: Peter Murtagh
: From Tip to Top The Journey of a Lifetime From Chile to Alaska
: Gill Books
: 9780717190034
: 1
: CHF 15.10
:
: Reiseführer
: English
: 320
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
Peter Murtagh decided it was time to embark on 'The Great Retirement Project' - riding a motorbike from Tierra Del Fuego at the very southern tip of South America, to the most northerly point in Alaska, alone and without the pressure of any deadline. Aged 69, just him, a tent, a bike and a sleeping bag. En route, Peter explored magical, wonderful and extraordinarily out-of-the-way parts of our bruised world, met incredible people from all walks of life and observed a great swathe of the Americas. Travelling alone on the 45,000km journey allowed him a rare opportunity to disconnect from hectic daily life and to embrace the solitude, challenge and peace-of-mind of the road less travelled. From Tip to Top is a story of optimism and hope and the adventure of a lifetime, and is a ground-level portrait of the Americas as we rarely see them.

Peter Murtagh is an award-winning journalist and author. He spent almost forty years in newspapers holding several positions including chief editor, foreign editor, news editor, opinion editor and managing editor. As a reporter, he specialised in long form investigative pieces. His travel book with his daughter Natasha, Buen Camino!, was a bestseller.

CHILE AND ARGENTINA


12–17 NOVEMBER 2022, PUNTA ARENAS, CHILE

The flight from Santiago began its slow but steady descent, wheeling left across the Strait of Magellan, the windows on the right side tilting upwards to give me a glimpse of the snow-capped Andes.

The Andes! Again, and at last, so close I could almost touch them – the same feeling I had two and a half years previously when mask-wearing soldiers stopped me just outside Puerto Natales to say, politely, no, I could not go further. ‘Covid,’ they said, as if I needed telling.

Now, with the curse lifted for almost everyone everywhere, I was back, a bundle of excitement and anxiety. Excitement because this was the resumption (resuscitation?) of the ‘great retirement project’, riding a motorbike from Tierra del Fuego to Alaska, alone and without the pressure of any deadline to get to place X by such and such a time or date. This would be no race, no ‘lads together having a blast’ expedition. I wanted this to be a journey of encounter and exploration, a journey partly along the famed Pan-American Highway – or the Panamericana, as it is known in much of Latin America – but one with the freedom to go this way or that as the mood or the moment took me.

But there was also more anxiety this time. Maybe it was post-Covid angst; maybe it was appreciating better than the previous time the anxiety I was causing in others – in my wife and children and among my wider family and friends – by doing this. But my selfish self was still doing it. Maybe it was the gnawing realisation that, nearly three years on, I was in my seventieth year and no longer had the strength or fitness I had as recently as 2020. I had by then developed a touch of arthritis in the joints where my thumbs join my wrist. Sometimes I can’t twist the lid off a jar. My doctor has me on statins (a low dose, but heart pills nonetheless) and also something for blood pressure, and when I told him about the trip, he commented, ‘Ballsy,’ half admiring (I suspect), half thinking (I also suspect) that there’s no fool like an old fool.

So what made me think I would be able to upright a toppled BMW R1200 GS Adventure, a vast machine by any measure