Hoopty
When planning our epic trip to Patagonia Jenya and I decided to rent a car to get around once we arrived in El Calafate, Argentina. Most tourists rely on buses, but we like our freedom. We also opted for a cheap, local rental car vendor, and thus got an old, beat up hoopty with a cracked windshield, a broken tachometer gauge, and - which we only realized as night fell on the highway into the middle of nowhere - a broken headlight.
But at least it ran, and got us to the Chilean border without incident. Another complication was dealing with the imperfect relations between Argentina and Chile, which is evident and suddenly our problem when driving an Argentinian car into Chile. Lots of old school bureaucracy, filling out paperwork, all with serious language barriers.
Also the border crossing we chose had enough elevation that we also found ourselves driving in ice/snow conditions in a vehicle poorly equipped for such. But we made it through and into the warmer air of Natales, and had a grand old time on that side of the border.
A week later we were returning to Argentina over that same border crossing, only to be met with a locked gate and a sign that had the distressing words "cerrado" and "72 horas." It seemed completely abandoned at first, but luckily there was some young patrol person inside who let us in and even more he knew enough English to explain the border guards were on strike for 72 hours. Only tour buses were let through. Being stuck in southern Chile isn't the worst thing, but we already had hotels and flights booked. Eventually he admitted he heard a rumor that maybe this one much smaller border crossing south of here may be open at 5pm for an hour.
So we went back to Natales to eat more beef before heading to this other crossing well before 5pm, and sure enough there was a line of cars forming. We took a number, and after hours of waiting they let us do the paperwork and sent us through. Yay!
The road from this lesser crossing back into Argentina was still under construction. We were on dirt and gravel for miles. Fearing these aged tires would blow out I was relieved to eventually drive onto some newly installed pavement parallel to the main drag. I enjoyed smooth sailing on fresh highway until realizing we might be on the opposite side of the highway going the wrong direction. There were no other cars or previous signs to give us clues as to proper orientation, but in any case the highway inexplicably dead ended with impassible mounds of dirt, so I had to backtrack and get back on the gravel road again.
And then suddenly all the dashboard dials went to zero. The speedometer and gas gauge basically died. Having no idea if we had enough fuel to make it back to Calafate I had no choice but to stop in this tiniest of towns and hope the car will still operate after filling up, despite whatever electrical problems it was having.
It did start up again (phew!) and we went back to the hoopty rental to complain about its issues (using lots of broken Spanish and mime and drawings). They tried to convince us to fix it all ourselves (the blown fuses and headlight) and they would take the costs off our bill, but they ultimately caved and quickly put in new fuses/bulbs the next day.
So, yeah, having a car added a few more stresses to our journey, including random stops and inspections on the road by military police, or the constant state of running low on gas between the very rare fueling stations in this part of the world.
But we did gain a lot, of course. We could stop whenever wherever and bask in the emptiness of the region or commune with the guanacos. We also could stay in places long after the tour buses left, like on the shore of the lake right by Perito Moreno glacier. We had the whole place to ourselves by late afternoon, meditating as the recently calved ice chunks flowed to shore and melted.