{"id":2111,"date":"2023-03-29T11:10:59","date_gmt":"2023-03-29T15:10:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ebbsbay.ca\/?p=2111"},"modified":"2023-03-29T11:32:04","modified_gmt":"2023-03-29T15:32:04","slug":"el-fin-del-mundo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ebbsbay.ca\/index.php\/2023\/03\/29\/el-fin-del-mundo\/","title":{"rendered":"El Fin del Mundo"},"content":{"rendered":"

It began almost 50 years ago.<\/p>\n

\"\"There was never really a plan, just a vague idea – Dave and I would get a couple of motorcycles and head south. We’d stop when we ran out of road. I had no idea how we would do this, just old National Geographic images in my head of\u00a0 rugged gauchos with their herds on the vast expanse of Patagonia and Inca ruins perched on the slopes of the soaring Andes mountains.<\/p>\n

Then life happened.<\/p>\n

\"\"But the idea never went away. Like a flower that grows, against all odds, in a crack in the urban concrete, it survived. But what I thought was the concrete of my life, turned out to be something much more malleable. And that flower never lost its beauty and allure.<\/p>\n

Things changed as the trip evolved from idea to an actual plan, and changed again after we arrived, as I’ve written in previous blogs. But the idea of riding to Ushuaia, the southern tip of South America, literally the end of the road, remained an important goal for me.<\/p>\n

Ushuaia is 3,163 km (about 2,000 miles) from our house in Mendoza, over some good, and some not-so-good roads. It would take me from the Andes Mountains, through the Pampas, the fertile breadbasket of Argentina, and past a few resort towns on the South Atlantic coast. But most of it was crossing the wild, lonely, wind-swept expanse of Patagonia.<\/p>\n

\"\"Most of the photos I took are of the strange and interesting things along the way, like the roadside dinosaur in Trelew – life-size model of Argentinosaurus, one of the largest land animals that ever lived.<\/p>\n

But Patagonia itself? How do you capture the essence of a place like that in a picture? The magnificent, empty immensity of it all. Our human scale of reference fails us in places like this. The changes in landscape are subtle and happen over hundreds of kilometers. On the other hand a tuft of grass is an entire microcosm to it’s tiny inhabitants.<\/p>\n

\"\"Traveling across Patagonia is as much an inward journey as it is an outward one. I think people who run marathons feel the same way. It’s not really about the race.<\/p>\n

There’s time to think.<\/p>\n

About everything.<\/p>\n

From the meaning of life, to what I want for supper.<\/p>\n

Or let your mind go clear and think about nothing at all.<\/p>\n

A typical day goes like this: get up around 7, have coffee and something to eat. Check my email while I still have wifi. Then put on my riding gear and load the bike. Turn on the tunes and hit the road around 8.<\/p>\n

I have a blue tooth sound system in my helmet that connects with my phone. There’s no cell coverage in Patagonia, but it allows me to have music while I ride. Sometimes it’s a classic rock, or old blues. Sometimes I sing along, sometimes not. Often I just put it on random and see what comes up. I kind like it when Schubert plays back to back with The Clash.<\/p>\n