EPISODE 49
Queen of the Ice
In the Season 3 premiere, you’ll meet Antonella Giacomini, an Italian mountaineer and adventurer who has been called the Queen of the Ice because she loves to traverse glaciers in remote corners of the world. A woman accustomed to skiing while pulling a sled across ice fields, Antonella recounts how she accidentally got into bike touring while trying to reach a glacier in Patagonia with her expedition gear. She has come to love the concept of bicycle touring, visiting countries like Italy, Costa Rica, and Canada on two wheels. Regardless of her mode of transportation, Antonella has learned valuable lessons, such as how to survive a four-day snowstorm that wrecks your tent. Or how to enter Argentina illegally three times but always manage to get out. From shattering the cruel myth that biking from northern to southern Italy is “all downhill” to performing sacred rituals to scale unclimbed peaks in Mozambique. Antonella’s wild stories offer proof that to experience life fully, you should travel, travel, travel.
Episode Transcript
Antonella: Ragazzi viaggiate, viaggiate. Viaggiate perché è l’unica cosa cioè non impalerete sui banchi di scuola.
Gabriel: You just heard Antonella Giacomini, speaking in Italian, her native language. Here is the English translation of what she said:
Antonella (English): Guys, travel, travel. Travel because it’s the only thing that you won’t learn sitting at school desks.
Gabriel: Antonella’s own travel career has spanned more than 4 decades and taken her to some of the most remote corners of the planet. She loves cold places, like Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, Greenland, Iceland, Lake Baikal, and, of course, her beloved Patagonia. Twice she set off on expeditions attempting to cross, on skis, the Hielo Patagónico Sur, the third-largest sheet of ice in the world, after Antarctica and Greenland. On a separate occasion, while once more trying to reach the Patagonian ice fields, she found herself cycling the Carretera Austral. This improvised ride with her travel companion, Daniela, opened up a new world of bike touring for Antonella. She has since taken three more big tours and plans on doing more. That is, when she’s not busy conquering peaks around the world with her husband, noted mountaineer Manrico Dell’Agnola. I think it’s safe to say that Antonella has taken her own advice to travel, travel, travel.
Sandra: You are listening to The Accidental Bicycle Tourist. In this podcast, you’ll meet people from all walks of life and learn about their most memorable bike touring experiences. This is your host, Gabriel Aldaz.
Gabriel: Hello cycle touring enthusiasts! Welcome to the first episode of Season 3 of The Accidental Bicycle Tourist podcast. We begin Season 3 where we began Seasons 1 and 2: In a small campground called Turismo al Galope in Villa Cerro Castillo, a stop along the Carretera Austral, in Chile. In Season 1, Episode 1, you met Michelle Savacool from the United States. In Season 2, Episode 25, you met Laura and Shaun from Canada. And today you will meet Antonella Giacomini from Italy. Antonella only felt comfortable conducting the interview in Italian. Since my level of understanding of Italian is good, this meant that she could speak in her native language, while I could speak Spanish, a language in which Antonella is fortunately conversational.
Gabriel: Antonella Giacomini, grazie per essere stata ospite del podcast “The Accidental BIcycle Tourist.”
Antonella: Grazie a te, Gabriel, di darmi questa possibilità.
Antonella (English): Thank you, Gabriel, for giving me this opportunity.
Gabriel: We got to know each other at a campground called Turismo al Galope in Villa Cerro Castillo. You were traveling with your daughter, Annandrea, and her best friend, Giulia. Why did you decide to travel to Patagonia?
Antonella: Quando noi ci siamo incontrati non era la prima volta che andavo in Patagonia. Diciamo che per me la Patagonia è un po’ una seconda casa.
Antonella (English): When we met, it wasn’t the first time I had been to Patagonia. Let’s say that Patagonia is a bit like a second home to me. The first time I went to Patagonia was in 1995, as a mountaineer, together with my husband, Manrico Dell’Agnola, who is a well-known mountaineer, and with an expedition that wanted to climb the Casarotto Pillar at Cerro Fitz Roy. The first time we went, my daughter Annandrea was only one year old and had to be away from her mom and dad for several months, which always characterized her childhood. Since then, we have always traveled a lot for mountaineering expeditions, and I always said that I wanted to take her to Patagonia. I hoped to take her as a child, but the situation never arose. Because Annandrea had never been to Patagonia, I decided to organize a trip dedicated to her, together with her friend, and to get to El Chaltén by traveling along the Carretera Austral using public transport, hitchhiking, and whatever else we could. I think the Carretera Austral is like the Camino de Santiago.
Gabriel: More or less.
Antonella (English): Yes, more or less. And the really nice thing, which Annandrea always remembers, was continuing to meet people. You meet them one day, then lose track of them, then find them again, then send messages on WhatsApp. “But where are you now?” “How did you get to Caleta Tortel?” “We found a truck, but where did the cyclists end up?” I remember it was a very eventful trip.
Gabriel: Lots of messages going back and forth. My wife Sandra and I hitchhiked down the Carretera Austral and you were going the same direction, towards Villa O’Higgins. I counted up, in total we met up on six separate occasions, even at Torres del Paine, much further south. Although we met for the first time that evening at the Turismo al Galope, we got to know you better the following day, on that snowy hike to the mountain called Cerro Castillo.
Antonella (English): Oh yeah. It was a nice hike, Cerro Castillo, even though there was snow and we couldn’t really hike the whole loop. We had to climb and come back by a different path, but along the same slope.
Gabriel: I remember Annandrea and Giulia taking lots of photographs. Weren’t they Instagram influencers?
Antonella (English): Oh, no, no, no. Annandrea could do much more, but she’s not very social. She’s a very good photographer. She must have taken after her father, I think, because her father is a photographer, a professional photographer, but unfortunately she doesn’t devote enough time to it.
Gabriel: I just want to go back to the chronology. You said your first time in Patagonia was in 1995, and we meet there in 2022. How many other times did you visit Patagonia in between?
Antonella (English): So, after that first trip to Patagonia, I organized and led the first Italian explorations to the Clyde River area of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic. In 2000, I completed, on skis, a 32-day, 600-kilometer completely unsupported crossing of Greenland.
Gabriel: Wow.
Antonella (English): We returned to Patagonia in 2002 – myself, Manrico, and two of our friends – to attempt to cross the Hielo Patagónico Sur. The crossing started at the Jorge Montt Glacier, which is one of the glaciers that flow into the Calén Inlet, which is part of the fjord on which the village of Caleta Tortel is located. Therefore, you must leave Caleta Tortel by boat, navigate around the icebergs calved from the front of the Jorge Montt Glacier, the northernmost glacier. We stayed, I think, 40 days on the ice fields before having to abandon due to bad weather. We had gotten further than the Paso del Viento but we had to turn back and go over it because it was the only place we could escape. Because if you cross the Paso del Viento, you arrive at El Chaltén.
Gabriel: In Spanish, Paso del Viento means the Pass of the Wind. So, in Patagonia, that’s really saying something.
Antonella (English): Yeah, true. The Hielo Patagónico Sur is in Chile, and El Chaltén is in Argentina. The border runs along the peaks, and even along the peaks of Fitz Roy, there is only one pass that is authorized for crossing from Chile to Argentina, apart from Candelario Mancilla and then Laguna del Desierto, which is the crossing we all took in 2022.
Gabriel: Right.
Antonella (English): That pass is called the Paso Marconi. There, you can enter from Chile, cross into Argentina, and when you arrive at the border police station, they give you an entry visa, an entry stamp. However, the Paso del Viento is not authorized – at least it wasn’t then, I don’t know about now – so we entered Argentina illegally. We had to sort everything out in El Calafate, which has a larger state police station, not like the one in El Chaltén. We handed them all our passports, and we spent two days without passports, which isn’t nice, to be honest. When we went back to get our passports, they said that only I should go to the police chief, because I spoke Spanish.
Gabriel: See? Speaking Spanish is very useful.
Antonella (English): Definitely. My companions gathered around me and so the chief said to them, “No. The rest of you don’t need to come in.” I went first, but I looked back at them and whispered in Italian, “Come in, come inside.” And they slowly, slowly followed me in. When we went in, however, the funny thing was that the commander then spoke to all of us. He had a giant satellite photo of the Patagonian ice fields on the wall behind him, like the ones we had, and he asked us where we had entered, what had happened, and then he told us that an Argentinian military expedition had successfully, heroically, completed the crossing. They showed us a film, they made us sit through a film, which was very bad. And one of our friends, who was the oldest of us, a doctor, complained, “I have to watch this thing, but it’s terrible,” and I told him to shut up, because they had to give our passports back. So he shut up, and that was the story.
Gabriel: Propaganda.
Antonella (English): Yeah.
Gabriel: When was the next visit?
Antonella (English): As I said, in 2002, we only crossed one third of the ice field before having to stop due to bad weather. So, in 2006, I organized an all-women’s expedition with two others, Nadia Tiraboschi and Eloise Barbieri. The main problem in Patagonia, as you well know, is the weather. So, the Patagonian climate has a somewhat peculiar situation because there is humid air rising from the fjords, rising from the Pacific Ocean. Imagine that there are places where, when you look down, you see green below. Green meadows, forests, which are along the fjords, and it’s a very special feeling because you’re on a glacier, white, cold, and you look down a little, and there are places where you can see the fjords. You can also smell the salty air. I could really smell it, taste the salt in my mouth. This very warm humid air arrives on the glacier, where the air is cold, so it snows and snows and snows, and that’s why the weather is always very bad and unstable. And so, when we made the crossing with the women’s expedition over 54 days, we had only six days of good weather, really clear days with sunshine. Only six!
Gabriel: That’s not many.
Antonella (English): No, that’s not many, but we walked anyway, even when the weather wasn’t good, and even when the weather was terrible. Along the way, we made it back to the Paso del Viento. You know, when you make it there, you set up camp. You have to protect your tent. So first you dig, you make bricks, blocks of snow. You use the blocks to make a wall and then you put up the tent behind this wall, sheltered from the wind. Unfortunately, after four days of constant snow, there were more than two meters of snow. That meant that the snow was higher than our wall.
Gabriel: Oh, that doesn’t sound good.
Antonella: Nostro muro era alto come noi e questo, tra l’altro, è diventato il muro che doveva proteggerci, è diventato invece una cosa dannosa per noi.
Antonella (English): Our wall was as tall as us. This wall was supposed to protect us, but instead it became something harmful to us, for the simple reason that all the fresh, wet snow was leaning very high against the wall. The wind picked up the snow and threw it over the tent. So at a certain point, we didn’t know how much was falling from the sky and how much was being blown by the wind, because there was really a lot of snow. The tent was always full of snow. Every day and night, every single hour, one of us went out with a shovel and cleared the accumulated snowfall off the tent.
Gabriel: Wow. Did you get along during this stressful time?
Antonella (English): Not at first. I always say that, from a human point of view, that expedition was terrible. There were a lot of problems between us, but all three of us were experienced in mountaineering and expeditions. I had crossed Greenland on foot with skis, so we all had some experience of bad weather, very cold weather, tents that have to be pitched in a certain way and so on. After four days of continuous storms, the tent finally broke and we decided to abandon it. Fortunately, we also had a small tent and we set it up.
Gabriel: This small tent, this an emergency tent, not meant for long-term use.
Antonella (English): Yeah.
Gabriel: Ok, good.
Antonella (English): Then everything worked perfectly, like a Swiss watch.
Gabriel: Really, there were no further problems?
Antonella (English): No, no, really. No, there we really proved our professionalism. The fact that we knew exactly what to do, everyone did what they had to do without arguing, without any problems. I mean, there was no doubt about it. Yes, and I always say that. We didn’t agree on many other things, but there, we worked as a team.
Gabriel: And so, are you the women who have gotten the furthest south on the Hielo Patagónico?
Antonella (English): Yes. Perhaps only one other woman attempted to cross the glacier completely. Just one other. I don’t know if she was American. I don’t think so. In any case, there is no complete, official, and regular crossing.
Gabriel: Oh. There isn’t?
Antonella (English): No. One of the problems is transporting everything for almost two months of crossing.
Gabriel: Yeah.
Antonella (English): Yeah. Each of us was skiing and pulling a pulka, which is a kind of sled, with 100 kilos of food, gear, and personal belongings. To have to carry less, there was a Chilean expedition that had food caches thrown from an airplane along the way. Another problem is that there’s a mountaineering spot towards the end of the glacier, where there’s this fault, this crack in the glacier, and the glacier has different levels. You have to descend using ropes, abseiling, and you also have to lower the sleds, which is very complicated. That’s the key passage, from a mountaineering point of view. But another expedition made that passage by helicopter. They skipped it altogether!
Gabriel: Yeah!
Antonella (English): Easier.
Gabriel: Yeah, nice. Luxury!
Antonella (English): In 2006, our plan was to exit at the end of the Hielo Patagónico, at the fjord called Última Esperanza. After the severe storms, we changed our plan to exit at Estancia Cristina at the Upsala Glacier. Since another storm was coming and we only had one small tent, we turned back to exit at Paso del Viento, as we had done the previous time. The expedition that went furthest south was that of Ousland, a mountaineer with great experience.
Gabriel: Børge Ousland is a Norwegian explorer, best known for his unsupported journeys to the North Pole and for being the first person to cross Antarctica solo, a traverse he completed on skis and assisted by a kite. In 2003, Ousland and Thomas Ulrich crossed the Hielo Patagónico Sur by kayak and skis. They started from Caleta Tortel by kayak, skied across the ice for 54 days, and continued by kayak to Puerto Natales.
Antonella (English): Ousland’s expedition came off the ice at the Grey Glacier. You hiked the “O” Circuit of Torres del Paine, so you walked on the Grey Glacier, I think.
Gabriel: Oh god, yes. We did. I remember the climb up to the Grey Glacier. It was snowing like crazy and the wind was howling. So, typical weather.
Antonella (English): That’s the one.
Gabriel: Well, your crossings, both of Greenland and some of the Patagonian glaciers, are monumental achievements. Those were done on skis, pulling sleds. We still haven’t talked about bicycles, but that is about to change. The fourth time we met was in Villa O’Higgins, at the end of the Carretera Austral. In the Camping El Mosco you casually mentioned to me that you had bicycled the Carretera Austral many years ago. How did that happen?
Antonella (English): Well, the Carretera Austral is considered – or was considered at the time – one of the most beautiful gravel bicycle routes in the world. Now, unfortunately, they are paving it all, and for us cyclists this is a huge loss, but for those who live there it is a necessity, and we have to understand that too. Truth be told, the idea came from my friend, Daniela Facchinetti. After Patagonia in 2006, one might have thought that I would never go away on an all-women’s expedition again, but that turned out not to be true, because then I found Daniela. She’s from Friuli, in the province of Udine. We met by chance because she wanted to cross the Hielo Patagónico alone and came to see me for information. And I told her not to try to go alone, absolutely not. So we went together to Iceland, to cross Vatnajökull, which is the largest glacier in Iceland. We got along well. We are very different, we have different skills, and so the partnership works. I returned to Patagonia with Daniela in 2010. Our plan was to enter the Hielo Patagónico on skis via the Chico Glacier near Lago O’Higgins, so she said, “Why don’t we combine the two? Why don’t we cycle the Carretera Austral with a trailer behind us, with the skis, boots, a tent, all our food? Let’s do the Carretera Austral, then leave our bikes at El Mosco.” I said, “Why not?”
Gabriel: Yeah, why not?
Antonella (English): Yeah. When Daniela and I finished the Carretera Austral and arrived at Villa O’Higgins, we met a guy named Jorge who ran El Mosco. Jorge liked my bike, so he bought it. When I returned to El Mosco with Annandrea and Giulia in 2022, I spoke to the lady who now ran the campground. When I asked for Jorge, she told me that he had died. I was very sorry to hear that, and then I told the lady that I had sold my bike to him. So she took me outside and asked, “Is this is the bicycle?” I couldn’t believe my eyes. I said, “Yes.” My bicycle was still there, twelve years later! And she said that a mystery had been solved, because he always told us that he had gotten this bicycle from an Italian woman, but we didn’t know how had happened. The bicycle even had the bottle, the water bottle, still on it.
Gabriel: That’s incredible!
Antonella (English): Can you believe it?
Gabriel: No. No, I actually can’t believe it. What an amazing rediscovery.
Antonella: Incredibile. Una storia incredibile, veramente.
Antonella (English): Incredible. An incredible story, truly. After El Mosco, Daniela and I took a boat to Candelario Mancilla. There, we had arranged for someone with horses to wait for us. We took all our equipment on horses to the Chico Glacier. Then we tried to enter the glacier, but we didn’t succeed.
Gabriel: Oh. Why not?
Antonella (English): Too bad weather, very bad weather, very bad weather. It was at the end of 2010, the start of 2011.
Gabriel: Bad weather. That’s a theme that we’re starting to develop here.
Antonella (English): Yeah, it is.
Gabriel: What’s one adventure that you and Daniela had during your cycling trip on the Carretera Austral?
Antonella (English): There’s one adventure that I also talk about in my book. It was a human experience, a bit difficult, because we were hosted in a kind of tourist village. Well, not really a tourist village. They were a group of people who lived near a lake, and they had cabañas. But everything was closed, there was nowhere else to sleep. We didn’t want to use the tent, so we managed to go to this couple living there. We started talking, and the husband was very nice. He talked a lot. He told us about the situation in Chile, that Chile is a rich country. At that time, President Michelle Bachelet was in office, and I said that Chile was doing well economically, and he replied that it’s easy to do well when someone else has done well before and laid the foundations. And already there I understood something. There was something that didn’t quite add up, something a little suspicious. And when I asked him what he did for a living, since he was retired, he told me he had been in the military. So I did some math… his age, the year of the coup d’état, which was 1973, and so, as I am incapable of keeping quiet, who sometimes should sew my mouth shut, said, “But then you were in the military during the Pinochet regime.”
Gabriel: Oh, wow! Okay, that was direct.
Antonella (English): He changed immediately. That’s when the friendly relationship between us ended. And Daniela was there, telling me to shut up, but it was too late. Everyone was in shock. His wife ended the conversation by showing us, making us look out the window and saying, “See that bridge over the river? Pinochet came to the inauguration. Because, you know, the Carretera Austral was built by Pinochet.” And then she continued, “Before, we were isolated here from the rest of the world and the rest of Chile.” That night, we didn’t sleep well. Daniela said, “He’s coming to the room now, he’s going to throw us in the lake.”
Gabriel: Oh my god, yeah.
Antonella (English): Yeah, that was a particular experience, a truly human, cultural, anthropological experience. So, those are always difficult situations to talk about. How to say that Mussolini also did good things for Italy, that Pinochet also did good things for Chile.
Gabriel: Or that Franco did some good things in Spain among the many bad things.
Antonella (English): Yeah, of course, as well. It’s the same.
Gabriel: You mentioned Candelario Mancilla. As we’ve discussed on the podcast, I found out in 2022 that Candelario Mancilla is nothing more than a dock for the irregular boats from Villa O’Higgins, a field on which to pitch your tent, and a border checkpoint run by the carabineros, the Chilean state police.
Antonella (English): Yes, that was also a wonderful experience, going to Candelario Mancilla. There were ten of us, remember?
Gabriel: Yup.
Antonella (English): Four on bicycles, plus the five of us, plus Bruno. Do you remember Bruno, the Chilean guy?
Gabriel: Bruno! Of course.
Antonella (English): And do you remember that the carabineros wanted to take a photo with us because we were the first to enter after COVID?
Gabriel: Sure. That’s a memorable photo.
Antonella (English): I still hear from one of the carabineros on WhatsApp.
Gabriel: No way. That’s hilarious!
Antonella (English): Yeah.
Gabriel: You know, when we all crossed together into Argentina via Candelario Mancilla and the Laguna del Desierto, it turned out that Sandra and I also entered illegally. Or at least that’s what they thought when we tried to leave Argentina by bus weeks later.
Antonella (English): Really? How’s that?
Gabriel: Somehow, even though we were only ten people – plus, remember there those three other bikepackers who had been stranded at the border crossing for weeks? Remember those guys?
Antonella (English): Yeah, I remember.
Gabriel: Yeah, so even though we were then, thirteen people, the authorities forgot to stamp our passports, both mine and Sandra’s. We had no entry stamps. So we had to go into the office. We had to describe when we entered, where we entered, how we had entered, which is, you know, carrying all of our gear through this crazy trail. And they ended up phoning the border guards at Laguna del Desierto before allowing us to leave. Everybody else got through in five minutes. We held up our bus for more than an hour. We thought we would be trapped in Argentina. The bus would leave without us.
Antonella (English): It’s incredible. You didn’t tell us about this.
Gabriel: Well, you know, there’s so many stories to tell.
Antonella (English): Yeah.
Gabriel: But the driver waited.
Antonella (English): Annandrea lost her Chilean – how was it called? – tarjeta migratoria.
Gabriel: The little tourist document you have to fill out when you enter.
Antonella (English): Yeah, it’s a little paper they give you at the airport.
Gabriel: Yeah, and then you keep it until you leave. And she lost it?
Antonella (English): No, she kind of put it in a jacket and it was all ruined.
Gabriel: So she destroyed it. Okay.
Antonella (English): Yeah, she basically destroyed it, but we managed to pass the border anyway. You know, two other times we entered without having the proper documents. In the all-women’s expedition of 2006, we had to turn back because we had lost a tent due to the bad weather and finally crossed the Paso del Viento to make our clandestine arrival in El Chaltén. And with Daniela that time on the Carretera Austral, we entered Argentina again without proper documents through Laguna del Desierto. When we went to the police station, we didn’t have the exit stamp from Chile, and the Argentinian police wanted us to go all the way back to Candelario Mancilla to get it stamped. And we had been walking and cycling for a month and I said, “No, we’re not going back that way, through that devil of a pass!” So we came to some kind of agreement and they let us enter Argentina anyway. You know, that’s Patagonia.
Gabriel: Yeah. What was your bicycling experience before the Carretera Austral?
Antonella (English): I didn’t have any.
Gabriel: What?
Antonella (English): Yes, I didn’t ride a bike. It’s Daniela’s fault for corrupting me with cycling, and I loved it so much. So much, in fact, that I did other trips afterwards, but the first one was the Carretera Austral.
Gabriel: You’re also an accidental bicycle tourist.
Antonella: Accidental! Sì, è vero.
Antonella (English): Accidental! Yes, it’s true!
Gabriel: In that case, when was your second trip?
Antonella (English): The second one was in Italy in 2013, with another friend. It was a very hot summer in Italy, it was crazy. I said to my friend Federica, “Why don’t we leave home and go to Sicily?” So, my friend traveled a lot by train, she knows the train schedules for the whole Italian peninsula. And I studied it on the map, because obviously I went looking for all the bike paths or secondary roads that could take me to Sicily. I knew it then, but now I know it even better that, if you leave from the north and go south, it’s not true that it’s all downhill. It’s not true. It’s not true that leaving from northern Italy and going south is all downhill. There’s the fact that Italy is very mountainous. Very, very mountainous. And I thought Calabria was flat, but no, Calabria is also very mountainous.
Gabriel: Yes.
Antonella (English): Anyway, we left home and arrived 16 days later, but we spent a day and a half in Rome because Federica had never been there before, while I know Rome quite well, so I took her on a tour. We also stopped for a day and a half in Naples. So, apart from the fact that Italy is wonderful, because there are so many unknown villages, beautiful small towns. But I noticed that, from a human point of view, travelers on bicycles, like travelers on foot, are more in touch with nature and the environment. Being a tourist in a car is not the same thing, perhaps because you are self-sufficient. When you’re on a bicycle, you always find people willing to help. They host you if you need it, they make you a coffee along the road, they give you water. This is true all over the world, but in Italy, we are a little more like that. Here in the north, people are known as less sociable, but in reality, we have always found people to be very kind throughout Italy. One cyclist even chased after us because we were going the wrong way and would have ended up in a tunnel where the traffic would have been really heavy. He turned around, cycled after us, came up to us and said, “No, no, no, no. Come with me, I’ll take you there,” and he led us along a small road that avoided the tunnel. From that point of view, it was a very, very nice experience. By bicycle you can cover more ground, whereas on foot it takes much longer, much longer. Not only is it an ecological, sustainable way to travel, it’s also a way to get in touch with people, and that’s an added value, something even more important, in my opinion.
Gabriel: Many guests echo those thoughts.
Antonella (English): Yes. Federica was just getting into cycling. Unfortunately, I tortured her by making her do the tour in August, all over Italy. She left me very, very alone. I spent many days alone. For example, I also did the Traversata della Basilicata by bicycle, alone. Here in Italy we had this film, I think, 10, 15 years ago, called Basilicata Coast to Coast. This group of men, somewhat in search of themselves, decide to cross Basilicata on foot, and so after that film, a lot of people went by bicycle to see where they had gone. You know, cinema tourism. I went there alone by bike, and even there, I didn’t want to take the main roads. I wanted to take the old road, and I got lost. I always say, you know what the best GPS is? The bar, the village bar. So I asked at the bar, and then they told me, “No, don’t go, it’s all ruined.” I answered, “I don’t care, because I’m on a bike.” What did I care if there are potholes? And so they accompanied me. First, they offered me anguria, which is watermelon, coffee, and everything else, and then they drove me to where this road that was no longer used began. They were in their car, and I was behind, on my bike. And so I managed to get onto the old road, avoiding a stretch of highway. So this is the great value of cycle tourism, of traveling in this way. It’s really beautiful.
Gabriel: Offering you watermelon and coffee is a very southern Italian touch!
Antonella (English): Yes. That’s how it was around Italy. Another wonderful place for cycling tourism is Costa Rica. Costa Rica is considered the happiest country in the world. It has no army, no military, education and healthcare are free for the population, and above all, they have realized that they have important tourist attractions, which allow them to live off tourism. I started planning a trip with the notion that Australia would be the destination, that it was the most beautiful cycling destination in the world. Then came the idea of Costa Rica and everything changed. We traveled there in 2014, because I turned 50 there. I was born in ’64, so yes, 2014. I just said, let’s go and see, and I got four friends involved. I organized the trip, the route and everything else, and we went. We did 600 km of a very peaceful trip, always sleeping in small hotels. We didn’t have tents with us. Truly wonderful people, very hospitable. I recommend Costa Rica, I really recommend it. I believe July is the least rainy month. If it rains, it rains in the mountains because Costa Rica has mountains and even the capital is at 1,500 meters. But overall, the weather is great year-round. That’s also why Americans go to Costa Rica to spend the winter. There are lots of Americans there, but it’s still very beautiful. And it has an explosion of nature because it’s a tropical climate, so the rains make everything very green. There are these huge forests, there are beaches where you can surf, huge beaches. No, it’s very really very beautiful.
Gabriel: Sounds great. Now we shift from the summer heat of southern Italy and Costa Rica to colder climates. You mentioned earlier that you have written a book. It’s called Volevo vedere la Tundra, which translates to “I wanted to see the tundra.” What is it about?
Antonella (English): Yes, Volevo vedere la Tundra. The book comprises 14 stories, a couple of which go back a bit in my history and explain even the title. They tell the story of a little girl who has always been very attracted to cold places. And then I chose some expeditions, some particularly significant trips, and I recounted these trips, starting with the two expeditions to Baffin Island, which were mountaineering trips. We went for two years in a row and climbed mountains that had never been climbed before, opened up new mountaineering routes, things like that. Then I discuss the crossing of Greenland along Nansen’s line. from east to west, which is 600 kilometers.
Gabriel: In 1888, another Norwegian, Fridtjof Nansen, led the first expedition to successfully cross Greenland. The “Nansen line” is an informal term used to refer to his historic route from the uninhabited east coast to the slightly less uninhabited west coast. Nansen eventually became a diplomat. After World War I, he was appointed the first High Commissioner for Refugees for the League of Nations, serving from 1920 until his death in 1930, and is a foundational figure in refugee protection. He is known for creating the “Nansen passport” for stateless persons, including prisoners of war. Nansen won the 1922 Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work.
Antonella (English): Of course, there’s a lot of Patagonia, because we’ve been there many times. There’s the female Patagonia expedition and the other times I went with Daniela. You had the book in your hands when we were in Patagonia.
Gabriel: Yes, I did. Is it still only available in Italian?
Antonella (English): Yes. I need to get it translated into English one day.
Gabriel: And if I remember correctly, the book also includes a chapter on a solo bicycle trip that you did in Canada.
Antonella (English): That’s right. It was 2017, because the following year we were in Pakistan, but not on bicycles.
Gabriel: And why did you choose to bicycle in Canada?
Antonella: Perché Gabriel, si diventa vecchi e ogni tanto ti ha la sensazione di non essere più capace di fare certe cose.
Antonella (English): Because, Gabriel, you get old and sometimes you feel like you’re no longer capable of doing certain things. Someone who is used to doing sports, as in your case, wants to test themselves and asks, “But will I still be able to do something like that, will I still be able to go away on my own and organize everything?” So I thought about this trip, and how I wanted to see eastern Canada, because I had always been in the west. I wanted to visit the maritime provinces, because I liked the North Sea, this cold sea. I had read that the Great Trail had just been inaugurated in 2017. It turned out that the name Great Trail was created because, after 20 years of work, the Trans Canada Trail was finally being fully connected. So, the official name is the Trans Canada Trail, a very long trail that connects all of Canada from east to west, starting in St. John’s, the capital of Newfoundland, and ending near Victoria, British Columbia. So it really became a single trail of 22-24,000 km. But in reality, if you go to Canada and ask about the Great Trail, even though there is a huge sign in St. John’s that says “Great Trail” or “Grand Sentier,” because it is also written in French, Canadians don’t actually know it. They know the Trans Canada Trail.
Gabriel: I see.
Antonella (English): Anyway, when I read about the Great Trail, I was inspired. I said, “Wow, let’s go and do a bit of it. Let’s go and see.” And so I set off with the idea of doing part of this trail. Shortly after leaving St. John’s, I had to change my mind because in Newfoundland the Trans Canada Trail passes through the middle of the island. I thought it was a shame not to see the island’s coastline. What’s more, I had an ordinary bicycle. I didn’t have a mountain bike that could handle mountain trails, so I decided to change my plans immediately and followed the coast. The result was that there were a lot of climbs, because if you go down along the coast every time, then you have to go back up and then down again. It’s quite challenging. Newfoundland is very sparsely populated, with very small villages and lots of elderly people because the young people have left to work. I experienced a lot of hospitality, and at one point I thought I’d like to have a T-shirt that said, “adopt an Italian.” Because I was in a tent, I was self-sufficient. Even though I was traveling alone, I asked if I could sleep in a garden, if I could sleep in a public park, if they had water so I could wash myself. Usually, they didn’t let me sleep in the garden and they let me sleep in their house instead. They made me dinner, they made me breakfast in the morning, I could take a shower. It was wonderful.
Gabriel: It really seems like you are treated very well everywhere you go.
Antonella (English): Yeah, and as I was saying, Newfoundland is very wild. Nova Scotia is much less so. It’s much more populated, but it’s very beautiful because it’s Scottish, of course. Scottish culture is very present. Incidentally, both islands speak English. That is, they speak a dialect of English. They practically don’t understand each other, so imagine me. I arrived and didn’t understand anything. And then I went to Prince Edward Island, which is PEI, as they call it. I don’t know if you know of the cartoon called, Anna dai Capelli Rossi.
Gabriel: I don’t think so.
Antonella (English): So, the character is a girl named Anna. She has red hair, is adopted, and lives on Prince Edward Island. A famous Canadian writer named Montgomery wrote the book. I think they made a cartoon out of it, so going to PEI meant going to see the house where the book was set.
Gabriel: Is the original title of this book Anne of Green Gables?
Antonella (English): Yes, probably. I think so.
Gabriel: Then I do know it.
Antonella (English): PEI is beautiful because everything is flat. It’s really flat, flat, flat, flat, flat, perfectly flat. After a month, Federica and another friend joined me, and we spent another three weeks between PEI and Quebec. We did it together.
Gabriel: So, wait. Federica, the woman whom you dragged through Italy, was willing to join you on another bicycle tour?
Antonella (English): Yes, but then we always slept in camps, because I couldn’t let them sleep in the woods. We had to be a little more comfortable. Sometimes we even slept in a hotel because when it rained, they didn’t want to pitch the tent. And sometimes we ate in restaurants too.
Gabriel: That’s one thing I remember about our meetings in Patagonia. While everybody else was eating really simple meals, the three of you cooked up elaborate, multi-course meals, with antipasti and primi and secondi.
Antonella (English): Well, you know, Italian cuisine has just become recognized by UNESCO as a cultural heritage for all of humanity, so there must be a reason. Annandrea is very good at cooking and wants to eat well. So she’s the one who went shopping in Patagonia and then cooked. It actually it doesn’t cost much to eat well.
Gabriel: How about Giulia? Can she cook?
Antonella (English): Yeah, Giulia can cook too. Giulia is the kitchen helper.
Gabriel: Good. You also accompanied the good food with good drink, if I remember.
Antonella (English): Yes, a bottle of wine, beers, pisco sours.
Gabriel: Ah, the pisco sours.
Antonella (English): You remember, right? Rounds of pisco sours in Caleta Tortel.
Gabriel: Yes. That was unforgettable. We had a view too, didn’t we, somehow, over the village?
Antonella (English): Yeah.
Gabriel: Another one of our favorite memories is the hike we took with you from El Chaltén to Laguna Torre, at the foot of the imposing Fitz Roy. Before returning to El Chaltén that afternoon, you took us to the continuation of the trail, where there was a steel cable crossing the river. We were really surprised to discover that you had brought two harnesses, which you had used in previous years to cross the river when climbing the mountain. However, on that day, the three of you, along with Sandra and the famous Bruno, had fun taking turns putting on the harnesses and doing acrobatics over the river.
Antonella (English): By cable, you mean the Tyrolean traverse?
Gabriel: Yeah.
Antonella (English): Yes, the Tyrolean traverse is used to cross the Torre River, and yes, we tried it, I had the harnesses because I had half an idea of going further with Annandrea and Giulia.
Gabriel: I just can’t believe that you brought harnesses from Italy for the occasion. That’s wild. Talking about the Tyrolean traverse has made me realize that we’ve talked about your skiing across glaciers and cycling on different continents, but we haven’t talked at all about your amazing mountaineering accomplishments. What’s one climb you’d like to highlight?
Antonella (English): I can tell you the last thing we did, even though I’m old now. They were patient and waited for me. We went to Mozambique in Africa and climbed a mountain that no one had ever climbed before. We discovered it by chance when a friend of ours saw a photo of mountains in Mozambique. We went looking for it and found this mountain in the middle of the savannah, never climbed before. Last year, Manrico and I went to Mozambique to see where the mountain was, if it was possible to climb it, because there are people who live in huts at the foot of the mountain, and the mountain could be sacred, so perhaps it was not possible to climb it. We went thanks to the sister of our friend who found the photos. She is a UN aid worker and was there in Mozambique, so she accompanied us and we discovered that by performing sacred rituals we would be allowed to climb it, that it was granite and therefore could be interesting from a mountaineering point of view. We found a place to set up base camp, where we could pitch our tents by a water source, although we had to be very careful to boil the water. However, I am a water expert. This year we returned, six of us in total. There were two couples, Manrico and I, and another mountaineer with his wife. And there were two others, the one who saw the photos, plus a very young guy who was very, very strong, who had just come from a huge mountaineering expedition in Patagonia. My husband Manrico and I and the other couple climbed the main peak, which is the highest peak of the mountain, the top, and we chose a simpler climbing route, but it wasn’t that simple. We did that one, while the other two, the younger guys, climbed another wall with a beautiful route. On top of that, they climbed other routes nearby, if you know a little about mountaineering, with grades of 8C, 8A. So a very difficult route.
Gabriel: Well, I don’t know anything about mountaineering, but I actually can’t imagine planning and carrying out such a climb in Mozambique. It sounds like a daunting challenge.
Antonella (English): In my opinion, it’s really important to prepare well for any trip, to understand where you’re going and to be aware of the culture of the place you’re going to. And to remember that, first of all, in certain places you have to tread lightly. That is, literally, barefoot, with the utmost respect for the people you meet, for their culture. If you go to Africa by bicycle, it’s obviously a completely different culture. Unfortunately, I realized, because I was wrong, that we Europeans always start from this Europe-centrism. That is, our culture is a reference point for others. That is not the case, but we often have this attitude of colonizers that there is no other way of thinking, which sometimes prevents us from understanding other cultures and therefore harms us, because we learn less. So we need to put aside what we know to be as open as possible to what we can receive. Then we can criticize it, we can say we don’t like it that way, but in the meantime, we have to understand it. That’s it.
Gabriel: True.
Antonella (English): But we had a wonderful experience with the local people. We tried to help them and left all the technological equipment that we had. We had solar panels, we had a big battery to charge. We had, yeah, all this part here that allows you to generate electricity. We had LED lights to illuminate the field. We left that too, and then we left all the equipment we had purchased, so tents to shelter from the mosquitoes because there is malaria there. Since the children get malaria, we left the tent at the school where they can have lessons. In short, we tried to give something back, to leave a mark of our passage. We would like to continue to help. Above all, we would like to be able to buy desks for the school because they don’t have desks. They don’t have desks or even chairs, so they have school sitting on the ground. And then we would like to buy a motorcycle, because in the savannah they get around on motorcycles. We’d give a motorcycle to the village chief, because he doesn’t have one and it would be useful for him to have one to get around. These days, my husband is finishing the film about the expedition, which will be presented at the Trento Film Festival.
Gabriel: Yeah. I looked up Manrico and saw that he has climbed thousands of routes. New solo routes, winter routers, record-time climbs. You name it, he’s done it.
Antonella (English): That’s correct. Manrico doesn’t like riding a bike, unlike me. He doesn’t like walking, as well. He only likes climbing, that’s all. To tell the truth, he was supposed to come to Patagonia with us the year we met. He was supposed to join us from Mexico because he was going to go climbing in Mexico and then come to Patagonia, but he broke his leg and so he stayed home alone.
Gabriel: Although it was a pity for Manrico to stay home alone, this changed the character of your Patagonia trip. It became yet another all-woman expedition with Annandrea and Giulia.
Antonella (English): Yeah, definitely.
Gabriel: Looking back on all these years of travel, often as a solo woman traveler, what conclusions have you drawn?
Antonella: Allora, come donna dirai che magari in certe situazioni può essere più semplice.
Antonella (English): As a woman, you might say that perhaps in certain situations it can be easier, because people might not be afraid of a woman, so they take her into their home and help her more readily. Perhaps a man on his own, perhaps someone doesn’t trust him and does not offer him hospitality. There are definitely places that can be difficult for women. I would like to do the Karakoram Highway in Pakistan, by bicycle, but going there alone? No. Going there with another woman? Hmmm. I don’t know. You have to go away in a group, and maybe something will happen anyway because there are still places that are less straightforward. Now let’s see what we’ll do this summer. If I don’t find anything that inspires me, I’ll go back to Canada, by bicycle. There’s a lot to do and it’s a country I feel very comfortable in as a solo woman traveler. I’d like to get to know Quebec a little better, because I’ve only cycled down the St. Lawrence River to Quebec City and then Montreal, but I’d like to see the north of Quebec. There’s the Gaspé Peninsula, which is very, very beautiful. We’ll see.
Gabriel: You are amazing. You never seem to get tired of traveling around the world, especially in this very active way, with hiking, mountaineering, cycling, skiing. As a final question, what advice would you give to young people who would like to exploring but are unsure if that’s the best way they should spend their time?
Antonella (English): A piece of advice for young people who want to travel? Guys, travel, travel. Travel because it’s the only thing that you won’t learn sitting at school desks. At school desks you learn theory, but often you forget it precisely because it’s too theoretical. Instead, travel, because it really opens your mind. Those who travel really have an edge, and now even society and the world of work require open minds and not minds with top grades. Yes, degrees are useful, they are important, but if you don’t know how to live, if you don’t know how to be in the world, as we say in Italy, to find your place in the world in relation to others, then studying hard is useless. So, travel, guys, travel on foot, travel by bicycle, travel by hitchhiking, get into backpacking. Don’t feel humiliated if you work in a restaurant, washing dishes, even if you maybe have a degree in engineering. What does it matter? It doesn’t matter.
Gabriel: Interesting that you mention washing dishes. In the episode “Tour d’Afrique,” Henry Gold, who went on to found a very successful bicycle touring company, mentions washing dishes, and one of the people who was washing dishes next to him ended up being a valuable contact for him many years later.
Antonella (English): It doesn’t surprise me. That’s the importance of opening up to experiences. Traveling by bicycle allows you to meet people from all walks of life, see many things, to breathe in the scents, feel what’s around you. And so, in my opinion, it remains the best way to travel.
Gabriel: I would like to thank Antonella Giacomini for her patience during our Spanish/Italian interview. Also, a big thank you to Giulia Menel, who spent two hours with me, reading Antonella’s part in English. Previously, coverage of Antonella’s journeys have overwhelmingly been in Italian. I hope this episode allows a few more people to get to know Antonella and her remarkable story.
Gabriel: The transcript for this episode is available on The Accidental Bicycle Tourist website. I welcome feedback and suggestions for this and other episodes. You’ll find a link to all contact information in the show notes. If you would like to rate or review the show, you can do that on your favorite podcast platform. You can also follow the podcast on Instagram. Thank you to Anna Lindenmeier for the cover artwork and to Timothy Shortell for the original music. This podcast would not be possible without continuous support from my wife, Sandra. And thank you so much for listening. I hope the episode will inspire you to get out and see where the road leads you.
Antonella: Intanto, se parti da Nord e vai al Sud, non è vero che sei in discesa. È una battuta, Gabriel, non so se hai capito.