Travels in Patagonia

Patagonia! She is a hard mistress. She casts her spell. An enchantress! She folds you in her arms and never lets go. The Maestro from Bruce Chatwin's " In Patagonia "

In calling up images from the past, I find the plains of Patagonia frequently pass across my eyes; yet these plains are pronounced by all to be wretched and useless. They can be described only by negative characters; without habitation, without water, without trees, without mountains, they support merely dwarf plants. Why, then, and the case is not peculiar to myself, have these arid wastes taken so firm a hold of my memory? Charles Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle:

I had no idea of the impact it would have on me when I embarked on this trip.  As it did with Darwin centuries previous and Chatwin decades previous, Patagonia's hold is not easily explained and touches you at your core.  It had been in my dreams ever since I saw photos of the granite towers and heard the name.  Patagonia is the land of Darwin and was a hideout for Butch Casidy and the Sundance Kid, a place of towering granite and endless wind over featureless plains, of glaciers and fjords, of Spanish Conquistadors and military dictators.

When my friend Tony, then living in Nicaragua, posed the idea of a bike trip through this land of adventure, I jumped at the opportunity.  How could I not go?

Over the next ten months, we made plans, changed plans, threw away plans and made new plans.  Our original group of three (Tony, his wife, Melanie, and myself) became two (Melanie opted to spend the time reconnecting with her family) and then became four as our friends Chip and Amy, who were planning a bike trip in New Zealand but were caught by the same enchantress, joined our group.  I bought guidebooks and maps.  I plotted the angle of sunrise and set at the iconic vistas we would be visiting.  I tried to "pre-visualize" photos I wanted to take, as my photography books told me I should do.  I was focused on what my idea of adventure should be and how I could capture it.

Ten month later, as I made my last preparations to leave, I realized just how difficult this would be: I didn't speak Spanish (one four-lesson course notwithstanding), I'd never been bike touring before, and I was dating someone who would change -- perhaps already had changed -- my life.

Aren't the best plans set aside for love?  Joanna and I had started dating about the time this trip was in its infancy.  As we grew closer, and the trip grew into maturity, my adventure-of-a-lifetime and my girlfriend were at odds.  My guidebooks, maps and photography books offered no advice for this aspect of the trip.  Here I was on my own, learning as I go.

But I was young and fit and had enough stamps in my passport to feel that I could handle whatever curveballs travel would throw at me.  It was the separation from Joanna and her then-two-and-a-half year old daughter that would prove the hardest.

What follows is a transcript of my journal entries throughout this trip: I will be publishing them ten years following the date of entry.  For the most part, they are unedited -- for better or worse -- with only changes to my atrocious spelling and occasional hiccup in grammar.  Where I do add or embellish, I hope to make it obvious that I've done so.  However this is a work in progress and I hope you take as such.

On 16 Dec., 1999, I departed.  My ticket said I'd return 16 weeks later.