Bike packing at the end of the world
Ferdinand Magellan, Ernest Shackleton, Charles Darwin, Francis Drake, and Bruce Chatwin are just a few of the explorers, scientists and narrators who across the centuries have tried to conquer, explore, or describe Patagonia.
However, each and every attempt to grasp the essence of this land has only contributed to reinforce the collective image of an hostile and indomitable place, with too many stars to count and too much wilderness to tame.
In a close dialogue between words and photos, this book aims to tell the story of the authors’ bike packing journey in Patagonia: a thousand kilometers from El Calafate to Ushuaia, across the ice of the Perito Moreno Glacier and the windblown “Land of Fire”.
The motives behind the journey
The journey was not conceived as a challenge to overcome but was instead motivated by an ancestral need to listen to new stories, breath new perfumes, and fill the eyes with space and the skin with wind.
Even more than that, the intimate and radical idea that pushed the authors towards this unknown landmass was that perhaps in these scarcely populated areas, it is still possible to meet someone and establish a profound and meaningful contact with them.
Meet Frank, nomad radio host, Penni, silent photographer, and Willy, eternal traveler: the voice, the eye and the heart of Patagonia. Let yourself be moved by the beauty of the untouched landscapes they will cross as well as by the people they will encounter and the lessons they will learn.
The authors
Francesco Frank Lotta: In 2018 he has published “Ritorno alle terre selvagge”, the story of his journey in Alaska following the footsteps of Chris McCandless. He hosts the radio show “Deejay on the Road” and he his the director of “Tratti – Patagonia”, the documentary that follows the traces of this book.
Paolo Penni Martelli: he is the author of tens of photographical reportages for the Alvento magazine and he is the official photographer of Eroica, the non-competitive cycling event that every year, in many parts of the world, aims to rediscover the roots of biking.
Willy Mulonía: he has accompanied more than five thousand bike packers around the world. Between 2001 and 2002, he has biked for thirty thousand kilometers from the city of Ushuaia (Patagonia) to Prudhoe Bay (Alaska). From that adventure, his book “Chino verso Nord” was born
