Spring Break and the American Road Trip

scratched signI had always wanted to go on a, no the road trip—the American road trip, the cross country ride that takes a group of friends from the cold (eternally) east to the sweltering south through the dry southwest, over the mountains and into Balmy California. It’s a figment within the American Dream, a journey that made Louis, Clark, and Jack Nicholson’s career. The ride is never easy but its always life changing.

I never went on said trip in the United States. Gas got too expensive. One needs to be at least twenty-five to rent a car. Weeks after landing in Argentina I began to fantasize about driving along the south American coast. Windows down. Music blaring. Running out of cigarettes. The open road. But when I finally verbalized my plan in a casual “so what are you doing for Spring Break” conversation I was shut down by a simple question: “Do you know how to drive stick?” Of course I don’t. I don’t even like to drive very much. I get tired and bored easily. What I liked about my road trip idea was just that, the idea. There were plenty of other fun things to do over break; a car would just complicate things.

It was that disappointment that made renting a car with a group of friends in Bariloche that much more exciting. We picked up a list of rental places at the tourist office and “A Rent-a-Car,” in all of its blissfully ESL redundancy, was the first one with vehicles available. Our group of five sat in the small office within a one-story galleria. We paid a soft-spoken balding man in cash and gave him the numbers of my passport, my friend’s drivers license, and a third companion’s credit card number. But we paid in cash. It was thirty pesos a day split five ways. Our white Chevy sedan had a broken radio and windshield wiper. It took Alex, the only one of us who had any experience with a stick shift, twenty minutes to pull onto the street. This lapse was duly noted by the nice man who’d just trusted the vehicle to us.

We had rented that car for four days, from Sunday to Wednesday, but we only had it for two. In two days we drove to Colonia Suiza, a strange mock-village inhabited by chocolatiers and artisans (“artisan” is thrown around a lot in this region) and scaled the hills and narrow roads around Mount Tronador. Destination-wise these trips were dull. Mount Tronador is the highest peak in the region but all we saw of it was water falling—albeit beautifully—down its southern side from a viewing point bounded by Lincoln-log-like railings. Before the waterfalls was the main attraction, a waning glacier lying in a murky lake. Looking back, I equate these sites with the highway gimmicks of the fabled road trip. The World’s Biggest Donut. A sandwich with Jesus’ face toasted into it. Blank, the Eighth Wonder of the World. But before we got to the glacier we sat in the car, rolling uncertainly up and down narrow roads listening to music from portable speakers I’d bought in Bariloche, worrying about how little gas we had left and having a great time. A key part of the American road trip is that the journey outbalances the inevitable disappointment of the destination.

We made it all the way back to our hostel before the clutch gave out. Sure Alex wasn’t a pro but we figured the car had been a lemon to begin with and we fell asleep thinking we’d just trade it in for a fresh vehicle the next day for our trip El Bolson. Yet when we got to A Rent-a-Car we learned that in Argentina, when they think you broke the car, you have to pay for it. Now came the next part of the journey—the guilty call home. Mom, I took (well figuratively) the car, it broke, can you help? One girl called her father, a car enthusiast, who told her it was ridiculous that we’d be charged for breaking the clutch—we hadn’t driven it long enough for the damage to be all our fault. Another parent wasn’t so understanding. “You fucking rented a car?...and you didn’t get insurance?” Well we weren’t sure if had gotten insurance or not but that parent, a mother, was also the one who stayed on the phone with her daughter, found a lawyer friend in Bariloche and promised us that we would get away with it. And we would have if it hadn’t been for those meddling Argentines at A Rent-a-Car who promptly charged the damage to the credit card we supplied before it supplier could reach her mom to ask her to close the account. That fact that our fate had been partially decided by a joint account made us all feel younger and not in the way that the road trip is supposed to.

In the end we rented another car at Hertz. The same day that we lost our first vehicle we took that second one down Route 40 (arguably the Route 66 of Argentina) to El Bolson, a village three hours south of Bariloche which experienced a large influx of hippies in the seventies making it touristy and unique at the same time. The spike in be-dreaded wanderers and weed didn’t make me feel like I had traveled back in time but instead that I’d come upon a place that had ceased to travel through time or had taken its own route at any rate.

When we returned that car the next day we were confident that we wouldn’t be charged for any damages but the burnt chemical smell in the cabin betrayed us and we were in fact charged the exact same amount to fumigate as A Rent-a-Car had asked for an entirely new clutch. We left Hertz with plans to contest the charge to Visa and grimly aware of the fact that in Argentina they make you pay for you mistakes. And this was how the road trip and indeed my trip with my friends ended. That morning two of them left for Mendoza and the next day I left for Parque Lanin up north. There is always a dramatic parting and a low point in the road trip. But we had made plans to separate before our spirits and wallets were sunk. This parting was merely hectic.

Before we parted we all agreed that the cars or “the car” had defined our stay in Bariloche. And maybe that is all the American road trip is finally about.

Location