Or at least it’s in stopping, getting down close to the ground and hunting the detail.
To take at face value the guidebook’s descriptions for the scenic qualities on offer in the southern cone of the Americas continent, is to believe that the Patagonian Pampa will inflict terminal tedium, a boredom resulting in an ennui so severe that it will test your resolve for life.
Much of the ‘scape is flat, impossibly flat and yet it has a surrealist quality, as well as providing a challenge to depict and portray its undoubted beauty. Be that on a day of somber blanket cloud with flat light that wrecks distance perspective, or when the wind-scalped, bristle-stalked, golden tussock is low-lit by a rising sun, or the gutsy wind that’s sending ghost-shadows rippling through the quaking grass. There might be no classical mountain panoramas, no opportunities for those iconic photos that never seem to do justice to their spectacle, nor the colour offering of an indigenous population. That colour has to be found deep down, close to the ground. It’s why cycle touring is so well suited to travelling across this flatscape, it’s so much easier to stop and to look when a sudden possibility happens to occur.
It’s summer, and many of the vergeside plants are into seeding, whilst others are starting to bloom; all are tiny and cushioned close to the ground. Some have strong smells, butterfly attractants, others have some differing quality, maybe a death scent, one that draws flies and ants.
An other reason the bike has a distinct advantage over a car-bound observer is that cyclists spook wildlife. We’ve seen it in the US Everglades, on an Andean altiplano and now the southern Pampas; cars pass and the guanaco won’t even lift its grazing head, whereas an approaching bike sends them into a blind panic. Ñandu will take a flightless race along the fenceline, attempting to barge their way through the expertly strung wires, only to bounce off, give up and carry on striding out in front of us. The steeple-chased guanaco will attempt a fence-jump; some will easily and gracefully succeed, others will entangle themselves in wire, sending convulsive waves singing down the fenceline.
Gauchos on bicycles; herders of wildlife.
Which can be unsettling, bordering on outright dangerous, because a spooked guanaco is oft tempted to cross the carriageway right on front of an approaching car. Hit one of these and there’s a fair chance it’s going to end up inside your car. Each morning the asphalt is daubed with fresh red bloodstains, yet strangely few carcasses are evident. Maybe there are enough carrion eaters to tidy away the deaths or is there a ready market for roadkills; it’s a thought, as the squashed hog-nosed skunk carcass and it’s attendant stink will haunt the verge for weeks to come.
We’ve gathered up a family clutch of ñandu, and they’re striding the fenceline; we’re pedalling hard. They’re barely out of second gear. I’m watching them when I hear the alarm, the hyena-cum-horse call of a guanaco herd. They stampede right across the road to front, right into the path of the ñandu.
Pandaemonium ensues.
Harum-scarum.
A tumbling of ruffled birds.
The camelids effortlessly clearing the fence.
We pedal on by.
Another occasion, we’ve climbed through a fence to inspect an abandoned railway station. Derelict buildings are a favoured cyclist’s camping spot in these exposed, wind-scoured pampas. It’s still too early in the day, so our interest is more in the possibilities than the actualities. There’s a roofless waiting room, a stationmaster’s office and a water closet that with some judicious cleaning would serve for a night. There is also, lost in the grass, iron rails, wood sleepers and the switching gear for the sidings. The redundant water tank still sits rusting on its stone pier, remnants from the steam age that exported mutton and wool to Europe. Yet much of that is invisible from the road.
Whilst the sight sense predominates, others are present.
Dropping down below the road, tucking into a concrete drainage channel, with the wind raging overhead, into a near silent sheltered world after the daylong ear-roar. It’s also a repository for the flotsam of soda cans, tumbleweed, and the territorial skat of fox poop. Even when desiccated to a cinder biscuit, it stinks.
To clean up or move on?
It’s been a long day, another 100 miles, this time much of it side-to- head wind. We clean up and in so doing acquire socks impregnated with the hooked talons of burrweed, an innocent looking seed that is pernicious in its ability to burrow ever deeper into a stocking’s fabric, and then to remain as an invisible irritation for days. And yet, by way of a recompense, we gain a wild camp with a moonless night of infinite starscapes. The wind dying and my ears singing with the silence.
Maybe we have a high threshold for terminal tedium, or.possibly we’re too easily enthralled; that, or it’s a perversity to thwart a guidebook’s prediction. Whichever, I keep finding these vast open spaces sensually fascinating. There’s a deep beauty to be found in the tiny details.
