30.1.09. Perito Moreno, Argentina.

Pics from Chile, words from Argentina. Strange days indeed.

Just as, famously, there's a fine line between clever and stupid, there is only the narrowest of demarcations separating tearful, panicky dismay from demented, sky-punching euphoria. I get the first one from a misfiring cylinder, compounded by my apparent inability to change a spark plug without dropping it deep into the dark heart of the engine; and the second from finding a mechanic who can do the job properly, resulting in a custard-smooth motorbike and a soppy grin.

You know what it's like. One minute everything in the world is completely bollocks; an hour later you are, literally, a millionaire Jesus, covered in girls and throwing 180's every turn.
---

That track by The Feeling is a magnificent, strutting rooster of a song, is it not? Look a little closer... and the rooster is wearing a smart new beret!

But what about a Top 5 booze tunes? Not in order...
Closing Time - Semisonic
Still Be Around - Uncle Tupelo
Have A Drink On Me - AC/DC
Whiskey Blues - Muddy Waters
Gin & Juice - Snoop.
All 16 songs off of Frank's In The Wee Small Hours would also fit the ticket. None of 'em specifically about boozin', but you sure as hell get the picture.

While we're "at it", can there be a music video based on a less convincing premise than the one* in which the fat lad out of Keane outruns a couple of motorcycle assassins? The only vehicle Tubbyguts could outrun -surely to Christ- would be an ice-cream van.
---

I swear on the tear-sodden grave of Tony Hart that I just overheard this conversation:

USA Man: Where I come from, roadkill and hunt-meat recipes are a really important part of our cultural heritage.
USA Woman: Fer sure! My mom's beaver is delicious!

One hardly knows where to look...
---

What sort of TV channel, I wonder, would show you the first half of a Barclays Premiership match, then at half-time, give you the full-time score complete with highlights, and only then show you the second half? Do you think it might be the Blithering Idiot Channel?
---

What in the ruddy heck d'you think "Membrana en Pasta" might be? I´ve just seen it advertised on a billboard, and I'm nearly certain I don't want any of it in my mouth.
---

*The Lovers Are Losing, 2008

27.1.09. Bajo Caracoles, Argentina

The bar at the petrol station (and why not?) in BC is a hive of inactivity. I've done 138 miles of Ruta 40 today without falling off, so I'm going to sit here, idle as a bee, until either I run out of pesos or I'm physically kicked into the gravel.

Men, yesterday

The road here varies between OK dirt and the worst pile of rocks you can imagine. Halfway in, though, there's a miracle: 30 odd miles of brand new blacktop. At first I think it's a mirage, and when I realise it's not I get down on my hunkers and kiss it. Kiss kiss kiss. Oh lovely road.

Ruta 40 is all about the weather. Today it's ideal - no wind (much) and no rain for 2 days. Under these conditions, the worst it gets is just really, really horrible, rather than impossible. The four times I've thrown La Fluffita into the rocks/mud on the way to Gobernador Gregores, however, have taken their toll. Scratched paintwork! A slightly bent footpeg! An engine that is not functioning with quite the efficiency one might hope for, and extremely dirty trousers. Injury-wise, I can only claim a pathetic bruise on me leg; you'll have had worse from banging your knee on the kitchen table.

29/1/09. Perito Moreno, Argentina.

Having proved myself the master of Ruta 40 (ignore, why don't you, the damage to bike, person and trousers mentioned above), I check into the Hotel Neveryoumind and steel myself for a serious rest. The slightly horrible old bint of a landlady suggests (I think) that a room is available for the first night, but that on Thursday she's got a busload of tourists arriving and I may or may not, at that point, be thrown, hopping mad and helpless, into a local ditch.

I decide to ride out the threat by visiting "El Viejo", and grab myself a seat at the bar that allows me to
A) look at the WHAM Jennifer Connelly (face and hair)/POW Jennifer Lopez (everything else) barmaid, and
B) spot the coach-load of shit-bags who may or may not be stealing my room as I write. We shall see. On va voir!

An agreeable hour passes - and it's sod you, you coachy, Pepsi-sucking, window-burnt bum-wits! My room is still mine, so damn you to hell, Johnny-come-lately.
I shit in your hair!

19/12/08 Rio Grande, TDF, Argentina.

None of your rubbishy Japanese TV's in TDF

One of the things I miss about Britain - the You of Kay - is the opportunity to watch "Withnail & I" at least once a month, preferably with someone who's seen it at least 30 times. If the phrase "Breakfast in fifteen minutes!", uttered in the right way, is enough to make you burp with glee, you are In My Gang. Are you able to read, without honking up a chuckle, the following innocent words; "Where did you schooool?" Then you are not In My Gang.

My sister Vicky and I are currently spending a terrifying amout of cash texting each other lines such as "It won't be the first time I've been left with the couch" and "We're coming back in here!". I can't see how anything could amuse me as much as sitting in a bar in TDF and getting a text that reads "He told me of your arrest on the Tottenham Court Road". Bruce Robinson is the perfect artist - one immaculate, timeless work of genius, followed by a retreat into wine. Better than God.

22/12/08, Rio Grande

May I put forward a suggestion? The next time you're in TDF, don't plan on staying 8 nights in Rio Grande. There's nothing desperately wrong with it. It's got 2 quite nice cafe/bars (La Ruega and Epa) and a cheap hotel with English-speaking movie channels. But - oh Gawd - eight nights is seven too many. I have no choice. I got here too early, partly because I thought a week in the (long-gone) Irish pub sounded good, but I can't push on to Ushuaia because my hotel is only booked from the 24th, and I doubt I could get another room there without a reservation this close to Christmas.

Anyway, if you do get stuck here, the Carrefour supermarket is way better than the Anonima, and La Ruega does excellent litres of draught, while Epa has cheap bottles of Isenbeck. I really am done here though. Finally, try not to be here on a Sunday, and if you are, be sure to hand your shoelaces in at reception.

---

Las Lagrimas del Rio Grande
Oh Rio Grande, Rio Grande
You are making my legs go bandy
Surrounded by sea, and thus not landy
At least I'm not reduced to shandy
The electronics you sell are made by Tandy
Your kiosks stocked with 3rd rate candy
Everything shuts on Bloody Sanday
I'll get outta here, please God, wan-day
No mountain views - not the smallest Ande
An Irish pub woulda sure been handy
Your tourist infrastructure is so not dandy
I wish that I had better planned-i'
---

23/12/08, Epa bar, Rio Grande

If you know anything at all about me, you'll be aware that I'm a huge fan of personal hygiene. My jeans may currently smell like a failing bakery, due to having been worn unwashed for 32 days, but my body - from hairline to toenails - is like a brushed whistle.

I am generally all in favour of lavatories that are regularly bleached, fumigated and sand-blasted of course, but to close the toilets in the Epa bar for cleaning for 45 minutes, while I'm clearly drinking litre bottles of Isenbeck strikes me as an act of criminal madness. I can write this only now, after they've been re-opened, with the aid of a kidney massage and an oxygen mask.

17/12/08 Rio Grande, TDF, Argentina.

It's 175 miles from the petrol station ("gas outlet" if you prefer) in Rio Gallegos to the next one, just over the Chile/Argentina border in San Sebastian, Tierra Del Fuego. My petrol tank goes to reserve at 165 miles - if I haven't been too silly and childish with my throttle fingers. All well and good if the station actually has fuel in it; reserve should give me about another 35 miles.

On this occasion, the attendant informs me, having stumbled back to the pump from the tin outhouse, pulling up his overalls and trailing lavatory tissue like a horrible bride all the while, it does not. And the next one's in Rio Grande, an impossible 65 miles away.

I decide to pull the old hollow-laugh routine, intended to convey a sort of darkly amused, "so near and yet so far" vibe. His face - such as it is - softens, and, looking furtively towards the border police hut, he unlocks the pump - and squirts me out a full tank! I can't quite make out the reason for his initial refusal to provide, but I think the place is simply low on juice (come on - it's TDF) and he's been instructed to save it for the police.

It is with a modicum of reluctance, therefore, that, 100 yards up the road, I take the following picture in the full and certain knowledge that, one day soon, I will be affixing a comedy subtitle to it and putting it on the internet.

Indeed?

In reality of course, like everyone else in Britain in 1982, I thought the Falklands were somewhere near the Shetlands, and I wasn't 100% sure where the Shetlands were either. I didn't give a bat's bum about them then and I don't give a frog's fraenum about them now. Thatcher was a witch and only escaped a war crimes trial on a technicality in 2000; Galtieri was a git and a failure. A lot of people died, the whole thing was shit, end of story. Shall we move on?

Last night I stayed at La Frontera in San Sebastian where I met Tim and Marco who are - if you'll allow me - clinically mad enough to be cycling through Patagonia. I passed them today, and I imagine we'd have met up as planned at The Galway bar in Rio Grande had it not been turned into a travel agency at some point between now and the publication of the current LP South America guide.

The pillows at the hotel in San Sebastian have provided me with a stepping stone to enlightenment. Let me finish. Last night I lay in bed and thought - My stars! These are the finest pillows I have ever used! And they were. And then I thought - Bollocks! I bet tomorrow night's pillows will be rubbish in comparison. A cloud descended. And then the truth dawned! The possibility of Wednesday night's pillows being inferior to these, the finest on Earth, was ruining my enjoyment of The Finest Pillows On Earth! So I threw aside the possible and began to embrace the actual - The Finest Pillows On Earth!

TDF Lager News: Prices have escalated since 1981. In a quite-nice cafe-bar, a litre of local draught lager works out at about 1.98 GBP a pint, 2p less than Margate's cheapest pub. Fags, however are untaxed in TDF - huzzah! - so that 20 Camels come in at 1 USD. I'd love to report on the local cigs, but the Argentinian ones are pretty bloody grim.

Brilliant motorcycle products:
1. Rukka "Silver" jacket. Light, warm, subtley groovy.
2. HG "Tuareg" boots. Feel like a train could hit them without rendering the shins unto meat paste. Amazingly comfortable if you buy 1 size too big.
3. Giali armoured trou's. Comfortable, just feasible as a street trouser.
4. As always, the Shoei Syncrotec II. The king of flip-up helmets. Get it in black - the fastest colour. Silver ones cost you 5 mph.

14/12/08 Rio Gallegos, Argentina

800 miles into the gale-blasted flatlands of Patagonia, there's a sign at the side of the highway depicting a tree bent over by the wind. So that's it! I wondered why I was leaning over at 45 degrees while riding in a straight line! So it's breezy then? Thanks very much, The Government!

I seem to have ridden 1000 miles this week, and it's time for an oil change, 3000 miles from Motoserv in King's Cross (the finest motorcycle shop on Earth). The Africa Twin handbook suggests not bothering until 8000, by which time I suspect the oil would have become black, gritty water with metal shards in it, so I think I might do it now. Or, you know, tomorrow. I'm in the pub now.

New Business Ideas 2: Male grooming for pets. After the rip-roaring success of Rabbit Mascara etc, how about A Razor For Rover? Shave your pooch a stunning moustache or enviable goatee! Tramline your tomcat! Sideburn your horse! Coming soon - Right Guard Parrot.

Next stop- Tierra Del Fuego, land (in 1981) of the mythical 2p-a-litre beer. Every Argentinian I've met has been friendly, with the single exception of a disgruntled old bastard in a cig kiosk in BA, perhaps because I attempted to pay the requisite 4.40 pesos with a 100 peso note. Or perhaps he was just a bastard.

New Business etc... Pine Scented Mouse Wipes!

Hey there Andy Bell! If you're reading this, there's an excellent article about the history of Bultaco motorcycles in the December 08 issue of Argentina's (rather scooter-heavy) Exclusivo Motos magazine. Well, the pictures are good anyway. The text is impenetrable, what with it being all in foreign and that.

It's 10.01pm and it's broad, read-the-newspaper daylight outside. Exactly how is one supposed to know when it's time to go home?

Sierra De La Ventana, Argentina. 29/11/08

An evening of lager and cigarettes at a pavement table near, if not quite in, some mountains. How ineffably winsome! I hear you respond. And it is, despite these facts:

1. I am sitting 12 breezy feet away from the largest wind-chimes I have ever seen;
2. The wind-chime shop is playing, over the wind-chimes themselves, the most self-harmingly funereal Scott Walker CD I have ever heard;
3. In my other ear the restaurant is countering with some extremely disappointing disco covers of all your New Romantic favourites.

Bahia Blanca, Argentina. 3/12/08.

The flush on the single gentleman's lavatory in the North-Western, BB's finest bar, gave out an hour ago. Still no-one has, er, unpacked their shopping, but it can only be a matter of time. Unlike most Argentinians, I prefer to drink beer in quantity rather than savouring each pathetic sip and sodding off home after stringing out 1 bottle of lager for 2 hours, so my chances of stumbling on a toilet-full of Tuesday's lunch are significantly higher than most. Luckily my resolve in these matters is unmatched.

I've endured 2 nights in the Hotel Chiclana's Coffin Suite*, a windowless box big enough for a single bed, with a shared fright-bog down the hall. Cheap though. Now I've cracked and moved to a twice-the-price room with - hey! - a window. A view of a brick wall 4 feet away never looked so enticing.

Las Grutas, Argentina. 8/12/08.

Las Grutas is the most perfect little beach resort this side of Zanzibar, and it's not in the Lonely Planet book so get your skates on.

I arrive here from the 2008 Horizons Unlimited meeting in Viedma. It´s a feast for the eyes, an all-you-can-eat buffet for the ears, a salty snack for the fingertips, a pop-tart for the tastebuds and - quite naturally - a crap in a bun for the nose. If you like dirty motorbikes with bits hanging off them, loud throbbing noises, beer, meat and lavatorial cliffhangers, it's paradise. I do - and if you don't, fair enough. Perhaps you prefer sauntering through meadows bursting with wildflowers, or cultivating pansies in your greenhouse. That's cool. Some people like dressing up as girls and rifling through Mummy's make-up bag. No problem! Each to their own, I say.

Puerto San Julian, Argentina. 13/12/08.

The waitress in Restaurante D'Angela is sweet like a peach and sexy like a cheetah. She brings the total number of waitresses-slash-barmaids I have fallen deeply and temporarily in love with to 10,000. She looks like a 22 year old Helena Bonham Carter without the hedge-style eyebrows or humming lunacy.

New Business Ideas 1: Make-up for Pets.
Cat lipstick! Dog blusher! Oh come on!

*No actual air is permitted either to enter or to leave the room. By Order.

Mar Del Plata. Argentina. 23/11/08.

A single-handed Budweiser-guzzling competition - man against barrel - leads to a late night steak with a wine "salad". Sleep, in a bed that international laughing-stock Tom Cruise would find restrictive, is hard to come by, and at 10 am I'm kicked out of the hotel and forced, blinking and confused, out into the world to fend for myself. Luckily "fending" on this occasion involves a 200 yard ride to the cafe for tostadas of jamon y queso.

Hans* from Switzerland comes over as I bite into what would seem to be a sandwich of Hoover bag contents, freaked out by my GB numberplate. Good bloke! He tells me that he rides a BMW around the Alps and wishes me well, so - nice one Hans!

A hot-but-jolly ride - a mere 75 miles - down to Mar Del Plata. It's like Toronto and Margate had sex and - THUNK - plopped out a very nice Atlantic coast town. Juan, on a rather groovy little 250 Honda CB-something, meets me at the lights, guides me to a hotel, tells me of his six-months-at-a-time Canada/Argentina life, and finds me a secure parking spot. Argentina is the chimp's nips (as we say in Thanet).

Necochea, Argentina, 27/11/08.

HUURRP! That was the best meal (asado, bitter lettuce, cheap vino tinto) of the last 4 days. In fact the only actual meal, if you care to join me in discounting burgers, ham'n'cheese toasties, medialunas (croissants) and garage sandwiches. Bugger the Mar Del Plata landlady who told me Necochea was "shit" and "nothing".
No, really! Go there - for me - and bugger her!

Coronel Pringles, Argentina, 28/11/08.

There's a little bit of chitter-chat in Britain and some other parts of Europe at the moment about the idea of removing road signs, traffic lights and other visual clutter, in order to allow the motorist to concentrate and make decisions based on current road conditions, traffic levels and so on. I´m sitting at a busy, traffic-light and give-way-sign-free crossroads in Coronel Pringles, staring our European future in the eyeballs. It's been 30 minutes but I'm nearly certain I'm going to snap up from this page any second, jolted away from pen and paper by a crescendo of rending sheet steel, the resolved chord of tinkling indicator lens on cobblestone and the delayed applause of human screeching that constitute a quite-serious car accident.

There is no statue of a stupid-looking bastard waving a cardboard tube of reformed potato-effect snack discs in the main square, so we shall have to assume Col. Pringles was not the man you and I both want him to be.

It is a lovely little town, with some lovely little humans in it. I'm thinking specifically of the busty chica who recently bounced past me on a suspension-free bicycle. Well done cobblestones!

2 hours slip by, no car crashes, and I'm bum-over-eyes, haplessly in love with this laughy little burg. Maybe I should just stay here? I'm in a pizza joint sitting next to a hilarious group of grannies, obviously celebrating something. It's 10 pm, 3 days from December, shorts and t-shirts. Hopelessly devoted to Col. Pringles.

*names changed to etc etc. And cos I forgot to ask.

21/11/08. Pinamar, Argentina.

So it's bye bye C and hello AT. My 10-year-old, 35,000 mile Africa Twin which I bought on eBay and am somehow expecting to get me to Canada, has been nailed up inside a dusty crate for 6 weeks and sea-freighted diagonally across the Atlantic. It starts first time after being crow-barred free in BA, much to the delight of the cheery warehouse fellas and the relief and near-tearful gratitude of myself.

I spend a fair proportion of my final week in BA in - oh I can't decide - either the second-best or the joint-best pub in the world, The Gibraltar. Where might one begin? Visually, it's perfect. Dark wood, dim but optically-adequate lighting and just the right amount of comedy bar trinkets - i.e. not that many. The staffing is ideal; a landlord from the North-East of England, "Nice" Beaver, who has the unusually good manners to look, and, importantly, be, even more hungover than you when you arrive; and a selection of nice, smiley girls to pour the stuff.

The stuff itself is cheap, cold and limitless. Closing time is 4 am. They have the perfect bar-stools. In the CD rack are both the last Midlake album and an AC/DC best-of. Every time I go there I end up having an amusing chat with a tourist, an ex-pat or a local.

I really could have gone there every night for six weeks, but I'd have died, so I didn't. So now I'm in Pinamar. The AT was a joy on the 250 mile ride here, but I've woefully overloaded it (again) so tomorrow is going to be chuck-stuff-away-day. I hope my landlady - who is 175 years old - has a big dustbin.

23/10/08. BA.

Panic Room, 2004-ish.

Really should be called "I am mesmerized by Jodie Foster's chest and as a consequence have no idea what is going on". Five stars.

26/10/08. BA.

One bowls fairly carelessly down the emerald avenues of life, believing that a pea-sized blob of shampoo and a kitchen sink full of hottish water are all it takes to remove stubborn blemishes from the smalls and return almost any of the intimate garments to showroom condition.

But hang on just a cotton-pickin' minute. It appears that rare steak juice - pink , hot and fatty - utterly thwarts this notion. Don't eat wet beef in your good pants.

31/10/08. BA.

I bloody love Buenos Aires. It's completely, barkingly, eye-gougingly nuts. Screamingly bonkoid. Crazed like the paving and nutty like the bar. I worried that I was going to be humiliated by my Spanish, and punched, stabbed, kicked and hated for being English. It hasn't happened and I doubt it will. Argentina baby!

There's a little bit of me that, after 3 weeks in Argentina, can never eat meat again. Thank buggery it's not my mouth!

5/11/08. BA.

Obama is El Presidente! Fuck you McCain. Fuck your team's cheap Obama/Osama puns. Fuck your Hussein gags. Fuck Sarah Palin, her airbrushed Alaskan prehistoric bullshit, and her neanderthal Creationist loser dogshit dogma. Apparently there is a Sarah Palin sex doll available on the internet. If the manufacturers can find the common courtesy to send me one, I will ceremonially crucify it atop a pyre of Black Sabbath records, copies of "The Origin Of Species" and reams upon reams of family planning literature. *

12/11/08. BA.

A fashionable statistic states that the average US citizen has five pounds of undigested red meat in his intestinal tract. Luxury! I have double that in my oesophagus alone.

*This is way less offensive than what I originally planned to say.

13/10/08, BA

I am 42 and my willowy days are behind me. C. is 20, raven - haired, fulsome of form and saucy of eye. Battle lines are drawn up in The Gibraltar, and an evening skirmish at my place results in a closely-contested draw.*
That's 20 - twenty - years old. I may have peaked too early.

14/10/08, BA

There is something to be said for staying in occasionally, drinking urine-hued Argentinian chardonnay and listening to AC/DC on half-decent headphones. No need to bring up the resultant jumping around in front of the full-height mirror. That's private.

You can stand in a bar at 10pm anywhere in the world and shout "AC/DC" and at least one person will grin excitedly at you, and, more often than not, come over and breathlessly dissect the guitar solo from "Overdose". That means, if I have my facts correct, a BILLION people like AC/DC. That feels important. Let there be rock!

NB: This doesn't work with Rush. If you stand in a bar at 10pm and shout "La Villa Strangiato", you will, I suspect, be strangled before you make it back to your villa.
Or Hawkwind. Someone with boogly eyes may come over, dribble on your cuffs**, and begin to worship you as a galactic messiah, but the most likely outcome is embarrassed indifference. Do Not Panic! Think Only Of Yourself!

One of the benefits of a long motorcycle trip is that it allows you fully to think through these issues. So where in SHIT is my bike? I would cheerfully bite out my pineal gland for 10 minutes on 2 wheels up the Avenida 9 de Julio.

*Actually I won.
** Hello Benny.

Buenos Aires, 8th Oct 2008

In the beginning, there was darkness.
And the Air Comet flight attendant said Let There Be Light.
And warm mushrooms were served at 5 am somewhere over the South Atlantic.
There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, because it was rubbish.
And Lo! said the captain, and the plane obeyed and it was good. Good air to Buenos Aires.

I find myself in a heart-warming one-bed flat, 100 yards from the thrusting, unashamedly priapic centre of BA; the Obelisk. By the time we landed yesterday I felt like a stamped-on cadaver, but the taxi ride into El Microcentro kissed my eyeballs, licked my heart and wibbled my ding-dangs back to life.

Slightly unconvincing second-hand horror stories about how Argentinians hate Brits, with a vengeance and to a man, were atomized by the fact that the first one I met invited me to his house for roast meat and wine with his Anglophone wife on Sunday.

Perfect weather for arriving from London - cool but sunny. So far so good. Apart from the sugary bun with ham and cheese I had this morning. Bleccch. I have no bike for three weeks so all I can do is drink Quilmes (a second-tier lager: Isenbeck is much nicer) and immerse myself in this nutty Southern Hemisphere metropolis. Further north, I'm expecting the inevitable Kentucky Run-In with a Creationist. Catholicism may be a sick, power-mad, kiddie-fiddling, brain-washing, peasant-indoctrinating, empty, gold-plated, bloodthirsty, fetishized, perverted, whisky-swilling, woman-hating, gay-bashing, witch-burning shitball of a religion, but at least it doesn't try to argue that dinosaur fossils are God's Prank.

It's taken me nearly 3 years to think of an end for the London - Cape Town story, and I still can't. Cape Town is much better as a long-haul holiday destination than it is as an overland end-point, partly because, quite rightly, no-one in CT gives a weeping shit how you got there. The wavers and well-wishers are gone. It's literally over. Bloody great town for a week's holiday though!

Things I learnt from crossing Africa:
1. People are nice.
2. I want to do it again.
That'll do me!

10/10/08, BA

Imagine a boot stamping on a bin bag full of rat's faces forever. Add E331 and salt to the result, and bingo! You have a sizeable batch of Piccadillo "meat" paste, the Worst Food Ever. Why in the name of wank did I buy two tins?

In comedy news, there's a cafe at Madrid airport called "Ars", and here in BA you can buy a small jar of glazed fruits called "Gentleman", allowing you to hand them around, eyebrow aloft, with the phrase, "will you take a Gentleman's cherry?"