The late Bruce Chatwin, once wrote in his iconic travel book, ‘In Patagonia’: ‘The plateau walls rose off a jade-green river, a sheer rampart two thousand feet, layer on layer of volcanic strata, stripped like a pennon of chivalry in bands of pink and green…The river ran down to a lake, Lago Ghio, with water a bright milky turquoise and the shallows were pink with flamingos.

Paso Roballos really did look like a site for the Golden City of the Caesars – another El Dorado hidden in the Southern Andes.’

This is where we were headed on mountain bikes in December last year, having failed in our quest some 30 years ago due to a dodgy piece of mutton. We were now 30 years fitter and more experienced, so what could possibly could go wrong? We flew with the bikes via Santiago to the tiny Patagonian town of Balmaceda, close to the border between Chile and Argentina. It was an emotional return for us, as this is where we had arrived late on Christmas Eve in 1993 to the warmest of welcomes after a gruelling and eventful ride across the Andes.

Ahead lay a 400 mile circuit with Paso Roballos at its heart. Adrenalin and the excitement of being back in Patagonia, banished any thoughts of the ferocious winds, the corrugated gravel tracks, the steep Andean climbs, the volcanic ash, lack of human habitation and entering one of the wettest places on earth. But hey, we had a Lost City to find!

Three days of cycling and a boat ride took us across the border into Argentina to the balmy foothills of the Andes. The news was not good. Due to a big dump of snow the previous week, the track up to Paso Roballos was closed to all vehicles. Reasoning that we could push the bikes around the drifts, walk across the hard crust of the snow or dig our way through, we decided to go for it. Having climbed and climbed we did eventually make it to the snowline, and using a combination of all three methods, we made it up and over the pass.

The view from the top did not disappoint, and we witnessed the same spectacular landscape as Chatwin – a myriad of vivid colours, turreted peaks, and sheer ramparts protecting the castle-like San Lorenzo mountain. What a perfect location for a Lost City!

Due to the snow, we had this Andean cordillera to ourselves. Eagles and condors soared overhead, and our path was lined with guanacos, rheas and hares, showing more curiosity than fear. During one memorable hour’s cycling, we witnessed a guanaco giving birth, two guanacos making another guanaco, and an eagle gorging on a dead guanaco. At night, we were joined by alpacas to protect us from pumas.

Instead of discovering the Lost City with its ‘towers of jasper’ and ‘roofs of silver’, we were treated to many marvels of nature: a sapphire archway studded with diamonds taking us through a glacier, rivers of jade, emerald lakes and night skies of a million stars. In this true wilderness, we were nature’s privileged guests and we felt well looked after – the notorious Patagonian wind slept, the sun shone in the wettest place on earth, and alpacas guarded us.

The legendary City of immortality may have eluded us, but now in our 60s, we returned feeling 10 years younger and with the belief that anything is possible. We again ate the purple sour-sweet berries of the calafate bush – a sure sign that we will return soon to Patagonia…

With many thanks,

Rupert, David & Merlin

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