The Road to Patagonia (2024) Movie Script
Thank you.
Oh, hey. That's me. This is Pete. This is Frankie the dog. And we're all going to the top of Alaska.
Oh, man. You okay, Pop?
Good girl. Good girl.
Nothing smashed. Nothing's broken.
I don't know, man. It looks pretty broken. It looks pretty broken. I'm just happy we're
alive.
Luckily, Pete, the guy I was hitchhiking with, was a mechanical engineer. And despite my
trepidation, he somehow got the old van running again. And everything was going sweet. We
were back on track. Until we broke down.
Oh, shit. Go.
Jesus. Get that off, man. You all right?
Yeah. Is it still burning?
Yeah. Big time. Have you got something to stop it? Big time.
Um, Jesus. Good work. Good, good work. Fuck. Heavy.
Looking back on it. I can't believe I didn't move the jerry can. Fuck. But Pete fixed the
van again. And we kept on trucking.
Maybe you're wondering why I'd even get back in that van. Or what I'm doing in the middle
of Alaska. But my guess is that you want to know who's talking to you. So bear with me
and I'll try and explain.
My name's Matty Hannan. I grew up moving around a lot. Always living inland. But for as long
as I can remember, I dreamed of living close to the ocean. When I turned 18, I left home
down a great ocean road to learn to surf and enrol in university. I majored in ecology, which
is the study of relationships between living things and their habitats. After four years,
the research for my final paper led me to the rare section of the library, where I found
a book called Shamans of Mantawe. While I'd been studying the theories of
ecology, it looked to me like the people in this book were living ecologically in the
rainforest. One photo in particular caught my attention. A happy young boy eating a roasted
dragonfly as a treat. I was fascinated with how different their lives were to mine. Then
once I learned that those same islands were also home to some of the most perfect waves
in the world, I did everything I could to land a job over there.
I moved to a little thatched hut with no running water or phones or internet and adopted five
village dogs, a black cat and a gliding squirrel called Coppy.
The only way to eat meat was to catch it yourself. And so I learned to spearfish.
And when the conditions were right, I'd surf the wave in front of my hut.
Yeah, yeah, that baby. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go.
It felt like I'd stumbled across some kind of utopia. I was lucky enough to befriend a local
family too. The Salakirats, who lived a little bit deeper into the rainforest. Especially Aman Lepon,
here, who took me hunting, fishing, building and exploring.
From what kind of Chen K, she lived and kale, she lived in the jungle.
In the land, her friends and hedges were away,
from the crust, there,
and in those fields.
I think it waslive and I got rid of it to camp for you.
It was a ing of such people.
I wondered why the church and government had tried so hard to outlaw their culture.
They were such nice people, so generous and family-oriented.
Aman Lepon taught me that his culture sees the world around him as alive and made up
of different beings or spirits, and not just human beings, but also tree beings or river
beings, and that they all rely on each other to stay healthy and happy.
University had taught me to be sceptical of anything that couldn't be measured, especially
things like invisible spirits in the forest.
But after some time with Aman Lepon and his family, I began to wonder that if by concentrating
on hard data in my studies, I'd forgotten about intuition and feeling.
The
student
Let's go again!
It was only years later that I found out the young grinning boy eating a dragonfly in that
library book was actually Aman Lepon, and that although we'd grown up in alternate universes,
we were now siripop, or good friends.
Those islands are a world that feels so alive, where work is varied and minimal, biodiversity
is rich, time is plentiful, fresh food is abundant, and community is central.
I loved it so much that I ended up staying for five years, but at 26 it felt like I was
drifting away from my friends and family at home, and so I flew back to Melbourne, Australia,
to reconnect.
The culture shock was instant, the coral reefs and lively jungle was long gone, and
now I was in a world where every aspect of life had been commodified.
I got an office job sitting static in front of a computer, which made me money, but it
also left me physically weak, understimulated, and time poor.
It was a vibrant city, and there were some amazing people around me, but after my experience
in the islands, I struggled to feel a part of a community that referred to its people
as consumers, and with national success measured by how many things we bought or sold.
And soon, like so many of the successful people around me, I was clinically diagnosed with anxiety
and depression.
My shaman friends in Indonesia didn't even have words for depression or suicide, because
it was so rare, but in this world, it's the number one killer for my demographic.
After a couple of years of feeling misplaced, I needed a life-changing experience.
So late one night, without knowing anything about it, I booked a one-way ticket to Alaska.
vapid to go to Omega, why does that huge?
I bought longer minutesoring them like walking.
As I was, I was aetti l to whom I bought the world.
I had a lot of eight hours on the plane.
With the money I'd saved in the city, I designed and commissioned a motorcycle sidecar that
would fit my surfboards, wetsuits and camping equipment.
And so that's where I'm at, I've tucked my boards into my bike and the dream is to ride
and surf the west coast of the Americas from the very top of Alaska to the tip of South
America.
And I'm hoping that the people I meet and the places I go on this 50,000 kilometer journey
might just change my life.
My first stop was an exposed stretch of coastline in remote Alaska, where I'd heard there was
a possibility of waves.
I camped alone in the spruce forest for two weeks, waiting for swell and spending most
nights terrified in my tent.
I felt like prey just waiting to be eaten, the safety and convenience of the city long
gone.
Although my closest encounter in the tent didn't come from the bears.
All right, this is the scariest thing that's ever happened to me.
There's wolves everywhere.
Wolf came up to the tent, right up to the tent, right up to the bloody tent.
And now there's a whole pack of them around me.
I'm not sure what I'm going to have to do.
I've got their spray, but this is pretty full on.
The truth is, a lot of things feel freaky in Alaska when you're alone.
Even when surfing, the huge sea lions, the intimidating mountains.
I felt vulnerable and scared a lot.
But I think it was the same experiences with the animals, forests and the ocean that breathed
a bit of life back into my melancholy soul.
So today has gone from being an absolutely amazing day with pumping waves and hiking out.
Um, yeah, and shit kind of hit the fan.
I came back and my tent's flown away.
I didn't know where it was.
It's pitch black.
And so I had to run along the cobblestone beach and eventually found my tent in the ocean.
Everything's saturated that I'm pretty sure the tent's kind of buggered and every night sleeping
in a tent and then shit like this happens.
Yeah, there's a few negatives.
But as time progressed and I learned more, my mind began to slow down and I started to
appreciate the small gifts from this land that had seemed so strange to me.
One morning I got chatting with an incredible Tlingit artist who made me see how some people's
connection to place meant that the wolves, bears and eagles were not terrifying beasts
of the night, but instead direct links to ancestry and community.
So this is a representation of a raven and the interesting things about this is I have a
articulating mouth to it.
This is the ears to the raven up here, eyes to the raven and the beak comes down and straight
down and the fish is right down here.
This is actually a wolf cape.
You can see the claws.
These are actually sea otter teeth that I used.
I'm actually undecided whether I'm going to use a white fox like this or a rabbit to represent
a bald eagle.
This is a dagger handle I carved.
On top it's a Thunderbird and they're holding a spirit.
You can see the face carved in there.
This is actual human hair as well.
Our people were very spiritual people.
Everything had a spirit.
One of the things that are important to my particular clan is Wase Tisha, which is also
known as Mount St. Elias.
That's always depicted with two spirits connected to that mountain.
It sounds like animism or shamanism.
Is that right?
Well, shamanism doesn't exist anymore.
It kind of went out of style, especially when Western culture came in.
As I hiked through those Alaskan landscapes, I had time to mull over what Rob Beatty had said
about the mountains possessing their own spirit and how in a way it was similar to what my
shaman friends had said about the spirits of the rainforest.
But do we even have words to express those kinds of ideas in the West?
And if we did, why did we lose them?
My Irish ancestors lost a lot through colonization.
But when they arrived in chains on the first fleet to Australia, we soon took on the role
of colonizers ourselves with a brutal outcome.
So what does that make me today?
After two months in Alaska, I hit the road south.
As I rolled into Vancouver Island, the isolation of solo travel melted away as I met people from
the vibrant surfing community of Canada.
One morning, I got chatting to a cute surfer named Heather, who lent me a longboard and showed
me a fun little local spot.
We caught a few waves together, and in between, she made me laugh by randomly grabbing pieces
of seaweed and stuffing them in her mouth, showing me which ones tasted best and which ones I should
eat while on the road to save money and stay healthy.
She also talked a lot about the local forests and told me how the latest research from the
University of British Columbia showed that individual trees can communicate with each other, and that the
mother trees even send their offspring nutrients through underground mycorrhizal networks of fungi.
It's real nice hanging out with her.
So we hung out a little more, and then I invited Maddie to come and check out my little farm.
I jumped at the chance, mainly because I liked her, but I was also inspired by her big ideas
to change the world, one vegetable at a time.
There's a big movement in Vancouver, so it's kind of a good place to be an urban farmer, because there's a lot of
awareness around it.
Newspaper articles talking about CSAs and young farmers, and there's a lot of support for young farmers.
It really brings a community together.
I guess my dream is to provide good quality organic food to my direct community and in direct relationship
with the seasons, using principles of permaculture and agroforestry.
Spending time with Heather gives me a sense of happiness and contentedness that I hadn't felt
since living in Indonesia.
I'm definitely starting to fall for her.
I think it's going to hurt to leave, but if I don't, I'll never make it to Patagonia.
We promised to stay in touch.
In the meantime, there was a big swell forecast, and an infamous wave I'd heard a lot about lay further south.
So I hit the road.
And being on the road feels good.
I've got all my systems down for travelling now, and having less possessions than when I was in the city is liberating.
Everything I own in the world fits in my bike, and I'm free.
Everything is absolutely covered in dust.
That's what you get when you're riding motorbikes.
I'd still prefer it over a car any day.
It's bloody good.
I'm starting to really dig this motorcycle stuff.
And to top it off, I've borrowed a local legends board.
I'm camping on Mavericks Beach, and the swell's supposed to be up in the morning.
I'm camping on Mavericks Beach, and the swell's supposed to be up in the morning.
For an average surfer like me to drop into a couple of those waves was a bit of a dream come true.
I jumped back on my bike, buzzing with energy, and curious to see what lay between here and Mexico.
As I rode from iconic Sierra Valleys to delicate desert arches, it dawned on me how long it's taken to shape this land.
And I wondered about the people who had seen it change through the ages.
As I learned more, I was surprised to find out the First Nations people of the US were also traditionally animistic.
It occurred to me that animism isn't so much a religion, but more of an ecological feeling that everyone around the world felt.
From Australia, to Indonesia, to the Americas.
This cannot be fucking real.
Please, please, please, please.
Fuck.
Jesus Christ.
Fuck!
Fuck!
Fuck!
I'm gonna get up in here.
Motor.
Motor.
Motor.
Motor.
The La Romana.
My bike's gone.
My bike.
It's fucking gone.
I'd been eating tacos at a beachside restaurant,
watching the sun go down when it happened.
The bike was only parked 150 metres away,
but it was out of sight.
And I guess that's all it took.
Luckily, I'd been repairing my surfboards at the hostel,
so at least they weren't in the bike at the time.
It's been one week of fucking around with police,
with bikey clubs, getting robbed by the police.
I don't even know what to do anymore.
I'm at a complete fucking loss.
All I could think about was if I had just stayed
in British Columbia with Heather,
none of this would have happened.
I limped back over the border to where I'd been
only a week prior, feeling embarrassed and dejected.
Luckily, my friends Jake and Pat owned a surfboard factory
in San Diego, where they offered for me to crash on the floor
to rebuild my life.
And so while they worked,
I applied for vehicle insurance compensation,
a cheaper secondhand bike,
and thankfully some generous companies
helped me out with some adventure gear.
I lived in the shaping bay for a whole month,
fixing the bike and writing morose letters to Heather.
To say thanks, I bought the guys some beers
and painted a mural for their surf shop.
Losing the bike was definitely a hard pill to swallow.
Although the insurance money helped,
it didn't cover what I'd spent and lost.
And so my already tight budget was reined in even further.
But damn, I'm lucky to keep riding.
And in one of those strange serendipitous ways
when things start looking up,
five of my close friends rolled into town
with their own bikes
and a plan to ride together down the Baja Peninsula.
and the Baja Peninsula.
One of these big sands of the bus
do any shatter for other rooms
and hiking residents
don't see anything like that.
If you try and put it down the a Platinum
and go in different positions,
you'll see a green call in at your ownBox
and go outardi Willy gajiga.
What hit? What did it hit? You know, it's trapped under the paddy.
Yeah, you get it right there.
Fuck! I've almost had it!
You're probably going a bit fast, baby.
Well, you guys told me to leg it!
Let's see!
Whoohoo!
Hopefully some cakes come through.
mesela en anglais
Her diciendo
Oh!
totally
How's the hummingbird during our tent this morning?
Dude, I bet you back in the day outlaws did use to take baths in this mother bugger.
Having my friends around me has changed everything.
I just find myself laughing all the time and losing my stuff is beginning to feel like
a lifetime ago.
Sometimes we'd stumble across surreal campsites, interspersed with the prickliest and most bizarre
forests any of us had ever seen.
Nearby caves showed ancient artworks of the Cochimi, a hunter-gatherer people from this
particular region of Baja.
They used to roam the deserts with intricate capes flapping in the wind, woven from human
hair.
The Spanish conquistadors who wanted their land, followed by the Christian missionaries who
wanted their faith, soon wiped out their traditional culture, language and eventually the people
themselves.
There's less than 80 Cochimi people alive in Mexico today.
We never met any of them.
But there's an indisputable life force still present in those Bujum forests.
The universe works in peculiar ways, that's for sure.
It turned out that my letter writing had been worth it and Heather had driven all the way
down from Canada to explore the desert with us.
He'd gotten a lot hairier since I last saw him.
And even though he smelled like a cross between motorcycles and campfires, I still kind of liked
him.
I love the smell of burnt hair.
Really?
Heather, or Bomber as I've started calling her, has been hanging out with us for a month
now.
My head's kind of spinning and I'm feeling a bit nervous.
But I think I'm going to ask her if she'll come with me all the way to Patagonia.
I know I really like him.
Well, I like her and I'm pretty sure she likes me.
Just so sweet and, you know, intelligent and beautiful and just up to really enjoy life
and just has such an innocent curiosity about the world that really stokes me out and definitely
there's not many girls out there like her for sure.
Maddie mentioned that maybe I should keep going with him and we could do the trip together
and kind of made my heart fly a little bit.
That was kind of nice.
Never searched this board in tubing waves yet, so that's a bit of a first.
It should be a bit of fun out there and hopefully can sit behind the rock and pick off a couple
of deeper ones with it.
One day when I was out walking, I heard a bird up in the tree.
Suddenly he started talking, and this is what he said to me.
I'm starting to see your ass out here every day.
If there's one lesson that losing my bike has taught me, it's that like the Baja, life
can feel like a barren desert of thorns.
But if you surround yourself with friends and community, it's easier to appreciate how those
thorns are a small and important part of this wild ride we're all on.
It was going to be sad to say goodbye to the gang, but I couldn't believe it.
Heather's going to sell her little farm so she can buy a motorbike and we're going to ride
off together into the sunset.
The thing is, I never really saw myself as a motorcyclist.
I've never even sat on the back of one, let alone ridden one myself, but for some reason
strapping two surfboards and about a million other things to it feels like the right thing
to do.
I'll ride when you ride, I'll crash when you crash, I'll burn when you burn, in the
light and in the flash.
Like a truck, the moving light, running back right through the night, come on.
So fun.
Whatever turns you off, I'm going away and away.
Whatever turns you off, red lights and hooter throwing.
One of the main reasons for setting off on this journey was to surf the Pacific coast of the
Americas.
But I never would have guessed that a surf trip could spark my interest in history and
what it means to be human in today's world.
Arriving at the ancient ruins of the Mayan civilization made us stop and think.
How did such a magnificent society collapse so completely?
Like us nowadays, they were sophisticated with advanced technologies, writing, mathematics,
astronomy and engineering.
At the time it all must have felt so important.
But their kings yearned for power and the people worshipped that power.
The elites built bigger and bigger temples to prove their status until they'd deforested all
the jungles around them, which in turn led to severe drought, eventually contributing to
a collapse of the Mayan civilization.
While it was reassuring to see that life continued after the collapse, especially with the jungle
now thriving, we wondered about the modern day Mayan people and what they might have learned
through hindsight.
We'd heard about the Zapatistas who have focused on small scale farming and community
to become an autonomous and sustainable movement.
We can't continue to live the way we live now, in this brutal neoliberalism or real.
I think when we come from that world and we find ourselves, not only with the Zapatista world,
but in general with the indigenous world, it's like a very strong cultural shock.
Because in the indigenous world, everything is collective.
Everything is in a community.
I think that in a future, the only option is that we all live like this.
That we'll come back to live in a community.
For me, that's the big difference between the individual world and the collective world.
In a way, listening to the Zapatistas confirmed for me that I'd been on a good trajectory with my community-supported farm in Canada,
of building small scale, decentralised food systems.
And it made me wonder about the idea of community.
Does it only refer to humans?
Or could community include everything we're in relationship with?
Oh, sorry guys.
I'm so excited.
Get on your bum.
It was time to make some miles.
I'd always dreamed of seeing the Amazon basin since living in the jungles of Sumatra.
And I'm really excited to cross the Andes to see where potatoes come from and to feel the Amazon rainforest teeming behind it.
Stopped at this tiny little spot in the middle of nowhere and we're getting gas, otherwise we won't make it.
There's been a few times where we've come close to running out of fuel in the desert,
which feels kind of gnarly considering there's nothing out here if we do.
We're entirely dependent on the gas stations for fuel and supplies.
And although it sometimes felt like we were riding on Mars,
the cold Humboldt current makes the ocean rich with life, including incredible surf.
One unbelievable spot broke for more than two and a half kilometres,
with rides that lasted more than five minutes.
I got the longest wave of my life out there.
And to get to the Amazon, we had to cross the Andes mountain range,
which was quite the adventure in itself.
But along with the altitude sickness and breakdowns came the crisp mountain air,
the epic views and some of the best campsites we'd experienced.
After crossing the Andes, the winding road down led us to the humid jungle of the Amazonian headwaters.
Shortly after, the roads ended, so we parked the bikes and jumped in dugout canoes to head deeper into the rainforest.
We didn't really have a plan.
We wanted to experience the forest, but other than that, we'd just see what happened.
Wow, that's weird.
He's slicking inside my nostrils.
Oh my God.
So we're in the Amazon and it's bloody amazing.
Like so many places we've been, but the big difference between here and even the mountains where we kind of last were,
there's this incredible diversity of animals and chaotic cacophony of just life and death.
You kind of really realize how interconnected everything is.
It's the same story across the world.
And that's the cool thing, you know, riding down from Alaska.
Everything just seems so linked to nature.
And then, and then so many of the problems of the world seem so,
seem so distanced from nature.
I mean, we're traveling on motorbikes, so it's definitely not a perfect scenario.
But it's really been a great vehicle for us to be able to explore and learn a little bit more ourselves.
These wings look so cool when they're open up to home.
Hmm.
It looks like dead leaves when they're closed.
Hmm.
Thumbs up.
Thumbs up for nature.
I'd heard of ayahuasca before, although up until then I'd never had any desire to drink it.
But a chance encounter with a warm shaman gave us trust and curiosity.
As I stepped into a world I never knew existed,
it seemed clear that the Amazonian cultures had developed their own wisdom
or a different way of knowing through plant medicines and ceremony.
I wondered why my culture had outlawed it.
While the West is interested in exploring outer space,
other cultures are more focused on exploring inner space.
Perhaps that means the globalized world could learn from small forest communities.
After all, science still can't define what consciousness is.
suddenly I could see my own cultural bias and how I'd been conditioned to think of the developed world as superior.
I could see that a lot of what society had taught me about life was just one modern perspective,
not necessarily a historical truth.
Progress is inevitable.
Mountains are mineral deposits.
Technology will save us.
Fish don't feel pain.
Time is money.
credibility is likely to fragment of society and nature-based cultures are primitive.
We haveauser issues at restaurants.
We haveauser issues at local and local and local and local.
Thus we rule human,
we access Shopping Toure riches and Amabi.
We have ugrai clean people.
Once the Nisusus weak permeated us,
First we include backups of K removing horses,
langs
And our common source of islands
For the first time, I truly felt the essence of what my friends in Indonesia
had been trying to teach me, that the entire world is alive in ways that can't be measured,
a web of life of awe-inspiring power and beauty.
And as I smiled about how much I loved being alive, it also dawned on me just how much I loved Heather.
Hey, what have we got here?
Um, California poppies, some kind of brassica weed,
Alstroemeria, and pearly everlasting.
I don't know what this is.
Um, they look like snapdragons, but they're not.
We're still at the tent!
Hey!
After our experience in the Amazon, the sound of the highway kind of lost its romance.
We thought about what it might be like to leave the roads and cars behind,
to move in a way that's more in tune to the local landscape.
We rode into Chile with a plan.
Try to sell the bikes and use that money to buy four horses.
We wanted to slow things right down and rid ourselves of the reliance on roads and gas stations.
Then, one day while surfing, we met a couple of cowboys, Sam and Mick, from the outback of Australia.
And they just happened to be trying to find a couple of motorbikes to start their own adventure.
We offered to teach them to surf, and they offered to help us pick good horses.
Just, just used to riding it.
We don't know how to surf, and you guys don't know how to ride, so...
You're doing so well, though.
Yeah, it's good.
First ride, you both look natural in the saddle, so that's, um, that's half the battle.
Once I was the king, I took her to my town.
Suddenly, we were looking after four horses.
Two for riding, and two for carrying surfboards and gear.
My two are called Salvador and Peachy.
And my two are called Blackie and Harimel.
We knew nothing about riding horses before starting this new endeavor, and I didn't even
know what a, uh, a halter was, or, you know, I think I'd heard of the word bridle, that's
for sure, but I didn't know how the hell to put one on.
Doesn't it look like there should be a strap over the front?
Is this really just all a bridle is?
I don't know.
I can't remember anything.
I have no bloody idea.
I don't know how much space there should be here.
Does that go under her neck, or where is it supposed to go?
I have no idea.
Poor old Harry is actually about 33 years old.
We were told between eight and ten or something, is what they told us.
By a vet.
By a bloody vet.
And basically, he filled us full of rubbish.
By the time we'd spent a couple of days with him, we realized that he was in a bit of a different
league than the other three that are a much, much better shape, I guess.
Scary surfboard.
Come on.
Wow.
Not easy with these surfboards.
So Blackie had the episode two days ago where basically she was fully traumatized by the surfboards.
Kind of got a couple of rope burns in the process.
Nothing really bad at all.
But it scared the hell out of her, and then she didn't really like it much.
Blackie.
So now she won't go anywhere near surfboards.
Which of course, when you're trying to do a surfing mission on horseback, is quite problematic.
Whoa.
Blackie.
Whoa.
Whoa.
Whoa.
I'm terrified of the horses, so that's a great start.
I can't do anything near them.
It just gets worse.
It doesn't get any easier.
I tried to put the saddle on Blackie today, and she freaked out and ended up snapping her
halter and fell over backwards.
So, yeah, excited to hop on her and get going.
Yeah, kind of regretting this whole decision, actually, but it's okay.
Yeah.
It's been a little bit stressful with the horses, and all of a sudden we're both learning
this new thing, and so we've definitely argued more than we have with the rest of the trip.
We didn't really have any issues like that before, and it's just been a little bit harder,
and I think we're both just like almost a year of like every single day together 24-7.
It's a bit crazy.
But it has been lovely, and we don't fight.
Yeah, we don't fight.
Except for now with the horses.
Yeah, we've definitely had a couple of...
Like having children or something.
Yeah.
Everything's just been harder with the horses already, and we haven't even...
Do you not yet?
We haven't even started.
Look how shit all this is.
Yeah, it's just coming together.
It's just gone.
After almost two months of testing ways to strap surfboards to horses, everything had failed,
until we eventually came up with a rack design that stopped the boards from touching the horses or from entering their peripheral vision.
While we trained the horses and built the racks, we got to know the next-door neighbor, Ramon Navarro,
an internationally respected big wave surfer and conservationist.
We'd heard he'd just finished a long-term project to protect the iconic Punta de Lobos point break from development forever.
So surfers, fishermen, everyone knows that's a pleasant place, you know.
There's not many places like that in the world.
My real vision is my kid and the kids of my kid can keep seeing that place exactly what it was.
It's just the ocean.
Why do you need to be private, you know?
So with surfing, you need to understand absolutely everything that happened in the ocean to be a good surfer and to understand the ocean.
And I believe that's the way we need to live our life, you know, understand what exactly happened.
Fishing or spearfishing is kind of like the same surfing, you know.
I get the same level of power and adrenaline to go spearfishing or just, you know, just catching waves.
And it's not just to go to the ocean and just kill fish.
It's like you pretty much harvest fish.
And I believe that's the main problem of the humans right now.
Like, mostly the big boats that they know harbors, they just destroy, they just take everything.
I mean, if you go to the ocean, you're pretty small in the ocean and understand what happened.
You just, it's like I go to my garden.
You're not going to take a green tomato.
You're going to wait, you know, until it's ready.
And it's the same thing with waves.
You're not going to pick out the clothes out of the little one if there's the big ones out there.
You're just going to wait and get the good one, you know.
And that make your, like, kind of like next level connection and understand and respect and obviously protect.
I think we're ready to roll.
I think we're ready to roll.
Yee-hoo!
There were a lot of concerns about everything on that first day, but we figured if we can keep it together for 100 metres, then we could probably keep it together for a couple of kilometres.
And if we could manage to travel for a whole day, then there was nothing stopping us from doing it every day for months on end.
That first beach ride felt like such an achievement, even if we were just plodding along at four or five times slower than a bicycle.
We avoided roads and stuck to traditional seaweed-gathering trails on the coast.
None of them mapped.
We were traversing terrain that we wouldn't have dreamed of tackling on our overloaded motorbikes.
It was so quiet.
Suddenly we could hear the birds and the sound of the ocean.
Instead of warming loud engines and checking oil, our mornings were spent in quiet awe of four gigantic steeds and their peaceful spirits.
Sometimes just standing quietly listening to their heartbeats.
The slow travel meant that we began to notice the small details of the landscape, like fruit trees ready to pick, or the various wild foods that were good to cook with.
Not to mention the personalities of random horses who would try and join our little herd.
We proved that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
And for the most part, we said goodbye to roadside campsites and cooked on an open fire.
Coffee?
Sure.
The route south was no longer bound by the intervals of gas stations and fuel from the other side of the world.
Instead, we hunted green grass and clean rivers, all of it growing freely.
We have such a minimal impact.
And even then, grazing animals have a positive impact on the land.
They encourage growth, and their poo fertilizes.
And it's just pretty cool that you can just ride a horse along the land and go surfing and just live and live outside and be free.
It's pretty beautiful.
Because that's what we're doing.
You look beautiful, John.
You're beautiful, mate.
It's added a big challenge to the journey, taking surfboards, because you're constantly, not only worrying about grass and water and somewhere to camp, but then you've also got the added dynamic of, okay, what are the waves doing?
What's the wind doing?
What's the tide doing?
So it's like this whole other complication.
But at the same time, I don't think I've ever felt anything more rewarding.
Yeah, surfing on horsebacks.
Freaking awesome.
Look at that thing out the back.
It's just tubing off its brain.
Oh.
We have the most beautiful campsite.
And we're so lucky to be able to roll up onto the beach and just camp.
Yeah.
This is amazing.
Such an amazing way to see things.
Let's stand on the surfboard bait.
Hola.
Buenos dias.
I wonder how long I'll give away.
Will the celebration be this time for me and me alone?
Yes, first bath, shower in two weeks.
I think it's two weeks to the day.
So, it's exciting.
I feel a bit gross.
Yeah, I look gross.
At one point, we stumbled upon a little hamlet
and after getting chatting with a friendly local,
we learned how the Mapuche were one of the only people
to fight the Spanish conquistadors and win,
but are now again fighting to protect their lands and waterways.
I am Mapuche Las Kenches.
The Mapuche is the people who live on the land or their territory,
who live for generations.
The Mapuche is the people who live around,
their lives,
they turn around what there is,
like I said,
the collection of algas, the fishing,
the products that come out,
contact.
And also, spiritually,
the sea has life.
It gives us life.
Every day, with the rain, the wind, the wind,
it's all beautiful.
The sky, the clouds, the birds.
Here, there are days that it's carved out
of white gaviotes,
and the other day, there's a pelican.
They say,
you can't stop to thank the sea for the air,
every day,
the air,
you get out of here,
you breathe,
you feel bigger,
you know?
We noticed Viviana had a sign in her window,
protesting a pulp mill's plans to pump waste into their local beach.
We, as Mapuche,
or Lafkenche,
we don't want it to arrive,
because it would be the total destruction of each alga,
chorizo,
and we wouldn't have that.
We'd ridden past several of the pulp mills that Viviana was talking about,
where mountains of pine logs are chipped into pulp to make paper,
a process that produces toxic waste water.
And we'd even been advised by locals not to surf in those areas,
because of the waste outfall into the ocean.
Only recently,
one of the pulp mills had illegally dumped chemicals into a Ramsar-listed wetland,
killing tens of thousands of birds,
including South America's largest population of black-necked swans.
When we began the horse journey,
we dreamed of riding through picturesque wilderness,
but it was clear early on that wilderness had become a rarity.
Instead, our daily horizon was lined by pine plantations that fed the pulp mills.
Day after day,
week after week,
month after month,
the monocultures continued.
And because the horses depended on the land,
it made the industrialized landscape all the more obvious.
The horses had nothing to eat,
and maybe that's why we never saw any of the native deer.
Most of the plantations had big fences or walls around them too,
that would stretch for kilometers,
forcing us onto precarious cliffside trails to be able to continue.
We're stuck in this damn pine forest.
Yeah.
Man, I hate these.
They're not forests.
I hate them.
They don't even look that good from far away.
You can tell they're the same species.
They're just silent, dead, money factory paper mache pieces of pine.
They're a bit spooky.
Yeah, they're spooky quiet.
And anyway,
so we've just gotten like three kilometers into this one.
And then I remembered I left the GPS where we had lunch like two hours ago or something like that.
And so I bolted back there thinking that we might be able to beat this storm.
And then obviously we haven't.
It's been raining pretty, pretty good.
So I didn't find the bloody GPS, which we really need for down south.
We need all the time.
He's so hungry and thirsty.
Like he's sucking on my fingers like he's hungry and thirsty.
We need to keep going.
We've got kilometers to go.
We don't have any water for the bloody horses.
We couldn't get out the way we wanted to because he's fucking fence.
Yeah, there's no water.
Really?
Nah, it's all bloody salt.
So we're going to have to keep going for like, I don't know, 8K or whatever that guy said.
And try and find some up there.
At least there's a bit of food.
Even though it had already been a huge day, we had to keep pushing on.
We were doing okay, but I could see that Harimau, being so much older than the other horses,
was really tired and would sometimes need to stop to catch his breath.
Doing well, mate.
You're doing well, buddy.
We love you.
We love you.
But it was under that big, rising full moon that I learned to let go and trust in the horses.
Blackie had challenged me so much, but on that night, we kind of just surrendered to the journey together.
And for the first time, I think she and I truly connected.
Pretty beautiful still.
It's so nice.
It's amazing, actually, with the stars and the moon.
After breaking camp for three hours in the morning, then traversing cliffs and endless pine plantations during the day,
then miles and miles of soft sand at night, we were getting pretty worried about finding water for the horses.
And after a couple more hours, we were all exhausted and needed rest.
We haven't drunk any water since the morning.
Literally, we haven't drunk a single drop each since the morning.
Yeah, I just feel like we're letting the horses down, like, and then what's the point, I guess?
Now they're miserable and cold and hungry and thirsty.
And same as us.
The next morning, we set off parched, but hopeful.
Hey, Bomber!
There's water coming off the cliffs!
Wow!
Drinking the holy water, mate, are you?
Having a little drink?
That beautiful spring coming out of the cliff emphasized freedom for me.
It was life pouring out from the earth.
It struck me how we were all made of the same stuff.
The horses, the birds, even the plants that clung to the cliffs.
All of us made of water.
We don't even have to have the horses tied up here.
That's the best thing.
They're just off.
We can't even see them at the moment.
All four of them are just cruising along this little stretch of beach coastline.
And they just come back here whenever they want a little bit of water.
And it's pretty radical that we can just trust them to be free.
I guess that's the thing about adventure.
Often it's the challenging times that lead to the unexpected gems.
And this was one of those times.
Because right out the front of that magic freshwater spring was one of the nicest waves we'd ever seen.
Oh my god.
Oh my god.
Oh my god.
Moonshine.
Yummy.
Moonshine.
Yummy.
Ooh.
Love you.
Wool.
Wow.
Wow.
Yeah.
The day we packed up to leave that special spot, the waves were better than ever.
It hurt to ride away, but if we were ever gonna make it to Patagonia, we had to keep moving.
Just, I was feeling a little bit badly for Harimao.
He was just, he's so much slower than the other horses that I feel like when he has to walk their speed, he has to work extra hard.
And he's a bit older and skinnier, he doesn't put on weight as easily.
He's never been the same size as the other ones. And that's okay, he's such a little champion.
He's so cool, I love him so much. I love all the horses.
We went up a hill and just watching how slowly he went up the hill, it just broke my heart.
And, um, I don't know. So I was seriously considering stopping here and trying to sell Harimao and Blackie and then having Maddie go on without me.
I don't know. We were just arguing and it just felt like a really negative situation.
Like we would find ourselves in beautiful places and I would have so much love for the journey.
But then there would be such, um, we would get an argument and it would just feel so draining, um, on top of all the work with the horses.
It's a lot of energy and a lot of emotional energy, I think, with the horses for me.
So she's all alone.
It took a bit to sink in, but with Heather heading back to Canada, we chose to try and find a forever home for the horses.
We wanted all four of them to stay together. They'd become best mates.
And we met a guy in the market who had heard that we were going to be selling the horses after the end of the Cabal Gata.
And, um, and he offered us an amazing price.
He came up to us and said he'd buy all four horses.
And he said that all four horses were for his children.
Where we met him was actually close to the butcher in the market.
And I said to him, they're not going for meat, are they?
And I pointed at the butcher that was right there and he's laughed and he's like, no, of course not.
And he looked straight into my eyes and he shook my hand and we made the deal and we shook on it.
And then one of our good friends from around here, someone that we do know really well, someone that we can trust,
came up to us and told us he was going to shoot them the next day and sell them to the butcher.
And he's still supposed to be coming this afternoon to pick them up.
Luckily, we had some friends up in the mountains who had just finished their own horse journey.
Hello? Hi, how's it going?
So yeah, I was just calling.
We're thinking about riding the horses towards Pucon.
What do you guys think about, about adding four horses to your herd?
And so we set off with a long way to go up into the mountains.
Why may I not go out and climb a tree?
Trees have fingers that face the aliens from the leaves.
Our horses had carried us so far and we'd become a family.
I felt so much gratitude for all of them, but especially Harry Mao.
It's a pretty scary bridge, hey Big Sal.
When it drowns me in the sun
I wanna go and find a little cat
Cat's been found in the day but it looks nice
In a way I was glad we'd been forced up into the mountains
It meant that we could all stay together for a little bit longer
So we're on the pass at the moment
And it's bloody beautiful
Last night the lake was like a mirror
And it was just an amazing afternoon
Being in such a place with the horses
Because being on the coast for so long
And then trekking all the way through
And then coming up here to the mountains
Has been a huge reward
But it's bloody cold
And I don't know
I guess we weren't really prepared for the mountains
This was all just a plan B
Because we didn't want to sell our horses
To that guy or anyone that was going to kill him
Sounded like a lot of people would have just sold him off for meat
My hands hurt and I don't want to do anything
Why?
Because it's freezing
And every time you use your fingers
They get cold again
Why don't you put your gloves on mate?
We don't have any gloves
We don't have any gloves
How are we even going to get a ticket home?
I don't know
I already have mine
I don't
Heather and I had been through so much over our time together
But at this stage it was just the plight to find a safe home for the horses
That kept us trekking onwards side by side
Deep down I knew that in about a month's time
She would head north back to Canada
And I'd set off alone
Down into Patagonia
We made the packs as light as possible
For poor old Harimau
To the point where all he was carrying
Was our sleeping bags and pads
But it was clear by this stage
He was tired
But no matter how often he'd stop
He'd never let us out of his sight
We're a weird herd of animals
All trekking together physically and emotionally
Wherever one of us went
The rest would follow
As we got deeper into the mountains
We came across small communities
Who would often let us camp with our horses on their land
Sometimes we'd exchange travel stories with the locals
And one man in particular had gone far deeper
And far longer than either Heather or myself
So I'm like a nomad
I'm like a nomad
I have a long time
And then I want to go to another place
And I take my backpack and my carpa
And I walk
That's the freedom
That's the most beautiful
From there for me
It's only the walk
Walk, walk, walk
Camping where I'm at night
Conocer people
Conocer the customs
And always
And always
For the interior
Of the villages
Where the communities are
Mapuche
Why do you look for the communities
Mapuche?
Possibly
I have blood
Possibly my grandparents
Were Mapuche
It's a shame
I say maybe I'm Mapuche
Because I have a risk
Disculpen me, pero
Siempre me sucede
Los primeros salidas que hice
Yo fue en el ao 72
Y despus en el 73 me detuvieron
Pinochet
Pinochet
La dictadura militar que hubo ac en Chile
Los milicos me cortaron el pelo con corta pluma
Nunca me haban pegado tanto
Me encerraron
Vi morir personas al lado mo
Eso me da pena
Fue malo
Feo
Aqu mataron a ver como 28 personas
Aqu
Por qu?
Porque
Tenan pensamientos diferentes
A las doctrinas que queran exponer ellos
Que impusieron
Por muchos aos
Para el mundo
Hay muchas cosas que no se han sabido
Que no dejan salir de ac
Y todava
Si todava existe eso
Pero ahora de otra forma
Es lo mismo pero
De otra forma
Ahora los grandes grupos econmicos dominan
La hidroelctrica ac
Iban a destruir los ros
Y va a ir a la escoba
Despus va a ser todo feo
Y eso destruye
Destruye mucho
Adolfo
Are we running out of love
The next morning
We rode on
With Adolfo's sad words
Ringing in our ears
And there's a lot of time
To think and reflect
While riding a horse
His sadness
His sadness about being disconnected
From his Mapuche roots
Triggered a sense of sorrow
For me
First and foremost
I felt for Adolfo
He's a genuinely good man
Who's had a hard life
But on another level
I felt a distant ache
For the disconnect
Of my own ancestry
And what had happened
For the world
To end up like this
It seemed obvious
That throughout history
There's been a push
To eradicate
Nature-based cultures
But I couldn't shake
What Adolfo had said
About those same
Oppressive systems
Still being in place
Although now
In a predatory capitalist form
That afternoon
We were again welcomed
Into a Mapuche community
Hola amigo
Hola hola
Como esta
Bien bien
Hola
Hola
Que bonito
Our horses are running away right now
But it doesn't even matter
I mean
We just know
That we're in the
We're in Mapuche territory now
And we know
We're being looked after
And the whole reason
That we know
We're being looked after
Is pretty much
Because of these guys
Because
Of the love that they create
When people see
When people see the horses
They feel
A connection
To nature
Ahuyentan los malos espritu
El caballo
Caballo
Caballo para nosotros
Es algo sagrado
Ac
Muy sagrado
Nosotros ganamos de la tierra
Porque somos
Como Mapuche seres espirituales
Y cuando hablamos de seres espirituales
Es porque respetamos la naturaleza
Hay ro
Hay cerros
Hay montaa
Hay volcanes
Hay volcanes
Y eso
Todos esos seres espirituales
Tienen dueos espirituales
Que dan la vida
Que hoy da
El sector empresarial
Lo que quiere aqu en este territorio
No es cierto
Es sacar aguas
De un ro afluente
Muy sagrado
Del territorio
De Mapuche
Por lo tanto
Esos son los empresarios
Que quieren conducir agua
Y poder hacer mover mquinas
Para generar energa
Pero esa energa
No se queda en el territorio
Esa energa se va
Para el norte
Para la minera
Y que sacamos
Ganamos nosotros
Los territorios
Que estn aqu
Nosotros cuando vimos pasar
Porque este camino internacional
Vimos pasar camiones
De alto tonelaje
Con material
Que iban a construir
Los paramos
Botamos rboles
Y los sacamos de aqu
Vino el contingente
De fuerzas especiales
De carabineros de Chile
Vino el helicptero
A apuntarlo
Pa, pa, pa, pa
Para poder distorsionar
Y que pasaran esos camiones
Por lo tanto
Es una amenaza
Para nosotros
Para oponernos
Nosotros
En los desarrollos
Que quiere construir
El pas
Y grupos empresariales
A nosotros
Nos tiene tildado
Como gente terrorista
A m me condenaron
Por 630 das de crcel
Tal acerca de las ne
comes down to the story we tell ourselves and in turn the laws we abide by ancient law around the
world says the earth is full of spirits or persons only some of whom are human but all of whom
deserve respect whereas modern law says that only humans and corporations are persons which means
that everything from the mountains to the forests are just resources for the taking if at one point
in history all of our ancestors were deeply connected to the rivers mountains the animals
and the trees can those of us who have been disconnected rediscover the spirits of nature
the funny thing was I could easily see Heather's determined and loving spirit and our direct
experience of living with our horses for the last six months made it obvious that they too had their
own spirit there was big salvador the gentle giant beautiful blackie the strong leader cheeky peachy
who would stick her head in the tent each morning to wake us up and of course there was faithful old
harimau who would follow us all to the very end
and so if horses and humans have their own spirit or personhood then maybe a volcano could too or a river
or a forest and perhaps if we look closely we'll see that the mighty ocean is full of different people
none of them human but all of them surfing and dancing for the Sun
well you ripped the bag mate
you come out here into the beautiful quiet mountains and you can hear a woodpecker pecking away or you can
just sit next to your horse while you know while she sleeps and there's something just immensely
gratifying about that we had one final mountain pass to clear before arriving at our friends Greta and
Alice property their horses forever home it was a strange feeling because with each step closer we
were nearing a goal that had taken so much effort to arrive at but at the same time we knew it would
bring big change for all of us she's slippery you're all right go mate you're doing good
whoa dude
I don't know I'm really tired right now on our last night
what's gonna happen when you go home and then I go somewhere else
I don't know it'll be kind of tough after spending like 24 7 for 14 months together it's kind of a lot of time
it's been really crazy especially just what we've been doing it's like really emotionally taxing and
just so intense I think we also need a little a little breather from each other and to know that
we like can live our separate lives again and be our confident selves because it's something I feel
has not been coming out in myself it's been really hard like latching on to someone else's journey
yeah we wouldn't have done it it wouldn't be like this if it hadn't been for you
mm-hmm yeah and I would never do this if it weren't for you
how do you feel about this Haki we're on the home stretch
we're on the home stretch
howdy now
hold up
hold up
that was so tasty
oh yeah
so delicious
oh this is a magical opportunity
oh hi beautiful
we've been waiting so patiently
and all in love
like when you guys called us and it was like how I don't even know like you know all of the different
questions that come up but then also that gut feeling that says this is asking for you to
participate and you say yes and then once you say yes then you've opened up all these other doors for
the things to come in that you need in order to make it happen we were really surprised when seeing
how people were like wow no this is part of our culture but it's gone you know there's so many
it's third generation is the only one who remembers or knows what that's like
that's like
yeah
whoa whoa whoa that was gnarly
you okay
that was quite funny sorry to be laughing but
no you left me behind buddy
Heather and I spent that afternoon saying goodbye to the horses feeding them some of their favourite snacks
I realised that the horses had been on their own journey full of lush pastures and scary plastic bags
but now they were home
they were safe
and while we were all going our separate ways from here on out
we were all going to be better for it
I'm glad for Matty that he's still aiming to get down to Patagonia
but I'm heading home
there's been a lot of saying goodbye these last couple of days
yeah lots of saying goodbye to the horses and to each other
it's kind of crazy thinking about it
but we're both going to move on to some pretty cool things I think
uh
where do I
where do I start
it's pretty wild really what's um
what's happened in the last few days you know
um
whue
my world's just been turned upside down
upside down. So it's been such a massive high you know this whole trip and then
a few days ago say goodbye to the horses and that was pretty sad and then
yesterday said goodbye to Bomber which was really really bloody hard, a lot
harder than what I thought it was gonna be. It's a really difficult part of the
journey, I think it's the most difficult part of the journey I've experienced is
when you gotta say goodbye. I'm really sad but I'm so stoked. I don't know if I've ever
been this stoked in my life, that's a ridiculous thing. But I kind of got my
heart broken at the same time.
Like a wandering coast for a harbour
Like the ground beneath the snow for springtime
Like a believer
For something to believe in
Like a drifting castaway
For shoreline
I've waited for you
All the way through
All the way down the line
I've waited for you
All the way through
All the way down the line
I've waited for you
All the way down the line
I've waited for you
I finally understood I'd been so fixated on the glory of reaching Patagonia
That I'd failed to see it never mattered to Heather in the first place
And now she was gone
But I suppose the best lessons in life come from your mistakes
And if this journey has taught me anything
It's that the greatest mistake of all
Would be to live in fear of making one
I live in fear of making one
I live for a moment
And every moment says goodnight
What I draw for you is yesterday
Here's what it looks like
I can only draw from
I can only draw from
What enters my eyes
Maybe our perception
Is why we cry
Maybe it's perception
I just think we're scared to die
If the world is for a moment
If the world is for a moment
And every moment says goodbye
Then I'm drawing for you yesterday
Here's what it looked like
I was on my way to heaven
Hi guys
Hi
Tumbling towards the devil
We're silent and away
We're silent and away
We're silent and away
Sad shit
Yeah
Good night
Good night
To me
Good night
Get out, get out, get out, get out
Of SNEV
Ready, by Sandra?
Whose a McKinney
I hate the parents
I'm alive
All right, give me props, you know, you guys.
I'm dreaming, I'm dreaming all day long, I'm dreaming of you, dreaming, I'm dreaming
all day long, I'm dreaming about you when I'm walking, I'm dreaming of you when I'm talking,
I'm still dreaming of you, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, closer each and every day, I'm getting
closer to you, closer in every single way, I'm getting closer to you when I'm walking,
closer to you when I'm talking, oh, closer to you, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm,
hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm.
Every day I walk across the mountain and the river
For on my mind the sparkling rub that'll take away the shivers
Twilight settles upon the world on my retreat back home
But I can see the light of dawn as I pour it through my liver
Oh, hey. That's me. This is Pete. This is Frankie the dog. And we're all going to the top of Alaska.
Oh, man. You okay, Pop?
Good girl. Good girl.
Nothing smashed. Nothing's broken.
I don't know, man. It looks pretty broken. It looks pretty broken. I'm just happy we're
alive.
Luckily, Pete, the guy I was hitchhiking with, was a mechanical engineer. And despite my
trepidation, he somehow got the old van running again. And everything was going sweet. We
were back on track. Until we broke down.
Oh, shit. Go.
Jesus. Get that off, man. You all right?
Yeah. Is it still burning?
Yeah. Big time. Have you got something to stop it? Big time.
Um, Jesus. Good work. Good, good work. Fuck. Heavy.
Looking back on it. I can't believe I didn't move the jerry can. Fuck. But Pete fixed the
van again. And we kept on trucking.
Maybe you're wondering why I'd even get back in that van. Or what I'm doing in the middle
of Alaska. But my guess is that you want to know who's talking to you. So bear with me
and I'll try and explain.
My name's Matty Hannan. I grew up moving around a lot. Always living inland. But for as long
as I can remember, I dreamed of living close to the ocean. When I turned 18, I left home
down a great ocean road to learn to surf and enrol in university. I majored in ecology, which
is the study of relationships between living things and their habitats. After four years,
the research for my final paper led me to the rare section of the library, where I found
a book called Shamans of Mantawe. While I'd been studying the theories of
ecology, it looked to me like the people in this book were living ecologically in the
rainforest. One photo in particular caught my attention. A happy young boy eating a roasted
dragonfly as a treat. I was fascinated with how different their lives were to mine. Then
once I learned that those same islands were also home to some of the most perfect waves
in the world, I did everything I could to land a job over there.
I moved to a little thatched hut with no running water or phones or internet and adopted five
village dogs, a black cat and a gliding squirrel called Coppy.
The only way to eat meat was to catch it yourself. And so I learned to spearfish.
And when the conditions were right, I'd surf the wave in front of my hut.
Yeah, yeah, that baby. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go.
It felt like I'd stumbled across some kind of utopia. I was lucky enough to befriend a local
family too. The Salakirats, who lived a little bit deeper into the rainforest. Especially Aman Lepon,
here, who took me hunting, fishing, building and exploring.
From what kind of Chen K, she lived and kale, she lived in the jungle.
In the land, her friends and hedges were away,
from the crust, there,
and in those fields.
I think it waslive and I got rid of it to camp for you.
It was a ing of such people.
I wondered why the church and government had tried so hard to outlaw their culture.
They were such nice people, so generous and family-oriented.
Aman Lepon taught me that his culture sees the world around him as alive and made up
of different beings or spirits, and not just human beings, but also tree beings or river
beings, and that they all rely on each other to stay healthy and happy.
University had taught me to be sceptical of anything that couldn't be measured, especially
things like invisible spirits in the forest.
But after some time with Aman Lepon and his family, I began to wonder that if by concentrating
on hard data in my studies, I'd forgotten about intuition and feeling.
The
student
Let's go again!
It was only years later that I found out the young grinning boy eating a dragonfly in that
library book was actually Aman Lepon, and that although we'd grown up in alternate universes,
we were now siripop, or good friends.
Those islands are a world that feels so alive, where work is varied and minimal, biodiversity
is rich, time is plentiful, fresh food is abundant, and community is central.
I loved it so much that I ended up staying for five years, but at 26 it felt like I was
drifting away from my friends and family at home, and so I flew back to Melbourne, Australia,
to reconnect.
The culture shock was instant, the coral reefs and lively jungle was long gone, and
now I was in a world where every aspect of life had been commodified.
I got an office job sitting static in front of a computer, which made me money, but it
also left me physically weak, understimulated, and time poor.
It was a vibrant city, and there were some amazing people around me, but after my experience
in the islands, I struggled to feel a part of a community that referred to its people
as consumers, and with national success measured by how many things we bought or sold.
And soon, like so many of the successful people around me, I was clinically diagnosed with anxiety
and depression.
My shaman friends in Indonesia didn't even have words for depression or suicide, because
it was so rare, but in this world, it's the number one killer for my demographic.
After a couple of years of feeling misplaced, I needed a life-changing experience.
So late one night, without knowing anything about it, I booked a one-way ticket to Alaska.
vapid to go to Omega, why does that huge?
I bought longer minutesoring them like walking.
As I was, I was aetti l to whom I bought the world.
I had a lot of eight hours on the plane.
With the money I'd saved in the city, I designed and commissioned a motorcycle sidecar that
would fit my surfboards, wetsuits and camping equipment.
And so that's where I'm at, I've tucked my boards into my bike and the dream is to ride
and surf the west coast of the Americas from the very top of Alaska to the tip of South
America.
And I'm hoping that the people I meet and the places I go on this 50,000 kilometer journey
might just change my life.
My first stop was an exposed stretch of coastline in remote Alaska, where I'd heard there was
a possibility of waves.
I camped alone in the spruce forest for two weeks, waiting for swell and spending most
nights terrified in my tent.
I felt like prey just waiting to be eaten, the safety and convenience of the city long
gone.
Although my closest encounter in the tent didn't come from the bears.
All right, this is the scariest thing that's ever happened to me.
There's wolves everywhere.
Wolf came up to the tent, right up to the tent, right up to the bloody tent.
And now there's a whole pack of them around me.
I'm not sure what I'm going to have to do.
I've got their spray, but this is pretty full on.
The truth is, a lot of things feel freaky in Alaska when you're alone.
Even when surfing, the huge sea lions, the intimidating mountains.
I felt vulnerable and scared a lot.
But I think it was the same experiences with the animals, forests and the ocean that breathed
a bit of life back into my melancholy soul.
So today has gone from being an absolutely amazing day with pumping waves and hiking out.
Um, yeah, and shit kind of hit the fan.
I came back and my tent's flown away.
I didn't know where it was.
It's pitch black.
And so I had to run along the cobblestone beach and eventually found my tent in the ocean.
Everything's saturated that I'm pretty sure the tent's kind of buggered and every night sleeping
in a tent and then shit like this happens.
Yeah, there's a few negatives.
But as time progressed and I learned more, my mind began to slow down and I started to
appreciate the small gifts from this land that had seemed so strange to me.
One morning I got chatting with an incredible Tlingit artist who made me see how some people's
connection to place meant that the wolves, bears and eagles were not terrifying beasts
of the night, but instead direct links to ancestry and community.
So this is a representation of a raven and the interesting things about this is I have a
articulating mouth to it.
This is the ears to the raven up here, eyes to the raven and the beak comes down and straight
down and the fish is right down here.
This is actually a wolf cape.
You can see the claws.
These are actually sea otter teeth that I used.
I'm actually undecided whether I'm going to use a white fox like this or a rabbit to represent
a bald eagle.
This is a dagger handle I carved.
On top it's a Thunderbird and they're holding a spirit.
You can see the face carved in there.
This is actual human hair as well.
Our people were very spiritual people.
Everything had a spirit.
One of the things that are important to my particular clan is Wase Tisha, which is also
known as Mount St. Elias.
That's always depicted with two spirits connected to that mountain.
It sounds like animism or shamanism.
Is that right?
Well, shamanism doesn't exist anymore.
It kind of went out of style, especially when Western culture came in.
As I hiked through those Alaskan landscapes, I had time to mull over what Rob Beatty had said
about the mountains possessing their own spirit and how in a way it was similar to what my
shaman friends had said about the spirits of the rainforest.
But do we even have words to express those kinds of ideas in the West?
And if we did, why did we lose them?
My Irish ancestors lost a lot through colonization.
But when they arrived in chains on the first fleet to Australia, we soon took on the role
of colonizers ourselves with a brutal outcome.
So what does that make me today?
After two months in Alaska, I hit the road south.
As I rolled into Vancouver Island, the isolation of solo travel melted away as I met people from
the vibrant surfing community of Canada.
One morning, I got chatting to a cute surfer named Heather, who lent me a longboard and showed
me a fun little local spot.
We caught a few waves together, and in between, she made me laugh by randomly grabbing pieces
of seaweed and stuffing them in her mouth, showing me which ones tasted best and which ones I should
eat while on the road to save money and stay healthy.
She also talked a lot about the local forests and told me how the latest research from the
University of British Columbia showed that individual trees can communicate with each other, and that the
mother trees even send their offspring nutrients through underground mycorrhizal networks of fungi.
It's real nice hanging out with her.
So we hung out a little more, and then I invited Maddie to come and check out my little farm.
I jumped at the chance, mainly because I liked her, but I was also inspired by her big ideas
to change the world, one vegetable at a time.
There's a big movement in Vancouver, so it's kind of a good place to be an urban farmer, because there's a lot of
awareness around it.
Newspaper articles talking about CSAs and young farmers, and there's a lot of support for young farmers.
It really brings a community together.
I guess my dream is to provide good quality organic food to my direct community and in direct relationship
with the seasons, using principles of permaculture and agroforestry.
Spending time with Heather gives me a sense of happiness and contentedness that I hadn't felt
since living in Indonesia.
I'm definitely starting to fall for her.
I think it's going to hurt to leave, but if I don't, I'll never make it to Patagonia.
We promised to stay in touch.
In the meantime, there was a big swell forecast, and an infamous wave I'd heard a lot about lay further south.
So I hit the road.
And being on the road feels good.
I've got all my systems down for travelling now, and having less possessions than when I was in the city is liberating.
Everything I own in the world fits in my bike, and I'm free.
Everything is absolutely covered in dust.
That's what you get when you're riding motorbikes.
I'd still prefer it over a car any day.
It's bloody good.
I'm starting to really dig this motorcycle stuff.
And to top it off, I've borrowed a local legends board.
I'm camping on Mavericks Beach, and the swell's supposed to be up in the morning.
I'm camping on Mavericks Beach, and the swell's supposed to be up in the morning.
For an average surfer like me to drop into a couple of those waves was a bit of a dream come true.
I jumped back on my bike, buzzing with energy, and curious to see what lay between here and Mexico.
As I rode from iconic Sierra Valleys to delicate desert arches, it dawned on me how long it's taken to shape this land.
And I wondered about the people who had seen it change through the ages.
As I learned more, I was surprised to find out the First Nations people of the US were also traditionally animistic.
It occurred to me that animism isn't so much a religion, but more of an ecological feeling that everyone around the world felt.
From Australia, to Indonesia, to the Americas.
This cannot be fucking real.
Please, please, please, please.
Fuck.
Jesus Christ.
Fuck!
Fuck!
Fuck!
I'm gonna get up in here.
Motor.
Motor.
Motor.
Motor.
The La Romana.
My bike's gone.
My bike.
It's fucking gone.
I'd been eating tacos at a beachside restaurant,
watching the sun go down when it happened.
The bike was only parked 150 metres away,
but it was out of sight.
And I guess that's all it took.
Luckily, I'd been repairing my surfboards at the hostel,
so at least they weren't in the bike at the time.
It's been one week of fucking around with police,
with bikey clubs, getting robbed by the police.
I don't even know what to do anymore.
I'm at a complete fucking loss.
All I could think about was if I had just stayed
in British Columbia with Heather,
none of this would have happened.
I limped back over the border to where I'd been
only a week prior, feeling embarrassed and dejected.
Luckily, my friends Jake and Pat owned a surfboard factory
in San Diego, where they offered for me to crash on the floor
to rebuild my life.
And so while they worked,
I applied for vehicle insurance compensation,
a cheaper secondhand bike,
and thankfully some generous companies
helped me out with some adventure gear.
I lived in the shaping bay for a whole month,
fixing the bike and writing morose letters to Heather.
To say thanks, I bought the guys some beers
and painted a mural for their surf shop.
Losing the bike was definitely a hard pill to swallow.
Although the insurance money helped,
it didn't cover what I'd spent and lost.
And so my already tight budget was reined in even further.
But damn, I'm lucky to keep riding.
And in one of those strange serendipitous ways
when things start looking up,
five of my close friends rolled into town
with their own bikes
and a plan to ride together down the Baja Peninsula.
and the Baja Peninsula.
One of these big sands of the bus
do any shatter for other rooms
and hiking residents
don't see anything like that.
If you try and put it down the a Platinum
and go in different positions,
you'll see a green call in at your ownBox
and go outardi Willy gajiga.
What hit? What did it hit? You know, it's trapped under the paddy.
Yeah, you get it right there.
Fuck! I've almost had it!
You're probably going a bit fast, baby.
Well, you guys told me to leg it!
Let's see!
Whoohoo!
Hopefully some cakes come through.
mesela en anglais
Her diciendo
Oh!
totally
How's the hummingbird during our tent this morning?
Dude, I bet you back in the day outlaws did use to take baths in this mother bugger.
Having my friends around me has changed everything.
I just find myself laughing all the time and losing my stuff is beginning to feel like
a lifetime ago.
Sometimes we'd stumble across surreal campsites, interspersed with the prickliest and most bizarre
forests any of us had ever seen.
Nearby caves showed ancient artworks of the Cochimi, a hunter-gatherer people from this
particular region of Baja.
They used to roam the deserts with intricate capes flapping in the wind, woven from human
hair.
The Spanish conquistadors who wanted their land, followed by the Christian missionaries who
wanted their faith, soon wiped out their traditional culture, language and eventually the people
themselves.
There's less than 80 Cochimi people alive in Mexico today.
We never met any of them.
But there's an indisputable life force still present in those Bujum forests.
The universe works in peculiar ways, that's for sure.
It turned out that my letter writing had been worth it and Heather had driven all the way
down from Canada to explore the desert with us.
He'd gotten a lot hairier since I last saw him.
And even though he smelled like a cross between motorcycles and campfires, I still kind of liked
him.
I love the smell of burnt hair.
Really?
Heather, or Bomber as I've started calling her, has been hanging out with us for a month
now.
My head's kind of spinning and I'm feeling a bit nervous.
But I think I'm going to ask her if she'll come with me all the way to Patagonia.
I know I really like him.
Well, I like her and I'm pretty sure she likes me.
Just so sweet and, you know, intelligent and beautiful and just up to really enjoy life
and just has such an innocent curiosity about the world that really stokes me out and definitely
there's not many girls out there like her for sure.
Maddie mentioned that maybe I should keep going with him and we could do the trip together
and kind of made my heart fly a little bit.
That was kind of nice.
Never searched this board in tubing waves yet, so that's a bit of a first.
It should be a bit of fun out there and hopefully can sit behind the rock and pick off a couple
of deeper ones with it.
One day when I was out walking, I heard a bird up in the tree.
Suddenly he started talking, and this is what he said to me.
I'm starting to see your ass out here every day.
If there's one lesson that losing my bike has taught me, it's that like the Baja, life
can feel like a barren desert of thorns.
But if you surround yourself with friends and community, it's easier to appreciate how those
thorns are a small and important part of this wild ride we're all on.
It was going to be sad to say goodbye to the gang, but I couldn't believe it.
Heather's going to sell her little farm so she can buy a motorbike and we're going to ride
off together into the sunset.
The thing is, I never really saw myself as a motorcyclist.
I've never even sat on the back of one, let alone ridden one myself, but for some reason
strapping two surfboards and about a million other things to it feels like the right thing
to do.
I'll ride when you ride, I'll crash when you crash, I'll burn when you burn, in the
light and in the flash.
Like a truck, the moving light, running back right through the night, come on.
So fun.
Whatever turns you off, I'm going away and away.
Whatever turns you off, red lights and hooter throwing.
One of the main reasons for setting off on this journey was to surf the Pacific coast of the
Americas.
But I never would have guessed that a surf trip could spark my interest in history and
what it means to be human in today's world.
Arriving at the ancient ruins of the Mayan civilization made us stop and think.
How did such a magnificent society collapse so completely?
Like us nowadays, they were sophisticated with advanced technologies, writing, mathematics,
astronomy and engineering.
At the time it all must have felt so important.
But their kings yearned for power and the people worshipped that power.
The elites built bigger and bigger temples to prove their status until they'd deforested all
the jungles around them, which in turn led to severe drought, eventually contributing to
a collapse of the Mayan civilization.
While it was reassuring to see that life continued after the collapse, especially with the jungle
now thriving, we wondered about the modern day Mayan people and what they might have learned
through hindsight.
We'd heard about the Zapatistas who have focused on small scale farming and community
to become an autonomous and sustainable movement.
We can't continue to live the way we live now, in this brutal neoliberalism or real.
I think when we come from that world and we find ourselves, not only with the Zapatista world,
but in general with the indigenous world, it's like a very strong cultural shock.
Because in the indigenous world, everything is collective.
Everything is in a community.
I think that in a future, the only option is that we all live like this.
That we'll come back to live in a community.
For me, that's the big difference between the individual world and the collective world.
In a way, listening to the Zapatistas confirmed for me that I'd been on a good trajectory with my community-supported farm in Canada,
of building small scale, decentralised food systems.
And it made me wonder about the idea of community.
Does it only refer to humans?
Or could community include everything we're in relationship with?
Oh, sorry guys.
I'm so excited.
Get on your bum.
It was time to make some miles.
I'd always dreamed of seeing the Amazon basin since living in the jungles of Sumatra.
And I'm really excited to cross the Andes to see where potatoes come from and to feel the Amazon rainforest teeming behind it.
Stopped at this tiny little spot in the middle of nowhere and we're getting gas, otherwise we won't make it.
There's been a few times where we've come close to running out of fuel in the desert,
which feels kind of gnarly considering there's nothing out here if we do.
We're entirely dependent on the gas stations for fuel and supplies.
And although it sometimes felt like we were riding on Mars,
the cold Humboldt current makes the ocean rich with life, including incredible surf.
One unbelievable spot broke for more than two and a half kilometres,
with rides that lasted more than five minutes.
I got the longest wave of my life out there.
And to get to the Amazon, we had to cross the Andes mountain range,
which was quite the adventure in itself.
But along with the altitude sickness and breakdowns came the crisp mountain air,
the epic views and some of the best campsites we'd experienced.
After crossing the Andes, the winding road down led us to the humid jungle of the Amazonian headwaters.
Shortly after, the roads ended, so we parked the bikes and jumped in dugout canoes to head deeper into the rainforest.
We didn't really have a plan.
We wanted to experience the forest, but other than that, we'd just see what happened.
Wow, that's weird.
He's slicking inside my nostrils.
Oh my God.
So we're in the Amazon and it's bloody amazing.
Like so many places we've been, but the big difference between here and even the mountains where we kind of last were,
there's this incredible diversity of animals and chaotic cacophony of just life and death.
You kind of really realize how interconnected everything is.
It's the same story across the world.
And that's the cool thing, you know, riding down from Alaska.
Everything just seems so linked to nature.
And then, and then so many of the problems of the world seem so,
seem so distanced from nature.
I mean, we're traveling on motorbikes, so it's definitely not a perfect scenario.
But it's really been a great vehicle for us to be able to explore and learn a little bit more ourselves.
These wings look so cool when they're open up to home.
Hmm.
It looks like dead leaves when they're closed.
Hmm.
Thumbs up.
Thumbs up for nature.
I'd heard of ayahuasca before, although up until then I'd never had any desire to drink it.
But a chance encounter with a warm shaman gave us trust and curiosity.
As I stepped into a world I never knew existed,
it seemed clear that the Amazonian cultures had developed their own wisdom
or a different way of knowing through plant medicines and ceremony.
I wondered why my culture had outlawed it.
While the West is interested in exploring outer space,
other cultures are more focused on exploring inner space.
Perhaps that means the globalized world could learn from small forest communities.
After all, science still can't define what consciousness is.
suddenly I could see my own cultural bias and how I'd been conditioned to think of the developed world as superior.
I could see that a lot of what society had taught me about life was just one modern perspective,
not necessarily a historical truth.
Progress is inevitable.
Mountains are mineral deposits.
Technology will save us.
Fish don't feel pain.
Time is money.
credibility is likely to fragment of society and nature-based cultures are primitive.
We haveauser issues at restaurants.
We haveauser issues at local and local and local and local.
Thus we rule human,
we access Shopping Toure riches and Amabi.
We have ugrai clean people.
Once the Nisusus weak permeated us,
First we include backups of K removing horses,
langs
And our common source of islands
For the first time, I truly felt the essence of what my friends in Indonesia
had been trying to teach me, that the entire world is alive in ways that can't be measured,
a web of life of awe-inspiring power and beauty.
And as I smiled about how much I loved being alive, it also dawned on me just how much I loved Heather.
Hey, what have we got here?
Um, California poppies, some kind of brassica weed,
Alstroemeria, and pearly everlasting.
I don't know what this is.
Um, they look like snapdragons, but they're not.
We're still at the tent!
Hey!
After our experience in the Amazon, the sound of the highway kind of lost its romance.
We thought about what it might be like to leave the roads and cars behind,
to move in a way that's more in tune to the local landscape.
We rode into Chile with a plan.
Try to sell the bikes and use that money to buy four horses.
We wanted to slow things right down and rid ourselves of the reliance on roads and gas stations.
Then, one day while surfing, we met a couple of cowboys, Sam and Mick, from the outback of Australia.
And they just happened to be trying to find a couple of motorbikes to start their own adventure.
We offered to teach them to surf, and they offered to help us pick good horses.
Just, just used to riding it.
We don't know how to surf, and you guys don't know how to ride, so...
You're doing so well, though.
Yeah, it's good.
First ride, you both look natural in the saddle, so that's, um, that's half the battle.
Once I was the king, I took her to my town.
Suddenly, we were looking after four horses.
Two for riding, and two for carrying surfboards and gear.
My two are called Salvador and Peachy.
And my two are called Blackie and Harimel.
We knew nothing about riding horses before starting this new endeavor, and I didn't even
know what a, uh, a halter was, or, you know, I think I'd heard of the word bridle, that's
for sure, but I didn't know how the hell to put one on.
Doesn't it look like there should be a strap over the front?
Is this really just all a bridle is?
I don't know.
I can't remember anything.
I have no bloody idea.
I don't know how much space there should be here.
Does that go under her neck, or where is it supposed to go?
I have no idea.
Poor old Harry is actually about 33 years old.
We were told between eight and ten or something, is what they told us.
By a vet.
By a bloody vet.
And basically, he filled us full of rubbish.
By the time we'd spent a couple of days with him, we realized that he was in a bit of a different
league than the other three that are a much, much better shape, I guess.
Scary surfboard.
Come on.
Wow.
Not easy with these surfboards.
So Blackie had the episode two days ago where basically she was fully traumatized by the surfboards.
Kind of got a couple of rope burns in the process.
Nothing really bad at all.
But it scared the hell out of her, and then she didn't really like it much.
Blackie.
So now she won't go anywhere near surfboards.
Which of course, when you're trying to do a surfing mission on horseback, is quite problematic.
Whoa.
Blackie.
Whoa.
Whoa.
Whoa.
I'm terrified of the horses, so that's a great start.
I can't do anything near them.
It just gets worse.
It doesn't get any easier.
I tried to put the saddle on Blackie today, and she freaked out and ended up snapping her
halter and fell over backwards.
So, yeah, excited to hop on her and get going.
Yeah, kind of regretting this whole decision, actually, but it's okay.
Yeah.
It's been a little bit stressful with the horses, and all of a sudden we're both learning
this new thing, and so we've definitely argued more than we have with the rest of the trip.
We didn't really have any issues like that before, and it's just been a little bit harder,
and I think we're both just like almost a year of like every single day together 24-7.
It's a bit crazy.
But it has been lovely, and we don't fight.
Yeah, we don't fight.
Except for now with the horses.
Yeah, we've definitely had a couple of...
Like having children or something.
Yeah.
Everything's just been harder with the horses already, and we haven't even...
Do you not yet?
We haven't even started.
Look how shit all this is.
Yeah, it's just coming together.
It's just gone.
After almost two months of testing ways to strap surfboards to horses, everything had failed,
until we eventually came up with a rack design that stopped the boards from touching the horses or from entering their peripheral vision.
While we trained the horses and built the racks, we got to know the next-door neighbor, Ramon Navarro,
an internationally respected big wave surfer and conservationist.
We'd heard he'd just finished a long-term project to protect the iconic Punta de Lobos point break from development forever.
So surfers, fishermen, everyone knows that's a pleasant place, you know.
There's not many places like that in the world.
My real vision is my kid and the kids of my kid can keep seeing that place exactly what it was.
It's just the ocean.
Why do you need to be private, you know?
So with surfing, you need to understand absolutely everything that happened in the ocean to be a good surfer and to understand the ocean.
And I believe that's the way we need to live our life, you know, understand what exactly happened.
Fishing or spearfishing is kind of like the same surfing, you know.
I get the same level of power and adrenaline to go spearfishing or just, you know, just catching waves.
And it's not just to go to the ocean and just kill fish.
It's like you pretty much harvest fish.
And I believe that's the main problem of the humans right now.
Like, mostly the big boats that they know harbors, they just destroy, they just take everything.
I mean, if you go to the ocean, you're pretty small in the ocean and understand what happened.
You just, it's like I go to my garden.
You're not going to take a green tomato.
You're going to wait, you know, until it's ready.
And it's the same thing with waves.
You're not going to pick out the clothes out of the little one if there's the big ones out there.
You're just going to wait and get the good one, you know.
And that make your, like, kind of like next level connection and understand and respect and obviously protect.
I think we're ready to roll.
I think we're ready to roll.
Yee-hoo!
There were a lot of concerns about everything on that first day, but we figured if we can keep it together for 100 metres, then we could probably keep it together for a couple of kilometres.
And if we could manage to travel for a whole day, then there was nothing stopping us from doing it every day for months on end.
That first beach ride felt like such an achievement, even if we were just plodding along at four or five times slower than a bicycle.
We avoided roads and stuck to traditional seaweed-gathering trails on the coast.
None of them mapped.
We were traversing terrain that we wouldn't have dreamed of tackling on our overloaded motorbikes.
It was so quiet.
Suddenly we could hear the birds and the sound of the ocean.
Instead of warming loud engines and checking oil, our mornings were spent in quiet awe of four gigantic steeds and their peaceful spirits.
Sometimes just standing quietly listening to their heartbeats.
The slow travel meant that we began to notice the small details of the landscape, like fruit trees ready to pick, or the various wild foods that were good to cook with.
Not to mention the personalities of random horses who would try and join our little herd.
We proved that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
And for the most part, we said goodbye to roadside campsites and cooked on an open fire.
Coffee?
Sure.
The route south was no longer bound by the intervals of gas stations and fuel from the other side of the world.
Instead, we hunted green grass and clean rivers, all of it growing freely.
We have such a minimal impact.
And even then, grazing animals have a positive impact on the land.
They encourage growth, and their poo fertilizes.
And it's just pretty cool that you can just ride a horse along the land and go surfing and just live and live outside and be free.
It's pretty beautiful.
Because that's what we're doing.
You look beautiful, John.
You're beautiful, mate.
It's added a big challenge to the journey, taking surfboards, because you're constantly, not only worrying about grass and water and somewhere to camp, but then you've also got the added dynamic of, okay, what are the waves doing?
What's the wind doing?
What's the tide doing?
So it's like this whole other complication.
But at the same time, I don't think I've ever felt anything more rewarding.
Yeah, surfing on horsebacks.
Freaking awesome.
Look at that thing out the back.
It's just tubing off its brain.
Oh.
We have the most beautiful campsite.
And we're so lucky to be able to roll up onto the beach and just camp.
Yeah.
This is amazing.
Such an amazing way to see things.
Let's stand on the surfboard bait.
Hola.
Buenos dias.
I wonder how long I'll give away.
Will the celebration be this time for me and me alone?
Yes, first bath, shower in two weeks.
I think it's two weeks to the day.
So, it's exciting.
I feel a bit gross.
Yeah, I look gross.
At one point, we stumbled upon a little hamlet
and after getting chatting with a friendly local,
we learned how the Mapuche were one of the only people
to fight the Spanish conquistadors and win,
but are now again fighting to protect their lands and waterways.
I am Mapuche Las Kenches.
The Mapuche is the people who live on the land or their territory,
who live for generations.
The Mapuche is the people who live around,
their lives,
they turn around what there is,
like I said,
the collection of algas, the fishing,
the products that come out,
contact.
And also, spiritually,
the sea has life.
It gives us life.
Every day, with the rain, the wind, the wind,
it's all beautiful.
The sky, the clouds, the birds.
Here, there are days that it's carved out
of white gaviotes,
and the other day, there's a pelican.
They say,
you can't stop to thank the sea for the air,
every day,
the air,
you get out of here,
you breathe,
you feel bigger,
you know?
We noticed Viviana had a sign in her window,
protesting a pulp mill's plans to pump waste into their local beach.
We, as Mapuche,
or Lafkenche,
we don't want it to arrive,
because it would be the total destruction of each alga,
chorizo,
and we wouldn't have that.
We'd ridden past several of the pulp mills that Viviana was talking about,
where mountains of pine logs are chipped into pulp to make paper,
a process that produces toxic waste water.
And we'd even been advised by locals not to surf in those areas,
because of the waste outfall into the ocean.
Only recently,
one of the pulp mills had illegally dumped chemicals into a Ramsar-listed wetland,
killing tens of thousands of birds,
including South America's largest population of black-necked swans.
When we began the horse journey,
we dreamed of riding through picturesque wilderness,
but it was clear early on that wilderness had become a rarity.
Instead, our daily horizon was lined by pine plantations that fed the pulp mills.
Day after day,
week after week,
month after month,
the monocultures continued.
And because the horses depended on the land,
it made the industrialized landscape all the more obvious.
The horses had nothing to eat,
and maybe that's why we never saw any of the native deer.
Most of the plantations had big fences or walls around them too,
that would stretch for kilometers,
forcing us onto precarious cliffside trails to be able to continue.
We're stuck in this damn pine forest.
Yeah.
Man, I hate these.
They're not forests.
I hate them.
They don't even look that good from far away.
You can tell they're the same species.
They're just silent, dead, money factory paper mache pieces of pine.
They're a bit spooky.
Yeah, they're spooky quiet.
And anyway,
so we've just gotten like three kilometers into this one.
And then I remembered I left the GPS where we had lunch like two hours ago or something like that.
And so I bolted back there thinking that we might be able to beat this storm.
And then obviously we haven't.
It's been raining pretty, pretty good.
So I didn't find the bloody GPS, which we really need for down south.
We need all the time.
He's so hungry and thirsty.
Like he's sucking on my fingers like he's hungry and thirsty.
We need to keep going.
We've got kilometers to go.
We don't have any water for the bloody horses.
We couldn't get out the way we wanted to because he's fucking fence.
Yeah, there's no water.
Really?
Nah, it's all bloody salt.
So we're going to have to keep going for like, I don't know, 8K or whatever that guy said.
And try and find some up there.
At least there's a bit of food.
Even though it had already been a huge day, we had to keep pushing on.
We were doing okay, but I could see that Harimau, being so much older than the other horses,
was really tired and would sometimes need to stop to catch his breath.
Doing well, mate.
You're doing well, buddy.
We love you.
We love you.
But it was under that big, rising full moon that I learned to let go and trust in the horses.
Blackie had challenged me so much, but on that night, we kind of just surrendered to the journey together.
And for the first time, I think she and I truly connected.
Pretty beautiful still.
It's so nice.
It's amazing, actually, with the stars and the moon.
After breaking camp for three hours in the morning, then traversing cliffs and endless pine plantations during the day,
then miles and miles of soft sand at night, we were getting pretty worried about finding water for the horses.
And after a couple more hours, we were all exhausted and needed rest.
We haven't drunk any water since the morning.
Literally, we haven't drunk a single drop each since the morning.
Yeah, I just feel like we're letting the horses down, like, and then what's the point, I guess?
Now they're miserable and cold and hungry and thirsty.
And same as us.
The next morning, we set off parched, but hopeful.
Hey, Bomber!
There's water coming off the cliffs!
Wow!
Drinking the holy water, mate, are you?
Having a little drink?
That beautiful spring coming out of the cliff emphasized freedom for me.
It was life pouring out from the earth.
It struck me how we were all made of the same stuff.
The horses, the birds, even the plants that clung to the cliffs.
All of us made of water.
We don't even have to have the horses tied up here.
That's the best thing.
They're just off.
We can't even see them at the moment.
All four of them are just cruising along this little stretch of beach coastline.
And they just come back here whenever they want a little bit of water.
And it's pretty radical that we can just trust them to be free.
I guess that's the thing about adventure.
Often it's the challenging times that lead to the unexpected gems.
And this was one of those times.
Because right out the front of that magic freshwater spring was one of the nicest waves we'd ever seen.
Oh my god.
Oh my god.
Oh my god.
Moonshine.
Yummy.
Moonshine.
Yummy.
Ooh.
Love you.
Wool.
Wow.
Wow.
Yeah.
The day we packed up to leave that special spot, the waves were better than ever.
It hurt to ride away, but if we were ever gonna make it to Patagonia, we had to keep moving.
Just, I was feeling a little bit badly for Harimao.
He was just, he's so much slower than the other horses that I feel like when he has to walk their speed, he has to work extra hard.
And he's a bit older and skinnier, he doesn't put on weight as easily.
He's never been the same size as the other ones. And that's okay, he's such a little champion.
He's so cool, I love him so much. I love all the horses.
We went up a hill and just watching how slowly he went up the hill, it just broke my heart.
And, um, I don't know. So I was seriously considering stopping here and trying to sell Harimao and Blackie and then having Maddie go on without me.
I don't know. We were just arguing and it just felt like a really negative situation.
Like we would find ourselves in beautiful places and I would have so much love for the journey.
But then there would be such, um, we would get an argument and it would just feel so draining, um, on top of all the work with the horses.
It's a lot of energy and a lot of emotional energy, I think, with the horses for me.
So she's all alone.
It took a bit to sink in, but with Heather heading back to Canada, we chose to try and find a forever home for the horses.
We wanted all four of them to stay together. They'd become best mates.
And we met a guy in the market who had heard that we were going to be selling the horses after the end of the Cabal Gata.
And, um, and he offered us an amazing price.
He came up to us and said he'd buy all four horses.
And he said that all four horses were for his children.
Where we met him was actually close to the butcher in the market.
And I said to him, they're not going for meat, are they?
And I pointed at the butcher that was right there and he's laughed and he's like, no, of course not.
And he looked straight into my eyes and he shook my hand and we made the deal and we shook on it.
And then one of our good friends from around here, someone that we do know really well, someone that we can trust,
came up to us and told us he was going to shoot them the next day and sell them to the butcher.
And he's still supposed to be coming this afternoon to pick them up.
Luckily, we had some friends up in the mountains who had just finished their own horse journey.
Hello? Hi, how's it going?
So yeah, I was just calling.
We're thinking about riding the horses towards Pucon.
What do you guys think about, about adding four horses to your herd?
And so we set off with a long way to go up into the mountains.
Why may I not go out and climb a tree?
Trees have fingers that face the aliens from the leaves.
Our horses had carried us so far and we'd become a family.
I felt so much gratitude for all of them, but especially Harry Mao.
It's a pretty scary bridge, hey Big Sal.
When it drowns me in the sun
I wanna go and find a little cat
Cat's been found in the day but it looks nice
In a way I was glad we'd been forced up into the mountains
It meant that we could all stay together for a little bit longer
So we're on the pass at the moment
And it's bloody beautiful
Last night the lake was like a mirror
And it was just an amazing afternoon
Being in such a place with the horses
Because being on the coast for so long
And then trekking all the way through
And then coming up here to the mountains
Has been a huge reward
But it's bloody cold
And I don't know
I guess we weren't really prepared for the mountains
This was all just a plan B
Because we didn't want to sell our horses
To that guy or anyone that was going to kill him
Sounded like a lot of people would have just sold him off for meat
My hands hurt and I don't want to do anything
Why?
Because it's freezing
And every time you use your fingers
They get cold again
Why don't you put your gloves on mate?
We don't have any gloves
We don't have any gloves
How are we even going to get a ticket home?
I don't know
I already have mine
I don't
Heather and I had been through so much over our time together
But at this stage it was just the plight to find a safe home for the horses
That kept us trekking onwards side by side
Deep down I knew that in about a month's time
She would head north back to Canada
And I'd set off alone
Down into Patagonia
We made the packs as light as possible
For poor old Harimau
To the point where all he was carrying
Was our sleeping bags and pads
But it was clear by this stage
He was tired
But no matter how often he'd stop
He'd never let us out of his sight
We're a weird herd of animals
All trekking together physically and emotionally
Wherever one of us went
The rest would follow
As we got deeper into the mountains
We came across small communities
Who would often let us camp with our horses on their land
Sometimes we'd exchange travel stories with the locals
And one man in particular had gone far deeper
And far longer than either Heather or myself
So I'm like a nomad
I'm like a nomad
I have a long time
And then I want to go to another place
And I take my backpack and my carpa
And I walk
That's the freedom
That's the most beautiful
From there for me
It's only the walk
Walk, walk, walk
Camping where I'm at night
Conocer people
Conocer the customs
And always
And always
For the interior
Of the villages
Where the communities are
Mapuche
Why do you look for the communities
Mapuche?
Possibly
I have blood
Possibly my grandparents
Were Mapuche
It's a shame
I say maybe I'm Mapuche
Because I have a risk
Disculpen me, pero
Siempre me sucede
Los primeros salidas que hice
Yo fue en el ao 72
Y despus en el 73 me detuvieron
Pinochet
Pinochet
La dictadura militar que hubo ac en Chile
Los milicos me cortaron el pelo con corta pluma
Nunca me haban pegado tanto
Me encerraron
Vi morir personas al lado mo
Eso me da pena
Fue malo
Feo
Aqu mataron a ver como 28 personas
Aqu
Por qu?
Porque
Tenan pensamientos diferentes
A las doctrinas que queran exponer ellos
Que impusieron
Por muchos aos
Para el mundo
Hay muchas cosas que no se han sabido
Que no dejan salir de ac
Y todava
Si todava existe eso
Pero ahora de otra forma
Es lo mismo pero
De otra forma
Ahora los grandes grupos econmicos dominan
La hidroelctrica ac
Iban a destruir los ros
Y va a ir a la escoba
Despus va a ser todo feo
Y eso destruye
Destruye mucho
Adolfo
Are we running out of love
The next morning
We rode on
With Adolfo's sad words
Ringing in our ears
And there's a lot of time
To think and reflect
While riding a horse
His sadness
His sadness about being disconnected
From his Mapuche roots
Triggered a sense of sorrow
For me
First and foremost
I felt for Adolfo
He's a genuinely good man
Who's had a hard life
But on another level
I felt a distant ache
For the disconnect
Of my own ancestry
And what had happened
For the world
To end up like this
It seemed obvious
That throughout history
There's been a push
To eradicate
Nature-based cultures
But I couldn't shake
What Adolfo had said
About those same
Oppressive systems
Still being in place
Although now
In a predatory capitalist form
That afternoon
We were again welcomed
Into a Mapuche community
Hola amigo
Hola hola
Como esta
Bien bien
Hola
Hola
Que bonito
Our horses are running away right now
But it doesn't even matter
I mean
We just know
That we're in the
We're in Mapuche territory now
And we know
We're being looked after
And the whole reason
That we know
We're being looked after
Is pretty much
Because of these guys
Because
Of the love that they create
When people see
When people see the horses
They feel
A connection
To nature
Ahuyentan los malos espritu
El caballo
Caballo
Caballo para nosotros
Es algo sagrado
Ac
Muy sagrado
Nosotros ganamos de la tierra
Porque somos
Como Mapuche seres espirituales
Y cuando hablamos de seres espirituales
Es porque respetamos la naturaleza
Hay ro
Hay cerros
Hay montaa
Hay volcanes
Hay volcanes
Y eso
Todos esos seres espirituales
Tienen dueos espirituales
Que dan la vida
Que hoy da
El sector empresarial
Lo que quiere aqu en este territorio
No es cierto
Es sacar aguas
De un ro afluente
Muy sagrado
Del territorio
De Mapuche
Por lo tanto
Esos son los empresarios
Que quieren conducir agua
Y poder hacer mover mquinas
Para generar energa
Pero esa energa
No se queda en el territorio
Esa energa se va
Para el norte
Para la minera
Y que sacamos
Ganamos nosotros
Los territorios
Que estn aqu
Nosotros cuando vimos pasar
Porque este camino internacional
Vimos pasar camiones
De alto tonelaje
Con material
Que iban a construir
Los paramos
Botamos rboles
Y los sacamos de aqu
Vino el contingente
De fuerzas especiales
De carabineros de Chile
Vino el helicptero
A apuntarlo
Pa, pa, pa, pa
Para poder distorsionar
Y que pasaran esos camiones
Por lo tanto
Es una amenaza
Para nosotros
Para oponernos
Nosotros
En los desarrollos
Que quiere construir
El pas
Y grupos empresariales
A nosotros
Nos tiene tildado
Como gente terrorista
A m me condenaron
Por 630 das de crcel
Tal acerca de las ne
comes down to the story we tell ourselves and in turn the laws we abide by ancient law around the
world says the earth is full of spirits or persons only some of whom are human but all of whom
deserve respect whereas modern law says that only humans and corporations are persons which means
that everything from the mountains to the forests are just resources for the taking if at one point
in history all of our ancestors were deeply connected to the rivers mountains the animals
and the trees can those of us who have been disconnected rediscover the spirits of nature
the funny thing was I could easily see Heather's determined and loving spirit and our direct
experience of living with our horses for the last six months made it obvious that they too had their
own spirit there was big salvador the gentle giant beautiful blackie the strong leader cheeky peachy
who would stick her head in the tent each morning to wake us up and of course there was faithful old
harimau who would follow us all to the very end
and so if horses and humans have their own spirit or personhood then maybe a volcano could too or a river
or a forest and perhaps if we look closely we'll see that the mighty ocean is full of different people
none of them human but all of them surfing and dancing for the Sun
well you ripped the bag mate
you come out here into the beautiful quiet mountains and you can hear a woodpecker pecking away or you can
just sit next to your horse while you know while she sleeps and there's something just immensely
gratifying about that we had one final mountain pass to clear before arriving at our friends Greta and
Alice property their horses forever home it was a strange feeling because with each step closer we
were nearing a goal that had taken so much effort to arrive at but at the same time we knew it would
bring big change for all of us she's slippery you're all right go mate you're doing good
whoa dude
I don't know I'm really tired right now on our last night
what's gonna happen when you go home and then I go somewhere else
I don't know it'll be kind of tough after spending like 24 7 for 14 months together it's kind of a lot of time
it's been really crazy especially just what we've been doing it's like really emotionally taxing and
just so intense I think we also need a little a little breather from each other and to know that
we like can live our separate lives again and be our confident selves because it's something I feel
has not been coming out in myself it's been really hard like latching on to someone else's journey
yeah we wouldn't have done it it wouldn't be like this if it hadn't been for you
mm-hmm yeah and I would never do this if it weren't for you
how do you feel about this Haki we're on the home stretch
we're on the home stretch
howdy now
hold up
hold up
that was so tasty
oh yeah
so delicious
oh this is a magical opportunity
oh hi beautiful
we've been waiting so patiently
and all in love
like when you guys called us and it was like how I don't even know like you know all of the different
questions that come up but then also that gut feeling that says this is asking for you to
participate and you say yes and then once you say yes then you've opened up all these other doors for
the things to come in that you need in order to make it happen we were really surprised when seeing
how people were like wow no this is part of our culture but it's gone you know there's so many
it's third generation is the only one who remembers or knows what that's like
that's like
yeah
whoa whoa whoa that was gnarly
you okay
that was quite funny sorry to be laughing but
no you left me behind buddy
Heather and I spent that afternoon saying goodbye to the horses feeding them some of their favourite snacks
I realised that the horses had been on their own journey full of lush pastures and scary plastic bags
but now they were home
they were safe
and while we were all going our separate ways from here on out
we were all going to be better for it
I'm glad for Matty that he's still aiming to get down to Patagonia
but I'm heading home
there's been a lot of saying goodbye these last couple of days
yeah lots of saying goodbye to the horses and to each other
it's kind of crazy thinking about it
but we're both going to move on to some pretty cool things I think
uh
where do I
where do I start
it's pretty wild really what's um
what's happened in the last few days you know
um
whue
my world's just been turned upside down
upside down. So it's been such a massive high you know this whole trip and then
a few days ago say goodbye to the horses and that was pretty sad and then
yesterday said goodbye to Bomber which was really really bloody hard, a lot
harder than what I thought it was gonna be. It's a really difficult part of the
journey, I think it's the most difficult part of the journey I've experienced is
when you gotta say goodbye. I'm really sad but I'm so stoked. I don't know if I've ever
been this stoked in my life, that's a ridiculous thing. But I kind of got my
heart broken at the same time.
Like a wandering coast for a harbour
Like the ground beneath the snow for springtime
Like a believer
For something to believe in
Like a drifting castaway
For shoreline
I've waited for you
All the way through
All the way down the line
I've waited for you
All the way through
All the way down the line
I've waited for you
All the way down the line
I've waited for you
I finally understood I'd been so fixated on the glory of reaching Patagonia
That I'd failed to see it never mattered to Heather in the first place
And now she was gone
But I suppose the best lessons in life come from your mistakes
And if this journey has taught me anything
It's that the greatest mistake of all
Would be to live in fear of making one
I live in fear of making one
I live for a moment
And every moment says goodnight
What I draw for you is yesterday
Here's what it looks like
I can only draw from
I can only draw from
What enters my eyes
Maybe our perception
Is why we cry
Maybe it's perception
I just think we're scared to die
If the world is for a moment
If the world is for a moment
And every moment says goodbye
Then I'm drawing for you yesterday
Here's what it looked like
I was on my way to heaven
Hi guys
Hi
Tumbling towards the devil
We're silent and away
We're silent and away
We're silent and away
Sad shit
Yeah
Good night
Good night
To me
Good night
Get out, get out, get out, get out
Of SNEV
Ready, by Sandra?
Whose a McKinney
I hate the parents
I'm alive
All right, give me props, you know, you guys.
I'm dreaming, I'm dreaming all day long, I'm dreaming of you, dreaming, I'm dreaming
all day long, I'm dreaming about you when I'm walking, I'm dreaming of you when I'm talking,
I'm still dreaming of you, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, closer each and every day, I'm getting
closer to you, closer in every single way, I'm getting closer to you when I'm walking,
closer to you when I'm talking, oh, closer to you, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm,
hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm.
Every day I walk across the mountain and the river
For on my mind the sparkling rub that'll take away the shivers
Twilight settles upon the world on my retreat back home
But I can see the light of dawn as I pour it through my liver