Location: Santa Fe, New Mexico
Total Miles Ridden: 34,232
Total Days on the Road: 441
Curses in this entry: Lots (Parents be warned!)
Well, well, well... After one year, two months, and 13 days, I arrived back in Santa Fe safe and somewhat sound. I'm sure some people would question just how sound one can be after over a year of travel, and to be honest, I can't blame them.
The sky was a clear cobalt blue and the temperature about 43 degrees when I finally rolled into Santa Fe on Friday, Feb 27. The trip from Miami back to New Mexico was hardly without it's own share of adventures with gulf storms, two days of Mardi Gras, and a run-in with Texas State Troopers, among other fun daily details.
On the long road home, I was put up by some of the nicest and most welcoming folks that I'd encountered during the whole trip. MANY THANKS go out to Camilo and Angela in N'Awlins and to Rick and Jules in San Antonio.
On the whole, it was nice to see that traveling in the states can be as rewarding as south of the equator. It's helping me deal with my "Holy Shit, I'm BACK!" depression.
I think at the end of any huge project, trip, or event in one's life, there is a certain "what's next?" and "what the hell WAS that anyway?" that goes on. As you might guess, I'm in the middle of the throes of that right now.
I had a few hundred photos from Brazil when I left Rio, but my little data storage device thingy has gone belly up. Unless the Archos company in California can miralce me, I may have lost to the last all the originals for the last eight months on the road... from Bolivia on. Ugh.
So, the following is a collection of stories from the last month or so on the road and some of my reflections on being back. I'll probably have more stories surface as I review my photos and journals to harvest lost details and gems from along the way.
BR 116 -- Brazilians in Black Leather
“Motoclubs are not a laughing matter. They are a serious thing.” Words across the back of a motorcycle gang t-shirt given to me by Brazilian friends in Ushuaia.
Although you could say Brazilians don’t take much too seriously, including work, marriage vows, traffic laws, and the United States among other things, they do take their motorcycles and riding them VERY seriously. In Brazil, you would be hard pressed to even find a dirty motorcycle, unless of course it is being driven by a dirty American like me. And most importantly, anybody who’s anybody who cares much at all about riding a bike is a member of a biker gang – or Motoclub, as they call them.
My first encounter with Brazilian “motoclubes” occurred just south of Viedma, Argentina en route to Ushuaia. I was sitting in a small restaurant just off the highway when a rider rolled up on an overloaded Suzuki DR 800. With bleached-out orangey hair, scars across his brow like he’d been attacked by a bird of prey, and a thick leather vest with a huge shield patch across his back, “Ney” was an intimidating figure for sure.
Most other South Americans I’ve met doing a long trip on a bike have been upper class, so I made an immediate judgment of Ney, as well – prodigal son of a rich family. You know the type: drugs, bikes, women, and a tapped up spending account to take care of it all. Well, I learned quickly that this wasn’t the case with Ney – at least not the spending account part, that is.
Although my Portuguese was less than comprehensible at that time, we established quickly that we were both traveling solo and in the same direction. Without much recourse for saying anything else, we decided to head south together for at least a little while.
There are many ways men can grow to feel indebted to one another very quickly in today’s world. Taking a bullet, posting bail, and fudging a tax return seem to be the top three, but certainly providing a liter of gasoline to a stranded (and embarrassed) fellow biker comes in a close fourth. And so it was that within two hours of knowing Ney, I was crouched on the side of the road filling a Pepsi bottle out of my own tank to get him ten kilometers further down the road to the next station.
Later that day as we stood at a dusty crossroads looking over some maps in the high afternoon sun, another rider pulled up on a similarly overloaded Yamaha Tenere. As he slowed to stop I noticed his feet barely touched the ground despite the tremendous load. Tenuously, he stopped the bike on the gravely shoulder and dismounted, already shouting and waving his arms in Portuguese.
I picked up quickly that Ney and the newly arrived Marcos had lost each other in Buenos Aires three days before. Despite Marcos’ best attempts to catch up with Ney, every checkpoint and gas station along the way he stopped at indicated a Brazilian has passed four hours before. At long last, he had made up the lost time.
It seemed to me right away that his manic effort to catch up with Ney had come at a cost. That night at camp he seemed spacey and without much of an appetite. I asked him what he had been eating and drinking while riding such long hours over the last few days. “Plenty,” he responded dryly. “I don’t like drinking water much, though, so I normally sip on a Coke or something like that.”
Ok, I’m no doctor, but even I know that Coke does as much for hydrating a wind-blown and parched body as beer. At dinner, he ate two mouthfuls of spaghetti and wandered off to his tent. It was only 7 pm.
The next day we started off early for a tour of Peninsula Valdez. There is a 150 mile circuit of dirt roads that loops around the triangular peninsula allowing for intermittent stops to see elephant seals, sea lions, penguins, and, with luck, Orcas. Most tourists do it as part of large, obnoxious tour groups, but the luxury of motorcycle travel is independence. If you don’t mind actually riding, that is.
As we were gassing up before taking off, Ney leaned into me and whispered, “Hey, Marcos doesn’t know how to ride in dirt, so let’s go easy on him, ok?” Suddenly, I was worried. Not only does Marcos not like to drink or eat, but he doesn’t know how to manage the all-too-important varied conditions or riding a big bike in gravel, dirt, dust and sand.
Anyone who has ridden a motorcycle before knows that the first time off the tarmac is a harrowing experience – especially with a big, loaded bike. It’s like walking on ice: everything your body is trained to know and rely on regarding traction and steering suddenly goes out the door, and your instincts to brake when in trouble can get you killed. A hundred mile tour around the peninsula in six inch deep gravel doesn’t seem like the best place to start, but the dehydrated and near-flagging Marcos is gung-ho and ready to go.
After a brief lesson that basically came down to “Rule 1 – Don’t touch the front brake, and Rule 2 – When in doubt, lay on the gas” we were off. Throughout the day, Marcos did just fine, and the glimpses of penguins, elephant seals and sea lions seemed to take his mind off his own private terror.
As we were making the long ride back to camp in the late day sun, we passed over an especially gnarly stretch of gravel. I looked in my rearview mirror to see how Marcos was going to handle it. As his bike hit the deep gravel, he must have let off the gas because I instantly saw his bike swing into a fishtail. First to the right, then to the left, his rear tire looked like it was trying to beat his front home. I was convinced he was going to bite it, but after a few tense seconds, he pulled it through and straightened out again.
As he was swerving, my mind flashed to my own accident over a year and a half ago -- the one that nearly cancelled my trip south altogether. Riding on the gravel roads north of the Gila Wilderness in central New Mexico, I was on a “training ride” for the big trip. I had over a year riding under my belt, but like Marcos had never encountered more dirt than a few gravel driveways and such. Coming over a cattle guard, my bike sank in deep gravel. Knowing nothing of dirt riding, I followed my first instinct and slammed on the brakes. The bike went into a major slide and started fishtailing back and forth. Despite my best screaming and cursing, the oscillations just got worse. The four seconds I was actually sliding seemed eternal. I was convinced this was the end. I thought about my friends and my family. About how sad it was to die out here on this gravel road. I felt like little Ralphy in A Christmas Story and that everyone was right about this red-rider BB gun I was riding. They had all told me I’d shoot my eye out, and here I was doing just that. When I hit the ground, I was going about 40 mph. I landed on my face and right shoulder. I don’t remember much more of the impact, but the next time I opened my eyes, I was lying in the culvert on the side of the road. My feet were elevated on the berm, so I just laid there. The boy scout in me knew I was already in the perfect position for the treatment of shock. When my friend James arrived all he could say was, “Oh, Fuck! Fuck! Dude, Fuck! Are you ok? Fuck, look at the bike! Oh, Fuck!!” I laid there prone while he and another friend righted my warped bike. After a few moments, I righted myself and walked about some. My shoulder was sore and I had a mild sting in my mid section. Aside from that I was fine. I was one lucky MF. My helmet had scratches all over it, and the bike looked like it had been through the wrecker. The forks were twisted 45 degrees around, the aluminum boxes were toast, and there were scratches and on all sides of the body. Shit, there was a scratch on the top of the rear luggage rack. Had the bike done a somersault? My friends stowed the bike on the side of the road, and loaded me with painkillers for the long ride out to the highway. I could feel the ends of my broken ribs rubbing together when we hit bumps. I wanted to throw up. An hour later I was in the backseat of a nice Texan family’s Chrysler and three hours later, in the hospital. My broken collarbone, two broken ribs, and shoulder-full of torn ligaments seemed to be a reduced sentence from the certain death I had imagined seconds before the accident.
Back at camp, I asked Marcos how it felt to come that close to falling back there on the gravel. Proudly, he said he didn’t think much about it. He just laid on the gas as I had told him and came out of it ok. At least one good thing came out of the hard-learned lesson I was given back in the Gila.
As we cruised further south into Patagonia, the land got flatter, the wind got stronger, and the weather got more unpredictable. Over coffee on the second day, Ney expressed more concern for Marcos. This was Marcos’ first big trip out of Brazil, and Ney didn’t think he was up for it. In fact, he said, Marcos should go home. But as part of the BR116 motoclub, this would be a disgrace to the whole organization. All BR116ers finish the trips they start, no matter what. Anything less is cause for stripping the offending member’s patch and kicking him out of the club. So, Ney was recommending that Marcos go home since he was in over his head, but this also meant he would have to kick him out of the club. This seemed to me to be a pretty bad Catch 22 to put Marcos in, but then again, I wasn’t part of the club.
At the end of the afternoon on day three, we were confronted with an especially hard cross wind. The wind was blowing so hard from the west, that we were all leaning the bike 20-30 degrees to the right just to stay straight. About twenty miles before the ferry into Tierra del Fuego, the road was under construction and we veered left along the gravel detour. It was a little nasty with the wind, and we were all feeling a little spooked in the marble sized gravel.
Once out, Ney and I pulled over and waited for Marcos. And we waited. We waited a little more until about ten minutes had passed. We shared a look of dread and wheeled around to go back and see what had happened. As we passed back onto the gravel, an Argentine truck driver was leaning out his window motioning that something had gone wrong with our friend.
When we pulled up to the scene, Marcos was standing next to his apparently mangled bike. This was a good thing, relatively. He could have been stuck under it or worse. Once we accessed that Marcos was indeed ok, we looked at the bike. His luggage was spread about, yard sale style. His front rim was bent 90 degrees, and various plastic pieces were cracked or severed. This bike was not going anywhere fast.
Marcos recounted that the gusts got too extreme for him in the gravel. He couldn’t grip the road and was sent over the left berm at 40 mph, catching a few meters of air for what seemed like eternity before landing square on his front wheel. The impact sent him and his luggage soaring over the handlebars. Being a thin guy, he must have just landed and rolled. I was going 40 mph when I wrecked two years ago, and the bike and I were both in much worse condition. This guy had someone watching over him for sure.
A pair of Argentine Angels were the next folks to pass by – a couple from Buenos Aires on their honey moon. They quickly offered to do what ever they could and cleared out the back of their pickup to make room for Marcos and his bike. Within fifteen minutes we were on the road again. It seemed like a miracle.
The next morning, we caught up with Marcos in Rio Grande, Argentina. His ride had dropped him at a motorcycle shop, and they were already elbow deep in grease and sprockets fixing the bike to get him back on the road by late afternoon. It was Christmas Eve. We were trying to make it to Ushuaia, the end of the road in southern Argentina, for the big Christmas bash. Every year overland travelers of all sorts congregate in Ushuaia for Christmas – it’s a long-standing tradition, I’m told. And despite the tragic events of the day before, it seemed like we might make it afterall.
The hours dragged on, and finally at 8 pm the bike was finished. The mechanic and his boys had worked all day and through dinner on the problem. The entire bill, including a new rim, was $100. Merry Christmas, Marcos!!
Once in Ushuaia, we celebrated in full fashion. We were greeted with a roomful of red-cheeked merry-makers, James Brown on the stereo, a seemingly endless supply of Argentina’s finest pilsner, and a free leg of lamb dinner. Christmas had come after all!
On Christmas afternoon, the sound of motorcycles filled the camp, and my Brazilian moto-buddies ran down the gravel driveway in delight. The rest of their Brazilian BR116 contingent had arrived. Averaging over 600 miles a day, the kamikaze riders from Sao Paulo had made it from the Tropic of Cancer to the end of the world in four days. Four days!! This did not sound like fun to me.
After two more days of sight seeing with the boys, I decided to part ways and start my trip back north. Ushuaia was cold and rainy, and I was growing tired of the group dynamic thing. After a year traveling solo, it’s hard to suddenly be making decisions by committee – even though traveling with Ney and Marcos, and now the four new stooges, had been great (they even saved my ass a few times when my battery went dead south of Puerto Valdez), I needed my space. Patagonia was not big enough for the seven of us.
I set out knowing I would see them again. I was headed to Brazil in a month or so, and I knew that despite my aversion to group dynamics, having a few friends in one of the biggest cities on the continent, Sao Paulo, could be a good thing.
Argentina by Air
I set out of Ushuaia with three Belgian riders – two brothers and a best friend on a whirlwind six week 10,000 mile tour around the perimeter of Argentina. Again, this did not sound like fun to me. After two days, their pace out paced me, and I was again on my own.
Six days later, after hiking in Torres del Paine National Park and watching the world’s only easily viewed calving glacier at Perito Mereno in Argentina, I found myself stuck again with a dead battery. After a few jumps and a few hundred stressful miles, I was back in Rio Gallegos on the Atlantic coast looking for a battery.
My search took my by taxi back to Punta Arenas, Chile when I got a message from Zelie, my girlfriend in the states, that “Surprise!” she was going to be in Sao Paulo, Brazil in two short weeks to go to the beach with me. Maybe she didn’t understand where I was and how far it was to get to Sao Paulo, but who was I to give her a reality check?
I looked at the map and determined I had 5,500 miles to go in two weeks. This did not sound like fun, but I wanted to make the best out of it. I still had to travel up the Carratera Austral in southern Chile for one, and that was NOT on the shortest route from A to B.
At this point, six to eight hours a day in the saddle seemed like business as usual, but that pace was not going to get me to Brazil in time. From here on, it was going to have to be more like 12 hours of riding a day.
After six hours on a motorcycle, your ass is numb, your legs are sore, and your hands are stuck in a grip position. After ten hours, you sink into a meditative state. After twelve hours, delirium set in.
I was averaging 500 miles a day, and that included a fair share of sidetracking and sightseeing on dirt. I was definitely hitting my stride as a long distance motorcycle rider. Maybe when I get back I could start a motorcycle courier service. I mean, at this point it seemed like my most marketable skill. The days started melting into one another. I was riding through the most incredible countryside in the world, and I was too stoned from inhaling highway dust (no Mom, that’s not the street name for an illicit drug) that I didn’t even stop to take many good pictures. Ok, maybe a few.
On the second day, I was cruising up the 400 mile dirt stretch of the Carretera Austral. The route was lined with wild flowers and waterfalls. Snow-capped peaks loomed on either side. Horsemen riding bareback with sheepskin chaps waved from the roadside. I started giggling. Uncontrollably. The sensory overload of all the sights, sounds, and smells made me literally high. I couldn’t take it all in fast enough. Each new scene warranted an hour long stimulation look, and I was flying through it at 30 mph. My cheeks got sore from my insane permagrin inside my helmet. I was flying. I was seeing Argentina by air.
That evening, I was exhausted as I pulled into Coyhaique I was so bleary-eyed and fatigued I drove the bike clear off an embankment and into a ten foot ditch. After expending the rest of my energy hauling the bike out, I stayed up until 11 pm with the hotel owner watching the Big Lubowski on his VCR. My delirium came to a head as the bizarre and dry humor percolated through my already foamy mind. I laughed and laughed and laughed and then I cried. I was repeating lines from the film for days. Do you SEE what happens when you fuck strangers in the ass, Danny. Do you SEE what happens?
But the road just kept calling. I found myself trying to one-up myself. Maybe I could ride fifteen hours today. Maybe I could go for the iron butt award – one thousand miles in a 24 hour period. But alas, I couldn’t squeeze that extra two hundred miles out of my ass that day.
I was no longer traveling. I was riding a motorcycle…period. I’ve read of other guys doing this too. One who zipped through Mexico and Central America in eight days, and then wrote a book about it. It’s one thing to do it when you have to. It’s another to make it your M.O.
Eight days and one broken ass later I found myself back in Buenos Aires. The preceding week was an emotional blur of miles logged, food inhaled, and sleep deprived. I needed a break.
So I headed back to the movies.
I began to notice that my monthly movie quotient had gone from .5 to six or seven in no time at all. Something about hitting Argentina where first run movies in high-fidelity wrap-around sound theaters were going for $2 a ticket got to me. I was an addict.
I saw the late show of Rings III and hit the hay. And I hit it hard. My body sank into the hostel bunk bed in a way that I couldn’t sleeping on the side of the road in my bivy sack. The sound of my South African roommate’s drunken snore eased me off to la-la-land, and next thing I knew it was 11 AM.
Jumping from bed, I had to get right down to business. I had a full day or sorting, packing, repacking, motorcycle maintenance, and general dealing ahead of me. I had accumulated an insane amount of junk in the six weeks I was in Buenos Aires over October and November and had to shed some weight.
Suddenly it was Christmas in January at the Recoleta Hostel. I waltzed through the hostel like ol’ St. Nick bestowing trinkets, clothes, shoes, broken motorcycle shocks, and other gems on unknowing and unknown fellow hostellers. Despite my serial gifting, I still left a pile of junk in the industrial sized trash can in the kitchen. I was heading to Brazil, baby! No time to let luxury items like an extra bar of soap weigh me down!!
I set out of Buenos Aires by noon the following day and set my sights for Florianopolis, on the Brazilian coast. Zelie was arriving in a few days, and hell if I was going to let her arrive and see me without at least a base tan.
Cops and Robbers
Buenos Aires -- On the way out to the BMW dealer, I had my first run in with Argentina’s finest. In a random “papers check” I was found to have none. I had grown so accustomed of walking about the city with as little on my as possible, I actually was driving without any ID. When I say without ID, I didn’t even have a photocopy of my passport. No title. No license. No nuthin’.
Needless to say, my friendly-neighborhood Buenos Aires police officers didn’t find this momentary lapse of reason as funny as I did. In fact, they were saying words like “confiscate” and “impound” – words that despite my seventh grade reading level in Spanish, I was able to pick up.
Their good cop/bad cop routine was playbook perfect… Cop #1 shouted and paced. He told me not to touch my bike as it was now in the possession of the Buenos Aires Metro Police. Cop #2 jus stood there looking at me with his arms crossed. Being that I actually was in the wrong, I felt a bit of a panic. I did not want to be dealing with this. I wanted this to all go away, and quickly. I asked if we could just walk the three blocks to my hostel. I had the papers there. I’d show them, and we’d all be honky dory. No, sir. The crime has been committed.
I was SOL, as my Dad used to say. I knew that if my bike went somewhere with them, one or both of two things might happen: 1) I might never see my bike again. Argentina is the corruption capital of South America. In Bolivia, the cops impounded my bike, but I knew the daughter of a judge on the Bolivian Supreme Court. In Buenos Aires, I didn’t know anybody. And 2) I would probably not make it to Sao Paulo in time to pick up Z at the airport in three days. This would not be good.
I started in with pleading my case. “What’s the nature of the penalty? I’ve got the right papers back in my room! Shit, look, I even have a fire extinguisher!!” taking about the 15 lb. red, wall mountable fire extinguisher my Brazilian buddies had talked me into getting because they knew people who got nabbed and heavily fined without one. The cops both just chuckled at the red behemoth..
Look,” I pleaded, “I don’t know the law here, but sometimes one can pay a ‘fine on the spot’ in other countries. Did this apply in Argentina?”
“I’m listening,” the cop replied. He was going to make me say it, wasn’t he?.
“Well, um, uh, maybe there’s a fine I can pay now – not to imply anything illegal, of course, I just don’t know the law here, you see. Yeah, but maybe I can pay a small fine now and drive away with the bike today, no?”
“I’m listening.”
“I don’t know what someone would normally pay in a fine like that, but, um, uh, maybe 50 pesos would make this ok, huh?” Fifty pesos is about US$17.
“I’m sorry, that number doesn’t really say much to me,” he said leaning back against the squad car looking at his shoes and wiping his nose with the back of his left hand. I could see him trying to hide a smirk, the shit head. This was quickly escalating from petty bribery to full-on extortion.
Well, I was a bit screwed at this point. I had close to 300 pesos ($100) in my pocket as I was headed to the BMW dealer for some parts, and all in 50’s and 100’s. So, if it wasn’t going to be fifty, it was going to be…
“How about 100 pesos?”
“Deal. Follow us down to the corner, turn left, and we’ll meet half way down the block. Have the bill folded in your right hand and we’ll shake hands like old friends, ok?” Easy as pie. This guy had done this before, I surmised.
As the cops got in their squad car and pulled slowly away down the hill, I had the urge to just take off. I was good enough at weaving through traffic that I could lose them quickly, but (SHIT!) I had already given them the name of my hotel. Surely, they’d just wait there all day until I eventually had to come back to roost. And besides, these guys were pros with radios, and there weren’t too many gringos on black BMWs in Buenos Aires that I noticed.
We drove down the block as planned. At the corner was another squad car and a cop I hadn’t seen earlier standing at the ready with a shotgun in hand. I guess they had already thought about the me speeding away scenario, as well. We slowed to a stop and Good Cop got out of the passenger side door with a big shit eating grin on his face. These guys make less than $400 a month, so to score $35 off some gringo is like hitting the lottery.
He walked up casually as I was fussing with the bills in my tight front pocket, not bothering to be subtle at all as a little old lady stood with her poodle on the sidewalk watching the commotion. As I gave him the “shake” he patted my shoulder with his left hand like we were old buddies. “Now, you drive safely, ok pal? And don’t forget to get back to your hotel to get those papers.”
“Thanks, boss,” I replied with a dry smile.
The next day after I had finished taking care of some last minute load lightening, I was tearing north along the Rio de Plata to get well into Uruguay by night fall. There’s a ferry that heads across the Plata into Montevideo, but it was booked that morning, and the next one didn’t leave until midnight. I still shy away from pulling into major South American cities in the dark of night.
A German rider I met in Ushuaia had told me that this stretch of highway was one of the most “expensive” in South America. He’d been chiseled out of over $200 by the highway cops along here for everything from not having a fire extinguisher (ol' Red was finally going to come in handy!) to not having the right insurance papers. I had spent two hours in the internet cafe in Rio Gallegos making some high quality fraud insurance papers, so I wasn’t going to fall victim to THAT ploy!
As I sped through the rolling hills north of Buenos Aires, I came up behind a slow moving family van trying to make its way up a short hill. I quickly zipped around them over the double yellow line and made my way up and over the crest of the hill. This is par for the course in South American driving. Everybody does it.
As I came down the back side of the hill, I saw a police road block ahead, but I was ready. Fire Extinguisher? Check! Fraudulent Insurance Papers? Check! In fact, the only thing I was nervous about was the broken turn signal lens on the front right side that I had left broken on purpose after I ran over that little girl in Bolivia. It was my “Drive Safely” daily reminder.
As I rolled up to the cops, they motioned both to me and to the van behind me to pull over. There were three cops in total on the scene. One who was busily extorting cash from a few BA rich kids on the way home from the beach in the other lane, one in my lane who was now talking to the folks in the van behind me, and the boss, who was perched in the passenger seat of the dilapidated squad car to my right. He had one foot sticking out the door onto the gravel and was fanning himself with some papers in the late day sun. He reminded me of Boss Hogg from the Dukes of Hazzard.
The cop in my lane gave a loud “Muchas Gracias!” to the carload behind me and patted their hood as they drove away. He walked up to me and asked me to turn off the engine and follow him. We walked over to Boss Hogg who informed me that I was guilty of a major traffic violation and would have to pay 350 pesos ($135) in cash on the spot. I just laughed to myself and said, “Sorry, I don’t understand.”
Cop #2, who by now reminding me of Roscoe P. Coltrane, was saying, “Well, we just asked the car behind you if you had passed them on the hill back there, and they said yes, so you are guilty, so you have to pay the fine.” I could almost imagine him saying, “Idn’t dat right, Boss? Ah gih, gih, gih, gih…” Oh, Roscoe.
“I didn’t pass anyone! If you didn’t see me, how can you say I’m guilty?”
Roscoe flashed me a torn piece of newspaper with a name and address scrawled in the margin. “Well, we have the address of the witnesses. We can just give this to the judge as evidence, if you like.” These were definitely not students of logic nor district attorneys, but they were cops and I was a gringo and they had all day and I did not. Oh, and they also had my license by now. Stupid…
“Yeah, so that’ll be 350 pesos, Mr. Gringo,” oinked Boss Hogg.
I laughed again, and told him I didn’t have it. I was going to Uruguay and had cashed out all my Argentine pesos in Buenos Aires. Sorry, he was SOL this time!
He sent me back to the bike to try to make me sweat some. I sat in the saddle and sucked on my little water hose thing with a smug look on my face. I was going to show them. They couldn’t get cash out of this little gringo!
After ten minutes, Boss Hog called me back over. “Well, if you don’t have the money, what do you have?” I always keep my real billfold in a leg wallet, far from the probing eyes and hands of cops and robbers alike. I took out my day wallet, the one filled with expired credit cards, a few dollars in cash, and my high quality Bogota-Issued Student ID Card. I looked in the wallet anticipating to find just a few bucks. I was wrong.
That morning I had put a fifty note in there for my final gas fill-up before crossing into Uruguay. The cop was looking in the wallet too, and promptly said, “That’ll do,” as he motioned me to put the bill in his hand.
I reeled in anger, and handed over the note. As he took it, I said, “You know, my buddy had said this was the most expensive stretch of highway in Argentina, and he was right!”
Boss Hogg and Roscoe only oinked more some more and replied, “That's right! Ah, gih, gih, gih, gih..”
Uruguayan Models
Tacuarembo, Uruguay -- Funny how dark it gets once the sun actually goes down. Down in Patagonia the sun never really set. It just sort of smeared across the horizon for a few hours before fading into a dull glow. Here in Uruguay, things are a little more dramatic. The sun set an hour ago, and since then I’ve just been following the faint white line on the side of the road through the complete darkness to make sure I actually stay on it – the road, that is.
As I pull into the crossroads town of Tacuarembo a hundred kilometers short of the Brazilian border, I put up my antennae for a place to stay. At this point, I’m pretty low on funds and don’t want to change too much money into Uruguayan pesos. Why bother if I’m only in country for the night?
On the outskirts of town, I see a small bed and breakfast on the side of the road and pull in. The sign out front says El Refugio, the Refuge, and that’s just what I’m needing at this point. The windows and doors are wide open and I see a well-dressed man inside talking on the phone. Even for a bed and breakfast, the front parlor is surprisingly casual, so I refrain from just walking right on in; instead, I give a soft knock.
The man, still on the phone, opens the door with a curious “can I help you?” look on his face. “Is there a room available?” I ask in Spanish. He furrows his brow quizzically, as a small child pokes her head out from behind his right leg. Hmmmmm…
He hangs up the phone before replying with a polite smile, “I’m sorry, but this is not a hotel.” I apologize for the confusion, but inquire why the sign and parking lot in front of the house. It seems that’s just the way he likes it.
I ask futilely if there’s any place I can camp nearby, suggestively eyeing his huge side yard and ample barn in the back. By this time his wife is standing in the doorway also with another small girl in tow. They are all well-dressed for 10 pm on a Tuesday night, but then again this is Uruguay, the closest thing to Argentina without actually being in Argentina. Even the Uruguayan flag shares the same baby blue and white color scheme with a shining sun symbol as Argentina’s. When Argentina’s economy crashed four years ago, Uruguay’s went down with it.
I make a step backwards to excuse myself and let them resume their foreigner-free evening, but the father is intrigued and asks what the hell I’m doing out here at this time of night. I provide my by-now-very-smooth-sounding explanation of who I am and what I’m doing (American, motorcycle, year long trip, etc.) and offer my hand and name, “Eduardo.” He takes my hand with a big smile and informs me he is also an Eduardo. Small world.
Without much more hesitation, his eyes widen and he asks me if I like “For-Te.” I admit I don’t even know what he’s talking about, let alone if I like it. He shows surprise and repeats emphatically, “For-Te? For-Te? No conoces For-Te?” You don’t know For-Te? He motions me to follow him with the excitement of a school boy, and leads me back behind the house to the unusually long barn.
Uruguayans are renown for having similar tastes to their southern neighbors, but in larger proportions. They also drink yerba mate, a hot, bitter herbal drink, but out of Big Gulp sized cauldrons, not the modestly sized cups of the Argentines. Maybe it’s over-compensation for hundreds of years of living in Argentina’s tall shadow. I mean, can you name anything distinctly Uruguayan? Anyway, I was about to learn other aspects of their culture run in similar proportions.
As we approach the barn, I make out a sign above the door and finally realize what the heck he’s been talking about. As if it was just stolen from the dealership showroom on Cerrillos Rd. in Santa Fe, a huge FORD sign looms over my head as I’m led into the dark barn.
For-Te. Ford T. Ford Model T? Oh, you’ve got to be kidding…
With the flip of a huge switch right out of Dr. Frankenstein’s Lab he unveils his own mad life’s passion. For the last ten years he’s been buying up every Ford Model T he can find, and he’s found them all right here in Uruguay. In all, there must be over 20 cars, most in running order, and tens of thousands of other items -- antique signs, trinkets, and other bits of evidence of a good, healthy obsession.
I ask if the he normally opens the “museum” to the public, and he gives me a funny look. “This isn’t a museum, but some people would like it to be,” referring to a handful of collectors who have come through over the years offering him huge sums of money for some of the cars and other memorabilia.
He takes me through the story of a few of the T’s, and tells me of his real dream: to drive one all the way to Detroit for the T’s 100th Anniversary in a few years. He swears it’ll make the journey. “These cars were built to last,” he says proudly fondling the arched front fender of the pride of his collection, a 1912 limousine with the original wood paneling, trim, and fully functional microphone system to inform the chauffer when to stop.
As he dims the lights as we walk out, I ask him again about a place to camp near by. He gives a teasing look through his enormous side yard, as if looking for the best place to tell me to throw down my bed roll, but in the end gives me directions to the town’s riverside park. Maybe he’s nervous of me jumping in one of his prize T’s and beating him back to Detroit in it, or maybe he just doesn’t like strangers camping in his yard.
Either way, I thank him for the tour and putter off into the night looking for a place to lay my head and contemplate yet another bizarre road side attraction in this fabulous land.
Portuguese for Beginners
Sao Paulo -- Welcome to Brazil. The land where mangos fall from the sky, where dancing is mandatory, and where you have no idea what the hell anybody is saying. Well, that is, unless you are Brazilian.
Although the people born in the most populous country in South America CLAIM they speak Portuguese, even the Portuguese I met had a hard time understanding them. With enough coaching and utter obliteration of twelve months of intensive Spanish learning, even I began understanding the Brazilans, but only after mastering a few important rules.
Rule #1 – R’s are H’s
Don’t argue! I know what you THINK you know, but all is not what it seems in Brazil. Although you THINK you hear the words “hapido” and “huta,” what is really being said is “rapido” (fast) and “ruta” (road). This especially comes in handy when you are having a conversation about music and someone asks you if you like Hockey. Hockey? Oh, you mean ROCK! Of course I like rock…
Rule #2 – All words that end in hard consonants actually end in E’s.
As you may have noticed in the Hockey example, I didn’t say “do you like hock?” No, that would be too easy, you pathetic American. No, the real pronunciation for “rock” is “hockey.” That is because you never want to leave hard consonant sounds alone on the end of a word. It was only after learning Rule 1 and 2 together that I figured out why “Hatchey ina Hummy” was a friend’s favorite U2 album. Oh, you mean “Rattle and Hum!”
Rule #3 – D’s are J’s or G’s
Ask for a Vodka and Soda, and I’m afraid you are out of luck. Change it to a Vodgeka, and the bartender will stop looking at you funny.
Rule #4 – X’s are SH’s
When I first arrived in Sao Paulo, I had to call a friend’s mother to get in touch with him. Luckily, she spoke perfect English. Unfortunately, however, she needed to give me directions and all the street names were in Portuguese. No matter how slow she said it, I could not understand why all these SH sound words had X’s in them. I finally had to ask a stranger to talk to her and write down the names for me so I would recognize them while driving.
Rule #5 – Expêçt funny symbõls õver yõur letters.
Although they will send you into a mild panic at first, the funny symbols over what seem to be half the letters in Portuguese actually do serve a purpose, despite seeming like evil creations of Brazilian linguists for the sole purpose of confusing ignorant outsiders.
Rule #6 – You HAVE to SPEAK in UPS and DOWNS or NO one WILL unDERstand YOU.
Portuguese is known as the sung language, and with good reason. Even the most simple of statements are said in a sing-songy up and down manner. Throw in some good deep nasal whines and you’ll start fitting right in.
The Real World?
Some people along the way have asked "what's it like to be back in the real world?" or something like that. To be honest, I have a hard time discerning which world is more real, or if they are really all that different for one to be able to draw such a distiction. When you ask the people in South America what world they think is more "real," they might have a much different opinion than your average American.
Now, I know when that quesiton is posed to me, it is more in reference to the "real world" that all of us must endure. So maybe the real quesiton being asked to me is, "What's it like to be back to reality, where you'll have to work, wash your own dishes, pay bills, take on responsibility, and be more than a wealthy tourist living off the strength of the all-mighty dollar in thris world countries?"
If THAT is the question being posed then, I might reply, "Heavy." I hate to say I've been spoiled for the last year, but you all know it's true. However, that is NOT to say that one cannot make that lifestyle of perpetual travel and adventure their own reality. In fact, I met quite a few "professional" travelers along the way. Some were trustafarians, some hippies, and some just smart and opportunistic. And to be honest, I can't make some blanket judgement of all those people as a whole. Sure, some were leaches, some were sadly searching for their own idea of perfection, but others were just kind-hearted people with an undying thirst for knowledge and experience.
I hope the other people that met me along the way will put me in that last category, because if there is one thing I learned on this 14 month odyssey, it's that life is too short to not chase your dreams, no matter what part of the planet they make take you to.
When I set out on this journey, I posed a rhetorical question on the About Ed page of this website. I asked whimsicially if a journey of this magnitude would get at the itch for travel that I'd been trying to scratch since I was a kid. On the same page, I answered the question playfully, "Then I look and wonder, 'Hey, what's over there?'" Now that I'm back, I can answer my own rhetorical question with more certainty.
In short, NO. If anything, all this seeing and living and wondering and wandering has driven my thirst for travel to new extremes. Traveling doesn't scratch the itch of the travel bug; it just makes it more intense. The more you see and experience, the more you realize how much there really is to see and experience. That's just how big the world is.
So, coming back to those of you who are wondering how I'm adjusting to life again in the real world, I'll just simply reply that the world is what you make it, and I think I'm going to make mine even bigger and seemingly more surreal through travel and adventure as the years go on. Some things are just in your blood, and a need to travel and learn is in mine.
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