Here we are, in Buenos Aires, the destination of the trip. We made it! We arrived the day before Douglas´ birthday (he´s now officially old and decrepit) and have been enjoying this wonderful city ever since. We had a bit of a hard time finding parking at first, and driving here is scary (8 to 10 lanes of tiny zooming cars, lots of complicated traffic patterns), but once we parked the car, on Carlos´ recommendation, we were very relaxed.
We have also booked a spot on a northbound boat for LaTortuga. I think she´s looking forward to the hard-earned rest! A vacation at sea for the van. We found a company on the web called Transpack. They are based in BsAs and ship cars and the contents of homes wherever you want to go. We met with them, they gave us a quote for putting us on a boat next week, and that was that. They were very professional and the process looks like it will be simple. They do the customs paperwork in Argentina, and we will pick up the car in Norfolk, VA in 3 weeks!
We can´t quite believe that´s the end of our Latin American travels with the van. We still have two weeks, in which we´ll pass through Uruguay and head northeast to Douglas´ dad´s place in southern Brazil for a few days of visiting. Then we have to come back to BsAs to fly home on June 11 - plane tickets from here to Miami were less than half the price of tickets from anywhere in Brazil!
Right now we are at the home of an Argentinian VW enthusiast, Carlos, who contacted us by e-mail and offered us to stay at his home. Tomorrow he´s having a get-together of the BsAs VW club!! We´re very excited to meet everyone, including Cris and Barbara, who wrote Guapo´s blog and helped to inspire our trip.
We´ll be posting more entries on our travels in Argentina just as soon as we get a chance.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Argentina!
We are in heaven. Cancel your next faraway vacation plans and come to Argentina. It could not be better than this.
As soon as we crossed the border from Bolivia, things were different. The roads were paved. The officials were friendly, and didn’t ask you to stop your car and come into their dark little office by the side of the road. Amazingly, a customs officer looked inside our car when we were crossing the border (not necessarily a good thing…but the first time on the entire trip, and we’ve crossed 10 international borders) but he was very friendly also. He opened two cupboards full of food, some of which was contraband, shut them, and asked us if we had anything we shouldn’t. We both answered a rather weak ‘uh, no…’, he asked us how fast the van goes (we were worried this was a trick question and lowballed it), and sent us on our (paved!!!) way.
We drove for a few hours through some spectacular desert scenery, and arrived in Tres Cruces, a small town on the side of Ruta 9 south. The gendarme at the customs waypoint asked us where we were going, and we replied “uh, we’re not sure, maybe here?” He told us we could certainly sleep in the middle of the town, no problem, so we parked next to the church and then went looking for food in the little kioskos surrounding the central square.
This was our first clue that we were not in Bolivia anymore. The stores actually had something other than rotten fruit! We were overjoyed. We found tomatoes and garlic, some KitKatlike chocolate bars called Rhodesia (what Zimbabwe was called before independence, and we couldn’t resist – they were pretty good), and even some delicious sausage. Cecile and Alexandra would have been impressed – small salamis, juicy inside, covered in a very fine coating of white mold. Absolutely delicious, and we’re hooked. Douglas may have even tried a bite or two when I wasn’t looking. We’re debating how many we can store in the black ammunition box bolted to the bottom of the van. Should we write “400 Argentinian salamis” on the customs declaration? Maybe not….
The next morning we drove through the Quebrada de Humahuaca, a collection of absolutely gorgeous red and green (the ROCKS are green, not the vegetation) hills. We especially enjoyed the road signs and the fact that there were LINES on the road, something we haven’t seen since leaving North America. The windy track dropped us down several thousand feet in altitude, and we arrived in the charming town of Salta.
How to describe Salta…they really love their cake. We saw 8 shoes stores in a single block (Nathalie, these are your people). I even found some cute little shoes that fit my strange feet, brown with flowers embroidered on the sides. The central park is surrounded by cafés with outdoor seating, and lined with orange trees. People strolling in the park pick the oranges, for eating. There’s a very social vibe, and we enjoyed sitting in a café with WiFi, eating things with dulce de leche (caramel) on them and watching the people go by. Saltenos are into their beer, too – we often saw pairs of middle-aged women eating sausage and drinking beer at 11am. What a life. While eating French fries on the pedestrian mall, we decided we could live here, and that we were going to come back and work here for a spell. It is just too fabulous.
Unfortunately, we were having another car problem – the clutch slave cylinder was leaking, and the leak was getting worse. It all started in Quinta Lala, and we’d just been adding extra fluid until now, but in Salta the leak got worse, and we decided we needed to do something about it. So, the goose hunt was on. That’s what we call it when we go out to look for something we need but are pretty sure we won’t be able to find, like a clutch slave cylinder for a 1982 Vanagon. Inevitably, each store tells us they don’t have it, but the store 3 blocks away will have it for sure. This patterns proceeds for several iterations until we end up back at the first store.
We got a cabbie to take us to a VW repuestos place, and sure enough, he told us we’d have to go to Chile to find the part. But, of course, he gave us a closer option, too – the store down the road would certainly be able to rebuild the part for us. We set off in search of shop number two. The hunt was on. 3 stores later, Douglas boldly called an end to the hunt, removed the part on the side of the road, and took it inside. And lo and behold, they had just the right gasket to repair the leak!! He put the part back in, we bled the clutch, and were back in business.
We set off down the road (devoid of mummified dogs, washboard, and van-permeating dust) in search of the next place to stay. After a few more hours of brake-squealing scenery (lots of picture-taking) and some nice pottery craft homes on the side of the road, we arrived in Cafayate, a small wine-producing town in a landscape that looks surprisingly like California wine country. I guess wine country is wine country. We circled the central plaza along with lots of old Ford Falcons, Renault 3CVs, some unidentifiable but really old (and possibly homemade) small cars, and hordes of classy bicycles. We think there are perhaps more French cars here than in France. They’re well-maintained, though, and for probably the first time on this long trip, I don’t taste diesel in the back of my mouth from all the truck and bus exhaust.
At the south end of town, we found a campground (!!it’s hard to say how nice it is to be camped at an actual campground, instead of on the side of the road, or a chicken-filled parqueo, or a noisy central square) and then biked into town, to find a café that served wine on the sidewalk. We found one, and settled into several small bottles of delicious local wine, along with a spread of bread, cheese, olives, salami, ham, and chips. We watched the bicycles and old cars go by, and savored the social evening life – folks heading home with an armful of bread, or meeting friends in the square.
The next morning was lazy. We slept late, ate breakfast at our picnic table, and then biked into town to check e-mail, go to the bank, and look for more wine. We took tours at two bodegas, and one cheese making place, and came home laden with cheap, delicious wine and cheese, then settled into a nice dinner at our campspot.
There is something magical about the light here – or maybe it’s the friendly people, or the very relaxed ambiance. Maybe it’s the lack of body armor and razor wire…I’m not sure, but we feel very peaceful and at home. I’m feeling so relaxed at being in a place that has the trappings of civilization that I’m practically floating above the landscape. It’s still different and interesting – you can still buy coca at the corner store – but things work, there is the infrastructure people need to go about their daily lives, the food is good, and the wine is better. I don’t feel like people are scrabbling every day just to keep it together. Every country we’ve been to has been a great adventure, and glorious in its own way, but getting to a place with familiar infrastructure feels like a reward for completing an obstacle course - it’s very relaxing.
As soon as we crossed the border from Bolivia, things were different. The roads were paved. The officials were friendly, and didn’t ask you to stop your car and come into their dark little office by the side of the road. Amazingly, a customs officer looked inside our car when we were crossing the border (not necessarily a good thing…but the first time on the entire trip, and we’ve crossed 10 international borders) but he was very friendly also. He opened two cupboards full of food, some of which was contraband, shut them, and asked us if we had anything we shouldn’t. We both answered a rather weak ‘uh, no…’, he asked us how fast the van goes (we were worried this was a trick question and lowballed it), and sent us on our (paved!!!) way.
We drove for a few hours through some spectacular desert scenery, and arrived in Tres Cruces, a small town on the side of Ruta 9 south. The gendarme at the customs waypoint asked us where we were going, and we replied “uh, we’re not sure, maybe here?” He told us we could certainly sleep in the middle of the town, no problem, so we parked next to the church and then went looking for food in the little kioskos surrounding the central square.
This was our first clue that we were not in Bolivia anymore. The stores actually had something other than rotten fruit! We were overjoyed. We found tomatoes and garlic, some KitKatlike chocolate bars called Rhodesia (what Zimbabwe was called before independence, and we couldn’t resist – they were pretty good), and even some delicious sausage. Cecile and Alexandra would have been impressed – small salamis, juicy inside, covered in a very fine coating of white mold. Absolutely delicious, and we’re hooked. Douglas may have even tried a bite or two when I wasn’t looking. We’re debating how many we can store in the black ammunition box bolted to the bottom of the van. Should we write “400 Argentinian salamis” on the customs declaration? Maybe not….
The next morning we drove through the Quebrada de Humahuaca, a collection of absolutely gorgeous red and green (the ROCKS are green, not the vegetation) hills. We especially enjoyed the road signs and the fact that there were LINES on the road, something we haven’t seen since leaving North America. The windy track dropped us down several thousand feet in altitude, and we arrived in the charming town of Salta.
How to describe Salta…they really love their cake. We saw 8 shoes stores in a single block (Nathalie, these are your people). I even found some cute little shoes that fit my strange feet, brown with flowers embroidered on the sides. The central park is surrounded by cafés with outdoor seating, and lined with orange trees. People strolling in the park pick the oranges, for eating. There’s a very social vibe, and we enjoyed sitting in a café with WiFi, eating things with dulce de leche (caramel) on them and watching the people go by. Saltenos are into their beer, too – we often saw pairs of middle-aged women eating sausage and drinking beer at 11am. What a life. While eating French fries on the pedestrian mall, we decided we could live here, and that we were going to come back and work here for a spell. It is just too fabulous.
Unfortunately, we were having another car problem – the clutch slave cylinder was leaking, and the leak was getting worse. It all started in Quinta Lala, and we’d just been adding extra fluid until now, but in Salta the leak got worse, and we decided we needed to do something about it. So, the goose hunt was on. That’s what we call it when we go out to look for something we need but are pretty sure we won’t be able to find, like a clutch slave cylinder for a 1982 Vanagon. Inevitably, each store tells us they don’t have it, but the store 3 blocks away will have it for sure. This patterns proceeds for several iterations until we end up back at the first store.
We got a cabbie to take us to a VW repuestos place, and sure enough, he told us we’d have to go to Chile to find the part. But, of course, he gave us a closer option, too – the store down the road would certainly be able to rebuild the part for us. We set off in search of shop number two. The hunt was on. 3 stores later, Douglas boldly called an end to the hunt, removed the part on the side of the road, and took it inside. And lo and behold, they had just the right gasket to repair the leak!! He put the part back in, we bled the clutch, and were back in business.
We set off down the road (devoid of mummified dogs, washboard, and van-permeating dust) in search of the next place to stay. After a few more hours of brake-squealing scenery (lots of picture-taking) and some nice pottery craft homes on the side of the road, we arrived in Cafayate, a small wine-producing town in a landscape that looks surprisingly like California wine country. I guess wine country is wine country. We circled the central plaza along with lots of old Ford Falcons, Renault 3CVs, some unidentifiable but really old (and possibly homemade) small cars, and hordes of classy bicycles. We think there are perhaps more French cars here than in France. They’re well-maintained, though, and for probably the first time on this long trip, I don’t taste diesel in the back of my mouth from all the truck and bus exhaust.
At the south end of town, we found a campground (!!it’s hard to say how nice it is to be camped at an actual campground, instead of on the side of the road, or a chicken-filled parqueo, or a noisy central square) and then biked into town, to find a café that served wine on the sidewalk. We found one, and settled into several small bottles of delicious local wine, along with a spread of bread, cheese, olives, salami, ham, and chips. We watched the bicycles and old cars go by, and savored the social evening life – folks heading home with an armful of bread, or meeting friends in the square.
The next morning was lazy. We slept late, ate breakfast at our picnic table, and then biked into town to check e-mail, go to the bank, and look for more wine. We took tours at two bodegas, and one cheese making place, and came home laden with cheap, delicious wine and cheese, then settled into a nice dinner at our campspot.
There is something magical about the light here – or maybe it’s the friendly people, or the very relaxed ambiance. Maybe it’s the lack of body armor and razor wire…I’m not sure, but we feel very peaceful and at home. I’m feeling so relaxed at being in a place that has the trappings of civilization that I’m practically floating above the landscape. It’s still different and interesting – you can still buy coca at the corner store – but things work, there is the infrastructure people need to go about their daily lives, the food is good, and the wine is better. I don’t feel like people are scrabbling every day just to keep it together. Every country we’ve been to has been a great adventure, and glorious in its own way, but getting to a place with familiar infrastructure feels like a reward for completing an obstacle course - it’s very relaxing.
Tupiza
After a few more hundred km of washboard, we arrived in Tupiza, a southern miracle of a town nestled in a red rock river valley where Billy the Kid met his demise after robbing a bankroll train. We stayed parked in the yard of a cute little hotel in the middle of town (after I did some pretty fast talking – they didn’t want to let us stay), and had a nice time wandering around eating Saltenas (dough pockets filled with various yummy stuff, like chicken or olives or eggs), circling the central square, and generally soaking up the nice small-town ambiance. I’m really going to miss the Latin American central squares. They’re always full of people in the evening, taking a stroll after dinner, making out on park benches, eating ice cream, watching people go by. We would have liked to spend more time here, but were anxious to cross the border to Argentina and make our plans for the remainder of our trip. I did take time to visit Hotel Mitru’s fabulous book exchange, though - one of the best we’ve seen.
Dust
Once we left the salar, we grew back to our normal size, and lost our powers of super-high jumping. It was fun while it lasted.
We set off south, and passed through the town of Uyuni, that subsists solely on tourism. We have seldom seen a bleaker place. Everything was made of mud, brown and dusty. We bought what few things were available in the market, had the car washed to get the salt off, and then turned our tires southward, for Tupiza, and the border with Argentina.
We had heard that parts of the “road” from Uyuni to Tupiza were tricky, and we were a bit worried about the van making it. We had read about the infamous km 33 in Guapo’s blog, but forgot that it was just south of Uyuni, or we wouldn’t have attempted it so late in the day. In the distance, we saw dunes, and 4 big trucks, all stuck. As we got closer, we saw that the dunes lapped over the road, and the guys driving the trucks were trying to dig them out. We stopped and watched 2 trucks, a big orange Volvo and a beige petrol tanker, dig their wheels out and then power through the sand, driving as fast as they could, fishtailing the whole way. The sandy patch was about a foot deep, and probably 30 meters long.
There were 2 more trucks stuck at the other side, and we were still waiting and watching and trying to decide what to do. One of the newly-liberated truck drivers urged us to “go, go, go, now, now, now, while it’s light and there are people” who would have to help us, he said.
So, we did. Douglas gunned the engine and Tortuga powered through the foot-deep sand for about 5m. Then our low-hanging engine caught on the high-piled sand in the middle and acted like a brake. We were stuck, but good.
While we were thinking about how to extricate ourselves, we had to wonder why doesn’t someone do something about the road??? EVERYone got stuck, from big trucks to families in 4x4s. Everyone would get out to push, including grandmas in traditional dress (she did take her hat off), leaving the 12-year old to drive. He did great through the sand, even though he couldn’t really see over the steering wheel, but once he got to the road he stalled it, and someone bigger had to take over. Even the big commercial trucks were stuck, or at least waiting behind someone else who was stuck. This was everybody’s problem, clearly.
We know from Guapo’s blog that it’s been like this for at least 5 years – probably forever. Why don’t they build a wall to keep the dunes off the road? Or move the road? Or save up and buy a town grader and clear it now and then? But no. And that’s just one of many instances where we’ve seen the people here living with a stupid situation that could be fixed with a little ingenuity. Part of the third world, I guess, part of the adventure we came looking for.
In the end, the oncoming truck drivers didn’t offer to help us – they asked us to back up and get out of their way so they could get through. They did help us back up, and then they powered through and drove off into the sunset, leaving us on the side of the road. One small blue 4x4 opted to head off the road into the desert, going around the dunes, and he got through fine.
So now what are we to do?? We’re stuck on the side of the “road”, the sun is about to set, and we have 30m of dunes in front of us. We were planning to wild camp on the side of the road anyhow, so we considered staying where we were. But we didn’t like the thought of being right on the side of the road, or of waking up with the dune crossing staring us in the face. We thought about going around through the desert like the 4x4, but we weren’t sure we wouldn’t get stuck out there far from the road – worse than being stuck in the middle of the road, because no one has a reason to help you because you’re not in their way. Douglas wanted to go for it, and spend the evening digging our way out. We had 2 10’ long planks, and could have laid them out for traction. I, of course, was thinking about dinner, and didn’t want to spend an unknown number of hours digging in the sand in the dark. Not a fun day at the beach. We eventually agreed to go back up the road and look for a campspot, and tackle the sand in the morning, when there might be people to help.
As we were going back up the road, we saw the small 4x4’s tracks, emerging from the desert. We thought – what the hell, if we get stuck, we’ll camp there. We scouted it out on foot, and it seemed firm enough. We cautiously nosed the van down the 45 degree sand bank at the road’s edge, and into the desert. And the sand held us up!!!! We stomped and whistled and did little victory dances in our seats, then drove another few km and pulled off the road on someone else’s tracks to camp…
It got COLD that night, and we woke up to ice crystals on the insides of the windows, and a 2inch long icicle hanging from the tap. No water. Douglas started the car to heat it up a little, and it died after a few minutes. (Just a note – I would NOT want to attempt this trip without a mechanic!!!) After a couple of minutes he figured out that the fuel filter was probably clogged, took it out, and saw actual CHUNKS of gunk inside it. Luckily, he had presciently bought one just 2 days ago, so he popped it in and we were off.
We had 200km to go to get to Tupiza, and we were guessing it would take us 2 days. *2 days* to go 200km. That’s 120 miles. We weren’t choosing the crappiest road just for the fun of it – we were taking the “main” road from Uyuni to the Argentine border. The main track inevitably gets washed out, or too washboardy, so there are many alternate tracks. Several times we were driving along on one of the tracks, and then saw that we were being passed by another vehicle on a different track, just a few meters to one side, on a different and totally unreachable track. The thorns and soft sand in between usually prevented us from switching tracks.
On the way, we got lost – we had been following a riverbed south from the town of Atocha, and when the track split, part of it continuing with the riverbed, and part of it crossing over into the mountains on the other side, we kept following the riverbed. The “road” deteriorated, and I discovered that I kind of like off-road driving (driving on the road in Bolivia is pretty much like driving off-road anywhere else) and am kind of good at it. We also saw a lake full of pink flamingoes, which made the unscheduled detour worth it. Eventually we arrived in a small mining town named Atasi, and were told we had missed the ‘detour’ many miles back and should turn around. The old road, marked on our map, has been phased out and they’ve made a new one. This is easier than it sounds, to be sure, involving little more than driving a 4x4 back and forth a few times and naming the resulting signless track the “road”.
So, turn around we did, retracing our steps with comments like, “o, there’s the mummified dog we saw earlier” and “it looks like the flamingoes have left their lake” and “aha, the llama herd, we must be on the right track.”
I keep calling Bolivia a wasteland, but Douglas clucks his tongue at me and says we’ve only seen a tiny corner of it. He’s a perpetual optimist. And he’s right. But this tiny corner is a wasteland. Every breath tastes of dust. Every possible nook and cranny of the van is covered in a thick coating of fine brown dust. I don’t think we’ll ever get rid of it all. The roads are washboardy dirt tracks through the empty desert, if you’re lucky – otherwise you just follow everyone else’s tracks through the riverbed. Towns of 200,000 don’t have supermarkets, their tourist offices are closed and full of broken furniture, and you can’t buy bottled water in jugs larger than 2L. Every time you ask for something, the answer is “no hay” (there’s none), usually accompanied by a scandalized look, as if to say “why would you think that was available??”
The one thing Bolivia has in abundance is silence. Every night we have found a little spot off the road to park the van, angling it so its new shiny reflective tape (Peruvian law) won’t catch passing headlights and attract unwanted and possibly unfriendly attention. We’ve seen pink flamingos and emus. Our ears are ringing from the silence. And that’s nice. We think maybe Bolivia is the kind of place that takes time and patience to appreciate. Maybe next time.
We set off south, and passed through the town of Uyuni, that subsists solely on tourism. We have seldom seen a bleaker place. Everything was made of mud, brown and dusty. We bought what few things were available in the market, had the car washed to get the salt off, and then turned our tires southward, for Tupiza, and the border with Argentina.
We had heard that parts of the “road” from Uyuni to Tupiza were tricky, and we were a bit worried about the van making it. We had read about the infamous km 33 in Guapo’s blog, but forgot that it was just south of Uyuni, or we wouldn’t have attempted it so late in the day. In the distance, we saw dunes, and 4 big trucks, all stuck. As we got closer, we saw that the dunes lapped over the road, and the guys driving the trucks were trying to dig them out. We stopped and watched 2 trucks, a big orange Volvo and a beige petrol tanker, dig their wheels out and then power through the sand, driving as fast as they could, fishtailing the whole way. The sandy patch was about a foot deep, and probably 30 meters long.
There were 2 more trucks stuck at the other side, and we were still waiting and watching and trying to decide what to do. One of the newly-liberated truck drivers urged us to “go, go, go, now, now, now, while it’s light and there are people” who would have to help us, he said.
So, we did. Douglas gunned the engine and Tortuga powered through the foot-deep sand for about 5m. Then our low-hanging engine caught on the high-piled sand in the middle and acted like a brake. We were stuck, but good.
While we were thinking about how to extricate ourselves, we had to wonder why doesn’t someone do something about the road??? EVERYone got stuck, from big trucks to families in 4x4s. Everyone would get out to push, including grandmas in traditional dress (she did take her hat off), leaving the 12-year old to drive. He did great through the sand, even though he couldn’t really see over the steering wheel, but once he got to the road he stalled it, and someone bigger had to take over. Even the big commercial trucks were stuck, or at least waiting behind someone else who was stuck. This was everybody’s problem, clearly.
We know from Guapo’s blog that it’s been like this for at least 5 years – probably forever. Why don’t they build a wall to keep the dunes off the road? Or move the road? Or save up and buy a town grader and clear it now and then? But no. And that’s just one of many instances where we’ve seen the people here living with a stupid situation that could be fixed with a little ingenuity. Part of the third world, I guess, part of the adventure we came looking for.
In the end, the oncoming truck drivers didn’t offer to help us – they asked us to back up and get out of their way so they could get through. They did help us back up, and then they powered through and drove off into the sunset, leaving us on the side of the road. One small blue 4x4 opted to head off the road into the desert, going around the dunes, and he got through fine.
So now what are we to do?? We’re stuck on the side of the “road”, the sun is about to set, and we have 30m of dunes in front of us. We were planning to wild camp on the side of the road anyhow, so we considered staying where we were. But we didn’t like the thought of being right on the side of the road, or of waking up with the dune crossing staring us in the face. We thought about going around through the desert like the 4x4, but we weren’t sure we wouldn’t get stuck out there far from the road – worse than being stuck in the middle of the road, because no one has a reason to help you because you’re not in their way. Douglas wanted to go for it, and spend the evening digging our way out. We had 2 10’ long planks, and could have laid them out for traction. I, of course, was thinking about dinner, and didn’t want to spend an unknown number of hours digging in the sand in the dark. Not a fun day at the beach. We eventually agreed to go back up the road and look for a campspot, and tackle the sand in the morning, when there might be people to help.
As we were going back up the road, we saw the small 4x4’s tracks, emerging from the desert. We thought – what the hell, if we get stuck, we’ll camp there. We scouted it out on foot, and it seemed firm enough. We cautiously nosed the van down the 45 degree sand bank at the road’s edge, and into the desert. And the sand held us up!!!! We stomped and whistled and did little victory dances in our seats, then drove another few km and pulled off the road on someone else’s tracks to camp…
It got COLD that night, and we woke up to ice crystals on the insides of the windows, and a 2inch long icicle hanging from the tap. No water. Douglas started the car to heat it up a little, and it died after a few minutes. (Just a note – I would NOT want to attempt this trip without a mechanic!!!) After a couple of minutes he figured out that the fuel filter was probably clogged, took it out, and saw actual CHUNKS of gunk inside it. Luckily, he had presciently bought one just 2 days ago, so he popped it in and we were off.
We had 200km to go to get to Tupiza, and we were guessing it would take us 2 days. *2 days* to go 200km. That’s 120 miles. We weren’t choosing the crappiest road just for the fun of it – we were taking the “main” road from Uyuni to the Argentine border. The main track inevitably gets washed out, or too washboardy, so there are many alternate tracks. Several times we were driving along on one of the tracks, and then saw that we were being passed by another vehicle on a different track, just a few meters to one side, on a different and totally unreachable track. The thorns and soft sand in between usually prevented us from switching tracks.
On the way, we got lost – we had been following a riverbed south from the town of Atocha, and when the track split, part of it continuing with the riverbed, and part of it crossing over into the mountains on the other side, we kept following the riverbed. The “road” deteriorated, and I discovered that I kind of like off-road driving (driving on the road in Bolivia is pretty much like driving off-road anywhere else) and am kind of good at it. We also saw a lake full of pink flamingoes, which made the unscheduled detour worth it. Eventually we arrived in a small mining town named Atasi, and were told we had missed the ‘detour’ many miles back and should turn around. The old road, marked on our map, has been phased out and they’ve made a new one. This is easier than it sounds, to be sure, involving little more than driving a 4x4 back and forth a few times and naming the resulting signless track the “road”.
So, turn around we did, retracing our steps with comments like, “o, there’s the mummified dog we saw earlier” and “it looks like the flamingoes have left their lake” and “aha, the llama herd, we must be on the right track.”
I keep calling Bolivia a wasteland, but Douglas clucks his tongue at me and says we’ve only seen a tiny corner of it. He’s a perpetual optimist. And he’s right. But this tiny corner is a wasteland. Every breath tastes of dust. Every possible nook and cranny of the van is covered in a thick coating of fine brown dust. I don’t think we’ll ever get rid of it all. The roads are washboardy dirt tracks through the empty desert, if you’re lucky – otherwise you just follow everyone else’s tracks through the riverbed. Towns of 200,000 don’t have supermarkets, their tourist offices are closed and full of broken furniture, and you can’t buy bottled water in jugs larger than 2L. Every time you ask for something, the answer is “no hay” (there’s none), usually accompanied by a scandalized look, as if to say “why would you think that was available??”
The one thing Bolivia has in abundance is silence. Every night we have found a little spot off the road to park the van, angling it so its new shiny reflective tape (Peruvian law) won’t catch passing headlights and attract unwanted and possibly unfriendly attention. We’ve seen pink flamingos and emus. Our ears are ringing from the silence. And that’s nice. We think maybe Bolivia is the kind of place that takes time and patience to appreciate. Maybe next time.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Bolivia Blur
Alas, we can see the bottom of our pot of gold. Every country we’ve visited has kept us longer than we had planned and now we need to book it to Buenos Aires to get the van and us back to North America (to start saving up for the return to the countries we’ve missed). Our plan from here is to stuff the car into a box in BA, travel by bus through Uruguay and on to my Dad’s house in Southern Brazil. Then we’ll fly to NC to meet the car, pack our stuff into the trailer and visit folks on our way to Vancouver. Of course Moab is on the way – anyone interested in meeting us out there?
Upon crossing the border into Bolivia it was immediately apparent that the pace of things here are just a bit more relaxed. I had to wake up the border guard to get the car paper work done. Probably a boring job considering everyone just went around the other side of the building with all their goods piled high on the trici-taxis. The large sign proclaiming the need to declare your goods was an amusing detail. Then a local policeman tried to charge us for crossing the bridge, which we had already paid someone on the other side. On the advice of the immigration guys we just drove by him, he gave chase for about 20 meters on foot until we disappeared around a corner. Had he run a bit further he would have caught us stuck behind a parade that covered the entire street with people in amazingly colourful indigenous regalia, gold and red and yellow, playing pan pipes and dancing.
We soon get to our first police check point. This is a gate across the road and a small building. We sit in the van for a spell waiting – nothing. Finally I get out and walk over to the building, this is apparently how its done! He says I need to pay a voluntary amount of 10 Bolivianos. I say that’s too much, half distracted by the porn calendar posters hanging up behind him, and end up giving him the 1USD. On the smaller roads the local traffic would just drive under the raised gates, and upon seeing us the cop would walk out, lower the gate, and walk back into his shack, evaluating how much of a donation we are worth. By the time we got to Tupizza, in the south, Kim gets into a very un-Canadian argument with the cop about the terrible condition of the roads and the lack of signage and that she’s just not going to pay. Actually, I guess that’s very Canadian, expecting every thing to be in order and just so.
The paved roads in Bolivia are excellent, much like Peru’s. Unfortunately the main attraction that I wanted to see is the largest salt flat in the world, the Salar de Uyuni, and it is not on a paved road. A quick squiz at the map and the Salar looks bigger than lake Titicaca and the 500km of secondary road was no deterrent. The pavement ends just south of Huari. The beginning seemed much like any other dirt road and we decided that the reports of needing a 4x4 were exaggerated.
We spent the night near the road just south of Rio Mulatos after a long day of washboard and river crossings.
The sunset was great and then there was the silence. All you could hear was the blood running through your ears. I just sat for an hour listening to the silence. While eating breakfast after a great night in the altiplano I said ‘hey look, emus!’ Kim, the biologist, looks up sleepily from her oats and says, no, those are just llamas. Then she looks again, drops her oats and lunges for the binoculars. Emus!
Then came THE detour. A sign said ‘this way for the direct route to Uyuni’ Here the road started following river beds, this would be the case for a quarter of the trip to Uyuni, and deteriorated into tracks across the desert and river crossing that created bow waves that washed up onto the windscreen. This is when the joke ‘this looks like the main road’ started, Kim would say this anytime we were on a track that looked like it had been used in the last year. At a high point we actually pulled out the binoculars trying to see anything at all. We spotted a village in the distance and headed for it. Upon arriving a guy comes running out to greet us. It turns out he’s been waiting for days for a ride to Uyuni, and he knows the way. He says its just three of them and I see two kids next to their packed bag. Sure I say, that shouldn’t be too much extra weight for Tortuga. He’s practically kicking up his heels as he runs back to collect his wife, mother in law, everything they own, and the two kids (I guess kids don’t count). They fill the entire back of the van. Thank god for the new air-springs! This is when Tortuga really came through, climbing slick rock, ploughing through hundreds of meters of soft sand, climbing impossible ravines. It really reminded me of a 4x4 trip to Moab with David – except we didn’t have any beer with us here. I know if David were here that would never have happened!
The Salar didn’t so much appear, as the ground in front of the distant mountains disappear. Then the horizon started turning white. I knew the last two days of goat tracks across the dessert would be worth it. We deposited the family on the main road in Colchani, the entrance to the Salar. The Salar isn’t like the salt flats in the US, its actually the remnants of an ocean and is still 100 meters deep with a ½ meter crust of salt on top. There’s the danger of going through but we decided if we followed other tracks we should be OK on our way out to Isla Pescado an island made of petrified corral and covered in huge cacti, pretty surreal, 70km across the salt. Getting onto the salt is reportedly the tricky part although everything was nice and dry for us and it was pretty easy.
Right at the edge there are guys piling salt into neat little piles to dry, by hand of course. Driving on the perfectly flat salt with its hexagon pattern is amazing. We kept wanting to call it ice. Arriving at Isla Pescado, thank golly for GPS, we parked on the shore on the opposite side of the tourist area thinking this would be free. It’s not, 10 Bolivianos each that goes into a fund for the local community, this year its for electrification of the village
We spent the evening riding bikes, cooking, listening to the silence, enjoying one of the best sunsets of the trips and watching the Salar change colours with the changing light. And we ended this wonderful day in a very decadent way – watching Battlestar Galactica. Thank you Darcey for giving us the idea to download them through ITunes.
Upon crossing the border into Bolivia it was immediately apparent that the pace of things here are just a bit more relaxed. I had to wake up the border guard to get the car paper work done. Probably a boring job considering everyone just went around the other side of the building with all their goods piled high on the trici-taxis. The large sign proclaiming the need to declare your goods was an amusing detail. Then a local policeman tried to charge us for crossing the bridge, which we had already paid someone on the other side. On the advice of the immigration guys we just drove by him, he gave chase for about 20 meters on foot until we disappeared around a corner. Had he run a bit further he would have caught us stuck behind a parade that covered the entire street with people in amazingly colourful indigenous regalia, gold and red and yellow, playing pan pipes and dancing.
We soon get to our first police check point. This is a gate across the road and a small building. We sit in the van for a spell waiting – nothing. Finally I get out and walk over to the building, this is apparently how its done! He says I need to pay a voluntary amount of 10 Bolivianos. I say that’s too much, half distracted by the porn calendar posters hanging up behind him, and end up giving him the 1USD. On the smaller roads the local traffic would just drive under the raised gates, and upon seeing us the cop would walk out, lower the gate, and walk back into his shack, evaluating how much of a donation we are worth. By the time we got to Tupizza, in the south, Kim gets into a very un-Canadian argument with the cop about the terrible condition of the roads and the lack of signage and that she’s just not going to pay. Actually, I guess that’s very Canadian, expecting every thing to be in order and just so.
The paved roads in Bolivia are excellent, much like Peru’s. Unfortunately the main attraction that I wanted to see is the largest salt flat in the world, the Salar de Uyuni, and it is not on a paved road. A quick squiz at the map and the Salar looks bigger than lake Titicaca and the 500km of secondary road was no deterrent. The pavement ends just south of Huari. The beginning seemed much like any other dirt road and we decided that the reports of needing a 4x4 were exaggerated.
We spent the night near the road just south of Rio Mulatos after a long day of washboard and river crossings.
The sunset was great and then there was the silence. All you could hear was the blood running through your ears. I just sat for an hour listening to the silence. While eating breakfast after a great night in the altiplano I said ‘hey look, emus!’ Kim, the biologist, looks up sleepily from her oats and says, no, those are just llamas. Then she looks again, drops her oats and lunges for the binoculars. Emus!
Then came THE detour. A sign said ‘this way for the direct route to Uyuni’ Here the road started following river beds, this would be the case for a quarter of the trip to Uyuni, and deteriorated into tracks across the desert and river crossing that created bow waves that washed up onto the windscreen. This is when the joke ‘this looks like the main road’ started, Kim would say this anytime we were on a track that looked like it had been used in the last year. At a high point we actually pulled out the binoculars trying to see anything at all. We spotted a village in the distance and headed for it. Upon arriving a guy comes running out to greet us. It turns out he’s been waiting for days for a ride to Uyuni, and he knows the way. He says its just three of them and I see two kids next to their packed bag. Sure I say, that shouldn’t be too much extra weight for Tortuga. He’s practically kicking up his heels as he runs back to collect his wife, mother in law, everything they own, and the two kids (I guess kids don’t count). They fill the entire back of the van. Thank god for the new air-springs! This is when Tortuga really came through, climbing slick rock, ploughing through hundreds of meters of soft sand, climbing impossible ravines. It really reminded me of a 4x4 trip to Moab with David – except we didn’t have any beer with us here. I know if David were here that would never have happened!
The Salar didn’t so much appear, as the ground in front of the distant mountains disappear. Then the horizon started turning white. I knew the last two days of goat tracks across the dessert would be worth it. We deposited the family on the main road in Colchani, the entrance to the Salar. The Salar isn’t like the salt flats in the US, its actually the remnants of an ocean and is still 100 meters deep with a ½ meter crust of salt on top. There’s the danger of going through but we decided if we followed other tracks we should be OK on our way out to Isla Pescado an island made of petrified corral and covered in huge cacti, pretty surreal, 70km across the salt. Getting onto the salt is reportedly the tricky part although everything was nice and dry for us and it was pretty easy.
Right at the edge there are guys piling salt into neat little piles to dry, by hand of course. Driving on the perfectly flat salt with its hexagon pattern is amazing. We kept wanting to call it ice. Arriving at Isla Pescado, thank golly for GPS, we parked on the shore on the opposite side of the tourist area thinking this would be free. It’s not, 10 Bolivianos each that goes into a fund for the local community, this year its for electrification of the village
We spent the evening riding bikes, cooking, listening to the silence, enjoying one of the best sunsets of the trips and watching the Salar change colours with the changing light. And we ended this wonderful day in a very decadent way – watching Battlestar Galactica. Thank you Darcey for giving us the idea to download them through ITunes.
Turbo Liberation
Arriving at the Lima airport (very nice flight on an Airbus 319) I haggled a cab down from 40 Soles to 25 Soles (10USD) to take me to DHL. On the way there he tells me that today is a national holiday and they will be closed. This, in addition to the fact that DHL was across the road from the airport did not put me in the best spirit. After calling him a thief he offered to take me anywhere I wanted to go for another 15 Soles. I asked him if he understood what I had just said, about him being a crook and all. Being in the middle of an industrial zone I decided to have him take me to Miraflores. This is a suburb of Cusco reputed to ‘not be in Peru’.
Once I got settled in at a nice hostel in Miraflores I set off exploring. Everyone was right, the convertible Lexus’s, Land Rover Disco’s and Limo’s made me feel like I was in Cary. And then there was Vivandas. It’s a Whole Foods, only with nicer produce (in addition to the SA fruits) and it’s 24hrs. Not Peru.
The electric fences around every house and private guards with Uzzi’s on every corner affirmed that these people were uncomfortable with their wealth in a country dominated by poverty.
The beaches are stunning. Comprised of stones about fist size, the receding waves make a magnificent sound. I spent several hours just sitting and listening.
Then I stumbled across LarcoMar. A very upscale mall, complete with a Starsucks. I took in a movie.
The next morning, I arrived at DHL at 8:30 and waited for over an hour for Milton Velasquez. I don’t think his employee manual translated the “express” in DHL Express. I was then told I needed to go and plead my case with Customs (window 14 he tells me). At the customs house I started the standard goose hunt. Window 14 only does packages over 50 kilos, you need window 7 I was told. No, you need window 4, actually, you need Jorge Torres in window 2. Jorge didn’t let me finish telling him about how I’m on honeymoon and my wife is in Cusco before he sprang to action. He called over an assistant to pull my paper. Run run he said. He called DHL and told them to release the package to me within the hour. He begged my pardon and yelled to a DHL employee in the customs area to have him take me in the DHL van back to the DHL building. By this time he was speaking such fast Spanish I didn’t catch most of it but before I knew it I was back at DHL. Milton dragged himself down to meet me, obviously post verbal lashing by the guy in a suit behind him. This guy apologized profusely for the hold up and sent me out the door with the brand new turbo. There was supposed to be 150USD import duty but no one said anything about it. I sprinted around the first corner.
I walk across the street to the airport and had missed the last plane to Cusco by 10 minutes. Drats, another night in Lima with no Kim. The next flight was at 4am. OUCH. I booked a seat on it and headed back to Miraflores. My plan was to watch a late movie and head back to the airport and practice my juggling until 4.
As luck would have it, Spiderman 3 opened at midnight. I could occupy my entire evening strolling the wonderful parks of Miraflores and watching movies! Not to spoil it for my readers, but the guy next to me in Spiderman slept with his head on my shoulder through most of it.
A cab got me back to the airport just in time to check in and get on the flight. I had been very careful with seat selection so that I could see the wonderful Andes from the other side of the plane. Walking onto the runway in the dark made me realize this was all for naught.
Flying back over the countryside we had driven a month ago was like Cliff Notes. The desert leading into green valleys leading into snow covered peaks. Wonderful!
I’m writing this parked on the main square of Chuquito next to the police station. There are 2 marching bands consisting of two drummers and 10-15 guys playing pan pipes dueling it out! Pan pipes!! These aren’t the guys you see in tourist restaurants, playing ABBA for Europeans and North Americans. These are guys in jeans, with backpacks on, and maybe a beer in their hand, stomping around in the square with their neighbours and friends, rocking out on their pan pipes. This is fantastic.
Or, it would be, if after two hours they’d played more than one song, over and over and over…!
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
SNAFU
We have been really enjoying a lot of the things that make the third world the third world - the markets, the riotous colors, the anything-goes attitude. Of course, there is a flip side to that coin, and right now it is staring us in the face - the corruption, the brainless bureaucrats, the ENDLESS hassle.
We decided to have the turbo shipped to us from the US, at great expense, because the van won't go without it. Well, actually it will, but it will only have about 25-30 hp, and we would be driving to Argentina at 20 mph. That wouldn't be any fun, and we still have thousands of miles to go before the end of our trip.
So, we found a turbo, and had it shipped to us by DHL.
On Monday, yesterday, it arrived in Lima. This is where things got $%^&#$ed up. We got an e-mail saying that they couldn't import our package into the country because importation of used car parts isn't allowed.
First, the turbo is brand new. Our shipper didn't mark the box labelled 'used' on the DHL label. So we don't know why they think it's used. Doubtless some nasty bureaucrat is trying to line his pockets and make our lives difficult.
Second, we're not trying to import the part - we're in transit, and will be leaving this backwater as soon as we can put it in our car and drive away.
Sigh. There was no convincing anyone of this over the phone, so this morning, Tuesday, May 1, Douglas got on a plane to Lima, on a mission to liberate the turbo from the dastardly customs agents. He has a real flair for convincing government officials that they would rather help than hinder us. I think it's his cute smile.
Unfortunately, we didn't realise (and the folks we talked to yesterday at DHL didn't tell us, even though we said he was coming to Lima today), that today is a national holiday and EVERYTHING is closed. So poor Douglas is stuck in Lima by himself, waiting for customs to open so he can argue with corrupt bureaucrats. Lima's not exactly a nice city (to put it mildly) - it's huge, dirty, and has more than its share of crime and corruption.
That's all for today - I'm off to make voodoo dolls of witless customs agents.
o, and keep an eye out for new posts from a while ago - I'm working on catching up on our blogging from while Beulah was visiting us. I'll post them in the order they occurred, so the new ones won't always be at the top.
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