Odyssey to Ushuaia
A Motorcycling Adventure from New York to Tierra del Fuego
By Andrés Carlstein
Chicago Review Press Incorporated
Copyright © 2002 Andrés Carlstein
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-55652-440-0
Contents
Acknowledgments,
1. To Boldly Go Where Other People Already Live,
2. The Welding Prodigy,
3. Attack of the Flesh-Eating Minnows,
4. Moto Monks and Border Bastards,
5. Tramitadores in the Mist,
6. Riding the Whore of Babylon,
7. The Quest for the Kawasaki Dealer,
8. Beauty and Bogotá,
9. How Peter and Robert Plunged into a Volcanic Crater,
10. The Desecrator of Chan Chan,
11. Zen and the Art of the Inelastic Collision,
12. Beware of Falling Tourists,
13. The World's Most Dangerous Road,
14. The World's Saltiest Hotel,
15. The Place Where Bikes Go to Heal,
16. Bad News in Buenos Aires,
17. The End of the Road,
CHAPTER 1
To Boldly Go/Where Other People Already Live
My sunglasses had been stolen from my pocket in a Peruvian coat-check, so I had to keep the tinted visor on my helmet down to curb the tremendous glare. Salt, pure and blazingly white, lay in all directions. There was enough salt to kill every last slug on the planet. Aside from the mountains visible to the southwest, there was no earth nearby. All around me lay a flat white desert of salt where not a creature could live. I wasn't taking any chances — the crusty white lake bed we rode on reflected the bold midday sun, sending rays into my eyes from all directions and threatening to cause a kind of snow blindness, even though there wasn't any snow in sight. Temporary blindness, no matter what the cause, was a condition that would make riding my motorcycle off the salt impossible. This was the Salar de Uyuni, a 7,500-square-mile dried lake at 12,000 feet, formed when a huge bowl of ocean water was driven skyward with the rising continent millennia ago. And we were stuck on it.
My two companions and I were unsure how to proceed. "I think we need to go southeast," I finally said. "That travel agent said there was a road down there, and we haven't crossed it yet. I'm sure that's the way."
Robert, a big, graying man in his fifties who looked like a retired lumberjack or burly ship captain, sat on his massive black BMW bike to my right. He flipped up his helmet and a bushy beard popped out. Reminiscent of something from a cartoon, his beard looked like an expanded white sponge that couldn't possibly return to its original size and fit back in his helmet. He slowly took off his gloves and examined the global positioning satellite receiver (GPS) mounted on his handlebars for what must've been the tenth time.
The third man in our group, Peter, sat on his large, red-and-white BMW bike with his legs spread wide for balance, arms across his chest in frustration. His piercing Colombian eyes were set with a gravity they rarely displayed. "Yeah, but the other guy said there's also a road straight south from the Isla de los Pescadores," Peter said. "We came straight south, and still there's no road. I think we need to go west. We don't have enough gas to run around looking for a road. It has to be one or the other."
We were at an impasse. Normally during a disagreement between two members of the group, the third person settled the tie. But Robert just looked at us in silence. Between the GPS, maps, and local information we had figured we couldn't get lost. And technically we were right. We knew exactly where we were, but we couldn't find a way off the salt. The solid land lay just a couple hundred meters to the south, but between firm ground and us was a wide moat of sandy-salty mush that would surely swallow up at least one of our bikes if we tried to cross. Normally foolproof, the GPS wasn't helping us because there were no good reference points in the software to tell us where the road was in relation to our position. The sacred GPS, as Peter dubbed it, could only tell us what we already knew: that we were somewhere along the edge of the salt lake, but not on hard land.
We didn't want to end up like that French couple last year — their truck sank into the muck and they were stranded, suffering in the burning days and freezing nights under the endless, cloudless sky for nearly a week before being rescued. They were consular representatives from France, and Bolivian Air Force planes began looking for them when they didn't arrive at their destination as expected. Nobody knew where we were, let alone gave a damn, so if we got stuck we'd have to be our own rescue party. Worse still, we were running out of water and gas, and we had nowhere to turn for more information. I was sick of the constant committee frustrations that come when making group decisions, and decided it was time to act.
"Look, we know there's a road over there to the east. Supposedly it also heads south, right?" They both looked at me noncommittally. "We haven't seen anything resembling a road yet, so if we go in that direction long enough we will cross it. We have to cross it. I'm going that way." I lowered my visor and started off. I looked back a few moments later to see them grudgingly begin to follow.
Fortunately I was right. We made it to the bridge and to hard, salt-free land. Robert, the big Canadian, stopped his bike next to mine and smiled. "That was a close one," he said. "We had to make a decision and it had to be right." I realized this must've been his way of complimenting me. I'm sure it was hard for him, considering how many times I'd done the completely wrong thing since we had been together. Who am I kidding? Half the time I'd been a two-wheeled pain in the ass, and saying these kind words was probably not unlike verbally passing a kidney stone. I nodded in appreciative silence, not wanting to screw up this unusual moment.
* * *
Back when my brother and I were kids, we used to dream of riding motorcycles to Argentina. We would joke about pulling triumphantly into the drive of one of our many uncles' houses — our loving family and beautiful female strangers (they'd heard about us and came from across the land in bikinis to meet the heroes) would embrace us at the door with the sun shining and our engines revving loudly. Since childhood we'd been infected with our father's love of motorcycle travel, but while we were encouraged to travel, we were discouraged from having bikes of our own. After our father's death, all his old treasures were sold, including a two-stroke NSU, a DKW, and a BMW touring bike. The motorcycle had left my presence, but it hadn't left my consciousness.
One hot summer evening just before my last semester of college at Penn State, the motorcycle dream came back to my mind. It came from deep in my memory, but for some reason, suddenly the message was loud and irresistible. I was having drinks with some friends in a pub when the idea crystallized — and I decided right there that, no matter what happened, I would ride a motorcycle south until I ran out of road in Argentina.
You know you've said something remarkable when people grow silent for a few moments, processing your words, eyeing you with quizzical concern, as if to say, "Should this person be on medication?" So after that evening at the bar where my friends replied, "Don't you know there are planes for that?" or "Hope you have a tough ass," I stopped telling others I planned to ride a motorcycle to the tip of South America.
How do you justify selling everything you own and riding a...
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