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Now That's Travelin'

From the Columbus Dispatch:

Couple conquer Central, South American roads in RV
--STEVE STEPHENS

I try to limit my drives to 200 miles, tops. By then my diet Dr Pepper and beef jerky have run out, along with my patience.

Jim and Donna Bruce Fugate prefer longer drives. The retired couple from London, Ohio, recently returned from four months and 17,000 miles on the road.

Well, most of their miles were on roads. Some were on what might generously be called dirt tracks.

The Fugates drove their pickup camper from Texas down the entire length of Central and South America and back up again, with just a little help from a freighter at Panama’s Darien Gap and a barge at the Amazon River.

The Fugates are experienced campers.

‘‘We had done kayak camping, backpacking, tent camping," said Mr. Fugate, 68, a retired educator. ‘‘With the small (RV) unit, you treat it like a tent. You camp around it. But we do have a queen-size bed like at home. Of course, the bathroom is a little small."

And they had no electrical or water hookups at 95 percent of their campsites. That proved no problem.

‘‘I’ve camped all my life," Mr. Fugate said. ‘‘I thoroughly enjoy the outdoors."

And Mrs. Fugate, also 68, hasn’t let an injury slow her down. She has had difficulty walking since she broke a hip, but her husband designed a special lift attachment to help her into the camper.

Mr. Fugate also is an experienced driver, which helped him conquer the roads of Amazonian Brazil, the roughest he encountered on the trip.

‘‘As a young man I had driven a dump truck over coal-mining roads and flatbed trucks on logging roads. That helped prepare me, but this was worse."...Although the Fugates speak little Spanish and less Portuguese, almost everyone they met on their journey was friendly and welcoming, they said.

The couple visited most of the countries of Central and South America. They crossed the Atacama Desert of Chile, climbed the Andes Mountains in Peru and Argentina, stopped for a stage show in Buenos Aires and followed the Amazon to the Brazilian metropolis of Manaus.

Other high points included spotting condors, ostrichlike rheas and guanacos (reddishbrown llamas) in the wild, the couple said.

They encountered their wildest weather in Patagonia, the grassland region of southern Chile and Argentina.

"I’d been in the Great Plains of the U.S. and thought I’d seen winds," Mr. Fugate said. "But down there they blow day and night. Sometimes I had to extend both arms, dig my toes into the soil and use all my weight just to close the door" of the truck.