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El Viento (The Wind)

By Chris Thompson - 2008-12-07

I’m jolted awake from my sleep by a loud howling outside the tent. My drying clothes are springing around above my head as my little yellow home is shaken and beaten by this monster outside. Instantly I’m awake, hastily pulling on my rain pants and jacket. I’ve never heard the wind this strong before, I must be out there. I can hear the waves being thrown against the rocks below me. As I emerge from my yellow cave, i’m hit in the face with a salt spray, whipped up from the channel to my south. White foamy waves are crashing over the jagged rocks of our little beach. I climb out onto one of the large ones, 20 or 30 meters away from the grassy knoll where we’re camped. This is no longer the peaceful beach we initially found; "muy tranquillo" our Argentine mountain-biking amigo told us. Now it is the bow of a ship, crashing through the seas. I stand on the rock, surrounded by the spray and foam, and let the spray crash into me. South America is proving to be all that I imagined and more.

I am constantly amazed at the beauty and fierceness of this place, at the end of the world, or, en espanol, ‘fin del mundo’. Ushuaia is an incredible place. It seems to get more and more ridiculous the longer we are here. Perfectly calm and quiet one minute, a few hours later, a howling maelstrom. Dust devils, raging wind, incredible mountains. I’m already in love and we’ve only been here a few days. I feel the spirit of those old explorers, heading off to the Antarctic, not knowing what lays ahead. I even saw a small replica of the James Caird, the little boat that helped bring Shakelton’s seemingly doomed crew back to safety from the jaws of the Antarctic ice.

My first impressions as I cycled from the airport were immediate fear. The bike was too heavy, the wind too strong, the mountains are too tall, and I am not big enough for all of this. I still can’t really understand what’s happening, or even believe that I’m here yet. I wake up to the wind, rain, and mountains. I look around in total awe. This is my home. I know that I can’t conquer the mountains, or defeat the wind, or push back these waves. But I can get up the next hill. I can pedal down the road for one day, and another, and another…I’m still uncertain of what lies ahead, but I am eager to find out what it is. I’m even finding a little place in my heart for this wind; it grows on you.