The Silk Route Motorcaravan Club.Bulletin 116.June 2004. |
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On Tour With The French Taking The Great Eastern Road. |
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On 5 May 2004, I had the pleasure of greeting several vans who had a rendezvous at the Vincennes flower gardens. The ambiance was good, morale was high - unlike the weather. Ren Notteau, who started off late, had come to deliver the passports with the visas recently granted by Mongolia. A fax from you President can be useful: the travellers obtained a preferential rate - €30 instead of €40 or even €75, and everything was ready in 24 hours. No problem with Pakistan either. But Moscow spoiled everything. Here's the travellers' email on 16 May: "We thought everything was in order to cross the Russian border and continue our voyage without problem using the visa from Rafale Air which cost us €260 euros per person. But when we arrived at the border we had to pay $24 vehicle insurance for 10 days, €4 for the people and $40 to get a permit to travel for that time. Owing to the fact that a 90 day permit to travel was refused, we telephoned the French embassy on our arrival in Moscow. They gave us an appointment for the following day. We still paid $50 p.p. registration to Intourist, the corresponding agency of Rafale Air, for a stay of 2 weeks, and they told us it was not possible for them to give us more and that we should also have to register in other cities. We went to the customs to prolong our permission to travel; it was refused! Return to the embassy, then to the agency and the insurance company. After having paid a $20 p.p. admin fee + $90 insurance, we are in possession of registration and insurance for 3 months stay . which enables us to present ourselves tomorrow at customs and ask for a permit to travel for 3 months. If the asking price is too high, we will probably leave without this. We do not know yet how much it will cost, but what we know is that Rafale Air very had perhaps not envisaged this! We are installed in Gorky park, very close to the Kremlin. Peaceful, attended, free car park. The group which took the southern route here has joined us. We hope to leave tomorrow and we will send another e-mail as soon as possible. Christiane Dumas |
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Postcards From |
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Jo and Brigitte Aubry, Christchurch, April 23. Splendid country. The decision to exchange vans (a method worth developing) was absolutely right. We have landed on our feet, the people are really nice, warm welcome from the kiwis puts you immediately at ease. Guy and Mauricette Lebourgeois, Monument Valley, the USA, April 25. Crossing the Grand Canyon and, today, Lake Pauwell. Superb and sunny. Hubert and Madeleine Athnion, Tamrhakt, April 28. After having vainly waited for the sun at home, we left to find it in Morocco. Andre and Ginette Bertrand, Roger and Claire Cortade, Warsaw, April 25. After Dresden, Wroclaw, Krakow, interesting cities, we are in Warsaw, visited by bus. The 26th, we'll be at the Belarus border. The adventure starts then. Serge and Christiane Herviou, Sassari, May 11. Sardinia: a destination for the motorcaravanners who want a rest from major expeditions. Marcel and Monique Keyaert, Sassari, May 15. Sardinia: an island less wild than Corsica but worth dicovering. Ginette, Andre Bertrand, Claire and Roger Cortade, St Petersburg, April 14. Got here without problems after visiting Moscow in the heat. Here, the wind coming from the Baltic is welcome, and we'll make good use of our coats on the many visits. |
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Travellers' Websites |
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Travellers' websites are multiplying. It's becoming difficult to explore all of them and then to pass on an account to those who are not yet 'connected'. I will thus be satisfied to describe those emanating from our members and then to publish extracts and photos (not always possible - it's impossible to illustrate the travels of Erwin and Laetitia Munch as their photographs do not seem 'detachable'). While waiting for our own www.camping-cars.org to be revived (work in progress), you will be able to follow the voyage of the Munches on www.family-dreamtime.fr.st/ and with those of Jacques Berlivet (unfortunately with few pictures) on www.abmlemans.net/grd-voyag/berlivet/chapitres recit.htm More general, but enthralling in its diversity is campingcar.enliberte.free.fr. Lastly, for lovers of this kind of thing, Denis Layahe has launched a forum for us. Not easy either to reach - type fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/groupedelaroutedelasoie without error nor space, take a breath, follow the instructions, and away you go! There is also a much under used English language forum here. |
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Adventures In Mexico. |
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There was a terrible graunching sound and we feared we had torn off the air conditioning unit. In fact we were lucky and had only scratched it, but another RV which stopped in the same campground as us that night had done the same thing and torn a huge hole in his roof. From El Fuerte we took the famous Copper Canyon railway 280 km (and 8000ft up) to Creel in Chihuahua province, leaving Camilla behind. This is one of the great railway journeys of the world, as the Copper Canyon is 4 times longer than the Grand Canyon in Arizona, and 2000ft deeper in nine canyons (out of 20 in total). The railway was started in 1877 and finished in 1961, due to construction difficulties, revolutions, civil wars and manana. It is built alongside a river all the way, but is often 300 ft above the river bed, strung on the side of the cliff. Rather disconcertingly we saw several freight cars at the bottom of ravines which had obviously fallen off the track at some time in the past, and on the way back we saw 2 more which had definitely not been there when we went up 2 days before!. The scenery is spectacular, with 86 tunnels and 39 bridges, and places where the track does a circle or even a figure of eight to gain height. It took 8 hours, an average speed of 35 kph. It wasn't any quicker on the way back downhill, and probably much more dangerous. At Creel, which is as high as you can go, we broke our journey and stayed 2 nights in a grotty [= very bad] hotel. With Camilla we have become very soft [= do not like difficult conditions] and luxury-loving. I would be reluctant to go back-packing again if it meant suffering the deprivations we put up with on our first round-the-world trip. Creel itself is a dusty cold and windy railway town, but in our 1.5 days there we managed to fit in a couple of half day trips in the surrounding countryside. We found a guide/driver called Oscar, who turned out to be (at least partly) a Tarahumara Indian, even though he was over 6ft tall and broad. He had lived in a Tarahumara village until he was 5 and spoke their language. He took us to see some Tarahumara still living in caves. The women dress in very bright patterned clothing, mixing up patterns in a way that would look bizarre if we did it, but with their stocky build and dark complexions looks just very colourful and charming. The men wear head bands and loin cloths, and are famous as runners, playing a relay game with a wooden ball which they kick, running for 40 hours non-stop and covering up to 200 km. One thing we found out is that there is no such thing as a typical Mexican, though there are "archetypal" Mexicans. Some are tall and blond, and must be of pure Spanish blood. Then there are pure blood Indians of many different tribes, all looking very different. The Tarahumara is only one of the many we came across, all still speaking their own languages and with different traditions. The government provides free primary education, but not many Indians take up the offer for their children, and it is apparently unenforced, so the Indians do not change much. Most people are a mixture of Spanish and one or more Indian tribes. We also ought to mention that we were impressed with Oscar's driving. We drove up flowing rivers and across hugely bumpy terrain in his car, grounding occasionally, without coming to grief. The next day Oscar took us to several canyon viewpoints which were truly spectacular, with drops of up to 7000ft to the valley floor. The climate on the bottom is sub-tropical: where we were standing there was still some snow on the ground, and at Divisadero where we got back on the train, it was snowing! Rejoining Camilla we returned to the coast and then drove along it for a bit going north until we turned inland again to visit a silver mining town called Alamos. This was once the capital city of a state called Occidente, a combination of 2 current states (Sinaloa and Sonora), and the richest town in Mexico due to the silver. As a result there are some very grand old buildings, palaces built by the silver kings, and a huge governor's residence. The town was deserted in the 1920s but since 1948 has been restored by rich Americans buying up the houses. We went on a house tour run by volunteer home-owners for the benefit of secondary school children. Our $20 sent a child to school for 2 years. One of the houses we saw was quite wonderful, owned by an American artist, with the original room proportions (large rooms with very high ceilings) and decoration, a carp pond, fountain, swimming pool, guest accommodation, built round a courtyard. We were surprised to hear that it would be worth less that $400,000 After Alamos we travelled up the coast again, stopping wherever there were campsites - further apart than we would have wanted - at San Carlos and then at Bahia Kino. To get to the latter, we had 77 miles of perfectly straight and perfectly flat road off the motorway, mesmeric and sleep-inducing as the presence of more little crosses proved. At Bahia Kino we stayed on the beach again, just yards from the water's edge. This was the best beach place we had been to, and it would have cost us ú200 a month to stay there forever. Peter was tempted. We had power, sewage, water and a supermarket with wine within walking distance. What more could a man want? I note I haven't said much about wildlife. There are not many large mammals in Mexico, or none that we saw anyway, apart from the grey whales. We did see ground squirrels and scorpions and quite large monitor lizards, but there are lots of birds. The national bird is the crested caracara, a falcon type bird which catches snakes. We saw many of these and osprey, as well as the omnipresent brown pelicans and huge flocks of cormorants. The pelicans are very well-mannered. We saw a fisherman feeding 5 or 6 of them with fish guts, and they all stood on the gunwale of his boat waiting their turn, without snatching or grabbing. How unlike gulls - "Mine, mine!". At El Fuerte I was disconnecting our electricity cable when I felt a sharp buffet on my shoulder, like being hit by a large pebble. I turned round and there was a tiny green bird hovering about a foot from my head and humming with rage. They are brave and very territorial, and I'd obviously got too close to its nest. We think it was a black-chinned humming bird, though it might have been a costa's humming bird. At Bahia de los Angeles we saw a belted kingfisher and on a beach south of Todos santos gila woodpeckers. While we were waiting for the ferry at Pichilingue we saw a fishing boat literally festooned with magnificent frigate birds, at least 100 of them. The only mammal we had a close encounter with was a stowaway, a grey mouse that got on board at Todos Santos. He (we did so hope it wasn't a she) was terribly noisy and kept me awake half the night rattling round in the cupboards. Camilla must have seemed like a huge adventure playground, there are so many holes for cabling that a mouse can get through to get from one place to another without coming out into the open. One morning he ran over my hand, the cheeky thing. Although he was rather sweet we didn't want him to stay with us permanently, so at Creel we bought him some "presents", some peanuts and two ratoneras, one of the snap variety, the other the sticky sort which Peter said was too cruel. However when we got back we were relieved to find Senor Raton was no longer on board - possibly because we'd left all the food in the fridge or the microwave oven. We then did a long day (300 miles) to the border at Nogales. There we were inspected by the customs, but couldn't find anyone in the least bit interested in stamping our passports. We had to drive into the USA to park, and then walk back across the border to find the immigration service. No wonder there are millions of illegal immigrants. We could have got in easily without a permiso (though we would probably have had some grief when leaving the US by air without it). However the immigration officer was polite, friendly and gave us 6 months though we'd only asked for 2. Weird, after all the grief we had getting in to Florida and from Canada. Susie Markham. |
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In Central America |
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After the price of the crossings (in Bulletin 115 [the Nawrocki's sent their VW Synchro by container from Enden in Germany to Veracruz in Mexico for €1,200, and paid €1,500 for the return journey from Costa Rica to Le Havre]), here some impressions of Central America by motorcaravan. In Mexico, the carnet de passage is unknown! Don't bother getting one. The country's culture is very rich: splendid sites, pretty colonial cities, varied landscape, excellent food and music! However. there is corruption on the part of the traffic police and the military, polluted and in general very dirty cities, and life is expensive. Our stay lasted two and a half months, a little short if you want top see everything. Belize is an English-speaking country, cleaner, but also more expensive. Very relaxed population. Guatemala is our favourite. Tikal is marvellous with its wild animals and its birds. The population is always smiling, they wear traditional clothing, and the markets are a treat for the photographers. As far as security is concerned, great efforts are made to protect tourists: we had no problems in 3 weeks. Honduras offers the most beautiful roads in Central America. In the north, Garifunas welcomed us with its magnificent, wild beaches. No problem. cool. We found Nicaragua had a little of the ambiance of Cuba and we adored the town of Leon. Costa Rica is a jewel: a small,l very green country, beautiful forests, dense and superb vegetation, active but accessible volcanoes, coloured birds by the thousands, wild and splendid beaches, small villages with pleasant inhabitants. Choose the season to visit carefully. because the rains are abundant. We had more downpours here in a week than in all the rest of the trip put together. Lastly, Panama and its impressive canal. Here were the best places to pak up and helpful, welcoming locals. In short, we loved this quiet destination, and drove 20,000kms from October to April. Our VW returned by container, from Costa Rica to Le Havre, in 3 weeks, for €1,500. [The Nawrockis sent their VW Synchro by container from Enden in Germany to Veracruz in Mexico for €1,200 total]. But to leave the port of Le Havre costs! €500!! Next time, we will go to Hamburg or Rotterdam: even the forwarding agents agree that's the best. France is too expensive! Of course, any member who wants to consult us on these destinations will get an answer. Nicole and Bernard Nawrocki. |
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Between Rivers. Uruguay, Argentina And The End Of The Journey |
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Monday March 1. The southern road. Via the 14. It skirts the Rio Uruguay, which, as its name lindicates, is on the border with Uruguay. Night at Cerro Azul. Tuesday March 2. Close to Santo Tom , we visit "Las Marias", large estancia which cultivates tea and math . The latter is a shrub resembling an orange tree. Its leaves are dark green and shiny and contain a bitter substance with a pleasant flavour. Its roasted leaves constitute the "yerba math " that Argentinians drink incessantly. Thursday March 4. El Palmar Park. Three days in this peaceful park on the edge of the Rio Uruguay. We discovered animals such as the viscache, a large maroon rabbit walking in the evening around the tents and the motor homes, having a particular taste for the flaps of cars ; carpinchos, a kind of large otter, living at the edge of the ponds, some reaching 65 kg ; and finally foxes, accustomed to eat the bread of the tourists, with a regular schedule and route. Saturday March 6. San Jos . Many europeans (Italian, German, Swiss and French) came here about 1850, and created estancias helped by the municipality. The museum features this, the contracts, the cars that arrived later, one a 1910 Hotchkiss. Sunday 7 March. San Antonio de Areco. Visit to a museum. We meet a French couple, with their two small daughters, who have come to create an NGO to help young people [find work ?]. Accompanied by an Argentinian couple speaking French, they guided us all afternoon, showing us the gauchos, their way of life, and all the craftwork of the area (wood, leather, silver and copper). Tuesday March 9. Estancia "Cina-Cina" Demonstration of dressage, parilla with a score of people, including Canadians from Quebec and Montreal, followed by local music and dances. Wednesday March 10. Tigre. To a small quiet city at the edge of the Parana delta, 40 km north of BA (Buenos Aires). This city is made up a multitude of isles and islets. You get around largely by boat. Each house has its pontoon. Luxuriant vegetation surrounds all the houses, some of which are worthy of Hollywood (says the Routard guide). Weeping willows border the banks. Lots of different boats, from an old mahogany launch, the skifs and kayaks of the clubs, to the great Mississippi-style ships. Sunday March 14 and 15. With an all-inclusive ticket, we spend 48 hours in Uruguay. On a boat from Tigre to Nueva Palmyre, then by bus to Colonia del Sacramento. On the river Plata, just opposite Buenos Aires, there's a longstanding haunt of smugglers. Today, life is (still) less expensive Argentina : it's a country worth getting to know. City founded by the Portuguese in 1680, yielded to the Spaniards in 1777. Few ancient remains, only the point with its lighthouse, a location for swindling tourists. Wednesday March 17. Buenos Aires. By train, visit Buenos Aires and Turner to get our ticket. We learn that the Grande Amburgo will arrive on the 25th and leave on the 26th, one week later than scheduled!! Meal in the Florida pedestrian precinct in the middle of buildings and busy Argentinians. Shopping, and demonstration of tango in the street by professionals. Sunday March 21. We again take the train for Buenos Aires, and join a city tour showing us the principal monuments and the various districts. We liked Boca (BA's Pigale [Soho] in the old port quarter. On the quays of Rio Tujan, we visit the Tigre naval museum with its many models of boats that have played a role in history. It's the end of our land voyage. The cargo boat will bring us another, marine way of life, but that's another story. Arrival envisaged between April 15 and 20, subject to sailing conditions. Francois and Genevieve Petit. |
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Plans For Expeditions |
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Members planning expeditions and looking for travelling partners include
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"In Brief, This Is The Life": The Berlivets In Chile. |
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We have been with Chilean friends for a week. We met through a French organisation to which we belong, Bolivia INTI. It organizes training courses in the construction and use of solar cookers in underprivileged districts. It started in Bolivia and already several thousands of cookers have been made in just a few years. Now it's also active in Peru and Chile. We have come to help at the end fo two training courses here in Copiapo. It's Autumn here. One cannot say that the leaves are turning because Copiapo is in a desert ! We are 800 km north of Santiago. Cacti and stunted vegetation grow on the mountains which surround us. Copiapo is called the green valley. Thanks to the river and the sun, vegetables and fruit grow very well. Rain is rare. It does not even fall every year. The Pacific is within 60 km and the mountains of more than 6000 meters are only 100 kms away. Behind them is Argentina. On May 16th, it will be a year since we embarked at Le Havre with our vehicle (see bulletin 113). Since our arrival in Buenos Aires with our faithful Berliland, we have done 34,000 km, about half on tracks, going almost to the ends of the world, to Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. We have spent 9 months here because we returned by plane for two months at holiday times. Our health is good and the Land Rover I converted is the ideal motor for this kind of journey. Comfortably equipped, it has all facilities [?], is quick, compact, and has the mobility of a 4x4. In brief, this is the life. In 2003, we drove from Buenos Aires to Iguazu to admire the extraordinary waterfalls, then went through NW Paraguay into Argentina, via Salta and Jujuy and valley tracks surrounded by mountains of all colours. The tropical area of Bolivia and its restored Jesuit missions interested us very much. We went through Bolivia sometimes without seeing anybody all day. In the footsteps of Che Guevara, we went to Higuera, where, with a handful of compagneros , he was killed by the Bolivian army trained by the CIA. In Cochabamba, we met Bolivian and French team members of Bolivia INTI. Two enthralling weeks, rich in friendship, helping people in the construction of their solar ovens, financed mainly by the contributions of the French members. The meeting did not disappoint: on the contrary, it reinforced our conviction that this work is good for the planet and its inhabitants. Salar Uyuni is 3700 m above sea level and at night the temperature goes down to -20(C. It's -4(C in the vehicle without heating - which, like us, needs oxygen. It refuses to work above 3000 m, unlike us and the Land Rover's turbo diesel which is not affected by altitude. On tracks we crossed the south Lipez for 3 days along the lagunas between 4 and 5000m above sea level. We saw geysers and an active volcano. Pink flamingos take off as we pass. A fairy tale. From San Pedro de Atacama in Chile, we once more went into NW Argentina to meet friends who had travelled there by bus, then we went along the Andes towards the south, over the San Francisco pass at 4750 m into Chile to find our friend Omar who we had met in Cochabamba at the time of a training course. Since then, he has started this activity here and already made 60 cookers. People wait impatiently to be able to take their training course and to return home with their cooker. Chile does not produce gas and presently has a serious disagreement with Bolivia, which refuses to sell to them. Bolivia wants access to the sea, access which was lost at the time of the war of the Pacific at the end of the 19th century and has always been denied since. Bolivia has just made an agreement (April 2004) with the Argentine to sell gas to them, on the express condition that they do not resell it to the Chileans. The latter don't appreciate this. They are likely to undergo a serious energy crisis. Renewable and free energies are more than ever big news here. Guided by Omar and his friends, old miners, we went looking for minerals and marine fossils, sometimes as high as 4,000m. The planet underwent many pressures to be deformed this way. From Copiapo we went down to Santiago and left our vehicle in safety. Next August, if all is well, it will be necessary for us to think of returning and of embarking for Buenos Aires for the month of the return voyage. We have avoided for the moment the earthquakes which occurred a short while after our journey. South America is really a pleasant and easy continent. A good reception is offered everywhere. Living is cheap for tourists but unfortunately not for local people taking into account the very low wages. for those which have a job. We met people of all conditions: workmen, peasants, the unemployed, teachers, leaders of trade unions, politicians touched by repression and who knew prison, torture and exile, landowners, jet setters, actors and the artists. And also rich tourists, seldom in motorhomes, but sometimes with enormous vehicles, 10 ton 4X4s, and lots of others, travelling by bus, on bikes or on foot, sometimes from Alaska to Ushuaia. And others, whose journey was interrupted by love and who settled here. But we are not settled. We headed to the deserts of northern Chile, then to Peru and Bolivia. We crossed the south of Brazil via Pantanal (rich in wild animals) and reached the Atlantic coast via Uruguay to Buenos Aires. After two months in France for New Year, a plane - or rather three - brought us to Santiago. After picking up the Land-Rover, we crossed the Andes in mid-January to meet French friends, also in a Land Rover, in Mendoza in Argentina. Then we zigzagged south, going up some enchanting valleys on tracks bordered by wild lupins and mountains with snow and glaciers. After passing quickly through San Carlos de Bariloche, a fashionable ski station, we headed directly east to the Valdes peninsula on the Atlantic which we traversed in all directions to take tracks to the beaches where penguins nest, where the marine seals and sea lions (which can weigh 4.5 tons) loll in the sun in grumpy contentment or choleric anger when disturbed. The whales unfortunately, which leave in December, had not waited for us. Along the Atlantic the colonies of penguins and marine mammals are numerous but the tracks to see them are only accessible in a 4x4. On a campsite we met by chance some very nice members of the Club who had heard of us via the internet. We saw them again on several occasions. To avoid taking the monotonous,200 km, truck-infested Route 5, we chose to go on 500kms of tracks in the landscapes of Westerns. We saw many guanacos, wild cousins of the llama, in Patagonia, but no vehicle nor human during 1.5 days. One leaves continental Argentina to enter Chile then one crosses the Magellan Strait at its narrowest in half an hour by ferry. You are now on Tierra del Fuego, the Land of Fire which does not burn. It was called that because of fires which were lit by the primitive Indians living in the area of the time of Magellan. It's a very large island, divided between Argentina and Chile. After continental Patagonia with its semi-desert vegetation, Tierra del Fuego surprised us. We expected a sorry and cold landscape, but you find forests sometimes with very large trees and quite green pastures with , within 1000 kms of the Antarctic. The area of Ushuaia is very pleasant. The vast bay is bordered by mountains of less than 2000 meters covered with snow and glaciers. There's a heat wave, 25(C in the day. Exceptional sunshine for a week. We covered almost all the tracks alongside the Atlantic, the Magellan Strait and the Beagle Channel. Further north, the weather let us down. In Torres del Payne, the weather was nice, and we travelled for 200 km through the national park, going along the lakes and admiring the vertical and sharp-edged rocks which test Andean mountaineers. Some walkers had made a tour of the massif in a week. They were tired and happy to have finished, the rain having messed their route up a little. But the landscape is absolutely fabulous. El Calafate is a small station established at the edge of Lake Argentino, the largest in Argentina. A modern boat, equipped like a Boeing 747, took us close to the enormous glaciers which complete their journey in the lake. We sailed among the icebergs with their surprising colours which go from white to marine blue. The Perito Moreno glacier cuts across Lake Argentino and comes to rest against the opposite bank. It is 5 km wide, 30 km length and 70 meters in height above the lake. You can approach it thanks to footbridges. The pressure of the advancing ice causes powerful explosions. The sight of the ice as high as a cathedral and collapsing in the lake brings applause from the tourists. We spent two rainy days there to admire the spectacle. It was not, unfortunately, sufficient. A few days, after our departure alas, the bottom of the glacier collapsed, releasing the millions of cubic meters retained in the arm of the lake at a height 8 meters above the lake itself. The collapse lasted 4 days. This event occurs only once every 15 or 20 years. Further on, a track was being transformed into an asphalt road. It leads to the small station of El Chalten, especially popular with young people who like walk and climb in the mountains. We also we walked and contemplated the Fitz Roy massif. Its edges are impressive. The landscape is splendid, the shores of Lake Viedma and its glacier, very beautiful. After sections of tarred road, the track is dusty but the semi-desert landscapes are pleasant. One sees the Andes at a distance: the peaks are around 3000 meters in this area. At the exit of a village of 30 houses, we picked up a hitchkiker, his bag and his guitar. Marcelo had waited since the day before and was glad we stopped! He was to his village in NW Argentina after more than a year spent to Ushuaia. He manufactures musical instruments out of terra cotta and has a very interesting repertoire of the traditional music of his area which he sang for us on the way, accompanying himself on the guitar. In the evening, he prepared us a parilla, (pronounced parija), various meats cooked on the wood fire, then charmed us with his songs in the moonlight. Very interested by nature, he learnt from his Indian mother and of his people a great deal about astronomy, plants and animals and at each stop was forever in search of arrowheads, fossils or minerals. In short, a very interesting encounter. We travelled 3 days together and left him when we went into Chile. We wanted to descend towards the end of the carretera australe (southern road), at Villa O'Higgins. This road, a project of the disastrous Pinochet era, was finished and opened by the army 4 years ago. It cost the lives of many soldiers. It was necessary for them to work hard in an area where it rains most of the time. They had to make blast out huge quantities of rock. You travel alongside precipices some 300m high. The track, only 4m wide, has a very steep camber to prevent the rain from destroying it. The result: passing another vehicle is a nightmare. Often covered with chippings, the road is made slippery by the rain. It's really hard for us with our 2.90m height. In Villa O'Higgins, we met some Swiss on bikes. They left home 8 years ago. We awaited in vain for the sun to return. To leave, it was necessary to retrace our steps as the track is a cul-de-sac. We followed a minibus closely. It brought us to the road through a really steep passage. Then after one anguished night in Caleta Tortel, we set out again in the high forest, the road bordered with immense leaves like parasols. We were then at the same latitude as our house in France, but in the southern hemisphere. Fortunately, the grader had planed the central part of the track and had deposited material on the sides making the infrequent meetings with other vehicles less worrying. Further north, the carretera australe is asphalted and crosses mountainous and wooded areas with superb lakes. Arrived at Cohaique, we were keen to go to Chiloe. A Navimag boat left Puerto Chacabuco for Quellon in the south of the island, two days later. The crossing lasted 36 hours with 10 stopovers in villages lost at the bottom of fjords among the salmon farms or on a beach without a village or road, where two or three people wait for a boat. I must stop my account here. We must carry on after a week staying with friends: our programme is already much delayed. Our voyage is recorded on slides. We have already taken more than 100 36 exposure films. You can follow the first 6 months account of our voyage, in 2003, on the internet on http://www.abmlemans.net/grd-voyag/berlivet/chapitres%20recit.htm The continuation, 2004, is made up of some personal e-mails. We are happy to respond to any queries from members who need information. Jacques and Marie-Paule Berlivet. |
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