Introduction

 

The following notes are written in late 2024, almost 4 decades after completion of the journey that is the subject of this book, which in turn is based on my travel diary of the time.  In my usual anal way, I have endeavoured to provide time and place context, wrapped in a slightly rose-coloured view from forty years after the events.

*

In late 1985, my better half and I set off from Auckland, New Zealand, to spend a year circumnavigating South America by whatever means came to hand.  This was a time before the internet, before email, digital cameras, mobile phones, GPS, Google Maps and Google Translate.  We were armed with the 2-inch-thick, 1453-page 1984 South American Handbook and a random collection of information scraps pertaining to certain hikes we’d like to do enroute, through the Andes, the Sierra Nevada and a few other places.  In my (slightly obsessive)  planning, I had arranged a series of mail collections in major cities, and we carried the large part of our funds around our waists in cash and travellers cheques, with a couple of credit cards stashed in our boots.  The Handbook – our bible – was the source of all information on hotels, transport, restaurants, sights, dangers and logistics.  It guided every aspect of the route and timing of our trip.

Sharon and I were both experienced travellers, being then in our early thirties.  I had done the legendary Kathmandu-London trip in 1977, had lived and worked as an engineer in Australia, Britain, Nigeria and Oman, while Sharon had worked as an ER nurse in South Africa after leaving her native Australia.  We had met on a 5-month overland trip from Johannesburg to London in the back of an Encounter Overland Bedford truck, in 1981 – a journey guaranteed to cement a love or loathing of travel off the beaten track. 

In the three years after the African odyssey, we had moved to my native New Zealand, married, bought the essential house and car and cat, and sort of settled down, though I was working in Oman at this time.  For all the focus on dropping anchor, travel was never far from our sights.

This was New Zealand in 1985 – remote, quiet, peaceful, save for the odd excitement when the French decided to disagree on our anti-nuclear stance and blew up the Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour.  That aside, life in New Zealand went on in its own unsophisticated way, largely unaffected by world affairs.  We had McDonalds, Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken, so we considered ourselves to be at least partially educated in haute cuisine.  Beyond our shores we knew that Ronald Regan was president of the United States, Margaret Thatcher Britain’s prime minister, and the Soviet Union was in the hands of a man called Gorbachev.  Our own prime minister was a controversial left wing politician named David Lange, elected the previous year in a landslide, and whom would become best known for making New Zealand a nuclear-free zone and denying port facilities to any nuclear-armed ships, friend or foe.

The reader of this tome must make allowances for my pre-occupation with many apparently trivial things in life, not least being the cost of things on our travels  – accommodation, food, and coke in a supermarket.  Life in 1985 in far-off New Zealand was a simple affair, and we perhaps thought of ourselves as simple folk, though undoubtedly comfortably better off than much of the rest of the world.  We had two television channels at the time,  both state-run - imaginatively named TV1 and TV2.  (The first privately-owned channel would not appear until 1989).  Unemployment was 7.3%, mortgage rates were north of 12%, the average cost of a house was NZ$65,000 and the average household income was NZ$24,000.

[During the course of our year away, the New Zealand dollar would fluctuate between 50 and 60 cents US.  For the purposes of this narrative, I have generally quotes prices in USD at that time, this currency being more recognisable to non-Kiwi readers.]

This book does not make any pretensions of being an epic travel odyssey.  Rather, it serves as a record of life and travel in South America (and a little bit of the US) in the mid-1980s.  My observations are anything but “woke”, for such a concept did not exist in 1985.  I called the shots as I saw them in my diary, though we always endeavoured to respect the society and culture we were passing through – at least to their faces.

We had the intention of being largely self-contained for a year, and hence I obsessed over what to take.  The engineer, planner and scout in me wanted to be prepared for a plane crash in the jungle, and in any case, a length of fishing line and some hooks didn’t take up any room.  I stopped short at flying out with duct tape in my pack, since I figured we could buy some when we got… there.  This observation provides a small glimpse into the mind of the author all those years ago.

In regard to the Darien crossing, my story documents this route before it became impassable for decades due to the presence of guerillas and drug smugglers, and before people traffickers also made it a no-go zone in the early 2000’s.  It is likely that the barely-inhabited jungle connection between Panama and Colombia that we experienced will never exist again.

Readers may be interested in a previous book titled “Trip Hazards”, compiled in 2022, that contains some extracts from this South American memoir.  The focus of that book was the nature of pre-internet travel, covering more of my travels prior to 2000, and the particular difficulties and pleasures of travel in that time.  It was an era before every photo had to have the foreground of hands holding iPhone cameras cropped out.

 

 

The e-book can be obtained on Fiction4All at: https://fiction4all.com/ebooks/b19700-trip-hazards.htm

 

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Chapter One - Preparation

 

It was dark when we pitched the tent. For the last hour we had stumbled down a barely discernible path, alternately slipping, groping and stumbling over rocks, past whipping branches and through muddy puddles in the blackness. The rain had stopped, but the wind still rushed through the surrounding trees.  Now, our wet clothes replaced by dry warm long-johns, we lay huddled in our sleeping bags, too exhausted to indulge in conversation.  Our tent lay hunched on a rain-sodden slope, buffeted by the airstream blasting down the valley.  I lay on my back listening to the mad flapping of the tent fabric, my mind drifting away to imagine the vastness and immensity of the Andes towering around us, the culmination of months of planning and experiences before reaching the heartland of South America.

Such, at this stage, was alas not the case.  Reality has a knack of being far less glamorous - or at least seeming so at the time.  Reality for Sharon and myself at this moment lay in a deep bush-clad valley in the Waitakere Ranges, 30 kilometres northwest of Auckland.  It was the first of what we expected to be several ‘trial hikes’, to determine the usefulness and appropriateness of our gear.  We were testing it all for the first time, prior to a year finding our way through the infamous Darien Gap in Panama, following with a circumnavigation - if one dare use so noble a word - of the South American sub-continent.  Now, at the end of July 1985, we were utilising the height of a wet Auckland winter as a testing ground for wet-weather gear, packs, stove, and tent - all brand spanking new.

Our trip was a big undertaking for us, but was not intended to be a blood­chilling story of close encounters with deadly situations.  We were not brave adventurers setting out where no hand had set foot, where white men were revered as gods, or white women sold into slavery.  Nor did we expect to spend too many nights in foreign prisons, flea-ridden hovels passing as hotels, or sheltering in desperate circumstances without any roof at all over our heads.  Unfortunately for zealous editors we were too conventional for that kind of thing.  Besides, I reasoned, it had all been done before.  Pick up any travel book these days and it'll be about some chap riding his pushbike to the South Pole, walking through the Sahara with only his sanity for company, or living for years with the yetis in Tibet.  One would think normal people never travelled.

However, like most good travel stories, there had to be an element of preparation.  While some people might set off for their Overseas Experience with little more than an open air ticket and Noddy's Guide To The World, the Alexanders were a little more organised.  Not that we were first timers of course, oh no.  Definitely Experienced World Travellers, veterans of Trans-Africa and Trans-Asia Expeditions, of living in the Middle East and slumming in London Suburbia were we.  World Travellers, clearly, and you'd be surprised what stupid things World Travellers are capable of.

However, all this travelling does prepare one for other things in life. Like more travelling.  But like most moderately normal human beings, we found our tastes changing with the onset of early middle-age (as turning thirty seemed to be). The possession of money had quite a lot to do with ones tastes, and having done the tenting bit across the wastes of the Sahara and Australia, and dossed in cheap Parisian hotels, we were now determined to live it up a bit, while stopping short of a succession of Hiltons.  The net result of all this affluence turned out to be a mosquito-plagued jungle expedition, hammocks on a cattle boat, tents in the snow, mice-infested tramping huts and dossing in cheap South American hotels. Did I say 'live it up'?

*

Taking a year off, i.e. opting out of Life-As-We-Know-It, was a complicated business.  The more conventional the people, the more involved the procedure.  And in our own way we were as conventional as most.  We had a house in Auckland, a car, a cat, and a jungle of house plants.  And none of these took lightly to being abandoned for a year.  Accompanying these tangible assets were all the intangible liabilities that went with them, at least one of which seemed to materialise in the letter box each week.  These were such things as insurance premiums, power bills, rates, subscriptions, business magazines, and, once in a while, personal mail.

There is also the usual problem with employment - or rather the unemployment which might result.  Here we varied slightly from the norm.  In October 1985 I had completed a three-year contract as Resident Engineer for a civil engineering consultant in the Sultanate of Oman.  I class myself as one of the seemingly few people in the world who actually enjoy the job they do.  In the course of working in the Australian outback, the Shetland Islands, Nigeria, London and Oman, I pondered many times on the fact that companies were prepared to pay me to travel, to visit interesting and exotic places, and to actually do something I enjoyed.  There sure were some terrific employers in the world.  And with that brief aside, you now have some insight into the how's and why's we could actually afford to take a year off in the first place.  But there were other benefits to this situation, which perhaps tend to daunt many other would-be World Travellers, as will be elaborated in due course.

While the Oman Experience was taking place, Sharon was merrily (sometimes) getting stuck into her BA at Auckland University.  My return home in October 1985 found her in the midst of exam fever, with her last one due to finish only a week before we left at the end of November.  Having completed two years study, she was able to then take a year off before returning to her studies, while I remained between jobs.

We were then faced - in a period of little more than 6 weeks - with renting out the house, selling the car, and sorting out a morass of paperwork to cope with all the expected eventualities that can occur over a period of 12 months, from paying rates to (shudder) revising our wills.

For those who have never been involved with this sort of situation, a few words may be useful, remembering that this, of course, was 1985 – no internet, no online payments, only snail mail and cheque books.  Not easy to run your affairs from 12,000 kilometres away.

There were quite a few Real Estate Agents who included a "House Management" facility.  In addition to acting as landlord, they will look after your mail (which is re-directed to them via your local Post Office), pay your bills and bank your income.  Like all businesses, some were better than others, so shop around.  Also, like all businesses, they were out to make money, so expect to pay 7.5% on top of all bills.  This can be avoided to some extent by paying rates and subscriptions in advance.  The disadvantage here may be the lack of interest earned on your money – it’s all a question of balance. On the positive side, the rental coming in from our house at USD140 a week more than paid for our accommodation overseas, if you wanted to look at it that way.  This income was also relatively easy to write off under the current tax laws, under depreciation and suchlike.  We were fortunate in finding someone who agreed to take the house furnished, complete with cat and plants.  These problems solved, we sold the car to a dealer, and stored much of our personal stuff (clothes, books, good crockery, bed linen etc) in the spare garage.  The gear well protected with dust-covers, mothballs, anti-mouse pellets and packets of silica gel (available by the kilogram from your friendly local chemist), we closed and padlocked the garage.  We returned after 11 months to find no problems at all with damp, moths or rodents.  We had agreed on a month's free rent for the tenant for looking after the cat, and had paid off certain expected bills in advance, and thus set off with consciences at least convinced that we'd done the best we could.  

All this could be made much less painful if you have accommodating family or friends, of course, who may not object to being burdened with your troubles while you jet around the world enjoying yourselves. But families are strange entities, so let’s not even go there.  We would rather be in control of our own destinies…

*

So that was all the tangible stuff done, slotted in between the inevitable round of farewell dinners.  But of course you do not just turn up at the airport as though waiting for a number nine bus.  There were visas, tickets, route-planning and equipment­buying to be dealt with.  And the earlier much of this was done, the better, given the last-minute rush with the house.

Route planning was a major part of the preparation, and one that was easily done well in advance.  I confess to being a believer in preparation - obviously something to do with a mis-spent youth in the boy scouts - and looking back at our journey, I can't recall too many times when it was a case of "if only we had known this, or seen that..." Not like the two Germans who turned up in a little Peruvian village in anticipation of walking the Inca Trail. We shared a room with them in a primitive but picturesque boarding house, and naturally asked them how long they intended to take in walking the trail.

"We are not exactly sure," said the bearded young man.

"Well, how much food do you have?" we asked.

"We have not bought food yet.  We expect to buy some here.  We couldn’t buy camping gas in Cuzco, so we will have to use firewood," the blonde girl explained.

"There's no firewood on the trail that we know of," we told them. "Not with several thousand people walking the trail each year. And there's not much food here for carrying with you - especially compact stuff that won't need much cooking..."

Unfortunately we have no further information as to the fate of our Germans, who could not be said to be the most prepared of backpackers, in view of the considerable amount of literature available on the Inca Trail.

And literature was the key to the whole business really.  There were plenty of books on South America, by far the best being the Handbook - worth it’s not inconsiderable weight in gold.  Within this one book we could find 99% of the information we required, from a full range of dozens of hotels, to places to buy second-hand English books, to where to go, what to see, and how to see it.  It was all a bit overwhelming to start with.  As a briefer, more general introduction, I used "South America On A Shoestring", which was a quick guide  to the best sights.

In essence it was a case of 'join up the dots', linking points of interest.  But tied in with this were relevant items such as seasonal weather, transport availability and tourist seasons. We were committed to our Darien Gap Expedition, departing on the 24th December, since this was the dry season. We had four weeks to fill in prior to arriving in Panama City, and we were on our own after finishing this section in Barranquilla, Colombia, sometime in mid-January 1986.  From there it seemed a natural progression to head into Venezuela, since everything I had read suggested Colombia was the best country in South America from which to make a speedy exit.  

Vivid in my mind was the story of Tristan Jones, a solo sailor who got pick-pocketed of his wallet within five minutes of arriving in Bogota.  A short time later he was held up on a traffic island by five armed men while crossing the street in 9am traffic.  This time he lost his passport and traveller’s cheques.  He approached a nearby policeman, who promptly arrested him for having no identification (which, of course, had just been stolen!)  He was thrown into a freezing sordid jail for five days before eventually being turned out without a word of explanation. And there were plenty more stories where that one came from...

Continuing with "Plan A": after a hike in the Venezuelan mountains and a visit to the coast, we would endeavour to see the Angel Falls - the highest in the world - before heading southwards into Brazil.  After crossing the Amazon at Manaus, we had on our list the Pantanal wetlands, near the Bolivian border, the capital Brasilia, the quaint town of Ouro Preto, then on to Rio.  We would be there late in March - after the Carnival in February, which suited us admirably.  At a time when Rio is jam-packed with people, prices and the crime rate would soar.  It was all a hassle we could do without.  We were definitely not "crowd" people.

This planning led to a projected itinerary, which was refined slightly after the initial estimate.  This enabled us to produce a mailing list, centred around Thomas Cook and American Express offices, as well as the odd Australian Embassy (Sharon being an Aussie) and the rare New Zealand Embassy.  These places usually guaranteed an English-speaker, and were invariably friendly, helpful, and much less crowded/bewildering/ impersonal/ bureaucratic than many post offices catering for Post Restante.  We obtained the addresses of these mail stops from the South American Handbook, and were careful to pick locations which could be readily identified on the relevant included downtown map.

From Rio, our route ran inland to Iguassu Falls via Sao Paulo, thence south to Asuncion in Paraguay, then into Argentina via the old Mission stations, and into Uruguay, Montevideo and across the River Plate to Buenos Aires.

According to our estimated travelling time, it would be mid-April by this point, so we envisaged getting down to Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world, fairly rapidly.  Naturally enough, we anticipated heading north equally rapidly after Tierra del Fuego, stopping off for some hiking in the Chilean fjords and the Lakes District, in southern Argentina. Then it would be north to Santiago, by train to Bolivia, and visits to the Spanish colonial towns of Sucre and Potosi, before pushing on to La Paz, the highest capital city in the world.

From this point there seemed much to see and do - hiking the Inca Trail, the Takesi Trail, visiting Machu Picchu, flying over the famous Nazca Lines, visiting the floating islands of Lake Titicaca and so on, before reaching Lima.  Once again, after Lima, there was a series of walks lined up before continuing north into Ecuador and to Quito, and hopefully the Galapagos Islands.

Having worked all this out, we now had a rough schedule for mail and seasons, both of which seemed reasonable. Our longest stretch between mail pick-ups - such a morale-lifter when travelling - was about two months, between Montevideo in Uruguay, and Santiago, Chile. We could also - thanks again to the South American Handbook - gain some idea of costs, having now a feel for how many nights’ accommodation in each country we would need, and how many thousands of kilometres we would cover.

With all this research, the whole size of the undertaking was beginning to come home to me, although it was not until a week or so before departure that this manifested itself an uncharacteristic attack of nerves.  Sharon was blissfully unaware or immune to it all, preoccupied as she was with final exams and last-minute rushing about.  Secure in the presumably comfortable thought that I was organising everything successfully, the whole business seemed barely to touch her.  Of course I was the one who had been reading the countless warnings about thieves, druggings, muggings, druggies, police, lunatic drivers and just plain lunatics.  Maybe I was aware of what lay before us, and the fact that it was also my Spanish that would have to get us through.  As it turned out, the apprehension disappeared almost the moment we took off.  Events continued almost too fast, over the course of eleven months, to allow one time to worry about the future.  We also got into the "habit" of travel, whereby we seemed to take everything the lifestyle could throw at us as normal, and just accept it.

I mentioned the subject of speaking Spanish, which is really a necessity in South America.  With the exceptions of Brazil (Portuguese), Guyana (English), Suriname (Dutch) and Guyane (French), the official language of the other eleven countries south of Nicaragua is Spanish.  As we would be visiting all of these, plus Brazil, a knowledge of Spanish was essential.  I could make no linguistic claims, having done a couple of years Latin, school French until age 15, then a half-hearted and extremely transient flirtation with self-taught German.  Throw in half a dozen Arabic expressions, a few pidgin Nigerian colloquialisms, and you had the extent of my multilingual ability.

Spanish, however, is a relatively easy language - inasmuch as any new language is.  The spelling and pronunciation are very regular, with many similarities to the other Romance Languages, and there were not too many variations between countries.  Which is all very fine, but no comfort when you come up against a blank wall of unintelligibility.  This point is often brought home to well-intentioned travellers who might cheerfully go forth armed with their Berlitz phrase book, to ask, perhaps: "How do we get to the bus terminal?" More often than not they will be understood perfectly – it was with the reply that the system fell down...  "Well, you take the next left - that street with the yellow building on the comer - then go on until you come to a square, where you go right down a flight of steps with lots of statues, past the opera house - keep on going for a kilometre or so..." And so on - all at twice the speed of sound.  These days? It’s called Google Translate.

In fairness to my other half, Sharon's ability to interpret hand movements and facial or voice inflections often did as much to translate replies as did my limited Spanish.  I spent perhaps three months goading myself to plough through a teach­yourself-Spanish course prior to the trip, while based in the Middle East, and by the end of the journey I could carry on a conversation at least at a snail's pace - as long as everybody stuck with the present tense.  Sharon had meanwhile progressed to asking for a cup of coffee, if the place had a bed, how much was the room, where was the loo, and did they speak English.  In short, the essentials of life.

English could usually be guaranteed in places like better-known travel agencies, but elsewhere in 1980’s South America it was pot luck.  By no means could you count on it anywhere, except in big hotels like the Sheraton or the Hilton.  And dressed as we were, we became somewhat loathe to enter these luxurious precincts.

Possibly the worst language difficulty came at the end of the trip, when, after having been speaking variations of Spanish for ten months, we arrived in Tahiti to discover most of my school French had retired into the deepest brain recesses.  It could only be coaxed from here with a time delay of some five seconds per word, after the inevitable intermediate translation into Spanish. I t took the full two days to stop saying "si," rather than "oui".