Roaming South America

My South America Journey - Update Part 1

March 25, 2023

My South America Journey Update - Part 1

Since I left Roldanillo, Colombia back on October30 I visited Ecuador and Perú and just entered Chile a couple of days ago. A quick comparison of Ecuadorand Perú brings up what is to me the most noticeable difference:the people of Perú are friendlier than the people of Colombia andEcuador, in general. But, when anyone in this part of the worldgets behind the wheel of a car or on a motorcycle, they becomeincredibly rude or selfish. Out on the roads, it's "every man forhimself." I think I will find this throughout all the countries Ihave yet to visit. It's just part of the culture of SouthAmerica. Every driver of any and every motor vehicle thinks thathe/she is the king/queen of the road. I think the only reasonthey don't have more crashes is because of the slower speeds theytypically drive and all the speed bumps, which are almost everyblock of every road. Obviously, that's an exaggeration, but it'snot too much of a stretch. As far as comparing small-town peopleto big-city people it's the same everywhere - city people aretoo busy to be helpful and friendly and town people are more thanwilling to be friendly and helpful. I've seen this very often inmy travels. After spending nine and a half years in Colombia Ireally did fall in love with the town of Roldanillo, at the baseof the Andes in the northern part of the Valle del Cauca. But,the political and tax situation of Colombia has been changingfor a few years now and has been and continues to become lessfriendly to foreigners. Thus my search in the other countries ofSouth America which are friendlier to foreigners.

I spent about 2 1/2 months in Ecuador andfound two towns that I really like as potential new homes. Ispent about 2 months passing through Perú, and I found threetowns in particular that I like in Perú, as well.

For new readers, the significance of those twostatements are this: I left Colombia with the goal of findinganother town in another country to make my home. I'm notinterested in living in the US anymore, that place has gone plumbcrazy, and my pension (Social Security) probably isn't enough forme to live a life anything near the life I can live here in SouthAmerica. And life here is better in many ways, including muchless stress, much less of big brother watching you, none of theRepublican BS trying to take away your personal freedoms (whatyou have left of them), here a person eats a much healthier diet,the laws are laxer which is both good and bad but in the endmakes life easier overall because you have more freedom of choiceand fewer likelihoods of the government poking its head into yourpersonal business. All of that means you have more personalfreedom here in South America. So, I'm going to find a town tomake my new home, and I don't care too much about which countryit's in (more about that below).

On my website, at the very bottom of the homepage, you will find a Google map with my journey indicated withcolor-coded icons. The icons are:

• Green & Numbered: A town I need to pass through to do thejourney, this is my planned route. My planned route changes oftenand has changed many times.
• Yellow with an Arrow: These are my target towns, the onesthat fit my original criteria for a possible new home (more onthat below).
• Red X: These are the target towns that I decided on aftervisiting them, I wouldn't want to live in.
• Blue with a house: These are the towns on my top 10 list, ofwhich there are five at this time.

So, the next point to clarify is how did Idecide which towns to target? That took a lot of work. I starteda spreadsheet with the town/department(province orstate)/population/Monthly Avg High Temp/Avg High Temp -Year/Monthly Avg Low Temp/Avg Low Temp - Year/Notes. The monthlytemperature averages came from either of two websites -climate-data.org or weatherspark.com - the majority came fromclimate-data.org. The population data came fromcitypopulation.de. The towns I researched had a population ofaround 10,000 and above.

The spreadsheet includes:

• Colombia (135 cities/towns)
• Ecuador (89 cities/towns)
• Perú (168 cities/towns)
• Chile - northern half (135 cities/towns)
• Aregentina - northern half (18 cities/towns)
• Bolivia (53 cities/towns)
• Paraguay (49 cities/towns)
• Uruguay (40 cities/towns)

From that data of 687 towns/cities I sortedeach country by population and pulled out the towns with populationsbetween 25,000 and 80,000. Then I sorted those by average yearlyhigh temperature and pulled out the towns in the range of22-28° C (71-83° F). Then I sort those and pulled outthe towns with an average yearly low temperature of 14° C(57° F) or higher. All of that narrowed the target townslist to 62 towns. All of this data collection work was done overa period of more than quite a few months.

So far in my journey I have visited 24 targettowns. Of those 24, I have added five to my top 10 list. Thosetowns are:

• Puyo, Ecuador
• Catamayo, Ecuador
• La Merced, Perú
• Moyobamba, Perú
• Tingo Maria, Perú

Those five towns are all located on theeastern side of the Andes Mtns. I found several towns along thecoasts that were quite nice places to visit, but due to thedusty/sandy/salty air, I decided I don't want to live on thecoast. Also, the coast of Perú is mostly desert, brown/grey/tan,and the only green is what has been planted there. I prefer themountains and the areas alongside them where it's green and theair is free of sand/dust/salt. I also discovered that the coastalcities/towns have much more litter than the inland cities/towns.And one more point of import - the coastal regions have no coffeeculture. Outside of the big cities, you'll be hard-pressed to finda coffee shop or restaurant that serves proper filtered groundcoffee. Pretty much all you'll find is instant coffee. On theeast side of the mountains, they do coffee properly.

Now, I have entered Chile. My plan, mypenciled-in plan, is to visit only a few cities in the northernhalf of Chile. The southern half is too cold. Then I willcontinue east into the northern half of Argentina and visit ahandful of towns on the way north and into Bolivia. There arequite a few towns of interest in Bolivia, all of which are in thesouthern half of the country. From there I will continue southand a bit eastward into Paraguay where there are more than a fewtowns of interest, then a little more southeast into Uruguaywhere there are a few towns of interest. I will possibly pass througha bit of Brazil on the route from Paraguay to Uruguay. I don'texpect to be adding any of the towns in Chile to my top 10 listbecause they are all desert towns—brown, brown, brown. Andthe Uruguayan towns, well, again, probably not on my top 10 listbecause Uruguay is the most expensive country in South America.It's still less expensive than the US, though.

I am enjoying my journey, enjoying exploringall these towns and cities. I have ignored most touristattractions along the way and concentrated on the cities andneighborhoods, looking to see if a place might call out to me,"Chip, make this town your new home." I have enjoyed meeting somany people, both locals, and foreigners, and I have experienced alot of growth in my grasp of the Spanish language. Granted, myuse of verbs is still lacking, a lot, but I can hold areasonable conversation with local people, and that makes mehappy. I look forward to what is yet to come, and I hope you willcontinue to follow me here on my website.