My Journey so far, Part 3

2023-06-04

My South America Journey Update - Part 3.

First, a recap: Part 1 covered leaving Colombia, about 2 1/2 months passing through Ecuador, where I found two towns that I like as potential new homes, and about two months passing through Perú, where I found three towns in particular that I like.

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

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

Those four towns are located in the eastern side of the Andes Mtns. I found several towns along the coasts that were quite nice places to visit, but due to the dusty/sandy/salty air, I decided I didn't want to live on the coast.

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 March 31. 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 left Colombia to find another town in another country to make my home. I'm not interested in living in the US anymore because that place has gone plumb crazy, and my pension (Social Security) probably isn't enough for me to live life anything near the life I can live here in South America. And life here is better in many ways, including much less stress, much less of big Brother watching you, none of the Republican BS trying to take away your personal freedoms (what you have left of them), here a person eats a much healthier diet, and the laws are laxer which is both good and bad, but in the end, makes life easier overall because you have more freedom of choice and less likelihood of government poking its head into your personal business. All of that 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't care too much about which country it's in (more about that below).

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

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

So, the next point to clarify is how did I decide which towns to target? That took a lot of work. I started a spreadsheet with the town/department(province or state)/population/Monthly Avg High Temp/Avg High Temp - Year/Monthly Avg Low Temp/Avg Low Temp - Year/Notes. The monthly temperature averages came from either of two websites - climate-data.org or weatherspark.com - the majority came from climate-data.org. The population data came from citypopulation.de. The towns I researched had a population of around 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 sorted each country by population pulled out the towns with populations between 25,000 and 80,000. Then I sorted those by average yearly high temperature and pulled out the towns in the range of 22-28° C (71-83° F). Then I sorted those and pulled out the towns with an average yearly low temperature of 14° C (57° F) or higher. All of that narrowed the target towns list to 62 towns. I did all of this data collection work over a period of about six months.

I am enjoying my journey, enjoying exploring all these towns and cities. I have ignored most tourist attractions along the way and concentrated on the cities and neighborhoods, 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 experienced a lot of growth in my grasp of the Spanish language. Granted, my use of verbs is still lacking, but I can converse with local people, and that makes me happy.

How will I decide which town on my top 10 list will be my new hometown? Good question. I will, of course, visit each one at least two times before I can make such a decision. And, well, they all have very similar yearly temperature averages, but the differences come in the individual months. One thing I will have to consider is this: do I want year-round summer, southeastern Ecuador, or northeastern Perú, or do I want four 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 my journey. It's really just a slightly different version of what's already 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 I hope you will continue to follow me here on my website.