South America
Descent into Montana-like paradise (Drive Day 215: Jan 30, 2004)
We leave the swarming stillness of Laguna Blanca, flamingos still sleeping with their heads tucked under wing. The drive is hypnotizingly beautiful, sun dancing between pine trees lush in comparison to what we’ve left behind. This is gentle, welcoming Argentina again – luring us to the town of San Junin de los Andes with its cowboys and campground on the banks of the river Chimehuin.
I’ve never seen water so clear, each pebble on the river bed sparkling with color. It is irresistible but but there is nothing gentle about this water. We wade out in dusty shorts and plunge in, yelling “Timber!” The force of the current swirls around us like fallen logs, tugging and slurping at our quickly puckering bodies.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
Laguna Blanca National Park (Drive day 214: Jan 29, 2004)
I can’t imagine driving two days without seeing another vehicle in the United States. So I certainly don’t expect to find a national park all to ourselves. But in Argentina we do. In truth we are surrounded by life; avian creatures much more adapted to the cold and altitude than we are.
The sky is savage here, even in its deceptive, lavender hues. The steel grey clouds swirl and twist above flattened earth. The volcanic mountain remnants meet the lake in ripples, lips and curves like frosting on an old, dry cake. There are no campgrounds here, or showers. So we strip down naked in front of ostriches and pour gallons of chlorinated water over our heads as the sun sets, swatting at the hordes of primeval mosquitoes that emerge out of nowhere at the smell of intruding human.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
Offroading (Drive Day 213: Jan 28, 2004)
Highway 40 has become our new master, but we break off on the way to Barrancas just because the truck can handle it. And somehow it would be a shame not to explore the vastness and isolation. So tonight we don’t bother looking for campgrounds and revel in the solitude instead.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
Shimmering seas of yesteryear (Drive Day 212: Jan 27, 2004)
The last time I saw flamingoes was in Peru and involved high-altitude hallucinations I’d rather not repeat. So I am startled and a little nervous finding them here, 75 kms from the town of Malargue. But this country has every other conceivable natural wonder, why not a huge expanse of dried-up salt water in the middle of the desert?
It’s blindingly beautiful and the altitude is high enough that I do, for a moment, dream of ice skating across the crystalized surface.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
Understanding mate (Drive Day 211: Jan 26, 2004)
Omit the accent mark above the e, as this WordPress font does, and the word mate conjures up Australian friendliness. Which actually makes it a not-so-terrible typo. Because friendliness is what this ritual of tea drinking demands. I’m not used to sharing lip germs with strangers but what I’m beginning to learn is that strangers are just friends you haven’t met. And in Argentina that describes every person in a municipal campground who ambles over for a look at the Ford F350. It’s ugly-American rude to refuse a sip from a shared silver straw. Never mind that the stuff tastes like soaked twigs and dirt – it’s the comradery that counts. And the farther from civilization this road trip takes us, the more that human connection matters.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
Malbec Mecca (Drive Day 210: Jan 25, 2004)
I am no oenophile but I know the tannins and sugars in reds will punish me with pounding headaches. Today I will I suffer anyway. The Malbec capital of the world is achingly beautiful and sophisticated – all accessible by rented bicycle and foot.
If the always sunny skies and not-quite-nosebleed altitude prove anything it is that perfection is possible.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
The mothership of wine: Mendoza (Drive Day 209: Jan 24, 2004)
The backroads end in the sophisticated destination that is Mendoza. Wine is big business here but that doesn’t keep it from being as beautiful as any city I’ve seen.
We arrive as the sun is setting and in any other country that would mean a mad scramble to find someplace safe to camp. But even though most tourists who come here stay at resorts and fabulous hotels, Mendoza still has a municipal campground and locals friendly enough to point us in the right direction.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
Why Guacho Gil never worries for smokes (Drive Day 208: Jan 23, 2004)
Just as suddenly as a mountain goat emerges from a foggy mountainside, we are back in lowland farming country. The crop is familiar; we could be driving through rural North Carolina.
When Gary hops out to photograph a tobacco barn a man on a motorcycle pulls up to chat. His white baseball cap has a picture of Che – of course. Rains this year are too late and too little, I learn, and each stalk of tobacco hanging from the rafters makes four packs of cigarettes. I want to think Che would have donated a cig or two to Guacho Gil along his motorcycle sojourn through this part of Argentina, but then again, he might have bummed some from the shrines instead. Who’d have known?
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
Under a wide, brilliant sky (Drive Day 207: Jan 22, 2004)
It is impossible to over-describe the colors of this landscape. The mountains are somehow more resplendent than the altiplano of Bolivia, speckled with cheery yellow wildflowers. The light that shines through banks of fog is iridescent celadon. The roads are almost as miserable as Bolivia’s at times, but truckers here honk before every hairpin turn to warn approaching drivers. In one day we dodge foxes, mountain goats, wild llamas and domesticated sheep. Between cities the campgrounds are DIY—and we heat day-old empanadas on the engine block.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
Giving thanks to Difunta Correa (Drive Day 206: Jan 21, 2004)
Those same truckers who leave cigar stumps for Gaucho Gil? They also festoon their rearview mirrors, mud flaps and grilles with red ribbons honoring another folk saint the church wishes would go away. This time it’s a woman named Difunta Correa (literally defunct or deceased Correa) and legend has it she was so dedicated to her forcibly recruited army husband that she and her infant son followed behind him when she learned he had been wounded. Thing is, she didn’t have enough water and guachos found her flat on her back in the desert, three days dead. The miracle part is that her baby was alive, nursing at her breast, near the village of Villecito.
So instead of bottles of booze, devotees leave her plastic litre bottles of water and give thanks to her for everything good that has ever happened to them or that they hope happens. At her largest shrine they stack model houses, expired license plates and photos of children and you can buy stickers and wax replicas, exposed breast and all. We settle for one of the mirror ribbons thanking Difunta Correa for protecting our Ford.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
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