when i stop being a hermit, i´ll write more, but in the meantime, here´s a brief description of part of what i´m living:
i
recently started my romance with ´la Ruta 40´, one of Patagonia´s (and
indeed, South America´s) most famous ´highways´. mention ´la Cuarenta´
(´the Forty´) to travellers who have battled it out on their own terms,
and they´ll shake their heads with wry smiles, their eyes taking on the
same wistful look that one often sees in people remembering the first
time they had their heart broken. mention that you want to travel up
the 40, and they´ll either laugh outright at the absurdity, or become
really serious as they try and tell you about the futility of it. to
understand why the Cuarenta inspires such reactions, i have to firstly
describe another well-known aspect of patagonia, namely the winds.
i
may have mentioned the patagonian winds in previous emails, but i think
that until now, i´ve been quite flippant about it. we´re not talking
about a slight breeze that would make marilyn monroe giggle in delight
and run off to change into her white dress; we´re talking about winds
that can reach up to 140kph, winds that can blow a truck over in the
middle of the highway, winds that *literally* take your breath away. i
remember a few times when hiking, i´d have to crouch close to the
ground to not be knocked over by the gusts, and where i have to
actively inhale with effort, just to be able to draw a breath.
depending on the location, the wind blows harder in some towns than
others. in Río Grande (in the province of Tierra del Fuego in
Argentina), a ´good´ day meant that the windspeeds were at less than
70kph. in Puerto Natales (the usual point of departure for Torres del
Paine National Park, in the south of Chile), a couple of fellow campers
told me that the pressure of the wind was such that sometimes they´d
wake up in the middle of the night with the tent blown so low that the
roof was centimetres from their faces.
now
let´s return to the above-mentioned Ruta 40; this is the main road
which runs along the Patagonian Andes on the Argentine side, connecting
the mountain-side towns north-south, and branching off to the various
passes crossing over to Chile in the west. the majority of it is
´ripio´, which can mean anything from dirt roads, gravel, sand, ...
basically anything that´s not asphalt or cement. in this case, we´re
talking roads which are made of large rocks the size of a newborn´s
head, which makes navigating particularly difficult. when you add the
wind factor into it, travelling becomes hell. adriano, the italian
biker with whom i travelled last year, told me that to go straight
ahead, he had to steer as if turning a corner just to counteract the
force of the wind. another bikie friend who has had more than 10 years´
experience in travelling on her motorbike was blown over by a sudden
gust of wind along the way, breaking her collarbone. the few cycling
travellers that i´ve met who have attempted parts of the road have told
me that they often had to hide out in roadside culverts to wait for the
winds to abate before continuing. and a truckie who used to do a very
small section of the 40 when they were doing roadworks told me that to
cover 12km, he needed *2* hours.
my
personal experience in tackling the 40 actually involved a detour. to
get to a spot 220km north along the road relying on lifts, i had to
travel a few hundred kilometres out to the coast, head north, and then
come back in to the mountain range. i started to despair a bit about my
chances of reaching my destination, since in 4 hours´ of travel, we
passed 5 cars: not a good signal when you´re hitchhiking. when i got to
a junction 120km from my destination, i met 2 couples who were heading
the opposite direction; one had been waiting for 2 days, and the other
were on their 3rd day of waiting. of the handful of cars that passed
the junction each day, some would be full-up, some would have space but
the drivers knew that the condition of the road would not allow for the
car to travel with the weight of a couple more people and their
backpacks, and some were just tourists who aren´t in the habit of
giving people lifts. for the past couple of nights, the travellers had
been hiding out under a bridge; that morning, they´d found a freshly
killed hare, and were planning a roadkill roast that night. i was
getting quite excited about the prospect of joining them when just at
that moment a car approached, heading in the same direction as myself.
after hearing the other stories, i was a little desperate, and replaced
the standard hitchhiking thumb for a hands-clasped begging motion. the
pick-up slowed down, the 2 italian tourists wound down their windows,
and told me that they were full up.
´i´ll go in the
back!´
´but it´s more than an hour, - you´ll get blown off, and it´s too cold!´
´no,
please, you don´t understand,´ i pleaded, and after a bit more theatric
desperation, they allowed me to get into the back of the ute, where i
did the remaining 120km huddled in a quasi-foetal position, glad that
at least it wasn´t raining.
(photos: 'la cuarenta' gallery)
