I’m quite disappointed that my car won’t be able to complete this journey with me. But I’m excited by the prospect of a new car. And fact of the matter is, it actually speeds up the process for me to go back home because this is starting to tax me.
At first I was fairly bummed out about this whole thing with the car blowing up. But now I’m becoming much more resilient and enthusiastic about the prospect of driving a rental car into Ushuaia. I watched the video of myself yesterday, waiting for a Godsend some 300 kilometers away for 3 hours. And I can see how nervous and frustrated I was about the car blowing up. And I look around me now, surrounded by such wonderful people that the whole car thing isn’t frustrating me as much anymore. I am more than optimistic now that I will reach my destination, which I set out to reach one way or another.
It’s somewhat hard now just trying to even think about what I went through yesterday. Looking back, it’s almost like a fairy tale come true. I cannot imagine being more envious of any other trip that anyone has ever taken because of the way my day went yesterday. I am very content with the way things worked out given the extreme situation I was in.
So I noticed that I was never able to write what happened yesterday. I waited for about 3 hours for the trailer to show up. It shouldn’t take more than that for the truck to drive 100 km and for a trailer to return 100 km to take me away. But it did. It never came. It was getting dark fast (I knew sun was to set at around 6PM through my GPS), and I was starting to contemplate camping out for the night. So it was around 4:30 PM that I decided to start asking other people driving by to help me out.
One of the ones I stopped along the road was a woman driving a pickup truck with her daughter. She worked for the official Argentinian highway patrol, not the kind that gives you tickets but the kind that helps you out when you’re in distress on the road. They had 2 spare tires on the back. She was going north and was telling me she can get to the city up north some 200km away, very close to the city I started out in. She couldn’t call anyone or radio anyone either because we were literally in the middle of nowhere. Even though I was couldn’t move and had no other option at the time, I didn’t like it. I decided to wait for another highway patrol that was heading south to help me.
The one I stopped at about 4:30PM looked like the the highway patrol I had stopped earlier. But it was a random man named Juan Carlo traveling with his daughter and his wife. I tell him that I’ve been waiting for 3 hours for a trailer that never came and that I need to get towed somewhere. He says he’s going to Rio Gallegos. I tell him that I’m going in the same direction and ask if I can’t just go all the way with him. Of course this was a HUGE proposition because Rio Gallegos was 300 miles away from where I was. He says he can pull me to the next station. That is a lot better than waiting in the middle of nowhere. I was 200 miles away from the closest civilization up north and 300 miles away from the closest civilization down south. Footprint’s put it best when they said that there’s less than 1 person to every 1 square km of Patagonia. It felt like it. There is absolutely nobody here.
It didn’t start out very well. He tied a left over tow rope with some other rope but after about a mile, it snapped. I thought he would just give up and say sorry I’m gonna get going, but no. He says ah, the rope is too thin. So he pops out a thicker rope and we try again. While we were there, though, we happened to have pulled in front of a van that was having trouble starting up again. So the two of us went back and pushed that van for about 100 feet while the guy turned the ignition. It was ‘Little Miss Sunshine‘ moment in real life.
Later we stopped to get gas. I was so gracious that I paid the some $33 in gas for Juan. It was dead chilly. Not only was it cold, but it was windy as hell. We also stopped because apparently, he was caravaning with his brother, Raul. He was in another pickup truck and was in front of Juan, and had stopped at around San Julian to wait for us.
You have almost none of the luxuries of being in a tow truck. You need to remain in your own car to maneuver, and you’re without power so you have no 1) power steering, 2) power braking, and 3) no air conditioning. 1) Meant I had to turn the wheel extra hard around hills. 2) Meant I had to really, really hard to brake anywhere. And 3) meant that I was under the mercy of the weather outside, which at night drops to about 15 to 20 degrees.
One thing about being towed with a rope is the fact that the car in front of you has complete control of how fast you go. So when you’re starting out at 0, the guy ahead of you is going 5-10 miles an hour and he tugs you hard. Your car attempts to catch up, and eventually, after tugging hard 2 or 3 times, your car will go fast enough for the car in front to be able to pull you without having to tug hard all the time. If the speed and altitude remains constant, the pull of the car in front is not noticeable at all.
But of course that doesn’t happen. Altitude changes, you have to pass slow trucks, and make turns, and adjust for bad road conditions, among other things of just simply changing speeds inadvertenly. My head was going through some serious whiplashing.
The first station that I saw along the horizon was about 60 miles away. We got there in about an hour and the guy started slowing down a bit. I could see in front of me that he’s talking to his wife. We never stopped and instead picked the speed back up. It was at this point that I knew he had completely committed himself to taking me to Rio Gallegos. I almost cried. No having to wait all night at some gas station for a mere promise of a tow truck. I was heading to civilization.
But it wasn’t an easy journey by any account. I drove in extreme cold and steered hard and braked hard. We drove like this for 6 hours and 280 miles. It was the 2nd hardest drive I’ve ever done, second only to the one in Colorado. I hate the way it sounds. It sounds so simple, and there is no other way to describe it. It’s an overwhelming mixture of feelings, wondering if you’ll make it, if the fender of the cars will hold at every hard tug, if something else will go wrong. And you’re consistently trying to keep the car in front of you at around 2-3 feet. For 6 hours. It’s not easy by any accounts, but the third sentence makes it sound so easy.
But I made it. The car had stalled at 1:30 PM, Juan Carlo found me at 4:30PM and I was at Rio Gallegos at 11PM. We parked my car at a gas station for the night and left. I hopped along in his car, having given him my last free cigar and at this point handed the ‘bomberos’ or chocolate sweets to his wife. We left thinking we were going to try and find me a place to sleep. Instead, a simple question to ask if I can’t stay at his house turned everything around. The spouses looked at each other for a few seconds and said a couple things and told me that they can do that. I arrived at his house around 11:30PM.
Along the way, I never saw any tow truck that the trucker was supposedly going to call for me heading in my direction or anything.
I was dead tired at this point. I had woken up at around 9:30 AM, but I was worn out from the mere stress of the day. But the family was just getting started. They got some wine, pumped up some music from both the computer and the tv, which they had just gotten a dvd player for, and was having a good time. I felt like I was intruding a bit at this point, but they seemed to be happy and jubilant to just be in each other’s company that I really enjoyed this moment. I was just sitting, half watching a dubbed version of Stuck on You, when Raul’s wife decided to sit right next to the TV and breast feed. I was struck by how inviting this family was and how comfortable they all seemed to have a total stranger in their house. I was so tired that I crashed for the night at around 12:30.
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I woke up at around 7:30AM, mostly because my stomach hasn’t been feeling very well for the past week or two. I’m fairly nervous and this trip is stressing me out enough that my stomach is suffering a fair amount because of it. I use the restroom as a morning routing nowdays.
Today, I ended up going to pick up my car from the gas station. Juan picked up his brother and we went and drove my car back to Juan’s house. I hope it’s the last time we’ll have to go through that routine of having to be towed.
I took out most of the things from the car and I think Juan and his brother Raul enjoyed the spactacle of witnessing all the things that I packed in my car. I gave away almost everything to them that I wouldn’t be able to carry in a plane with me. The big items are namely the mechanic’s tool set that I bought for the trip but never used, the self inflating mat, the rechargeable lantern, and the sleeping bag. They took most of everything that I had brought almost solely for the trip.
Although I had known it would happen all along, it was quite a different feeling once it did happen. Soon, most of the things that I gave away became part of their house immediately. The kids started playing around with my emergency whistle, and Juan started asking me questions about how things like the rechargeable lantern and the inflatable mattress work.
Juan and I spent most of the day looking for a rental car. I finally settled on the cheapest one I could find that had cars for hire for tomorrow and it still cost me $400 (some 1300 pesos) for 2 days. It would have been cheaper but I only get 200km per day and to pay for more. It was quite a decision to make. But I was determined to finish the journey driving.
We went to the Aduana but it was closed. Apparently, they open at 7AM and close at 3:30 PM, quite an odd time table. I need to go there tomorrow to clear my name and then, who knows? I have no idea what’s going to happen.
Juan’s brother Raul actually practiced TaeKwonDo. He seems quite proud of it. He had certificates and such on the walls and I could read out some Korea on the certificates. He’s a first degree black belt, and I think he felt somewhat apprehensive about the fact that I’m second degree. But he says he competed nationally and practiced for 3 hours every day and was very careful about his diet and didn’t smoke. I am quite sure he could have easily kicked my ass now or even when we were both at our primes. At the lunch table, he joked around, asking me if I want to sparr after lunch.
There was a lady here, who says she’s 21, who was actually kind of cute but was obviously at least a bit tipsy. And if I’m not mistaken, she started hitting on me a bit, talking about how she’s worked at such and such place for 5 years and she’s doing this and that. I mostly ignored her and pretended that I didn’t understand for the most part. She laughed heartily at the funny pictures and videos.
One thing about this family which may be true of all Argentinians is that they’re extremely friendly. Less than 24 hours ago I had barely been introduced to them and they were already serving me dinner and wondering if everything was ok with me. The kids are very attached and friendly with me. In fact, almost so much so that I can’t even take the time to catch up on my journal. I don’t know how else to express my gratitude other than to say thank you very much. I could certainly not have asked for more. I definitely regretted not having more command of Spanish.