From Unremarkable to Incredible – the trip across Argentina

After a day of cleaning and packing up the vehicle, we finally got on the road on Tuesday 25^th February, exactly three weeks after our arrival at Paraiso Suizo. We felt we had been in Uruguay long enough so concentrated on making our way West to the Argentine border.

Our last few days in Uruguay were fairly unremarkable although we enjoyed a stop off at the old Fray Bentos meat packing factory, now an industrial heritage museum on the banks of the Rio Negro. The site itself is enormous with every building a mighty edifice of Victorian endeavour. 

The fridge of the factory was about 150 yards long, five storeys high and about fifty yards wide.  It was basically just all fridge and the coolant was provided from three mighty engines in the massive engine room.  The flywheels on these huge engines were about thirty feet across, solid cast iron, and attached to two pistons each, each piston about the size of a dustbin and the sort of noise that would have been generated inside this engine room must have been almost intolerable.  

Loading Cranes at Fray Bentos (made in Leeds)

Sue next to giant fly wheel in the engine room

Engine room showing fly wheels

Engine room showing fly wheels and pistons

The plant’s record year was apparently 1890 when 209,000 animals were killed.  The plant’s products were used by Captain Scott, Florence Nightingale, British Everest expeditions and crucial to the British war effort in both World War I and II.  At its peak more than 2,000 cows were processed a day, as well as 6,000 lambs, pigs and turkeys.  Every part of the cow was used apart from the moo!

We also spent one memorable night when we made the mistake of staying at a little farmstead just outside the town of Mercedes. The surrounding countryside was lovely, but the place turned out to be a bit of a pigsty.  We found ourselves surrounded by a wide variety of chickens, guinea fowl, dogs, rabbits and a rhea.  The shower room didn’t look as though it had been cleaned since God was a boy and the water found its own way out, mostly under the door.  The final straw was when the very unfriendly cockerel attacked Sue and the over-friendly Rhea tried to join her in the shower. We didn’t hang around next day!

Sue's shower companion

The crossing over the border from Uruguay into Argentina on Saturday 2^nd March was entirely painless and then began the very long and almost entirely straight road across Argentina.  The fields on either side of the road stretched as far as the eye could see, the only variation being the type of crop grown, mostly soya, maize or millet.

Miles and miles of soya

Camping at Parana

A very prickly tree - Parana campsite

The monotony was relieved a little when we stopped off in Cordoba, Argentina’s second largest city, for a couple of days.  Our main objective was to find somewhere that would sell us a new car battery, having discovered that our domestic battery was no longer holding a charge and therefore the fridge was not working.

We found Cordoba to be much the same as many other cities, full of high-rise buildings, most of them a dirty white colour, and very noisy at night.  In this part of the world, nothing seems to happen in the afternoons, the shops close and everyone goes off for a siesta.  At about nine in the evening everybody and everything comes to life, just as we are thinking about getting ready to go to sleep.

We achieved our objective and after a couple of false starts we found a Bateria place that not only sold batteries but were prepared to fit them.  The cost of the battery, incidentally, was exactly half what we paid for exactly the same model in Uruguay.

We also enjoyed a visit to the weekend ‘feria artisanal’ which was lively, interesting and full of antique stalls, and numerous other stalls selling all kinds of arts, crafts and jewellery.  Unusually for us, we didn’t actually buy anything.

After nearly a week of driving north west across Argentina with nothing remotely interesting to look at, on Thursday 7^th March we finally started to climb into the hills.  The road took us up and up through a narrow river gorge which eventually opened out at about 6,000 ft onto a wide valley with a beautiful lake and surrounded by mountains.  We found a very nice cabana just outside the hill town of Tafi del Valle and the prospect of a couple of days walking in the hills was very attractive.

The lake at Tafi del Valle

The Maid of the Mountains

Next morning there was not a hill or mountain to be seen.  The weather changed overnight, the cloud came in and covered the mountains and even the lake, and then the rain started.  Since thunderstorms and rain were forecast for the foreseeable future, we abandoned our plan to stay awhile which was a pity as it was such a lovely area.

The road out of Tafi del Valle continued to climb, the cloud was swirling around us and we reached 9,000 ft at the highest point. Then, as we started to descend a little, we out-ran the cloud and were able to enjoy the view again.

The terrain was covered with huge cacti, some of them 30 ft high, many branched specimens, standing like stark signposts pointing this way and that across the landscape. Further along the road, the scenery changed, and we found ourselves in Argentina’s second largest wine producing area around the town of Cafayate.  Then, just as suddenly, it changed again and we were back among weird and dramatic rockscapes, great jagged teeth of rock with strata at all sorts of impossible angles.  There was no wildlife as far as we could see but a great feel of geography in action.

Giant cactus - road to Salta

Rock formations - road to Salta

After a six-hour drive, much of it on bendy mountain roads, we finally arrived in the north west city of Salta. Like other cities we have visited we found Salta to have an interesting colonial centre surrounded by very uninteresting suburbs with a lot of traffic and noise.

Cathedral - Salta

Hobo feeding the street dogs

We visited the Museum of the High Andes, one of Salta’s many museums, which gives an excellent insight into Inca culture. The exhibits were something between fascinating and macabre, fascinating because they speak of a culture long past but macabre because they featured mummified bodies of high-born children who had been sacrificed to the Inca God of the Mountain.  Three such children were found near the peak of a 19,000 ft volcano on the Chilean border, the world’s highest known archaeological site.  The cold, low pressure, lack of oxygen and bacteria helped to preserve the bodies almost perfectly.  Apparently, it was regarded as a great honour, but we find it difficult to understand how anyone can sacrifice their own children.  We’ve sometimes wanted to strangle ours, but never for long!

On Sunday 10^th March we left Salta and drove north to an area called Quebrada de Humahuaca, a World Heritage listed valley.  This valley is overlooked by mountainsides that have been eroded into spectacular formations that reveal waves of colours.  Some of the rock formations look like jagged teeth and others like the backbone of some unspeakable beast.

Dotted along the valley there are a number of small indigenous towns and villages.  Purmamarca was the first town that we visited, also known as the Valley of the Seven Colours.  This featured a huge artisan market and also a lot of tourists.  

Valley of the Seven Colours

Artisan market - Purmaharca

We stopped for lunch at a dark little café and whilst the food was awful, the music provided by an unlikely looking ensemble was quite wonderful. The girl with the recorder was animated, had a wonderful voice and the Indian thumped away on his drum with great gusto and the guy with the guitar sang with the girl, and the whole place became infected with their vitality such that several people in the room got up and started doing some form of traditional dancing.

Impromptu dancing at café - Purmaharca

The drummer

We decided to base ourselves in the picturesque little town of Tilcara and, as we drove into the centre, we came upon the tail end of the ‘Carnaval of the Quebrada’. This fiesta kicks off on the Saturday 50 days before Easter Sunday.  In each town, a devil figure is dug up from where he was buried the previous year and paraded into town amid much noise, triggering an eight-day bender of music, dancing and copious drinking.  We arrived for the final day and probably just as well because the music and festivities went on most of the way through the night. 

Drummers at the Devil's Carnaval - Tilcara

Dancer at the Devil's Carnaval

Dancers at the Devil's Carnaval

The dancers who were of all ages were dressed in a fantastic array of costumery including horns and face masks and brightly coloured costumes with mirrors sewn in them.  The band included three men with extremely large drums which they all thumped in unison, several saxophones and a startling array of silver trumpets which made a shattering loud peal when they all puffed their cheeks out and blasted together.  

Rock formations - Quebrada de Humahuaca

Lucy in the limelight

Cactus wood gate - Uquia

Giant cacti - Quebrada de Humahuaca

We spent much of the following day wandering around the various villages and then in the late afternoon went to the Serrania de Hornocal.  When we had driven up a steep and windy dirt road for some 25 kilometres we finally reached the viewpoint of this spectacular mountainside with its amazing colouration and shape. We both agreed that we had never seen anything quite like it before and the only thing that detracted from the delight was that we were up at 4,300 metres and finding it quite difficult to breathe, but a small price to pay!  On the way back down much of the view consisted of vast fields of giant cactus, all giving the high sign to an indifferent sky.  

Serrania de Hornocal

Still standing at 4,300 metres

After our stay in Quebrada de Humahaca we set off on the two-day journey across the Andes that would take us into Chile. We drove up through dramatic mountain passes and then emerged onto the Altiplano.  The road took us through the Salinas Grandes salt plains which were quite stunning.

Llama - on the road over the Andes

Senora Chica - Salinas Grandes

About three quarters of the way up the Andes we stopped off for the night at a dry, dusty little town called Susques, the only town actually. The wind blew all the time and so did the dust which got in our eyes, but the town had the most delightful little hotel called the Kactus Hotel (of course) which was spotless.  As we were up at 4,000 metres we were both feeling the effects of the altitude.  The locals all swear by drinking coca tea, so we did as in Rome and, whether there was a real benefit or it was just the placebo effect, it certainly helped.

All the way along on the Altiplano there were salt flats and some of them had shallow lakes and from time to time we saw flamingos feeding in the water.  There were herds of vicuna and some llama on the high plains, although how on earth they find anything to eat we do not know because the whole thing looks like the surface of the moon.

Our passage through Customs and Immigration at the border was very efficient and then eventually we commenced a long, steep and continuous descent to the little town of San Pedro de Atacama on the edge of the Atacama Desert where we are now. And so, we enter the next phase of our adventure.

Uruguay - Life is a Beach

Well, the old team is back on the road again for our third trip to Latin America.

Our first destination was Paraiso Suizo on Uruguay’s southern coast where Footloose Lucy, our Land Rover Discovery, has been in the tender care of Heinz and Sylvia for the past 10 months.

Our journey to Montevideo on Monday 4^th February went entirely smoothly.  Heinz met us at the end of the road, as arranged, and within 24 hours of leaving home we were back in the same cabana that we stayed in just before we returned to UK last April.  Nothing had changed and we were soon re-acquainted with the screeching of the parakeets in the trees, the short walk to the almost deserted pristine beach, and the sound of the waves crashing onto the shore. This place isn’t called Paraiso Suizo for nothing.

The beach at Paraiso Suizo

We have come to learn from our travels that if things appear to be going too well, then they probably are.  We weren’t wrong.  Footloose Lucy was neatly parked next to our cabana but Heinz had bad news.  As with people, it appeared that 10 months immobility had taken its toll on Lucy who was now anything but footloose.  Heinz reported that the battery wouldn’t hold a charge and there were no brakes.

The next morning, Wednesday, a recovery vehicle turned up and poor old Lucy was duly loaded and taken to the Dos Hermanos car mechanics at the nearby town of Piriapolis.  We heard nothing for a day and then the news came back that a new battery had been fitted but that the seals on the hydraulic brake servo pump had perished and needed replacing. We went along to the garage in the hope that we might have the proper bit in our spare parts box to fix the pump.  Indeed, Alan pulled out a piece of kit which said Master Cylinder Repair Kit and, filled with triumph and delight, he gave it to one of the brothers who scratched his nose in the South American manner and said “No”.  So, it appeared that the only way we were going to get Lucy fixed was for the replacement part to be ordered from Montevideo and this was unlikely to happen until the following week.

While we waited for a new set of seals to be sent by ox cart from Montevideo we amused ourselves as follows:

On alternate days we walked down the beach or up the beach.  Going down the beach was much the same as going up the beach, but the sea was on the other side.  There were stones to amuse us, pretty stones, all different shapes and sizes and there were also shells, mostly small mussel shells which made a crunching noise when you walked across them.  Then there was the high point of the walk, discovering a dead fish.

We enjoyed having a swim in the sea, but that pleasure was short-lived after a woman was seen being carried off the beach with a bleeding foot and clearly in agony – a gift from a sting ray lurking in the shallows.  Sue could not be persuaded to enter the water thereafter.

The rest of the time we sat on the porch of our cabana and watched the Mockingbirds and the Monk Parakeets and the Southern Lapwings squabbling over insects in the grass.  Occasionally, to relieve the boredom, we caught the bus into Piriapolis and walked up and down the beach there.

Wednesday 13^th February was a good day.  News came from the garage that the new seals had finally arrived and they were in the process of being fitted, so armed with this knowledge we went for a celebratory walk along the beach.  After about two miles in the searing heat we finished up in a little village called Santa Ana where we discovered a restaurant. They cooked us some delicious fish and produced some ice-cold beer and after stuffing ourselves nicely we walked the two miles back again.

A call to the garage on Thursday revealed that the repairs were not quite finished yet. Maybe Manana?  And on Friday morning the work still had not been completed.  However, we had already arranged to go and stay in Montevideo so we departed without Lucy and left Heinz to continue liaising with the garage in our absence.

By Friday afternoon we were ensconced in a very nice, if somewhat quirky, B & B next to the Parque Rodo in Montevideo and just a couple of hundred yards from the sea.  The change of scenery was exceedingly welcome.

Our penthouse suite at the B&B

Parque Rodo

Saturday morning found us taking yet another long, hot walk along the sea front to the Ciudad Vieja (old city).  We walked and we walked along the Rambla which is made of red granite and is quite beautiful.  Down on the seaside there were stretches of sand and stretches of rocks and on every available square inch there were Uruguayans displaying copious amounts of flesh.

On one side of the Plaza Independencia there was an amazing edifice which from a distance we thought was a cathedral.  It turned out to be a concrete palacio, the Palacio Salvo, and whoever Salvo was he obviously had a very grand idea of his own importance.  This thing sticks up in the middle of the Old Town with protrusions and lumps and would no doubt be described by HRH as a carbuncle.  

Palacio Salvo

Some of the streets leading from the square down through the old town have been pedestrianised where we found lots of stalls selling junk and jewellery.  There were various street entertainers including an exceedingly sexy young girl with blue tail feathers who was dancing to a drum band with what one can only describe as gay abandon.

Street Dancer

Ciudad Vieja

On Sunday we visited a couple of street markets selling the sort of stuff that our parents would have thrown out and probably their parents did.  We then caught a bus back into the Ciudad Vieja for some lunch.

On the way back things got a little more interesting.  It was decided that in order to stay out of the blazing sun we would walk back inland rather than along the Rambla.  Passing as we did through one slightly shabby area a young man with some ambitions to be a master criminal sneaked up behind Alan and grabbed his camera.  Alan turned around and grabbed him by the throat, but he was rather slippery and he let go of the camera and ran off with Alan stumbling after him in a fairly poor facsimile of a chase.  We are told that Montevideo is generally a very safe city but even this place has its opportunists.

Danger lurking on a quiet back street

On Monday 18^th February Alan flew back to London for a few days.  A week or so before we departed for Uruguay, we received the incredibly sad news that Alice, his 26 year old great-niece, had died.  The funeral was on 20^th February and Alan was there to join family and friends in saying good-bye to Alice whose young life was cut so tragically short. Our hearts continue to go out to Alice’s Mum and Dad.

Meanwhile Sue stayed on at ‘Una Noche Mas’ B & B, got to practice her Spanish with the friendly proprietors Eduardo and Carla, continued her exploration of the city and relaxed a great deal.

It is now Monday 25^th February.  We are back at Paraiso Suizo, everything is fine with the vehicle (fingers crossed) and we are packed and ready to go tomorrow morning. Our plan is to head west from Uruguay into Argentina, then Northern Chile, Bolivia and finally Peru. Well, that is the plan, let’s see what happens.

Time to leave Paraiso Suizo

Back to dear old Blighty again

The final few weeks of this trip have not exactly been the most interesting, although we have a tale or two to tell.  Our main purpose was to drive over the Andes, across Argentina and then to the southern coast of Uruguay where we have arranged to store Footloose Lucy for the next nine months or so.  This has meant covering a similar distance in three weeks to that which we have covered in the last three months.

We circumnavigated our way around Santiago without going wrong once and then on Good Friday we crossed the Andes into Argentina.  The Andes were stark and savage and high with seemingly nothing on them apart from the occasional distant glimpse of a large raptor.  The ascent to the Chilean/Argentine border was steep and quite formidable but the descent to the foothills around Mendoza was much more gradual and gentle.

Switchback up the Andes

Road through the Andes

Lunch stop at the top

Turquoise lake on Argentine side

We arrived in Mendoza, a lively and attractive city in the middle of the Argentine wine growing region, on Easter Saturday.  We looked for various cabanas, hostels and hotels to stay in Mendoza, all of which were full, it being Easter weekend.  The only place that wasn’t full was the Motel San Isidro which is where we ended up staying.  Motel in South America is a euphemism for sex hotel but any port in a storm!

The Motel San Isidro was all that the name suggests.  The entrance was discreet, the car ports had curtains that closed behind the vehicles in order to protect them from prying eyes.  The room itself had an extremely large bed and a two-person shower with two shower heads.  There was a cunning device, a bit like a leper’s hatch, for ordering food and drink.  This presumably enabled the occupants to ring up and say, ‘Immediately send two dozen oysters and a bottle of champagne’ and somebody would trot along, open a flap on the outside, push the food in and then close the flap.  The occupants could then open the inside of the flap and, when they had a spare moment, consume the provisions.  All that said, we were very comfortable and the staff, who were quite amused at a couple of white haired travellers taking refuge at their motel, were very friendly and helpful.

Little furry rodent without a tail (not a mouse)

 

Monk Parakeet sitting on the BBQ

After our dirty weekend we descended onto the Pampas looking for wild Gauchos riding around on sweat flecked ponies.  What we found was combine harvesters.  The harvest was in full swing and everywhere we looked there were combines spewing grain and soya and millet out into the backs of trucks which were keeping pace with the combines as they moved through the flat unending prairie.  The Gauchos have probably all gone to work as extras in Hollywood

We found this nice secluded spot for lunch and then the heavy brigade decided to join us

The roads across the Pampas in Argentina are by and large, dead straight, dead flat and deadly boring.  We agreed that if this is the Pampas you can keep it.  This part of the trip has not been without its incidents and amusements, however. 

After driving our daily average of 250 kilometres we turned up one evening in a little town and found that it had an attractive lake which we thought would make a nice place to camp for the night.  We looked around for somebody who might tell us where we could camp, and we happened upon the man from the water purification company.  He was a very pleasant chap who pointed out where the camping area was and then he asked us if we would like some fresh water, he being in the business.  We took up his offer and he filled the water tank and then we proceeded round the lake to the area designated for camping.

We sat for a while and chatted and then a friend of the aforementioned water company employee turned up and said how pleased he was we were there and had come to visit their little town and, by the way, was it okay if he got the local television company along.  We weren’t quite sure if we had understood him correctly but we said “yes, yes, yes” and he took some photographs and then we got on with making our supper in the time honoured manner. 

About fifteen minutes later the television crew arrived complete with outside broadcast stuff and a lady to do the continuity and they proceeded to interview Sue (the only one of us who speaks a bit of Spanish), slightly flustered, but who made a pretty good fist of it in the end.  Meanwhile the guy with the very sophisticated camera went all the way round Lucy and inside Lucy and up in the tent and took long shots and shots of us and they ultimately went off with great expressions of good fellowship.  If we were the local headlines then it must have been a quiet week in Lake Woebegon.

Sue with Argentine TV crew

After a week of driving seemingly endless miles along seemingly endless roads and staying in forgettable towns we finally approached the seemingly unpronounceable town of Gualeguaychu, close to the border with Uruguay.

Coming into the aforementioned unpronounceable town we missed the turning and Alan decided that he would take a short cut across a little grassy bank onto the right road rather than turning around and going back.  There was a ditch, quite a deep ditch, too deep for Lucy.

There was this shortcut . . . . .

Lucy got comprehensibly stuck, so we hitched the winch up to a handy telegraph pole but unfortunately it was at entirely the wrong angle and therefore would only pull Lucy sideways rather than out.  Before long two policemen came along, followed by another two and, whilst they undoubtedly thought we were completely stupid (and they were right weren’t they Alan? Should have listened to Sue), they were very helpful and ultimately they persuaded a chap in a large pick-up to tow Lucy out backwards.  On this occasion it was a VW pickup, not a Nissan.

During the initial attempts to winch Lucy out of the ditch, her bonnet catch broke which meant we could no longer open the bonnet.  This resulted in us having to stay in the aforementioned unpronounceable town for longer than we intended in order to get it fixed.  That said, it turned out to be quite a pleasant town and we managed to while away the time along the banks of the Rio Gualeguaychu and the surrounding park which was full of bird life.

Female Green-Barred Woodpecker

Red Crested Cardinal

The crossing into Uruguay on Tuesday 10^th April was our fastest ever, fifteen minutes from start to finish and that included obtaining a 365 day Temporary Import Permit for Lucy.  It made us wonder why other countries have to spend so much time shuffling round bits of paper, sending you to half a dozen different check points and stamping everything in triplicate.

The Plaza at Mercedes, Uruguay, with Cathedral and flowering tree

Close up of prickly tree in bloom

Mercedes Cathedral

By Wednesday afternoon we had arrived at the overland depot, otherwise known as Paraiso Suizo.  Heinz and Sylvia, the Swiss couple who own and run Paraiso Suizo, were very pleasant and made us entirely welcome.

Having got ourselves shaken down Heinz suggested that we should park Lucy next to the bungalow as there was a big thunderstorm coming in during the night.  This we did, in fact very close to the bungalow.  Unfortunately, the wind direction was not as predicted and during the night we got the full force of the thunderstorm with lashing rain and heavy winds on the tent.

The tent awning supports flew away some time during the high point of the storm and we felt like a couple of young rooks in a nest high in a poplar tree being whacked around by the vagaries of the February and March gales.  Interesting experience.  The tent also leaked, it leaked a great deal.  In fact, Sue’s side was mostly a pool of water and she was understandably far from entirely gruntled.  Needless to say, neither of us got much sleep.

Washed up marker buoy - victim of the storm

Attempt to re-float fishing trawler - another storm casualty

Next day we decamped and moved into one of the nice, dry, spacious cabanas where we have been ever since even though the weather is now beautiful and sunny again.  We have spent the time getting Lucy serviced and other bits of her fixed, cleaned her inside and out and generally prepared her for a long stay here at Paraiso Suizo although we still haven’t worked out what to do about the leaking tent.

We’ve also had time to chill out and relax here.  There are miles of deserted white sandy beach to stroll along, there have been birds for Alan to photograph and the nearby town of Piriapolis where Lucy has had her repairs done is a pleasant enough seaside town to wander around.

She's nicked my hat again!

Totally in control of the situation - chairlift to the Mirador, Piriapolis

Male Green-Barred Woodpecker

Female Green Barred Woodpecker

Monk Parakeet

We don't know what this one is, but it's very pretty

We have booked our flights home and on Wednesday 18^th April we will be leaving for UK and Lucy will be staying at Paraiso Suizo in the tender care of Heinz.  The highlight of this trip has most certainly been the time spent in Patagonia (except the disappointment of not seeing Albatross and Elephant seals) and on Chiloe which was everything we hoped for and more.

We are already thinking about our next trip when we plan to make our way to Bolivia and Peru and somehow include a trip into Brazil and the Amazon.  Watch this space!