Roaming South America

My Journey so far, Part 3

June 4, 2023

My South America Journey Update - Part 3.

First, a recap: Part 1 covered leavingColombia, about 2 1/2 months passing through Ecuador, where Ifound two towns that I like as potential new homes, and about twomonths passing through Perú, where I found three towns inparticular that I like.

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

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

Those four towns are located in the easternside of the Andes Mtns. I found several towns along the coaststhat were quite nice places to visit, but due to thedusty/sandy/salty air, I decided I didn't want to live on thecoast.

Now on to Part 3 of my journey recap.

I entered Northern Chile on March 24. This part of Chile is all Atacama Desert and it is boring, bleak, and brown. From there I went to San Salvador, Argentina, and arrived on March31. And, yes, it is green and beautiful. Argentina is green and beautiful, but the towns are not such great places anymore. I then took a bus southwest to Formosa on the Argentina-Paraguay border. This town is very pretty and appears to be very much a walking/running/cycling-friendly city. This would be my first choice for a place to live if I were to choose to live in an area with four seasons. To enter Paraguay from Formosa one could take a bus north and cross into Asunción, or do as I did and take the small ferry across and up the river a little ways to Alberdi, Paraguay.

In Paraguay, I visited 12 towns. I found the area outside of Asunción particularly beautiful, and there are the towns of Itá, Itaguá, Areguá, and San Bernardino. Then on my east, I visited a couple of other towns, one is called Villarrica and it too is very nice, a town that I liked. Further east, at the border with Brazil, is the city Ciudad del Este. I found it to be ugly, dirty, with awful traffic, and it has absolutely nothing of interest in the city. The city was never properly planned and it shows. From there I headed south to Encarnación, a small city that I really liked, as in enough to live there, again, if I were to choose to live in a place with four seasons. I liked Paraguay, but I did find the version of Spanish they speak in Asunción and across to Ciudad del Este to be difficult to understand. They speak a mix of Spanish and Guaraní, but this isn't the case in Encarnación. Because it is directly across from Argentina the Spanish spoken here is more of what we might call "typical" or regular Spanish.

From Asunción, I crossed into the town of Posadas, Argentina. To get to Uruguay one has to cross through a bit of Argentina. So, I headed due south to the town of Santo Tomé and crossed into São Borja, Brazil. Now, I could have gone the route south staying in Argentina and eventually crossing into Uruguay at Concordia, Argentina, and into Salto, Uruguay, but I chose to go through a bit of Brazil.

Brazil, where they speak Portuguese and no Spanish. Now, I've read many websites that say they speak some Spanish there, but don't believe them. According to what I found on some linguistics websites, the Spanish language is spoken by less than one percent of the population of Brazil. And that includes here in the border towns along Argentina and Uruguay. In fact, in the towns of Quaraí, Brazil, and Artigas, Uruguay, you will find a definite division - Spanish on one side of the invisible border and Portuguese on the other. I wrote invisible because the two towns are one commercial area with shared urban and suburban neighborhoods, and no wall, no fence, no nothing separating the two countries. The local people are free to cross back-n-forth at will. If one wants to continue further into the countries they need to check into the immigration office. I arrived at said office at 6 pm on a Saturday and it was closed for the night. So, I then had to find a hotel for the night in Quaraí, not what I planned on or wanted to do, but so it goes.

I struggled with the language barrier in Brazil. Now, both Portuguese and Spanish are romance languages and are related in many ways, but in this southwestern region of Brazil, they have a dialect that makes them even harder to understand. There is a dialect called portuñol which is a mix of Portuguese and Spanish, and many people in this region speak it. And, when I spoke to people in Spanish, and I tried to use a little Portuguese or asked for assistance, they gave none, no help whatsoever. If they figured out what I was asking about or talking about they responded in their hundred-mile-per-hour Portuguese. I found the experience in southwestern Brazil to be a bit on the frustrating side. I hadn't experienced anything like in any of the other countries I had visited.

In Uruguay, I stayed alongside the border with Brazil, and the climate was reasonably warm, but it was getting towards the end of Fall. Then I went into the interior and visited a couple of towns and at night the temps dropped to as little as 3° C one night, 5° C the following night, and 11° C the next night. I am not used to these kinds of temperatures. I lived in Southern Arizona for seven years before relocating to Barranquilla, Colombia, and both of those areas are quite hot. I was in B'quilla for 9 years before I moved across the country to a valley in the Andes Mtns. So, I am acclimated to a hot climate. When I arrived in the town of Tacuarembó, Uruguay, I started getting very strong hiccups, and they lasted for hours, then stopped for a little while, then restarted, and this went on for two days. It continued when I visited Melo, Uruguay, as well. A person at the hotel told me the weather along the coast is slightly warmer than in the interior of the country, so I went to Montevideo. That person was incorrect. I was friggin' freezing! I caught a cold in addition to the hiccups continuing all of those days. And yes, hiccups can be caused by a drastic temperature change. I'd had enough of the cold weather and decided to start working my way north, so I went to Salto, but just a few kilometers before entering the city, and the weather was noticeably warmer, and my hiccups stopped. My visit to Uruguay included five towns (because I cut the visit to Uruguay short). From Salto I went across the river to Concordia, Argentina, then north to Encarnación, Paraguay. I plan on staying here for at least a month, then heading for the Pacific Coast of Chile or Perú.

For new readers, this is my plan: I leftColombia to find another town in another countryto make my home. I'm not interested in living in the US anymorebecause that place has gone plumb crazy, and my pension (SocialSecurity) probably isn't enough for me to live life anything nearthe life I can live here in South America. And life here isbetter in many ways, including much less stress, much less of bigBrother watching you, none of the Republican BS trying to takeaway your personal freedoms (what you have left of them), here a person eats a much healthier diet, and the laws are laxer which isboth good and bad, but in the end, makes life easier overallbecause you have more freedom of choice and less likelihood ofgovernment poking its head into your personal business. All ofthat means you have more personal freedom here in South America.So, I'm going to find a town to make my new home, and I don'tcare too much about which country it's in (more about thatbelow).

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 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 sorted 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. I did all of this data collection work over aperiod of about six months.

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 many people, both locals, and foreigners, and I have experienceda lot of growth in my grasp of the Spanish language. Granted, myuse of verbs is still lacking, but I can converse with localpeople, and that makes me happy.

How will I decide which town on my top 10 listwill be my new hometown? Good question. I will, of course, visiteach one at least two times before I can make such a decision.And, well, they all have very similar yearly temperatureaverages, but the differences come in the individual months. Onething I will have to consider is this: do I want year-roundsummer, southeastern Ecuador, or northeastern Perú, or do I wantfour seasons as in the others a bit further south?

I use an app on my phone called Polar Steps.If you have it or decide to install it, you can follow me on myjourney. It's really just a slightly different version of what'salready on my website. Here is a link to my profile: Polar Steps: My South American Journey

I look forward to what is yet to come, and Ihope you will continue to follow me here on my website.