be Jacksoned”. Mike will sometimes get back from paying for petrol or whatever, and say “sorry you got so Jacksoned”.On the whole, Mike gets really stressed out by the Jacksons whereas I tend to suffer fools (Jacksons) gladly so end up being the one who answers the endlessly identical questions. Such is marriage, folks, each one has their role…

We drive all day from Simoca to Cordoba. The day is blindingly hot: 39′c. We’re with Ale’ and later British Mike and his girlfriend, Lidy on their rented Transalp cross our paths and we end up in convoy. All good. The driving is long and flat, but the sun shines with gusto and the heat feels Southern European.

Ale’, Mike (Clear) and I have organised to meet up with our biker friend, Sergio. Ale was with him when we met them both in El Alto, outside La Paz, and we all travelled together for a few days on the way out of Bolivia. Sergio, who is an architect in Cordoba, had promised us a true Argentinian parilla (BBQ) at his place.

We arranged to meet Sergio just off the city’s huge periferico so that he could lead us to his house. There he was, leaning against his car, looking so urban, so un-biker, so unlike the man who had left us a week before on his 650, dressed in black bikegear. Here he was a normal person, in his normal car. Virtually unrecognisable.

Allow me to digress for a minute here. When Mike and I knew that we were going to do this trip, we went along to a long distance motorbike talk at the biker hangout, the Ace Cafe in Park Royal, northwest London. We decided to go by car as it was rainy and potentially icy, so turned up in my grandmother’s purple Corolla wearing normal clothes, to be greeted by a SEA of motorbikes and people clad in leather. I have never been so intimidated in my life. I thought we were going to be killed. I felt so out of place, I hated every minute of it. It reminded me of how i felt for 2 years with braces.

But the thing that I didn’t know then that I know now is that bikers are part of the one of the kindest, more community-minded groups that I have ever been lucky enough to be part of. Bikers wave to each other when driving, bikers greet each other in petrol stations, bikers talk to other bikers in restaurants and on the street. Like JOrge in Santa Cruz who saw us on telly and came to find us to invite us to have dinner with 30 bikers who’d love to know our story, bikers love to exchange tales.

Dr Helen Fisher (who is the key to this whole mad adventure of ours – she did the original brainscans with neurologist Dr Lucy Brown) has this theory that there are four types of human beings: explorers, builders, negotiators and directors. She uses that to calculate compatibility in romantic relationships, and one of her findings is that explorers can only date explorers – they have both to have that hunger for new experiences (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Fisher_(anthropologist).

Well, bikers are kind of the same too.

Everyone who has done any kind of distance biking (that can range from a weeklong road trip away to round the world twice, etc) The kind of person who is prepared to drop everything and set off into the horizon is the kind of person who is going to get on well with someone else you is also prepared to do the same. All along the route, we have ended up gathering bikers, becoming part of bigger groups which then disperse as people go their own ways at their own speeds, but friendships are made, advice is given, and it’s generally totally wonderful – an honour even – to be part of this community. They’re not intimidating at all.

That’s just the leather…

So, back to Cordoba. We get to Sergio’s house and he is obviously a man who knows how to parilla. He has two fires going, one is laden will burning hot coals, the other is lower and awaiting action. Which he quickly provides in the form of a mountain of meat. We spend a wonderful evening eating our body weight in meat and generally being smutty in our basic but adequate Spanish.