Germinating seeds need fertile ground
It's windy in Patagonia!
The Compass Expedition's email seed landed in my inbox in October 2014 meeting favourable conditions: I had recently retired, Jacqui was having a break from work and a recent holiday in France left us wanting more travel experiences. We were open to a new adventure.
The copyrighters who created Compass' promotional email knew which buttons to press for this motorcycling fanatic. I was seduced by the Patagonia Explorer expedition brochure with photos of motorcycles, their riders (many of whom looked a lot like me), the Andes and Patagonia.
Growth of this idea was unlikely without management's approval and would have remained dormant except that Jacqui wandered by, checking out the photos over my shoulder. Jacqui liked what she saw, especially the snow capped mountains, exotic animals and weird looking plants. What's more, many of the photos included women: women on bikes, women as pillions and the clincher for Jacqui, women in the support vehicle. Another tick for those clever copyrighters! Jacqui was sold and our expedition had germinated.
After completing reams of paperwork and robbing the bank to pay for it all, our Compass Expeditions Patagonian Explorer adventure sprouted on 21st January 2015 when we landed in Santiago. You might say that our adventure finished 20 days later in Buenos Aires, Argentina, but the reality for us, and I know for our fellow expeditioners, is that the memories of those 20 days are still flourishing many years later.
Just as the copyrighters had portrayed