and this is...

… the end.

Everything apart from the infinity, endlessness and a loop comes eventually to an end. My trip pretty much did too. I thought I would write something to sum it up. But what?

The thing is that I don’t actually know how to sum up my trip. It’s still too fresh and too real and in a way still happening so it’s difficult for me to say big words now.

My holiday:

me

my bike (Scott Sub 30, as far as I remember model 2009)

and…

4392km on the bike

2900km additionally hitched and by bus at the very north of Argentina

95 days from the first to the last cycling day

62 days on the bike

53 days of ‘real’ cycling – covering more than 30km so not counting the days when I was just getting on the outskirts of the town to get a lift or getting somewhere near on a rest day etc

31 nights in a tent

100 empanadas eaten

100 facturas eaten

40kg of meat eaten

200 litres of water drunk (I only bought 4 bottles of water during the trip; everything else was tap or stream/lake water (I treated it only twice))

1.4GB of thoughts

5 or 6 cycling days with an iPod on

one set of tyres from start till end

one puncture

three or four lubrications of the chain

loads of sunny days

loads of windy days

three or four rainy days

quite a few new Spanish words learnt

not a tiny bit smarter and still searching for the sense of life

I have to say I was really scared at the beginning of the trip and wanted to leave Ushuaia and start cycling as soon as possible. Just to start escaping from the very south. And to make sure that this sort of cycling was not too bad and I could make it.

Was I prepared correctly? I was and I wasn’t. I had no idea how it was to cycle on a bike with panniers as I put them on my bike for the very first time in Ushuaia. I left the hostel, started cycling down a little hill and thought ‘Right, so that’s how it is. Not too bad’. But then only a few km later when I was leaving the town I got to the first climb and quickly revised my opinion.

Physically I was prepared rather ok (apart from some knee problems which I guess I could do nothing about). The bigger problem was to cope mentally. For long time I didn’t feel quite at peace alone on an empty road in Patagonia. Till now I feel some sort of fear of the wind and though I don't need to anymore I keep checking the direction and strength of the wind by observing leaves on the trees or grass or flags etc. At the beginning I just wanted to get as soon as possible to the place where I planned to spend the night. I’d rather rest little and finish cycling earlier. It came later that I finally really started enjoying the pure act of cycling and could truly relax.

Only at the very end of my trip when I took a bus did I realise that I enjoyed cycling more than I thought. On the bus I missed the freedom and independence. I missed the possibility to stop whenever I wanted, to choose my own pace, I missed fresh air. But then when I got back on the bike and had to cycle against strong wind I again got rather miserable. The thing was that towards the end of the trip it was harder for me to stay motivated and to keep cycling. It doesn’t happen every day that you wake up and happily get on your bike thinking ‘I will now cycle 100km’. Especially if it is your second month of cycling. But then it was towards the end of the trip when I did some serious cycling (apart from the last week in the Quebrada de Humahuaca which was already my ‘holiday’; but then again this climb to Purmamarca was really tough).

For sure I have chosen a serious destination for my very first cycling tour. And I went solo. But I completed it without any serious problems and I enjoyed it so it’s all great. I guess I would be more afraid of cycling alone through Africa or Asia than Patagonia.

Many times I was thinking why I do it, what for, what my goal is, what I want to achieve. I’m still not 100% sure but I guess what mattered to me was the fact that I cycled. It was not just an alternative to backpacking and taking a bus from one town to another. It was a totally different trip and I had different priorities. It in the end was some sort of test for me. And spending those hundreds of hours on the bike was more important than going hiking in Bariloche or kayaking in Futaleufu. It was the experiencing of various states of mind that mattered. I didn’t go to Patagonia just to be there or to visit all the tourist sites and do all the tourists do there. I was there to cycle it. Right now when I think of an old-school, romantic wandering around the world I see a picture of a road going all the way to the horizon, possibly mountains somewhere there, rather blue sky and a characteristic silhouette of a cyclist on a bike with panniers one metre from the edge of a road. It’s classic travelling but also a tiny bit of exploring and definitely some sort of confrontation with the world inside of you and around you.

People I met on the road kept asking me whether I would do it again, whether I would go on another touring trip. My first reaction at that time, in the very middle of my trip, fully submerged in it, was ‘I think I’ve had enough’. But the more time passed, the more I was thinking about it, the more I felt I would actually really want to go cycling again one day.

I have never considered myself a cyclist. I still don’t. I don’t go for a ride on the weekend, I hate lycra cycling clothes, a helmet ruins all the fun of a ride for me. However a bike is part of my life. A big and important part.

Thanks for all the support during the trip!

Karol

PS If anyone needs any specific info on the route, gear, thinks of a cycling trip etc – feel free to ask any questions. I’d be happy to share my knowledge and experience I’ve just gained.