Chapter 2

Successfully getting Co’Pito out of Chile was easy, even in Spanish.  Perhaps that is why I decided to up the adventure and pick up a couple of Colombian hitch hikers, in the 13 kilometres no-man’s land between Chile and Argentina. 

It wasn’t until we were all in, rolling through that snowy peaked valley, wishing we had heaters, that I began to reflect on the possible problems of picking up 2 young Colombian Hippies who as it transpired – were actually COMING from Argentina! They had been kicked out of there, refused entry into Chile, were stuck in no-man’s land on top of highest mountain any of us had ever been on, and were heading back to find another way over the border.

That kind of set the scene for the following 24 hours.  Having come through the sketchy (and chilly – pun intended) border crossing, Dan and I now felt quite comfortable with the Hippies.  So we invited them for dinner and to use our tents in the tranquil local park, central Mendoza wine country.  Even after the local with a broken arm tapped on the door at midnight to ask me to roll his joint, we felt safe.  The guy was young, looked harmless enough so I helped him out until the blue lights of a police car rolled in and I ducked into Co’Pito, hoping to avoid being asked to move on.

Dan and I watched the conversation between the broken-armed youth and the policeman through gaps in the curtains like naughty school boys.  Right about until the policeman shot the youth at point-blank range.  Honestly, the shock stayed with me well into the next morning.  In a blur the policeman radioed for backup, knelt down, took a pulse and did nothing, more police cars arrived and did the same, knelt down, took a pulse and did nothing.  The kid was dead before he hit the floor.

Eventually after 7 police cars and an ambulance descended upon the scene not 15 meters away from the Bus, one officer approached us and informed us that “it was not safe to stay here.” – Funny because we had just been discussing the same thing – we were to be escorted to the nearest police station.  It was something that we would be getting used to in the following months.

As the police pulled the hiding Colombians out of the bushes, our bodies went into auto-pilot, packing everything away. We replayed the sequence of event in our minds; there was no arguing, no shouting, he didn’t have a weapon, he didn’t try and run.  They didn’t take our statement, and we were the only witnesses.  Waking up on our first day in Argentina, at the Police Station, we still couldn’t make any sense of the situation; the story didn’t appear in any of the local papers.  It was weird.

—–Alaska or Bust—–

It was a baptism of fire; I was hooked on the trip already.  The engine had started making funny noises, but I had convinced myself that probably wasn’t important!  We had made it over the highest peak in the whole trip.  I am not sure if I was aware at that point that the Andes are the longest mountain range in the world.  They would become our nemesis and we would face them 7 times in the following year!

We had survived this far, and we were on our way.  Word had spread and we picked up 2 more CouchSurfers, Tyler the moody American and Sharne a beautiful Australian girl.  At the time I had no idea of the importance of the random encounter with this “chica loca”, I didn’t know that she would be the sort of girl that is hard to get out of you mind and that she would make repeat appearances on our path before we’d arrive in Alaska.

We met another Chilean Bus and their Swiss owners at the border with Bolivia and started a Kombi convoy.  At the time it was new to everyone, we didn’t know the time or date, or even where we would wake up tomorrow.  Everyone in the Bus had proved they could handle the normal stresses of travel, now we had to see if we could handle “Bus Stress” and 4 new friends living on-top of each other.  Co’Pito was a pressure cooker for emotions, it would only be a matter of time before the steam escaped, but at the time we were free and we were the happiest people we knew!

Read More from our Off-Camera Adventure in South America in our Overlanding Story e-book: