Thoughts from the end of the world. . .

Ushuaia, Argentina

Well, no mythological musings today. 

We ran out of roads to bike on – kind of came to a dead end . . . I guess that means that the South American chapter of our journey is over. 

And now we’re headed off to Marrakech. The upshot is that maybe it’s time to reflect on a few bigger picture items . . .

Let me start with a topic that it’s been on my mind as we’ve pedaled along these lonely austral roads: wildlife and the state of our world.

I think there is a tendency to think that when it comes to nature the grass is greener in other parts of the world. 

“Yeah, well, here in Minnesota there is so much agriculture and mining, and so many cars and stuff that there isn’t much wildlife. But go to the Andes in South America – it’s unspoiled there . . .”

Well, it’s not like we’ve explored the whole world – or even a truly significant portion of Central and South America. But from what we have seen I’ve been really struck by how little wildness there is left anywhere. There are barbed wire fences delineating various pieces of private property pretty much everywhere – even high up on mountains or in the most remote desert areas. There are no wolves. There are basically no deer. We saw a few raccoons in Panama City and Cartagena – pathetic beggars that probably couldn’t survive for a day without people feeding them – but none outside of those cities. Yes, there are some guanacos way down here in far southern South America, where the population density is incredibly low – but that is, really, just the exception that proves the rule. 

Now, when I was growing up my Grandpa used to tell us about the frogs in Mule Lake – near the old family farm outside of Fergus Falls in northwestern Minnesota. He talked about how these amphibious creatures – who depended upon the health of both the air and the water – were kind of the canary in the coal mine in terms of the state of our world. No frogs – or deformed or unhealthy frogs – probably meant that the ecological balance was off, and/or that herbicides or pesticides had despoiled the land. 

Let me just say that there hasn’t been a sign of Kermit and friends for thousands and thousands of miles. Not a croak (Although there are people who claim that I sound like Ms. Piggy’s lover. To that I say: A) that completely misses the point, and B) there is no truth to that ridiculous claim whatsoever… 😁).

Now, up in the North Woods there may be a tendency to think that things are still okay. Go to the Boundary Waters and it almost feels like the world hasn’t changed in thousands of years. That is, in fact, why we go there . . . But I think that’s just the cocoon that we live in; because we are doing pretty well up in Minnesota, because people like my Grandpa fought to keep our environment in good condition, and because there are few enough people in the Northwoods generally, we have been able to maintain our little illusion of environmental nostalgia. 

But, my goodness, in the broader context the natural world is under serious assault. 

Kind of sad – because there’s no meta-experience that can replace the real world wonder of hearing the frogs croaking, the peepers peeping, or of seeing a deer or a moose or a wolf – if only for a moment. In fact, my guess is that even Mark Zuckerberg is busy flying his kids to the Yellowstone Club in Montana so that they can experience a “real” wild animal; he’s not telling them to strap on their VR glasses so they can “play” with an elephant. Because even he knows that there is no substitute for the real world in this regard . . .

Some of you cited the recent New York Times article about all the people visiting Ushuaia these days. I guess the number of tourists visiting the Antarctic has more than tripled in the last ten years. And why not? People want to experience some last vestige of wildness in the world. It’s the same reason we just paid $110 each to see a penguin. Pretty pathetic, really. They drive you out for an hour on some remote dirt road, then load you on a boat, and then motor across the Beagle Channel so that we can see – and, more important, take a picture for social media – of three or four penguins taking a nap on the beach. It was definitely “worth it” for us wealthy Americans, but let’s be honest: if we want more – or, really, any wildness for our kids and grandkids we need to focus on creating a different world rather than celebrating these tiny exceptions to the general rule of environmental ruin . . .

I don’t quite know what to do about all of this . . . Because if the choice is food for your family or preserving space for a bear to roam, pretty much everyone is going to choose their family. Now I know some will say that this is a false choice; that we can have both. Maybe so – but probably only in places where there is enough wealth that you can use the most advanced agricultural techniques – and, even then, I doubt you can really feed all the mouths that there are to feed in the world right now by using only organic farming . . .

So I guess the choice is to help the whole world become more successful. Raise all boats, as they say. Then, presumably, populations will stabilize and people will have the luxury to allow the bear to roam . . . Of course, the raise-all-boats strategy is pretty much exactly the opposite of where we seem to be going right now . . . 

Alright, enough of that soapbox . . .

Let me change gears to some more specific observations. 

When we started on this journey I think one of the things that we were most excited about was the food of other countries. And it is still exciting to arrive someplace new and find the local specialty. For instance, we are for sure excited about tangine in Morocco. 

But as we have moved along, I guess the new food motivation has moved down the list of priorities. Yes, the food can be good. But the restaurant version of stuff never seems all that satisfying. Not sure exactly why. Maybe we don’t know how to order properly; but I kind of doubt this is the real problem. After all, Dr. Liu is a pretty quick study and spends a lot of time trying to figure out the local foods. 

But it just seems like we always end up getting half a meal. In Argentina we might order the steak because it’s supposed to be good. The steak will be fine, but the meal as a whole is pretty unsatisfying. They’ll give you a T-Bone or whatever, and some mashed potatoes. Both good in and of themselves. But missing the complementing vegetables that make the meal a meal . . .

Now, it’s not like we haven’t been enjoying local food. It’s just that it’s much better to buy fresh ingredients at the grocery store and cook them ourselves. And we feel like we probably get a more authentic experience that way anyway. For instance, in much of Latin America they sell pre-marinated meats. Really good, and fun to cook. Or the squash. For the first time in our lives, we pretty much have squash at every meal. Love the squash they sell around here. But haven’t seen a lick of squash at a restaurant. 

Of course, street food is a different matter entirely. Mexico and the less affluent countries of Central America had great street food. Less expensive and better than any of the restaurant stuff. But it seems like the more wealth a country has, the less street food they have. Guessing Morocco will be good in this department . . . We’ll see.

So if the food is not as big of a priority, what has moved up the list? The landscapes. The people. The history. And the biking.

When you are biking point-to-point across a continent, with no repeat, the landscapes and the riding are pretty much always great. Always fresh. Always interesting. 

And it’s always fun to meet new people. Always different. Mostly friendly. Always with their own unique and fun stories. 

And the history. It’s funny how the history can surprise. 

Argentina is a good example . . . Who remembers the Falklands War? Back in 1982. Obscure islands in the Atlantic. Seemingly out of nowhere, Argentina decided to invade this sanctuary of sheep herding. The British would have none of it – and sent their own military to eject the Argentinians. Us Americans haven’t heard much about it since then – and I guess we just kind of assumed that this chapter of history was all settled.

Not so fast.

The Argentinians refer to the islands as the Malvinas – and let me just tell you that the issue is very much alive and well here in Ushuaia. Seems like everywhere you turn there are tributes to the soldiers who fought in the war, or to the history of the islands. We even visited a whole museum dedicated to the Malvinas yesterday. Lots and lots of words explaining why the islands rightfully belong to Argentina; the displays were like a long legal brief I might have written in a former life . . . 

• Point No. 1. The islands are closer to Argentina than they are to Great Britain.
• Point No. 2. Apparently the Spanish held the islands for a while before Argentina declared its independence from Spain.
• Point No. 3. The geological features of the islands are kind of a continuation of the geology in southern Argentina – or something like that.
• Point No. 4. The flora and fauna of the islands are kind of like Argentina.
• Point No. 5. According to the Argentinians, the British took the islands in violation of some old treaty or something.

Oh, and for reasons I didn’t quite understand, the general rule of self-determination should not apply. Because, as it turns out, the people who live there – and there are only about 3,000 of them – mostly speak English, they are mostly of British descent – and they prefer to keep British rule. (No word on the preferences of the 500,000 sheep or the one million penguins on the islands. The sheep are of the Corriedale variety – a breed that originated in New Zealand. The nationality of their tuxedoed friends is unclear.)

I guess Ushuaia is the capital of the southern region – the Antarctic region – of Argentina, and that region included the Malvinas for the 74 days between Argentina’s invasion on April 2, 1982, and their surrender to the British on June 14, 1982. So I guess it’s a big deal here in Ushuaia. So much so that we understand that, to this day, many Argentinians don’t vacation in Chile because the Chileans supported the British on the Malvinas issue . . .

On this note, I wonder whether Minnesota should think about making its rightful claim to Isle Royale. After all, the island is much closer to Minnesota than it is to Michigan, Minnesota wolves used to roam the island, and Isle Royale moose probably swam over from Minnesota. Between our canoes, fishing boats and SUPs I’m pretty sure we could mount quite a formidable armada. And then, after the invasion, we could erect lots of monuments in St. Paul to the heroes who fought for our state . . .

Okay, the last few days in Ushuaia . . .

This town is not what we were expecting. I think when we left Minnesota we were thinking that Ushuaia was maybe like Ely or Roseau or something . . . Just some little outpost that we would hopefully travel to that happened to be on the far tip of South America. 

What we found instead is a Duluth-sized city, but growing by leaps and bounds. Like Duluth, it is built into a hillside, with steep streets going down to an international port. Construction everywhere – with new buildings clinging to the side of the mountain. The funny thing is that this big town has only one road in and out. I guess because of that, there is no crime – too hard to hide and no way to escape . . . Which is interesting, because Ushuaia was originally a penal colony; like Australia they sent their criminals down here to suffer with the penguins. 

Between the Antarctic cruises, the bikers like us, the motorcycle tourists, the regular tourists looking to check their fin del mundo boxes, and the wintertime tourists coming for the skiing – both Alpine and Nordic (there’s a summertime-for-us World Loppet race . . .) – Ushuaia is about much more than prison these days . . .

With a few days to kill, we took a penguin tour with some friends that we had met on the ferry last week;

we biked to the national park, where the road to the end of the world officially ended, and where we saw another fox and some whales;

we tracked down some bike boxes for the journey on the plane;

and we caught up on some gear homework – like finding and repairing a tiny pinhole leak in our inflateable sleeping pad, and giving Old Dan and Little Ann a thorough de-greasing…

Now we’re on our flight. First Buenos Aires, then Frankfurt, and finally Marrakech. Crazy how fast airplanes go. Spent the first ten minutes of the flight watching the last two days of our biking go by – in the blink of an eye. 

Going to be some serious culture shock to go – just like that – from seven months of Latin America and Spanish, to Morocco and Arabic, and the Arab world generally.

General plan is to spend a few weeks in Morocco, make our way to Gibraltar, take a ferry to Spain, and then start heading east across southern Europe and into Turkey, before eventually turning back north – hopefully before it starts getting too hot . . .

We’ll see . . .

Oh – a few statistics for you . . .

• So far, we’ve been on the road 226 days. 
• The best I can figure we’ve traveled a total of about 13,500 miles (longer than a straight-line trip to Ushuaia because we detoured for things like St. Louis, Tampico, Mexico City, Oaxaca, the Lakes District of Chile, the Carretera Austral, and for things like campgrounds, national parks and city tours). Of that total, we biked about 10,500 miles; we flew about 300 miles (Panama City to Cartagena to avoid the Darien Gap); we bused about 2,000 miles (through much of Peru and the Atacama Desert); and we have taken about 600 miles of ferries. 
• We’ve traveled through eight states and twelve countries. 
• I think we’ve gone through six chains on each bike; four sets of tires per bike; four derailleur cables (I think three for Little Ann – she’s kind of a derailleur cable hog); and about two sets of brake pads per bike.
• And, at probably about 5,000 per day for each of us, I think we’ve consumed about 2,260,000 calories. 

Alright, signing off from somewhere above a few bits of rock in the Atlantic – home to a million penguins, 500,000 sheep, and 3,000 people. 

Next report . . . The Marrakech Express . . .