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I have had a number of email nudges, asking whether I’m still in Brazil and why I haven’t posted an update. I returned about 10 days ago, but my batteries were truly drained, and it has taken me until the last day or so to feel recharged enough to write this.

I’m sure many of you have picked up on the theme of our last two or three South American travels, road trips, in the best sense of the phrase. Our most recent trip however drifted away from the classic definition, and that led to it being, not quite right.

To take you back to our road trip origins, I first met Rob in 1969 when we were both at OISE (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education) the then newly-created entity whose initial primary objectives were to conduct and disseminate research in the field of education, and to offer graduate-level education courses and degrees. I was in my second work tenure at the Institute, my previous role had been in the Education Planning unit where I had worked as a Research Assistant on a project to develop a cost-benefit model for building Community Colleges, a new educational policy initiative at that time. My second stint was in a much more mundane role, story for another day, and it was in this period that I met my very good friend and travel companion Robert, who at that time was a Ph.D. student at OISE.

Rob and I spent many long hours planning a trip that became a central focus for us, to drive motorcycles from Toronto to the southern tip of South America. At that time, 1969/70, there were still many ‘war surplus’ stores in the city where military material from WWII and the Korean War as well as military training materials and equipment were still available. In the absence of MEC and the other outdoor and camping equipment stores that we now have, these stores filled a need and for those who wanted to go camping or rough travelling, they were usually the first stop for tents, sleeping bags, rucksacks etc. They also supplied much of the clothing of the hip young, and military jackets were standard kit everywhere from Vietnam War protest marches to Holiday dinners with family.

And occasionally, there were true finds, such as the original WWII military dispatch riders’ Triumph motorcycles, still packed in oil and grease, in their original crates that we came across in an ad. These were going to get us to Ushuaia. We would unpack and de-grease the motorcycles, assemble them and then, Bob’s your uncle, we would simply spend 6 or 7 months, possibly years, it didn’t seem to matter, driving on the adventure of a lifetime. It also didn’t seem to matter that neither of us was even slightly mechanically inclined or that neither my basement apartment nor R’s flat were ideal sites to de-grease and assemble a working motorcycle.

And as unrealistic as it was and perhaps because it was so unrealistic, it became very real and very important at the time. While we spent many long evenings planning and consuming quantities of wine and beer, not surprisingly reality always intruded, and the adventure never did happen. While we rarely spoke of it over the passing years, this was the dream that always sat in the back row of every idle discussion, that awareness of unfinished business.

I don’t think either of us mentioned it 2 years ago when I asked Rob if he wanted to join me in driving the Careterra Austral southward through Chile to the end of that highway at Villa O’Higgins, but I’m sure we were both aware of it. It was the first time we had travelled together in 55+ years and I think that we both discovered that we enjoyed it and could make it work.

In keeping with the unacknowledged links to our original plan, last year we planned to drive from the tip of South America to Buenos Aires but because of scheduling conflicts we had to switch the timing of the trip and the logistics of the route became too complicated. We ended up driving from Buenos Aires through Patagonia from the sea to the Andes.

These two adventures met or at least came close to our definition of our classic road trip, a fixed destination and a minimal itinerary between the departure point and the finish. Simply to drive away and take each day as it came. And while we now require a degree of comfort and control of our itinerary that would have been anathema to our younger selves, the important thing was the trip itself. To switch metaphors, the idea of casting off and simply going where the wind took us. And while to an outside pair of eyes we may have seemed to be following a fairly structured routine, we could still hold to the shadow of an idea, wandering at will and meeting each new adventure with eyes seeing a world for the first time.

Our most recent trip broke that mould. The difference? This was a trip with a purpose or purposes that went beyond the simple idea of letting kismet determine the next adventure. For Rob, who was fired with the idea of Paraguay as a shadow world with a tortuous history filtered through the imaginations of Graham Greene and John Gimlette, his purpose was to find traces of that lost world. A world that included an Australian utpioan experiment in the wilds of Paraguay.

For me, it was, as it usually is, about the possibility of seeing and photographing wildlife, in this case in Brazil, and most especially, jaguars. The fact that we stitched our goals together with a cord of roads, 5,00km long we thought made for a road trip but it wasn’t….just a very long drive.

How did that shape the trip?

Rob was intent on ‘his’ portion of the trip, Paraguay and I on ‘mine’, Brazil. I don’t think either of us considered the trip as a whole as much as we should have so neither of us fully appreciated the fact that in order to get to Asuncion in Paraguay and on to Brazil we first needed to drive through the whole of Uruguay from south to north, through a portion of Argentina and halfway up Paraguay! And because it was a long drive and not a road trip, we hadn’t made time, for instance, to drive to and visit Montevideo while we were in Uruguay; the plan had become, get to Paraguay as quickly as possible.

Neither did we think to ask the obvious question, why don’t we just fly to Asuncion in Paraguay and start the trip there? Had we done that we would have been able to enjoy the other critical characteristic of a good road trip, turning off the beaten path when something looks interesting and follow your nose. We simply had too many kilometres to cover to allow for that.

Added to this was the fact that on our previous two trips I had taken a very laissez faire approach to wildlife and took photographs as and when I came across the opportunity, it was not hard-wired into the itinerary in such a significant way. I know that leading up to the trip I spent more time thinking about that than on the trip as a whole, to our cost.

I also know that we both spent the months leading up to the trip researching and preparing for our individual trip sectors so I overthought the equipment that I needed for my photography, and right up the moments before leaving for the airport I was switching lenses and other equipment. In Rob’s case on top of everything else, he was busy selling his home and moving to a new location.

Finally our response to the trip was was not helped by our guide in Brazil who shredded what was otherwise a very worthwhile experience. He was brash, short-tempered, autocratic and insensitive, quite the worst guiding experience that Rob or I have ever had. He was a control and command guy, possibly useful when guiding a group when that task becomes more like herding cats but he had no client relationship skills in a one-on-one situation, as ours was. No collaboration or consultation, no discussions between ourselves and the guide about options and choices. Questions were treated as intrusions and were responded to as personal affronts. We simply spent 13 hours a day in the very hot sun, in a small boat being hauled like baggage from place to place. Our guide was technically competent, knew the animals and birds and thanks to the radios that the guides all use to notify each other of animal activity, we did have some wonderful sightings but his people skills were woefully lacking and that did leave a very bad taste. I’m not posting his name or his company but if anyone is planning a trip to Brazil for wildlife please write to me and I’ll be happy to share.

My learnings from this adventure, none of them new but all worth repeating:

– Focusing on one particular aspect or period of a trip to the exclusion of the trip as a whole, comes at a cost

– Overthinking and underplanning, comes at a cost.

– Your guide can make or break the trip

After that long and rambling semi-rant, I do need to acknowledge that I’m pleased with some remarkable photographs and Rob did get to lift a little bit of the Paraguayan veil, even if we did not find any of its darker or more mysterious corners.

Next steps?

The final element in the equation is our age and health and how capable we are of continuing along this path. So a pretty significant question, do we have another trip left in us and are there new roads for us to travel?

PS Following on from my snow leopard experience in India earlier this year and a couple of jaguar experiences on this trip I have been giving a lot of thought to what I do, wildlife photography and the places and conditions that allow us to practice this activity. I’m trying to get my thoughts in order and when I’m more confident in my conclusions I’m planning at least one article on rewilding and ecotourism, how ethical and sustainable they really are and some of the problems that they bring in their wake including the role of photographers like me. A very very complicated topic!

Stay tuned!