This is my uncle Sanchez, he lived a humble and anonymous life and somehow I wanted to do a small tribute to him.
He’s 86 now and can hardly walk, but still drinks his “Mate” and remembers his wild years as a locomotiv driver, funny that the train he used to work with, has now been “restored” and placed on a corner less than 200 meters from where he lives (see photo below).
When I was 6 years old I used to visit him on saturdays, then he’d take me to the train station and together we waited for the daily cargo train to pass the station at full speed, we seated on a small little hill very near the railways and waited and waited, the cargo trains were (and still are) very irregular. I remember he teaching me to “feel” the vibrations of the sleepers and somehow I was hypnotized by that monstrous smoking mass of metal passing by as a hurricane.Then he’d take his blue bicycle, seat me behind, and take me to a local bar to eat a cheese sandwich and a lemonade. Those were great saturdays for me (and I supposed for him too). Now more than 35 years has passed and every time I visit my home town I pay him a visit. His full name is Felix Sanchez. Like a movie star.
So I finally found the car, a beautiful Mitsubishi L200 4×4 from 2004, it’s a second hand but with only 100.000 km on the clock, so it should do the job.
You see, in all our previous travels in Africa we choose rugged cars with zero confort and loads of gear and equipment, that’s not the case when travelling in South America, all you need here is an air-con, the rest is superfluous, even the 4×4 is not necessary (we will be glad of having it though…!)
The back of the L200
It’s not easy to find the right car for our trip, it takes concentration, knowledge and of course luck. Therefore I went out fishing this weekend to relax and “clean” my mind of all the models and vehicles I’ve been trying in the past week. Tomorrow I will write a little more about the car, until then take a look at the picture to see the beautiful “dorado” we caught on the Paraná river just 400 km from where I live.
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So I’m finally in Argentina and as sooner I touched argie soil I’ve been delighted with a great asado, Argentinian national food. It’s great to be back in this amazing country, after all I was born here 43 years ago. Last time I was here was almost 4 years ago but the sounds, smells and sights are well saved in the hard disk of my soul and it can’t be formatted by 19 years of living in Europe.
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The plan is to buy a car in Argentina, do the whole loop of the Southamerican continent, then end the trip in Buenos Aires, sell the car and fly back to Denmark. To do this we take of course advantage of Mario being born in Argentina and still having the argie passport. So that’s why Mario will travel first, find the car, do the whole paper work and then Helle will join when the car is ready.
