Chile & Argentina - Part 4: The two sides of the overlanding coin.

With Sweetcakes in good shape and the sun shining above us, we left Coyhaique in good spirits. 10 minutes down the road we notice a new scraping sound, but by this time we are experts at diagnosing the many sounds coming from our car. We realized it was just a rock stuck somewhere in the wheel and continued our merry way along the Carretera Austral. We had a beautiful day, but we had to stop after just a couple of hours on the road. Currently the road is under construction and they close large sections of it from 1-5pm every afternoon. We found a section of the old road and tucked ourselves behind some trees for a bit of privacy from the few cars passing along the road.

We passed this small shrine along the side of the highway. The Virgen of the Waterfall.

 Note the guardrail; this is actually the old carretera; Post-apocalyptic look going on.
Check out the giant leaves!

Forgive me, but I had to take some pictures of nature reclaiming the old highway. 

Possibly the prettiest lichens I have ever seen. --Bethany

I can't decide if this is beautiful or disgusting --Ike

It reminds me of candied peanuts --Bethany

You can't tell from this pic, but these leaves are gigantic!

Ike pulled Sweetcakes into the lane, which was perched between some sheer rock cliffs and a steep drop off to the river in the valley far below. Helping Ike turn around in the lane, I peered over the edge down towards the river. I'm not afraid of heights, but my stomach still did a little flip when I saw just how far down the river was, and there was nothing except a few small bushes between me and the raging waters below.

Interesting rocks along the green river.

That day was a historic one for Sweetcakes: she turned over to 300,000 miles! What a site to see all the dials on the odometer turn at once. We celebrated with a bottle of champagne, enjoying the view from our perch above the river. I couldn't help but looking over the edge to watch the water rush by. The surrounding valley and the water itself were both vividly green. Ike threatened to push me over and cash out on my life insurance policy a couple of times, and after my second glass of champagne I kept my distance from the edge.

dat feel as all six click over

Yes, you ordered the second cheapest brut on the menu?

The next morning the rain and fog was back, so we packed up our belongings and soldiered on up the road. The highway passes through beautiful scenery, but with the dreary weather we weren't able to get out and enjoy it much. Another thing I realized as we drove hour after hour along the road: many overlanders doing the panamerican trip don't travel through Canada and/or Alaska on part of their trip. We had seen many, many miles of similarly beautiful rugged mountains up in Canada and, given the less than ideal weather, trudging along this rough gravel road in our rusty (but beloved) car, probably wasn't the best decision.

Not actually off road, but still a gnarly drive.

A few more hours up the road we stopped at Queulet National Park for a hike to view a glacier with a waterfall coming out the bottom. Sounds impressive, right? The park ranger informed us the hike was 2 hours, and oh, by the way, you need to ask around about road conditions as you head north because a volcano just erupted near Puerto Montt. Wait, what!? Southern Chile sits on the “Ring of Fire” and another volcano in the area had just erupted a few weeks earlier. There was nothing we could do about the news at that point, so we continued with our plans. Even though it was approaching lunch time, we figured it would be an easy hike and we could have lunch when we returned to the car. The hike was not super difficult, but there was a fair amount of climbing up and up through the lush forest. We're not sure exactly what kind of climate this is, but it's like a cold weather version of a rain forest! More purple mushrooms greeted us as we made our way back to the viewpoint for the glacier. We passed a couple of other hikers making the trek in the drizzle, and I was happy to know we weren't the slowest hikers (for once!). We reached the viewpoint and unfortunately the clouds hid the glacier from our view. But we did see the waterfall, which looked like it was magically pouring out from the cloud. So I guess that's pretty cool. After a brief rest, we set out back down the trail before I got too hangry. We met a few other weary travelers that asked how much further... I guess we weren't the only ones surprised by the length/incline of the trail.

 Eat your heart out, Columbus Junction

Waterfall out of the sky

Fungi art?

Returning to Sweetcakes, we heard a loud hissing. Hooray! A flat tire! A small metal blade was protruding from one of the rear tires. We pulled it out and Ike plugged the tire in a matter of minutes. We are professionals at this point. We enjoyed our lunch and then continued up the road. That night we camped at a small campground run by a sweet elderly couple. It had hot showers (a major bonus since the hostel where we had previously stayed 4 nights had been without water the entire time), electricity, wifi, a covered space for our tent (key during the constant rain/drizzle), and even unlimited amounts of fire wood for the stove to keep us warm. What we consider a perfect campground. We went to bed that night warm and dry, but were awoken at 2am by a loud [tornado, we mid-westerners would call it] siren going off. In a sleepy daze, I hastily googled the small town's name and siren to see if this was something related to the volcano explosion. The results showed 2 options: volcano or tsunami. Grrrrreat. We sat there for another minute as the siren continued to wail, wondering what we should do. Surely the elderly couple would come inform us if we were in danger, instead of just leaving us here to die... right? After a couple of minutes, the siren was silent. “If it was a real emergency, they wouldn't just shut the siren off already, right?” Ike was trying to keep me from panicking. On cue, we heard emergency vehicle sirens go off nearby. We sat in our tent in silence for another 10 minutes, listening for any sound that might indicate the town's residents were GTFOing. Nothing, silence. We crawled back into our sleeping bags and tried to fall back asleep.

Meeting campground cats is basically the best part of this trip, to be honest.

 This was along the dirt wall while we were waiting for construction.  Cool to see some people got creative with it.

Almost as all-terrain as Sweetcakes

The next morning we woke up, happy to see that we hadn't been covered in volcanic ash or incinerated by flowing lava. We decided to celebrate being alive by visiting some natural hot springs further up the highway. We were the only ones there for the first 20 minutes or so, and enjoyed the nice peaceful surroundings. A local family rolled in with 2 young teenage boys. They had the afternoon off from school, so had come out to soak in the hot pool. As any respectable middle class parents would do, they prodded the boys to practice their English with these two gringos. We made friendly banter with them, smiling and nodding when we could not understand the boys' embarrassed mumbles. We asked about the road conditions up north, near the volcano. They informed us the border crossing we had intended to use to re-enter Argentina was closed due to heavy ash fall. We debated among ourselves whether we should turn back south and cross at a different crossing, or continue north and figure out our plans there. Possibly in a few days the border would re-open. We opted for the latter.

Hot water on cold days is better than cold water on hot days.

The northern part of the Carretera Austral is considered a “bi-modal” road, which basically means you have to use several expensive ferries to continue along the route. I miss northwestern Canada, where often times they opted to run free ferries instead of building bridges. The first set of ferries was a short 45-minute ride, then a 10 minute drive across a small peninsula, then a longer 3-hour ferry. As we were boarding the second ferry one of the workers told us we had a flat tire. Uh oh, our second one within 48 hours. We assumed the patch was leaking, so Ike pulled out the old plug, inserted a new one, and re-inflated the tire. Later he went back to Sweetcakes to check on the tire and found it completely flat. It was hard to hear over the noise of the ferry, but we thought we could hear a hissing sound. We weren't in the mood to jack up the car, remove the tire, and patch this flat all while on the ferry. Instead, we opted to re-inflate the tire as we approached the harbor and hope that we could make it the short distance to our wild campsite that night. We made it without any problems.

The sun was setting as we pulled into our campsite and right on cue, the drizzle started. We broke out the jack and started to loosen the lug nuts so we could remove the tire to patch it. Each of our tires has an anti-theft lug nut that requires a key to remove it. We put this on the lug nut, but it slipped in our tire iron. We tried again. And again, but it continued to slip. The key says it is not supposed to be used with impact wrenches, but all of the tire shops we had visited had used their impact wrenches on it. Much to our dismay, the shop in northern Chile where we had purchased our two new tires must have stripped our key. We attempted to patch the tire without removing it, but the location of the puncture made it really difficult to insert the repair tools. We tried moving the car forward a few inches to see if the angle improved. Nope. Now backwards a few inches. Still not better. We eventually inserted a couple of tire plugs, but could still hear a small hiss so we knew the tire was not completely fixed. It was completely dark out by now and we were extremely frustrated at ourselves and at the tire shops for ruining our key. We couldn't even remove our stupid flat tire and put on the spare. Exasperated, we jacked up the car for the night and crawled into our tent. Tomorrow will be better, right?

And it was. We packed up the tent, re-inflated the tire, and set off for the third and last ferry. We pulled up to the port at 11am on the dot, boarded the ferry, and immediately it took off. The information we had indicated that the ferry left every 45 minutes, but it turns out there was a fixed schedule. Had we been a couple of minutes later, we would have had to wait an hour and a half for the next ferry. We rolled into Puerto Montt a couple of hours later, the tire still holding enough pressure. Since it was Sunday (of course), nothing was open. We ventured out past the edge of town for a campsite that sounded like it was cheap and had good amenities. After driving along a rough gravel road, we came upon a hotel with the same name. It had an arrow painted on its sign and said the camping was another couple of kilometers down the road. So we soldiered on. After driving more than a couple of kilometers and seeing nothing looking like a campsite (but we did see a badass grandma dressed in hot pink sweat pants throwing an old table out to the curb and carrying a machete taped to a broom handle), we turned around and headed back toward the hotel. We knocked on the office door and after getting no response, poked around the property. We saw the campsites, so knew we were in the right place. Back to the office for more knocking, and eventually a tired looking man came to the door and informed us the campground was closed for the season. Really buddy? Thanks for letting us drive all the way out here. We made our way back to town, and drove around in search of a decent hostel. We had a connection for a mechanic that could fabricate a new muffler & tail pipe for us, so we wanted to stay in this town until the next day. Otherwise, we would have left, because Puerto Montt is an industrial port city, not the kind of place that caters to lots of tourists.

Volcanic eruption sky

After inquiring at several hostels that were all overpriced and run down, we arrived at a B&B run by an older woman that had high ratings on Trip Advisor. We walked in and it smelled like we were at Grandma's house. Yes, please! Since we were the only guests staying that night (hello, low season), she let us use her kitchen to make dinner. We opted for Ike's famous french fries and chicken cordon blue. As soon as we started heating up the oil she shut the kitchen door and opened the window. Oops: after all this time cooking outdoors, we forgot how stinky oil is. Sorry for stinking up your house, Grandma!

Bright side to volcano eruptions: amazing sunsets

The next morning we called our mechanic contact about getting the muffler repaired, but he was at a doctor's appointment and said he'd call us back later. So we set off to crush our other errands: laundry, boom! Tire repair shop, boom! Car wash, (delayed) boom! Well, we had to wait awhile for the old man washing cars to finish up the semi and trailer he was working on. I wandered down the street and saw that just down the block there was a muffler and exhaust shop, what a coincidence! The old man said he was “almost done with the semi, just another half hour” (we've learned that hearing we need to wait a minutito (small minute) is really a bad omen), so we rolled into the muffler shop to ask if they could help us out with Sweetcakes. Sure, we can make a new one for you. Want a quote? We hastily discussed our max willingness to pay (yes, I am an economist...) as we walked into the office. $250, we agreed. The price came out to $140, including parts and labor. Great, we'll take it! How long do you need to have the car in the shop? A whole day? No, we'll have it done in an hour. We agreed to drop the car off right after their lunch break.

We pulled Sweetcakes over the shop's pit and a guy got to work with a blow torch removing the old rusty muffler and tailpipe. The soon came out with a pre-fabbed muffler and then took our tailpipe back to their metal-bending (magic) machine and minutes later returned with a new one. In an hour we had a new muffler. Goodbye, rust bucket!

"So, we didn't actually have to remove it; it just came off in our hands." [Matt: not what they actually said. :-p]

We were in a bit of a pickle about where to head next. With the volcanic ash clouding the sky we debated heading north towards Santiago and then crossing into Mendoza, crossing through the ashy border crossing towards Bariloche, or heading southeast onto the island of Chiloe. We opted for the later; so with all our errands taken care of, we made a mad dash for the ferry taking us from mainland Chile out to Chiloe. They charged an arm and a leg for the half hour ferry ride, so we nodded in support when we drove past the government billboard advertising their plans to build a bridge out to the island. The next day, however, as we drove around we saw tons of graffiti and signs saying “No al puente” (no to the bridge), so apparently the locals aren't too fond of the bridge plan. My limited knowledge of the island (largely from reading Isabel Allende's Maya's Notebook... an excellent read), tells me this is because the people of Chiloe pride themselves from being different from the mainlanders. They are already overwhelmed by tourists during the busy season and creating a bridge would likely exacerbate this issue.

"No to the bridge!" graffiti along the main highway.

Arriving on Chiloe we drove to our wild campsite for the night, a nice spot on a beach, according to our favorite app: iOverlander. We pulled out onto the beach just as the sun was setting and saw a giant MAN vehicle parked in the spot. It was a perfectly flat little grassy spot right next to the beach. We walked around and eventually settled on a spot behind the sand dunes. It lacked the beautiful beach view, but benefited from some grass below and wind protection. We whipped out our headlamps and started working on dinner and a few minutes later Mark, our neighbor in the MAN, walked up to introduce himself. He and his wife Barbara were Swiss and were a few months in to their Panamerican journey. We were invited into their home on wheels after we finished with dinner.

One of these vehicles is the pinnacle in overlanding flexibility and ruggedness.  The other is a MAN truck. 

Well, it's 9:15... do we have time to make our bed or should we go say hi to our neighbors? We decided it was already pretty late, so we better go be social. We knocked on the door to the MAN and were greeted with a friendly hello. Climbing up the stairs into their rig, we were immediately jealous. Not only were they in a massive MAN, but they a pop-top roof as well, so the place felt huge and spacious! We got to chatting and swapping travel stories, as overlanders are prone to do, and then were offered some coffee. Mark whipped out real coffee mugs and a coffee machine (yes, a coffee machine) and a selection of 2 dozen types of tea for me. This, my friends, is the luxury life on the road. Soon the wind was whipping and rain started pouring down. We were grateful to be inside their warm and spacious rig. After coffee we tapped our giant box of wine and before we knew it, it was 3am. Time flies when you are chatting with kindred spirits (nevermind that Mark was born the same year as my father. Time to step up the adventure, Dad!). The next day Mark was checking out Sweetcakes in the daylight and told us that it reminded him of his first overlanding rig from when he was 25. I turned to Ike and said, “So, if he started out like this, I am hopeful that we will end up like that!”

Always take your shoes off before entering the house.

Not a shabby morning view

Cows also like the beach apparently.

Look at me 'helping'!

New friends Barbara & Mark

We awoke to a beautiful sunny morning the next day. I took a stroll along the beach before the other bums aroused and found a herd of cattle grazing in the sand. (Only in Chiloe???) Mark helped us with some small fixes on Sweetcakes and we were amused at his preparedness with a complete set of nails and screws, not to mention a cordless drill. Resolution: next overlanding trip, buy a MAN. Soon it was nearly 1pm and we tore ourselves away from the relaxing beach and our new friends and headed south through the island. We made it to the city of Castro for a late lunch of sushi, then headed back to the coast and wild camped along another beach that night. It's fairly chilly down here these days, especially along the coast where the wind is whipping, but a bottle of wine and a beautiful sunset will keep you happy.

The expertise of the roll making wasn't great, but the quantity and quality was exceptional.  And the price. ;-)

The next day we headed back to Castro to visit the market by the port to buy a big slab of fresh salmon for dinner that night, but we also found this gigantic head of garlic (ajo chilote according to the locals). Chiloe is known for its uniquely styled churches. We visited the one in Castro, painted yellow and purple on the outside and built entirely out of wood on the inside (floor, walls, ceiling) making it feel somewhat like the inside of a (beautiful) ship. We decided to take a meandering route back towards the northern part of the island, stopping to view a few more churches. The road was paved and passed through beautiful countryside. We pulled over at one of the little towns to see its church, only to find it was under renovation and was completely gutted. Whomp, whomp. Soon after the road turned to gravel (ugh, we had sworn to ourselves to do our best to avoid rough gravel after the Carretera Austral), but we soldiered on to the next church. It was pretty from the outside, but was locked up, so we didn't get to see the inside. We continued along the road, rejoicing when the pavement returned, and stopped in one more town to see their church. Painted bright green, it was definitely unique, but the inside was blasé. “I don't get why the churches here are a tourist attraction?” I complained to Ike. “Because there's not much else to do here...” Good point. We headed back to Ancud, happy to see the sun poke out beneath the ash cloud as it set behind the ocean on the horizon.

Everything's bigger in Chiloe

Castro's church

So fresh; so clean

The last fort in Spanish Chile to surrender. 

Can't handle the cuteness

The next morning we returned to the mainland via the ferry, then made a mad dash to Bariloche, Argentina via the border crossing that had been closed due to high amounts of ash. As we drove north past Puerto Montt towards the highway taking us across the border, we saw that Volcan Calbuco was still gently spewing smoke. There was a light gray cloud surrounding the volcano. I snapped a few pictures, then the volcano disappeared from our view for a few minutes. Coming around the corner, we suddenly saw a large black plume coming out of the volcano. “Whoa, that's new!” We watched as the black cloud continued to swell over the next hour or so that it was in our sight.

Just a harmless cloud of smoke billowing out of the volcano...

...and then 3 minutes later we see this!

kaboom

Ash from the major eruption

The mountain pass to Argentina had a fair amount of ash along the shoulders, but for the most part the road was clear. The town of Bariloche was surprisingly ash free. The hostel owner later told us that due to the wind direction, they had been spared of most of the ash. We exchanged some more dollars on the blue market, ate an exceptional amount of meat at a parrilla, and consumed some delicious microbrews at a nearby pub. Ike was in heaven with all the beer and meat!

In case you're wondering, yes we were able to finish all of the meat in a single meal!

The next morning we spoke with a Dutch trio that was making their way through South America over the course of a half year, giving advice and sharing stories. We made sure to consume copious amounts of the freshly baked bread and raspberry jam the hostel made for its guests. We got an update from the hostel host about places along our route where the ash was particularly bad, then hopped in the car and moved on.

"Caution: Dinosaurs." Well then.

Rural Argentina doesn't really have a strong network of gas stations along highways to stop at, so it's not uncommon to just find a secluded place along the highway when nature calls. Pulling over, we hopped out of Sweetcakes and as I came around behind the rear of the car, I saw smoke wafting out from the rear tire well. Swearing softly, I told Bethany to grab some water. Spraying some on the brakes, they weren't sizzling [which meant the rear brake line likely wasn't stuck on]. The wheel stud was extremely hot, though. We pulled into a small pullout along the highway, killed the car, and began the process of pulling the wheel off to see what was up.

While at the tire shop in Puerto Montt, we'd had the employee loosen all of the anti-theft lug nuts so we could get them off in the future. Placing the tire iron in, it immediately slipped again. ARG I THOUGHT WE'D FIXED THIS! Bethany had the brilliant idea to take out the vice grip, and with that, she was indeed able to loosen the lug-nut. At this point we noticed that one of the other loosened ones was nowhere to be found, loosened to an extent that it just fell off at some point in our driving in the last few days. As we found out in Mexico, driving with 4 lug nuts is no problema. 

With the wheel off, we immediately noticed that there was quite a bit of volcanic ash coating the inside of the wheel, as well as clogging the open space around the wheel stud. Too thick to simply brush off, and not wanting to completely ruin one of our scrub brushes, we grabbed some old metal fence wire, and began scraping it off. Clearing out the space around the wheel stud, we noticed the ash had mixed and formed a goop. We realized this likely meant it was sticking to and mixing with a fluid leaking out from Sweetcakes. That would explain why it was only bad on this wheel instead of all of them. Clogging up the wheel stud acted as insulation and overheated it. It looked liked we'd cleared up the symptom, but still had a disease to diagnose. Given that we were several hundred kilometers from the nearest town, we decided all we could do was monitor the wheel stud temperature and see if anything felt different while driving. Camping spots [both official and on ioverlander] were sparse in this region of Argentina. Pulling into the picnic area we hoped to call home for the night, we saw quite a few cars in the area since it was the weekend.

“Nope.” We said, and rolled on out, hoping to find a good pulloff from the road connecting the larger city of Nuequen [Nagoya we called it after trying unsuccessfully to pronounce its name] and the little tourist town along the lake. We picked a gravel road at random that split off, and found a nice quiet spot in what appeared to be a small quarry.

The following morning we attempted to find a mechanic to check out the wheel, despite the overheating issue no longer giving us problems. We weren't successful, instead deciding that grabbing some food from the grocery store and soldiering on was better than spending all day driving around trying to find a place. Another full day of driving brought us to an actual campsite along a large lake. This place also had a decent crop of people around for the weekend, but the site was large enough for us to find a place along the outskirts with a fair amount of privacy. After setting up, a truck pulled out and a guy hopped out to collect payment. We were a bit disgruntled, as we thought it was a free campsite [likely is during the week when there are few people hanging out], but we were happy to cough up the two dollars to camp there. :)

The sunset was amazing, the sky was clear, and the moon was full, and we soaked up the natural beauty. But then the cold front rolled through, and we tossed on the extra layers of clothing and hid in the tent and slept. Awaking the next morning, we realized that after nearly a month of cold weather, we were kinda getting fed up with it, and wanted to stay warm. Unlike many of our friends who have enclosed spaces they can hang out in, we're restricted to either laying down [inside the tent or car] or sitting in the front seats of the vehicle. We motored off toward Buenas Aires, where we could then ferry over to Uruguay and enjoy some [hopefully] warmer weather. Coming into the city, we realized it had been a while since we'd been in a major metropolis. I was also surprised by the landscape outside of the city. I had figured it would be the open grasslands with mountains in the distance we'd seen over the previous few weeks in much of the rest of Argentina, but about 200 miles out, it changed to farmland, and felt almost indistinguishable from the Midwest. We took that as a positive sign, and made our way on into the city.

Mega toll entering Buenos Aires.

Glad we're straight through....

Naturally we were coming into town when Boca and River, the two Buenos Aires futbol teams, played each other. 

We had to drive right to the heart of the city, down to the port so we could purchase our tickets on the ferry. We made it with no issues, and inside the terminal found out that it would be fairly expensive, but quite fast to get across to Uruguay. Since Bethany had been here, many of the boats had been converted to 'rapid' ones that made the trip in an hour instead of the standard three. We shopped around for secured parking, then found a highly ranked hostel in the neighborhood. We packed our bags and made our way on over.

After checking in, we hit up Calle Florida (a busy tourist street) to change the rest of our US dollars on the blue market. We'd continually been told that Buenos Aires was the best place to exchange, so we were on a mission to do just that. Back in Bariloche we received 12.25 Argentinian Pesos per 1 USD, but only after playing hardball. They told us it'd be 12.5 over in BsAs, so we were out for blood. The first guy we walked up to said 12 even. We walked away laughing. Our leverage was that we had benjis and wanted to change a grand. It was still like dealing with Craigslist low-ballers, the best still capping out at 12.45. One guy was quite nice about it and said he wished us luck, and said he'd still be there when we got back. Eventually though we found someone that caved to our 12.5, and walked into the interior of the magazine shack to do the exchange. We counted all one hundred and twenty five 100 peso bills, made sure we were squared away, then made a bee-line down to the vehicle to lock up the wad of cash.

When Bethany visited in 2006 the exchange rate was 3 pesos to the dollar. Now the official rate is 8.5 pesos, and on the blue market we are getting 12.5. Poor Argentinians... this inflation is crazy.

We celebrated our success by making dinner and drinking wine. One of the perks of traveling during low season is that many of the hostels are nearly empty [the downside is that many of the campgrounds are closed], so we opted to stay in the 8 person dorm... that only had one other person in it. Returning after our errands, we opened the door [eventually... they key was difficult], to find the other guest trying to sleep. Oops. :(

Days in Argentina: 28  Bottles of wine purchased: 39

We packed our things the next morning, and made our way back down to the dock to catch the ferry to Uruguay. After checking in, we had to split up. I returned to the car so I could drive it onto the ferry, while Bethany waited upstairs. I planned to meet up with her after I drove it on. After getting Sweetcakes out of the parking garage, I pulled into the line for vehicles that would be boarding. After 10 minutes passed, I asked one of the dock workers when we would be boarding. “When the boat arrives, you'll board.” he replied. Ah, ok then. Continuing to wait, I realized it was getting fairly close to the departure time, and there was a chance they would board the vehicles and the passengers at the same time to keep the schedule. I also realized that Bethany had given me the ticket printouts. We'd been issued some additional paperwork before making our way through customs and security [where we split up], but I began to worry they wouldn't let her board since she didn't have the printout of her ticket. At this point the vehicle inspection guys came around, all of them giving Sweetcakes a long review as the rest of the vehicles were just local travelers.

I walked up to one of the guys, wanting to ask if Bethany needed her ticket to board. As someone experienced in only speaking languages brokenly, I ran through what I'd say several times in my head and how I'd break down what I needed to convey. “Ok, so first I'll say, 'mi esposa es aca' [my wife is there] and point to the passenger waiting area. Then I'll say, 'pero tengo sus boleto, este un problemo?' [but I have her ticket, is this a problem?]” Walking up to the guys, I started my question. Except I ended up saying, 'ella no boleto' instead. Japanese uses 'no' as a possessive, and instead of saying 'Her ticket', I'd just said, 'she not a ticket'. Their faces were priceless. Anyway, the gentlemen figured out what I was trying to ask, and informed me that we had official tickets printed [the other paperwork] and if she had that she would be fine. Happy, we finished the inspection of Sweetcakes and I boarded and met Bethany in the passenger seating area. We were bound for Uruguay!