[Above: Nancy Olson's shadow reflected on the floor of the Atacama Desert.]

Journal by Nancy Olson

My mom always taught me, if I don’t have anything nice to say, I shouldn’t say anything at all. The problem is, today is my journal day, and I have to say something. My job is to tell you fine people what is going on here on our little road trip. So, with that in mind, I will search for something nice to say. Hmm…let’s see…something nice…

I can’t think of anything nice, so that’ll have to come later. I’ll keep my whining to a minimum here. I’m angry because we just drove all night. I mean, we got up, started driving, ran out of gas because we haven’t filled our Scepter jerry-cans since emptying them to ship the Land Rovers to Ecuador, and then just kept right on driving through the night. For that reason, my journal starts just after midnight, at the very birth of Thursday. Gosh, I wish I had something nice to say. I could torture you all with an ultra-marathon of a journal.

After running out of gas and scrounging enough liters off the locals to get us to the next station 90 km down the road, we had a “team meeting” to discuss whether we would press on or camp. It was one in the morning by this time, and we had a whole lot of desert ahead of us. Oh, and don’t worry; we still haven’t filled our jerry cans, so there’s a good chance for more high-drama in the future.

I wanted to make camp, and, apparently, so did Justin. We have 1000 km to Santiago, and we don’t want to get there on the weekend. We need to get there before the weekend so the local Land Rover dealership can start performing routine maintenance on our vehicles. (Also, we’re running Mobil 1 in each of our vehicles, for the whole 34,000 miles, without changing our oil, and we are supposed to send back oil samples for testing every 10,000 miles. We’re going to draw those samples in Santiago. We like participating in this test, because it’ll be fun to help prove what we already know: that Mobil 1 is great.)

So, we put it to a vote whether we would camp or push on for another hour. Knowing full well that we would never stop after an hour, and feeling like it’s wiser to camp at a known, secure position to sleep and then wake up fresh, I voted to stop. Justin voted to stop. Todd was duped into thinking we’d actually stop after an hour and voted “go”, as did the rest of the team. We decided that getting to our destination is more important than sticking to our safety procedures. Decisions such as “not driving at night” are pre-made, written-in-stone decisions. They are made ahead of time so that the expedition members don’t have to risk making a poor decision later on when they are affected by lack of sleep or are caught up in the excitement of the moment. Putting the destination ahead of the safety and common sense is not acceptable, in my opinion.

I find it impossible to sleep in the passenger seat while somebody else drives at night, so I drove while Todd slept. Shortly after sunrise, we pulled over for a driver change. I crashed hard and barely mustered the gumption to wake up for lunch. We hit an Internet café and grabbed some chow. The fish I had was so good, I think I want to eat fish and only fish the whole time we’re in Chile. (There! I did it! I said something nice!)

Shortly after getting back on the road, I fell asleep again. Because we drove through the night and I am completely wrecked, I won’t have too many pictures of Chile. At nightfall, I took over the driving again, and we drove until we arrived in Santiago at about three in the morning. Oh! Woops! I guess that means it’s no longer my journal day! It’s Friday, so I’d better stop writing. One more positive item: Santiago is beautiful. It’s clean. The people are nice. Chile is reminding us all of California, and we’re all homesick now.

I’m not mad; I just need some sleep.

Best to all,

Nancy
nancy@drivearoundtheworld.com

Logbook for January 22nd, Day 83
Start: Somewhere in Chile, 0715
S: 25* 53.620'
W: 70* 27.993'
Finish: Santiago, Chile, 0330
S: 33* 26.913'
W: 70* 40.034'
Mileage: 599
Notes: This is Day Two of our maniacal marathon drive to Santiago. I will never be able to recover from two all-nighters on the road. I slept some during the day while Todd drove. And drove. And drove some more. I'm missing much of Chile, but I'm learning a lot about the back of my eyelids. The part of Chile that I wasn't asleep for looks a lot like southern California. We drove from the desert highlands to the coast, and everybody agrees it is California-esque. We stopped at a mall today to eat, and I'm happy to report that consumerism is alive and well here. I's a shock being back in a wealthy nation after traveling through the 3rd World for so long. Something tells me we'll have fun in Chile. We arrived in Santiago at 3:30 in the morning after fighting the sleep monster all night. I wonder if we'll ever recover. Tomorrow, we have an appointment at Land Rover Santiago to have maintenance done on our vehicles. (N.O.)

Help support our cause: The LONGITUDE Expedition is the longest journey ever attempted with a focus on Parkinson's Disease. The Drive Around the World team aims to raise money for Parkinson’s Disease research by driving four certified pre-owned Land Rover Discoverys around the globe following lines of longitude. Readers are encouraged to pledge small amounts of money per expedition-kilometer via a pledge form that can be found on our Parkinson’s page by clicking here. 100% of donations received go directly to Parkinson's research and all who donate $10 or more will be entered into a raffle to win an expedition-equipped Land Rover Discovery.