Pinch Me Pancho

On the coast just north of Dublin I went straight into quarantine. It was in a place I’d only ever seen from the window of a train. At the same time Fran stepped nimbly into the past. His aunt had lent us her summer home, Tír na nÓg which is Irish for “Land of the Young”. It was built by Fran’s grandfather in the 1930s and is still welcoming his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Isolated at the end of a grassy driveway, only a narrow strip of golf course separated us from the dunes. Like the beach and rock pools, the house had barely changed. Precarious towers of books covered every surface, bunkbeds crowded the empty bedrooms and rabbits were the only players on the croquet court. I’d been hearing stories of this place for so long it wasn’t hard to feel the ghosts of summers past, faint outlines of small children with grubby knees, grass-stained shorts and salt-dried hair. I imagined I heard the whack of a tennis ball, the shriek of the gulls and the chatter of a tiny procession making its way home after a hard day’s slog at the shore. It was a far cry from Inca terraces and grilled guinea pig but for an enforced stay on the other side of the world, it wasn’t half bad.

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As soon as we were let loose on the general population, I went home to see my family. Irish life was slowly returning to a cautious and reduced normal. Meanwhile Fran flew to Hamburg. We’d hired a broker to receive Pferdi off the ship but it still took over a week to get him out of the port. A very kind cousin from Bremen drove up with his trailer and helped navigate the customs process which was an absolute godsend. As a US-registered bike, Pferdi entered the EU as a ‘tourist’. It all went smoothly but 3rd party insurance, at $200.00 a month, made our hair stand on end. I landed in Hamburg on the same day and laughed when they drove by the empty terminal pulling the big crate. The last time I’d see it was on the back streets of Callao with Pferdi slowly boxed-in, like a magician’s assistant in a disappearing act. He was unpacked the next day at the farmhouse, got his new battery installed and started-up first go. It was a good first step on our trip to Rome.

It took a while to pack; we’d forgotten our system. The journey was almost a straight line south, about 2,000 km. We were avoiding the autobahns because at 80 kph, Pferdi would be a health-hazard alongside those speeding trucks and BMWs. The weather was spring-like, with grass greener than green and skies so blue they were practically weeping. So was Pancho for that matter, who teared-up at the sight of the perfect roads stretching before us. Expecting a leisurely jaunt through the countryside, things began to look differently from the sidecar. Used to lolling around in there like Cleopatra in her asses’ milk bath, I found I actually had to work. There were so many back roads! Forget how many of them lead to Rome, how many bloody roads lead to one blinking village? If I took my eye off the phone for a second I’d look up to find we were going the wrong way. There was Fran, gaily following a smooth black curve past a church when I should have told him to go straight and climb the steep side street behind the barn on the corner. And because this is Germany, one expects everything to work just perfectly, but the little blue arrow on my map was about two minutes behind, resulting in innumerable U-turns. With the driver fuming, the navigator mutinous and Pferdi confused over why he was spending so much time in reverse, it wasn’t at all the happy return to the travelling life we’d envisioned. I began to long for the Andes where all I had to do was wonder when we’d go over the side and would we go straight to heaven because we were already in the clouds.

There were several friends along the way and we wanted to stop and say hello. We didn’t have to quarantine again but we had taken two flights so were wary of putting other people at risk. We expected to do no more than park at the end of a driveway and yell across the gravel as well as across the years. As it turned out, we were very lucky in our timing and cases were low. Life was just about as normal as it could be and after Peru, it was like landing on another planet. Having spent 127 days inside the same four walls in the Ica desert, we couldn’t imagine ever again doing anything as ordinary as eating ice cream at an outdoor café or drinking a cold beer on the banks of the river Rhine, but there we were. “Pinch me Pancho” I said and he obliged.

When I was 17, I spent a year in Northern Germany. I’d been back several times but it felt surreal now to be driving Pferdi through the village, then out across the fields on the road I cycled five days a week to catch the school bus. The homes hadn’t changed, nor had the people and there was a happy, contented sense of having come full circle. Moving further south, we stayed on the old country roads. The ride was slow, the navigation still tempestuous but the view from the office window never failed to delight. On the hillsides above the Rhine, castles and vineyards were two-a-penny as were medieval towns right out of Grimms’. We continued to get a warm welcome from old friends and slipped easily into the German way of life. The sidewalks were free of trash and craters, there were no speed bumps and the food…..well, let’s just say there were more than two types of cheese, and I’m not including Easy Singles. Honestly, what’s not to love?

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We left Bavaria in the same manner we arrived, dripping wet and cold. The full bike gear was retrieved from the bottom of the trunk for the first time since, hmm, somewhere in Mexico and the window boxes and frescoes were the only signs of color on the road to Garmisch-Partenkirchen. People had laughed when I asked about the process at the Austrian and Italian borders, because there was none. I was used to gathering passports and paperwork in triplicate and waiting in line for a bored customs agent while ten locals tried to help me. The Germans were right. I completely missed the border. Fran had to nudge me but it was already gone. It was so wet we didn’t see much of anything during the 70 km through Austria. The Alps were dark and dramatic but the pastures were sodden and the clouds low so I just huddled deeper into the sidecar and waited for Italy.

The Brenner Pass toll plaza on the border was unmanned and try as we might, it wouldn’t spit out a ticket. In the end we just drove on. Big mistake. It was so different from Latin America where even the automated toll road in Panama City had someone there to help. We had prompt and personal assistance however on the other end, in the form of a €70 penalty, to be paid elsewhere. There were no discussions, no explanations and no excuses. What a welcome to the sunny south.

Though the pass is the lowest in that section of the Alps the weather didn’t improve until we got down into the valley. Driving through the Italian Tyrol the sun came out and the gloves came off. There were more castles here than in Germany, and endless vineyards and small towns with skinny church towers and pointy spires. We were still on the big boys’ road and feeling further dwarfed by the mountains. What had been lacking in the Alps that morning was more than made up for by the Dolomites in the afternoon. We spent the night in a village near Trento and the next day left the peaks behind. The scenery fizzled and flattened out and bypassing Verona, Bologna and Florence, our day ended in Arezzo. The hilltop town had a beautiful medieval center, a Medici fortress and dark winding streets. It was here we ate our first Italian meal. We wanted to sit outside but none of those places were open for dinner yet and we were too hungry to wait. It was the first time we’d eaten in a restaurant since March 11.

As it turned out my navigational skills had nothing to do with it; all roads do lead to Rome. On Wednesday, September 30 we finally reached the eternal city. Traffic wasn’t too daunting, after driving in Bogota, Lima and various Teutonic backwaters, Pferdi is no longer easily intimidated. Two months and 17 days after deciding to leave Peru, we parked, unpacked (everything) and hung up the keys for what will probably be our longest stop ever. In six and a half months we’ve driven only 2,300 km. It’s shameful. On the other hand, we never did claim to be the fastest wheels on the autopista.