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Old Man on a Bike
Simon Gandolfi
A Septuagenarian OdysseySimon Gandolfi has never been one to grow old gracefully and following two heart attacks he decides not to rest up, as many might, but to ride the length of Hispanic America on a 125cc motorbike. And why not?His wife may have plenty of reasons why not, but used to the intrepid septuagenarian's determination to complete any plan he comes up with, she shrugs her shoulders and waves him goodbye.At 73 years old, Simon Gandolfi sets off from Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico to embark on a five and a half month journey culminating at 'the end of the world', Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego. For Simon this is a journey of discovery. Leaving behind the safety and sanctuary of friends and family, he is truly alone but along the way he meets and talks with rich and poor, old and young, officials and professionals, agricultural and industrial workers. This expertly written travelogue reveals not only the stories of those he meets, and his own, but also that of Latin America, its attitudes to itself, to the USA and the UK in the aftermath of the Iraq war and the realities of the poverty and endemic corruption throughout much of this continent.But whilst guide books often warn of thieves, corrupt police and border officials, Gandolfi writes of the incredible kindness and generosity he encounters, of hope and joy, understanding and new friendships, and ultimately, an old man's refusal to surrender to his years.'The journey begins tomorrow at 8 a.m with a flight from the UK to Boston. I fly Aer Lingus and have bought and will wear a green shirt and a Clancy Brothers Arran sweater in hope of an upgrade. I will be away from home for many months and I have a long long way to ride. Am I nervous? Yes. Scared? A little.'Simon Gandolfi, 18 April 2006Outrageously irresponsible and undeniably liberating, Gandolfi's travels will fire the imaginations of every traveller, young or old.
For Bernadette, my love, my strength, my wife – and for Wei-Ming Ang, best of companions on the road.
Contents
Cover (#uec6e2c00-fdb0-51ea-86f9-0d1cc4e7b906)
Title Page (#uc83c1886-31fe-5a82-84e8-bcf8eeeca6b1)
Dedication (#ulink_693a95a0-8566-537a-96f3-60b4201e97b0)
Prologue (#ulink_531e0ba0-4759-52cc-98de-5d0b14f5741f)
Chapter 1: The Boys on Bikes (#ulink_5348bc77-4acb-559b-9bfa-3f5c17c8aed4)
Chapter 2: Goodbye Dallas (#ulink_90f0210b-8f40-5f37-b63f-54a07527a3c9)
Chapter 3: The Road to Oaxaca (#ulink_0f63440f-0f0a-5170-8ed6-1d97e7a158b5)
Chapter 4: Oaxaca (#ulink_90da8a73-6ccd-5483-8c02-5e0aec73538d)
Chapter 5: The Monk and Mister Big (#ulink_41d870b9-239e-58c0-84bb-92579c7a76aa)
Chapter 6: To Antigua (#ulink_9fb9d016-b2c0-5f01-9d58-a4070cc5d13c)
Chapter 7: Rio Dulce (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8: Café Conversation (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9: Flores to Copan (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10: Honduras (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11: Nicaragua (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12: Costa Rica (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13: To Almirante (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14: David to Panama City (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15: Colón and Portobelo (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16: Holiday Cruise (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17: Colombia (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18: Ecuador (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19: Peru (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20: Onward through Peru (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21: Bolivia (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22: Argentina (#litres_trial_promo)
Picture Section (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#ulink_d78691b2-e8a3-503f-a244-708e83234a4e)
Why would a reasonably sane man in his seventies ride the length of Hispanic America on a small motorcycle – a man who is overweight, suffered two minor heart attacks and has a bad back? Stupidity comes to mind … And flippancy is easy camouflage …
Age has much to do with it. My wife is younger by almost thirty years. I feel old. I suspect that our teenage sons find me an embarrassment; their friends mistake me for their granddad – or an old tramp.
So, yes, age.
And anger.
Though I have lived abroad much of my life, I am very English, probably something of a Blimp. I believed that honour was intrinsic to being English; in public service, we behaved better.
Then came the Iraq War, the disclosure of Abu Ghraib.
None of my honourable English compatriots resigned, not a Minister of the Armed Forces, not our Ambassador in Baghdad, not a senior officer serving in Baghdad, not the Head of Military Intelligence nor any of his senior colleagues.
They were complicit in Abu Ghraib. So am I. That is the strength of Democracy: the Government is ours; each one of us is responsible for our Government’s actions; each one of us is equally sullied.
The alliance to which we are committed is intent on nation building in Iraq … and Afghanistan. The US has been nation building in Hispanic America since President Quincy Adams’s declaration of the Monroe Doctrine (1801). In travelling, I may discover how successful the US has been and discover what opinions the people of Hispanic America have of their neighbours in the North.
US citizens possess an absolute certitude in their superiority. Canadians are poor cousins. Those south of the border are wetbacks, greasers, Latinos – inferior beings. Good ones make good house pets.
Surely we Brits know better?
I visited three high schools in my native Herefordshire. I asked fifteen-year-olds for their image of a Mexican. All gave the same answer: fat, sweating, big hat, drooping moustache, comic accent.
And those from further south? Central and South America?
Drug dealers or crooked cops, corrupt officials.
Such is cultural colonialism – so much is absorbed from Hollywood.
I wondered, as I listened, what those South of the border, the Spicks and greasers, thought of us Brits? Do they imagine that we wear bowler hats, carry umbrellas and drink endless cups of tea? Or that England is a land peopled by football hooligans?
Do they differentiate between Britain and the US?
My wife said, ‘Find out. Ride a motorbike. It’s something you’ve talked of doing as long as I’ve known you.’
‘I’m too old,’ I said.
‘So? Get young again. Get out from behind your desk. Show that an old man can make it. And don’t dare write a polemic’.
Polemic is wifely code for obsessive and boring – our sons are more forthright.
And my wife is correct: I have been behind my desk for too long. Writing fiction, I have been seeing through my protagonists’ eyes, living their traumas. Time has come to raise and risk again my own head above the parapet, see with my own eyes, experience my own adventure. Latin America is tempting. I am obsessed by its history.
I wrote the best part of two novels in Santo Domingo, capital of the Dominican Republic. Two 16th century mansions form the Hostal San Nicolas de Ovando. The manager set a trestle table in the tower. The river lay below. I would imagine those first tiny Spanish ships lying at anchor. I would imagine sunlight flashing on breast plates and helmets, the strike of steel-shod boots. They were small men, the Conquistadors. Most had little education. They were filled with superstitions. How could such men in such small numbers capture vast Empires? I have read modern historians. I find them wanting in explanations. Though what do I know? I’m a high school drop-out. And I admit to prejudice. My great grandfather was a famous Spanish terrorist – El Tigre del Maestrazgo. His mother was executed by firing squad. He conquered much of Spain.
Cortés set out from Veracruz and conquered Mexico. I intend to travel all the way south from Veracruz to Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego. Cortés rode a horse. A Honda 125 will do me fine. All I wish to conquer are my fears. I have faith in the bike. I am less sure of my heart. Will it cope with the rigours of the Altiplano?
More positively, I may lose weight.
Chapter1 (#ulink_1e40e52a-3a57-5584-a5c7-8119bcfd02c8)
The Boys on Bikes (#ulink_1e40e52a-3a57-5584-a5c7-8119bcfd02c8)
1906: My father sits beneath a thorn tree in northern Kenya. He and his business partner Jack Riddle have been in Ethiopia buying horses. They travel with sixty porters and livestock. Jack is scouting ahead for water. My father writes in his diary a reminder to order a new dressing case from Asprey, a Bond Street purveyor of luxury goods – hairbrushes, clothes brush, beaver-hair shaving brush, cut-throat razors, all with ivory handles. My father will supply the ivory.
2006: I buy a used green shirt and Clancy Brothers sweater at the Age Concern shop in Hereford. My wife asks whether I plan auditioning for a job as a garden gnome. I retort that I am flying to Boston with Aer Lingus and hope for an upgrade.
I fail with the upgrade. However, the immigration officer at Boston’s airport is Irish American and appreciates the sweater. He asks what I plan doing in the US. I plan travelling by train to Dallas, crossing into Mexico by bus, buying a motorcycle in Veracruz, Mexico, and riding to Tierra del Fuego. The immigration officer is two years short of retirement. He checks my date of birth.
‘You’re seventy-three.’
‘So?’ I say.
‘What type of bike?’ he asks.
A Honda 125.’
‘For real? A 125?’ He grins. ‘That’s a pizza delivery bike. You think you’ll make it?’
I have doubts but what else should I do with the last years of my life? Sit at home and watch TV?
The immigration officer stamps my passport. ‘What does your wife think?’
‘She’s pleased to have me out from underfoot.’
My ex is more concerned. We have been separated for twenty-five years. She collects me from the airport and drives me to her home in Providence, Rhode Island. In the car, she says, ‘This thing you’re planning is really dumb. I’ve been talking with people. They all say it’s dumb. I mean, going through Colombia and places. And the roads, the way those people drive. You’ll get yourself killed.’
I take the bus next day to my adopted daughter’s home in Duchess County, New York. Anya reiterates the imagined dangers. I have a history of heart attacks. Why deliberately put myself at risk?
‘It’s a man thing,’ I explain.
And why take a train south to Dallas? No one takes trains.
I am about to write about the Americas. I need to see the US rather than fly over it at comfortable bombing height.
Dallas, Friday 28 April
My forty-eight-hour train journey from New York ends late afternoon in Dallas, Texas. I have slept in a chair the past two nights. Don Weempe collects me at the Amtrak station. Don and Jane and their daughter, Elspeth, are old friends who visit England regularly. I haven’t visited Dallas in eight years. Dallas is a great city and the Weempes are generous and considerate hosts. So why does Don plot my death?
Don is a heavy-built six-foot-four-inch good ol’ boy, third-generation Dallas, a graduate of Texas A&M University. He makes his money spreading concrete over Texas. He and three friends plan leaving tomorrow at five in the morning on a bike trip. Texas is big and Texans ride big bikes – too big for an old Brit, even a Brit preparing to ride from Veracruz, Mexico, to Tierra del Fuego. In Texas, a Honda 125 doesn’t rate as a bike.
I am to follow the weekend bikers in Don’s Hummer with their gear. The Hummer is in Don’s front drive. It looks huge. It is huge. Back home I drive a fourteen-year-old Honda Accord. My sons are ashamed to be seen by their friends in what they describe as a ‘Granny car’. They tilt the seat flat and pretend to be reading a newspaper. Now I lie awake worrying that I won’t be able to handle something as big as the Hummer. I worry that I won’t be able to keep up with the bikes. I know that Don has a Harley, leather seats and studs. I’ll meet the other three riders in the morning.
Texas everywhere, Saturday 29 April
Five in the morning and Don reverses the Hummer out of the drive. I climb in behind the wheel. Big! Wide! Scary! Home in England, my sons tease me endlessly for driving slowly and holding up the traffic. Now I must follow Don on a Harley and Jack, an airline pilot, on a BMW GS 650.
Rain falls steadily. I hope it will slow the bikers down.
It doesn’t.
I follow their tail lights onto the freeway. We speed through Fort Worth and halt for breakfast around seven. Paul joins us, a lawyer on a vast Honda cruiser with a seat the size of a sofa. The bike is a recent purchase. Paul has all the kit: suit with armour plate, million-dollar boots. Unfortunately his boots have filled with water.
We turn off the freeway onto country roads wide enough to be motorways back home. No cops, and the speed edges up. The bikes out-accelerate and out-corner the Hummer. I lose a hundred yards or more on each bend and have to work at catching up. The speedometer touches eighty, eighty-five, ninety miles an hour. My sons won’t believe me. Fifty years at the wheel and I was hit with my first-ever speeding ticket the month before leaving England: thirty-three and a half miles an hour in a thirty zone.
A couple of hours at the wheel and I am almost confident. The Hummer is rock steady. I am familiar with the controls. The rain has ceased, the sun is bright and the satellite radio is tuned to Nashville. I risk taking my eyes off the road. Cattle graze vast paddocks. A brace of wild turkeys scurry off the verge and hide in the mesquite.
I follow the boys on bikes into the town of Turkey in mid afternoon. ‘Town’ in west Texas is fifteen houses and a store that closed in the sixties. We are in Turkey for the annual Bob Wills memorial concert. Bob Wills was a country and western singer. He and his band, The Texas Playboys, topped the charts back in the forties.
The memorial concert is in a dirt field beside Turkey’s disused redbrick high school building. Tents and RVs and trailers are parked among the standard farm mishmash of new and disused agricultural machinery – abandoned pickups and rusted metal stuff that even the manufacturer wouldn’t recognise. Texas machinery is big. The driver climbs a ladder to reach the controls – no place here for a man with vertigo.
The Bob Wills memorial concert is true west Texas. Three plank-and-scaffolding stands face a stage that is as permanent as anything is permanent in west Texas. Swallows or house martins have nested in the ceiling. The Texas Playboys are up there doing their stuff – those that are still alive, that is. Practised? They could play in their sleep.
Three or four generations of the same family lounge in folding chairs between stands and stage. Stetsons, blue jeans and boots are obligatory for the over-twos. The MC is a local doctor. He knows half the audience by name and knows at whom to direct his quips. Local girls collect dollars for the museum’s upkeep. Jack buys a Bob Wills memorial hat while I write my name in the visitors’ book and that I come from England. If there is another tourist, he got lost.
I remark on the quantity of old people’s transport: electric invalid chairs and golf carts. I am driving a Hummer! This is fun. My mistake is not buying a Bob Wills memorial hat. A Bob Wills hat would have protected me all the way south to Tierra del Fuego – or at least to the ranch down in Argentina where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid hid out for a few years.
I have sinned. I have been overconfident. Pride comes before a fall. I am about to plummet from fearless driver of the Hummer to trembling Brit on the sidewalk. Disaster hits on the freeway into Amarillo. The boys on the bikes thread the traffic. One minute I am tapping along to Garth Brooks on the radio. Next minute I am in panic. The boys on the bikes have gone.
I drive a further ten miles with my gut in a knot. Too late, I spot a biker pulled in at an exit. Is he one of my bikers? Has he seen me?
I take the next exit. A biker races by on the freeway.
What should I do?
Help!
