For 14 years, nothing could have been the most sensible warriors on the Karen Catchpole and Eric Mohl road. The New York couple with a serious case of travel preference had rattled their faithful Silverado from the most sensitive in the Western Hemisphere in Alaska to the rear of South America and a number of intermediate locations on an epic road trip.
They were in the Patagonian desert in western Argentina when the microscopic kibosh fell: Covid-19.
The World Health Organization has declared the new coronavirus a pandemic. Argentina temporarily closed its borders. There were no robberies. “We were locked up like everyone else here,” Catchpole said.
As experienced readers, they were used to roadblocks and things that didn’t go as planned, but it wasn’t the general detour. Since it’s interrupted by who knows how long, do they deserve to pack up and go home?
They huddled in a smart position to be in a pandemic, the Mendoza wine region in western Argentina in the foothills of the Andes, where they had a long-standing invitation to space and stayed animals for a friend.
“From the beginning, we feel here,” Catchpole says. “Argentina’s reaction to the pandemic has been one of the world’s highest severe quarantines. The social distance was implemented in supermarkets and pharmacies, where only a few consumers were allowed at a time and young people were not allowed. Soon purchases of food or medicine were made limited to express days of the week depending on their identity number. Masks were mandatory. »
Argentina has been more successful than its neighbors Chile and Brazil in managing the virus, the cases have increased recently. Argentina had about 167,000 cases (376 consisting of 100,000 people) and 3,000 deaths (7 consisting of 100,000 people) at the end of July.
In Brazil, there were about 2.4 million infections (1,166 consisting of 100,000 people) at the end of July and around 88,000 deaths (42 consisting of 100,000 people). Chile had approximately 350,000 cases (1,868 consisting of 100,000 people) at the end of July and more than 9,000 deaths (49 consisting of 100,000 people).
After Covid, the couple’s epic journey, which they call their trans-American journey, is paused but inactive, because the couple is working.
His travels are also his paintings, as they deposit independent articles about his discoveries on the expedition. They paint stories of places they have already visited, waiting for a safer time to get back on the road.
Catchpole, former editor and editor of Condé Nast, and Mohl, a lawyer who sought to be a photographer, his adventures through the presentation of articles for publications and Internet sites around the world. “We live our dream, but we spend 60% of our time working,” Catchpole says.
They also publish well-designed stories and images of their travels for their website, trans-americas.com. They recently published articles on archaeological sites in northern Peru and a consultant on the island of Providencia off the Caribbean coast of Colombia.
When the pandemic occurred, the couple returned from one of their largest “field offices,” Patagonia, the vast realm of wild nature, mountains, ranches in the middle of nowhere and ice stretching 402,000 miles in the lower part of Chile and Argentina.
“Patagonia was so beautiful, mountains, just glaciers. We saw another 4 cougars!” said Mohl.
“It never happens,” Catchpole says. “Most people in Patagonia have never noticed a cougar.”
It’s one of the moments catches up with Catchpole and Mohl, one of the stumbling occasions that leaves you in the grip of the wonder of your world. The prospects of the birth of glaciers, towering peaks and Patagonia’s global herbarium have gone so far beyond the senses that they can perceive everything slightly.
“When we left, we couldn’t absorb that intensity,” Mohl recalls.
They have become addicted to long journeys when they passed through Southeast Asia for 4 years in the last 1990s, traveling to Borneo and the Himalayas. It was the dawn of the internet café era.
As an editor and journalist, Catchpole helped create The Magazines Sassy and Jane for Condé Nast. What if she can write about her children and Eric can photograph them and they can post from the road? They sold some pieces to magazines and the seed was sown.
They went from house to work, stored cash and yet devised a three-year plan across the Americas. “From Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, we’re all Americans,” Mohl says. The project of his trans-American adventure was to better perceive his own garden and his neighbors. They left in 2006.
Since then, they have accumulated 220,000 miles, 17 nations and 14 punctures. They’ve made the equivalent nine times the world’s round in their mud-stained Silverado. The three-year-old turned to 14 and that counts.
They skated on shattered roads in Guatemala, crossed marshes in Bolivia and made slalom in the jungle of Ecuador and Brazil. During a long escape to the border of Peru and Bolivia, two tyres separated.
“We were on our way to the border because our visas were about to expire with the transitional import permit for our truck,” Catchpole recalls. “And Peru is very serious about not staying long. The country has the right to confiscate your vehicle if it exceeds the length of your stay. We had two delaminated tires (detaching from their casing), so we couldn’t get to the border.” on time. “
Border officials did not buy their stories about mechanical challenges, even though they had a timestamped photo of a local police officer helping them use the tire. With visions of being locked without wheels, they discovered an ally, a local Chevy dealer, who stepped in and solved the challenge with the police.
It was just one of the many times strangers did their best to help them in a crisis.
Its goal is to go beyond the surface of tourism and connect with the local population, and its strategy to do so is to do so slowly. The delay is the builder of conversations and friendships and the director of opportunities that we lose when we rush to a place.
Catchpole recommends ending talking to the waiter about his food place and other citizens of the city he is in. “If you temporarily pass through a place, you will end up like your preconceived idea. It is imperative to have time to let everything happen. »
Their travels have taught them to stay open, and when he invites them to a position in a direction they don’t go, they say yes.
Using the common sense we use to annoy us in a big American city, they say they’ve never been assaulted or never afraid. A cook and a cooler were pinched in a camp in Guatemala, but the locals picked it up before breakfast.
Their in-depth technique has led them to a lot of immersive experiences. In Peru, they visited the annual Chacu festival, which presents the classic summary of vigogne. The vineyards are part of the circle of flame relatives and alpacas, more sublime: “the supermodel version”, explains Catchpole.
She and Mohl were invited through the locals to see this ancient ritual.
“Dozens of other people are deployed in the vigogne’s shooting diversity, all holding a very, very long rope with small flags and pieces of cloth,” Catchpole says. “They stretch the rope and walk slowly in groups of vicuñas to pick them up to a transitional enclosure.
There, the locals perform a classic Inca ceremony, then cut each animal, whose coats are used for expensive clothing and blankets. “The day full of desirable moments, adding the possibility of seeing the vigogne up close and attending a non-tourist Inca ritual,” he says.
They have traveled to many places, from temples to the narrow stairs of the Mayan village of Copán, Honduras, to culinary discoveries, such as the place to eat El Chato in Bogota, Colombia. They discovered the unknown paradisiacal tropical beach of Puerto Viejo in Costa Rica and brought the old Patagonian Express exercise to Argentina. One of the highlights was the village of Zacatecas, in the highlands of Mexico, “like Europe in our backyard, 12 hours from Texas”.
The couple’s time to know their landscape allows them to notice destinations that are not on the same ancient tourist map, such as Bonito, a city on the edge of the Pantanal wetlands in southwestern Brazil, with spring waters and crystal clear waterfalls. It’s like swimming in an aquarium.
During his stay in Bonito, Catchpole began to have abdominal pain. The owner of the small hotel where they stayed, María Pires, of Pousada Galeria Artes, accompanied them to a local clinic, since they did not speak Portuguese, the language of Brazil, only Spanish (only present).
The doctor didn’t think it was appendicitis, but Maria didn’t buy it.
“He contacted a surgical instructor four hours away who told us to get through immediately,” Catchpole says. “Maria left her hotel and came here with us. We found out it was appendicitis and stayed with us during surgery in the operating room.
“Things like that happen all the time. We were very lucky to meet other people who are doing everything they can for us,” Catchpole says.
How long term for Catchpole and Mohl? They took a monetary blow with the entire travel industry. The advertising dollars that the publications have dried up and have been a relief in budgets for travel stories.
They believe that at that time they can move to Paraguay or Uruguay, where the virus has not gone wild. They have more questions than answers about what a pandemic might look like.
Your taste will have to adapt to a new tourism, which includes things like dressing up.
“For us, as non-Hispanics, the mask makes it more difficult to have a verbal exchange in Spanish. Masks suffocate the voice and hide facial expressions. It’s hard to stick up like a stranger in a mask,” Catchpole says.
“In fact, we don’t see people’s smiling faces, because it’s a detail that adds a lot to each and every interaction.”
It’s a long adventure for all of us.
Instead of the Inca Trail in Peru, check out the Ausangate hike: more beauty, more mountains and fewer people.
In Argentina, the northern wine region of Cafayate and the provincial capital, Salta, have vineyards, gauchos, culture and food in some of the best herbal beauties in the country.
The Amazon basin in Ecuador around Cuyabeno wins by animal sightings, fewer people and much lower costs than the maximum available Amazonian regions.
The Pantanal region of Brazil is the position where it is possible to see a jaguar in the wild, as well as macaws, anteaters, capybars and many others.
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