Coyhaique, Chile
21 february 2001
Here we sit at a mirador above Chile Chico overlooking Lago General Carrera which is a blue sea where winds whip up breakers large enough to body surf on if you were a cold blooded animal that is. Being warm blooded and without a wet suit, it is way too cold at about 50° F.
Here are some More of Things Learned While Driving Through South America for those who might want to make such a trip in the future. I attach the same user (reader) warning here that I have begun to attach to my diary. Warning: If you are looking for a balanced and fair depiction of life here, then look elsewhere. What I write is biased, sometimes funny, seldom to the point and many times descends into the obscure. My diary is even worse in that it is there that I vent my frustrations at the people I am traveling with and particularly at those insane things we continually run up against. As the robot in Lost in Space used to say, 'Danger! Danger! You have been warned Will Robinson! Proceed at your own risk!'
Law-abiding drivers: This is almost a misnomer here in Latin America where driving is a sport. Almost anything goes anywhere. If I had to rate drivers country by country for their attention to obedience to the 'rules of the road' Brasilian drivers would be miserably last followed closely by Argentines. Paraguayans would be next with Uruguayan and Chilean drivers the most law abiding. Brasilians have a mania to always pass all vehicles as quickly as possible -- it is almost a mandate that they must do this. Where they pass is unimportant as is which side they choose to pass onóalso unimportant. They will pass in any blind curve, at the top of any hill, on one lane roads, in traffic circles, on the shoulder, anywhere. Argentines like to pass at high speed on city streets and then veer in front of you to turn at the next corner.
Latins are all born race drivers: Brasilians think they are Emerson Fittipaldi or Ayrton Senna and Argentines think they are Mario Andretti. Argentina has more straight roads over longer distances than Brasil especially in sparsely populated Patagonia so while you are tooling along at 65-70 mph in your Vanagon, some little car full of people will pass you at 100 mph like you are standing still. Many times, these pseudo-race drivers will pass you and then if they happen to come to a curve that we who are used to curves could easily negotiate at 60, they invariably apply their brakes since they only seem to know how to drive fast on straightaways.
Showers: Build one into your van. We circulate antifreeze via a heat exchanger through 5 gallons of water stored under the seat and once the valve is opened to admit the antifreeze to the heat exchanger, within 10-15 minutes, it heats the bath water to 120 degrees which, when there is a cold wind blowing is what you need. Both Will and I can have a shower using the 5 gallons of water. The rest of the group are always chasing after places where they can buy as shower while we have a shower whenever and wherever we want albeit sometimes a quick one due to the wind in Patagonia. They used to use their solar showers but they don't heat up very well in 40 degree temperatures. In Brasil we luxuriated in a cool shower every night that was absolutely essential if one is to have a comfortable night's sleep.
Almost all showers in hotels and pensions in Brasil are electrically heated within the shower head. The wiring is atrocious and never wrapped and it is 220V so until they made a law that all shower heads had to be made of plastic, dozens of people were electrocuted each year when they raised their arm to wash their pits. Still, today, in many Brasilian showers, you get a light shock when you attempt to turn the water off. We hated these showers when we used them in truck stops which is where we stayed most nights in Brasil. Starting in Uruguay, they have hot water heaters so this problem ends.
Where to stay: In Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Chile, almost anywhere. Our favorite place is usually a gravel pit out of sight of the road. In Brasil, we mostly stayed in gas stations where the trucks parked which means you have to have good ear plugs to drown out the noise and you are invariably awakened in the morning not so much by the noise but by the smell of diesel fumes. There are always roosters from 2AM onward.
Ear plugs: Get the best you can and get plenty. I believe I am the resident authority on ear plugs. Those that I use are the white silicone ones that come either six or twelve to a box that you mash into your ear opening spreading them out to completely seal it up. They will drown out most everything from traffic to dogs to babies and will seal out water too.
Used ear plugs: Don't throw them away. If you have external locks that work with a key and you don't protect them somehow from the dust, they will cease to work once you get to the dirt roads and they fill with dust. In the states there are plastic protectors for locks but we had none so we used our old ear plugs which we lightly formed to cover the keyhole and then used West Virginia Chrome (sorryóduct tape for those not from the Mountain State) to hold the ear plug in place and then used a rubber band or an elastic ponytail holder to hold the duct tape in place. Result: it works!
Calling home: The best bet is to call from a cabina or booth at a telephone company where the connection will almost always be better. Sometimes it is sent by fiber optic cable (I believe) so there is no pause when both parties try to talk at once but sometimes it seems to be by satellite so one party has to stop talking before the other one can talk or there is cross-talk.
Gasoline: I mistakenly overestimated and therefore over-reported some of these prices before when I calculated a gallon as around 4 liters instead of the 3.784 L it actually is. These prices are calculated from our gasoline records and bank records of the exchange rate at the time we bought gas. US$ prices per US gallon: $3.78 in middle Argentina, $1.89 in southern Argentina and we hear more than $4 in northern Argentina. That sad news however I will report later when we know for sure. Brasil is $3.06, Paraguay is $2.19, Chile is $2.85, Venezuela $0.44 and little Uruguay is, as always, the most expensive at $4.25 a gallon. Several years ago in Venezuela they tried to raise the price of gas and there were riots all over the country and many people were killed. They love their old American gas guzzlers there. You can get unleaded in Argentina and Chile and many other places but sometimes you can't so you have to remove the catalytic converter and enlarge the hole of the fill tube on the Vanagon. We have had no problem so far with the oxygen sensor nor have we had a problem with fuel filters. We carry an extra O2 sensor and several fuel filters just in case.
Extra gasoline: We had a tank built underneath the van that holds 7 gallons while Kai and Les carry two 5 gallon cans each on their roof rack. We opted to have our roof clean and aerodynamic (now stop laughing, I know 'aerodynamic' and 'Vanagon' can't be used in the same sentence) so we closed the roof carrier with home manufactured painted steel doors and those locked compartments contain our spare parts whereas Les and Kai had boxes built on the rear bumper for spare parts. The only place so far that we have needed extra gas is here in Patagonia and in Tierra del Fuego. We (Larry and Will) have only had to pump one gallon once to get us into a town but they (Les and Kai), who get a little less gas mileage than we do, have used some from their extra supply once or twice I believe. When we left Chile where the gas at this latitude costs a little more than Argentina, neither Kai nor I filled up which was a mistake since the first town we came to that had gas, had gas but the pump had quit working just before we got there so we could get no gas. A rule of thumb for gas especially in Patagonia and Bolivia and Peru is to fill up wherever you can and always fill up when your tank reaches half empty.
Windshields, headlights: Both will probably get broken in Patagonia. Our headlights are intact because Will put a hardware cloth screen over them before we left WV. Les's got broken yesterday. Both Kai's and our windshield have dings in them. You can get an expensive shield made if you have the money or you can make one yourself out of hardware cloth and spacers to keep it away from the windshield.
Rain-X: It works. Learn to use it and always keep your windshield coated since you never know on these old vans when the wiper motor or the wiper blades will fail.
And as the wind howls outside and shakes the van, I must move to another location for I fear that we might be blown into the lake.
Chau, Larry
