Five Years on Horseback: Cold and Wind
Olivia and Ben, a Canadian and an Aussie, are traveling on horseback across the Americas from south to north, following the famous Pan-American Highway that begins in Ushuaia, Argentina, and ends in Alaska. Once a month, they’ll share notes from their life on the road.
The World from a Horse
28 February 2025 – Rio Grande, Tierra del Fuego
4:30 in the morning, my first snooze. I’m begging for 10 more minutes of sleep in this comfortable and warm bed. But there’s no rest for the wicked, everybody reading those lines knows that when there’s horses to care for, there’s no hour or time in the day that is too sacred for it. I need to get up and dressed. The truck is coming in at 6am and the horses need to eat well before their long journey in the trailer. Today’s challenge? We cross no less than four Argentinian and Chilean customs and borders offices, separated by an hour-long ferry crossing of the Detroit of Magellan to get out of the island of Tierra del Fuego.
The World from a Horse
Today, we start our journey towards the Province of Santa Cruz, the largest one in Argentina, that we need to cross from South to North. It’s going to be miles and miles of desert without much feed for the horses to graze on and even less water. While packing everything and making sure at least 6 times that I got every paper, certificate, visa and permit that we’ll need for that long and strenuous day, I can’t decide if I’m happier to go on than sad to get out of that island of green grass and fat horses towards the infamous cold winds and pampa of the Patagonia.
Tomorrow is my birthday, and I still don’t know what to wish for, as there’s so many things to worry about right now. Maybe to have as much a good time that we had in Tierra del Fuego, with amazing camping spots, good and generous people we met on the road and healthy horses. We’re a month into the trip; we still have years and thousands of kilometers that are waiting for us.
It’s 6:30, the horses are in, time to go.
The World from a Horse
22 March 2025 – El Calafate
After 140 miles in 12 days, we stopped at an estancia near the touristic town of El Calafate, on the coast of the Argentino Lake, taking its source in the gigantic Perito Moreno Glacier. We went to see it, hitchhiking our way into the national park, while our ponies had a couple days of well-deserved rest. Now, after 10 days stop that we used to shoe one of them as well as buy another one, getting our team even at 6 horses, three each, we’re ready to tackle the next bit of the trip.
The World from a Horse
Still in the desert, still with so much wind! At least from now on we’re going to have more luck with feed and water for the horses. We ride a maximum of 15 miles per day, mostly on the side of the road. Easier on the horses, as it’s flatter than going directly through the paddocks of the estancias. Anyway, there’s fences on both sides of the road, so on we go. We now have three horses each. One to ride, one as a pack horse and one that goes without nothing on its back, the next day we rotate and so on. It’s easier on their bodies. If there’s one that needs a day off, we can give them without stopping and without them to suffer from injuries, sores, etc.
The World from a Horse
25 April 2025 – Bajo Caracoles
At last, we’re counting the days that we have left in the largest province of Argentina.
It’s almost been two months now that we ride towards better weather. The cold and the wind have become the daily companions of our ride, as well as the comments on how this ride is so crazy and adventurous! To be able to live out there, wake up in the middle of nowhere, looking at the horses grazing sometimes as close as a couple feet from us in the pink and orange light of the sunrise is truly a blessing. There’s not much rain here, so we unroll our bedrolls and fall asleep below a roof of thousands of stars every night.
The World from a Horse
It’s weird, as a Canadian, April represents for me the coming of spring, longer, warmer days. Here in the southern hemisphere, we are fleeing winter, the unforgiving snow that is going to freeze everything and the dangerous blizzards they call “El Viento Blanco,” The White Wind. We reached an estancia yesterday without knowing that there were alerts issued by the local authorities that the next day, today, was going to be the first big storm of the fall. Winter is not due until the 21 of June, but nobody controls the weather. And so, it came.
I woke up in this small cabin, getting the fire going and looking out the window, the usually yellow pampa was now covered in a foot of white snow. All morning the two ranchers that are hosting us joked about us staying with them all winter, waiting for the snow and the cold to pass, for spring to come in September.
Ben laughed, I did too, just enough to hide my worries.
“Are we going to make it to the provinces where there’s no snow in the winter?” I asked him.
“Yes…” He spoke. “But we’re going to ride in that snow and mud for a good while.”
He looks unbothered, relaxed even, but we both know that our trip just took another turn. We keep going, but it’s starting to feel a little bit like a race.
“At least when we go out of Patagonia, we’ll be safe for a couple years, where the winters are warm!” I add, playfully.
“We still have almost a thousand miles to ride before we reach that,” he said back.
In times of uncertainties, we go on, that’s part of the plan, that’s part of the trip. We’re around 800 miles from our starting point, Ushuaia; we’re getting accustomed to our rhythm and to the first of 14 countries we’ll cross towards Alaska.
The World from a Horse
To learn more about Olivia and Ben’s journey be sure to follow them on Instagram, Facebook, and GoFundMe.
Go riding.
Amanda Uechi Ronan is an author, equestrian, and wannabe race car driver. Follow her on Instagram @au_ronan.
