Everything is going wrong

I get attacked, I have equipment, weather and terrain problems. My morale is at its lowest. Who said traveling by bike was easy?

When I get off the bus in Mendoza, on the Argentinian side of the Andes mountain range, I sit on the grass to ride my bike. A terminal employee shouts at me to go somewhere else, on the side where all the passengers are standing. Not the best place to put a bike back up but I comply. The whole screwed up, I leave to roll towards the exit… but makes me again call out violently. The man even runs after me, shouting like a damn that only buses can be on the asphalt. I'm told to push through the crowded terminal pushing my mount… Welcome to Mendoza.

Young and old alike riding on the small track of the rural velodrome.

The next day, I'm on my way. I intend to cross the whole width of Argentina to the east, to get to Buenos Aires, and then reach Uruguay and Brazil. A very long straight line of 1000 km in the pampas awaits me in Argentina.

For a few kilometers, I ride with happiness. It’s cool. Not cold, but enough to wear long sleeves and my pants slightly rolled up. My thoughts take me to the Europe of three years ago, to my beginnings. I'm a little nostalgic for those days when I didn't know anything about bicycle travel. But too quickly I am brought back to reality. As soon as the city center ends, the ditches fill up with waste, the air becomes drier and the vegetation turns into thorns. I am finally far from Europe.

My riding hours are going well, however, and at the end of the day I see a small sign indicating a velodrome. Surprising for a small remote and quite poor village. I went to see what was going on there and found a few young people and adults doing laps there. They tell me the site is old but they just got a grant because the asphalt is new there for just a few weeks. I take a look at the already dented and cracked asphalt. When is better than rock, I tell myself.

Then after a bit of conversation, one of the adults will find out at the nearest house if I can pitch my tent there, and come back and tell me yes.

My camp is set up in the middle of the municipal “velodrome”.

Under attack

The track cyclists gone, I set up my camp, prepare supper and go back to my tent. Darkness and cold comes very quickly in this southern winter. Above all, the total absence of humidity in the air contributes to drastically lowering the mercury as soon as the last rays of the sun disappear. Alone in the dark, I suddenly hear noises around my tent lit by my headlamp. They look like stones falling to the ground nearby. Again, a thud is heard. This time, the throw is precise and a stone tears the bottom of my tent canvas. I scream and come out of my tent. This is the first time in over three years that I have been attacked. However, I cannot see my attackers.

A few seconds later, I see three men heading towards me by the bike path. The coincidence is amazing and I wonder if it was they who attacked me. The oldest of them asks me if I want to go and settle in his garage “to be safer”. I am not very confident. I tell myself that the rock was perhaps a diversion for me to follow them and be robbed as soon as I left my equipment behind. At the same time, if I refuse the invitation and stay in the field, I risk being thrown again ...

I decide to follow them. But I carry the majority of my bags, including my electronics and money, and have them carry my tent. We walk towards the garage, which is in fact a facility for playing bowls, or boules, a kind of local pétanque. I put my tent back inside and between all my bags in it.

My tent set up at the back, next to the slopes of bowls, a sort of Argentinian pétanque.

I then accept an invitation to their house next door. Miguel, the oldest of the three men and owner of the house, tells me that it was surely the children who live in the back who attacked me. “Pendejos. »They describe them ... assholes in other words.

In the house, little is happening. Several people are there waiting to listen to a Copa America soccer match, which pits Brazil and Argentina that night. But the television will never work, and the kids will eventually spend the evening playing cards and smoking. They don't take too much care of me and I decide to go back to my tent.

Everything is going wrong

I managed to get through the night without being pulled out of the rubble. But the night is cold even inside my shelter. Especially since my little liner that I use inside my sleeping bag is tearing all over the place. After a few years of use, it has reached the end of its life. I had it repaired in Santiago but the fabric is too old and tears with the slightest movement.

I also often wake up during the night to try to re-inflate my mattress, which is pierced, by mouth. I also had it fixed before hitting the road again but it seems that new holes have formed. In addition, dogs are howling and barking all night long all around.

In the morning, I notice that a dog has chewed and destroyed my headphones while I was preparing my meal the day before. I turn my gaze to my bike, the tires of which look particularly soft, probably from the cold air. I try to re-inflate them but my pump is not working well either and I cannot.

When things are going well, things are going well, as they say ...

I settle into a bus shelter for a good hour to fix my mattress. I don't have a lot of water with me but I use part of it that I mix with shampoo to make it soapy and thus more easily find the bubbles which escape from the leaks to be sealed. The trucks pass without stopping very close by in a noise of hell. And thousands of ants are attracted to the water that I spill on the concrete of the shelter. I have only driven 10 km and am already mentally exhausted…

Roadside repair of my mattress. Soapy water to find the leak. My UV glue only dries in the sun and this repair will take me a good hour.

You like this ?

The days go on and are alike. The road options are not plentiful and I am generally a highway with no shoulder. The trucks are huge, almost like trains with their big trailers, and quite a lot and I often have to move quickly to the shoulder to avoid getting hit. I continue to repair my mattress almost every day, which keeps failing and forces me to sleep on the floor. And the very short days, from 9 a.m. to 18 p.m., do not allow me to move forward very much.

I buy bananas from a man on the side of the road. It asks me a different question than the ones I normally get. Instead of asking me where I'm from and where I'm going, he just asks me "and you like traveling by bike?" ". “Honestly, I don't know anymore, that I answer him candidly. I am 33 years old and I sleep on a sleeping pad that deflates… There are good days, and others more difficult. It's difficult lately ... "