James E Southern (known as Jim in Australia, N.Z., and South Africa)
Alaska to Patagonia hitchhiking most of the way
My map showed a railway from Alaska to the Yukon, a possible route for me to take. I was up north hoping to find work to finance my trip down south. I was planning on visiting my childhood home in Patagonia on the south-eastern tip of the South American continent. The trip actually was a way of avoiding deciding what to do with the rest of my life. Though I didn’t realize it then, by avoiding deciding it was being decided for me. I wouldn’t become an ordained minister.
Investigating the possibility of going to the Yukon by train, I found that the fare was outrageous. It wasn’t a regular passenger train. It was for tourists wanting to visit the old Klondike gold fields, making a round trip back to Skagway. It wasn’t for people wanting to make money rather than spend money.
So I set off hitchhiking from Haines, not far from Skagway. Instead of a backpack, which would have been more sensible, I was carrying my old black suitcase, the one that had travelled with me around the world. All that I needed for my trip to Patagonia was in that suitcase. I just needed some money.
It was a sunny spring day, perfect for hitchhiking. Daylight at that time of year stretched on for almost twenty hours. People in Patagonia would have been enduring almost equally long nights.
From Haines Junction in the Yukon, I got a ride all the way to Whitehorse. Not finding work there, I hitchhiked south, down the Alaska Highway, into northern British Columbia. At that time the highway was unpaved. At a shop at a gas station along the way, amongst souvenirs for tourists to buy, were cans of Alaska Highway dust.
There was an asbestos mine at Cassiar west of the Alaska Highway. I stopped in to ask if they happened to need a mill operator. Years before I had worked as a mill operator at a copper mine in Australia. They didn’t need a mill operator, and even if they would have needed one, they couldn’t have hired me. All their hiring was done through their office in Vancouver. So it was a wasted side trip, except for getting a good meal out of it. One of the miners bought me a meal, taking pity on me for coming so far and then being turned away. I continued on my way.
Eventually I did find work in Fort Nelson, tarring cracks in the airport runway. The plane of the day arrived at 10 in the morning. We, a crew of four, would tar some cracks until about 9:30 when we needed to clear the runway. Then we had to wait until the plane left an hour or two later. While waiting, we could do other things. I ate a lot of wild strawberries growing in the fields beside the runway.
The job came to an end when we finished tarring the runway. I prepared to head south, figuring I had earned enough for the trip if I hitchhiked most of the way.
I shared the cost of fuel with a couple driving to Vancouver, then caught the ferry to Vancouver Island to visit my sister. In Victoria, before I boarded the ferry to Port Angeles, an immigration officer questioned me as to the purpose of my visit to the United States. I hesitated as I hadn’t prepared myself for the interrogation. As I was planning to visit a friend in Oregon, I gave that as the purpose of my visit. But it is not good to appear indecisive before immigration officials. She questioned me at length—how much money did I have; when did I plan to return; etc. Eventually she let me board the ferry.
I hitchhiked through Washington State. I was on a road beside the I-5 when a police car stopped. The policeman told me that it was illegal to hitchhike in Washington State. I apologized, saying that I hadn’t realized that it was illegal. He drove me a ways down the road and let me out, saying that I was now out of his jurisdiction.
Not getting a ride is a problem when night falls. I spend a sleepless night under an overpass. Besides the problem of traffic noise when trying to sleep under overpasses or bridges, there is often the stink of human faeces.
I stopped for a few days to see my friend in Oregon, then continued hitchhiking to California. In California, the policeman who caught me standing beside the highway with my suitcase did give me a ticket for hitchhiking.
I had never visited Disneyland. A truck driver dropped me off in the middle of the night somewhere in Los Angeles. I slept the rest of the night in a park. Early in the morning I set off walking in the direction of some shops. Almost everyone I passed was black. I asked which direction Disneyland was. I was walking in the right direction. Looking behind me, I saw two black men step backwards in perfect unison into a doorway as soon as they saw that I looked behind. I decided to take a city bus.
By the time I found the closest YMCA to Disneyland, it was too late to go to Disneyland as I wanted to spend a whole day there. The next day I did go. Sightseeing on one’s own can be lonely, however. It wasn’t at Disneyland, but at another tourist site I overheard a girl remarking to her parents, “He’s alone!”
From California I hitchhiked to Arizona. In one semi-desert area I waited hours for a ride. To pass the time I read messages scratched on the back of a road sign. One message read, BEEN HERE 3 DAYS. RUNNING LOW ON WATER.
Waiting provides ample opportunity to think about things. I could have studied Spanish in preparation for my trip through Latin America. But I didn’t. I could have meditated on Scripture in preparation for life after this life is over. But I didn’t.
I visited another friend in Phoenix. She was Spanish speaking and recommended a Mexican hotel in which I stayed. Also an elderly relative of mine was living in Scottsdale. He and his wife invited me for supper. When driving me back to my hotel, he was concerned about my safety staying in such a seedy-looking hotel.
Hitchhiking south, I was picked up by a drunk driver. He was weaving over the road so much that oncoming vehicles were pulling over to let him pass. My next ride was better, all the way to Nogales, the border crossing to Mexico. From there I caught a bus to Magdalena as I thought the immigration officials might wonder if they saw me walking away with my suitcase. Then I continued hitchhiking.
On the coastal road, a couple of Canadians in a van picked me up. We arrived in Mazatlan late that evening. Rather than pay for only half a night in a hotel, we decided to sleep on the beach and look for a hotel in the morning. An hour or two after we had settled down, the police came around. They lined the three of us up against the van, holding us there at gunpoint while they searched through our belongings. They didn’t find any drugs. Neither did they find my wallet and travellers cheques which I habitually stuffed in the bottom of my sleeping bag. But they did find my change purse and helped themselves to it and some valuables belonging to the others.
From Mazatlan I hitchhiked to Mexico City. It was a long, painful trip—painful because of the sunburn that I had gotten in Mazatlan. My last ride into Mexico City was in a truck. At a police checkpoint before Mexico City, the truck driver handed the policeman a few hundred pesos. As we drove on I asked him why. He said that if he hadn’t paid, the police would have found something wrong with his truck even though it was brand new.
In Mexico City I found a cheap hotel. In the middle of the night I was awakened by someone in the lobby calling out a woman’s name. Then, loudly to the Mexican(s) who must have been there, “I know you’ve got my girl here!” He was talking in English with a black American accent. Then, again loudly, probably hoping that someone else would hear, “So you pull a gun on me!” After that there was quiet.
The next morning I checked out of that hotel and checked in at Quaker House. Other young travellers were staying there. I teamed up with three of them and we shared the cost of renting a car and driving to the Yucatán. We explored the Mayan ruins of Chichén Itzá, peering down a sacred sink hole. Divers had found young people’s bones, presumably of sacrificial victims, in the mud at the bottom of the sink hole. Another possibility is that the young people had accidentally drowned while swimming in the hole.
As agreed beforehand, I left the others and hitchhiked south into Belize, at that time called British Honduras. When hitchhiking down the Northern Highway, I got picked up by some Canadian Mennonite missionaries. They invited me to come to King’s College, the boarding school they were administering beside the Northern Highway. I remember helping cut fenceposts. We would find a tree of the right diameter, cut out the right length for a fencepost, and leave the rest of the tree just hanging there, caught up in the vines and neighbouring tree branches. www.kingsbelize.webs.com (King's College)
Investigating the possibility of going to the Yukon by train, I found that the fare was outrageous. It wasn’t a regular passenger train. It was for tourists wanting to visit the old Klondike gold fields, making a round trip back to Skagway. It wasn’t for people wanting to make money rather than spend money.
So I set off hitchhiking from Haines, not far from Skagway. Instead of a backpack, which would have been more sensible, I was carrying my old black suitcase, the one that had travelled with me around the world. All that I needed for my trip to Patagonia was in that suitcase. I just needed some money.
It was a sunny spring day, perfect for hitchhiking. Daylight at that time of year stretched on for almost twenty hours. People in Patagonia would have been enduring almost equally long nights.
From Haines Junction in the Yukon, I got a ride all the way to Whitehorse. Not finding work there, I hitchhiked south, down the Alaska Highway, into northern British Columbia. At that time the highway was unpaved. At a shop at a gas station along the way, amongst souvenirs for tourists to buy, were cans of Alaska Highway dust.
There was an asbestos mine at Cassiar west of the Alaska Highway. I stopped in to ask if they happened to need a mill operator. Years before I had worked as a mill operator at a copper mine in Australia. They didn’t need a mill operator, and even if they would have needed one, they couldn’t have hired me. All their hiring was done through their office in Vancouver. So it was a wasted side trip, except for getting a good meal out of it. One of the miners bought me a meal, taking pity on me for coming so far and then being turned away. I continued on my way.
Eventually I did find work in Fort Nelson, tarring cracks in the airport runway. The plane of the day arrived at 10 in the morning. We, a crew of four, would tar some cracks until about 9:30 when we needed to clear the runway. Then we had to wait until the plane left an hour or two later. While waiting, we could do other things. I ate a lot of wild strawberries growing in the fields beside the runway.
The job came to an end when we finished tarring the runway. I prepared to head south, figuring I had earned enough for the trip if I hitchhiked most of the way.
I shared the cost of fuel with a couple driving to Vancouver, then caught the ferry to Vancouver Island to visit my sister. In Victoria, before I boarded the ferry to Port Angeles, an immigration officer questioned me as to the purpose of my visit to the United States. I hesitated as I hadn’t prepared myself for the interrogation. As I was planning to visit a friend in Oregon, I gave that as the purpose of my visit. But it is not good to appear indecisive before immigration officials. She questioned me at length—how much money did I have; when did I plan to return; etc. Eventually she let me board the ferry.
I hitchhiked through Washington State. I was on a road beside the I-5 when a police car stopped. The policeman told me that it was illegal to hitchhike in Washington State. I apologized, saying that I hadn’t realized that it was illegal. He drove me a ways down the road and let me out, saying that I was now out of his jurisdiction.
Not getting a ride is a problem when night falls. I spend a sleepless night under an overpass. Besides the problem of traffic noise when trying to sleep under overpasses or bridges, there is often the stink of human faeces.
I stopped for a few days to see my friend in Oregon, then continued hitchhiking to California. In California, the policeman who caught me standing beside the highway with my suitcase did give me a ticket for hitchhiking.
I had never visited Disneyland. A truck driver dropped me off in the middle of the night somewhere in Los Angeles. I slept the rest of the night in a park. Early in the morning I set off walking in the direction of some shops. Almost everyone I passed was black. I asked which direction Disneyland was. I was walking in the right direction. Looking behind me, I saw two black men step backwards in perfect unison into a doorway as soon as they saw that I looked behind. I decided to take a city bus.
By the time I found the closest YMCA to Disneyland, it was too late to go to Disneyland as I wanted to spend a whole day there. The next day I did go. Sightseeing on one’s own can be lonely, however. It wasn’t at Disneyland, but at another tourist site I overheard a girl remarking to her parents, “He’s alone!”
From California I hitchhiked to Arizona. In one semi-desert area I waited hours for a ride. To pass the time I read messages scratched on the back of a road sign. One message read, BEEN HERE 3 DAYS. RUNNING LOW ON WATER.
Waiting provides ample opportunity to think about things. I could have studied Spanish in preparation for my trip through Latin America. But I didn’t. I could have meditated on Scripture in preparation for life after this life is over. But I didn’t.
I visited another friend in Phoenix. She was Spanish speaking and recommended a Mexican hotel in which I stayed. Also an elderly relative of mine was living in Scottsdale. He and his wife invited me for supper. When driving me back to my hotel, he was concerned about my safety staying in such a seedy-looking hotel.
Hitchhiking south, I was picked up by a drunk driver. He was weaving over the road so much that oncoming vehicles were pulling over to let him pass. My next ride was better, all the way to Nogales, the border crossing to Mexico. From there I caught a bus to Magdalena as I thought the immigration officials might wonder if they saw me walking away with my suitcase. Then I continued hitchhiking.
On the coastal road, a couple of Canadians in a van picked me up. We arrived in Mazatlan late that evening. Rather than pay for only half a night in a hotel, we decided to sleep on the beach and look for a hotel in the morning. An hour or two after we had settled down, the police came around. They lined the three of us up against the van, holding us there at gunpoint while they searched through our belongings. They didn’t find any drugs. Neither did they find my wallet and travellers cheques which I habitually stuffed in the bottom of my sleeping bag. But they did find my change purse and helped themselves to it and some valuables belonging to the others.
From Mazatlan I hitchhiked to Mexico City. It was a long, painful trip—painful because of the sunburn that I had gotten in Mazatlan. My last ride into Mexico City was in a truck. At a police checkpoint before Mexico City, the truck driver handed the policeman a few hundred pesos. As we drove on I asked him why. He said that if he hadn’t paid, the police would have found something wrong with his truck even though it was brand new.
In Mexico City I found a cheap hotel. In the middle of the night I was awakened by someone in the lobby calling out a woman’s name. Then, loudly to the Mexican(s) who must have been there, “I know you’ve got my girl here!” He was talking in English with a black American accent. Then, again loudly, probably hoping that someone else would hear, “So you pull a gun on me!” After that there was quiet.
The next morning I checked out of that hotel and checked in at Quaker House. Other young travellers were staying there. I teamed up with three of them and we shared the cost of renting a car and driving to the Yucatán. We explored the Mayan ruins of Chichén Itzá, peering down a sacred sink hole. Divers had found young people’s bones, presumably of sacrificial victims, in the mud at the bottom of the sink hole. Another possibility is that the young people had accidentally drowned while swimming in the hole.
As agreed beforehand, I left the others and hitchhiked south into Belize, at that time called British Honduras. When hitchhiking down the Northern Highway, I got picked up by some Canadian Mennonite missionaries. They invited me to come to King’s College, the boarding school they were administering beside the Northern Highway. I remember helping cut fenceposts. We would find a tree of the right diameter, cut out the right length for a fencepost, and leave the rest of the tree just hanging there, caught up in the vines and neighbouring tree branches. www.kingsbelize.webs.com (King's College)
Jennifer jumping
I spent Christmas with other missionaries in Belize City, and New Year’s Eve back at King’s College. After the Christmas break, the students returned. The history teacher didn’t return, however. He was Jamaican and had returned to Jamaica for the Christmas holidays. While waiting for him to return, his students were studying on their own. I was asked to sit in the classrooms overseeing the studying. I told the students, “Don’t ask me any questions about history. All I know about history is that people don’t learn from history.”
Two weeks later a telegram arrived from Jamaica. He wasn’t returning. So I became the new history teacher, studying a day ahead of the students and forgetting a day after. I taught “O” level and “A” level British History and West Indian History. The value of studying history, I learned, is that it helps a person understand the present world better.
Most of the students were creole and spoke creole. Although they weren’t supposed to speak it in class, some did anyway. One quite attractive girl, when I would ask her a question, would answer, “Me no know.” That was easy to understand, but in the dining hall, when I was sitting with the students and they were talking amongst themselves, I couldn’t understand a word.
For breakfast, lunch, and supper we ate rice and beans. For variety we often had plantain or chunks of meat as well. We seldom ate fish. I remember an American teacher, who also ate with the students in the dining hall, telling the students that in the Southern States people ate catfish. “Catfish! Ugh!” was the students’ response.
I had briefly stayed in a house on the Belize River. Toilets, instead of having a hole in the ground, had buckets underneath the seat. The contents of the buckets were then emptied into the river. A neighbour emptied her bucket and it seemed to cause the water to boil. I watched more closely when another neighbour emptied her bucket. It was a feeding frenzy for the catfish.
At the end of the school year the American teacher and I set off by bus to Guatemala. At border crossings and police checkpoints, on numerous forms that travellers are required to fill out, for “profesión” I could now write “profesor” instead of “estudiante.” (In Mexico I had tried putting “padre” but that had raised eyebrows.)
Two weeks later a telegram arrived from Jamaica. He wasn’t returning. So I became the new history teacher, studying a day ahead of the students and forgetting a day after. I taught “O” level and “A” level British History and West Indian History. The value of studying history, I learned, is that it helps a person understand the present world better.
Most of the students were creole and spoke creole. Although they weren’t supposed to speak it in class, some did anyway. One quite attractive girl, when I would ask her a question, would answer, “Me no know.” That was easy to understand, but in the dining hall, when I was sitting with the students and they were talking amongst themselves, I couldn’t understand a word.
For breakfast, lunch, and supper we ate rice and beans. For variety we often had plantain or chunks of meat as well. We seldom ate fish. I remember an American teacher, who also ate with the students in the dining hall, telling the students that in the Southern States people ate catfish. “Catfish! Ugh!” was the students’ response.
I had briefly stayed in a house on the Belize River. Toilets, instead of having a hole in the ground, had buckets underneath the seat. The contents of the buckets were then emptied into the river. A neighbour emptied her bucket and it seemed to cause the water to boil. I watched more closely when another neighbour emptied her bucket. It was a feeding frenzy for the catfish.
At the end of the school year the American teacher and I set off by bus to Guatemala. At border crossings and police checkpoints, on numerous forms that travellers are required to fill out, for “profesión” I could now write “profesor” instead of “estudiante.” (In Mexico I had tried putting “padre” but that had raised eyebrows.)
a pyramid at Tikal taken from the top of another pyramid
Our first stop was Tikal, another ancient city of the Maya civilization. We climbed up stepped pyramids, exploring the shrines at the top. Many or all had tombs within or underneath the pyramids. Along with the remains of kings, archeologists had often found the remains of human sacrifices. I wonder if, in the next life, those young people are still serving those kings.
From Tikal we caught a bus to Guatemala City. When we boarded the bus, the only seats left were at the back. We soon learned that seats behind the back wheels were bumpier than seats in the middle of the bus. There was another problem. All the windows in the bus were open for the breeze to cool us a bit. Some Guatemalans, being unaccustomed to long bus rides, got motion sickness. Women at the front of the bus were vomiting out front windows and the vomit was blowing back in through windows further back. We kept a careful eye on what was happening up front on our side. Whenever someone vomited, we would duck behind the seat in front of us. As I was sitting in the aisle seat, I wasn’t quite as concerned as my American companion.
On an aisle seat just up from me on the opposite side was a Guatemalan man dressed in a suit. He was particularly concerned about the flying vomit. But one time he wasn’t paying close enough attention. A big blob of vomit flew in a window ahead of him and hit him in the face. For a second he didn’t realize what hit him, then . . . .
Arriving in Guatemala City we needed to do some laundry. My American companion set us off in search of a laundromat. If there was one in Guatemala City at that time, we didn’t find it. We ended up taking our dirty laundry to a laundry. The service wasn’t all that bad, but it prompted me to add another warning to my “Tips for Travellers.” "When getting clothes laundered, beware of cheap laundries that might subcontract the washing to women who wash the clothes by beating them with a stick over a rock in the river.”
My companion and I toured around Guatemala before parting company. I hitchhiked south to Spanish Honduras. One of the unique rides that I got during my hitchhiking career was riding in a cart pulled by oxen. It was slow going but better than waiting beside the road.
Although Tegucigalpa was out of the way, I wanted to visit so caught a bus from the junction of the Pan-American Highway. The road curves through the mountains. Our bus driver was racing with another bus driver. I don’t remember which bus got to Tegucigalpa first, but both buses did make it. After a couple of days in Tegucigalpa, I hitchhiked back to the junction.
Hitchhiking through Nicaragua was uneventful. It may have been there that I ate my record number of bananas in one day. Bananas are cheap, good tasting, and convenient to eat on the road. I ate a lot of bananas during my trip. For drink, stalls beside the road sell coconut water, drunk right out of the shell after it is sliced open.
I arrived in Costa Rica. From there I could have continued to Panama but a hundred-mile break in the Pan-American Highway makes it impossible to get from Panama to Columbia by road. I decided to fly to San Andrés, a tiny coral island in the Caribbean. Although closer to Central America than South America, San Andrés Island belongs to Columbia.
I bought a ticket to San Andrés at the SAM Airline office in San José. The very pretty ticket agent spoke perfect English. However, she had an attitude. My guess is that some traveller like myself had taken advantage of her. I later had to see her again after finding out that I needed a ticket out of Columbia before the Columbian Embassy would issue me a visa. Another traveller had bought the cheapest possible airline ticket from a town in southern Columbia to another town in northern Brazil, considering that just an added cost to getting the visa. I explained this to the very pretty but sullen ticket agent. She must have known about the visa regulation when she sold me the ticket to San Andrés. She reluctantly sold me the required ticket out of Columbia.
On the day of my flight to San Andrés, I thought I would double check about transportation to the airport with the very pretty but sullen ticket agent. I showed her my map of San José. She confirmed that if I caught the bus there, I would go to the airport there. But why didn’t I take a taxi? I explained that I wasn’t made of money. Perhaps I told her that I had hitchhiked most of the way from Canada.
I caught the bus to the airport, arriving a couple of hours before my flight time. However I soon found out it was the wrong airport! The international airport was on the other side of San Jose, just off my map. I caught a taxi, paying the driver extra for speeding around San Jose to get to the international airport. I got there just in time to catch my flight.
In San Andrés I stayed in a pensión, as a guest house is called in Spanish. As well as a bed, meals are provided. Communicating was easier as many in San Andrés can speak English as well as Spanish.
I toured around on a rented bicycle, stopping at the southern tip of the island. The ocean current was carrying a load of garbage away that a truck had just dumped. But there was something else on my mind. Being in a different country, with different food and water, my bowels were taking a while to adjust. I urgently needed to go to the toilet. I questioned a young man there about where I might find a toilet. I used a couple of different Spanish words for toilet. He looked at me quizzically. I tried a couple of English words, then tried Spanish again. He either didn’t understand or was pretending not to understand. I couldn’t wait any longer. I went behind a small bush, leaving my own bit of pollution at the southern end of the island.
This incident reminded me of previous problems communicating in countries where I knew no words of the local language. A conversation might go like this:
Me: “Can you speak English?”
Him: “Yes.”
Me: “Thank goodness! Finally! Where can I find a toilet?”
Him: “Yes.”
I caught a boat going to Cartagena on the mainland. Like most of the other passengers, I was travelling deck class, which meant sleeping on the deck or in the passenger lounge. However I couldn’t sleep. Rolling waves were rocking the boat back and forth and back and forth. To keep from getting seasick, I went to a lower deck to stand close to the centre of the boat. Flopping around on the deck were flying fish that had been interrupted in their flight.
We docked in Cartagena in the afternoon. However customs officials didn’t attend to us until evening. Rather than disembark and look for somewhere to stay late in the evening, I decided to sleep on the boat. In the morning, when it came time to leave, customs officials searched through my suitcase as though they thought I was trying to smuggle something. They sniffed in the bottle of antimalarial pills that I was carrying in preparation for passing through the Amazon. Finally they let me through.
In Cartagena I met a young American couple with whom I toured the tourist sites, the main tourist site being the fortress of San Felipe de Barajas. However the admission price to tour the fortress was more than we wanted to pay. We surveyed the situation. The fortress didn’t seem all that impenetrable. We figured that if we climbed up a corner, we could get over the wall. So we did. I was first over the wall, but when I was helping the girl over, we were seen by a guide showing tourists around the inside of the fortress. All three of us were taken to the main entrance where we had to pay the admission fee.
From Cartagena I hitchhiked east instead of south. Rather than hitchhike the easy way down the Pan-American Highway, I had decided to visit Venezuela and from there some West Indian islands. It could be that teaching West Indian history had aroused my interest.
In Caracas I remember a lengthy conversation with a young lad. It was lengthy because I had to look up many words in my English/Spanish pocket dictionary. Why wasn’t he in school? Teachers' strike. How long have they been striking? Three years.
I hitchhiked from Caracas to Güiria from where I could catch a ferry to Port-of-Spain in Trinidad. But I arrived just after the ferry had left. It wouldn’t go again until the following week. So I went to the fishermen as I had been told that they also took people across. But the cost was double the ferry fare. When I voiced the comparison, they questioned me. Our conversation ended with their comment, translated, “What, you could go on the ferry? You have a passport?”
So I waited for the ferry, probably paying as much for staying in the hotel as the extra would have been if I had gone by fishboat. As this was during the World Chess Championship between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky, many Venezuelans were following the games. I played chess with a Venezuelan at the hotel. All the Venezuelans with whom I played were excellent chess players.
I caught the ferry to Port-of-Spain. By the time we got through customs and immigration it was four hours after arriving. At the time, I thought it was an unreasonably long time, but it wasn’t long compared to when I returned to Port-of-Spain a month later. Then we waited all day for customs and immigration to attend to us, finally getting through after eight hours.
It must have been obvious that I was a newcomer to Trinidad. Young men were accosting me, “Dash me a schilling.” Then I had to explain that I wasn’t a rich tourist. Once, when a young man seemed about to ask for a schilling, I beat him to it, “Dash me a schilling.” He didn’t have a schilling, but no worry, he would get me one. We went around together while he asked any of his friends whom we met on the street if they had a schilling for me. Eventually one gave me a schilling. The joke was on me.
From Tikal we caught a bus to Guatemala City. When we boarded the bus, the only seats left were at the back. We soon learned that seats behind the back wheels were bumpier than seats in the middle of the bus. There was another problem. All the windows in the bus were open for the breeze to cool us a bit. Some Guatemalans, being unaccustomed to long bus rides, got motion sickness. Women at the front of the bus were vomiting out front windows and the vomit was blowing back in through windows further back. We kept a careful eye on what was happening up front on our side. Whenever someone vomited, we would duck behind the seat in front of us. As I was sitting in the aisle seat, I wasn’t quite as concerned as my American companion.
On an aisle seat just up from me on the opposite side was a Guatemalan man dressed in a suit. He was particularly concerned about the flying vomit. But one time he wasn’t paying close enough attention. A big blob of vomit flew in a window ahead of him and hit him in the face. For a second he didn’t realize what hit him, then . . . .
Arriving in Guatemala City we needed to do some laundry. My American companion set us off in search of a laundromat. If there was one in Guatemala City at that time, we didn’t find it. We ended up taking our dirty laundry to a laundry. The service wasn’t all that bad, but it prompted me to add another warning to my “Tips for Travellers.” "When getting clothes laundered, beware of cheap laundries that might subcontract the washing to women who wash the clothes by beating them with a stick over a rock in the river.”
My companion and I toured around Guatemala before parting company. I hitchhiked south to Spanish Honduras. One of the unique rides that I got during my hitchhiking career was riding in a cart pulled by oxen. It was slow going but better than waiting beside the road.
Although Tegucigalpa was out of the way, I wanted to visit so caught a bus from the junction of the Pan-American Highway. The road curves through the mountains. Our bus driver was racing with another bus driver. I don’t remember which bus got to Tegucigalpa first, but both buses did make it. After a couple of days in Tegucigalpa, I hitchhiked back to the junction.
Hitchhiking through Nicaragua was uneventful. It may have been there that I ate my record number of bananas in one day. Bananas are cheap, good tasting, and convenient to eat on the road. I ate a lot of bananas during my trip. For drink, stalls beside the road sell coconut water, drunk right out of the shell after it is sliced open.
I arrived in Costa Rica. From there I could have continued to Panama but a hundred-mile break in the Pan-American Highway makes it impossible to get from Panama to Columbia by road. I decided to fly to San Andrés, a tiny coral island in the Caribbean. Although closer to Central America than South America, San Andrés Island belongs to Columbia.
I bought a ticket to San Andrés at the SAM Airline office in San José. The very pretty ticket agent spoke perfect English. However, she had an attitude. My guess is that some traveller like myself had taken advantage of her. I later had to see her again after finding out that I needed a ticket out of Columbia before the Columbian Embassy would issue me a visa. Another traveller had bought the cheapest possible airline ticket from a town in southern Columbia to another town in northern Brazil, considering that just an added cost to getting the visa. I explained this to the very pretty but sullen ticket agent. She must have known about the visa regulation when she sold me the ticket to San Andrés. She reluctantly sold me the required ticket out of Columbia.
On the day of my flight to San Andrés, I thought I would double check about transportation to the airport with the very pretty but sullen ticket agent. I showed her my map of San José. She confirmed that if I caught the bus there, I would go to the airport there. But why didn’t I take a taxi? I explained that I wasn’t made of money. Perhaps I told her that I had hitchhiked most of the way from Canada.
I caught the bus to the airport, arriving a couple of hours before my flight time. However I soon found out it was the wrong airport! The international airport was on the other side of San Jose, just off my map. I caught a taxi, paying the driver extra for speeding around San Jose to get to the international airport. I got there just in time to catch my flight.
In San Andrés I stayed in a pensión, as a guest house is called in Spanish. As well as a bed, meals are provided. Communicating was easier as many in San Andrés can speak English as well as Spanish.
I toured around on a rented bicycle, stopping at the southern tip of the island. The ocean current was carrying a load of garbage away that a truck had just dumped. But there was something else on my mind. Being in a different country, with different food and water, my bowels were taking a while to adjust. I urgently needed to go to the toilet. I questioned a young man there about where I might find a toilet. I used a couple of different Spanish words for toilet. He looked at me quizzically. I tried a couple of English words, then tried Spanish again. He either didn’t understand or was pretending not to understand. I couldn’t wait any longer. I went behind a small bush, leaving my own bit of pollution at the southern end of the island.
This incident reminded me of previous problems communicating in countries where I knew no words of the local language. A conversation might go like this:
Me: “Can you speak English?”
Him: “Yes.”
Me: “Thank goodness! Finally! Where can I find a toilet?”
Him: “Yes.”
I caught a boat going to Cartagena on the mainland. Like most of the other passengers, I was travelling deck class, which meant sleeping on the deck or in the passenger lounge. However I couldn’t sleep. Rolling waves were rocking the boat back and forth and back and forth. To keep from getting seasick, I went to a lower deck to stand close to the centre of the boat. Flopping around on the deck were flying fish that had been interrupted in their flight.
We docked in Cartagena in the afternoon. However customs officials didn’t attend to us until evening. Rather than disembark and look for somewhere to stay late in the evening, I decided to sleep on the boat. In the morning, when it came time to leave, customs officials searched through my suitcase as though they thought I was trying to smuggle something. They sniffed in the bottle of antimalarial pills that I was carrying in preparation for passing through the Amazon. Finally they let me through.
In Cartagena I met a young American couple with whom I toured the tourist sites, the main tourist site being the fortress of San Felipe de Barajas. However the admission price to tour the fortress was more than we wanted to pay. We surveyed the situation. The fortress didn’t seem all that impenetrable. We figured that if we climbed up a corner, we could get over the wall. So we did. I was first over the wall, but when I was helping the girl over, we were seen by a guide showing tourists around the inside of the fortress. All three of us were taken to the main entrance where we had to pay the admission fee.
From Cartagena I hitchhiked east instead of south. Rather than hitchhike the easy way down the Pan-American Highway, I had decided to visit Venezuela and from there some West Indian islands. It could be that teaching West Indian history had aroused my interest.
In Caracas I remember a lengthy conversation with a young lad. It was lengthy because I had to look up many words in my English/Spanish pocket dictionary. Why wasn’t he in school? Teachers' strike. How long have they been striking? Three years.
I hitchhiked from Caracas to Güiria from where I could catch a ferry to Port-of-Spain in Trinidad. But I arrived just after the ferry had left. It wouldn’t go again until the following week. So I went to the fishermen as I had been told that they also took people across. But the cost was double the ferry fare. When I voiced the comparison, they questioned me. Our conversation ended with their comment, translated, “What, you could go on the ferry? You have a passport?”
So I waited for the ferry, probably paying as much for staying in the hotel as the extra would have been if I had gone by fishboat. As this was during the World Chess Championship between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky, many Venezuelans were following the games. I played chess with a Venezuelan at the hotel. All the Venezuelans with whom I played were excellent chess players.
I caught the ferry to Port-of-Spain. By the time we got through customs and immigration it was four hours after arriving. At the time, I thought it was an unreasonably long time, but it wasn’t long compared to when I returned to Port-of-Spain a month later. Then we waited all day for customs and immigration to attend to us, finally getting through after eight hours.
It must have been obvious that I was a newcomer to Trinidad. Young men were accosting me, “Dash me a schilling.” Then I had to explain that I wasn’t a rich tourist. Once, when a young man seemed about to ask for a schilling, I beat him to it, “Dash me a schilling.” He didn’t have a schilling, but no worry, he would get me one. We went around together while he asked any of his friends whom we met on the street if they had a schilling for me. Eventually one gave me a schilling. The joke was on me.
market in Granada
In Port-of-Spain I bought a return ticket on a ferry to Bridgetown, Barbados, stopping in Grenada and St. Vincent along the way. It was a great ship. Travellers like myself, officially travelling deck class, actually had access to bunk beds.
I had planned to spend a while in Barbados, then catch the ferry on its way back to Trinidad. I did spend an enjoyable month in the beachside home of an Englishman. I was house and dog sitting while he was visiting another island.
The Englishman returned and I was ready to leave but, because of a port strike, the ferry bypassed Barbados. The ferry company was good about refunding the return portion of my ticket, but it remained for me to find my way back to Trinidad.
I talked to some sailors in the harbour and two Englishmen with a Danish coastal schooner agreed to take me. They had bought the schooner, loaded up with bags of cement, sailed across the Atlantic, and were touring the islands of the Caribbean selling cement to finance their working holiday.
Before rushing back to the beachside house to get my suitcase, I bumped into a Danish couple I had met also getting their tickets refunded at the ferry office. I told them about the Danish coastal schooner leaving that very day.
When I arrived back at the harbour with my suitcase, the schooner was pulling away. The couple whom I had told about it were on board. I tossed my suitcase to them and jumped the yard or two to the schooner rails. That was the closest that I ever came to missing the boat.
By the time we reached St. Vincent, relations had soured between us and the two Englishmen. We hadn’t made a clear agreement about how much we would be paying to travel deck class. Also we hadn’t made a clear arrangement of where we would be sleeping when it rained. And it did rain. The Englishmen hadn’t realized there might be problems with immigration having us aboard. And there were problems. They wanted to dump us in St. Vincent but immigration wouldn’t let them. So they took us on to Trinidad. That was when we spent eight hours going through customs and immigration.
While waiting, the couple and I got talking to a crew member on a nearby yacht. He told us that he had had a yacht of his own. He had picked up a traveller on one of the islands and was letting him navigate while he caught a little sleep. However instructions must not have been clear. The guy had run into the rocks near the harbour in St. Vincent. Just a few days earlier we had seen the mast sticking out of the water and wondered about it.
From Port-of-Spain I flew to Maturín, Venezuela. I checked in at a hotel there and the next day explored some nearby caves described in my South American Handbook. Returning to the hotel, I enjoyed the evening meal. Venezuelan dinners are ample but, as I hadn’t eaten anything at noon, I was still a bit hungry after finishing dinner. So I ordered a second dinner. After eating that I was full.
Then I went to the town square where locals meet in the evening. I met a man who could speak English quite well. He invited me for a steak dinner in a restaurant. I couldn’t turn down an offer of steak. We drove there in his Mercedes and ate steak. After leaving the restaurant he suggested ice-cream. As I tend to get thirsty after eating a lot, I thought ice-cream might quench my thirst. It didn’t, but it did make me feel fuller yet. Before driving me back to the hotel, we stopped at a café for tripe soup. I managed to finish it. That was the fullest I’ve ever been.
I had planned to spend a while in Barbados, then catch the ferry on its way back to Trinidad. I did spend an enjoyable month in the beachside home of an Englishman. I was house and dog sitting while he was visiting another island.
The Englishman returned and I was ready to leave but, because of a port strike, the ferry bypassed Barbados. The ferry company was good about refunding the return portion of my ticket, but it remained for me to find my way back to Trinidad.
I talked to some sailors in the harbour and two Englishmen with a Danish coastal schooner agreed to take me. They had bought the schooner, loaded up with bags of cement, sailed across the Atlantic, and were touring the islands of the Caribbean selling cement to finance their working holiday.
Before rushing back to the beachside house to get my suitcase, I bumped into a Danish couple I had met also getting their tickets refunded at the ferry office. I told them about the Danish coastal schooner leaving that very day.
When I arrived back at the harbour with my suitcase, the schooner was pulling away. The couple whom I had told about it were on board. I tossed my suitcase to them and jumped the yard or two to the schooner rails. That was the closest that I ever came to missing the boat.
By the time we reached St. Vincent, relations had soured between us and the two Englishmen. We hadn’t made a clear agreement about how much we would be paying to travel deck class. Also we hadn’t made a clear arrangement of where we would be sleeping when it rained. And it did rain. The Englishmen hadn’t realized there might be problems with immigration having us aboard. And there were problems. They wanted to dump us in St. Vincent but immigration wouldn’t let them. So they took us on to Trinidad. That was when we spent eight hours going through customs and immigration.
While waiting, the couple and I got talking to a crew member on a nearby yacht. He told us that he had had a yacht of his own. He had picked up a traveller on one of the islands and was letting him navigate while he caught a little sleep. However instructions must not have been clear. The guy had run into the rocks near the harbour in St. Vincent. Just a few days earlier we had seen the mast sticking out of the water and wondered about it.
From Port-of-Spain I flew to Maturín, Venezuela. I checked in at a hotel there and the next day explored some nearby caves described in my South American Handbook. Returning to the hotel, I enjoyed the evening meal. Venezuelan dinners are ample but, as I hadn’t eaten anything at noon, I was still a bit hungry after finishing dinner. So I ordered a second dinner. After eating that I was full.
Then I went to the town square where locals meet in the evening. I met a man who could speak English quite well. He invited me for a steak dinner in a restaurant. I couldn’t turn down an offer of steak. We drove there in his Mercedes and ate steak. After leaving the restaurant he suggested ice-cream. As I tend to get thirsty after eating a lot, I thought ice-cream might quench my thirst. It didn’t, but it did make me feel fuller yet. Before driving me back to the hotel, we stopped at a café for tripe soup. I managed to finish it. That was the fullest I’ve ever been.
snake in La Gran Sabana
From Maturín I hitchhiked south, eventually getting a ride with a truck driver on his way through La Gran Sabana, the great savannah stretching over south-eastern Venezuela. In the middle of the savannah the truck broke down. We had to wait several days for parts to arrive, ordered and delivered courtesy of other truck drivers. That first night I slept on the ground by the truck. Nearby, in the morning, I saw a snake which the truck driver told me was poisonous. The next night I slept on top of the load in the back of the truck.
Eventually we got the truck repaired and continued to Santa Elena. At that time, in 1972, the road wasn’t finished from Boa Vista, Brazil, to Santa Elena, Venezuela. I was planning on flying from Santa Elena to Boa Vista, but when I was on my way to the airport to buy a plane ticket, the taxi driver told me there was a small party about to trek through the jungle into Brazil. I contacted them and joined them.
We trekked single file along a trail, the guide leading, behind him a local businessman, then me with my suitcase on my shoulder, then a young Swiss couple with rucksacks, then a Brazilian soldier bringing up the rear. After a while the Brazilian soldier was carrying the Swiss lady’s rucksack and she was carrying his rifle.
Toward the end of the day we reached the road that was still under construction. We got a ride in the back of a truck to the crew camp. On the way, however, a tropical downpour hit us. We arrived at the camp soaked. The Swiss couple and I appreciated being invited for a good crew-camp meal but it would have been nicer yet if we could have first changed into drier clothes. Later, we were given a place to sleep for the night. The next day we got a ride to Boa Vista.
One memory of Boa Vista is of Amazons riding around on motorbikes. Probably I just happened to see the girls when their boyfriends were letting them try out their bikes. Also I needed a hammock with which to travel through the Amazon. I went around to several different shops comparing prices, then returned to the shop that sold the cheapest hammock. However the shop owner had returned. The man who had given me the low price wasn’t there. The owner wouldn’t sell it to me for that low a price. But he did give me a good deal.
Although Portuguese is somewhat similar to Spanish, because my Spanish was so poor I had trouble communicating. I was trying to get through Brazil without a dictionary though I later did buy an Inglês-Português/Português-Inglês pocket dictionary. I had to learn how to count all over again, and learn important questions in Portuguese such as “Where is a toilet?”
Boa Vista is on the Rio Negro. I caught a riverboat that was going down the Rio Negro to the Rio Branco and then on to Manaus on the Amazon. The only other foreigner on board was a Swede who had just bought himself a colourful matrimonial hammock for the same price that I had paid for my plain ordinary hammock.
Sleeping in the hammock would have been nice and cool if it hadn’t been for the mosquitos. Because of the mosquitos, I slept in the hammock in my sleeping bag with only my nose sticking out. It was uncomfortably hot.
One morning when I awoke, where the Swede had been sleeping in his hammock not far away, hanging there were only the remains of the hammock strings at either end. No hammock and no Swede. Perhaps an anaconda had gotten him during the night when we passed too close to shore. Then I found him on the bow of the boat looking rather gloomy. During the night, one end of the hammock had torn apart, dropping him to the deck. He had bought the hammock secondhand and the strings were no longer so strong. In frustration he had cut the strings at the other end also and thrown the hammock overboard. I lent him my hammock to sleep in for the rest of the day.
At a village on a bank of the Rio Branco, the crew rolled a barrel from the boat to the shore. I now assume it was a barrel of gasoline that they were selling. A day or so later, before getting to the Amazon River, we ran out of fuel. By this time there was a road beside the river. The Swede and I had to pay the bus fare to Manaus. I felt a little put out as we had paid our boat fare all the way to Manaus.
One memory of Manaus is of me spending hours in the post office mailing some postcards. I first had to queue up to buy stamps and then had to stand in the glue queue to glue the stamps to the postcards. Another tip for travellers is "Don't plan to do much in one day. Then, for example, when it takes two hours to post some postcards, you are not frustrated out of your mind."
From Manaus I caught another riverboat down the Amazon and up the Rio Madeira. I was the only foreigner on that boat, but there were many locals. For a stretch there were so many passengers that we had to string our hammocks two deep along the deck. An elderly woman was in the hammock below me.
In the Amazon and its tributaries there are freshwater dolphins. Two dolphins accompanied us for a long stretch on the Rio Madeira, swimming each side of the boat’s bow in what must have been sort of a slipstream that carried them along. Passengers on board ate meals in the galley. One day, with our rice and beans, we had dolphin. I don’t think it was one of those two dolphins.
The water of the Rio Madeira is the colour of lemonade. That was what the locals were drinking so, with no other option, I drank it too. I hoped they got the water by lowering a bucket at the boat’s bow rather than the stern. That reminded me of an earlier Tip for Travellers. "When you don't know what it is, don't eat it unless you see locals eating exactly the same thing."
We finally arrived in Porto Velho from where I caught a bus to Guajará-Mirim on the Bolivian border. It was too late in the day to get a Brazilian exit stamp so I crossed the river to spend the night on the Bolivian side as pensións were cheaper there, then returned to Brazil the next morning to get the exit stamp.
From Guayaramerín on the Bolivian side, I caught a plane to La Paz. Us passengers sat on bench seats on each side of the cabin with our luggage piled in the centre. Other people’s luggage included cages of fighting cocks. Along the way we touched down on a grassy airstrip. The ground crew rolled a barrel out to the plane and pumped in more fuel.
This was November, the month that I ordinarily send Christmas newsletters. When arranging to get the newsletter printed, I met some missionaries living in La Paz and stayed with them while preparing the newsletters for postage. It was nice to speak English again. Some might say I was sponging off the missionaries. True, they did help me more than I helped them. Jesus said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive" so in that way I was contributing to their blessing.
After finishing the Christmas letters, I decided to join some other travellers going to Peru. We caught local transportation to Lake Titicaca on the Peruvian border. Local transportation often was trucks. We and the locals paid to ride in the back of trucks. It was dusty. Buses were better but usually overcrowded. A fellow traveller joked that when passengers stood so tightly packed together they had to inhale and exhale alternately.
We caught a hydrofoil ferry to the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca, then proceeded to Cuzco. I marvelled over walls of huge stones carefully cut to fit together tightly without mortar. They may even have been pre-Inca constructions. I half-believed Erich von Daniken’s book about extra-terrestrials influencing ancient civilizations.
The llamas of Peru dislike strangers approaching them. They spit at them. The one that spit at me had good aim. Perhaps the descendants of the Inca llamas are expressing their opinion of the conquistators.
From Cuzco we took the train to Machu Picchu, rather than the popular four-day hike along an old Inca road. Taking the train was probably better for me than hiking as I wasn’t wearing a hat. Ultraviolet light is stronger at higher altitudes. Consequently my nose had been so sunburned that I had a big scab on it.
At Machu Picchu we stayed in cheaper accommodation beside the hotel. At the hotel I met a Canadian couple who wanted to climb Wayna Picchu, the mountain overlooking Machu Picchu. However the husband couldn’t exert himself too much as he had heart trouble. We agreed to climb together, continuing playing chess whenever he stopped to rest. We made it to the top. I forget who won the game.
I returned by train to Cuzco and from there, mostly paying my way, back to La Paz. This time, instead of staying with the missionaries, I stayed in a cheap hotel with other travellers. We smoked a bit. I remember a pretty, teenage American girl looking rather anaemic. She was on the hard stuff. I was told that she had inherited a large sum of money which her boyfriend was helping her spend.
From La Paz, again mostly paying for riding in the backs of trucks, I made my way south to Argentina. When asking directions, I learned to ask at least three people. If their answers didn’t jive, I would keep asking until three-quarters of them gave me the same directions. That became another one of my Tips for Travellers. A previous tip precedes this tip. "Never ask a question that can be answered by a simple 'si' (yes) or 'no' (no)."
In Argentina I could hitchhike again—I was back in civilization. One ride I got was with a truck driver. We stopped at a roadside café for a meal. Argentinians often drink wine with their meals. I drank so much I was feeling tipsy. The truck driver must have drunk twice as much as I did. We returned to the truck and drove down the road a ways to a pullover where other trucks were parked. We pulled over. The truck driver joined other truck drivers drinking beer. I didn’t join them.
A safer drink, when on the road, is yerba mate. On one truck ride that I got, the driver was brewing yerbe mate on a bunsen burner on the floor of the cab.
One long ride took me all the way to Buenos Aires. It’s a great city though the air is not as good as it might be because of all the industry there. Evenings are pleasant. I was out after 11 p.m. one evening and the sidewalk cafés were still full of diners and winers.
From Buenos Aires I hitchhiked to Mar del Plata where I spent Christmas with an Argentine family living in a tiny castle they had built by the beach. From there I hitchhiked west to Bariloche.
From Bariloche I travelled by bus and boat and bus and boat to the Chilean border. There were a number of us travellers heading for Chile. The Chilean immigration officer questioned us. How long did we plan to stay in Chile? At the bank right there at the border, we had to buy a certain amount of Chilean pesos for each day we were staying. I didn’t want to change money at bank rate as there was a huge black market in Chile at that time. This was when Allende was in power. I delayed changing money, hoping that I could get an entry permit without doing so. The immigration officer singled me out for not having changed money at the bank. He was a young man speaking excellent English. He was also a socialist as most government officials were. I protested that I was travelling on a shoestring budget. He countered that he couldn’t afford to travel at all. I didn’t ask if he had chosen, instead, to get married and have children. It’s best not to question immigration officials about their personal lives. So I changed enough money for two days, thinking that changing for just one day would be too difficult for him to believe. He wrote on my entry permit that I was permitted to stay for two days.
From the border we caught a bus to Puerto Montt. Because we could get many times the bank rate when changing on the black market, hitchhikers like myself were staying in five star hotels, thinking that might be their only chance. But out of habit I chose a pensión.
Eventually we got the truck repaired and continued to Santa Elena. At that time, in 1972, the road wasn’t finished from Boa Vista, Brazil, to Santa Elena, Venezuela. I was planning on flying from Santa Elena to Boa Vista, but when I was on my way to the airport to buy a plane ticket, the taxi driver told me there was a small party about to trek through the jungle into Brazil. I contacted them and joined them.
We trekked single file along a trail, the guide leading, behind him a local businessman, then me with my suitcase on my shoulder, then a young Swiss couple with rucksacks, then a Brazilian soldier bringing up the rear. After a while the Brazilian soldier was carrying the Swiss lady’s rucksack and she was carrying his rifle.
Toward the end of the day we reached the road that was still under construction. We got a ride in the back of a truck to the crew camp. On the way, however, a tropical downpour hit us. We arrived at the camp soaked. The Swiss couple and I appreciated being invited for a good crew-camp meal but it would have been nicer yet if we could have first changed into drier clothes. Later, we were given a place to sleep for the night. The next day we got a ride to Boa Vista.
One memory of Boa Vista is of Amazons riding around on motorbikes. Probably I just happened to see the girls when their boyfriends were letting them try out their bikes. Also I needed a hammock with which to travel through the Amazon. I went around to several different shops comparing prices, then returned to the shop that sold the cheapest hammock. However the shop owner had returned. The man who had given me the low price wasn’t there. The owner wouldn’t sell it to me for that low a price. But he did give me a good deal.
Although Portuguese is somewhat similar to Spanish, because my Spanish was so poor I had trouble communicating. I was trying to get through Brazil without a dictionary though I later did buy an Inglês-Português/Português-Inglês pocket dictionary. I had to learn how to count all over again, and learn important questions in Portuguese such as “Where is a toilet?”
Boa Vista is on the Rio Negro. I caught a riverboat that was going down the Rio Negro to the Rio Branco and then on to Manaus on the Amazon. The only other foreigner on board was a Swede who had just bought himself a colourful matrimonial hammock for the same price that I had paid for my plain ordinary hammock.
Sleeping in the hammock would have been nice and cool if it hadn’t been for the mosquitos. Because of the mosquitos, I slept in the hammock in my sleeping bag with only my nose sticking out. It was uncomfortably hot.
One morning when I awoke, where the Swede had been sleeping in his hammock not far away, hanging there were only the remains of the hammock strings at either end. No hammock and no Swede. Perhaps an anaconda had gotten him during the night when we passed too close to shore. Then I found him on the bow of the boat looking rather gloomy. During the night, one end of the hammock had torn apart, dropping him to the deck. He had bought the hammock secondhand and the strings were no longer so strong. In frustration he had cut the strings at the other end also and thrown the hammock overboard. I lent him my hammock to sleep in for the rest of the day.
At a village on a bank of the Rio Branco, the crew rolled a barrel from the boat to the shore. I now assume it was a barrel of gasoline that they were selling. A day or so later, before getting to the Amazon River, we ran out of fuel. By this time there was a road beside the river. The Swede and I had to pay the bus fare to Manaus. I felt a little put out as we had paid our boat fare all the way to Manaus.
One memory of Manaus is of me spending hours in the post office mailing some postcards. I first had to queue up to buy stamps and then had to stand in the glue queue to glue the stamps to the postcards. Another tip for travellers is "Don't plan to do much in one day. Then, for example, when it takes two hours to post some postcards, you are not frustrated out of your mind."
From Manaus I caught another riverboat down the Amazon and up the Rio Madeira. I was the only foreigner on that boat, but there were many locals. For a stretch there were so many passengers that we had to string our hammocks two deep along the deck. An elderly woman was in the hammock below me.
In the Amazon and its tributaries there are freshwater dolphins. Two dolphins accompanied us for a long stretch on the Rio Madeira, swimming each side of the boat’s bow in what must have been sort of a slipstream that carried them along. Passengers on board ate meals in the galley. One day, with our rice and beans, we had dolphin. I don’t think it was one of those two dolphins.
The water of the Rio Madeira is the colour of lemonade. That was what the locals were drinking so, with no other option, I drank it too. I hoped they got the water by lowering a bucket at the boat’s bow rather than the stern. That reminded me of an earlier Tip for Travellers. "When you don't know what it is, don't eat it unless you see locals eating exactly the same thing."
We finally arrived in Porto Velho from where I caught a bus to Guajará-Mirim on the Bolivian border. It was too late in the day to get a Brazilian exit stamp so I crossed the river to spend the night on the Bolivian side as pensións were cheaper there, then returned to Brazil the next morning to get the exit stamp.
From Guayaramerín on the Bolivian side, I caught a plane to La Paz. Us passengers sat on bench seats on each side of the cabin with our luggage piled in the centre. Other people’s luggage included cages of fighting cocks. Along the way we touched down on a grassy airstrip. The ground crew rolled a barrel out to the plane and pumped in more fuel.
This was November, the month that I ordinarily send Christmas newsletters. When arranging to get the newsletter printed, I met some missionaries living in La Paz and stayed with them while preparing the newsletters for postage. It was nice to speak English again. Some might say I was sponging off the missionaries. True, they did help me more than I helped them. Jesus said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive" so in that way I was contributing to their blessing.
After finishing the Christmas letters, I decided to join some other travellers going to Peru. We caught local transportation to Lake Titicaca on the Peruvian border. Local transportation often was trucks. We and the locals paid to ride in the back of trucks. It was dusty. Buses were better but usually overcrowded. A fellow traveller joked that when passengers stood so tightly packed together they had to inhale and exhale alternately.
We caught a hydrofoil ferry to the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca, then proceeded to Cuzco. I marvelled over walls of huge stones carefully cut to fit together tightly without mortar. They may even have been pre-Inca constructions. I half-believed Erich von Daniken’s book about extra-terrestrials influencing ancient civilizations.
The llamas of Peru dislike strangers approaching them. They spit at them. The one that spit at me had good aim. Perhaps the descendants of the Inca llamas are expressing their opinion of the conquistators.
From Cuzco we took the train to Machu Picchu, rather than the popular four-day hike along an old Inca road. Taking the train was probably better for me than hiking as I wasn’t wearing a hat. Ultraviolet light is stronger at higher altitudes. Consequently my nose had been so sunburned that I had a big scab on it.
At Machu Picchu we stayed in cheaper accommodation beside the hotel. At the hotel I met a Canadian couple who wanted to climb Wayna Picchu, the mountain overlooking Machu Picchu. However the husband couldn’t exert himself too much as he had heart trouble. We agreed to climb together, continuing playing chess whenever he stopped to rest. We made it to the top. I forget who won the game.
I returned by train to Cuzco and from there, mostly paying my way, back to La Paz. This time, instead of staying with the missionaries, I stayed in a cheap hotel with other travellers. We smoked a bit. I remember a pretty, teenage American girl looking rather anaemic. She was on the hard stuff. I was told that she had inherited a large sum of money which her boyfriend was helping her spend.
From La Paz, again mostly paying for riding in the backs of trucks, I made my way south to Argentina. When asking directions, I learned to ask at least three people. If their answers didn’t jive, I would keep asking until three-quarters of them gave me the same directions. That became another one of my Tips for Travellers. A previous tip precedes this tip. "Never ask a question that can be answered by a simple 'si' (yes) or 'no' (no)."
In Argentina I could hitchhike again—I was back in civilization. One ride I got was with a truck driver. We stopped at a roadside café for a meal. Argentinians often drink wine with their meals. I drank so much I was feeling tipsy. The truck driver must have drunk twice as much as I did. We returned to the truck and drove down the road a ways to a pullover where other trucks were parked. We pulled over. The truck driver joined other truck drivers drinking beer. I didn’t join them.
A safer drink, when on the road, is yerba mate. On one truck ride that I got, the driver was brewing yerbe mate on a bunsen burner on the floor of the cab.
One long ride took me all the way to Buenos Aires. It’s a great city though the air is not as good as it might be because of all the industry there. Evenings are pleasant. I was out after 11 p.m. one evening and the sidewalk cafés were still full of diners and winers.
From Buenos Aires I hitchhiked to Mar del Plata where I spent Christmas with an Argentine family living in a tiny castle they had built by the beach. From there I hitchhiked west to Bariloche.
From Bariloche I travelled by bus and boat and bus and boat to the Chilean border. There were a number of us travellers heading for Chile. The Chilean immigration officer questioned us. How long did we plan to stay in Chile? At the bank right there at the border, we had to buy a certain amount of Chilean pesos for each day we were staying. I didn’t want to change money at bank rate as there was a huge black market in Chile at that time. This was when Allende was in power. I delayed changing money, hoping that I could get an entry permit without doing so. The immigration officer singled me out for not having changed money at the bank. He was a young man speaking excellent English. He was also a socialist as most government officials were. I protested that I was travelling on a shoestring budget. He countered that he couldn’t afford to travel at all. I didn’t ask if he had chosen, instead, to get married and have children. It’s best not to question immigration officials about their personal lives. So I changed enough money for two days, thinking that changing for just one day would be too difficult for him to believe. He wrote on my entry permit that I was permitted to stay for two days.
From the border we caught a bus to Puerto Montt. Because we could get many times the bank rate when changing on the black market, hitchhikers like myself were staying in five star hotels, thinking that might be their only chance. But out of habit I chose a pensión.
statue of Magellan
From Puerto Monte I flew as a standby passenger in a military plane to Punta Arenas near where I had lived as a child. The statue of Magellan had shrunk considerably. As a five-year-old I had climbed up on one of the feet of a native figure on the monument, wanting to climb higher but my mother wouldn’t let me.
At the breakfast table in the hotel where I was staying, an American joined me. Before beginning eating, he bowed his head. He was saying grace silently. That pricked my conscience. In Alaska and northern Canada I had habitually said grace before meals, either bowing my head when with other Christians or, if with non-Christians, pausing a moment before beginning eating. Since staying with the missionaries in La Paz, I had merely said thanks silently while eating, if I remembered to. Was I more concerned with what people thought of me than with what God thought of me? Was I truly thankful for my daily food? To be honest, I was thinking less and less about God. But doing my own thing was becoming less and less satisfying. I didn’t tell the American that I was a Christian.
As a child I had lived on an estancia (a ranch) about a six-hour drive from Punta Arenas. This was in the 1940‘s when roads, and tracks on the estancia, were primitive. Instead of going directly to the estancia, I decided to go to Tierra del Fuego first. If I had gone to the estancia, it would have been difficult to get to Estancia Monte Dinero on the Argentine side of the fence. There was no longer an official border crossing as there had been in the 1940‘s. Then we had used the official border crossing only when driving from one estancia to the other. At other times we had just climbed through the fence.
I caught a ferry from Punta Arenas to Porvenir on Tierra del Fuego, staying there overnight in a pensión. Also staying at the pensión was an American missionary, but he wasn’t a Christian missionary. He was Bahai. We discussed religion. I may have said that I believed God had chosen Jesus to rule over the whole world. It wouldn’t work to have a committee made up of Zoroaster, Krishna, Buddha, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad. He may have countered that it was the same being incarnated as these religious leaders, and finally as Baha’u’llah.
The Bahai missionary changed money at the bank instead of on the black market. He was obeying the laws of the land. Is that what godly people are supposed to do? I didn’t want to believe that.
The next morning I set off walking down the road that led to the border crossing to the Argentine side of Tierra del Fuego. I walked for a couple of hours and then a car came along. But it was going the wrong direction. After another couple of hours another car came along, this time going in the right direction. It was full, but they made room for me anyway by one passenger sitting on another passenger's knees.
We reached the border crossing. Although I had carefully altered the “2” to “21” days on my entry permit, I was still a bit apprehensive about exiting Chile. However the Chilean official examining my entry permit there at the Tierra del Fuego border crossing gave me no problem. Both he and the Argentine immigration official were very helpful. As the car in which I was riding was full, they suggested that I wait for a better ride. It was somewhat of a relief to return to Argentina, as I was uncomfortable with Marxism. It would be a good system if it weren’t for human nature. We tend to think first of ourselves and our families. To a lesser extent, if at all, we think of the good of our neighbours. Jesus quoted Moses, “Love your neighbour as yourself.” But love can only be encouraged, not imposed.
The Argentine immigration official did get me a better ride but by this time it was evening. (In January sunset is late.) I stayed the rest of the night in Río Grande, then continued hitchhiking in the morning, meeting up with a couple of other hitchhikers—two young Argentinians from Buenos Aires. Ordinarily three people hitchhiking together would reduce chances of getting a ride, but in Tierra del Fuego it didn’t matter. Vehicles would usually stop, willing to take one or two or even all three of us. While waiting beside the road we noted road signs printed on slats to reduce resistance to the wind. Any trees were bent over in the opposite direction from the prevailing wind.
We made it to Ushuaia where we camped in a building under construction. For the night, I strung my hammock between two pillars and slept in it in my sleeping bag. I was cold! It would have been better to have slept on cardboard on the floor as the Argentinians were doing.
Docked at a wharf in Ushuaia was an American research ship. I got talking to one of the crew. They were about to sail for Antarctica. I told him that I had worked in the engine room of a Norwegian oil tanker. He told me that one of the crew on the research ship had just gotten fired for drunkenness. Why not go and talk to the captain? So I went and talked to the captain. He told me to come back the next morning.
The next morning I returned to learn that the captain had rehired the man he had fired. Perhaps the captain told him that he had better smarten up as there was someone ready to replace him. Anyway, the ship was going only off the Antarctic coast, not landing there, so even if I had gone on the ship I still couldn’t have said that I had been on every continent.
From Ushuaia I flew to Río Gallegos from where I phoned Estancia Monte Dinero. The son with whom I had played as a five-year-old came and picked me up. The next few days I spent in much more comfortable surroundings than the building under construction in Ushuaia.
The whole family there at Estancia Monte Dinero were critical of developments across the fence in Chile. When Allende had come to power, he had taken the land away from rich landowners and given it to the workers. The Englishman to whom my stepfather had sold the estancia lost it. I was told how the peons who had been given our old estancia had been negligent. Scab in the sheep had not been treated. Consequently the sheep at Estancia Monte Dinero had to be kept away from the fence between the two estancias lest the scab spread to the Estancia Monte Dinero flock. www.montedinero.com.ar (Estancia Monte Dinero)
I went to the fence to look down on the house where I had lived as a child. The house looked neglected, as did the shearing shed. Now, I’m told, there are no longer any buildings left there. Not far from the buildings was a dugout pond that hadn’t been there before. The water of the pond looked black. Then I noticed something struggling on the bank of the pond. It was a dying duck. Dead and dying ducks lined the pond’s bank. The surface of the pond was a thick layer of oil. Oil had been discovered on our old estancia. Further towards the sea I could see what might have been oil pumping stations. Ironically, decades later, after my stepfather sold his farm in southern Alberta, oil was discovered on our old farm.
Life laughs onward. But it seems to be the young who laugh the most. Older people merely smile at the antics of humans and animals. Or we might smile as we remember the past.
end of part 2; part 3 begins years later
At the breakfast table in the hotel where I was staying, an American joined me. Before beginning eating, he bowed his head. He was saying grace silently. That pricked my conscience. In Alaska and northern Canada I had habitually said grace before meals, either bowing my head when with other Christians or, if with non-Christians, pausing a moment before beginning eating. Since staying with the missionaries in La Paz, I had merely said thanks silently while eating, if I remembered to. Was I more concerned with what people thought of me than with what God thought of me? Was I truly thankful for my daily food? To be honest, I was thinking less and less about God. But doing my own thing was becoming less and less satisfying. I didn’t tell the American that I was a Christian.
As a child I had lived on an estancia (a ranch) about a six-hour drive from Punta Arenas. This was in the 1940‘s when roads, and tracks on the estancia, were primitive. Instead of going directly to the estancia, I decided to go to Tierra del Fuego first. If I had gone to the estancia, it would have been difficult to get to Estancia Monte Dinero on the Argentine side of the fence. There was no longer an official border crossing as there had been in the 1940‘s. Then we had used the official border crossing only when driving from one estancia to the other. At other times we had just climbed through the fence.
I caught a ferry from Punta Arenas to Porvenir on Tierra del Fuego, staying there overnight in a pensión. Also staying at the pensión was an American missionary, but he wasn’t a Christian missionary. He was Bahai. We discussed religion. I may have said that I believed God had chosen Jesus to rule over the whole world. It wouldn’t work to have a committee made up of Zoroaster, Krishna, Buddha, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad. He may have countered that it was the same being incarnated as these religious leaders, and finally as Baha’u’llah.
The Bahai missionary changed money at the bank instead of on the black market. He was obeying the laws of the land. Is that what godly people are supposed to do? I didn’t want to believe that.
The next morning I set off walking down the road that led to the border crossing to the Argentine side of Tierra del Fuego. I walked for a couple of hours and then a car came along. But it was going the wrong direction. After another couple of hours another car came along, this time going in the right direction. It was full, but they made room for me anyway by one passenger sitting on another passenger's knees.
We reached the border crossing. Although I had carefully altered the “2” to “21” days on my entry permit, I was still a bit apprehensive about exiting Chile. However the Chilean official examining my entry permit there at the Tierra del Fuego border crossing gave me no problem. Both he and the Argentine immigration official were very helpful. As the car in which I was riding was full, they suggested that I wait for a better ride. It was somewhat of a relief to return to Argentina, as I was uncomfortable with Marxism. It would be a good system if it weren’t for human nature. We tend to think first of ourselves and our families. To a lesser extent, if at all, we think of the good of our neighbours. Jesus quoted Moses, “Love your neighbour as yourself.” But love can only be encouraged, not imposed.
The Argentine immigration official did get me a better ride but by this time it was evening. (In January sunset is late.) I stayed the rest of the night in Río Grande, then continued hitchhiking in the morning, meeting up with a couple of other hitchhikers—two young Argentinians from Buenos Aires. Ordinarily three people hitchhiking together would reduce chances of getting a ride, but in Tierra del Fuego it didn’t matter. Vehicles would usually stop, willing to take one or two or even all three of us. While waiting beside the road we noted road signs printed on slats to reduce resistance to the wind. Any trees were bent over in the opposite direction from the prevailing wind.
We made it to Ushuaia where we camped in a building under construction. For the night, I strung my hammock between two pillars and slept in it in my sleeping bag. I was cold! It would have been better to have slept on cardboard on the floor as the Argentinians were doing.
Docked at a wharf in Ushuaia was an American research ship. I got talking to one of the crew. They were about to sail for Antarctica. I told him that I had worked in the engine room of a Norwegian oil tanker. He told me that one of the crew on the research ship had just gotten fired for drunkenness. Why not go and talk to the captain? So I went and talked to the captain. He told me to come back the next morning.
The next morning I returned to learn that the captain had rehired the man he had fired. Perhaps the captain told him that he had better smarten up as there was someone ready to replace him. Anyway, the ship was going only off the Antarctic coast, not landing there, so even if I had gone on the ship I still couldn’t have said that I had been on every continent.
From Ushuaia I flew to Río Gallegos from where I phoned Estancia Monte Dinero. The son with whom I had played as a five-year-old came and picked me up. The next few days I spent in much more comfortable surroundings than the building under construction in Ushuaia.
The whole family there at Estancia Monte Dinero were critical of developments across the fence in Chile. When Allende had come to power, he had taken the land away from rich landowners and given it to the workers. The Englishman to whom my stepfather had sold the estancia lost it. I was told how the peons who had been given our old estancia had been negligent. Scab in the sheep had not been treated. Consequently the sheep at Estancia Monte Dinero had to be kept away from the fence between the two estancias lest the scab spread to the Estancia Monte Dinero flock. www.montedinero.com.ar (Estancia Monte Dinero)
I went to the fence to look down on the house where I had lived as a child. The house looked neglected, as did the shearing shed. Now, I’m told, there are no longer any buildings left there. Not far from the buildings was a dugout pond that hadn’t been there before. The water of the pond looked black. Then I noticed something struggling on the bank of the pond. It was a dying duck. Dead and dying ducks lined the pond’s bank. The surface of the pond was a thick layer of oil. Oil had been discovered on our old estancia. Further towards the sea I could see what might have been oil pumping stations. Ironically, decades later, after my stepfather sold his farm in southern Alberta, oil was discovered on our old farm.
Life laughs onward. But it seems to be the young who laugh the most. Older people merely smile at the antics of humans and animals. Or we might smile as we remember the past.
end of part 2; part 3 begins years later