On Hitchhiking, Specifically In South America And More Specifically On The Carretera Austral And Route 40 (Ruta 40)

August 23, 2016 by Danny Cronyn in Chile, Argentina

By Danny Cronyn

This missive comes mostly from a place of desire for improvement and optimization—of constructive criticism in hopes that generations of future backpackers can make good on the vibrant expectations of what past hitchhiking cohorts have provided. This also comes from a place of being disappointed and disenchanted with the current stock of unappreciative scenesters looking to thumb rides for free on the roads today. Here we go...

Dear Hitchhikers in South America and especially those on the road to/from Patagonia (specifically the Carretera Austral and Ruta 40 outside Calafate, Chalten, Trevelin, Bariloche, El Bolson, etc),

Let me preface this by saying I have purchased and driven vehicles in different parts of the world over the last decade. I’ve picked up hitchhikers in India, across Central and East Asia, Africa, and all over the Americas (north and south). I’ve hitchhiked myself as well, when it became either a mechanical or economical necessity...hence the impetus for penning this here blog post.

Hitchhiking is not a mode of public transportation. It is not a way to get from “here” to “there”. Possessing a thumb and backpack is not your entry price to the world of free travel. Your sociopathic desire to save money on air/train/bus transportation while not offering money for gas to the kind people that pick you up is not “the way it works”. Having nothing to offer is why you would hitchhike, not a chic new way to do things.

Briefly, hitchhiking should not exist to you in the same way that soup kitchens should not exist to you. If you had the money to take a taxi to a homeless shelter, it doesn’t make you an adventurous eater or frugal for dining there, it makes you a real jerk. There is no hitchhiking ecosystem, since there is ostensibly only one side: people who have worked hard, saved, and laid out real money for their own transportation which they improve, fill with gas, and fix (often) when it fails them. You, hitchhikers, have done none of this yet still think by holding out a sign or thumb you’re entitled to free transport.

You paid for an airplane ticket to South America, you pay for meals in restaurants, you pay for nights in hostels and some even pay for hotels (!!!). You come armed with nothing but a sense of entitlement and serious case of bad travel etiquette. You are a freeloading, mooching, grifting, scabby, and sometimes worst of all, boring lot of bad travelers...but here I am willing to try and help out future wannabes by trying to dissuade them.

The situation is this, in South America, that there are far too many hitchhikers now, since it has evidently become vogue to do this, and far too few people who can pick them up. In the olden days, VW buses and Defenders rumbling down to Patagonia on terrible roads would pick up the itinerant hitchers out of a sense of community and transcendental travel spirit. The current class of hitchers though, realizing this, has figured that they can take advantage and use the Overlanding Oversoul to their advantage and just skip purchasing bus tickets all together—offering nothing in return.

The shoulders of roads out of every town now are littered with hitchers, sometimes literally waiting in lines, to get picked up by people like my wife and me, and our fellow overlanders. Like I’ve stated, they bought food and room/board whilst in town, but set aside nothing for transportation (making them jerks, not poor). Out of the tens of dozens of hitchers that we’ve transported, sometimes for distances of hundreds of miles, do you know approximately how many of them offered money for gas? Approximately zero of them. Exactly zero of them. Some have even forgotten to thank us. Our friends picked up one hitcher that was awesome, a true professional that came armed with stories, stickers, and a small donation for gas, but he was the exception that proved the rule.

So, what to do? Here’s a helpful FAQ for you, to help you decide whether you should hitch in South America.

Q: Can you afford to buy a plane ticket to South America, along with food, room/board, and entertainment but not yet for transportation?

A: You’re a great little saver, keep going, you’re almost at “ready to travel” level!

Q: Can you theoretically afford to pay for travel, but prefer the adventurous spirit and kinsmanship of bumming rides?

A: I admire your spirit, make sure to split gas with your ride-givers (or at least offer the maximum you can afford), polish your A-game chatting and storytelling, and do make sure to profusely thank them for their generosity.

Q: Did you arrive on the shoulder of the road by hitching from somewhere else, do you use Couchsurfing or sleep in your own tent, and are you self-sufficient and a real world traveler?

A: You don’t need this FAQ; you know what to do. You’ve got great stories and no one minds picking up someone with those.

Attitudes are shifting about hitchers thanks to the lot currently out on the road. If you’re reading this and considering doing the same, please heed my advice and get the hitchhiking image back to “lovable tramp” from “scheming cheapskate”.

Rant completed.

On Breaking Down and Being Lifted Back Up - Dedicated to Pinky Tosi

August 19, 2016 by Danny Cronyn

Last we touched base with you, our ever-faithful reader, we were leaving the land grab spot of Mount Fitzroy cum Climbing town of El Chalten and pursuing our route up north. We hoped to make a solid dash across Argentina, through some old stomping grounds and Buenos Aires, and be on our way to Brazil within a few weeks. We already made plans for Shannon to fly out of São Paulo to the States so that she could be there for her first niece’s birth, so we had an end date and a schedule to keep! Let’s go!

On our way out of El Chalten, we passed the familiar lineup on the shoulder of the road of hitchhikers, looking to catch a ride north along the famous Ruta 40. We decided to pick up a couple of them, one German diet specialist and an Israeli who was financing his voyage by playing poker in casinos throughout South America. That they both ostensibly had money, but decided to hitch and not chip in for gas cemented my view on today’s hitchhikers…look out for the dedicated follow-up post on this coming next! We hauled these two, ourselves, and Masi back to a favorite wild camp spot along Ruta 40- next to a river in a quiet cleared area. Decent conversation, a roaring fire, and increasingly good home cooking from us two (our spice game was really starting to get on point) made for a good night in the wilderness. In the morning we cooked breakfast, packed up, and were ready to go except for these two hitchers taking their time…ugh, we were tempted to leave them just for their bad manners. We wanted to make it close to the Chilean border town of Perito Moreno that day and had a lot of KM to cover.

Eventually we did get on the road, and made it all the way to Perito Moreno- a sleepy border town with not much to report. We dropped off the two hitchers, wished them well, despite once again not getting an offer of a little gas money after more than 500km of chauffeuring them. Although we were miffed at once again having bad hitchers, I was mainly concerned with a now-feared feeling coming from the accelerator pedal and engine…what some in the VW community call the “dreaded bog” in relation to performance. Press on the accelerator and there’s a hesitation, followed by nothing, followed by an uptick in RPMs, followed by a slowdown. It’s like there’s chewing gum all over the acceleration system, and it just gets worse and worse. Of course correlation is not causation, but I can’t help feeling like the extra two meat sacks (and their luggage) in the Kombi for over 500 km were to blame.

After camping in the nicest municipal campground we’ve encountered the entire trip (side note: they had free gas stoves there, and the Argies who used them would NOT turn them off after use, meaning out of eight stove tops it was not unusual to see four of them on full blast with blue flames shooting up and NO ONE around- so weird and unsafe), we continued up north back to our absolute FAVORITE camping spot in Trevelin at Sergio’s eco-vineyard. We covered some fairly uneventful miles and pulled into Sergio’s with our fingers and toes crossed he had room for us, and luckily he met us with a smile and a camping spot for the next four days. His place is truly an oasis for overlanders, and I cannot speak highly enough of his hospitality, the tranquility of camping there and how relaxing it is. While there, we met an American family traveling in their Infinity SUV they shipped down from Albuquerque (anyone considering overlanding in SA, we think this is a supremely bad idea…besides being likely more expensive just to ship than buy, there are zero Infinity cars down here, meaning no parts if something goes wrong). We exchanged travel tips with them, played Möllky together on the huge green vineyard lawn, drank beers together, and even broke in Sergio’s new brick & clay pizza oven with my first ever attempt at pizza from scratch. I must say, I made a delicious friggin' pizza.

Before leaving Sergio’s I also resolved to fix the dreaded bog issue, or at least get to the heart of it so that I could describe the fix to a mechanic. I read blog after blog on what it could be (think: google medical symptoms and how you’ll self-diagnose the plague), checked our VW Idiot’s manual along with detailed German motor maps. After a few days of tinkering, taking apart and reassembling the carburetor (not easy for me), and adjusting some fuel mix settings…I made the noise and feeling go away!!! It was like being a magician, or the smartest man in the world for just one minute. Oh how I was proud.

As they say, pride before the fall.

It turns out, not to bury the lede here, that the ultimate issue was not at all the carburetor, fuel, or mix involved as most postings would have me believe, but was actually due to a failing valve in our engine (please DM me if you’d like a detailed explanation). What transpires in the next six weeks or so, we fixing everything but the issue which leads to disastrously un-fun times.

Here’s what happened next: we leave Trevelin/Esquel area, and soon enough are back on the road and I begin to feel the dreaded bog creeping back into the pedals. The sound is terrible, the engine is choking, and the performance is abysmal. Indeed, I did not nip anything in the bud as I suspected previously. We hoped to hop straight from Sergio’s camping spot, to another favorite campground up in Bariloche, but Masi was not having it, so we ended up back in my least favorite fake hippie town of El Bolson- this time it was summer and the camp ground was swamped! We lurched into a spot, and right off I got busy trying to remedy what was not-the-actual-problem and had little success. I re-regulated the valves, advanced and retarded the timing, checked the fuel lines, replaced filters, replaced spark plugs, changed idle and fuel mix again…all without much effect, of course.

Shannon and I were feeling down and out, considering options and about to start asking after mechanics, when all of a sudden…Bridget jumps from around a corner and does a little jazz hands “hey it’s me” kind of number. I couldn’t believe my eyes, but it turned out that Brendan and Bridget had finished climbing in Piedra Parada (where we had been previously with them on our way South), and were on their way back to Buenos Aires to sell their beloved T3 VW, and stopped into Bolson for a pit stop on the way. How fortuitous and just the bright spot we needed! We spent a few days catching up and drinking and laughing before they had to head off once again without us, but we made plans to hang out in BA before we moved onto Brazil and them back to Sydney. We couldn’t travel with them because, well, Masi was refusing to budge at this point. A local mechanic came to the campsite, after no less than a dozen others refused, and towed Masi to his garage. His expert take was that too much gasoline was making its way to the cylinders and drowning out the spark. He was wrong. He fixed something, we replaced the spark plugs again (with the wrong kind), and drove off feeling tenuous at best about Masi’s shape.

It wasn’t long on the road to Bariloche before Masi was up to her old tricks again: hesitating badly, not wanting to go up hills at all, lacking any power whatsoever. We kept pulling over for small adjustments, 20 minutes at a time, that seemed to move her down the road another 30/40/50km each time…but it was getting worse. I was adding more air, then fuel, then current (nifty trick of shorting the main battery and adding another transfer to the coil), but nothing had a lasting effect. And then…I felt a crack come from within the gear box and suddenly I was making large circles with the shifter and was stuck in third gear (better than fourth, not as good as second!). I pulled Masi over, parked her facing down a hill, in case we had to push start her- and we did-, and inspected the issue. I had no clue. The engine was dying and I only had one gear. We push started her down the hill and I built up enough speed to make third gear work and we prayed we could make it the next 70km into Bariloche and find a mechanic. We made it exactly 58km before encountering a hill sufficiently big enough to stall us out. First tow of the trip! We paid a relatively small amount, by US standards, for the tow and looked up a VW mechanic in Bariloche to get dropped off at upon arrival. Thus started one of the coolest couple weeks of our entire trip.

PRO TIP- if you’re driving a VW and stopping in Bariloche there is but one man to see there, and his name is Pinky Tosi. Factually, Pinky worked on VWs for decades, knows everything there is to know about Kombi motors, and has a workshop stocked with everything one would need to build a new Kombi from the ground up- from industrial torque wrenches to spare engine blocks. Personally, Pinky is the man. He severely injured his back years ago in a head-on collision (he was clinically dead for a bit, but that’s his story to tell), and while he can’t directly work on VWs anymore, he will instruct, mentor, and teach you anything you need to know about fixing it yourself under his watchful eye.

As the tow truck pulled in, he came out and welcomed us in as friends and informed me that this was place the place to get Masi fixed, and that another couple of Kombinauts (who were in a similar situation) would be our companions and novice mechanical buddies for the foreseeable future. Pedro, from Switzerland, and Eva, from Lima were also traveling the continent in their awesome T2 and were broken down, so we’d be helping each other out for a while and Pinky would tell us how. Over the next couple weeks, Pedro and I helped each other pull engines out, take them apart, put them together, clean, sand, polish, make parts runs, and do everything we could to make our Kombis run again. They had new cylinders to put in, not a small task at all, and Pinky identified our issue (within seconds) as having a broken selector (the little articulated finger that chooses gears) and we needed to pull the engine and part of the transmission to get to it. The mechanical tutelage was priceless, mostly fun, and always given in a generous and selfless manner. Imagine in the United States, two strangers pulling up and someone devoting the better part of their every day to instructing them on how to fix it…without ANY mention of money? This man Pinky was working on his canonization.

We did finally pull apart Masi, and Pedro’s T2 named “Chota”, and put them back together. Pinky signed off on the results, Masi was running well and the gears felt like brand new. Before leaving, we all pitched in to buy supplies for a famous “pollo al disco”, or basically a chicken dish cooked over a fire with massive amounts of butter and white wine and garlic. Saying that it was “rich” is an understatement. Add bottles of red wine, for us, not the chicken, and at least one bottle of whiskey, meant that us merry gang were up until 2am in Pinky’s garage laughing and arguing about the state of the world (my Spanish experienced an inverse relationship with amount of alcohol consumed). Pinky outlasted us all, and I think outdrank us all as well, and the following day even made Pedro and I coffee with whiskey in the morning to chase our unbelievable hangovers away. It was truly a special time at Pinky’s and we’ll never be able to thank him enough for everything he did for us, allowing us to crash in front of his place, welcoming us into his home and garage, and giving us memories that will last a lifetime. Thank you Pinky, much love from us, and we will set a similar example for Kombi travelers when we make it back to the
States.

With much sadness we pressed on from Bariloche, half-hoping that everything was sorted. As I stated previously, this was not to be the case. Despite fixing the gear box and selector issue, the blown valve (which was still undiagnosed) was still there. After a troublesome exit from Bariloche- far enough away not to turn around, and close enough to feel super frustrated- Masi and the dreaded bog became reacquainted. A night spent in a wild camp, a morning of me re-re-regulating the valves that now showed me something was seriously off with our clearance there and cementing that more work needed to be done…and we pressed on.

Here’s an easy trick to move this all along, I’ll just paraphrase: a few more camp spots in the next few days as we could only move about 20-30km at a time due to overheating valves and loss of compression, I fear breaking then sucking in valve/ring pieces to engine block and cam shaft, we give up in Puelches (millions of Puelches, Puelches for me, millions of Puelches, Puelches for free, LOOK OUT), take a second tow into next town called General Acha, proceed to have worst week and a half of our entire trip while waiting for valves to be rectified and camping outside a dusty sandy mechanic office.

Highlights of General Acha and its awfulness: Juan Manuel the mechanic will tell you that he’s working on your ride, but will actually take a five hour siesta instead, everyone takes five hour siestas, the Petrobras gas station has aircon, wifi and decent medialunas making it the coolest place to hang out, no toilets or showers (except for when the kind asado grill restaurant owner let us shower inside his restaurant), and at night (like a biblical plague) large frogs come out of nowhere so they can get run over and add to that “murder town” feeling that we enjoy.

When I say that this was one of the worst places I’ve been, was treated very poorly in comparison to other places I’ve been, and only respect this place for giving me a definitive answer to the question, “worst place in South America?”, please know that I’ve done some traveling and putting my stamp on this town comes with weight.

I’ll spare you the nitty gritty of how we got our valves packaged, sent to the next town for rectification, back to General Acha, and then inside Masi again…but suffice it to say that the second we were ready to go I peeled out of there with all the middle fingers up.

Do breakdowns provide for interesting new friends and stories and love and wonderfulness? Yes, 100%, for sure, Maestro Pinky proved that…but do they also provide opportunity for unscrupulous, non-VW, sheisty folk to try and take advantage of travelers? Also yes. This was a post about both.

Smooth sailing from here on out boys!

The End of the World, an Exciting Glacier, Mount Fitzroy, and Ice Cream

July 15, 2016 by Danny Cronyn

From Puerto Natales, the five of us became three when we left Brendan and Bridget, and soon when we arrived in Punta Arenas the three of us became two when we left Gareth. After more than two months of traveling together, from Buenos Aires all the way to Patagonia, Gareth had been our constant companion, my fireside drinking buddy, and official monster mascot of the group. He was headed onto Ushuaia and Antarctica (leave that place alone for anyone considering it!!), while we were destined for some alone time and then back up north toward our next, faraway destination of Brazil.

We spent a quiet New Years together in an AirBnB outside Punta Arenas, cooked in an actual kitchen, watched US TV shows on cable (something we never did while at home—the super channel has a decent lineup!), and generally just rested and prepared for what was next. We also dropped Masi off to take care of an oil leak, which turned out to be due to a bad engine-reconditioning job so it took a bit more time and cash than we would’ve hoped (this theme comes up again).

While in Punta Arenas, miracle of miracles, who should we cross paths with but our dear friends, Angela and Trevor from NYC! We had both known we would be somewhere in Patagonia around the same time, us on our trip and them on their honeymoon, but we could never have imagined that we would be driving past the airport at precisely the same time they were landing! Due to differing travel schedules, we only got to spend a short three hours with them in the airport but it was completely worth it. Nothing like sharing great conversation and laughs with some of the best people we know at the end of the world.

We also decided that week that we’d become fishermen/fisherpeople, so we checked out the local tackle shop place where they sell that kind of stuff and came away with two poles (I was told we need those), reels (also necessary), and a bunch of hooks, weights, bobbers, and things with feathers on them.

Before leaving Punta Arenas, we also got to meet up with our old hitchhiking, farm-working, molkky-playing, French friend Paul. He was checking out the end of the world as well, but this time with a gaggle of French friends from home. We all agreed to meet out in the relative wilderness to do some camping and play one last game of molkky. We spent a great night out in the woods, broke out the molkky and even our new fishing rods in the morning—but caught nothing (this theme comes up again).

After saying our final adieus to French Paul, we pointed Masi north with her butt hanging off the end of continental South America. We’d first head back to Puerto Natales, the jumping off point for Torres del Paine, to lay up for the night and do some research on more hikes and camping spots around Torres National Park. We ended up staying in a great estancia on a lake an hour or so inside the park, which we heard was good for fishing. With high expectations, backpacks full of food and plenty of energy to catch all those Patagonian trout, we embarked on a full day fishing hike around the massive lake—just us two experts. Long story short, we ate our packed lunches, lost around $20 worth of lures (damn rocks and lake weeds!), but definitely got through our 10,000 steps. No fish.

After some really awesome camping, hiking, and just enjoying the great outdoors, we continued north toward the famous Perito Moreno glacier outside of El Calafate. We wild camped on the side of the road one night, and arrived into town the next to be greeted by massive (like 4-5 hour) lines for gasoline. Apparently Petrobras ships were being blockaded in Argentina, so ~%50 of gas stations had nothing. Womp womp, but this is also one of the benefits of being mobile and not having a plan—we could wait this out. We decided to see the glacier then come back to town a night or two later and hope the gas situation was resolved.

The Perito Moreno glacier is about an hour or so outside of town, and I can’t recommend it enough. You know how they say a fire is TV for people in the bush, or that a rotisserie chicken stand is TV for dogs? If that’s so, then this glacier is TV for penguins and also people who enjoy big chunks of ice falling off and making big sounds. It was amazing. Seriously great day, and one of the best organized and maintained parks of our trip so far. Downside was that you can’t camp in the park, and it was a little pricey for just a day’s admission, but totally worth it. Also, you don’t have to feel bad about ice chunks melting and global warming (which exists and if you don’t believe in it please immediately stop reading this and send me a message so I can cut all ties with you) because the Perito Moreno glacier is one of the only ones in the world that is actually growing. It stretches for nearly 100 square miles and is absolutely stunning. We spent four hours there and still had to tear ourselves away.

We spotted a nice wild camp spot by a river on the way to the glacier, so we pulled off on our way back to camp there underneath a bridge (overlanders and trolls alike know that bridges by rivers are great spots to camp due to shelter from the elements). A cyclist from the US named Walter was already setting up camp there so we made our greetings, set up our camp, made a fire, and invited him to share some food, chocolate, whiskey, and stories. We had a bunch of laughs and marveled at how grizzled and tough the cyclists we’d seen are, and talked about life back in our old lives for a bit. No matter what some snooty travelers will say, there’s nothing like someone who speaks your language, comes from your home country, and gets the trip you’re on—we don’t choose to seek out Americans or English speakers ever, but it’s really great to happen upon a good soul from your home.

We all went our separate ways in the morning—Walter onward toward Peru (do the KM on a map, then imagine pedaling every single one of them…..craaaazy!), and us back into town to camp and plan next steps.

We found a great little overlander spot outside of town, made it our home for a few days while Shan1 recovered from a bug, we waited out the gas strike, and made repeated trips to the local ice cream parlor.

PAUSE FOR JUST ONE SECOND

Glaciers. Patagonia. Torres. Fishing. Kombis. Epic. Friends.

These are just mere words compared to the incredible, mind-blowing, best of class ice cream that El Calafate has. For real, it was the best chocolate ice cream of my entire life. That’s like eating the best hamburger or spaghetti or simple delicious thing ever. If you go to Calafate and eat one pint of ice cream but miss the glacier, NO ONE WILL BE MAD AT YOU.

BACK TO OUR STORY

From Calafate we were headed straight north to El Chalten, the famed home of Mount Fitzroy and a mecca for the climbing set. Also tons of nature and hikes and fish just waiting to be caught.

Exiting Calafate, there were literal rows of hitchhikers, hippies, and travelers-without-transportation looking for rides. It’s been a long time coming that I owe the world a missive on “hitchhiking and how it’s not a thing”, but that will have to come later. The long and short of it, concerning Patagonia and the Route 40 drive, is that there are many, many, many more hitchhikers than there are vehicles to transport them. Why? Well, succinctly, because people are super cheap, don’t know how to travel, and somehow think that flying down here to hitchhike is kind of fulfilling our wish (us, as vehicle owners) to pick up random people and take them where they want to go free of charge. This will turn into a full blown blog post, meant for the appendix, where I just rant and rant and rant.

Being the excellent people we are, and looking to help out a fellow human, we pull over to pick up someone. Our criteria so far on the trip is absolutely no more than two people at once, too hard on the engine, and preferably a single person. We end up pulling over for a very kind, respectful, young Dutch man who is taking some time off before pursuing a graduate degree of some sort. We tell him we can take him as far as we’re going, but we will be camping somewhere random that night. After an hour or so, he seemed agreeable enough so we asked him if he has a tent and would like to camp with us…and that we’d also be fishing and catching oh so many fish. He liked the idea, and had never in his life been fishing, so we decided to all camp together and teach this young man a life skill: how to cast a rod into a river and come up with nothing for hours on end. It was fun, we shared food, made a big fire, laughed, played a dice game, some Israeli card game he knew (Aneef/Yassef??), drank some decent whiskey, and traded stories until our poor little table exploded underneath us and we all laughed ourselves to sleep.

The next morning I woke up feeling like I had caught Shan1’s bug from Calafate, so we broke down camp and jetted straight to Chalten. It was a beautiful drive (that I couldn’t enjoy as I was turning green), and we made it into town only to find it brimming with dirty ass dirt bag climbers (nothing but love you guys!), hordes of Asian tourists on buses (both Chinese and Korean), and roving packs of Israelis straight off their IDF gigs. What I’m saying is that Chalten is a bit of a shit show, and if not for the amazing nature there, it should not exist. We said our goodbyes to our polite young Dutch friend, then booked ourselves into a somewhat lavish pousada (all camp sites were full or incredibly expensive for being packed) so I could be sick for a day. Once recovered, we bought supplies and drove into the mountains to see some waterfalls (thumbs up) and even farther to access the trailhead for the Lago del Desierto hike. It’s the furthest trail from Chalten, and actually sits right on the foot border between Chile and Argentina. Being so out of the way has its advantages, as we saw almost no one on the entire day hike out to the north end of the lake (where we camped overnight), and almost no one on the way back. The one couple we passed on the way there was a Polish couple walking across the border into Chile. They didn’t look so great so we actually waited for them to finish and got concerned when night fell and they weren’t emerging out of the dense forest (seriously dense, and also almost no trail markers meaning we got lost for a solid hour). Eventually they did and we had a nice fireside chat with them. Next morning we woke up early and I bounded out of the tent ready to catch some goddamn fish.

This was to be my day—within minutes I had caught two decent sized rainbow trout, and was feeling pretty damn chuffed. Our working theory is that since this lake was catch and release it remained pretty well stocked aside from the fish we saw the friggin’ game warden taking out of the lake—c’mon dude, he was wearing his badge and everything, AND carrying a rod and cooler.

Photo op before being released back into the lake!

Besides nearly going insane from the horseflies on the hike back, we had an awesome time exploring the countryside and would hit up Chalten again for sure, but would skip the town entirely.

After four or five days there we bounced out to continue back up north and even saw an armadillo on our way out of town (cutest of God’s creatures??) and a monstrous Black-chested Buzzard-eagle. We were excited to make tracks back north, and will continue on next time!

This chapter is dedicated to Brendan Murton, his zinger got me to write it.

Farm work, Thanksgiving, White Water Rafting, Climbing, and Pre-Patagonia

May 09, 2016 by Danny Cronyn

OK, so yes we've been having way too much fun and we are still way behind on the blog and getting way-behinder as the days pass. Here is my attempt to distill down the most awesome rocking parts of our trip, accompanied by photos, to get us up to current day. It's a strange thing how being so far behind disincentivizes one from writing more, versus wanting to catch up- oh the human pysche, and oh my laziness. I promise you faithful readers, friends, and family that we are having a blast and are very safe. Love you all.

Last we left you, we were bidding adieu to Bariloche, to our Peruvian passenger Maricel, and briefly to our dear friends Brendan and Bridget while we met up with another friend of the this blog- good 'ol French Paul, our passenger from Punto Choros to Valparaiso, Chile. We had kept in touch with Paul all this time, as he said he'd eventually be WOOFing somewhere near Bariloche and we hoped to see him again. Turns out, he was working at a farm (HUGE by American standards, but actually only a subplot by Argentinian/Patagonia standards) and helping to do some work on the 5,000 hectare piece of land they had- or about 12,300 acres.

We were all glad to see one another, we brought some food, drink, and stories to share, along with our crazy Welshman. Paul was living with another volunteer, Morgan (an 18 year old British girl taking a gap year), in a tiny cottage on the property- no TV, no wifi, only power during certain hours, and weekly there was a food drop of mostly fresh veggies from local farms (so many leeks). Shan1 and I stayed in Masi, while Gareth was gifted the broken down caravan camper that sat on the property- really cool use of an out-of-work vehicle: a stationary, small, apartment. The first evening, we played soccer with the farm family kids (there was a full time Argie family living on the property, a Swedish mom and Argie dad with three very rough tumble farm kids that we loved), cooked a great dinner together, and stayed up late drinking what we had brought. We planned on taking off the next day, but were really enjoying our stay there and I asked Paul if we might be able to do some work and stay another night. Given that we were self-sufficient, needed no food or assistance, it was basically work in trade to hang out another day. Along with Paul and Morgan, we three helped dig a long irrigation ditch, find, and fit the pipes that would be laid inside, as well as hack through some pretty hearty roots with an axe. Tough day of work that was rewarded by another great dinner, drinks, and the first time we played our now-constant companion game: Molkky. Simple, Finnish, fun, can drink while playing- instant hit. We stayed up way late drinking whiskey and playing with our headlights. The next day we all hung out for a bit after breakfast, then said our goodbyes knowing that we'd made a great friend in Paul and that we'd see him again somewhere else in the world.

Next! We set off to El Bolson to meet back up with Brendan and Bridget (B&B), and continue our mission down south to Patagonia. Just to prepare you...lots of stops along the way.

El Bolson is a town on the Argie side of the border on the way down/up from Patagonia, so it gets a lot of travelers and tourists and is 'appropriately' outfitted. The town also has a very 'hippie' reputation, which I can say is only due to people not understanding what the hippies were all about. I will get into this later...because I can't help myself. After spending one night camped at a brewery, beer was super average and expensive, we met up with B&B at their campsite- an apple orchard with plenty of space and few occupants...perfect for a sweet hangout and impending Thanksgiving day feast. After touring the town a bit, we spent a few days settling in, making preparations and then getting a shopping list together for Thanksgiving, American/Welsh/Aussie/Saffa/Argentinian style. Despite not being able to find turkey (although we had JUST fed one on the farm we stayed at days before...a scary, pregnant, female), we made an absolute feast for all of us. Two types of grilled chicken over the fire, corn, asparagus, potatoes, sweet potatoes, purple cabbage, and a freshly made apple cake courtesy of Bridget- all accompanied by a classic US of A playlist featuring The Boss, Billy Joel, Tom Petty, and anyone singing about the stars and stripes. A great meal, wonderful friends, and certainly an unforgettable Thanksgiving. Still to this day....thank you Brendan, Bridget, and Gareth for helping us two Yanks celebrate.

OK, on the back of gratefulness, I got to say a word about El Bolson and what I perceive as THE reason to skip that fraud of a town if you can help it at all. John Lennon glasses, hemp pants, dreadlocks, and an obvious + copious drug trade does NOT hippies make. Listen dear people of El Bolson, if you want to really be the embodiment of that movement, talk to my parents, and figure out that making crap 'artisenal' jewelry and dropping acid doesn't make you a hippie. Besides the generally bedraggled look of the denizens there that may lead you to erroneous conclusions, the attitudes are the give-away. Tourists are marks to be cheated, people to condescend to, and in one instance we know of, people to be robbed/attacked. Our friends Johnny and Ruby (climbing friends of B&B and generally great people) were robbed at machete point while hiking there, and although surprising, we can't say that we could put it past those guys in El Bolson. Anyways, those fake ass hippies with bad attitudes could not hold us cool cats down, so on we go.

Oh, quick shout (just for memory's sake) on Brendan and my epic adventure to get some floras in El Bolson, talking with a guy who couldn't comprehend due to acid, end up drinking with a pregnant lady who insisted on us buying her beer, finally meeting back up with a guy with a broken wooden staff, and then ending up getting a random dude with a chainsaw to cut us our very own Molkky set. Inside baseball I know, but it was an awesome errand.

From El Bolson, we took a gear-check overnight hiking trip to an amazing locale up in the mountains with an awesome glacial river running through it (El Cajon Azul, the Blue Drawer), that I gladly jumped into from a height. The hike itself was average, but the camp site was straight out of a fairy tale- complete with trees filtering sun light through leaves, a babbling brook, and enough errant firewood to make a massive bonfire for our meal.

After the brief overnight hiking trip we headed south again, but not before making several stops to get majorly awesome (think: four mountain dews at full extension type awesome). Just south of El Bolson is a world famous climbing spot called Piedra Parada. If you're thinking that Danny + Shan1 are not clkbers, then you are about 50% right- turns out that I am indeed terrified of heights still (confirmed several times over) and that Shan1 is actually a natural at both climbing and making me look bad. Bridget and Brendan are both avid climbers, wanted to hit this spot, and were gracious enough to let us come with them and lend us their gear, and more importantly, their expertise. We parked up in amazing camp site right on a lazy river, complete with rope swings for mega-sweet backflips, and spent our first night playing Molkii and cooking over a fire. In the morning we awoke to a herd of cows surrounding us and knew it was time to hit the mountain. I won't get into the actual adventure any more than to say I gave it the old college try, make it about 50-75% up both pitches that I attempted before falling off both times (on belay, of course). The second time I took a huge swing across the face of the mountain, to the delight of everyone below, and to the detriment of my lifespan. Shan1, as mentioned, was cool as a cucumber and finished out both pitches first time up, and did it such suave fashion that I think she should really join a gym when we get back home. Awesome experience, thanks B&B for the amazing time.

From there, we headed into (believe it or not) the WELSH section of Argentina- Trevelin and Esquel. Turns out, like a million years ago or something some Argie visited Wales and brought back a few of those gingers with him. Knowing the Welsh a bit, they took advantage and set up shop, propagating red hair, failing businesses, and ridiculous accents in another part of the world. True to the reputation though, we found an honest to goodness Welsh tea house, complete with Welsh speaking grandma, to have a tea in with our resident ginger Welshman Gareth.

The real treat though, was discovering Sergio's eco-vineyard camping just south of Esquel. Sergio is an Argie, went abroad to become a chef, came back to his motherland to start a vineyard and eco site. A truly magical place, super restful, and the amazing night stars (milky way, Sirius, shooting stars) kept us all up watching them for hours. We pledged to come back one day...which happened on our way back up from Patagonia.

Sergio's was only a stone's throw away from the Arg/Chile border crossing, so our next stop would bring us back to Chile and to one our favorite towns of the trip- Futaleufu (foot-a-loo-foo). Apparently, as we discovered just before getting there, Futa is one of the top five best places to white water raft in the entire world...some argue #2 just behind the Zambezi in Africa. We found a great, and deserted, camping spot to park up for a few days and then walked into town to see about food and white water rafting. We booked a trip with an affable guide named Christian after checking a couple places, and were set to raft the next day. We also decided to stick around for a few days as well, given that Bridget's birthday was 48 hours away and we didn't want to be on the road for it. We found the sleepy town (not yet high season) to be full of great locals that welcomed us in, an awesome little bakery/cafe that we stopped into at least once a day, and even a little pub/inn run by an Italian expat who worked on fly-making and running his inn.

The white water rafting was a blast, and with a mix of class five rapids, a great challenge for everyone. Our guide was great, the river was empty except for us, and the five of us had a ball tackling some big rapids together. After the rock climbing, it felt like we were becoming the a real exxxtreme mountain dew crew. I would've loved to stay a bit longer to re-do the river (although at ~$100 it wasn't cheap), learn fly-fishing, and hang out longer in Futa.

The next day we decided to hang out for Bridget's birthday, and go to the BBQ/sheep roast that we were invited to after white water rafting. I will remember this night for the rest of my life. We all bought Bridget some small trinkets for her birthday, strung up some party items in the quincho at our campsite, and played music while playing dice game all together- just drinking and having a great time. After we celebrated together, we headed into town with dessert and boxes of wine for our mutton roast locals party. The party started out tamely enough, with tons of meat being roasted, and only a pitiful tupperware contained of limp lettuce as the sole veggie representative, and we ate our fill of meat while drinking beers with the white water rafting guide crew and other townies. Soon after sun set though, everyone started loosening up, mixing all together, the music got turned up and everyone got louder and happier. I don't know how it started exactly, but Brendan and I found ourselves in conversation with our guide Christian (who also owned the rafting company we took) advising him to buy the website domain www.RapidosEpicos.com (EpicRapids.com). Somehow a chant got started and took over the entire party, "ole...ole ole ole, Rapidos...Epicos...". As funny as it was, it also turned out to be a signal for our gracious hosts to suggest we move the party to a local bar. Welp, in typical kind Futa fashion, we were the only ones really being asked to go to the bar, but we laughed it off and went to where they suggested. Arriving at the "bar", it was really just an odd looking karaoke/gentlemen club with no one in it. The bar tender/proprietor even let us put YouTube videos on songs on their big screen until more people showed up and they eventually asked us to leave as well. Great night, we laughed all the way home.

PHEW. Catching up now...just a few short business quarters behind now, as we write from Sao Paolo, Brazil. Shan1 is now joining the writing team as well, so hopefully we should be at least doubling our output. Until next time!

The "Switzerland" of Argentina

March 14, 2016 by Danny Cronyn

Been a hot second or two since we last posted- and for good (bad!) reason- we’ve been stuck, stucker, and stuckiest on our way back to Buenos Aires and Brazil. The bright side is that I can cover about a month (and counting now) in a relatively short blog post.

Anyhow, back to the past we go! Last we left you, we were heading west to the Lakes District with a Welshman and his Peruvian friend in tow. Before leaving BA, we stopped by the house of Maricel’s (Gareth’s Peruvian friend who would be joining us for two weeks) uncle. Typical of Argentinians, they welcomed us in with both arms, we chatted for a bit, and were not allowed to turn down delicious food and drink before our trip. Her uncle even drove half of us to a big box store to do some pre-trip shopping. Super awesome peeps, very thankful to have departed BA on a high note like that.

The four of us officially on our way west (then due south to Patagonia), we drove again through the middle of Argentina, which is a great drive if you get off on sensory deprivation. We stopped at a few campsites along the way, one of which gave us a top 10 “worst night of the trip” with swarms of mosquitoes and biting flies that left us all chewed up and hoping for better down the road. After a few days slowly making our way toward the lakes and the Andes, we finally arrived in San Martin de los Andes- Argentina’s version of Vail or Breckenridge or Chamonix. Any of those towns it was not, it turned out.

We parked up in town in a parking lot right on the edge of the lake, at this time of year the wind was howling and still biting cold, and resolved to wild camp for the night. The town around us lacked any authenticity- it looked like someone had once seen a Swiss village and built a movie set based on it (think: the final scene of Three Amigos, or better yet Blazing Saddles…but Swissier). Main street crowded with North Face and Nike stores, dotted with price gouging ‘local craft’ shops. We somehow found a “Mexican” food place and stopped in for the first of many disappointing ‘ethnic’ meals. Overpriced, super odd, and not all that tasty- a simple google search would show them that the food they’re serving isn’t really Mexican, c’mon guys! It’s our fault for trying to find ethnic food because we’re homesick, but also a word of caution to long term travelers down here as well…not worth the trouble ultimately.

While this town, and the subsequent towns like it in the lakes region were disappointing in their veneers (literally, like chalets built out of concrete and stucco with one thin layer of wood paneling to give the look of authenticity) and commercialism, they more than made up for them in beauty. That first night in San Martin portended things to come for the next few weeks, and I (for one) could not have been happier.

From there until we left to head to Patagonia, we slept in epic camp spots on the edges of beautiful lakes, nestled in the foothills of the Andean mountain chain. We were in the Lakes Region, north of Patagonia. While no one ever joined me, my routine was wake up, do my little workout routine of pushups and situps or squats, then jump into a freezing cold lake- an excellent way to wake up. Each morning, or sometime during the day I’d attempt to jump in every lake I saw, just became my thing.

After our frigid night on the lakeshore in San Martin, we continued south along what's called the Seven Lakes Drive planning to find a camp spot along the way. It was an amazing drive, and really started noticing the landscape we all think of when we imagine “Patagonia”: emerald hills, wildlife everywhere, life climbing out of every crack and nook, exploding and vibrant. It was all of that I promise you, but nothing at all compared to the transcendental, primordial beauty of Patagonia that we would come to witness. We hiked the four of us on a trail that I still think we pretty much made up, but had a good go of it for a few hours before returning to Masi and trying to find a campsite. What I can remember from this stretch during that day was pulling into yet another completely empty campsite, being quoted a price that would indicate there was imaginary competition, and the guy finally telling us the temperature would be too low for tents and Gareth & Maricel would have a really hard night outside. Also, that guy looked exactly like Sean Connery, the Argentinian version, it was amazing.

Eventually we camped in Villa La Angostura, them in a hostel, and us two in Masi in a campsite in town (begrudgingly). It’s great to have friends join the trip for all the obvious reasons, but I will say that concessions have to be made once they’re there- those wild camp spots we would’ve camped at before are now out of the question with two people in tents. Just something to think about when you ask people to join- make sure they know what they’re getting into!

From Villa La Angostura, we made our way down to Bariloche, where Maricel was catching a bus back to Buenos Aires (a 24 hour bus…I couldn’t believe we got that far away already!), and we were set to meet up with our old friends Brendan and Bridget once again! Of course it was sad to leave Maricel, but we were also preparing for our long and quasi-dangerous leg into the wilds of Patagonia in our ill-suited girl Masi, so having convoy companions like Brendan & Bridget (B&B from here on out) was an awesome prospect.

A big ‘ol hug goodbye to Maricel, nicest Peruvian royal Caribbean worker I know!, and big ‘ol hugs to B&B as we met up once again in Bariloche.

OK, we are woefully behind on this blog for several reasons…but I’m going to try and pick up the pace in the next episode- just needed to get this out first.

Uruguay: Definitely A Country

January 23, 2016 by Danny Cronyn in Argentina, Uruguay

Hello beautiful people, thank you for keeping up with us- I know it's a chore to be this far behind us (we're about two months behind right now) and still care...which is why these blogs are so delightful. Just think how dry they'd be if we were timely- so I guess count your blessings and stuff you guys.

Anyways, Shan1 and I left you whilst enjoying Buenos Aires where we were joined by a ginger Welshmen and non-ginger Aussie, Gareth and Sean. Only a few days to hang out and enjoy BA, where the opening hours for bars made for some very late and dizzying nights for us all, before boarding a ferry boat destined for Colonia, Uruguay.

Carriages and cobblestones in Colonia, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Word of advice: book these ferry trips ahead of time if you're looking to go from BA to Uruguay, since they fill up quickly (likely less so, now that you don't have to cross borders to get advantageous currency rates), and are weirdly way expensive. It was kind of a hassle to do, since much like all of South America, the build-a-good-eComm-website craze has not yet taken over. If I decided to stay down here, I'd build a year 2000-esque business and just make people decent websites out of goDaddy templates. I'd be a millionaire in no time.

Bought tickets, waited in line, took ferry to Colonia, pretty straightforward. Colonia is a great little tourist spot, we found. Old walled city, cobblestone streets, cafes, lots of places to grub some food, and plenty of welcoming hostels. We spent the day walking around, looking at some of the antique cars, chatting, and mostly just waiting to ride and/or die the next day and go to Montevideo. Sean and Gareth both watched "Best in Show" for the first time ever as well, what a film. Oh, highlight of Colonia was easily this huge creepy poster of what looked like Gareth with a cut out black mask on...so eerie.

Gareth's masked doppelganger, mustache and all.

Then we went to Montevideo. I can honestly say I was looking forward to seeing this place, what I thought would be a smaller, more progressive, more beachy version of Buenos Aires. Not so much really. I shan't write about Montevideo too much other than to say it was nice and fine and I wouldn't go back unless I had to. We stayed in an awesome AirBnB though, made some wonderful meals all together, and hit up a few local spots for drinks after days spent walking all across the vast city. Nothing too impressive, especially after BA, and a bit underwhelming all over. Politically though, Uruguay IS super progressive and were one of the first countries in the world to legalize same sex marriage on the federal level as well as legalizing marijuana consumption and cultivation. Way to go you guys...now back to making your city cool again OK?

Epic Sunday roast in Montevideo—thank you Chef Gareth!

OH YEAH! On our way out though, we arrived at the main bus terminal to take the three hour bus ride back to Colonia to catch our ferry, and found the entire terminal was blocked in by a protest. Not cool. We waited around in some decent heat, while the Uruguayans drank their mate (they love the stuff even more than Argentinians), but sneakily climbed onboard the first bus to bust the blockade. Few hours later, we were in Colonia and ready to git 'er done on the ferry.

BACK TO BA, met another AirBnB hostess in Palermo neighborhood where we'd be staying the next two weeks or so. Got our stuff sorted, then headed right back out, around midnight (when things are getting started in BA) to a Pearl Jam pre-party (the live show was the next day) at a bar across town. Just so happened a good buddy from back home (JC, I know you're reading this) had a friend in BA for the show as well, so we were lined up to meet him too. Well, after about an hour of being in Pearl Jam only bar, with my buddy's super duper turbo drunk friend screaming in my ear, I remembered, "Oh yeah, I don't even like Pearl Jam that much". Hey, don't get me wrong, I like them the same way every casual radio listener from years 1993 to 2001 likes them, but I don't LIKE THEM LIKE THEM the way every single person in that bar did. The night devolved, another 5am performance.

Next day was a mess, as we discovered "Pearl Jam in Buenos Aires" really meant they were playing an HOUR BY CAR outside the city, and there was no real public transportation option out there. Context, that's like saying you're playing NYC and actually your gig is at the Hot Topic in the Paramus Mall. We persuaded a taxi driver to take us, skirted the gay pride parade happening that day (two days in a row a crowd of peeps blocked our way, it's a streak), and went to the show. Great tailgating happening everywhere, with choripan and large beers being sold in front yards- I will say that Argentinian Pearl Jam fans have zero problem wearing the band's shirt to the gig (a no-no in the US and also everywhere else ever).

Olééé olé olé olé...Pearl Jaaam, Pearl Jaaam!

Eventually we made our way inside, found the bathrooms (which for Argentinians were conveniently located everywhere there is a wall, because the dudes there pee on everything), and then tried to locate the place where beer is sold. You know about beer? At music shows? It's like popcorn at movies, or turkey at Thanksgiving, or an eye roll after someone rolls their RRRRs when saying "burrito". YEAH WELL, they don't serve any alcohol at big shows in Argentina, thanks for making me see a band sober it was...actually not terrible at all and I didn't have to pee once, so all in all...yup. Pearl Jam was good, Eddie Vedder drank more wine than than 20,000 people, and I gained a newfound respect for how cool a dude he is, even if I don't plan on listening to much Pearl Jam. Thank You Gareth for your wonderful present, we shall always remember (because we were super sober), the BA Pearl Jam show with much fondness and also because of the...

MOST TERRIFYING CAB RIDE EVER

Preface: I've driven cars, tuk-tuks/rickshaws, and motorcycles in Kazahkstan, friggin' Russia, Botswana, Cambodia, Vietnam, even INDIA YOU GUYS, and this insane, third-dimension existing, speed-me-to-the-afterlife loving, nightmare of a cab driver was BY FAR the most scary ride of my life. Seriously. It was literally crazy, like impossible and you wonder how this is being accomplished (scary level, that is), kind of crazy. Besides requisite high speed, non-obeyance of general road rules, and disconcerting amount of texting while driving (the holy trinity of bad driving) this guy was actually creating his own lane IN BETWEEN actual lanes. Imagine, two lanes on a highway, it's tarmac, you're near a major capital, there are lots of cars, and this guy was literally trying to fit between the two cars in the two lanes and creating his own third lane, IN THE MIDDLE. It that didn't work, and often it didn't and we were maybe an inch away from cars on both sides, he would switch out and gun the engine down the shoulder which sometimes had huge 2-4 foot dropoffs. I feel as though this is like trying to describe a bad dream where it's never going to be as scary as I want it to sounds, but let's just say I texted my rickshaw partner from India, Tall Paul, right after we got let out and told him I just had the scariest ride of my entire life. That's saying something, since vehicular manslaughter isn't really even a crime in India (don't fact check that).

Now back in BA, we partied a bunch more, had some great nights, Shan1 got to dance some tango, we walked around the city for days enjoying the sights, I rolled some jiu jistu in a local gym, and we reluctantly bid farewell to Aussie Sean from Brisbane (aka, Brisvegas, BrisneyLand, Brisbekistan).

Now we needed a fourth! Luckily, Gareth's friend Maricel from Lima came to join us for our ride west and south to the Lakes District in Argentina, and then to Bariloche to start our trip to Patagonia. Until next time (phew, only two months behind still!).

On Buenos Aires, Our Favorite Capital Thus Far

January 21, 2016 by Danny Cronyn

Pitting Buenos Aires against our only other capital city we've visited, Santiago de Chile, is like comparing the well-dressed Italian guy who works with your wife, tells great stories, speaks 4 languages, and you're afraid she secretly is having an affair with him, and your brother's friend who really enjoys How I Met Your Mother. What I'm saying is, Buenos Aires got swag, and we loved the crap out of it- sometimes we were sitting at a corner cafe enjoying a coffee or afternoon beer, and thinking, "this feels just like Brooklyn". We moved from Brooklyn, got madd love for it, and identify it as the "IT PLACE" in the world right now- YOU HAD YOUR CHANCE SEATTLE.

Sunset views from the Park Tower Hotel in BA for our one-year anniversary.

So how'd we get there? Glad you asked. It gives me great pleasure to plow through many days all at once in such short (blog) time. We drove there. Across about 1,000 miles of nothing but cattle and fences and grass and nothingness- such is the north central. It's like Nebraska + Cows x How I Met Your Mother. We drove straight across, only stopping to sleep in gas stations and take snacks. There's literally nothing to do on that drive, except pray that it's over. Actually, one story real quick...

Just before entering the city, we camped about 300km outside in creepy little beach town, free of charge and right on an inlet pond. Nice enough, woke early in the morning and drove out of town heading east still to arrive in BA by mid-afternoon. No sooner had we exited the beach town and made it onto the main drag, then we were stopped by a check point in the road. Hmmm we though, no way they're looking for us, the people who intentionally only bought three days of insurance and let is lapse a week ago? No way, prolly looking for drug lords, drug mules, or people who haven't seen the original Die Hard (RIP Rickman/Hans Gruber). Instead, turns out they were looking for idiots with foreign plates and lapsed insurance. As we got pulled over, I confirmed with Shan1 that we both now know 0.0 Spanish, and will smile our way through this.

PULL OVER PROCEDURE FOR ARGENTINA:

1) Licencia (that's driver's license, you guys)

2) Padron (that's car ownership docs)

3) Seguros (that's insurance)

Hey, we had 66% of those! I'd take those odds to Vegas any day of the week. Unfortunately, the officer didn't see it the same way, and we had a problem on our hands. After much back and forth in hand signals (no spanish...so clever!), we agreed that I should talk to his commanding officer. As I got out of the car, Shan1 had the "I guess I hope I see you again" look in her eyes while I crossed the street into an out-of-sight guard post. Well, turns out that my previous travels aided me well here, in that I was able to finally soften the commander up with my famous Irish charm, sincere apologies, and about $60 USD in cash (in reverse order), paid in the form of an informal "multa" or fine. The alternative? Well, at every guard checkin Argentina, you'll see several cars quarantined with 'sequestered' written on them with tape over their doors. Since insurance offices were closed for a few days I didn't want to wait around while our transport and house languished by the side of the road. Oh right, his first 'multa' suggestion was around $120 USD, and I told him it was a bit much...so he came right back with, "OK, how about half that?". DEAL SIR. *Handshake* *Knowing glance* *Cash exchanged* *Officer gives thumbs up and comments on how clever and worldly I am* (liberties have been taken with this dramatic retelling)

ANYWAYS. Insane driving into BA, like COME ON YOU GUYS type driving. Imagine this scene: one lane each way, driver behind me passes with cars coming other way, at the same time the driver behind that guy attempts to pass him on the opposite shoulder, car coming opposite way goes right in between them. People must die driving this way right? Yes, indeed they do, it's on the news and stuff.

K. We arrive into Buenos Aires, a sprawling city of over 12.8 million, and it takes well over an hour to drive from outskirts into city center on the highway. As elections were happening, everything was road to building top covered in campaign stuff- GO STOLBIZER! We finally navigate the maddening city traffic patterns to our hostel, check in, and head straight to bed- sleeping in one for the first time in a long time. To say this hostel (not hyper linking because they suck) was a good example of the west's decline is an understatement. Early 20 somethings of every country met here to listen to Maroon 5, drink jaeger bombs, and generally experience BA much the same as New Jersey folks do in Times Square. I dislike most hostels, some are very OK and good breeding grounds for single-serving friends, but some are lousy with youngins simply looking to binge drink and make out with a foreign person...like someone from the UK or even Scotland. My favorite line from our time there was a drunk gentleman yelling/asking at the top of his lungs "YO TOMMY, WE DOING THIS?". I digress.

There, the day after, we met Gareth! You may remember him from such roles and episodes as Minister at our Wedding, Danny Goes to Africa, Burning Man, Running with the Bulls, Let's Drive to Mongolia, and Tall Paul Tries to Drive a Rickshaw. Gareth would be joining our trip for the foreseeable future, and we were overjoyed to see a friendly face. He had just finished a six month tour as IT Guy (official title) on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship, so we were excited to learn about rudders, propellers, uniforms, and also if Love Boat is ever coming back (jury still out). We all hung out for a few days, walked the city, had an amazing hamburger and an entire bottle of Limoncello, dropped off our kombi for some maintenance work, and even had what Argentinians think is Indian food. Great to reconnect with an old friend that I think of as a brother, and have him share our trip with us for a while.

Although Gareth had just arrived, we were also awaiting our friend from Brisbane, Sean, and his arrival in a few days. You may remember Sean from such episodes as Tied-For-First-Drunkest-Skeleton at our wedding Halloween party (shoutout to Adam Carullo for making it a race to the bottom on that one!), Running of the Bulls, and Sean Comes to America for St. Patrick's Day. Great man, great friend, loves his Chevy. Sean actually showed up right during Shan1 and my first wedding anniversary, so our proper reunion was bit delayed while we celebrated at a very posh hotel and had a fabulous meal. Special moment to also shout out to Shannon's grandparents for the super generous gift: Cynthia and Romeo thank you so much, it was extravagant and perfectly-timed and we'll never forget who made our first anniversary such a special weekend, LOVE YOU.

Directly after our blissful wedding weekend, not linking to our anniversary restaurant but instead this one because it was a superior meal , we needed to make plans to get us all from BA to Uruguay so we could see beautiful Colonia and Montevideo. We also had to be back in time for Gareth's favorite thing ever- seeing Pearl Jam live. Next blog episode: we do the things I just said we were planning to do. Cool? Cool. Coming at you soon- we have wifi for a few days, so get your brain ready for mucho mas meanderings.

Get your passports ready...Up next, the ferry to Colonia, Uruguay!

Into the Argentina we go! Part 1

January 01, 2016 by Danny Cronyn

OK, so yeah we promised to be better at posting, then followed it up with a month of silence- it's kind of getting abusive at this point...cycles of broken promises followed by flowers and candy and blog posts- WE KNOW. This time though, we have a great excuse: we were mostly in Patagonia which is known for its incredible beauty but also has seriously crappy wifi (wait for the one-star review Patagonia, just wait for it).

Anyways, last we left you we were heading back to Santiago via a sleepy coastal town called Punto de Choros (translates to Mussels Point). Of course we wanted to get to the beach as quickly possible, so we planned out an aggressive driving route- it's cool we can go 55mph top speed- and wanted to cover 1,200km in just two days driving. Suffice it to say, super bad idea. First night we drove into the desert outside San Pedro, and found a camp spot on iOverlander (another shoutout to such a great app) just next to an observatory on a hill. Apparently the Chilean desert is world famous for science star nerd people who fight over Picard and Wookies and the like. Anyways, we parked next to a bunch of Brits and Scots who were staying up all night to watch stars, FOR FUN, and they were all on vacation from their professional jobs as star nerd watchers. They weren't very friendly, and even rebuked Shannon's attempts at asking after their interests. Whatever dudes. I also cleaned out some stuff in the engine, and discovered how to locate and clean the oil sensor (foreshadowing alert!).

After a nice night of sleep under some pretty amazing stars- you can see the friggin milky way with your bare eyes down here, you guys- we took up our 800km driving day with a sense of stoicism and naivety that we'll never have again. This day changed us as kombi people, and we'll never be the same. K, let me break it down for the non-metric peeps (all us USA'ers): 800km = 500 miles...meaning a pretty decent day of driving, like Baltimore to Boston or a San Diego to LA round trip twice, except in a Geo, or Neon, or Festiva, that weighs two tons and has an engine that sounds like an airplane landing and needs a break every two hours. Tough driving, is what I'm saying. Can't stop won't stop driving type driving. It was a rough day.

As we pulled off the main highway, 740km into our drive, and onto a desolate gravel road that led us out into the beach, the oil emergency light shone bright red in the cabin and I pulled over with much stress. It was dark, around 9pm, we still had an hour to go to get to the beach, and oil light problems usually aren't nice ones. Upon inspection of our engine, it turns out both the smog hose that comes off the carb and the oil sensor that plugs into the engine block had mostly come undone. Smog hose...I dunno, but the oil sensor was all me (chekhov's gun), and had spurted much oil all over the place. I tightened it, replaced smog hose, and we set off into the night- me feeling very much like I graduated with a civil engineering degree.

ANYWAYS, under the cover of night we drove into Punto de Choros, and asked around the sleepy town about camping spots and heard from a young lady that her uncle ran a joint right down the road. Tio Dogui welcomed us in close to 11pm, showed us a place to park in his sandy enclosed backyard, and hurried us into his very homey home for a late night dinner that he had on the stove. Frankly, we had no idea what was going on, he was running around, Shannon looked as confused as I did, but the wind was at near hurricane levels outside, and this gentle old hippie (yes, this bad ass) had already served us fresh bread, some sort of meaty stew, and was asking us questions about life and our travels before we could figure out what to do. His warmth and hospitality was truly at dizzying levels, and we came to see over the next days that it really was hard to tell the difference between guests and family in house. Eat, much needed whiskey drinking, followed by exhausted sleep.

In the morning we awoke to a beachside paradise- the wind had subsided, the sun was up, and all the puppies at Tio Dogui's were out and playing, along with the old german shepherd matriarch Luna. We talked with Tio, walked around town (takes about 10 minutes), and generally lazed about reading and playing guitar in hammocks. Tio welcomed us in for lunch with the family and other guests there, it was inspiring to receive such a welcome. We hung out more, did some shopping at the neighborhood minimarket, and made dinner out of the kombi. Later there was a fire, and we got to meet Daniel from Colombia who was traveling on school vacation, and Paul from France who was traveling for 6+ months and working throughout Argentina. Good peeps, lots of wine, bed. Next day we all decided to take boats to go see the penguins on the nature reserve island off the coast of Punto de Choros, so we headed over to the docks to get tickets and reserve our spots. While waiting for our boat to get ready, the urchin fishers were hauling in their catch from a deep cold well of water just off the dock. They had a great little system, since harvesting urchins was only allowed during one time of year, they would 'relocate' urchins from all over into this one deep cold well of water, basically using it as a refrigerator until they were ready to harvest. So we watched divers go into the dark hole off the dock, then come back up with hundreds of live urchins at a time. One urchin fisher even came over and craked open a live urchin and offered us a taste. I'm not one for uni or urchin, but this live stuff was the absolute JAM, buttery and salty and smooth. Apparently it's also supposed to be the natural viagra, as explained over and over and over by the fishermen.

Boat out, saw some very cute penguins (did you know they are pretty decent climbers and actually nest in the cliffs and bluffs instead of on the exposed beach?), tons of cormorants, lots of seals, and even had the experience of boating along when a pod of dolphins were swimming with us, like feet away. Definitely worth the price of admission, please stop into Punto de Choros and visit Isla Dama, a CONAF site down here, same as Torres Del Paine. Flowers were blooming, the island was pristine, company was great, just a wonderful day, transcendent really. In the evening Shannon and I walked the beach, skipped stones, and were accompanied by our now faithful companion, the german shepherd Luna. Awesome dog, and she really felt a duty protecting us from birds, other dogs, waves, and even heights (as she freaked out when Shannon climbed a rock). Amazing place, highly recommend it.

We ate a local place, the food was very average, and we had to share the restaurant with some very boorish and drunk chilean and american expats who were very...punchable. After dinner we headed back Tio's, there was a full fire going, some Chilean overland bikers we traded stories with, and decided to offer Paul the French guy a ride to Valparaiso on our way back to Santiago.

Left the next morning, with Paul in tow in the back now, and headed south back to Santiago. Apparently, Valparaiso is nowhere close to Santiago, but whatever, ain't no thing. Mostly uneventful drive, about 500km down there and we left early so not a big deal. Dropped off Paul in the evening, then headed back into Santiago to pick up final paperwork and finally head to Argentina. Before leaving we met up with our good friend Jose again, went to his friend's modern art exhibition, that he helped produce, and got to go out to dinner with him and his father (the hungarian consulate from Arica who was in town) for chinese food in their old neighborhood in Santiago. Jose is great, his father was super warm and all around just another special night for Shannon and Danny surrounded by awesome people.

Jose's dad even called the caribineros (police) who manned the border pass into Argentina to check it was open for us, and we got the green light...so next morning we headed to Mendoza via the mountain pass with 25 switchbacks on it. Peace out for now Chile!

Catching Up With The Cronyns: San Pedro De Atacama, Chile

November 30, 2015 by Danny Cronyn in Chile

Hello folks! We're trying to get better at updating more often and at least get to the same country...currently we're in El Bolsón, Argentina on the way to Patagonia and Torres Del Paine. Let's catch up, you guys!

Last we caught up we were leaving Arica after a nice bout of altitude sickness and heading southernly toward San Pedro de Atacama. Itching to get back out on the road again, we burned out of Arica down the coast line, through some severely large canyons (we still think it's funny one of them is called Shrimp Canyon). No issues on the drive, not a ton to see, but we were heading south again and in a fine mood. We wanted to break for the day somewhere near the large mining town of Iquique, where we also wanted to get an overdue oil change. It took us waaaaay longer than we thought to find a mechanic to change oil, pretty simple job, but finally made our way and had it done. By that time it was wicked late so we checked trusty iOverlander for spots to wild camp. We ended up pulling into a yet-to-green sand gold course that was under construction, and sleeping no more than 100 meters from the waves on the coast. Beautiful spot, free of charge, and great cooking and playing campfire guitar together...just us two.

Enjoying the views of the Chilean coast before heading back into the desert.

Next day we headed south and inland, we hoped, to the famous San Pedro de Atacama. Masi was in fine shape, the coast line looked exactly like the PCH or Highway 1 in California, and all was right in the world—truly inspiring views and surf on the coast. We hit the town of Tocopilla and made the turn inland to the exhausting desert. Winds picked up quite a bit, to the point of steering corrections and then finally to me literally holding the wheel at a 90 degree angle to compensate for the nonstop gusting. Because of an alignment problem and compounded by super hot desert asphalt and the open angle of the wheel on the road, it wasn't long before we had our first awesome tire blowout. It was legit—the entire tire blew out from the sidewall, and shredded the whole thing. So there we were parked on the side of the road, 100km behind and in front of us, in the desert, with a blown tire. It also wasn't until then that we discovered the jackpoint nearest the wheel was welded almost completely shut, and the jack we had would no longer work. I tried inverting the jack, using rocks to gain leverage, digging a hole under the wheel, but could not get Masi far up enough to get the spare onto her. After an hour of trying, then another hour of trying to flag someone down for help, a drunk Chilean (he was drunk because 1) I know drunk when I see drunk and 2) they had an open case of Corona bottles sitting out in the car and all four of the people in the car were drinking them) pulled over to lend us his working jack and also berate us for not understanding more of his slurred Chileno. Cool bro.

Tire back on, short of light, and an alignment problem, we decided to park it for the night in Calama and get Masi checked up on and aligned. Alignment guys were funny, new tire was bought, so we messaged our friend and ex-kombi owner Jose to let him know we had our first issue but we're ok. According to good 'ol Jose, he said, "Well guys, please get out of Calama as soon as possible, because it is basically the worst city in the entire world", and added that Calama is known as the city of the Three Ps: perros, putas, and polvo. I'll wait here while you google translate those.

After a very respectable camp experience in Calama, we bought another jack, and then attempted to head to San Pedro finally. Masi didn't want to start for the first time since we hit up 13-14,000 feet in Putre, and we were starting to get concerned. Getting her going still worked in second gear, so we punted on the problem until we got to San Pedro. Drive went fine and we arrived in San Pedro to see our real first tourists of the entire trip! Both welcoming and unsettling, as we had made it into a commercial zone. We parked up in a great little camping hostel (Hostal Puritama), and paid what we felt was an extravagant price for camping, use of kitchen (but no cooking allowed...womp womp), and crappy wifi: $20 USD per night. It's a hit to the budget starting out the day especially with so many free wild camps around. But there I learned how to change the timing on Masi, gave it a go, and she started firing up right away—so I was cautiously optimistic that I've made my first actual auto repair.

Hostal Puritama's seriously aggressive geese looking for a snack. Shan1 had to fight off the male with a plastic box.

Our week in San Pedro was pretty relaxing, although still expensive and touristy and we were glad to get going at the end of it. Highlights:

-Cabalgatas (horseback riding) through the desert and getting my steed into a full out gallop across the open sands. Shan1 was a bit more intelligent and kept her horse to a nice trot

That's not how you ride a horse. THIS is how you ride a horse.

-A couple nights of wild camping that bookended a full day at the Termas de Puritama where we soaked in stunning natural pools at the bottom of a red rock canyon

Spending the night near the termas the night before paid off—we were first to arrive in the morning and had the pools all to ourselves for 15 whole minutes!

-Our tour to Valle de la Luna where we explored some awesome salt caves and watched the sunset from the top of the valley ridge

The last rays of sunlight on Valle de la Luna. The human specks on the ridge offer a sense of how grand this place is.

-A great, and well-earned "nice meal out" where we FINALLY had good Chilean food: a rich pesto veggie risotto and a very solid salmon dish

-Watching a local football (soccer) game in the stands...not great level, but we felt like locals for a bit

-A tour to the salt flats where we saw our first flamingos, and then up to 14,000 feet to see a few volcanic lakes—beautiful and we were thankful to have plenty of coca and a fast bus driver to get us down this time!

14,000 feet and no altitude sickness, yay!

After a week in San Pedro, we started our drive back to Santiago to collect our official ownership papers for Masi but had a magical stop along the way in Punto de Choros and made some new friends. Stay tuned.

First we got to Arica...then we LEFT (<---Spoiler alert)

October 04, 2015 by Danny Cronyn in Chile

You know the 'ol maxim about driving 2,000 kilometers to Arica: you start out, then you get there.

Well, that's exactly what we did. We wanted to coincide our trip with our Kombi's old owner, and our new friend, Jose's trip up there and spend a day or two with him in his hometown. We arrived there the first evening a bit road-weary, but happy to see expanses of beaches, a chilled out surf town, and plenty of places to potentially camp right out next to the surf. As luck would have it, we got to play one of my favorite old games, "wrong way, right way", familiar to any friends or family that have visited me anywhere ever. To play, first you must go the wrong way (at least once), and then you go the right way. Equal parts stupid and unrewarding.

First, we wanted to camp literally on the beach so we scouted up and down the playa for an entrance where there were cars on the beach (don't look at their tires or the big 4x4 stickers on them, key to playing "wrong way right way"). Shannon got out, measured the sand was only like 2 feet deep or so, at worst, and then I gunned my little lady Masi from the dirt entrance straight out onto the sand. I must relate that those three feet we made it onto the beach were exhilarating. Unfortunately, if not for a kind passer-by with a tow rope, that's where Masi would still be since she apparently is a real no-talent ass clown when it comes to sand. Anypoops, we got pulled out (Shan1's first tow!), and headed to sands of less depth. We found some of those, only like a foot, at MOST, this time, and with a similarly glassy look in my eye I gunned Masi onto the beach for a second towing experience. This time we made it like four feet, at least. After that, we just wanted safety and no more digging and towing. So yes, we found a solid inlet road and set up camp maybe 45 feet from the where the waves were crashing.

Later that night, Jose and his girlfriend Marcela came to join us for a whiskey-by-lantern-light on the beach, we talked, then all retired for the night- not before Marcela told us that where we were staying on the beach was "really not safe at all". Ah well! Waves, beach, not-too-deep sand, what could go wrong?

KOMBI CAMPER ALERT: cover your damn cab air/intake holes with mosquito netting!

If anyone has read the above alert, they will notice that if you do not take caution and cover the cab air vents (obviously not the engine ones, although we saw Kombis with those painted over which kinda flies in the face of the whole "air-cooled" part of the engine) then intelligent 'squeeters will fly in, fly around your face and ears, and bite the fuck out of you all night long without any feelings or remorse or concern for your sanity. This night filled with mosquitoes and hatred for the insect world, was a terrible one. If I had transformed into a mosquito through some Kafka-esque magic, I doubt Shan1 would've spared me...such were the levels of pure and intense hatred toward those guys. I plan on tithing a part of my future salary to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, as I support their mission to rid the world (universe?) of mosquitoes #kill-em-all. At least, that's how I understand the mission of their charity. What I'm saying is that night was rough, you guys.

Well, we survived, woke up in the morning (as alive people do), and we were literally on the beach. NOT BAD. Vultures picking at trash piles aside (for real Chile, what the actual fuck), I was able to wake up in my Kombi, with my beautiful wife, on the beach, in Chile—and that does not a bad life make...no matter how many itchy bites one has on his face. From there, we met up with Jose for a tour of the city, a coffee, a visit to a surf hostal, and then said our good-byes to Jose as he was flying back down to Santiago that evening. We then drove out along the coast of Arica toward a nice little camping spot we found on iOverLander (shout out to this app—it's the bomb and please port over to 'Droid!). The spot was right at the mouth of a cave system along a coastal road (think PCH for the Californians) and situated only feet from the surf again. We parked up Masi, unfolded our table, cooked a delish dinner, and had a pretty solid night. In the morning, about 7 fishermen literally woke us up by banging into our Kombi with their rods and tackle and what I guess were bulky turtlenecks. Not cool guys. Also, lots of trash on the beach as the light revealed, the beach looked better in the dark.

Playa Corazones where we spent our second night. The caves in the background are closed until December 2015 due to being cleaned and de-graffittied, yay!

We then spent the rest of the week in Arica, buying much-needed mosquito netting for Kombi cab intake holes, a tow rope for absolute crap performance in the sand, a sound system workaround for shoddy music choices on the FM tuner, and general sightseeing. Highlights:

OLDEST MUMMIES IN THE WORLD: not even kidding you guys, these mummies are from 5,000 bc, putting those young studs from Egypt to shame
Terminal Agro: Sweet open air market, Terminal Agro was the name, and selling life curiosities was its game (Beware wild packs of roving dogs though, they'll get ya)
Sunsets

We stayed a few nights at El Buey Surf Hostel, a place owned by Jose's friend, Giovanni. Super chill place, we had it basically to ourselves while there, and only minutes walk to a really nice beach named Playa El Laucho, right where a resto/bar called Tuto Beach is located. Freezing water, hot sun, not too shabby.

From Arica, our next destination would be Putre, where just above is situated the world's highest lake called El Lako Mas Higho...just kidding it's called Lago Chungara and don't look up whether it's the highest, everyone told us that it is and these colors don't run.

The part where we went from Santiago to Arica

October 04, 2015 by Danny Cronyn

Catching you up on the lesser seen scenes along the ruta 5 in Chile.

Hey we're on the roa....yikes

September 26, 2015 by Danny Cronyn in Chile

This post is only a week old and we've communicated broadly that we're now fine, but I still want to preface this with a sentiment: our hearts go out to everyone in the areas affected by the massive earthquake that hit here in Chile, just west of La Serena and Coquimbo. At least 12 people have lost their lives, several towns were destroyed, and from first-hand experience I can tell you it was no joke.

K, so back to the beginning: our last week or so in Santiago was rather uneventful, as we cruised around finding, buying, and searching for more camping equipment. For anyone following in our footsteps: START AT THE BIO BIO FLEA MARKET off the Franklin stop before you go anywhere else. You can find anything there, seriously from Tae Kwon Do gear to old school Ataris and antiques, it's all there. We bought camping gear at a fraction of the store prices, tools for the kombi, and plenty of randomness. We also left a ton of things we would've loved to get folks back at home- sorry Uncle Mike, we didn't have space for those wooden golf clubs and the jade monkey.

In addition, we hot stepped all across Santiago, some days clocking more than 6 miles, searching for 1990 kombi window latches (pestillo, en espanol!), water containers (agua whatevers), and double burner camp stoves (doblisimo ampercamp-say estovos). Once we felt good with supplies we set our departure day for the 16th of September, and got everything all sorted with our baby girl for the road.

FIRST DAY: Our new baby did not let us down: she drove smoothly across hills, valleys, plain, and plateau alike, and although we move much slower than everyone else on the road (averaging about 80kph, or about 50 miles per hour), we were steady as hell. Our girl is a thirsty mistress though, and gets about 8 klicks to the liter, so we found our newest hobby- stopping at nice gas stations to take breaks, pay absurd dollars for gas (a full tank on our girl is about $60 USD), and eat the Chilean national food- Completos, or hot dogs with avocado on them.

Quick sidebar on Chilean national stuff:

National food = Completo (hot dog)

National anthem = car alarms (wee-ooo-wee-ooo-BARP-BARP-BARP)

National past time = enjoying the wonderful outdoors and then immediately throwing all your trash on the ground and breaking every piece of glass you have so as to ruin this site for anyone else. Chileans have a pyrrhic sense of enjoyment when it comes to nature.

Anywho, first day went great, we stopped off in Coquimbo and La Serena to buy some supplies and re-fuel on our way into the desert to do some camping. We had just barely parked out in the desert and started cooking dinner, when we felt the ground start to shake. The camp table and stove started to tip over, the food went all over the ground, and the kombi was swaying full tilt from side to side. For any Californians reading, this was Shannon's biggest earthquake, and definitely mine, and we although we laughed it off once it subsided (after minutes, not seconds), we knew that was a big deal. Soon texts and emails and FB messages started to come in telling us that on the other side of the mountain range that hid us, tsunamis were rolling in and literally destroying the towns we were JUST IN. Terrible news, and we have kept those people in our thoughts. Earthquakes are no joke, for real. Nothing funny to say about, just glad we were OK, and thanks to everyone that has kept us in their thoughts.

More to follow on the following days...only one week behind now!

Cars and numeros and cosas and things

September 24, 2015 by Danny Cronyn

DOING MADD UPDATES TONIGHT- THIS POST IS NOW WEEKS OLD (deal with it)

The best part of here (Santiago) so far has been the confrontations with bureaucracy—both because it's defined our purpose thus far of buying a car, but also because it's given us something to talk about with nearly everyone. FOR EXAMPLE (translated from Spanish for YOUR convenience):

Sr. Juan: "What are you doing here?"

Shannon: "Well I'm buying a kombi and driving it all over everywhere without exception."

Sr. Juan: "You mean 'RENT' a kombi, because what you're saying is not possible"

Shannon: "I said "BUY" a Kombi!!!"

*hits Señor Juan with stone cold stunner and asks him if he can smell what the rock is cooking despite him being knocked out and not great in English*

------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is not what actually transpired at all, quite the opposite, but I hope it relays (in dramatic fashion) what it's like to be here and have but one thing to communicate: ME WANT KOMBI.

Between arriving here and seeing our first pile of rust and house paint and poop (or what Romanians call a "car" apparently), we started the search anew. We scoured websites, newspaper ads, and even the local version of Chilean Craigslist (we found nothing there but I've had plenty of nice massage offers). After many messages, a soon-to-be-friend named José Antonio got back to us and said his kombi was still available and ready for a test drive.

Long story short = we went there, test drove it, liked it, liked his vibe, still looked at more kombis, took his to a mechanic for technical analysis, decided to buy his.

If you download John Muir's seminal book "How to keep an air-cooled VW alive" then you'll see that "feeling vibes" and "scrooching your butt into" your possible new vehicle is really important. It certainly was for us. We felt good vibes, we scrooched our butts, and had many beers and pisco (chilean liquor) shots with José on the way to making it official and transferring funds for our new baby. What follows is a succinct account of how to get bonafide in Chile and purchase a vehicle as a foreigner:

1) SEO Words to Make this Post Helpful to Foreigners trying to Find, Purchase, Get, Locate, Procure, Ascertain, and otherwise BUY a car, vehicle, auto, kombi, VW in Chile as a foreigner, non-local, or extranjero/alien.

2) Start searching on any of these sites: Yapo.cl, MercadoLibre.cl, El Mercurio, ChileAuto.cl

3) Find vehicle, set up time to take a look-see, test drive it, TAKE IT TO BONAFIDE MECHANIC for a review, then haggle over price

4) As a foreigner, you will need a RUT number (pronounced root, like the Beastie Boy's classic), that will then allow you to make investments and larger purchases, like a house or car, but will NOT allow you to vote- sorry MIchelle Bachelet haters, nice try. To do this, as we've done so as recent as September 2015, you need to:

a) Get a Chilean sponsor to come with you (shout out again to José for being the man and wading through this with us) and write a nice little paragraph about you do not at all plan to murder anyone in Chile

b) Go to the Chilean IRS, called the SII or Servicios Impuestos Internos, and get in line early before 9am to fill out an application together with your sponsor for a RUT

c) Once filled out, get it checked out and then proceed to a Notary (sidebar: notaries in Chile are basically like Judge Wapner, and have PLUSH jobs, I could write an entire post just about their business model...but I definitely won't ever do that). SNAP, I forgot, fill out ALL your RUT papers in BLUE ink...I'm not joking, it sounds nuts but we almost had to re-do everything because I signed something in a black. Notary reviews your papers, stamps them, charges you a few bucks (less than $10 USD) and then you go back to the SII office

d) NOW GO BACK TO SII, show them you're now , then they will print out a handy little paper for you with your new RUT number- congrats, you're basically a one-way Chilean citizen that can only give Chile money, but make none.

e) LAST STEP, go back to notary (NOT the registro civil or DMV as we yanks call it) where they will do a title transfer and charge you the tax on the purcahse- I think around 1.5% of the total value. BOOM, that's it.

5) Once you're all RUT'd up, you can grab the keys, drive with your temporary RUT number and the old owner's padron (the old title, until yours shows up in the mail weeks later), and cruise all around Chile, but NOT cross borders until your padron is ready with your name on it.

Sheesh, that's a lot. Next post will have us on the road...and it shan't be long before an 8.3 sized disaster strikes (we're doing great).

Somos Chicos Chilenos, AND STUFF

September 09, 2015 by Danny Cronyn

It's hard for me to even write in English anymore, so bear with me por favo...please. Gracias. Just kidding, the Español is still terrible, still speaking a mix of Spanglish/Frenglish and general nonsensery (#DanQuayle2016). Three weeks down and Johnny law still hasn't been able to touch us. The adventure continues...

Last we met, we were in the throes of Chilean cuisine, VW-finding, and overall exploratory pursuits...and not much at all has changed. Well, actually, I recant, much indeed has changed but not much to report back aside from we found, procured, purchased, and now are proud owners of our very own VW kombi.

Introducing... Lila's Wagen! Or at least until we get to know each other better and we give her another name.

That's right haters, we did it, so get ready for many kombi pictures, status updates, and many many many more pictures of foreign mechanics with crucial mustaches (#Movember). As my mother always told me, "anyone can drive through random countries in an ill-procured vehicle, but not everyone has the gumption to waste their time getting grifted by sheisty mechanics." LOOK AT ME NOW MA!

Side note: autocorrect only took issue with my use of "sheisty"

K, so down and dirty—we're in Santiago, and the city is still living up to it's official slogan as "South America's Version of Beige". I've implored Shannon to find the men here good looking, I've salted the food beyond normal reason, and I've drunk enough to think it wasn't Coolio's "Gangstas Paradise" AGAIN on the restaurant music selection, but hey—sometimes you can't fake the funk on a nasty dunk. Listen, I been done some traveling in my time, and can say with all honesty that Chileans are as genuinely lukewarm in their everything as they are unimaginative about culture, and that's not such a gosh darn bad thing dontchaknow! My time in Russia was punctuated by bribing officials and fending off unfriendliness, much of Asia was arms length at best, India was very....India (go there, you'll see), and Africa was just about the warmest and friendliest place you could imagine (think Kathy Bates in Fried Green Tomatoes). Santiago is downright OK, in the biggest sense of "OK" you could imagine. Please, anyone else: prove me wrong.

I've purposefully, in my thinking and writing, kept from extrapolating "Santiago" into "Chile", likewise "Paris" into "France", or "London" into "England" (even though we ALL know England is complete shit, except for London), which is the reason this paragraph will exist. For the Americans reading this, the United States ones, it will come as a real chuck to the chin, an attaboy to the whole Marshall Plan, and all that. You know what? Dictatorships are real bad for culture. You also know what? Cuba, when I visited ten years ago nearly, had more culture going in Havana (1/3 size of Santiago) after decades of communism than this place after a US-approved military coup. Here in Chile, the smarties were exiled, assassinated, or killed. The arties went to Germany or the US and did some amazing things. The best and the brightest were car bombed. Education was oppressed, the military took over, and basically nothing above average happened for 20+ years. I feel this in the food, the art, the culture, the people, the embraces here...it's systemic, and it's dangerously mediocre.

All that said, AND STUFF, you guys—I recommend coming down here for the same reason I recommend going anywhere. See things. Meet people. Experience a post-dictatorship country. Just do! That will be good enough for when you are being a human-doing. Make that choice and be a fundamental, awesome, existentialist without all the preoccupying baggage.

NEXT POST, we'll talk about cars and engines and numbers and stuff...

Arriving In CHI-CHI-CHI-LAY-LAY-LAY

August 26, 2015 by Danny Cronyn

PHEW, we landed safely! (Last Tuesday...we know, we'll get better at posting regularly, promise.) And apologies to anyone who took the under on us actually doing this, at a very respectable +250 odds, I can't actually blame you. Anyone who parlayed "10 years of middle school + high school + college Spanish classes won't add up to shit", well congrats, your ship has just come in amiger....amigon, amigo.

In the past week, we took a plane from beautiful Orlando, home of Harry Potter world, my beautiful family (and winners of Harmony's infamously tough trivia night), and reluctant alligators, all the way to Santiago, Chile. Not a bad flight all told, but a disturbing amount of pressure was put on us to watch Big Bang Theory on the airplane—NOT the first time this has happened to me (see: the time on a plane when a marine forced me to watch an episode and then called me "gay" for not enjoying it). I digress...it's a really easy flight down here, you should do it and watch whatever you feel like watching!

We took an uber-like taxi to our B&B, which is exactly like renting a room from an artist in his house and pretty darn comfortable for USD $15/night. We love it here, and would recommend Bellavista Home to anyone visiting Santiago. There's even a place called "Montana Steakhouse" five minutes walking, so us Americans that value Montana will feel right at home. The house is great, the neighborhood is great, the subway is great...Santiago is a really soft landing actually. The one thing we could never have counted on though was that, like, everyone here speaks Spanish and they throw that in our face constantly.

Right away (second day) we visited the VW Kombi that we thought, hoped. and prayed would be our newest family member/home for the next few years. We'd been communicating with a German/Romanian couple who were trying to sell it down here, and all signs looked positive. What can I say that hasn't been said before a thousand times, "don't buy a classic Volkswagen bus from a Romanian couple in South America yadda yadda yadda..." You know the rest. The bus lacked hutzpah, but made up for it in rust—which is good for oxidation fans but bad for aforementioned buyers of said bus. The deposit we put down was chalked up to sunk cost (#thanksobama), and so the search continues. It is also important to note that the entire (retrospectively funny) meeting with Señor Juan, the mechanic, was conducted with lots of gesticulating and signing, and usage of Google Translate which definitely works sort of sometimes for a couple things.

Post too long...continue on to the next to find out whether Chile has good local cuisine, sewage systems that can handle toilet paper, or stray dog policies (hint: none of those things, but it's a great city!).

Oh, and Chi-chi-chi-lay-lay-lay is the Chilean National Team chant. You're welcome.

A (Love) Letter From Danny

August 26, 2015 by Danny Cronyn in Pre-Trip

"We went from here to there," and that's a story we all know well enough. Besides visiting vistas, seeing scenes, and playing on playas, I want to describe a journey where people are met, situations are encountered, odd trivia bits are discovered, and lots and lots and lots of happiness happens.

In this tale, there's going to be confusion, delight, insanity, and hopefully (most often) big 'ol exploding high fives of good vibes and sentiments. And somewhere in between, some helpful, proper tips on just how to do the how and answers to why we're doing this whole thing. You can check out our first couple of posts for details on our pre-trip adventures, but just to recap our last couple of months:

NYC > Baltimore > CHI > Baltimore > LA > NYC > Baltimore > Tampa > Orlando > Santiago

There. To those that housed us over the last months, I want to offer FREE camping space to you all, including (in chronological order), Peg and Joe Cronyn, Ryan Archer Kelly, Drew Brownell, Steph, John and Laurel Hunzicker, Paige and Cedric Volk, Angela Patriarca, Sean and Jess King, Colby and Nikki Young, Jake and Amy Burns, Shahla Fatemi and Alex Nelson, Tim O'Bryan and Mike Belknap, Grandma and Grandpa Honey, and finally Sally and Mike Magruder. Please redeem your free camping space whenever you feel like being exactly where we are in South America (relative value ~1,000,000 Zimbabwean).

Safe to say, we love you all, and we love that we have such amazing family and friends—without which none of this would be imaginable or possible. Truly, you all are our present, not simply past or future and you are with us always. To everyone we didn't see, you owe us a visit or risk us completely forgetting about you (relative value about 1.5 million zimbawean). Kidding, obviously. We're just sore that we missed you.

That concludes pre-trip thanks, next post to follow on where we currently are, and cliffhangers abound! Did we make it safely here, or did our plane crash and are our ghosts currently writing this?! Find out next post!