last ride The
It took 15 months, six horses, one dog and a rooster for Felipe Masetti Leite to journey to the end of the world. Then, with the finish line in sight, a tragedy brings him to his knees
USHUAIA, ARGENTINA— Prior to starting this Long Ride, I had a deep premonition I would die in the saddle.
Nightmares in which I was catapulted off a bridge, hit by speeding cars or lost on the frozen Patagonian highlands, starved and dehydrated, kept me awake for months before my journey began. I never shared these thoughts before because I feared that admission would make them true.
I had already successfully made a much longer journey — 16,000 kilometres from Calgary to Brazil in 2012-14 — but a shadow of fear seemed to loom over me as I planned for this ride through South America.
Then I signed on to support the Barretos Children’s Cancer Hospital and I was able to push off these shadows. The faces of the children I met were beams of light. There was no way I could not go.
So last year, on a sunny and hot April10, I saddled up my Brazilian mounts, Life and Doll, and, with my childhood friend Mark Maw from Canada driving the support vehicle, we set out from Barretos, Sao Paulo, with more than 7,000 kilometres ahead of us.
Our ride south through Brazil was one huge party. Every day a different rancher welcomed us with meat, beer, whisky and unbelievable gifts.
I got two colts, six knives, 10 cowboy hats, four pairs of boots, too many plaques to count and even a rooster! But the wonderful welcomes I received also made my ride a draining experience. Nearly every night I was in paradise drinking cervejas and telling stories until 2 a.m. Every morning was hell.
In the northern part of Parana state, a family stopped me at the side of the road and asked to take some photos. They had been following me on social media.
“My kids love horses, and they are big fans of yours,” smiled the blond matriarch of three boys. We shot a photo of her youngest in the saddle on my mare’s back. We talked about my motivation for this journey: I spoke about the cancer hospital and told them about some of the early signs of childhood cancer — information I shared throughout my ride.
“To tell if a child has a life-threatening eye cancer called retinoblastoma, take a photo of their eyes using a flash. If one of the pupils reflects back as a white circle, that child must see a doctor.” My usual spiel.
A week later, while eating lunch in the city of Maringa, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I was surprised to see the same blond woman with heavy tears running down her face. She was heading to the hospital with her youngest because he was diagnosed with retinoblastoma after she noticed a white circle in a cellphone photo. She was determined to save his vision and his life. She thanked me for the warning.
In my heart I thanked everything and everyone who put me on this journey.
Even though my days (every day, all day) largely consisted of the slow clop-clop of the horses’ hooves and the long-playing film of dreams that unspooled in my mind, my strongest memories will be of the near catastrophes that happened every few days and the people I met.
On twisty roads bordered by rock faces on one side and sheer drops on the other, transport trucks roared past, missing us by centimetres. Every curve was a brush with death.
As for the people, the most spectacular- ly unique were the near-extinct gauchos I met in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. A true gaucho is a hard-working cowboy with an almost mythical reputation. For them, the past cannot be forgotten and their culture must be lived.
Many nights, during barbecues hosted in horse stables and barns, a gaucho would stand and recite poetry to the soft sound of an accordion. They would speak of the landscape, great events and romantic chivalry.
There is nothing in the world like them.
As we approached Uruguay, the first border crossing provided a series of setbacks. My best friend Mark Maw realized that this “Journey to the End of the World” was not his dream, and he returned to Canada, leaving me without a support driver. A week later, the pet rooster I received as a gift, Cluck Norris, was killed by a wild dog. To top it off, Life and Doll were not allowed to enter Uruguay due to Latin America’s nonsensical bureaucracy.
With no horses or support driver but no time for self-pity, I began making calls. In less than 24 hours I was lent two Uruguayan mares, Andariega and Cautiva. And a new friend I met on route, Mario Luna, offered to drive the support vehicle. My new mares never really adapted to the busy roads, but they were good, strong horses and Uruguay was lovely.
In Uruguay’s capital, Montevideo, I thanked my mares (and Mario Luna) for their hard work and boarded a ferry to cross the Rio de la Plata for Buenos Aires.
After seven months in the saddle, I finally entered the land of my heroes, Mancha and Gato, the two criollos who accompa- nied legendary Long Rider Aimé Tschiffely from Argentina to New York City in the 1920s. The horses had been donated by an Argentine breeder and veterinarian named Don Emilio Solanet. My father told me this story over and over during my childhood. I spent my entire life dreaming about Tschiffely’s ride. Now fate had knitted our metaphorical yarns together.
The Uruguayan Criollo Association had put me in touch with Solanet’s son Carlos, and the family agreed to lend me two criollos to cross Argentina — Sapo, a 16year-old buckskin, and Picasso a 5-yearold bay — horses with the same blood as Mancha and Gato.
In his short life, Picasso had never left the ranch and he was thus scared of everything. Startled by the smallest noise, he would buck and often get Sapo going, too. Once, a tractor made Picasso rear back, his hind end hitting Sapo with a thump, driving the buckskin to leap like a rodeo bronco. I tried to hold on, but the lead rope burned a deep welt into my palm and I had to let go. Picasso held steady, but Sapo galloped and bucked in circles. The lid of the right pannier flew off and my belongings began to fly. When Sapo finally stopped, I grabbed him and settled him down in minutes. However, collecting my things from the tall grass — camera, batteries, sunglasses, food, water bottles — took more an hour.
Over Christmas, a deadly drought in the province of La Pampa was followed by an electrical storm that sparked and fed a raging fire. Blowing winds fanned the flames across ranch lands. On our arrival, the scene was an apocalypse. Swollen, blackened carcasses of cows, wild cats and armadillos dotted the roadside. The ponies and I struggled to breathe as strong winds blew acidic smoke and ash into our faces for 170 kilometres.
Luckily, in Bariloche our luck turned, and the universe sent me a “brother.” Twenty-six-year-old Sebastian Cichero (nicknamed Toti) learned about my journey through social media and offered to drive the support vehicle for the remainder of the journey. He had spent four months travelling on horseback from Buenos Aires to Salta, Argentina, a couple of years ago and was dying for a new adventure.
Together we trekked south through some of the most stunning and arduous mountain passes I have ever faced. In El Bolson, we adopted a street dog that had been hit by a car and we named him Butch Cassidy, after the notorious robber whose hideout was situated only a few kilometres south.
Butch wasn’t the only surprise in El Bolson. In the hippie capital of Argentina, I met a dark-eyed beauty who awakened the butterflies in my stomach: Clara Victoria Davel. Her stepdad, a park ranger, invited us to join his family for a meal.