A year ago today I was in Botswana, sitting in the shade of a tree, mop-haired, barefoot and tearing hungrily at a papaya, the juices pouring down my face and onto my filthy clothes. Today I am in a rich suburb of Lima where men drive Mercedes and their wives try to look 21.
I left England two years ago to attempt to cycle around the planet, raising funds for the charity Hope and Homes for Children. 29,000km and 32 countries later and I now have the end of South America in my sights.
The first year I rode across Europe, through the Middle East and down Africa towards Cape Town. I began the second year by crossing the Limpopo River into South Africa. I don't know whether it was white paranoia, genuine danger or a bit of both, but I was bombarded with warnings about my safety in South Africa. So, instead of my usual wild camps I began camping at farms or staying with the chiefs in small villages. These were warm, educational, entertaining evenings and yet they were the very people I was warned to avoid.
Lesotho was a land of open spaces and vast, silent mountains. The hills never stopped and the gradients were so steep that even pushing the bike frequently rendered me a red, sweaty bundle beside the road. If anything the descents were worse: steep hairpin bends which resulted in a hole wearing through the sole of my left shoe (my brakes having long since broken).
Climbing in Lesotho to the highest road in Africa epitomised why I undertook this whole journey - the search for a challenge, a slow sunset silhouetting all before me, and fold after fold of wild, empty mountains. I began this journey because England was too easy. I wanted to attempt something that I did not necessarily know that I was capable of. If this year needs a defining snapshot, that climb would be it.
Having omitted to pack a cavalry sabre in my panniers I had to resort to scything open my Pierre Jourdan champagne with my Leatherman penknife. A crisp "pop" and time to celebrate. I had now ridden a bicycle from my front door in England to Cape Town in South Africa. Feeling stunned and muted to be sat beneath the famous Table Mountain, and perplexed by just how ordinary I feel on this day I have strived towards for so long. Thinking back - faces, places, feelings. Half forgetting the wandering and the pain, half remembering days gone by.
Strange that South America should begin beneath Cape Town's Table Mountain. Yet, as I stood on the foredeck of the yacht, watching my waving friends slowly shrink from sight, it felt less like an ending than the start of a new chapter. I was bound for Rio de Janeiro amidst the glamour and excitement of the Cape-to-Rio yacht race. Table Bay was teeming with racing yachts and well-wishers, a dramatic horizon of spears of masts and curves of white sail. Helicopters swooped low above the fleet. The shoreline was lined with people and scores of binoculars flashed. I turned away from Africa towards the sunset and South America.
To my undisguised glee a newspaper article in Cape Town had labelled me an "intrepid young British adventurer". But, on that first night at sea, I was brought brutally back down to size as I hung over the side of the boat retching my guts out. The days blazed beneath a pale blue sky and above an incredibly clear ocean. Sunsets brought relief from the furnace, leaving the world to darkness, us and the comforting glow of the GPS and compass. Small clouds of black and silver shone as we cruised down the yellow carpet of moonlight. The helmsman heaved on the wheel as we surfed down the heavy, fast black waves. It was eternal motion, racing ever onwards towards South America. As the weeks passed the moon waned, filling the utterly black sky with so many stars that they spilled over into the ocean, showers of phosphorescent sparks streaming in our wake.
Crossing the Greenwich Meridian was a big moment for me - the next time I cross it I will be back in London! Only 360 degrees still to go. I was on my way home at last. The waves thumped, sluiced and fizzed on the hull as I lay in my bunk. Come on wind, take me home! We crossed the finish line in the dead of night, beneath the outline of Sugarloaf Mountain and the vast Christ the Redeemer statue gleaming white and appearing to hang in the dark sky. I now had myself a new continent to cycle across.
South America began in a deserted carpark on a damp sea shore, an inauspicious beginning for the long road north. But I was thrilled to be there, to be in Patagonia at last. For years names such as Ushuaia, Cape Horn, Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia have lured me. Patagonia feels, even today, like the end of the world, and the tantalising challenge she lays down has lured explorers for centuries.
The distances in Patagonia are virtually unimaginable to anyone raised in the efficient compactness of Europe. With the flat pampa comes the notorious Patagonian wind, so fierce that for two days I was unable to cycle and had to walk. One day I could not even walk into the wind and lay huddled under a bush, waiting for the it to ease enough to allow me to stand up. On days like these Alaska feels a long way away.
An Argentinian border guard walked with me to point out the narrow muddy footpath heading into the bushes towards Chile. "Just follow the horse shit," he reassured me, "and you shouldn't go wrong!" The solitary Chilean customs post stamped me into Chile. As I was the only person who passed north in the entire month I suppose that I constituted a stressful day at the office for them. I continued down to the lake shore to set up camp above the jetty in a small cove and wait for the boat.
Southern Chile was a spectacular wilderness, with the best riding of the journey so far. One day I rode through a forest along paths too narrow, steep and muddy to push the bike. At times I had to shuttle the bags and then the bike. Axle-deep mud, knee-deep cold rivers and scattered rocks slowed things down, too. I set a new personal record when I went 24 days without taking a shower. But being filthy enough to turn heads (and a few stomachs, I imagine) was a small price to pay to experience those landscapes.
"Your country is at war," I was told. It has been an odd experience to be so far removed from the world that I did not even know that several of my friends were now fighting a war. As a Brit in Patagonia I was perceived as the personification of the war itself. "You are at war" was said as in "you" personally rather than "you", your country.
I have crossed back and forth over the Andes too many times. Riding back to Argentina once more, the mountain pass was muffled under two metres of soft snow. "Fierce gradient - next 55km" warned the sign as the road furled upwards like a black ribbon in the wind.
In the north of Argentina were Walt Disney valleys in pastel shades with patchwork fields and cosy homes. Later I came across wind-hewn red sandstone gorges where the sun arrives late but bright and cacti stand like sentinels on the skyline. A fierce sandstorm filled my eyes and ears with sand and seared my nostrils. Snakes of orange sand writhed across the road and dust swirled in the sky; barren valley floors where the villages marked on my map proved to be little more than figments of some cartographer's fertile imagination.
The wind was relentless as I launched into the hairpin bends of yet another Andean crossing, snaking up through canyons and cacti to the heights of the Atacama desert. Because of the wind I had to walk for six days, rarely managing more than 20 miles a day. Dumb llamas and pretty vicuñas grazed on the shimmering horizons. The days and nights were bitterly cold and I heaved for breath in the thin air. And I was supposedly back in the Tropics once more! I carried food enough for five days and 18 litres of water. I camped beside a lake crusted with ice and salt and stark orange-red hills slowly releasing a cold full moon into the silent sky.
The Salar de Uyuni is a dried-up ancient sea, a vast plain of dazzling white salt. The salt is hard and flat, a mosaic of pentagons that crunch like crisp snow when you ride over them. It is a unique landscape with no roads or villages for 100km, just whiteness stretching out to touch the sky. It was a glum thought that in a couple of days I would have to return to roads and people and the drabness of reality. I decided that some naked cycling was in order as I whizzed across the emptiness. In shoes, woolly gloves (it was freezing) and sunglasses I flew by some tourist jeeps, delighting in their astonishment and amusement.
Many people had warned me about the plunging night-time temperatures of -20C on the Salar, but camping in that surreal world was something I had to experience. Besides, once people tell you that something is impossible it suddenly becomes very appealing. With six shirts, two fleeces, a down jacket, three hats, three pairs of socks, two silk sleeping bags, two sleeping bags and a bottle of revolting yet warming Paraguayan liquor I made it through the night.
Lake Titicaca is famous as the highest navigable lake in the world (3,800m). Her beautiful turquoise waters were sacred to ancient people. Inca farming terraces stripe the steep yellow shores and further away the huge white peaks of the Andes reach for the sky. It made for a delightful scene, a beautiful ride and a foolishly cold swim.
As I slowly move north across the planet I see the moon changing. In the north, you see the man in the moon. In the deep south there is a rabbit instead. I have been watching the rabbit gradually change into the man in the moon and the Southern Cross sink ever closer to the horizon. This second year has been so different to the first yet some things remain the same - endless beautiful places and good, kind welcoming people.
· See Alastair's website at roundtheworldbybike.com.
· If you feel moved to donate, please send cheques to:
Hope and Homes for Children
East Clyffe
Salisbury
Wiltshire
SP3 4LZ
or donate online at hopeandhomes.org.
