Autobiography - The Galindo Group

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Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 190 the neighborhood of Tapachula on the border between Mexico and Guatemala, we encountered a couple of mountain streams that we had to cross on bridges made of two felled split logs unattached to each other. I would get out and Joe would drive watching my signals to stay on track. Luckily, he negotiated them successfully. On one occasion in Guatemala we got stuck in mud so deep that only a friendly Cat D-8 tractor could pull us out. In Costa Rica we got covered with ash still coming down from a recent eruption of a volcano near San Jose. We arrived in Panama on the eve of the country’s independence day. It was nighttime and raining, Joe was driving. We were on the road out of the town of David going to Panama City. It was the best and newest highway in the country. Suddenly, a drunken reveler materialized in front of us. Joe swerved to save his life but put us on a head-on collision course with on-coming traffic. He swerved again and we wound up shaken but safe in the ditch across the highway. Central American fields were bountiful and the people prodigally friendly. As much as we could, to save money and also to savor the adventure, we tried to eat off the land. Joe had never tasted sugar cane right out of the fields and neither of us had tried to survive on fruits or raw vegetables alone. Whenever a friendly local person would treat us to a meal, as a rancher in Northern Guatemala did, we thought cooked food had never tasted so good. Joe got sick before me, which was very good because, when we hit the high altitudes of the Andes between Peru and Bolivia, I was sick and he was already well. A significant source of revenue in the countries we traversed was duty on imported automobiles. Consequently, their rules were very strict about letting an undocumented vehicle in. No country took chances on us possibly selling our car without paying taxes. In El Salvador, Ecuador and Bolivia we had to carry a policeman with us in our whole passage through the country. In Guayaquil, Ecuador, which was the port of disembarkation for our freighter from Panama, we stayed locked up in a customs compound for two days until they decided what to do with us. We slept on empty cars parked in the same lot. The crossing of the Guayas River at its mouth, from Guayaquil to Puerto Bolivar, in a barge not much bigger than our jeep was a scary experience, as was the Tiquina Strait crossing at the Lake Titicaca border between Peru and Bolivia. Driving on the littoral highway on Peru’s Pacific coast made the California Big Sur small by comparison. The sand slopes are impressive and when they slough-off over the highway they are like huge sand avalanches that bury everything in their wake. An eighteen-wheeler that had rolled down the precipice and was stuck half way to the water seemed like a little toy from where we were on the road. On November 22, 1963, the abusive Bolivian customs police released us after four days of detention in their La Paz compound, where they had taken our Scout because we Autobiography.doc 190 of 239
Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 191 had no vehicle importation papers. The dirt roads on which we had been driving for the last few days had not contributed to our comfort or personal cleanliness. We were not even allowed to take our toothbrushes out, much less our clothes. We were tired, dirty, hairy and had no money, but when we got released even the high altitude sickness improved. After a bath, shave and clean clothes we were ready to keep going. As we were driving toward Cochabamba, on the last leg of our trip, cruising at about 13,000 feet elevation on the Andes high plateau, we heard great revelry and rejoicing on radio stations broadcasting from the mining districts. They were celebrating the assassination of president John F. Kennedy. To a great extent his visionary leadership had fueled our adventure to Bolivia. We were shocked, angry and ready to declare war on the evildoers who carried out such crime. We saw miners playing Russian Red Army music with great joy as the Bolivian extension of Moscow’s hate-dominated Bolsheviks. The next few months demonstrated that this event emboldened the socialist tendencies of the government even more, and pushed our views to be more antagonistic to theirs. We ended our cross-continental adventure in that sad tone. Perhaps responding to the irresistible urge to search that the Supreme Developer has encoded in our beings, adventure in the exploration of the ocean realm has also been one of my favorite experiences. Despite the fact that I grew up land locked in the massive Andes Mountains, when I was finally exposed to the ocean, I became an avid fan of exploring it. My first scuba dive was in 1969 off Freeport-Lucaya on the Grand Bahama Island. Sport diving was in its infancy. I still had the opportunity to use the primitive double hose regulators of early scuba. When using it, it was impossible to breathe while swimming on the back, which made rolling around pretty difficult. Since then, equipment has improved by quantum leaps making the sport a lot safer and more fun. Learning the effects of pressure and temperature on air volume and oxygen’s partial pressure in the air is of critical importance for safe diving, as is understanding the physiology of the human body under varying multipliers of atmospheric pressure. Fortunately, it is not necessary to be a physicist or a medical doctor to learn scuba diving. Following the basic rules of prudence given in every scuba course and always diving with a guide familiar with the area not only makes the experience safer but also enhances the adventure. I have dived well over 200 popular, and some not so popular, sites all over the world, including a few accessible only by privately chartered live-aboard ships. I have been lucky to be able to take my family on a scuba expedition once a year for the last 25 years. I have dived the amazing waters of Hawaii, Yap Islands, Palau, the Andaman Sea, the gulf of Thailand, the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador’s Pacific Coast, the Canary Islands, Baja California, almost every major island in the Bahamas and the Lesser Antilles, many Yucatan and Central American island paradises and several of the South American Antilles. I have had the good luck to be in close contact with the strangest Autobiography.doc 191 of 239
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Bernard Bailyn, THE IDEOLOGICAL ORI
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George Fuermann, HOUSTON LAND OF TH
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Council for Natural Cooperation in
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