2023-11-13 14:00:00
At that point he got off the bicycle, looked for his cell phone and called the family. “I dedicate it to my grandchildren,” he said. Gabriel Leone as he turned and the camera showed the images of the lighthouse, the sign, of the deepest Patagonia. Between the cold, the tiredness and the loneliness, emotion got into his voice to break it suddenly. She had achieved it.
Era October 30 at 10 in the morning, I was right in front of the sign that says km0 of Cabo Vírgenes, at the southernmost point of the American continent. It came from 3 months and 2 days of traveling Route 40 from north to south, crossing the country completely, pedaling c once morest the wind, the cold and the sun.
Gabriel is from La Pampa, He has been retired for a few years, he is 67, but on December 1 he will turn 68 and he showed that there is no age to achieve what you heartily desire. On July 7 I left La Pampa in a Motorhome heading north with his bicycle. On July 8 he began pedaling from Tucumán in a period of adaptation to the altitude. And on July 28 he left La Quiaca, which is where km 5080 is.
This is how the adventure began
He waited a lifetime for this trip. Gabriel Leone dreamed a thousand times that he got on his motorcycle and traveled along Route 40 from north to south. That crossed towns, met people, discovered landscapes. But work, raising children, the short and insufficient vacation time that an employment contract provides, postponed things.
He was born in Morón, province of Buenos Aires.But following two years he was already in General Pico, La Pampa. He considers himself a true pampeano because “the place you chose to stay is worth more than the one you were born in,” he confessed.
“When I had 10 or 15 days of vacation I went out with my wife, and she didn’t like such a trip. It was postponed. I was a carpenter and then I started as a traveling salesman. I worked for 38 years as a salesman, I did well, I became a zone supervisor and when I retired I said ‘Por why not do Route 40 by bicycle and pedaling alone?’”
I had been doing some cycling. He went out around the city on the country roads. Little by little, he began to perform better, first he did 20, 30, 50 kilometers, he reached 100 yeIn conversations with other cyclists he heard regarding adventures like the ones he dreamed of doing.
He decided to leave Tucumán. She was taken by a friend in a motorhome, who was going on vacation up north. On the morning of July 8, their mission began to roll: to reach La Quiaca, to take a 5,080-mile route along Route 40.
“I’m making it descend. Some leave through Cafayate to avoid the gravel or avoid the Puna. I arrived at the northernmost town in Argentina, which is Santa Catalina, and from there I go down.”he said from the south, just following crossing the halfway point.
The routine was to average 40 to 50 kilometers per day. There are days when there were 90 or 100, depending on the distance between the towns.
I was traveling with a tent, cooking supplies, clothes, food, the heater and spare parts for the bicycle. The loaded bicycle weighed 68 kilos, plus its weight is 150 kilos.
«You can stop at hotels, but I am retired and the cost in tourist areas is very expensive. What I always look for is a municipal campsite, and if not, sometimes I stop in the middle of nowhere and set up the tent. But someone sees me enter a city on a bicycle and tells me ‘Do you want to come home?’ I have invitations in San Martín, in Villa La Angostura. In Bariloche I have the house of one of my wife’s cousins and things are happening,” she said in those days.
The biggest challenges of doing Route 40
The path traveled has different difficulties and attractions. There are very famous slopes that left you breathless. For example leaving of Humahuaca, that of Los Chorrillos He says it cost him a lot.
The windy days also marked great difficulty, and when he entered Patagonia he made himself known. “But I think the hardest thing is not being able to breathe, In the north I did not sign up at any time, but you notice the lack of oxygen, that is hard, I walked, I did ten, fifteen meters and I had to rest so that my heart rate would go down.
It was not adapted and it went up and up. «They say that when you climb more than 500 meters one day the ideal is to spend another quiet day resting. The slope between Quiaca and Cieneguillas and the Abra del Acay, 5000 meters high, is the roof of Route 40. I walked for 7 hours, with the bicycle at my side to climb it, there was no way to pedal it. They come from the world to take that route. “It is the second highest national route in the world,” he said.
The bicycle is not the best for those roads, but it is what there was. One of the things that he will not forget regarding the pedal roads is the people from the north, with whom he crossed paths.
«She is very good, very kind, very open. You go to ask something or have them explain it to you and they take their time. dThen the beautiful places, the landscapes, the Cuesta de Miranda, there are so many beautiful places…”
Through Patagonia
«Little by little, the steppe begins to be felt, the bushes are flattening, the entire landscape becomes more desolate. The distances between the towns became greater, 200 or 300 kilometers and the road became harder, more difficult. But getting closer to the goal also makes you draw strength from where you don’t have it,” he said a few days ago while returning home eager to see his people.
He crossed Patagonia chased by a big snow storm and was lucky in that sense, but he got very strong winds. One day, between Puente Blanco and November 28, the wind blew so hard that he fell off his bicycle 5 times. «You are there, and you have to continue because you have to get there. You can’t stay in the middle of nowhere. “I arrived and at the Highway Station it started raining, they helped me there,” he said.
In the south, the long distances and the cold meant that double the effort was needed. He confesses that “without the help I received along the way it would have been very difficult. From Río Gallegos, at kilometer 0, I advanced through climbs, that part was really very hard«Gabriel highlights.
When he arrived in General Pico, his friends, family and neighbors waited for him to enter a large caravan. accompanied by honking. The pride of those who know him to the surface for his achievements, for his perseverance.
And now that he is home he can think regarding what is to come. While he was waiting for them to look for him, he said that maybe he would return to some places he passed through and fell in love with, but he wants to do it by car and share it with his wife.
These days he enjoys his own. «I already pedaled, now I want to be with the family, tell them, it’s been four months without seeing them. I dedicated it to my grandchildren, to Ulises, Lautaro, Álvaro, Salvador, Julia and Amadeo, “They range from 12 to 1 and a half years old,” he says and gets excited once more when he names them.
Gabriel Leone shares his adventure on Instagram: @gabrielleone7477 and Facebook: Gabriel A. Leone.
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