Caravana Post Ushuaia Part 1
january 2001
tyler trotman at restIt is time to fill all y'all in on what has taken place on Caravana Pan-Americana since we left Ushuaia. Excuse me for using the word y'all. After living with two people from Louisiana for five months I felt it was time for me to use the word for the first time. I promise to limit my use of y'all.
I do not remember what Jeanne said in her dispatches about Ushuaia. Her last update was around new years eve or new years day. By that point Jeanne was definitely ready to get back on the road. I on the other hand was staying in a nice hotel with my girlfriend, my sister and three other friends. Leaving was not as urgent for me, but by the time my group of friends left I could understand where Jeanne was coming from.
Brian, one of my friends who came down to Ushuaia, would be driving with me for a week and then would find a way to get to Buenos Aires to catch his plane home on January 10. Brian arrived in Ushuaia, a week before the rest of us, with his girlfriend Niara. Niara, Wini (my sister), Stephanie (my girlfriend) and Karen (my maid) said farewell to Ushuaia early on the morning of the 3rd. Jeanne, Shay, Brian and I were to leave soon after.
Leaving was not so easy. We all needed to do x, y and z before leaving town. The two vans needed propane. My van needed new brake pads. We also could not forget one last stop at Maco Burger, the best burger joint in all of Tierra Del Fuego. Maco was a success and so was getting propane. The problem was we never made it out of town. Jeanne’s left front outer CV joint finally failed. We took it to a mechanic who removed the axle making the van 3WD instead of 4WD. By the time he was finished it was too late to leave Ushuaia. It was not that bad. We stayed in a nice hotel and were able to go see Charlie’s Angels at the one movie theatre in town. I liked the angels, just the angels. I also liked that it was acceptable to drink beer in the theatre.
The morning of the 4th we were up and out of Ushuaia in no time. The drive just north was interesting if you are not afraid of heights, a little scary if you are. The road winds up the side of a mountain and the sides get steeper. I will get to the point quickly this time. If you go off the road, and there is no rail or anything to stop you, your car will bounce down a cliff and blow up. Christian, the guy I picked up hitchhiking a couple days before we got to Ushuaia, said that one of his uncles was in a truck that dangled off the cliff for a while. He is still alive.
Our plan was to drive to Porvenir and catch a ferry to Punta Arenas. There are only two places to get a ferry to Tierra Del Fuego so it seemed logical to try them both. This ferry was supposed to be a couple hours long unlike the one we originally took to get to Tierra Del Fuego. We arrived in Porvenir and my van arrived with two flat tires. Luckily we were at a gas station and the tires could be fixed. Jeanne went to town to check on the ferry schedule while my tires were being fixed. She came back with bad news. The next ferry would not be leaving for another 24 hours and we might not even be able to get on that ferry.
We decide to drive back to the other ferry which was a couple hours away, but was closer to Ushuaia than where we were. In other words, it would have been much quicker just to have driven to the ferry we originally took on the way south. I was not a happy camper at this point. We were just across a body of water from where we wanted to be. Now we had to drive a couple hours east just to double back and drive even more hours west. If you are confused please look at a map.
About half way to the ferry I noticed that my tire was again flat. Brian, Shay and I got the tire changed and we were off again. We arrived at the ferry around 7pm. This ferry runs every half hour so catching it would not be a problem. As we were waiting in line a hitchhiker asked Brian and I if she could have a ride to Punta Arenas. We said sure. Her name is Daniela. She is a Brazilian hitchhiking her way to the United States all alone. Some of you readers think we are crazy to be doing what we are doing. I wonder what you think about a Daniela’s trip?
Around 11pm we arrived in Punta Arenas. We found a gas station and were permited to camp behind it. Daniella pitched her tent. Boots and I got the van ready and Jeanne and Shay were asleep.
A warm morning of blue sky and sunshine greeted us as we awoke. Jeanne and Shay took off to Puerto Natales while Brian and I went shopping for a new tire in the duty free zone of Punta Arenas. I bought a new tire, a different brand but same number. My tires are 205/75R14s. The new tire I bought was the same. However, my tires are really 295/75R14 93C and the tire bought was 205/75R14 95C. The new tire was about an inch taller. The tire that I replaced was totally destroyed. The inside of the tire was a ton of back dust from the rubber and a whole bunch of metal line.
My van started to have another problem at about the same time. I would hear a big bang coming from the bottom of the van about 10 minutes after turning off the ignition at the end of the day. The ventilation lines to the gas tank were clogged with dirt, which resulted in the banging noise from the gas tank expanding and contracting. I would attempt to fix this problem a couple times in January.
Brian and I arrived in Puerto Natales a couple hours after Jeanne and Shay. We were all sitting at a restaurant drinking beer when an American came over. He was a fly fisherman and was traveling around Chile with his wife. He was at the restaurant alone. He was drunk and painful to listen to. It wasn’t that he was bombed, he just wouldn’t stop talking about nothing. Brian and Shay got up and left. A couple minutes later I had to do the same. Jeanne was left there alone with him. She eventually comes out pretending to get a cigarette. She begged for us to come in and save her. We did and we were out of there.
We found a place to camp right in town and arranged to take a twelve hour tour of Torres Del Paine the next day. The park is named after its super tall multicolored rock towers. The park also has a cool waterfall and a big glacier. I will try to send some digital photos to the website. Trying to describe the park would not do it justice.
One memorable moment was Brian attempting to get as close to a guanaco as possible. A guanaco is a four legged animal similar to a llama. There are many guanacos in the parks of Patagonia along with some you have to avoid on the roads. We stopped at one of those places which had a nice view of the bright blue lake, the sleek steep tower and white jagged glacier. About fifty yards below us were a couple guanacos sitting by the lake. Brian slowly crept down there and spent about ten minutes face to face with one of the guanacos. The guanaco eventually grew tired of Brian’s face and ran away. The last part of the tour you walk to a lake to see giant floating pieces of ice, which were once a part of the glacier. Some small pieces of the ice were within reach so Brian, Shay, Jeanne and I spent some time sucking on the ice. The ice is very interesting. Ice cubes in your freezer or icicles hanging off your roof are never totally clear. They always have bubbles in them or lines in them. The ice from the glacier was perfectly clear, no bubbles or lines. Jeanne is bringing back some of the water for her friend who is a water quality engineer to examine.
For those of you who have never seen a glacier or photos of a glacier I want to mention that they have awesome shades of blue that comes from the ice. If anybody knows what causes the blue, please tell me.
Our next stop would be El Calafate. We were now back in Argentina. El Calafate is drop-off point for seeing Parque Nacional Los Glaciares. The Perito Moreno glacier is what everyone comes to see. The glacier was beautiful or as Jeanne says gorgeous. It is too big to describe. Try to picture thousands of jagged white skyscrapers all connected in some way or another for as far as you can see. They travel for thousands of year down the mountain just to reach the bright blue lake where in one crash boom bang they become an iceberg.
The four of us spent two nights at a campground on the edge of town. The first night was fun. We went out to dinner. Jeanne drank a boat load of tequila, because I couldn’t. I spilled mine on my lap. We spent the night back at the campground playing Uno. Uno is Brian’s favorite. For those of you who know Uno, we make it a little more exciting by playing with a new rule. It is the interception rule. In Uno, you take turns playing cards of the same number or color. The interception rule allows you to play out of turn if you have a card the same number and color as the one on the table. Once you make the interception play continues with the person next to you. Uno is usually fairly borrowing and this rule keeps players on their toes and makes it a little more competitive.
Uno ended. Jeanne and Shay went to bed. Brian and I decide to hide Shay’s shoes. Maybe we had just a little too much to drink. The next morning comes and one of the shoes cannot be found. Shay is running around in Jeanne’s sandals. Jeanne is a little upset that the shoe is gone. The shoe was eventually found on top of one of the vans. The whole shoe thing turned out to be a lot worse than it seemed.
Jeanne and Shay somehow got into a fight while discussing how Shay could not get revenge on me for the shoe thing. You don’t need to know anymore about the roots of the fight. Shay was banished from the van. He was to sleep on the picnic table outside the van. It was cold so I invited him into my van to sleep on the floor in the sleeping bag. Three boys in one van for the night didn’t result in the nicest of smells in the morning. Shay had bad athletes foot and it made the sleeping bag reek. By the way, he is now using his foot powder that his dear auntie purchased for him. His feet no longer smell.
Brian would take a bus to Rio Gallegos then next day (Jan 10), where he would take a plane to Buenos Aires and the fly back to New York City. Jeanne, Shay and I were on the road again. The next 4 days we traveled on long gravel road. The word for gravel in Spanish is ripio. We always dread the ripio. After driving for many hours on the 10th we arrived in Tres Lagos, a small deserted town in the middle of nowhere. The town had a campground. Yes, it was deserted too. A couple hours after we set up camp the owner arrived and welcomed us. He unlocked the bathrooms and let us know how much we would be paying him for the night. It wasn’t much. The bathrooms were clean and nice but the toilets did not have any seats. I hate that. Usually, if a campground has toilets without seats I will find a new campground. This was the only campground in town so I didn’t have a choice. The worst toilets in South America are the ones designed for squatting. This is a toilette in the ground with a place for each foot. I refuse to use these toilets. I think Shay may have used one in Brasil. You can ask him about it.
The 11th would be another long day on the ripio which would bring us to Parque Nacional Perito Moreno. This is not the park with the glacier. It takes two hours to drive into the park. The road gets very tricky at some points. It is very important to know exactly where your tires are at all times. Sometimes it was necessary to keep my tires on elevated pieces of dirt in the road that were maybe two or three inches wide. It can be a royal pain in the ass. Anyway, I don’t recommend going to this park after seeing Torres Del Paines and the glacier. I was at the point where the last thing I wanted to see was another beautiful light blue lake with a mountain behind it. The highlight of the day was leaving the park. We stayed at an Estancia in the park, which had a hotel and a campground. We stayed at the campground. The owner wanted to know if we wanted to buy any gas as we were leaving. The gas was in a big drum. I pulled up and before I knew it the owner put a hose in the drum and siphoned the gas out and shoved the hose in my van. That cannot be too healthy.
About two hours into the trip north I got my sixth flat tire. Jeanne was well in front of me and it took her a while to realize that I had stopped moving. My spare tire was flat from a flat I had gotten a day before. Meanwhile, the wind was blowing so hard that I could jump up into the air and it would blow me about two feet forward. Jeanne returned to where I had stopped and learned that I needed her spare tire. Shay and I got the tire changed and we were off again. Our resting point that night, the night of the 12th, would be the town of Bajo Caracoles. This is one of the most remote places ever. It is essentially just a gas station with a motel hundreds of miles away from the nearest small town. The three of us had cheeseburgers and played rummy 500. I had to win because I just cannot sleep when I lose to Jeanne when playing that game.
The next day promised to be better. It was, at first, for me. I got to witness Jeanne getting stuck in the gravel road and then getting pulled out by the road scraper. I have a nice digital photo of the grannyjean being pulled out by the road scrapper. Road scrapers are these giant machines which flatten gravel roads so cars don’t bottom out. Grannyjeanne is the name of Jeanne’s van. This name has two roots. The first is that her license plate says vnajean. That is supposed to mean vanajeanne which is similar to vanagon. Jeanne also refers to the syncro’s low gear as the granny gear. On a couple occasions she use the term granny gear one too many times. Therefore, Shay and I renamed her van the grannyjeanne.
Our destination for the 13th was the town of Perito Moreno, not to be confused with the glacier or the park of the same name they are all widely separated. The only good thing about this town was the paved streets. We got to town and went to a restaurant named Ruta 40. Don’t ever go there. Jeanne and Shay’s food tasted like metal. It was another town, similar to some on the east coast of Argentina, that had a lot of buildings and roads but no people. There is not much more to say about this town. It does make my top ten list of places not to see in South America.
The next day our trip would get more interesting. This would become my favorite day of driving thus far on Caravana Pan-Americana. We were driving from Perito Moreno, Argentina to Coyhaique, Chile. There was a 20 mile section of road before the border that will always be remembered. The road is on the map. It probably shouldn’t be. On a road map the road appears to be the most direct route from El Portezuelo to Balmaceda(which is where the border is). The road is not so difficult at first but just puzzling. Every half mile there would be a wire gate with heavy wood posts. It would take two people to open and close each gate. One of them we couldn’t close. I wonder if there are any lost cattle. Once we got past all the lakes we ran into a big mud pit. Before the mud pit one could see from tire tracks that some cars did a three point turn and chose not to attempt to pass. We decided to give it a try. Jeanne went first with the grannyjeanne and I successfully followed. There would be many more creeks and mud pits and cliffs and holes to come. Some creeks involved rearranging the rocks of the creek to get through. The process of getting through each obstacle was fun. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so if we had got stuck. One highlight for Shay was on a narrow road at the top of a cliff. This part of the road worried Jeanne the most. Heights do not scare Jeanne but she is definitely afraid of being in a vehicle on the side of a cliff. She feels as thought the cliff may collapse with the weight of the van. While Jeanne was negotiating the proper tracks to take, Shay started tossing big boulders down the cliff. I started doing the same too. The cliff was about 200 yards tall at about a 65 degree angle. At the bottom of the cliff there was a river. I have never had so much fun throwing rocks. The cliff’s surface was flat hard sand. Rocks would really bounce off the surface all the way down and then through the river. A rock getting to the other side of the river was a good shot.
I am sorry to take so long describing something that may seem so trivial. Sometimes the most trivial things are the most memorable. I feel like that any of you who have made it this far are not going to be able to take much more. Today is Feb 3 and I have been sitting at this computer for hours trying to remember what happened in the month of January. I will call this dispatch Caravana Post Ushuaia Part 1 and then continue with Part 2 some other time.
