The Long Way Up

From Ushuaia to Vancouver

Archive for category Photography

Taco’s, tequila y mucho mas

Sep 3

Posted by Adele in Culture, Landscapes, People, Photography, Places, Travel | 7 Comments


I really can’t believe we are more than two thirds of the way through ‘the long way up..’ it seems a world away since we were camped in Ushuaia looking at the ridiculous journey ahead of us. Believe it or not before going into Colombia we considered selling the van! After so many problems and with it money dwindling, moral was low.. there were times where the small budget we live on was completely consumed by paying mechanic fee’s but we couldn’t do it. We had to finish what we started..

Central America we flew through.. with Honduras, El Salvador and Guatamala being the most dangerous countries in the trip we weren’t too keen exploring the wondrous countryside and we were pushed for time to reach Mexico to meet up with Carlo’s friend Pietro. So we crossed three countries in as many days, no serious problems, other than a corrupt cop who wanted to lock Carlo in his makeshift jail/shed at one point but I did get to sleep in my first motel!! It was late one night after we entered El Salvador, without anything to eat all day and completely exhausted, we couldn’t be bothered to find a parking spot so, driving through Santa Rosa de Lima, we were talked into staying the night in a bright ‘lime’ green motel by its owner.. it was lovely and clean, it had air con, a hot shower.. lime green walls (inside too?!), matching bed covers and in the headboard was a love heart mirror and little love heart headrests.. Yes it was that kind of motel but i slept soundly ;)


The motel dreams are made from...


We stuck to the west coast and entered Mexico on July 28th. Slept on yet another cliff edge this time in a huge thunder storm and spent 3days on the beach of Saladita, a recommended place by a fellow traveler, thanks Anna. We had a campsite to our selves as this place was deserted, which we liked as we generally don’t like people..

I did make the leap, skip, jump to Cancun to meet up with some friends for a few days and had a wonderful time playing with sea turtles and swimming in the Caribbean ocean… We even went to some Mayan ruins and a Cenote cave where you swim in a fresh water pool deep at the bottom of the cave. Other than this little getaway from my ‘spouse’, I must say we’ve had a lazy time in Morelia with Pietro, it’s been pretty much a month here now, really getting into all the homely comforts, the sofa, a ‘real’ kitchen, hot showers! all these little things I took for granted before… but having internet is a complete life killer as we’ve both been sucked in on catching up with the world, it killed our enthusiasm to go out and shoot.. So, I made myself get out the other day and capture some of Morelia’s qualities as it is a beautifully cultured city and Carlo even got off his big fat a** and did a shoot with Pietro which was pretty cool.

I call it “Pietro the couch jumping Super Genius!!” – he studies quantum physics, i think he can read minds… (some people think that’s what it actually means he can do..)

It hasn’t been a complete dos this past month, our Canadian visa’s have been granted, which means our final destination in Vancouver will be our home!

Stay tuned for the US post!! Cali here we come…..



Drift Wood beach

like i said, deserted..

View from our campsite

Working hard, doing his thang..

Drift wood beach

LiGHT in THE SaND

same same

our long way up favourite star

Morelia Life - Real Mexico

Morelia Life

Morelia musicans


BEHIND THE SCENES: “Pietro the couch jumping Super Genius!!”


BHTS "Pietro the couch jumping super genius!"

Princes of Italy

The final result

The adventurous life of a physicist.


The “Legendary” crossing and everything in between

Jul 25

Posted by Carlo in Landscapes, Photography, Places, Route, Travel | 2 Comments


Alright folks, here we are.

I know it’s been a while, but hey, we didn’t just mess around. I believe this last month has been the most intense of them all. And we like to show something interesting rather than just writing a post for the sake of doing it.

We knew the boat crossing had to come at some stage, but you’re never ready for something like this. Especially when our always incredibly small budget doesn’t really allow us to treat ourselves in any way, especially when we really need it: stressful moments.

So when you combine the worse and hottest weather we had in the whole trip together with driving many miles and shipping our beloved (and behated) Betsy on a Cargo boat, you soon realise that there wasn’t much time and mind space for creativity and pictures.

Having said that, definitely a lot happened in this last month.

We left Ecuador, crossed all Colombia, stayed two weeks in Cartagena to organise the shipment of the van, met up with Miky who traveled with us until Nicaragua, sailed to Panama, got the van back and drove to Nicaragua trough Costa Rica.

In between, all this (in no specific order):

• Stuck in the middle of nowhere in the Colombian highland, under a tropical storm, dark at night with the engine not able to cool down because of the very steep uphill mountain road, we then slept on the side of the road
• Spent two weeks in the most horrible climate ever in Cartagena, with unseen bureaucratic procedures to ship the van to Panama
• Sailed from Cartagena to Panama in the open ocean, puking my soul
• Snorkled with a shark
• Had to fix the transmission joint under a storm with just a screwdriver
• Seen 5 more mechanics
• Spent my 30th birthday in a mechanic shop
• Spent the day after my 30th birthday with an Ecuadorian family of 30 relatives dancing Macarena and what not
• Hitchhiked with a few truck drivers under the rain and in the middle of nowhere with the van down
• Had no shower for over two weeks
• Had a night shower and a pool bath on the roof of an authentic colonial palace, gently offered by Giuseppe, a 73 year old italian ex military now in Cartagena where he founded a school for disadvantaged kids, and his wife
• Got wasted on a desert island with the boat captain completely drunk, naked, with a starfish on his penis. And we almost sinked on the way back from the island to the boat, because the weight on the dinghy wasn’t properly distributed. You can imagine how funny it was to then watch the same drunk captain trying to lift the dinghy up on the boat.. Same guy who then eventually tried to “cure” a wound on the forehead of one of the passengers by pouring rum on it. He eventually brought us to Panama.
• Sailed in open ocean at night under a full thunder storm
• Had a fight with the guardian who had to release the van from the Colon Port, under pissing down rain, completely wet deep to my underwear
• Got drunk with a bunch of locals in Anton, a 200 people town in the middle of Panama, in a local bar with porn on the TV on the wall, and Elton John jukebox songs all over. But hey, 60 cents a beer? Adele and a prostitute were the only females in the bar.
• Biggest achievement of my life: finishing the Rubik cube while spending 5 days on a fantastic hostel on a beach, in front of the pacific ocean swinging in hammocks.


As usual, I’ll let you guess the rest of the story from the shots below. Stay tuned, the rest of Central America and Mexico are coming soon.




The first glance of Colombia, one of the most beautiful drive of the whole trip

A photographer's heaven. Landscapes don't usually get much better than this.

An open breach after climbing up a very steep mountain in the clouds

While Adele is hanging out of the van to take this one, a gigantic drop is underneath her camera..

Frames of life on the side of the road: #1

#2

#3

A breathtaking sunset in open ocean on the way to Panama

Enjoying the open ocean? Not exactly. The boat is swinging like a bi**h and everybody is just concentrating to avoid vomiting. So romantic.

Gypsy Moth, our ride.

Fish cooked on the BBQ, naked bath under the stars, starfish on penis and rum on wounds. Ah, desert islands..

Our best producer/photographer/advertising guru/agent on the boat doesn't want to be bothered while she's working very hard on her tan.

Storm is coming, boat is ready.

Kunas working in the San Blas

The Life Aquatic #1

The Life Aquatic #2

The Life Aquatic #3

The Life Aquatic #4

Entering Nicaragua. It's not always sunny beaches, palm trees and cocktails.

Miky aka "Diamante" aka "Merenda" aka "Il cocchiere" aka "The gringo who counts money at the hostel" aka "speedo"

Carlo's vs

Adele's vs

The biggest achievement of my life. By far.

A lost surfers beach. Betsy almost didn't make it back. Shot with the same first camera I started my passion in photography with! #1

#2

A little corner of paradise in Nicaragua we treated ourselves with before hitting the road again #1

#2

#3

Worldwide released advertising by Adele Thomas / Photographer and Wonderful Person

AAA. Looking for a working van. Desperately.

Jun 17

Posted by Carlo in Landscapes, People, Photography, Places, Route, Travel, Van, Video | 7 Comments


First off, I would like to introduce the third and final video we have created for Pisco Sin Fronteras: The Challenge. The idea was to challenge the wanabe volunteer, while also showing the diversity of the international people that come through PSF.
Take a look: (if you see a freaky looking Italian a couple of times and a wind swept English slangy Cornish girl.. we had to make up the numbers.. apparently..)



After one month of volunteering with PSF and putting together some videos, photography and helping out here and there with projects, it was time to get back on the road again.. It was sad saying goodbye to the cool and interesting people we had met, they had made our experience even more unique.


A quick jump in, jump out of Lima and we were back on course, heading north following the Peruvian coast. Spending our nights again in the sticks, the first night in particular was spent on a towering cliff top over looking a bay and the open ocean.. it was a lovely spot with nothing but dunes all around. We had parked reasonably close to the cliff edge on a slight angle which didn’t bother me at all until we were tucked in to sleep that night, waves were crashing into the rocks and it grew very dark, I suddenly felt very disorientated and all I could picture was the van sliding off the edge into sea… I felt like every movement might plunge me to my death! Not the best night sleep as you can guess…


At sunrise we drove on, the scenery stayed dry and dusty with desert dunes, sometimes mountainous, sometimes bumpy and flat. We were stopped by ‘every’ police officer along the way… which made the journey seem to take forever, (we should change the colour of the van to look like a taxibus!) but on the final one that got us, Betsy’s wouldn’t start up… when we turned the ignition it just clicked over.. this turned into 4 days living in a mechanics workshop in Truijjo, with replacing the ignition itself, which technically should have taken… hmm, around 3-4 hours! but we had to wait for the part to come in.


Around one week after, we were crossing into Ecuador. Greeted at the boarder with a warm welcome and given gifts?! That’s never happened before.. we instantly had a good impression about this country. It was clean, green and the people were so friendly. We stayed west passing banana fields and mountains until we entered into the national park where the land became blander in colour, but the ocean came back into view with stretches of golden beaches and restaurants perched along them. Throughout this part of the journey there was a slow but definite tapping sound when accelerating, coming from underneath the van, towards the drivers back wheel.. it grew worse as we progressed towards the capital city Quito, and the taps soon became bangs… hence Quito becoming part of our agenda..


The mechanic changed two parts on the back wheels before finding out, that wasn’t the problem and the banging was still there.. They figured it must be the gearbox! As you can imagine, we were pretty upset hearing this, and it would honestly be the last straw if we had to replace. The diagnosis on Betsy’s gear box was a gear piece had broken into bits and was clanging around inside the gear box, and is not exactly a straight forward piece to replace either, you can’t just pick up a new from a store.. We have three options, SELL! Replace the gear box, or replace the piece.. We don’t want to sell for obvious reasons and the last two options cost $1000 and more. We cant afford that kind of money, so the mechanic proposed to take the broken part to a specialist and ask them to copy the grooves and nooks into another piece we found, to make it fit.. $150. Plus mechanic fees. So, we’ve spent the last 10days and nights on curfew to be back at the workshop by 5:30pm for when they lock up and lock us in. 7ft walls surround us with broken glass shards sprinkled along its edges! At home we call this prison. We sleep in the van that’s perched up on jacks, waiting for this new part to come in.. All fingers and toes crossed that we are good to go by this wknd so Carlo can at least see his 30th birthday out of these four walls and perhaps within four walls of a nice bar? Sounds reasonable.
I think we’ll keep you posted on that one ;)


The "scary view" which kept Adele awake..

Those tires signs on the sand are Betsy's. She was looking to commit suicide.

Carlo is cooking while Adele is taking this picture. The world up-side-down

A lonely man lost in the.. wait, oh snap. That's a woman.

Well, this is pretty cool, isn't it?

The answer is: I have no bloody idea..

On the way out of Peru, breath...

Jungle and bananas

An incredible morning, waking up in front of the ocean after one of the really few dinner out just off the beach... Priceless.

Our prison

In case you missed it in the previous one

The one on the left is the ma*a*uc*er which broke. The other one is our $150.

A series of shots for Angus' (a friend met at PSF) upcoming album. He's not just an amazing carpenter. He's a great musican too. n.1

n.2

n.3&4

n.5

Take your shot home

May 15

Posted by Carlo in People, Photography, Volunteer | 1 Comment


Hard workers and crazy people, that’s how we like it.

In the best tradition of the terrible place we worked before, here’s a little fun/fundraising studio we mocked up for a casino night (thanx Nick for putting it together) we did at PSF on friday night.

Despite the terrible past experiences on location studio, this has been a lot of fun. People here are crazy and interesting enough to actually get some good shots out.

Click here for viewing the studio gallery. To download a full size version just click on the image and you’ll get printable version. Just right click and save it on your computer.

Click here to see some extra shots from the night.


Crazy mdfckr . Smoking mdfckr.

Il gatto e la volpe

Spot the difference

Not too sure about your skills, doctor.

Bonnie and Clyde (aka Will Smith) . Be suspicious of italian speaking spanish people.

Horny witches? Stay away.

Scary sh*t

Mexican wrestlers are just everyday business here

Well, I don't really know how to comment this.

No caption needed

There will be only one, Ozzy.

Angus beef fest

Fried Chicken for Breaky

Mar 28

Posted by Carlo in Landscapes, People, Photography, Places | 2 Comments



Ok folks, let’s start by saying that even when it seems boring, it never is. Even when we’re playing the regular tourist, there is always something going on (or should I say wrong?).

First bit of advice: DO NOT climb all the way up from sea level up to 4600m in half a day.

Why? Just don’t.

We obviously thought we were superman and wonder woman and that nothing would effect us. Wrong. Except for the fantastic scenery, we had one of the worst nights of our life. Altitude dizziness (“soroche”) it’s not a joke, and you’ll find yourself not breathing properly and waking up in the middle of your best 5 minutes deep sleep with an awful suffocating sense.

We then eventually left Chile, not without “oiling” some Bolivian police officer at customs (we do love corrupted police, don’t we?) and we arrived in La Paz. A shower and the first hostel in months cheered us up and we enjoyed a bit of this crazy and inexpensive city. The city itself is beautiful, if it wasn’t for a million white mini buses carrying up to 17 people, which absolutely don’t respect any traffic rule and make our moving around with Betsy improbable. Or wait, maybe that was fun, and maybe they do contribute to characterise the experience?

After dealing with two more mechanics (yep that’s right, 18 and counting..) we eventually left La Paz and went for some bigtimebackpackertourist “adventure”: Lake Titicaca on the Peruvian boarder was actually a lot of fun. And even if our poor legs, which usually stay comfy on the van, had to walk a good 35kms in two days, the breath taking landscape and a very nice canadian couple who we shared the path with, paid the effort back.

Second bit of advice: DO NOT leave any paper work/document with a police officer, even if they ask for it.

Why?

Because these fu***rs have a very well organised scam that even the most aware traveller could fall for. If you’re backpacking by bus no worries, but if you have a vehicle, here’s the system: a cop at a police check just before the boarder asks you for your documents, including all the ones released at your entrance in the country. Then they keep one of them stamping you the other one in your possession (and you even pay for this to happen). When then you eventually try to cross the boarder, a custom officer asks for that paper that you don’t have anymore… “That’s a problem…, what can we do…, you’ll have to drive back 500kms to get another one… but hey, I’ll make an exception for you: you just pay me 200, and you can pass…”.

After realising that was a full time scam, we eventually argued for a good hour, and come down to pay something like 10 dollars. It still hurt.

Any good news then? We’re now heading to Cusco where we finally start to work for the first organisation. We’re very excited and as good workaholics we’ve got itchy hands to actually start.

Stay tuned.


The last glymps of Chile just before crossing to Bolivia - 4600m high

Altitude sickness was the price to pay..

A breath taking view on our early morning crossing between Chile and Bolivia

Sometimes sleepless nights are well worth..

Edgard, another mechanic bites the dust.

Looking over La Paz from a bridge over the big central gap

The maze of La Paz

Milton and his city

On our way to Lake Titicaca under different perspectives

Standing out, from both sides..

A view of Lake Titicaca from the road

Locals at the little town where we got the boat to take Betsy across

Good cop or bad cop?

On our way back after a first day of exploration at Lake Titicaca

A series on Isla del Sol, the sacred island of ancient Incas - 1

2

3

4

A week of Sun, Sand and Stars…

Mar 16

Posted by Adele in Landscapes, People, Photography, Places, Route, Travel, Van, Video | 11 Comments

We have never experienced such a diverse way of living.. From sleeping in a mechanics workshop for a week! To waking to the crashing of the waves on a rocky shoreline, to star gazing into a vast expanse of crystal clear sky – showing all of the beautiful milky way in the southern hemisphere and Orion’s belt in the north. After days of driving through the Atacama desert, the driest desert on earth, being able to dreamily take a walk upon the Atacama Salar and hearing the snow like crunch under foot from the crystallized salt… with nothing else but pure silence.. An eerie silence that is actually able to make a buzzing noise to your eardrum.. Life’s really all about taking the good with the bad or the bad with the good.. depending.. for instance, the hell Betsy puts us through some days, the last week makes it all worth while and even thanks to all ’16′ (yep, I’m counting!) mechanics we have had the pleasure of meeting, Carlo has managed to pick up a few mechanic skills along the way! Which of course has already come in handy, many a time.. Especially now, as tomorrow we venture into a new country, Bolivia. We have to acclimatize to being several thousand meters above sea level in landlocked La Paz and lake Titicaca before making another crossing by April into Peru!

Another motor to fix and these two customers also stay the night..

The Burbs of Vina

Neighborhood up the hills of Vina Del Mar

La Pangue observatory in vicuna, where we had a private tour with an astrophysicist called Eric! Thanks again Eric!

Telescope with 40cm diameter lens to observe the night sky in Vicuna, to the west of La Serena

Southern hemisphere, Milky way. Among these stars we were told by Eric, is one very unstable star that is dying and is turning into a supernova! (Which of course has already happened.. your always looking into the past when studying the night sky) and we are due to see this transformation happen within our life time, the effect will be like a 2nd sun and bring constant daylight to the earth and our galaxy for a couple of weeks! Good to know I think?! Eric told us, nothing to worry about though...!

Northern hemisphere.. Orion's belt (the polar bear..) visible on left of observatory

Osvaldo the mechanic in Chanaral, again very kind and fixed the accelerator cable. The list goes on..

Portofino beach at sunset

Hills of the Atacama Desert

It really is the driest desert on earth.. We kept hoping to glimpse a prehistoric geoglyph in the hillsides, to keep us amused.. but nothing but desert hills

The creation of a 'twister' in the distance, not quite as bad as the twisters in the movie..

The Salar de Atacama. An untouched part at least..

All deserts have an oasis

Just before reaching our destination of Arica, at the end of the desert, a prehistoric geoglyph?

Modern geoglyphs.. The new frontier of advertising for Coca Cola

Looking forward..

Betsy was a race car driver…

Feb 28

Posted by Adele in Landscapes, People, Photography, Places, Travel, Van, Video | 9 Comments

Due to some very goods news we received recently, we left Ushuaia with a certain urgency to head back north and hoping to reach Santiago in the next couple of days. I’ve been working on finding us volunteer placements in non-profit organisations in Peru and was really pleased to receive all very positive replies! We have been fortunate to have some project proposals come our way and have been asked we provide our skills and services as photographers to help their cause. We have a lot to finalise, however we probably will be shooting documentaries and updating photography for their websites and folios to help generate more fund raising and new volunteers for their program’s. We are really looking forward to getting involved with these organizations and more than keen to work with them on the projects proposed. Which is why we have re thought our plan and now want to spend a little longer in Peru and spread out our time there over hopefully 3 organizations. To make this happen, we will need to be in Peru by the beginning of April and so realised we have little time to get there. Especially as we want to spend at least a month in Bolivia before so..

Which is the reason for the hectic amount of ground covered this last week, not only have we managed to get 3000km north! But also…. we’ve picked up 3 hitchhikers, seen 2 mechanics, had the pleasure of waking up to a flat tyre! (which lead to the buying and mounting of 2 new ones!) And enjoyed two different Argentinian BBQ’s on two separate occasions – offered to us by some wonderfully kind and generous Argentinian people we met along the way..

Encase your wondering why we needed to stop at ‘two’ mechanics, Betsy is a little greedy with how much oil she likes to consume.. Around a ltr of oil in 250km! So we had our mechanics help us to temporarily fix the problem until we can get to Santiago. The first in rio Gallegos with Marcel and the 2nd Enrico, in Esquel. A beautiful little town tucked away in a valley with a mountainous backdrop, hence it’s popularity in ski season.

All being well, the van shouldn’t take longer than a week to fix up at our mechanics in Valparaiso (close to Santiago), we will take what time is needed to have her prepared for the roads ahead in Bolivia… And then we will continue up through northern Chile, stopping in la Serena, one of the worlds best spots to star gaze before entering the heat of the Atacama desert….

Enrico the mechanic in Esquel

Last glance of the gorgeous landscape in Tierra Del Fuego

A hill top cross - Ushuaia

Carlos, the hitch hiker whom walks the earth.. (I honestly thought I was looking at my dad standing on the side of the road! you never know, he likes walking 'alot' too.. Partly why we had to pick him up)

First sight of open ocean seen in weeks - Between Rio Gallegos and Bariloche

Mars?

The Beginning

Feb 10

Posted by Carlo in Landscapes, People, Photography, Places, Travel, Van | 9 Comments

I wanted to describe the glaciers to you, the wild nature and the southern part of South America. I wanted to tell you about the engine support breaking down in the middle of nowhere, having to find a solution to get to the next town. I wanted to introduce you to another awesome person that we randomly met and helped us incredibly fixing this and more problems with Betsy. But I will let you guess the story from the pictures at the end of the post.

Because today it feels a bit different.

After a fantastic month together, Giorgia, Lorenzo and little Olivia left us to go back to northern Argentina and then Italy, and we have now realised that this is actually happening, and that the trip is starting. Together with some sadness seeing some of my very best friend leaving, the realisation that what we are doing is real, arrived. We knew that we would have had some tough moments in our trip, and to be honest on one side we already experimented more than we expected, but on the other we know that there is more that has yet to come. But you’re never ready for that moment that finds you unprepared, and forces you to move forward and concentrate on the next move. Or the next shot.

We are in Ushuaia at the moment, the southern most city in South America, ready to face the beginning of the journey. After five weeks of travel the awareness that we can make it is growing on us, together with the conviction that what we shot up until now is closer to a “touristic” point of view than documentary and we both know that we want to go deeper into the culture and experiment more, whenever that means to be bolder or create situations that allow us to focus more and exploit this wonderful opportunity at its best.



The wonderful backdrop driving towards the Glaciers National Park

A view of he Viedma Lake

An extremely windy and rainy view of the national park

The Perito Moreno Glacier, one of the seven wonders of the world

Valley view, still a small portion considering that the whole glacier is 250 km2

A side view

Texture

On the way out from the national park, an icelandic view

Eduardo, metal musician and race car mechanic, special guesting on Betsy

Real men at work

An unreal evening in a lost town, Tierra del Fuego

Blinded by the light

A petrol and a police station, need anything else?

A remote petrol station and its gas man

A ship wreck in the port of Ushuaia

End of the world snow capped mountains and containers. The end of the beginning.

No Man’s Land

Feb 3

Posted by Carlo in Landscapes, Photography, Route, Travel | 7 Comments

God Bless Asphalt. I know it may sound unpopular and not-eco-friendly but after 5 days and almost 700 km of awful dirt road where your top speed barely reaches 50km/h, a flat tire and a major problem with the engine (more on this on the next post..), seeing a paved road in front of you has more or less the same effect that an oasis has on a thirsty wonderer in the hottest of the deserts.
Having said that, this has been by far the most intriguing and interesting part of the trip; and the fact that only such a terrible road connects these remote areas of the country, contributes to keep the feeling of loneliness and wilderness which makes this a unique experience. Waving at other travellers when you pass them, is something that you might see only on desolate roads, where everybody shares the same feeling, and even just a quick movement of your hand, creates a connection that truly starts many miles behind.

The first day we decided to go for an off-track visit to a farm (“Estancia”), where we had the luck to find an awesome blue sky which enhanced the red coloured ground (which reminded us of Australia) and the yellow fields that surrounded the whole instalment. The light of the late afternoon gave us a fantastic opportunity to capture some details like the lining fluttering against the blue sky.

After a nice night indoors, drinking wine and telling stories in front of the fire, we left early to begin what we knew would have been the tough bit.

If you ever come this way and decide to descend Patagonia through the “Ruta 40″, prepare yourself with endless patience, a full second tank of petrol (Argentinians don’t seem to be particularly attentive on refilling their petrol stations and the phrase “no tengo super, nada mas.” with a big stupid smile on their faces is way more common that you might expect) and most definitely a camera.
If on one side this will stretch your enthusiasm for driving, on the other side it will pay back a thousand times in terms of scenic views and never-ending sunsets.
The landscape is mostly shaped by the wind, which will be your companion for the whole road and more. The wind is so strong that it can sometimes literally hold you up, push your vehicle for miles and change your plan according to where and if you want to sleep. At the same time it avoids any plant higher than one foot to grow and this is the main characteristic that you’ll have to face. I personally loved it, as it’s something profoundly diverse than anything else I have ever seen and the only other place in the world that can generate such a hostile environment is probably the Siberian tundra.

Hundreds of miles of no-man-land, or more accurately I would say “few men land”, as Patagonia is one of the lowest population density areas in the world and except for the sporadic and ghost towns (like that one where we changed the tire), you won’t find any human evidence, apart from a few fences limiting the territory where sheep and lamas share the ground with pumas and ostriches.

The second to last day of Ruta40, exhausted after a whole day of travel, at sunset we found this turquoise-blue lake in the middle of nowhere, and believe me it was surreal. After many hours of barren landscape where everything is so flat that it’s difficult to understand where the ground ends and the sky begins, discovering this unexpected gem at the magic hour reminded us why we’re here.

Bumpy Roads, A Volcano and The Lake District

Jan 22

Posted by Adele in Landscapes, Photography, Places, Route, Travel, Van | 3 Comments

Where to start? 10 Days ago we started our journey south. With nothing but open road ahead of us and a rather freshly tweaked little camper, we flew our way onto the motorway out of the bustling city of Santiago to make the ‘long way down’ to Patagonia.

We drove several hundred miles over a couple of days and camped in the wild of a national park called Conguillio. The roads were horrendous but the landscape in comparison was beautiful. It held a couple of huge lakes, towering mountains, vast hilly woodland and an eyesore of a Volcano called Llaima stood smack in the middle! The devastation of the last eruption in the 30’s (which lasted for almost 30 years!) was still very visible with miles of volcanic rubble and ash left in its wake.

We passed into the boarder of Argentina with ease, even if we did chug along past the officers looking ‘more’ suspicious than we actually were… “Yes Officer, we are driving a BRIGHT orange van into Argentina” – However, thankfully no alarm caused. Pretty much all documents were in check and we were allowed to pass.

Our next stop was a meeting point just after the boarder crossing at Villa Pehuenia in the Lake District. Whereby we were on schedule to catch some friends of Carlo’s from Italy, Georgia, Lorenzo and little Olivia. By coincidence they are here at the same time and have rented a motor home to travel, so we have a few weeks together to head south.

We continue on, following the spine of the Andes, climbing into higher altitudes, experiencing the most breath taking crystal lakes of the Lake District. Surrounded by woodland, a mountainous landscape as far as the eye can see with winding roads meandering in and around these vast lakes, it can seem you are passing by a great ocean. We feel this really is a special part of South America.

*Couple minor problems with Betsy:

  • The boot won’t close properly due to the sheer amount of vibration when driving off road – seriously bumpy roads!
  • Carlo put the water cap on the roof of the van and drove happily away.. or shall I say not so happily..

On the plus side, she has been awesome so far. Were pretty organsised inside and we’ve made great use of the space. Very comfortable at night in the roof, except maybe a couple nights where the temperature dropped considerably and the weather was howling outside.. I thought, I might die..

Over the next few days we will visit a couple more national parks until we hit northern Patagonia and then we have 700k (3days) of dirt road into ‘no mans land’ to look forward to! Endless bumpy road into a barren and inhospitable terrain…