Going The Distance

Day starts with an email – we’re front page of El Patagonico!

When we crossed the border into Argentina, we discussed the type of couples we wanted to talk to in this country. And from the beginning, we knew that we wanted to investigate the other side of the Falklands story.

The Falklands War started on Friday, 2 April 1982 with the Argentine invasion and occupation of the Falkland Islands and South Georgia, and ended with the Argentine surrender on 14 June 1982. The war lasted 74 days, and resulted in the deaths of 255 British and 649 Argentine soldiers, sailors, and airmen, and three civilian Falklanders. It is the most recent conflict to be fought by the UK without any allied states and the only Argentine war since the 1880s.

The Argentine soldiers were largely young conscripts from across the country. Fearing a long siege, the Argentine army restricted food supplies to its soldiers and there are many stories of huge cruelty within the Argentinian army. Many of the young men were sent to fight against the British trained forces with only 2 hours of training on how to work their guns. Mike recalls, in his military training at school, the leader of the training talking about the horror of having mortally bayonetted an Argentine soldier in a Falklands trench during combat.

The memory of the war is very alive in Patagonia. In fact, it’s very alive in the whole of Argentina, but throughout Patagonia, there are monuments, flags and signs proclaiming “Las Malvinas son Argentinas”. Talk to anyone and they have an opinion about it. People talk about the war and its memory as an open wound.

We phoned the biggest veterans’ association in the state of Santa Cruz, based in Rio Gallegos, the Asociacion Centro de Veteranos de Guerra de Malvinas “Soldado Jose H. Ortega” (named after the first soldier from the Santa Cruz province to fall) and they invited us to their headquarters for 1.30pm today.

We arrive at the small building, expecting to meet with a secretary, explain what we are doing, him suggest a couple, then we arrange a meeting. Not at all. We enter the small room to find it full to bursting with men sitting around a table, perhaps 20 of them. The walls of the room are covered with black and white photos, posters, photos of faces, the paraphernalia of war, flags. I find it very emotional, to be honest. The idea of war is so horrific, and these men are all still relatively young (in their late 40s, early 50s) even nearly 30 years after the war. Something about the fact that they are there, laughing and chatting, unified by the horrors of an experience which changed every one of them 28 years ago, and they have welcomed us - from the nation which they fought against - into their sanctuary, makes my eyes well up. I find it very emotional, and I choke as I talk. Later they explain that the war was politically motivated, it’s not individuals they have a problem with.

It’s not immediately clear what is going on. It turns out that it’s a press conference, eventually. A local man is going to run a marathon on the Falklands islands for the veterans, and they’ve called a press conference. So we’re part of the press for a bit. It’s a bit confusing.

Finally, the crowd clears and we ask about couples. There are two couples in the room, and both agree to be interviewed. One married after the war, the other before.

Rosy and Fernando met 3 years after the war. Fernando was 19 during the war, and was a professional soldier rather than a conscript. They met at a dance, she liked the cut of his jib. They started going out and married after 3 years, they have 5 children.

Fernando says that the hideousness of war has made him appreciate every minute that he has. He says that post-Malvinas war, many couples divorced. He said that men were so affected by the war that they simply couldn’t care about their wives. He says “I’m lucky that she understands me. The pain that we have stays with us. The wound that we have does not bleed, but it’s deep within us. And as time goes by, with her and with my kids and my grandchildren of the future, our life becomes increasingly positive”.

She says that as a couple, they are three: him, her and the Malvinas. The war is something which is always with them, and she has become very active in the association too. They continue the fight to return the Malvinas to the Argentina.

Teresa and Nicolas have been married 30 years. They were married before the war, and Teresa had a 2 year old son and a 3 month old baby when war broke out and Nicolas had to leave to fight. He, like Fernando was a professional soldier. He’s older than Fernando and was a higher rank. (One of the things that the association says is that here in Santa Cruz, they are all friends, rank doesn’t matter – whereas in other provinces, ranks of veterans often only associate with other vets of the same rank).

Nicolas and Teresa both thought that he was leaving for a training exercise. It was only when he had gone, and she was taking the two baby boys back up to be with her family that she saw the demonstrations of support for the soldiers and the Malvinas cause. She couldn’t believe it, she felt vulnerable and alone. She starts to cry at the memory and Nicolas puts his arm around her and holds her head close to him.

He was able to send her postcards every two weeks. There was one point when she had no news of him and again, she sobs at the memory and said that she thought he was dead.

When he got back, he didn’t want to talk about what he had gone through. Still, to this day, when his children ask him about the war, he tells them to go and talk to Fernando and other friends from the veterans association.

They say that the biggest thing that they have is their children. Like Fernando, Nicolas agrees that after what he has been through, he realises what is important in his life. His children – 6 of them – are his whole world.

We’re just burning up the miles now. I take my place in the sidecar, wrapped up like an onion – in the absence of correct cold weather clothing, Mike and I have opted for layers. So I shoehorn myself into the sidecar like a puffed up Michelin Man, do up the sidecar cover and settle in for the long haul. Mike puts on his cheapy Costan Rican wellies, all the jumpers we have, the waterproof trousers (every little helps) and off we set for 8 hours driving. iPhone is fully loaded with all our favourite podcasts and off we set into the windy Patagonian wilderness.

Thankfully no rain. We’re just in “get this done” mode, not really thinking about what awaits us at the end of the journey, just head down, drive on…

Rio Gallegos is a reasonably sized city. We plan to spend two days here because we want to find Argentinian veterans of the Falklands war.

As we drive into town, looking for a place to stay, Mike swerves suddenly to the side of the road. “Oh my God! I have to get a photo, that’s hilarious!”

Tit Icecream. Oh how we laughed. (NB The Jacksons staring at us in the window. They’re everywhere)

Claudio, the journalist, organises a local interview for us. He’s the first journalist in the whole time that we have been on the road (there have been around 15) who has helped us to find an interview in any way, let alone organise one for us.

Petrol’s the story in Comodoro, so petrol’s the couple in Comodoro. He worked for YPF, the now-private petroleum company based in Comodoro and seen all over Argentina, she looked after the kids. They have been married for 49 years, but both seem surprisingly young. They laugh, lots and lots. It’s brilliant. Mike is twitchy because we have a really long way to drive to get to San Julian today, so we keep it quick. They met at a dance, she liked the look of him from the get go. My favourite thing about them is when I ask about what their arguments are like. She says that they shout at each other, and go into different rooms to blow off steam. I ask how long they don’t speak for, she says “oh, not long” and he says “a couple of years…”

Got to get on with the driving. It’s starting to get cold now, but the little trio (Clears and Russian) pushes on.

Long long driving day. We’re just trying to cover ground now, and are traversing the barren Patagonian wilderness fast. Mike is going great guns, driving hard even though our topspeed is seriously lowered by the headwind and we are buffeted constantly by those winds.

Not actually our guy (Mike defended his hit and run saying that it was better not to know)

There’s nothing for miles and miles and miles. Except, I’m sorry to report, one armadillo harmlessly crossing the road. Mike, blinded by a visor scratched by months on the road, fails to see him and mows him down. I mourn silently in the sidecar for an hour.

We’ve taken the east coast of Patagonia to get to Ushuaia. It’s the most direct but by far the most boring of the options on the table. The west, the famous route 40 (reputedly one of the world’s most beautiful drives), snakes along the lower part of the Andes taking in Swiss-loveliness in Barriloche, glaciers in El Calafate, dramatic beauty all the way down. The east, less so. It’s coastal and flat. Winds whip across the vast plains and pummel us unremittingly.

We eventually make it to Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina’s petrol capital. It provides a third of the country’s petrol (Argentina is entirely self sufficient for petrol), driven north to BA to be refined.

As we drive into town, we are pounced on by two locals (“Oh no, Jacksons…” we thought) It turned out that they were a journo and a photographer from the local paper. They were looking for a small story to fill a whole on a slow day, but when Carlos heard our story, he said that it was much bigger than he thought. So we did a full interview and appeared on the front page of El Patagonico the next day.

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.