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?DB7 The conceit was to have strangers take the tandem’s second seat on Gil’s two-year adventure.
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THE BOHEMIAN
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A Story to Tell
del Fuego (“Land of Fire�), named for the cooking fires seen burning on the beaches by Magellan and his crew five centuries ago. It was the end of an incredible journey, but the joy he had anticipated was absent. Instead, an emptiness filled him where every day there had been new people and places to meet. “Here [South America], I am different. I’m almost blonde and I’ve got a story to tell. But when I go home, I’m just going to be me. Walking down the street . . . without a bicycle,� Gill told the camera. A year and a half later, more than 200 hours of film footage, an extensive journal and scores of new friends have enabled him to bring part of that story with him. Two years after the adventure ended, Dominic Gill is pinching pennies, but he hasn’t yet succumbed to the 9-to-5 grind. He has, however, returned to the world of business. “I’ve turned what I loved into my work— which was the goal, for good or for bad,� he says. His book, a compilation of the imagerich prose of his journal and blogs, will be published in May of this year. And Achilles? Sitting in his aunt’s house, reconditioned and ready for a book tour around England.
In August 2008, Dominic rolled into the icy city of Ushuaia in Patagonia’s Tierra
‘Take a Seat’ screens March 8.
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“I spent three days in Honduras, and on the second day a family took me in and treated me like one of their own.� Such generous hospitality also meant eating what the locals ate. With a family in Ecuador, Gill helped to slaughter guinea pigs, a delicacy reserved for celebrations. “After which the lady of the house painstakingly cleaned the intestines with a knitting needle,� he remembers. Whether it was crickets or cow stomach in Mexico, sheep’s-head soup in Peru or days of nothing but stale bread and sardines in the Bolivian desert, Gill survived on whatever opportunity offered him. When he could, though, he would stock up on mayonnaise and pasta; the concoction, he says, tasted “like coming home to my favorite meal.� The most challenging element of his trip began to take on a new form. Saying goodbye to that kind of friendship and hospitality produced an emotional exhaustion that brought him close to quitting the expedition on more than one occasion. It was a feeling he didn’t want to get used to.