Junkie

Cabeza de Indio (indian´s head), View from close to Cabeza de Indio, El Bolsón... and My feet at the top of the 20km run to Refugio Dedo Gordo and back before turning my ankle

I am shaking. I feel weak all over as I roll down the dirt road. Frested valley and grey rocky clear river on my right and snow topped Patagonian peaks in front of me, to the south. But scenery does not make me shake... only caffeine and adrenaline and I have had no caffeine since yesterday... It must be adrenaline then, an aftershock of my traverse of the little path under an overhung rock outcropping that is Cabeza del Indio.

The train wound up switchback after switchback until the rock face where the path traced the cliff some zero to 3 and a half feet from its edge. Sometimes there was space here for one person to pass another on foot but on two serarate sections if you dropped a line from the edge of my handlebar of my mountainbike it would have to be 60 feet to reach the earth... and the other side? rock wall.

Now as I roll down the hill the adrenaline is everywhere in my body, warm, jittery and excited, but almost weak. So i begin to look for more before it has even flushed from my veins.

Later, I did find some horse trails that traversed the mountainside...sometimes windy and narrow but always quite smooth with packed dirt. A lot of fun, and fairly untechnical. There as I sped down a path among thorns, my breathing rapid (its not the effort its the adrenaline) I see yellow everywhere about the path so I stop...yes, a gift. Ripe and fallen yellow plums litter the ground. And you do not here, have to search to find fruit, like berry picking among the thorns... no here one must avoid the ripe plums so as not to step on and crush them. So I stop and grab a few handfulls. Am I greedy? I sit there supported by my bike frame, in the hot Patagonian sun and eat plums of the same colour, little suns.

I throw another easy few handfuls in my bag and continue.

Hours later I am sitting here in the sade of a mountain: still, unwavering, unshaking (if you allow me to employ this fabricated word) - and I am referring both to the mountain and to my body.

After I close this book I´ll be in search of the shakes, so IU´ll set up my stove and boil water for mate.