Wrap up and learned lessons

We finished our trip and we are glad that we dared to make it. It was not as difficult as we thought before departure. In fact, having a car in good conditions and your papers in order, the only thing that is needed is a credit card and the will to keep moving forward.

We planned our trip based on the available information, and this proved to be way too conservative. As a consequence we overestimated the risks, carrying stuff such as clothes and tools that were not needed. On the other hand, I failed to anticipate how difficult would it be to drive in the mountains of Colombia. I should have changed the brake fluid ahead of time, and this problem affected us while at the top of the mountains. In any case, it is never too late to learn new lessons.

Our only guide was a set of standard paper maps covering the entire continent. We did not have a GPS or even a cell phone, and we didn't need either of them. Alicia is now an expert interpreting maps, and thanks to her we didn't get lost more frequently. The biggest problem was driving inside the cities. Streets usually have their names on the map, but not posted on the street itself, therefore finding our way around was normally a serious challenge.

We were warned before departure about the risks of such a trip, with emphasis on certain countries having a bad record. However, we didn't experience a single incident. Not only that, but we were treated very well everywhere we went. Of course, we kept a low profile and that helped us, but we drove through all sort of roads and into smaller towns out of the beaten path all without a single problem. Based on our experience, all the warnings issued in the USA are completely out of proportion and should be disregarded.

Initially we felt like heroes trying to do some unbelievably daunting task, but once we started crossing countries and borders we realized that we were not alone in such a trip. There is a whole crowd of people actually driving throughout the continent, most of them from Latinamerican countries and Europe, and almost none from the USA. This is sad because people is unnecessarily affected by the negative advertising by the US media and government agencies.

In a trip like this you always have the opportunity to meet very interesting people and share their experiences. We were fortunate enough to meet people from different countries equally interested in learning as much as possible about Latinamerica, and we hope to see them again someday.

Regarding roads, our experience was mixed. The Panamerican Highway is in good shape with very few potholes. However, we choose to drive on secondary and minor roads, and in some cases we also drove on roads in construction. In those cases we exposed ourselves to some bad roads and, as consequence, we now need to replace the four shock absorbers in our car.

The best drivers are in Mexico. All seem to be well trained, and we felt very safe driving there. Chile is a close second in our ranking, also helped by their good roads. At the other end of the scale are Peru and Colombia, where everybody drives like a maniac. We are also feeling insecure in Argentina, where everybody drive unnecessarily fast.

We lost valuable time waiting for our car in Cartagena, Colombia. After that we decided to eliminate part of our tour through Colombia. Not only that but we also bypassed competely Machu Pichu and Bolivia. Our plan is to come back in a future trip to these parts of the world, which from Argentina will be a feasible trip.

The highlight of the trip was our sea voyage from Portobello, Panama, to Cartagena. I recommend it to everyoneprovided that you are equipped with motion sickness pills. Our journey through the San Blas Islands and later the high seas sail to Cartagena will remain for a while in our memories.

Finally, a word about iPad. We bought it hoping that it would save us some bulk and help us expedite our record keeping. It effectively is light and easy to carry around and, considering that we bought a refurbished one, worked without special problems. The iPad is designed to extract data from the Internet and is very good at that. However, as a data entry tool is extremely crude. The digital keyboard has limited functionality and handling pictures is more cumbersome than in a normal PC or MacBook.

Not all applications were upgraded to work on the iPad Operating System. For example, we found during the trip that Blogger, which we selected to create our blog, would not allow us to uplink pictures. That alone costed us bitter tears until we bought Blogsy, another application which allowed us to uplink pictures with some extra work.

Overall, had I known the iPad limitations, I would not have brought it in our trip.

To close this blog, thanks very much to all of you who wasted time reading about our adventures. We deeply appreciate your comments, and we always felt accompanied by you.

Your humble servants,

Alicia and Roberto

Some cactii in central Chile

 

 

Volcano Villarrica, South of Temuco

 

 

The seaside near Valdivia, a great place in Southern Chile

 

 

Going from Chile to Argentina we drove by the Puyehue National Park. The volcano Puyehue is the one that erupted last year and filled with ash most of Southern Argentina. Early in the morning we saw the ash piling up by the roadside on the Chilean side.

 

 

 

This used to be a blue lake on the Argentinian side. Now it is full of volcanic ash.

 

 

This is one of the first images we received from Argentina. The mountains peaks are more abrupt, also displaying the efect of the volcanic ash.

 

 

We entered Argentina by the Samoré Pass. After driving through Villa La Angostura, we had our first sight of the beautiful lake Nahuel Huapi, near Bariloche.