Teresa Bruce's Blog, page 5
January 25, 2018
Malbec Mecca (Drive Day 210: Jan 25, 2004)
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I am no oenophile but I know the tannins and sugars in reds will punish me with pounding headaches. Today I will I suffer anyway. The Malbec capital of the world is achingly beautiful and sophisticated – all accessible by rented bicycle and foot.
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If the always sunny skies and not-quite-nosebleed altitude prove anything it is that perfection is possible.
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Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
January 24, 2018
The mothership of wine: Mendoza (Drive Day 209: Jan 24, 2004)
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The backroads end in the sophisticated destination that is Mendoza. Wine is big business here but that doesn’t keep it from being as beautiful as any city I’ve seen.
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We arrive as the sun is setting and in any other country that would mean a mad scramble to find someplace safe to camp. But even though most tourists who come here stay at resorts and fabulous hotels, Mendoza still has a municipal campground and locals friendly enough to point us in the right direction.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
January 23, 2018
Why Guacho Gil never worries for smokes (Drive Day 208: Jan 23, 2004)
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Just as suddenly as a mountain goat emerges from a foggy mountainside, we are back in lowland farming country. The crop is familiar; we could be driving through rural North Carolina.
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When Gary hops out to photograph a tobacco barn a man on a motorcycle pulls up to chat. His white baseball cap has a picture of Che – of course. Rains this year are too late and too little, I learn, and each stalk of tobacco hanging from the rafters makes four packs of cigarettes. I want to think Che would have donated a cig or two to Guacho Gil along his motorcycle sojourn through this part of Argentina, but then again, he might have bummed some from the shrines instead. Who’d have known?
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Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
January 22, 2018
Under a wide, brilliant sky (Drive Day 207: Jan 22, 2004)
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It is impossible to over-describe the colors of this landscape. The mountains are somehow more resplendent than the altiplano of Bolivia, speckled with cheery yellow wildflowers. The light that shines through banks of fog is iridescent celadon. The roads are almost as miserable as Bolivia’s at times, but truckers here honk before every hairpin turn to warn approaching drivers. In one day we dodge foxes, mountain goats, wild llamas and domesticated sheep. Between cities the campgrounds are DIY—and we heat day-old empanadas on the engine block.
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Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
January 21, 2018
Giving thanks to Difunta Correa (Drive Day 206: Jan 21, 2004)
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Those same truckers who leave cigar stumps for Gaucho Gil? They also festoon their rearview mirrors, mud flaps and grilles with red ribbons honoring another folk saint the church wishes would go away. This time it’s a woman named Difunta Correa (literally defunct or deceased Correa) and legend has it she was so dedicated to her forcibly recruited army husband that she and her infant son followed behind him when she learned he had been wounded. Thing is, she didn’t have enough water and guachos found her flat on her back in the desert, three days dead. The miracle part is that her baby was alive, nursing at her breast, near the village of Villecito.[image error]
So instead of bottles of booze, devotees leave her plastic litre bottles of water and give thanks to her for everything good that has ever happened to them or that they hope happens. At her largest shrine they stack model houses, expired license plates and photos of children and you can buy stickers and wax replicas, exposed breast and all. We settle for one of the mirror ribbons thanking Difunta Correa for protecting our Ford.
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Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
January 20, 2018
Tales of rails gone by (Drive Day 205: Jan 20, 2004)
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Who are we to mourn the demise of Argentina’s famed railroads, privileged as we are with the mighty Ford F350 and decent roads crisscrossing the country.
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But there is something wistful and wasteful about the abandoned stations we keep driving past. Ferrocarriles Argentina was once one of the most extensive and prosperous networks in the world, boasting almost 30,000 miles of track.
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Then came highways, a few economic collapses, theories and assurances that privatization is the solution and this is what’s left in remote parts of the country. The Germans have a great word for it: Geisterbahnhöfe – which roughly translates into ghost stations and there are no shortage of filmmaking fans hopeful one day Argentina’s rail system will come back to life. But for now they just mark spots no longer deemed important enough to connect or serve.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
January 19, 2018
Guacho Gil (Drive Day 204: Jan 19, 2004)
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If it weren’t for the Argentinean film students who thumb a ride with us we’d never know to save a little wine, and preferably a cigar, for Guacho Gil. He’s like the patron saint of truckers and other macho types the Catholic church of Argentina would like to downplay. But shrines to this cowboy, Robin Hood outlaw protector dot the roadside with more frequency than churches and we are not the only ones who stop in tribute. The dregs of our last bottle of Torrontes are a small price to pay for the privilege of riding through Gil’s territory safe from banditos.
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Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
January 18, 2018
High desert elixir (Drive Day 203: Jan 18, 2004)
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I am not a proponent of drinking and driving, so when we discover we have entered Argentina’s northernmost wine region we curtail our road time to the hours between breakfast and lunch. There is no sense buying bottled water when Torrontes white is just as clear and infinitely more delicious. Instead of motoring on to cover more ground by dinner we set up camp after the first bottle and then rent bicycles to continue explorations – and buy more wine.[image error]
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Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
January 17, 2018
The colors of Cafayate (Drive Day 202: Jan 17, 2004)
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Whoever thought to dot the towns of northwestern Argentina with municipal campgrounds must have been a fan of westerns. The drive to Cafayate passes through technicolor splendor – mountains slashed with a cinnamon red glow as sunset turns the sky a heavy blue silver. At the campground the wind, rustling through the poplars, sounds like old men sighing.
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Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
January 16, 2018
Desert displays (Drive Day 201: Jan 16, 2004)
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First Argentina felt like a time warp. Now it’s like a flying carpet ride transporting us to what I imagine the American southwest looked like a hundred years ago. Rock formations peel and twist into revealed canyons and up-thrust formations with names like Devil’s Throat. The soil is painted with mustard, burnt cayenne and hazy purple colors. Then the terrain, just as suddenly, flattens out with formidable cacti in lieu of signposts or mile markers. Look don’t stay, they seem to warn and we keep driving.
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Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
