Hugh MacDermott enters the saloon bar, commanding attention as his spurred boots clink along the wooden floor. He straddles a barstool, ordering two glasses of bourbon in husky Clint Eastwood tones. The slam of tumbler on bar announces that the first has vanished down his throat. Through the haze of the smoky bar I see MacDermott picking up the second and bearing towards me. I tremble at the impending duel. This duel, however, is not to be one of pistols but one of the mind.
Hugh, 24, arrived in Argentina almost whimsically in 2004, with little more than a bag on his back and an address in his pocket. Four years on and he has achieved great things, touring Argentina on horseback for a year and a half amongst it. But despite having slept under the stars and lived off the earth regularly for the best part of two years (not to mention once making a stunt video), he remains a paragon of gentlemanly modesty and cultured intellect, playing down any Bear Grylls or John Wayne tag.
So, Hugh, what brought you to Argentina originally?
I had a job lined up at an estancia in a place called Intendente de Alvear in La Pampa, or at least that’s what I thought. Courtesy of some iffy geography and a little deception, I had envisaged the estancia as being 30,000 hectares of bucolic haven high up in the Andes, with crystalline streams, rolling fields and where horseback was the only mode of transport.
In reality it was 100 acres of flat, dry land used for rearing Polo ponies. Many gauchos believe that there is only one people who truly know how to ride – them; and they were charging tourists US $1,000 to come and stay. My room was the garage! I was honestly sleeping on a mattress in the middle of the garage floor, surrounded by the normal clutter (spare bikes, smokeless fuel, an old washing machine…). It wasn’t five-star.
Is that why you set off on your expedition?
No, the trip was a bit later. I had been reading ‘Tschiffely’s Ride’, which is Aimé Tschiffely’s account of his horseback expedition from Buenos Aires to New York in the late 1920’s – an incredible feat in today’s day and age but even more so back then. I wanted to emulate his adventure despite, upon researching the route, discovering that two other men had attempted the same trip since Tschiffely: one died as near as Córdoba, the other just plain vanished. I didn’t have such a clear-cut plan; I just set off from Buenos Aires and aimed for the US.
Crikey! Was your journey equally treacherous?
No, it was great. It was one of the cruellest winters in recent history and people doubted whether Pancho and I would make it through the mountains in such testing conditions that neither of us were accustomed to. Pancho did amazingly well though. I managed to stay with people a lot but there was still an element of living off the earth: sleeping rough, bathing in streams, catching your supper and so on.
Actually, while I was in what Argentines would refer to as the desert here, a friend taught me how to catch peludos (armadillos). The technique wasn’t hugely sophisticated: run after one and whack it! Preparing them is no more complex, in fact it’s quite like a microwave meal: flip it upside down, gut it, chuck it on the fire and then you have a ready-made meal served in its own container that you can eat from; and the best bit, no washing up.
Who’s Pancho?
Pancho’s my horse. When I got him, I asked the Gaucho his name but it seems that the Argentines are less sentimental with animals than the Brits. After some pained ums and ahs, he announced that the horse was called Pancho. I liked the name as it is a sort of anagram of ‘Sancho Panza’, Don Quixote’s great sidekick. Our journey was rather quixotic.
I gather that you didn’t make it to the US because you couldn’t get a VISA for Pancho?
I wish I could say that was true! No. Just 100 miles up the road, I was contacted by a swashbuckling character called Cuchullaine O’Reilly. He is a co-founder of ‘The Long Rider’s guild’ – an invitation only club for people who have ridden 1,000 or more continuous miles on horseback. Cuchullaine (alias Asadullah Khan having converted to Islam while teaching and supporting Mujahadeen resistence groups in Afghanistan) invited me to become ‘South American liaison’ for the guild. I hadn’t heard of it but, after checking their website, I was disappointed to see that they were following the progress of about five other people doing virtually the same ride as me at the same time and my adventure wasn’t so original at all.
My plans changed and I decided to ride to every country in South America instead. However, after some calculations into how long this would take me (such as placing a ruler on the map and drawing a straight line between Buenos Aires and Quito) and some soul-searching, my trip became more about myself than achieving records. I decided to ride around Argentina and see where I got to.
What was the highlight of your adventure?
It’s clichéd but it was the people that made my trip so special. The Argentines are so lovely and welcoming. Although my own mother was always going to worry about my welfare during the trip, I felt like I had another mother worrying about me every time I stayed somewhere. These women would take great care in sewing the holes in my one pair of trousers (which I had patched up in so many places that they had doubled in thickness) and feeding me well. They would always say, ‘oh your poor mother’. Forget having to call home when I finished my trip, I genuinely had a big list of concerned ‘mothers’ from all over Argentina to call and placate when I got back. For me, it is the people that make Argentina so great.