I asked another staff member at the airport what time they open. "Nine or nine-thirty". Hmm. Ok. Ryan and I went upstairs and overpaid for an instant coffee while we waited. We came back down around 9.
The lady from the parking voucher stand was kind enough to call the number posted at the desk for us since we had no phone. "They're coming" was all I gathered. We got a map from the Europcar rental lady, and waited around. Three guys came up to get their car, and called that number again. 20 minutes. It was after 10.
Finally the guy shows up and we get the truck. We forgo the damage insurance, since our credit card covers it. He gives us a better map and shows us to our Toyota Helix (or is it Helux...Hilux?) It's stick shift. Since Ryan hadn't driven stick since he was a teen in his grandparent's VW, we took a few laps around the parking lot. He took to it quickly and we were off, headed to Putre, about 2.5 hours northwest.
The road was long and took us through huge sand dunes and mountains. When we arrived we checked in to Terracelodge, and I was happy to see a clean, attractive room with a hot shower. We got some lunch (soup and chicken and rice) and walked a small trail a few kilometers from town.
We weren't very hungry at dinner since we'd had a late lunch. We went to a restaurant on the square and ordered too much food than we wanted. It was good though, a veggie pizza for me and fish for Ryan.
The next morning we had breakfast at the lodge and headed out to see Chungara Lake, a high altitude lake overlooked by a huge volcano. We stopped at the rangers station and they gave us a neat sticker of the park. I used their bathroom, that they had just finished hosing out. I had to use 2 of my rationed napkins just to dry off the seat!
We walked a short trail near the water, and drove out to some other lakes around the volcano while we waited for the clouds to clear (Ryan was dying to get a shot of the whole thing uncovered). We ate our lunch of empanadas and chocolate in the back of the truck just over the hill from a heard of llamas.
When we finished eating the clouds had moved and we went back to get more pictures of the Volcano. Success!
With the rest of the afternoon we explored the dirt roads in Lauca National Park and a Vicuna Reserve (Vicna look like short haired llamas mixed with baby giraffes). I even tried my hand at starting the truck, with Ryan coaching me. it worked, and I drove a good 30 feet!
We took a long road to an old decrepit town with a crumbling church, Ryan said he was waiting for zombies to come walking out of the old buildings. It was creepy. An old broken down swing set, with chains dangling, a see-saw with the wood broken in half. And not a soul in sight. We didn't see one other human the entire afternoon driving around the park.
The best part of that town is that it is right next to an active Volcano - you can see sulfuric steam and gas rising out of a vent on top. It was really neat. We worked our way back to Putre and saw a beautiful rainbow shooting straight out of a snow covered mountain.
Guest blogger: Ryan
After following a seemingly endless number of trucks we arrived back in town. We went to a local hole in the wall for dinner and got two "menu completos". First came a huge bowl of quinoa soup with veggies and chicken. The soup was so big that we thought the whole meal was the soup (and would have been satisfied)...wrong. We quickly got a plate of noodles and another huge piece of chicken covered in some kind of delicious sauce. For dessert we received a small bowl filled with a pink jello like substance. It was pretty good. We walked back home and went to bed.
Steph Blogging:
We enjoyed our breakfast again the next morning before heading off to explore the other side of mountains. We first grabbed some empanadas, peanuts, and bananas to bring with us. Suriplaza was our first stop. It is a beautiful group of bright orange mountains, dusted with snow, and that day set perfectly against a royal blue sky. We ate our lunch in the truck facing the mountains.
We decided to take a few more dirt roads over to another "must see" star on our map. A few wrong turns had us dead end into more ghost towns. Finally we found the road (either the map is labeled and the actual raod isn't, or the road has a sign but there is nothing on the map) and headed over.
About half way there we came up fast on a spot of the dirt road in which an old dried up stream had washed away a small ditch into the road. Ryan hit the brakes so that the front of the truck didn't get damaged, but in doing so effectively wedged us in. Impulsively he floored it to try to get us out of the spot, and by the time we got out to assess the situation, the rear driver's tire was in a 12 inch hole it had dug itself.
So now we have the front passenger tire wedged into the ditch/stream bed, and the back driver's side tire in its own neat little tire shaped hole. I immediately regretted eating my entire empanada at lunch. The hairy part was that we hadn't seen a soul since about 9 am on any of these roads, and now it was 1pm.
We ended up getting the jack out, jacking up the back tire as far as it would go, and filling the hole with small and medium stones, rocks, and gravel we could gather. Ryan started her up again and I stood back and watched.
When he turned off the car, there was a clear black stripe of baldness forming on the tire, and all of the rocks we had gathered had been flung all over the road behind us. And still, there the truck sat.
We would go through this a few more times. Kissing the tread on the tire goodbye, filling and refilling the hole, trying to dig away the ditch that was holding the front tire, and so on.
I'm reading The Neverending Story, and there is a character in it called a "Luck Dragon." Maybe I was getting delirious, but I was hoping that a luck dragon would come help us.
Finally we dug and dug at the back tire, wedged some large rocks in as far as possible and as flat as possible, trying to give the tire an unobstructed way out. We dug and dug with our hands and parts of the jack to clear the front tire as much as possible.
I stood back and Ryan started her up again. And moved! Forward! A lot! I was jumping up and down yelling and Ryan had a huge smile on his face. We made it!
The whole ordeal probably lasted an hour and a half. We still didn't see a soul until we got back in to Putre, at least a 35 to 40 minute drive away. Ryan of course was still up for seeing that other landmark, but I had had enough and just wanted to get back to civilization and out of that damn truck. I had actually thought the axle was broken for a while when it was sitting there, it looked weird to me and the other rear tire didnt spin at all for the longest time.
I'm proud of us. We didn't panic (outwardly) or loose our heads. We didn't get short with each other even though we were both frustrated and getting nervous the longer it was stuck. We pulled it off together and got ourselves the heck out of there.
We went back to the same restaurant for dinner. Again we ordered the menu completo and got too much food. A huge bowl of cazuela de vicuno followed by a plate of beef with a fried egg on it and a large portion of rice. Dessert was a banana drizzled in honey - very good!
We showered and got to bed when we got back to our room. Ryan mildly skinned up a finger from all the digging and filling, and we were both tired.
The next morning we left before breakfast, taking very bland cheese sandwiches prepared by the owner with us, and returned the car. We tried to fill the car at the gas station at the ariport, only to find out it was a jet fuel station and not for cars. We had to drive 20 minutes out of our way into town to find a gas station. Thats one thing America's got going...you never have to search too long for a gas station.
We dropped the car, got a cab to the bus station, hopped into a taxi bound for the Peruvian border.
to be continued...
The Volcano neat Lake Chungara
Is this a toyota ad or what?
Learning to drive stick
The old church belltower
more pictures to come soon!
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