Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25241
Three months ago I received the phone call from Bolivia, a dreadful connection with a three- second delay and what sounded like a tornado in the background. "I'm aging," said the familiar voice of my friend El Boliviano. "Meet me in Northern Patagonia. Bring your bike." It had been several years since I had seen this daredevilish fiend, and not without good reason. To travel with EI Boliviano is to jeopardize your good standing as a member of the thinking, breathing set. He thinks nothing of setting off aboard freight trains, destination: nowhere. He drags unprepared American friends, freshly arrived from their coastal cities, into the thin air of Bolivian peaks. He dives from cliffs, drinks from puddles, pees in the city streets. In short, EI Boliviano is a dangerous looney. But he is also an old friend whose timely whim will convince me to escape the nagging North American winter and plunge into the final days of the austral summer. While most journeys into the thick of Patagonia pass through the tiny airport in Puerto Montt, Chile, ours literally begins right there. Lugging our unwieldy bike containers out to the arrivals' curb, we spring into action, pouring out bicycle frames, wheels, seats and pedals to the bewilderment of a gaggle of well-pressed business travelers. Within minutes, we've assembled our rides, stuffed our cargo trailer and saddlebags and shoved off into Patagonia, weaving circles around the handful of lazy cabbies hoping for a fare. 30 Comprised of the southern hinterlands of Chile and Argentina, Patagonia is one of the rare world regions defined by its natural characteristics rather than national borders. A quick look at the map explains why Patagonia is a hard place in which to move about. Chile is a geographical absurdity - a narrow slice of mountainous land like a plate of armor offering the bulkier Argentina a first line of defense against wicked westerly winds. Nearly 2,500 miles long (about as long as the United States is wide), this sliver of a nation is flanked on the west by the encroaching sea, and on the east, by the cordillera of the Andes. The earth of Chile decomposes south of Puerto Montt as if shattered into pieces one particularly cold winter a few centuries back. What's left is a fractured puzzle of scarcely-visited islands, bays and channels, connected, if at all, by infrequent ferries, incomplete highways and rare footpaths. It is an impenetrability which adventurers have for years celebrated and damned. On the one hand, its very inconvenience keeps lightweights away. On the other, even for the serious explorer, waiting a week for a boat is a hard- boiled pain in the ass. Such terrain could not be much less amenable to bicycle travel, or so Puerto Montt's population of travelers- bushy-bearded older gringos, California dudes, and meandering Israeli students-delight in telling us. But just north of where the land begins to disintegrate, in a region known alternately as northern 'Patagonia and the Lakes District, a growing number of adventurers are discovering that a mountain bike may be the single best compromise for prying open the Northern Patagonian wilderness. Our route will lead us up and out of the bustle of Puerto Montt, north and eastbound over the Andes into Argentina. Once there, we'll turn south, to follow the Cordillera along its east side, through the washed out, drier Argentine hills. Then, it's back over the Andes south of the Lakes