04/02/2015
Day 35, Feb 1st, 115 kms today, 1825 kms total
Day 36, Feb 2nd, 45 kms today, 1870 kms total
Day 37, Feb 3rd, 115 kms today, 1985 kms total
El Calafate to Puerto Natales
I'd been riding scared since leaving El Calafate, locked in a desperate war with the Dementors of the Argentinian pampas, the indomitable West to East headwinds that stop you dead in your tracks as you try to cross back into the Elysean Fields of the Chilean mountains.
On the second day, after 7 hours of fighting the winds on stony gravel in the granny gear at 6 or 7 kms an hour, I got to an intersection where the road I needed to take to Chile went up a canyon directly against the wind and there was just no way to make progress. No way to stay on the bike. It was howling, raging, impenetrable.
At that intersection was a Puesto Fijo and a tiny shack of a gas station. It was the first sign of a human presence I'd seen on these godforsaken wastelands all day. There'd been nowhere to get out of the wind and duststorm, so at the very least I thought I could hunker down for a while in the lee of these structures.
The gas station was closed, so I banged on the door of the Puesto Fijo. These are outposts of what I think is the Argentinian Public Works department, used as a staging area for roadworks. There's one about every 100 kms or so from what I could tell, each with a caretaker, or puestero. In fact, these Puestos Fijos are indispensable to cyclists in these pampas - the distances between towns are often too great to ride in a day, and it's just not possible to pitch a tent in any area not protected from the winds. Luckily, the puesteros are usually friendly to cyclists, letting them camp in the yard or in a shed, and supplying water.
The puestero who answered my banging had just woken from a nap. Claudio was his name. Yeah, he said, the wind's really blowing today. It was the first time I'd heard any local even acknowledge the wind, they're normally very nonchalant about it. He let me in and shared a Yerba Mate with me. He was stationed here 15 days on and 15 days off, he said. His only means of communication was a CB radio he used to talk to the other puesteros. There was a satellite TV dish but it wasn't working just then, someone hadn't paid the bill, he thought. Sometimes you cyclists are the only visitors I have for my whole shift, he said.
He let me pitch the tent beside the building, in the only small area shielded from the wind. I worried that if more cyclists came we'd all need to huddle together in those few square feet. Later in the afternoon the gas station opened and I went and bought some biscuits and a drink. I bought my friend a Coke and some alfajores, a candy. He was so pleased that he told me I could sleep in the kitchen on a spare mattress he had, even though it was against the rules.
Over dinner I pulled out my dried backpacker food, and Claudio examined the packet. He'd seen other cyclists with these, and had wondered what they tasted like. Why don't you have a packet, I said, I have plenty of it. Well, I'll give you some meat in exchange for that one, he said. He pulled out a tray of cooked meat from the shelf, covered with a cloth, with flies buzzing around it, and stuck it in the oven. Once heated, he placed it in front of me - eat as much as you want, he said. Big, greasy, fatty hunks of meat. I wanted to ask him how long that tray had been sitting there. As he tucked in to my Mountain House beef stew, I gingerly poked around and then stabbed the least fatty piece I could find with my fork and hoiked it on to my plate. There were no vegetables, bread or anything else. I had lost my appetite, but under his eager eye I cut the few bits of meat away from the bone and fat and ate them. I had to say no, that I didn't want more, about five times before he finally took the tray away.
The wind, he told me, dies down at about 4 in the morning, and picks up again at 7 or 8. This window would be my only chance to escape the pampas. I had the bike ready at 4:30 under a bright moon, and indeed yesterday's howling gale was now what might be called a stiff breeze. It was freezing cold. So much so that I had to stop a few hundred meters up the road to put on more layers. Even with my full fingered gloves my hands were painfully cold. I wrapped them in what I could easily find - a t-shirt and my spare bike shorts.
I rode hard, in fear of the wind picking up. The moon set, and the sky started to lighten. After 50 kms I got to the Gendarmeria at the border. I asked the Argentinian policeman if I could use the bathroom. No, he snapped, esta fuera de servicio. It seemed a fitting bookend to my journey across the pampas.
The immense sense of relief I felt as I crossed into Chile wasn't just due to the working bathrooms at the border post. There were trees. And rivers. The post apocalyptic world I had been through was unfit for humans, but I had managed to pull off my pre-dawn escape.
I sat for a breakfast of eggs, bread and coffee with hot milk at a cafeteria at the Chilean border town of Cerro Castillo and marveled at the view of the Torres del Paine in the distance. I planned to go for a tour there tomorrow, but for now I would enjoy a carefree ride to Puerto Natales, 65 kms away. The sun was out, it was warm, and a nice cool breeze was blowing.
