| Twice the
mechanic made the trip into Rio Di Janeiro, and twice he was unable to
find a match. Finally he found a clutch plate of approximately the right
size and sent it to a machine shop, where it was slightly modified to fit
correctly. Throughout this period, I stopped by the mechanic every day,
only to be told each time that my car was almost ready and that surely
I would have it the next day. On the morning of the ninth day, my car was
ready.
Despite my
apprehension, the modified part worked beautifully, and I made excellent
progress across the heartland of Brazil, past Sao Paulo and southwest to
Foz de Iguacu. When I was about two hundred miles from Foz de Iguacu I
gave a ride to a young Brazilian couple standing by the side of the road
with their bags. I was tired after having already driven for eight hours
that day and thought the conversation might prove a good distraction and
keep me awake and alert. It turned out to be a wise decision, because in
addition to sharing my nomadic instincts (they made their living moving
from place to place selling handmade jewelry), they helped me avoid crashing
into the back of a beer truck that jackknifed in front of us. We had been
traveling a small, curvy two-lane highway that leads to Foz de Iguacu,
and right when I was leaning over to change the CD I heard one of them
blurt a Brazilian expletive I will not repeat, and which directed my immediate
attention back to the road. About fifty yards and two cars ahead of me
a clearly overloaded truck, stacked high with yellow cases of beer, shook
violently and spun halfway around as it spilled its cargo across the highway.
We screeched to a halt and watched the chaos unfold, narrowly avoiding
an accident. Traffic backed up in both directions, and as soon as it was
clear no one was seriously injured, the looting began. People raced out
of their cars and began grabbing as many cartons or loose bottles as they
could. Not eager to see the aftermath unfold, I shifted into four-wheel
drive and drove off the side of the highway, along a ditch, and around
the blocked area. The rest of the drive to Foz de Iguacu was routine and
accident free.
After seeing
the splendor of Foz de Iguacu and saying goodbye to my new friends who
gave me a particularly attractive metal necklace they had made themselves
(and which I still wear everyday) as token of their appreciation for the
ride, I had a relatively uneventful drive to Buenos Aires across the vast
grassland known as the Pampas. Once in Buenos Aires I was reunited with
Ben, who had left Brazil a couple of months earlier but returned
to South America for the last leg of my journey.
South of Buenos
Aires the driving got considerably more difficult. Large scale flooding
had completely submerged parts of the country’s main north-south highway
and forced me to take a series of poorly maintained local routes,
which were themselves often flooded with two or three feet of standing
water. There were a few close calls where the water was beyond the tops
of the wheels and perilously close to the air intake, at which point the
engine would have flooded. I resolved to outfit my car with a snorkel for
the exhaust and intake prior to another trip.
A little water
wasn’t going to stop me at this point, and I continued on to Peninsula
Valdez, a remarkable area of wildlife that I had dreamed of visiting ever
since seeing it featured in an IMAX movie some years earlier, even though
at fifteen years old I could not have fathomed the chain of circumstances
that eventually led me there.
To put it simply,
Peninsula Valdez is a stunning area of great physical beauty home to many
animals, such as Elephant Seals, Sea Lions, and Southern Right Whales.
The center
of the peninsula has one of the largest continental depressions in the
world, and is mined for salt by locals. The coastline is rocky and uneven,
although it is broken sporadically by beaches. While on a tour of
one of the beaches, we came upon a group of Elephant Seals sleeping and
snoring, moving their obese bodies only infrequently. They moved in a comical
and awkward fashion – they shifted their weight by contorting their bodies
and then hopping forward onto their bellies. This undulating motion, when
undertaken with effort, moved them along about as fast as an adult might
casually walk.
Despite this,
on the advice of tour guides we maintained a safe distance of about fifteen
meters from the seals. One seal, a large male with uncommon energy, became
agitated and began to hop rapidly toward our group in one-meter bursts.
Rapidly is a very relative term here, but even so, the sight of a three-meter
long, one-ton seal headed our way frightened most on the tour group into
moving away in a hurry. Ben and I stood our ground as the giant came within
four meters, before it seemed content with the results of its display of
force and moved back. Coming into close contact with Elephant Seals in
their natural habitat along the rocky shores of Valdez was an entirely
different experience for me – standing my ground as the aggressive male
Elephant Seal bounced over on its stomach to have a closer look was a powerful
thrill.
Leaving the
natural splendor of Valdez behind, I continued south and saw Patagonia,
and saw Patagonia, and saw Patagonia. Patagonia is endless and barren.
I drove for hundreds of kilometers and saw only endless plains filled with
thick-wooled sheep and marked by decrepit fences. As I drove further south,
I finally began to see the end of my long journey ahead of me, and to believe
that it could and would be over. Each mile unleashed a flood of memories,
as I found myself visualizing the lush jungle landscape of Nicaragua and
the chaotic streets of Caracas while I passed the unchanging blur of identical
countryside, my mind working to establish meaning and context across the
months and miles.
As I drew inexorably
closer to the Straits of Magellan and Tierra del Fuego, I came upon Puerto
San Julian, a small town in the southernmost part of Argentina situated
in a scenic and well-protected bay.
For this reason
both Magellan and Drake wintered here during their circumnavigations of
the globe. They took advantage of the location to rest, restock, and also
to execute various members of their crews for attempted mutiny. Apparently
some did not share Magellan’s and Drake’s enthusiasm for the cold and bleak
landscape and the seemingly futile, endless journey south.
After pausing
to look out at the bay and consider what life must have been like for Magellan
and his men all those centuries ago, huddled in makeshift shelters wearing
rough wool garments and eating coarse food, with no hope of ever returning
home alive, I got back in my car and began the final leg of my trip, glad
that it was the 21st and not the 16th century, and that I was driving and
not sailing.
The articles
below are Part I, Part II and Part III of To The End Of The World
by Charles Ragsdale:
To contact Charles
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