Kudos to the Argentinian authorities! During the last 10 days we passed lots of remote checkpoints, without a single case of corruption! Very neat. The San Francisco Pass (4726m) marks the highest and furthermost point of our trip. We are now officially on the way home! Next stop: Nevado Tres Cruces National Park. Below: Florian at the border crossing, in his favourite pose :-) Improvised dinner at the shelter in Nevado Tres Cruces. We shared the hut with a nice bunch of hikers. Their goal: climbing the nearby Ojos del Salado (6893m), the world's highest volcano. The night at the mountain hut was freeezing cold. I'm not sure if I slept at all. Now, with the sun up, I am still stiff with cold, trying to revive my numb feet, my back and my frozen fingers. We decide to leave this chilly wonderland and go straight to... ...the beach!!
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Today was a driving day, though in these flood plains it felt more like wave surfing :-) The road is a constant up and down, nothing for sensitive stomachs! Whenever we were not crossing river beds, we were passing illegal dumps of plastic bottles, ...or so I thought. Until I read about the popular cult around "La Difunta Correa": According to legend, a woman died of thirst, while searching the desert for her sick husband. When her body was found days later, her baby was still alive, nursing on her miraculously full breast. Today that woman has become something like a saint. Countless shrines line the roads and devotees leave water bottles to quench Difunta Correa's eternal thirst. There is a plus for non-believers too: Should you ever run out of water in Argentina's wild west, don't worry. There is plenty! Conveniently bottled to go. A million river beds later, we arrived in Chilecito, which seemed to be in a 100-year-sleep (aka siesta). Temperatures were in their forties again, and the only "person" far and wide was Jesus, watching over the slow decline of this ex gold rush town... We watched some tumbleweed roll by and drove on. Another million river beds later we finally reached our destination for the day: Fiambalá. It only shows up at maximum zoom level on Google maps. I was afraid the place wouldn't exist at all! But here we are, the place does exist – it even is a leg on the South American Dakar Rally. Aside from bike racers, Fiambalá has some wonderful hot springs. We arrived there just before sunset and after a long day of driving and dust these pools felt like heaven on earth!! Tomorrow we will cross the Andes once more and continue our Xmas roadtrip in Chile...
Talampaya & Ischigualasto – two complicated names for the same thing. It stands for a vast canyon landscape from the Triassic era. A geological formation thus. But since the park lies on the border of two provinces, it needed two entrances, two administrations, and – just guessed it – two names.
In professional circles, Talampaya & Ischigualasto are known as fossil excavation sites. In the last picture you'll see a grey-whitish sediment, that expands upon contact with water, thereby shielding the layers underneath. This is where many dinosaur fossils have been found. However, as a tourist, you get to see none of the excavation – "for security reasons" – and will have to put up with admiring the canyon's natural beauty. The holidays are over and we are heading north for Villa Union. First stop: the windswept stone formations of Guandacol. This oversized souvenir is called Copa del Mundo (World Cup). The road then continues towards "Cuesta del Miranda", a stretch of scenic serpentines, perfect for shooting a BMW car commercial..., or just to look and enjoy. Very beautiful. But next, something strange happened. As we reached the village of Aicuña, we expected to find walnut groves and a nice plaza (according to a tourist leaflet). Instead we found people staring at us in suspicion. Others hurried inside and eyed us through the curtains... They obviously wanted us gone. So we left... Back in Villa Union, voices turned to hushed whispers, when we were told about Aicuña's doubtful fame as the albino village. And that affected villagers (4 out of 300) are sick of being treated like a freak show, thus often prefer to hide. Fair enough – I wish we had known this before though. Another day trip from Villa Union leads up into the Altiplano, to Laguna Brava (4000m). The scenery was dazzling, much like on our previous Altiplano trips in Chile. Of course, the challenges of those trips to no-man's-land didn't change either: altitude sickness, freezing winds, weak engine, less and less petrol, and a good chance to get lost in the sweeping cordillera :-)) You name it. Fortunately we met an attentive tour guide up there, who prevented our car from getting stuck in the sludge of the lagoon. Then he even invited us to join his group. Now on foot, we noticed, why the shoreline was no place for a car. The whole ground felt spongy like a trampoline! Apparently there are immense underground gas pockets up here. We could see bubbles coming up the chimneys, and sometimes you smelled it too. The water inside the chimneys was freezing though, no hot springs... We spent another hour or so, watching the flamingos and those striking colours of the Altiplano, before returning to more human-friendly altitudes. Mendoza is wine country, and as you can see, we plunged right into it! We tried to cover the whole spectrum of what Mendoza has on offer – from world-class Malbec's at Achaval Ferrer (that surely would have ruined our holiday budget) to surprisingly good unknown producers. Our favourite "tour" was lunch in the vineyards of estate Ruca Malen. The next day, we decided: Enough wine, let's see the city! So off into Mendoza's historic center. However, we had barely started the sightseeing, when we found ourselves totally paralysed! We didn't understand what was going on, until we came across a temperature display: 44°C!! Well, apparently, the South American siestas (1-7pm) are there for a reason. We laughed at our mistake, returned to Casa Glebinias, and did, what every sane local would do: cool off at the pool and take a looong nap :-) Christmas BBQ at hotel Casa Glebinias. Argentinian christmas cake is divine, really different from the German version. Alas, no picture. It got eaten too fast...
It's Christmas time, and we are not keen on putting up the plastic tree for a fifth time in a row. Instead we decided to go and explore our neighbouring country, Argentina. The planned loop: cross the Andes into Mendoza, drive north to Villa Union and Fiambala, cross the Andes again, return to Santiago via Bahia Inglesa and La Serena. However, entering Argentina with a (Chilean rental) car is no easy task! It requires some thorough preparation... From all we've been told beforehand, Argentina's ATM's often don't have cash, you can't rely on credit cards either, and petrol stations might lack the petrol, that you were counting on. Also, you may come across corrupt police, and need endless paperwork for everything anyway. So, obviously we tried to provide for all contingencies, stacked up on Argentinian pesos (which we did need), got a jerry can (which we almost needed). Florian already applied for the car documents way ahead. Of course Hertz forgot about it and only came into action at the eleventh hour, when we finally received a bunch of paper with weird notarial notes, insurances, nice stamps and fanciful signatures from god knows whom. 12 pages in total!! But it paid off and we entered Argentina without too big a hassle. Right after the boarder we caught a glimpse of the Aconcagua, the highest peak in the Southern Hemisphere (6961m). Further on the RN7 highway is the beautiful sulphur-coloured Puente del Inca (Inca bridge) and the reservoir of Potrerillos. And now on to Menoza! Our roadtrip is just beginning... The last weeks have been busy with all kinds of festivities. Our friends Larissa and Eldwin gave a Christmas plus birthday party in the quirky style of the 70s. To match things up, they treated us to wonderful finger food from vintage cooking books. For Florian's birthday we went to Santiago's theatre to see the famous Nutcracker ballet. The show was really good (because our friend Fiona played in the orchestra!). The building features beautiful plastering, that lets you think of European opera houses, despite being in seismic active Chile. The next evening Outotec had it's company party. After dinner, best employee awards, and so forth, the DJ put on the first song. In an instant the dance floor got packed and the real fiesta began. I love this about South Americans. Dancing comes so natural to them! We had fun practising the weird "Gangnam Style" thing and of course, lots of Reggaeton.
The following day we left Santiago for an exciting Xmas roadtrip through Argentina & Northern Chile... |