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.