Today was quite an action packed day.
It started out with going to customs. Juan and I both overslept. And guess what? We got out of our beds and came out of our doors at exactly the same time. We dropped off his wife at her work and went to the customs at 8PM. They told me that the process to clear my name will take at least 2 days and a paperwork from Transit Customs office, and 3 mechanics pledging that my car is no longer functional. This obviously complicated quite a few things.
We went to the Transit Customs office and they said that all we need is for me to write a note with “Interdiccion” written on it and sign it. That’s it. That was quite a relief. I had told the Rent a Car guys from yesterday to come and pick me up at 9AM. We got back home at 9, and the guy was outside waiting for us. We told him to wait an hour because we still needed to fill out some paperwork. He went back to the office with the car.
We weren’t to be done in an hour. The man didn’t know how to type, and he could write a letter every 3 seconds. So his brother came by and helped type up the interdiccion letter I dearly needed. It took about an hour for him to get to Juan’s house, and another hour to type it up. It was the last time I saw him.
We went to the Trasit Customs house and it turns out the boss named Roberto went to UCLA for 6 months some 15 years ago. And he still spoke great English. And it turns out he didn’t know any English before he got there. He says he had a great teacher, but I was still very impressed. If only I could have done the same for my Spanish. We were there for about an hour and Roberto did his work well like a true professional. He says he absolutely loved California, but he can’t go back because now he has a job and family.
We were there for about an hour and a half because they also needed a note from Juan saying he’s gonna keep the car. So I can leave the country now without my car, but after 6 months when my permit for my car expires, the government is going to come by Juan’s house and claim the car. Everything is in Juan’s hands now. Roberto took my title and my temporary entrance papers.
So it was at this point that I started to feel really bad. My car situation was done. I would get to Ushuaia by rental car, and leave my defunct car in Rio Gallegos. I could easily be home by the end of the week, weather permitting. But there was great responsibility on Juan’s part, although it was clear that he could take as many parts from the car as he could. I hope the government doesn’t give him a hard time.
So I had lunch at Juan’s house and said my good byes to the kids as they were heading to school, from 1:30 PM to 6PM. A couple of the youngest of the 4 he had (1 more coming) gave me long hugs. I went to the rental place around 2PM and gave Juan the heartiest hug I have ever given anyone in this trip. If there ever was an angel looking over me, I am quite sure he showed himself through Juan.
During the drive, I started to think about my car a lot. It had become as much part of the trip as I had been. And I realized that the fact that I was driving another car made me almost forget about how hard this trip was. I am scared that I will not feel accomplished when I get to Ushuaia. I am certainly completing what I set out to do: driving to the end of the world. But because this car is obviously having a lot easier time in this weather and road conditions, I didn’t feel like it was all too hard at all.
But at the same time, I had felt the same at Chile. If Ushuaia was at the end of Chile’s wonderful Panamaerica highways, certainly I would have feared the same. So I am quite happy with the fact that the car situation that I had worried about is all but done. By tomorrow, I hope to be totally done with the car part of the trip. I very much fear the same thing that I had read about in Mark Mchatton’s book, where he said he feared that all of it would feel anticlimatic. I feel the same way. But how would I feel at the end?
So the drive today went along with a ‘driver’ by name only, mostly because it was about a hundred dollars cheaper to do so. But it takes away from the whole feel of the trip because he’s got the car papers and I only have to go through the migration parts of border crossings. And he has made the trip before, so it feels very much different. We crossed into Chile, then waited a few minutes for a ferry, took the 20 minute ferry across and drove almost 100 miles in Chile. The first 10 miles or so were good. The rest of it allowed me to go only about 60 km per hour. Even then it was bumpy as hell. I started to remember how hard this trip has been.
I got to Rio Grande here at about 9PM, and would have kept driving to Ushuaia, save for some gentleman that my companion had talked to and said that it won’t be a good idea to go at night right now. So we decided to stay here and leave for Ushuaia tomorrow.
So obviously, tomorrow is the day of truth. Tomorrow is truly the end of the world. Tomorrow is when I find out if this trip was worth it all.