TRAVEL: taking a lifeaffirming motorbike ride from Chile to Alaska

She encountered grizzly bears, glaciers, sea turtles and even found herself on the wrong side of the law. Sonja Duncan travelled from Chile to Alaska on a motorbike and fell in love with life.

Hatched over a bottle of wine, it was a crazy idea. Richard, my boyfriend of roughly three months, said, ‘Why don’t we ride from Chile to Alaska?’ Richard’s a seasoned rider; I was barely off my L-plates – I’d bought myself a red Vespa for my 50th birthday. But the following day, throwing caution to the wind, I upgraded to my first real motorbike. Weeks later, we set off on an 8000-kilometre road trip out through Birdsville to Alice Springs and back to Sydney to give me some back-road experience. It was a baptism of fire.

The final decision, though, to ride from the southernmost tip of the Americas to Anchorage, Alaska, in the continent’s far north, was not an easy one. My dad had just been diagnosed with cancer and I wanted to stay and help him through, but he insisted I go. “I don’t want you waiting in Australia for me to die,” he said. “If I’m here when you get back, great. If not, I’ll have enjoyed every post you’ve made from every place you’ve visited.” So he gave us his blessing. Dad lived to enjoy the whole trip and hear our stories in person on our return. He passed away in April this year.

There was another reason to go. My sister had died of cancer just three years earlier. She was a year older than me – she’d just turned 51 – and she’d always been planning what she would do when she retired or got a bit more money. One of them was to live on an island and help save turtles. So, after she died, I adopted a philosophy of ‘if not now, when?’ Life is short. You’ve just got to get out and live it.

We put our bikes on a plane and travelled to Santiago, in Chile. We didn’t plan too much. From Santiago, we rode south towards Ushuaia, the capital of Tierra del Fuego in Argentina, the southernmost city in the world. There among the glaciers and mirror- still lakes that reflected the sky, we turned our bikes around and rode north to Alaska.

The adventure begins

Most nights, we camped. People warned us of dangers but there was only one incident and it was soon after we set off. We were riding across the Campos from Mendoza to the Argentine coast: big skies; wide fertile plains; snowcapped mountains in the distance. We turned off the road and crossed a cattle grid, which should have warned us that we were on someone’s property but it didn’t. We were tired so we turned into the bush and set up camp.

Later, around midnight, we woke to the sound of car engines. Headlight beams encircled our tent. I unzipped the flap, peeked out and saw boots and a gun. I thought, ‘We’re in trouble here.’

It turned out that the farmer had spotted us and notified the police. We had very broken Spanish, they had no English but, in the end, everything worked out fine. Then, as we zipped up our tent, my heart still pounding, we could hear the police, driving back onto the road and cracking up laughing. After that we camped in recognised parks or camping grounds and slept a bit easier.

We were on the road for eight-and-a-half months. We rode through six countries in South America – Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and, while we were in the south, we visited the Galápagos Islands because my sister, “turtle girl”, and I had always said we’d go there.

I fell in love with Colombia. The landscape was beautiful, the people were warm and welcoming and seemed to have this extraordinary social consciousness and concern for each other. People say Colombia is risky but the biggest risk is that you’ll never want to leave. It won my heart.

Bears, bikes and bays

We rode from the old capital of Medellin in the Andes Mountains, across rivers and high passes towards Bogotá. There we put our bikes on another plane to cross the Darién Gap, a great expense of forest and mountains that lies between Colombia and Panama and is impassable by road. We handed our bikes over at the airport – $1000 cash; no receipts; you just pray – but they landed safe and sound.

I celebrated my birthday in steamy Costa Rica and we travelled north through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras in the spring. We crossed into the United States in May, hit those freeways and flew. We covered 12 states in two exhilarating weeks. We stopped for a while in Ohio to stay with friends. Then we headed into New York, Maine and north to Canada to visit family in Newfoundland, before riding across the country to British Columbia and the Yukon.

In the north, we were conscious of bears. We saw Grizzlies, black bears, brown bears, and travelling by bike, we were particularly vulnerable. You can’t just jump into your car. We set up a pulley system so we could hoist our food and toiletries high up into trees. We had “bear spray”, bear bangers to scare bears with a gunshot sound, and we wore bells while we were hiking. Bears are more likely to attack if you surprise them.

In the Yukon, we were stopped in our tracks by one of the prettiest spots we’d seen, Destruction Bay, a tiny settlement of 55 people on Kluane Lake, surrounded by tundra and snowy peaks.

We arrived in Anchorage, elated to be in Alaska. Richard bought a ring in a vintage shop and just a couple of days after we’d turned our bikes south, as we were driving back along the shore of Kluane Lake, he pulled in by the side of the road at Destruction Bay, got down on bended knee and proposed.

People ask if it was a life-changing experience. It was, and not simply because I returned and began planning a wedding. I was 52. I had never ridden a motorbike in any significant way. I took a risk and didn’t for a minute regret it. There were a few spills along the way but I learnt from them – I learnt that I’m pretty strong and I learnt not to let setbacks stop me from doing what I’m passionate about. We make so many excuses in life but this ride taught me that anything is possible.