Brokedown Palace...

So it ends... Our lovely home for the last 6 months finally gave up her ghost on a pass near Volcon Licancabur about 80 km from the Argentine border. We had pulled over to check on some folks who had overheated (easy to do, the road had no switchbacks to mellow the incline, just a straight shot up over 5000ft), and agreed to take the woman and children up to the top of the pass to ease the strain on the little Renault they had jammed with 7 people. Almost immediately we had issues- power was cutting in and out, it felt like someone had put a banana in our tail pipe! We struggled for over an hour to get up over the pass to no avail. Claudette has eaten passes like this for breakfast over the last two months in the Andes- even at several thousand feet higher, so we knew we had a problem. We turned the van around, but due to the giant ski slope of a road, and having the power cutting out (power brakes), we knew we were in a pickle... 

Now Linds and I had plenty of time to discuss our future while on the road and it was kinda assumed that at our most southern point, as the trip was winding down I would ask her to marry me. I certainly had not prepared for that a few days ago when the van broke, but as it looked like we might not be getting too much further south the moment was at hand! She said yes (!!!) and as we kneeled there hugging and wiping our eyes, our attention was drawn to the only other car we had seen in the last hour or so coming down toward us. Thumbs went out and we loaded up our gear into the cab of an 18 wheeler for the two hour ride back into San Pedro de Atacama. 

The last few days have been nuts. We have learned from some online friends, panamnotes.com and bodeswell.com, who are traveling in Chile and Argentina to our south that gasoline has been very hard to come by. Sounds crazy, but both groups have had to wait over a week in spots while gas was being trucked in and rationed off.  We both knew that having to be back in the states in less than a month for work and to reclaim our dogs, a lengthy and costly repair on a rig that was not coming back with us was ill advised. Plus we're a little homesick. Linds and I reflected on the last six months over a few boxes of vino and decided to cut our losses, sell the van for what we could and shoot back to the states.

  

Over 150 days and 16,000 miles...

our hostel at the end of the road

the road that ate our lunch...from 7900ft to over 13000ft in nearly a strait line

salt canyon in the Atacama Desert, the driest in the world

damn...

Arica, in northern Chile. 

Some beach time after a border stop

final plate of ceviche 

working my first car deal in over six months! looking forward to many more

Whose your llama?

    When you are living in a van, driving through eleven different countries (as of today!), flexibility is one of the most important virtues one can have. Plans change and change again before you know it. And that is one of the reasons that makes this adventure so fun.

Driving alongside the southern shores of Lake Titicaca seemed as magical as the Incan legends say. They believe that the Lake was the birthplace of mankind… and it is pretty enough to maybe even be true. We were really lucky to witness multiple village's different ways of celebrating the four day Carnival…though most involved people spraying each other with shaving cream (even police officers would get it!) and parades with dancers and musicians. One teeny-tiny town in Bolivia even had about a hundred men dressed up in home-made costumes as Fred Flintstones, Ninja Turtles and blue Avatars. I am still kicking myself that I didn't have my camera. 

The border into Bolivia was uneventful and even pleasant (with the exception of the $135 USD visa per person, ouch!). Brian is getting really good at shaking off the casual bribe by police officers or government officials with a well timed thank you, smile, handshake and quick snap of our documents back into his hands. Though my personal favorite is when an officer asked for a refresca (meaning money tip) and with a knowing smile Brian gave him a still-cold bottle of Inca Cola. The officer even smiled back. 

That night we camped on the shores of the lake at Copacobana. The next day we were off to La Paz and a week of Bolivia's best; Potosi, the salt flats and even possibly "the worlds most dangerous road." But that was not to be. 

Bolivia, while being the poorest and most under-developed South American country also has the worst system for dispensing gasoline. With the exception in La Paz, the largest city in the country, every single gas station we stopped at refused to sell us gasoline. Now, you can understand this is a problem, a big problem. Claudette is a gas-guzzling 8-cylinder conversion van. I wish she ran off happy thoughts and good intentions, but alas, that is not so. We tried begging, pleading, promises of large propinas (tips!) and even got the police involved as a last resort to no avail. We are still slightly confused at the exact problem, but we were able to determine our "international" license plate caused the vendor to need additional paperwork that very few, if any, rural gas stations had. Nothing we would do or say would convince these vendors to sell us gasoline. So we did the only thing we thought that would prevent us getting totally stranded out in the middle of the Bolivian desert. We filled our 30 gallon tank to full in La Paz, and vamoosed right back out of Bolivia. I am still contemplating a well placed phone call to refund our $270 dollars worth of Bolivian visas that we purchased when we drove into the country. I just hope that money goes to providing the gas station vendors for a new record keeping system. 

Presently we have the sprawling (yet narrow) country of Chile before us, and a little more menacingly, the Atacama desert in all its glory. 

Yup, that is a picture of the edge of the highway taken from the window of the moving van.
Dont look down!

A curious vistor this morning. Everyone wonders what those loco gringos are doing.

Shepard girl showing her flock who is boss

Nazca lines! We paid about 60 cents to climb up the observation tower...
what do you think, ancient prankster or aliens?

Peruvian homestead

Pre-Incan Chullpas (burial tombs)

Our first coca-tea! So tasty and made the altitude-dizzys go away for a while!

Umm... is that regular or premium?
 Claudette deserves better then what we had to resort to in order to keep moving. 

The road

Meeting of the llamas

Brian wonders if you can keep llamas within Portland city limits

Lake Titicaca

Copacobana; the hottest spot north of Havana. 

Camping at 14,200 feet! Brrrr!

Carnival parade dancers in Copacobana

Nevado Sajama at Sunset

Ferry across the lake going towards La Paz

So long Bolivia... wish you would have sold two nice kids some dang gasoline.

Vicunas; the alpaca's endangered cousin in the Lauca Parque Nacional in Chile

Neither of these look appetizing. One goes in and one came out.
Pretty much the same color. 

Chicken feet and tall peaks

Kinda like the gum inside a blowpop, a chicken foot treat comes hidden in many Latin American meals. Linds and I first discovered this in Ecuador when we both got some soup and "broasted" chicken. I kinda jumped when after a few bites, my spoon brought up a big ol' foot, but Linds had one too and after looking around at the other soup eaters we realized that we had not been sabotaged and that everyone gets a chicken foot. Unless you're getting a nice chicken breast from a huge walmart-like store, most likely a foot will be connected. Must be for flavor??

mmmmm...

We had shot up Canon Del Pato just in time for me to get a hold of the worst cold/flu I can remember and found a little hotel in Caraz called Las Pinas to lay low for a while. For three days we went to bed early and woke up late, walking to various cafes and bistros for juice and food but otherwise keeping to the room. What a great place to be sick! We had good WiFi (a rarity in small towns at 9000ft) and the whole place to ourselves. We used the opportunity to watch the entire extended version of LOTR, almost 10 hours total. (Thanks Zach & Sachi!) Caraz is the jumping off point for numerous alpine summit attempts on the surrounding peaks and we drove up to Laguna Paron to check things out. We picked up a couple of kids hitchhiking to the lake and drove the 35km up a steep dirt road to the base of Huandoy @ 20854ft.

Laguna Paron! dont jump Linds!!

in 1970 the entire town of Yungay was wiped out by a huge land/ice slide that killed over 15,000 people. this is a monument to the deceased.

andean women are cute!

nothing keeps linds and i from a killer breakfast. 

the andean girls sweet talked me out of 35 soles for this jug of honey and a mini jug of pollen(?). Huascaran is in the background

Marco and his crew gave the van a killer cleanin'. thanks!!!

Suila Grande- Touching the Void.

Claudette got the first car wash in almost 15,000 miles in Huaraz, a city in the Cordillera Blanca about 50 miles south of Caraz. Big thanks go out to Marco and his car washing crew for not charging us extra for washing off the dirt of 9 countries!! And we drove past Suila Grande, the peak that almost claimed the life of Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, who's trials were recounted in the book "Touching the Void" and the movie by the same name. We have pointed the van south and nailed the accelerator, driving through desert and dunes that remind us of Baja California without the delicious tacos. Next, Lake Titicaca!

back at the beach. life is good.