Out to (Vegan) Lunch?

What I should have been worried about was where I’d be sleeping for the next four months, as I—a novice touring cyclist on my very first tour—attempted to navigate across a country I’d never been to, on the cheapest bicycle I could find.

Although I hadn’t exactly trained, the plan was to pedal nearly 6,000 km (3,728 miles) from Argentina’s northern tip to the southernmost city in the world at the foot of South America, or die trying. I had already written out several heartfelt goodbyes, just in case.

I thought about them (my goodbyes, that is) that first night, laying out my sleeping bag in the dingy public restroom of an open-air recreation complex. Like few four-star hotels, my room was equipped with a steel-cage door, which, thankfully, I was able to padlock shut.

At 1 am, I was awoken from my cold concrete slumber by a rowdy gang of bikers; I heard laughter and the clanging of bottles. When they inevitably approached the men’s room, shaking and pulling at my cell door, I watched wide-eyed from the darkness. I couldn’t possibly have understood it at the time, but I would later come to welcome bathroom floors with great enthusiasm.

Fuelling the engine

On the road, I learned it was not just my safety I had to be concerned about. Historically, I’ve never taken good care of my health, and the more I began to see my anatomy as a machine I had to fuel to get from point A to point B, the more I realized I had to keep serious tabs on the health of my body and everything I put inside it.

I was 12 years old when I stopped eating meat—a decision that has affected my entire life. In university, I first witnessed veganism. Although it seemed a bit excessive, by the time I was in my early twenties I saw it as my responsibility to join the cause and stick with it … even if I found myself in the middle of South America.

Argentina is internationally known for having THE best steak in the world. Perhaps that’s why citizens eat an average of 44 kg (97 lbs) of beef per year! So how would a vegan survive there? At restaurants, the options were discouraging at best. Waitresses would frequently claim they didn’t even have vegetables, though I could see portions garnishing their steaks.

Surprisingly, pizza turned out to be a common menu item—and my salvation. I’d use my novice Spanish skills to order up cheeseless, meatless pies. (Although, try explaining to owners of little cantinas out in the farmland why you don’t eat cheese!)

Most days I’d just fire up my cooker—sometimes on a hotel room floor, sometimes to an audience of stray dogs. Typically, I’d cook things such as oatmeal, granola, pasta, rice, beans, lentils, and soup. Small-town fruit stands would often give me fruit and vegetables, and the fruit in Argentina was the best I’d ever had! A person could develop a serious dependency. With more fresh and fewer processed foods in my diet, I was eating healthier than ever before.

Keeping the fire stoked

Nevertheless, I had to begin tracking calories, as I would easily burn through 4,000 calories per day. High-calorie, high-protein foods such as nuts had never been a part of my regimen before, but in all of my exercising I began to develop cravings.

My grandmother always says your body will tell you what it needs. On those days when I had just come out from four nights of wild camping in tarantula country, it told me I needed to check into a cheap hotel with a bag of cookies, like some adulterer. Back in Canada, finding good cookies without milk ingredients was nearly impossible, but Argentine cookies were lush, and a few were vegan.

The next few months found me cooking in the oddest of places: police and ambulance stations, a concert hall, a bakery, an abandoned inn, even inside the Chilean border. Halfway through that circuit, however, things took an unpleasant turn. Trees and rivers disappeared one at a time. Towns mostly vanished altogether. Most of what was left was pure desert, and I was all alone.

Alone in the desert

I was right to have concerns, but they did me no good. I still battled relentless 100 km/hour winds with the power to roll my entire bicycle, and hid from hailstorms. I carried up to 13 L (3.5 gallons) of water, still begging for more and collapsing by the road. By night I had no choice but to begin sleeping next to animal parts in quarries and culverts under the quiet highway. Some things you just can’t prepare for.

Things go wrong, bodies grow tired, but getting sick out in the vast desert is a death sentence. Sometimes travellers can’t go a week without being ill, but here I went four months covered in dirt and sleeping under bridges, and I’d never been stronger.

The secret truth is that vegans are healthy and virile (some of us may be a little crazy), and I’m living proof we can do anything meat eaters can do.