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Rough Road

By Daniel Lins - 2009-09-15

The RentaCar agent dropped the keys into my hand and I walked outside into the desert, leaving piles of paperwork behind me. Natan (age 12) and I headed over to purvey our new path to freedom: a four-door truck like the Miners use to drive the desert roads. And the most important thing… beefcake four wheel drive!

We got in and smelled the scent of freshly cleaned leather, and we laughted at the thought of taking our new toy into the desert. The guys and I had heard of some natural geysers deep in the Interior, and had decided to take Natan for his first camping trip without the folks.

We drove back home, to the church we’ve been staying at. The guys were excited to see it too, and Natan’s parents rolled their eyes as we cackled in excitement. "You are responsible for Natan," his mother told me with a grave expression, wagging her finger to drive home the point. "Yes mom," I replied. "I’ll treat him as my own son." That appeased her, and I skipped away to pack my gear, wondering about what it would be like to actually have my own son.

An hour later, we were all packed up with food, tents, and gear for sleeping at 4600 meters (15,000 feet). We headed out of town, into the beige desert horizon – nothing but beige mountains to break up the beige plains. The truck handled well, even off-road, and I wondered why anyone would ever want to use the 4 Wheel Drive LOW gear, because the 4WD High worked just fine.

As we sped long the hard-packed dirt road, dodging potholes and boulders, we talked about life in the USA with Natan. He was eager to hear and practice English. Suddenly, the truck dipped into a small gully and hit the upslope hard, lifting four wheels off the ground before landing on the other side. We anxiously made sure none of the gear had bounced out of the bed, and continued on with more caution.

As we got into the mountains, the road changed to loose rock and gravel, barely wide enough for the little truck to pass. Certainly not wide enough for two vehicles. The mountain wall was one side, and a deep ravine on the other. We learned what 4WD LOW is for, as the big engine whined up steep hills at less than 6 mph. For hours, we took turns driving the truck, squeezing between boulders or hugging the rock wall to avoid tumbling down into the valley below. At one particularly narrow point, we looked down to see a truck resting on its roof in the valley, with its track an obvious rut down the cliff slope. It was the same make and model as the one we were driving, except white. Our nerve-wracking experience stretched on into the night, and we wondered if we were on the right road.

As it got dark, our world shrank to the small circle illuminated by the high-beams. We got less nervous, because the deep drop-of was invisible beyond the range of the headlights. The stars kept us company in the ink-black sky, shining in all their glory like this was their last performance. The altitude, the desert population, and the dry empty air make this one of the best places on earth for viewing extra-terrestrial radiation, and we drank it in like mystified wanderers in a foreign land.

The moon came up in front of us as we crawled through the mountains. Reaching the top of one climb, we saw a huge tractor in the distance, sitting right in the middle of the road. We groaned in dismay as we contemplated driving in reverse along the narrow mountain road: uphill and downhill, with the steep drop-off on one side, until we could find a place to turn around. We prayed, and kept advancing. Thankfully, when we got to the tractor, we found a place to squeak around without falling down the cliff. Once back on the road, on the other side of the earth-mover, we let out the breaths we didn’t know we’d been holding in.

We started descending, and came to the bottom of the gully. The road crossed a branch of the river. I got out and inspected our route, knowing that our only other option was to turn around and drive back. The crossing was deep, and wide enough that we could barely see the other side, at the very edge of the headlights. I wasn’t sure how the truck would handle, but we had plenty of food, water and warm clothes in case of emergency, so we decided to risk it.

We backed up a good way to get some speed, revved the engine, and floored it! The truck kicked gravel into the night, and we got into second gear before hitting the rushing water. Momentum carried us to the middle, but we slowed in the face of tons of water. The four-wheel drive proved its power, and we made it up the far bank without bogging down. Hallelujah!

On the other side, we began climbing again. The guys fell sleep as we bounced gently up the rocky road. We eventually crawled into the desolate wasteland of smoking earth and sulfurous air. Passing through columns of smoke and steam, we climbed to the far side. We found a picturesque spot, and parked, sandwiched between the smoking valley below, and the twinkling blanket or stars above.

We stepped out of the truck and breathed in the cold night air of 4600 meters. Our fingers began to stiffen as we worked furiously to make a camp before getting frostbite…

But that, my friends, is another story.