I hear a voice from my soul's core saying "freedom's just a metaphor; you got nowhere to go"
Okay, so. Excitement: can has.
Why? Because in January, I'm taking off to bike across South America!
The original intent had been to visit my UAE peeps - for several years now, I've been planning (and promising dubaiwalla, for example) such a trip for whenever I was no longer in school. Well, I'm no longer in school. So I was to go this last summer. Which got postponed (work) until October. Then that got postponed (work again) until January. January. For sure! I had vacation time booked, money saved... and then the UAE / Canadian governments decided to behave like kindergardeners. "Your mom" retorts escalated into burdensome visa requirements and other travel hindrances, and now dubaiwalla will never again believe a single thing I say to him. Ever. (Screw the UAE; maybe I can convince some of them dudes to meet me on neutral ground somewheres?)
Sigh. What to do?
I toyed for a while with the idea of going to
Dubai Lite (one of the two USian cities of consequence that I have yet to visit), but wasn't completely subscribed to the idea. I also thought about cancelling my vacation altogether to wait for another time.
Then a month or so ago I went out with some friends to see
Los Condenados - a movie set in Argentina (and incidentally one of the better ones I've seen this year; check it out!). But said setting wasn't conspicuously presented; we had an argument about it, and I had to look it up on the interwebz when I got home.
Which is when the idea struck me:
So. I am going to South America, for sure, at least inasmuch as I have now purchased non-refundable plane tickets. (And am only gone for a couple of weeks, so when I say "biking across," we must understand that I refer to one of the shorter possible continental chords.) However many of the details have yet to be concretised.
Here's what I know for certain:
It's about 1400km from Buenos Aires to Santiago, and how I cover that distance is still a bit up in the air. I have two basic options in mind:
Reasons to take the bus:
So yeah. Decision hasn't been quite made yet, but I certainly know which way I'm leaning. (Actually, I may end up doing some kind of hybrid: if I do bike, I will certainly want to keep the option open of ditching the bike and hopping on a bus in the eventuality that I fall irredeemably behind schedule.) We shall see.
In either case, though, I intend to blog the trip as much as possible. Sure it will only be for a couple of weeks, but Insha'Allah it will be a rather interesting couple of weeks. With... pretty pictures?
It will be interesting to see how technology facilitates this. When I biked
across Canada thirteen years ago, internet technology was still a little on the primitive side. I kept a pad of paper and pencils in my backpack, manually wrote an entry every day, then transcribed them onto the computer, uploading them to Geocities (yes, really!) whenever I was in a city large enough to boast an internet café (read: Winnipeg, Toronto, Montréal, New York, Philadelphia and Austin). Friends and family were alerted to updates via Hotmail. Ah, blogging before "blog" was even a word. (Uphill. Both ways. Snow. Lawn. Kids... *cough*)
Which makes for a v. interesting contrast with this summer's
Edmonton trip, when I was never more than a few hours away from a Starbucks or McDonalds or someplace that I could plug in me iThing, recharge and browse, then be ready to go again. Now, I don't know how the availability of free wifi in rural Alberta compares with that in rural South America, but my plan is just to take the iThing and use that alone to blog - hopefully every day? (Well, my route takes me straight through Mendoza, the heart of
Argentinian wine country, so if I do end up partaking as much as I anticipate, then perhaps this plan may require some revision, but eh, I'll burn that bridge when I get to it.)
So yeah. Enough rambling for one post. Exec summary: Me - Argentina to Chile - January - bike bike bus bus bike - beef - wine - blog - pictures? - stay tuned!
Why? Because in January, I'm taking off to bike across South America!
The original intent had been to visit my UAE peeps - for several years now, I've been planning (and promising dubaiwalla, for example) such a trip for whenever I was no longer in school. Well, I'm no longer in school. So I was to go this last summer. Which got postponed (work) until October. Then that got postponed (work again) until January. January. For sure! I had vacation time booked, money saved... and then the UAE / Canadian governments decided to behave like kindergardeners. "Your mom" retorts escalated into burdensome visa requirements and other travel hindrances, and now dubaiwalla will never again believe a single thing I say to him. Ever. (Screw the UAE; maybe I can convince some of them dudes to meet me on neutral ground somewheres?)
Sigh. What to do?
I toyed for a while with the idea of going to
Dubai Lite (one of the two USian cities of consequence that I have yet to visit), but wasn't completely subscribed to the idea. I also thought about cancelling my vacation altogether to wait for another time.
Then a month or so ago I went out with some friends to see
Los Condenados - a movie set in Argentina (and incidentally one of the better ones I've seen this year; check it out!). But said setting wasn't conspicuously presented; we had an argument about it, and I had to look it up on the interwebz when I got home.
Which is when the idea struck me:
- Fuck it. I'ma go to Argentina.
So. I am going to South America, for sure, at least inasmuch as I have now purchased non-refundable plane tickets. (And am only gone for a couple of weeks, so when I say "biking across," we must understand that I refer to one of the shorter possible continental chords.) However many of the details have yet to be concretised.
Here's what I know for certain:
- On Friday Jan. 14th, I fly to Buenos Aires, Argentina, arriving Saturday afternoon
- I will be spending the first couple of days in Buenos Aires with a friend.
- Two weeks and seven hours after my arrival, I fly back to Calgary from Santiago, Chile on Saturday Jan. 29th.
It's about 1400km from Buenos Aires to Santiago, and how I cover that distance is still a bit up in the air. I have two basic options in mind:
- Hop on (semi-)random buses according to whichever most strike my fancy at the time (so long as they don't take me too far in the wrong direction), wandering from town to town, seeing whatever there is to see; or
- Buy a used bike in Buenos Aires, ride to Santiago, then ditch it before getting to the airport.
Reasons to take the bus:
- It mostly boils down to a matter of time, and the way that impacts everything else. As I said, I it's just over 1400km, and after subtracting the initial couple of days in Buenos Aires, that will leave about 11 days, hence ~125km a day. Now, I can totally bike 125km a day, except that it doesn't leave much of a margin for error if something goes wrong. I have purchased all kinds of insurance (what? me? responsible? who are you and what have you done with...? etc.) but still.
- The
Cristo Redentor Pass over the Andes is at 3500m of elevation (possibly 3800m, but more on this later). I'm... pretty sure I've never been that high. Outside of, you know, an airplane. Now I'm not at all worried about my ability to make it in general, but at the same time, do expect it to slow me down a bit on the bike. How much? That's a total question mark. So, see "little margin for error," above. - Central Argentina in the middle of summer is hot. Like, upwards-of-40-degrees kind of hot. Now, I'm familiar with heat. I understand heat. I like heat. But I am so not acclimatised right now. And experience says that's something that will make it harder to consistently hit that 125km daily quota. Not enough to be a problem, but enough so that I'm going to have to push it every single day, which brings us back to the whole margin for error issue. (This would be so much easier if I had a little bit more time!)
- The bus offers more flexibility: since I won't be having to push against a deadline every single day, I'll have more opportunity to just wander around wherever. One can take a bus from, say, Córdoba to Santiago in a little over a day, which leaves a lot of time for screwing around and seeing random things on a whim. This suits my temperament far more than the prospect of having to plan out every day to fairly fine detail, which will be the case with the bike option.
- Specifically, it offers the flexibility to be able to take in
Valparaíso, one of the destinations that most interests me, but a side trip that isn't particularly feasible if I bike. - Finally, the road from the pass down to Santiago descends fast. To the tune of 3km of altitude in slightly over 30 lateral km. (Check out the first picture in the Wikipedia page on Cristo Redentor, linked to above.) It's also, by many accounts, not a terribly great road. 3rd-world country, and all that. With a commensurate standard of driving; I may be taking on some non-trivial risks to life and limb. The aforementioned insurance was purchased primarily because of this, fer instance. (Of course, this stretch presents mostly an illustrative example: the roads and standard of driving will likely be pretty crappy along much of the route.)
- Well, I just want to, dammit!
- I'm going to be in Argentina. On holiday. There is no WAY I am going to Argentina and not chowing down on delicious, succulent Argentinian beef, and partaking of delicious, cheap Argentinian wine. Like, every single day. However, I also know that after doing so every single day, I will be feeling guilty as hell about it. Again, every single day. At least this way, I will be able to maintain the pretense that I'm burning off a similar number of calories as I ingest.
- Did I mention that I want to?
So yeah. Decision hasn't been quite made yet, but I certainly know which way I'm leaning. (Actually, I may end up doing some kind of hybrid: if I do bike, I will certainly want to keep the option open of ditching the bike and hopping on a bus in the eventuality that I fall irredeemably behind schedule.) We shall see.
In either case, though, I intend to blog the trip as much as possible. Sure it will only be for a couple of weeks, but Insha'Allah it will be a rather interesting couple of weeks. With... pretty pictures?
It will be interesting to see how technology facilitates this. When I biked
across Canada thirteen years ago, internet technology was still a little on the primitive side. I kept a pad of paper and pencils in my backpack, manually wrote an entry every day, then transcribed them onto the computer, uploading them to Geocities (yes, really!) whenever I was in a city large enough to boast an internet café (read: Winnipeg, Toronto, Montréal, New York, Philadelphia and Austin). Friends and family were alerted to updates via Hotmail. Ah, blogging before "blog" was even a word. (Uphill. Both ways. Snow. Lawn. Kids... *cough*)
Which makes for a v. interesting contrast with this summer's
Edmonton trip, when I was never more than a few hours away from a Starbucks or McDonalds or someplace that I could plug in me iThing, recharge and browse, then be ready to go again. Now, I don't know how the availability of free wifi in rural Alberta compares with that in rural South America, but my plan is just to take the iThing and use that alone to blog - hopefully every day? (Well, my route takes me straight through Mendoza, the heart of
Argentinian wine country, so if I do end up partaking as much as I anticipate, then perhaps this plan may require some revision, but eh, I'll burn that bridge when I get to it.)
So yeah. Enough rambling for one post. Exec summary: Me - Argentina to Chile - January - bike bike bus bus bike - beef - wine - blog - pictures? - stay tuned!