Travel Articles

 A cycling honeymoon adventure through Patagonia                                                 by Simon Neuhoff

 

There are a wide range of reasons why people choose to locum, maybe nearly as many as there are locums working! For me though the main joy of locum work is the freedon and flexibility it brings. You can choose when and where you work and, nearly as importantly, you can choose when not to work. Over the last few years my wife and I have enjoyed using that flexibility to indulge our passion for travel. Most recently we headed off to South America, specifically Chile and Argentina, for a three month cycle touring holiday.

 

 

This was a common reaction when we announced our plans to our friends and family. The idea of a solo, unsupported cycle tour seemed unthinkable to many people. Yet it hadn't come out of the blue. To us it seemed like a natural progression in our hobby. Although we'd come late to cycling we'd been mountain biking for 6 years and more lately we'd gotten into semi competetive events. Events like the TransWales mountain bike race where you cover quite large areas of fairly remote country side, getting to see things and experience things that most people never consider. We'd also been on a supported mountain bike trip to Morroco and enjoyed the scenery and interaction with the locals very nearly as much as the biking itself.

 

An unsupported cycle tour was the next, logical step. It required a great deal more thought with regards to logistics and planning but it seemed entirely do-able to us right from the beginning.

 

Once we'd settled on a cycle touring trip we needed to decide where to go! A lot of our friends had been to South America and the more we found out the more perfect it began to seem. Patagonia in particular seemed to offer a perfect blend of challenging environmental conditions, remote, desolate and varied wildernesses and plenty of opportunites for off-the-bike adventures too. As I started to find out more about Chile and especially about the Carreterra Austral, the Southern Highway, this started to become our focus. The date was partly determined by work and financial considerations but also by the small matter of our wedding. We started to refer to our trip as our honeymoon and this became our excuse even if not our only reason.

 

To take best advantage of the seasons and also avoid the heavy summer crowds in the very popular lake district our route started in Bariloche, in Argentina. From here we made our way south through several nature reserves until we crossed the Andes at Fautaleufu, one of Chile's fly fishing and white water rafting hotspots.

 

We then followed the Southern Highway through Chile, threading our way through the glaciers and between the lakes, crossing rivers and mountains until we quite literally ran out of road. Then we made the tough crossing into Argentina, back over the Andes and onto the Pampas for what was the most physically and mentally challenging portion of our trip. After just five days in Argentina it was back into Chile and on down south before crossing the

 

Straits of Magellan to Tierra del Fuego, the Land of Fire and ultimately to Ushaia, 

the southern most city in the world. From here we made our way north by bus at first and then by ferry through the fjorded coast line of Chile to land at Porto Montt and we finished our trip by describing a loop through the volcanoes, lakes and thermal pools in Northern Patagonian Chile and Argentina.All in all we travelled artound 7000kilometeres, 4000 of it by bike. Along the way we met a lot of people and made a number of new friends. We even learnt some basic Spanish!

 

 

 

There are many joys to cycle touring. I've already hinted as to how much my wife and I enjoy freedom and independence in our travelling and a bicycle tour takes this to the ultimate level. You can ride when and where you like, wherever the whim takes you. With a well chosen bike you need not even be on a tarred road, or in fact any road at all! Being on bikes allowed us to make the Villa O'Higgins crossing from Southern Chile into Argentina, a route open only to cyclists and hikers. Motorists are forced to backtrack hundreds of kilometers north before crossing the Andes and making their way south again. You can also choose when NOT to cycle, loading your vehicle and all your belongings onto a ferry, a bus, a plane and maybe even a horse when the legs get too weary or the distances become too great. At the far end of your break from the bike you are instantly mobile again, no need to wait for the onward connection or find that elusive taxi.

 

We chose to be completely self sufficient, carrying tents, cooking gear, food and water enough to see us through as many days as we needed. At one point we had to make do for five days with very little human contact at all, in this period we spke to only two other people, each at a remote and lonely spot in the desolate Argentine pampas. Being totally self sufficient meant we could stop exactly where we wanted to and we often did exactly that, "wild" camping in deserted and remote, wild areas with no-one around for miles.

 

The physical aspects of cycle touring bring both challenges and rewards. We drew an enormous sense of achievement and satisfaction from our daily mileage which was often in very challenging conditions. Whether it was the extreme wind in Southern Patagonia, the desertlike pampas with no surface water, the big mountains of the Andes

or the torrential rains of Southern Chile we coped with everything that came our way. When cycle touring you are not removed from the scenery the way you are in a car or a bus - you are part of it. Unlike the regular tourist who scurries back to the shelter and air conditioning the cycle tourist has to embrace and survive the elements. You experience ALL the aspects of a country, the winds, the heat, the cold, the dryness, the humidity and even the smells.

 

Then there is the FOOD! Nothing makes a meal taste better than the particular hunger that a big day of cycling brings and knowing that you've burnt off thousands of kilocalories every day gives you the excuse to "pig out" in a completely guilt-free way. Whilst on the road and between towns the meals were simple but hot and filling but on arrival in town we would treat ourselves to a huge Argentine steak or some of Chile's famous sea food. After the evening meal, settled in our  wild camp somewhere in the bush we would spoil ourselves with a coffee laced with liquer and a square of dark chocolate - sheer heaven!

 

You are of course limited in how far you can go in a day though this can prove to be as much of an advantage as a disadvantage.

 

Being on a bike means you can get to areas not served by the regular tourist routes but also means that you sometimes find yourself in quite unexpected places, little towns or spots in between the regular attractions and some of our most memorable experiences happened in this way. In one of these little towns we got chatting to the owner of the only tearoom in town. When she asked what we did for a living and we explained we were vets she immediately closed up shop and took us to meet Pablo, her pet condor she'd hand raised nearly 28 years before. In the same town the local police arranged for us to camp on the town's rodeo ring.

 

Being on a bike means that you also get to meet an enormous number of people. Everyone seems curious as to where you're from, where you're headed, why you're on the bike in the first place.  People also seem to be more hospitable to crazy cycle tourists than they would to "normal" ones and often went out of their way to help us. Of course you get to meet a fair number of fellow crazies on their bikes too!

 

 

 

Whilst we were planning our trip we found a wealth of information on the internet. In particular its worth checking the "On Your Bike" section of the LonelyPlanet Thorn Tree website:  http://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/index.jspa

 

The aptly named www.crazyguyonabike.com website is full of useful information and lots of inspiring stories: http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/

 

Also look at the Cycle Touring Club's website:   http://www.ctc.org.uk/

 

Books: the most useful was Stephen Lord's "Adventure Cycle-touring Handbook".