The Long Way Up

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

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…

The Long “Wait” Up

Jan 14

Posted by Carlo in People, Van | 18 Comments

NO, we’re not dead. And YES, it has been way more tough than we thought.

Apologies for this incredibly late post, but the last two months have been insane. Crazy on one side and extremely boring (un-inspiring) on the other.
The good news it’s that we’re now on the road.

To cut a VERY long story short, we bought a van (the great westfalia, named Betsy) after waiting for it to be fixed for over a month since we first got in Santiago, then we blew the engine three days after, waited for two more weeks for a new engine to be installed, and when we thought we were ready to travel, a list of 20more “little” things to fix came out.

And all this brought us to THE MAN. There’s a picture of him at the beginning of the post, because even if Chile has been terrible under soooo many ways, he’s the symbol of all the amazing people that we’ve met on our tribulation. Javier (El Ja, rally driver, fantastic mechanic and awesome person), Arturo (our “random” friend in Santiago who help us incredibly, and mounted the solar panel) and a list of other people who made our staying enjoyable and less stressful (you know who you are).

So here we are, two tow trucks, 4 mechanics later, and a few miles behind our backs, we’re now heading through Argentina. Ready to start this journey.
More photography and video will come soon.

Have you seen this man??

Nov 5

Posted by Adele in Route, Travel | 1 Comment

(“He’s climbin in your windows, he’s snatchin your people up….”)

We will be travelling for one year from the very bottom of Chile all the way up until Canada, just with a van, our gear and some underwear. This blog will be the place where we’re gonna share our photographs, videos, thoughts and experiences.

Join us for a documentary of Latin and North American culture, people and landscapes!

Hola amigos! And welcome to the very first entry of The Long Way Up travel blog. I’m Adele and the key person on this awesome adventure! I will be bringing along my very own cameraman who will be following ‘me’ around like a massive stalker! Carlo my jolly feller. His life mission is to become bolder than bad Santa and cooler than The Big Lebowski! His mission for the next year however, will be creating a kick-ass documentary, capturing the very essence of South America and life living on the road.

Bring on the sun, pool side cocktails… naked Spanish waita minute?! That would be a holiday not an expedition!

We intend to document with video and photography the people, cultures, lifestyle, food, fashion and spectacular landscapes of South America, off the beaten track..

My life is pretty much packed into one suitcase, strange how you can accumulate so much sh*t over the years but when it really comes down to it you really only need a suite case full of things. In Carlo’s case, his main luggage will be gear, gear and more gear! He prefers camera gadgets and gizmos to actual clothing! His hero nickname: SuperGeek!

We will lug our 45kgs each to Sydney airport on November 15^th 2010 and will arrive in Santiago, Chile the same day. Here, we will spend 20days in a hostel to find the van. Keeping all fingers and toes crossed for the more roomy VW Camper Van like the Westfalia! This little baby will sleep, feed and carry our butts on the grand tour across Argentina down to the very southernmost part of South America, Patagonia, she’ll then venture right up the west coast into Central America and on to the US.

Final destination looking to be Vancouver!

As I understand it, 17 countries in all!

Excited much??!!

About the authors

Oct 19

Posted by Carlo in People, Photography, Video | No Comments

Carlo is a Vancouver based photographer and director. He specialises in editorial portraiture, fashion and advertising.

Born and bred in Italy, Carlo moved to Australia in 2008 and worked as a commercial photographer and DP for 2.5 years. He recently completed a year long exploration of Latin and North America shooting film documentaries for international NGOs.

Please visit carloricci.com to see his portfolio.
Follow him on twitter: @CarloRicci_

Fascinated by all aspects of photography, Adele is a producer of photography & film and is a photographer herself. She has spent this past year working on film & documentary productions with international NGOs, on a 50,000kms exploration in beautiful “Betsy” an orange VW campervan.
Originally of cornish descent, however, her career keeps her in the big smoke. London, Sydney & now Vancouver BC.

Click on adelethomas.com to see her work.
Follow her on twitter: @AdeleThomas_