Hello lovely people: the seventh of my occasional blogs from Chile – Argentina – Chile

It’s all about the mountains

After a week of feasting at different wineries with a bit of mountain visiting thrown in we set off on our road trip proper. Boy, this country is big with a lot of nothing in it (thanks for that Alison M). You may remember similar sentiments about our road trip in 2019 when we went from Perth to Darwin in 54 days BUT this part of Argentina seems big and empty on a different scale: the vistas are vast, the mountains huge, the skies superb, the colours extraordinary.

Our route:

• Lujan de Cuyo to a desert hotel east of Ischigualasta “El Chiflon”🛏️
• A 70 K re-tracing of our steps the following morning to find fuel (we didn’t even think we needed to plan for that, out of practice, a mistake not repeated!) and then the 50 Ks back to….
• Ischigualasta
• Villa Union 🛏️
• Talampaya
• Belen 🛏️
• Cafayate 🛏️ 🛏️
• San Salvador de Jujuy 🛏️
• Purmamaca and Tilcara
• Humahuaca 🛏️
• Salta 🛏️

The maps below do not include all the “side” trips at steps 2, 3, 5, and 9 above and the basic route is still 1,675 Ks (1,046 miles) and covers a small, tiny, fraction of Argentina; Land’s End to John o’Groats is 1,340 Ks (837 miles) – just to provide some sense of scale.

The roads are generally good and rarely very busy. Travel time is slow because the roads are often bendy, it is easy to see why the route is so beloved of motorbikers! The slow speeds give more chance to admire the landscape, always mountains on the horizon, the Andes of course and various sierras, some snow capped; a lot is verdant green with trees and shrubs; some is barren rock often multi hued (my, the colours are magnificent); we see spectacular cacti 🌵 and cross many wide, wide river beds almost all dry or with the barest trickle at this time of year.

After a day on the road our first visit is Parque National Ischigualasta. Our day gets off to a very good start with many guanaco (the wild camelid from which llama were domesticated some 4,000 years ago) in evidence. They are so photographic and adorable looking I make no apology for the multiple pictures below!

The tour of the park is in our own vehicle in a conga line, with a park guide up front, and several stops to admire the natural features and have the geology and effects of erosion explained – poor Roberto is working hard as our translator – everything is conducted in Spanish; Alison M’s Spanish is more than good enough to cope, ours the opposite. The shapes and strata colours are fabulous.

The next day is Parque National Talampaya, the tour here is of a canon and is by bus to preserve wildlife and reduce environmental impact. Astonishing rock formations and colours. Genuinely awe inspiring. We even saw condors, which have been shy on the whole.

A couple of nights in Cafayate give us a day out of the car properly to stretch our legs by walking to a winery: another glorious setting and fabulous lunch. The town is pretty and the hotel a delight, with a Mediterranean garden and a pretty pool. In fact all our accommodation so far on the road has been a delight. Before our Ischigualasta visit we stayed in a proper desert motel – built in the middle of nowhere, earthy tones and great cacti with a beautiful sierra as back drop, and a pool table for after dinner entertainment. At Villa Union it was a more corporately run enterprise but in a beautiful setting and with a great pool. At Belen it was a modern hotel which incorporated indigenous art and motifs in its decoration, housed the local archeology museum (a collection of ceramics) and had an even better pool.

Another day on the road to San Salvador de Jujuy, a big sprawling town which looks scruffy and somewhat unappealing. Our hotel, in a sympathetically converted and extended grand old house, is very central and we take a walk around the city. There are some impressive buildings in various states of disrepair, parks with lovely trees, and not much else to detain us, it was just a convenient place to break up the journey.

Our last full day on the road to our northernmost stop at Humahuaca includes stops at Purmamaca – more spectacular rock formations and colours – and Tilcara – a pre-Spanish indigenous fort at Pulcara and a botanic garden of astonishing cacti. We learn these cacti, cardones, have a life span of 100 years, desiccate from the inside out and the desiccated plant is used like wood, in buildings and carvings. Mature plants are protected so not found in any new building unless from salvage.

Humahuaca sits in the Quebrada valley, beautiful landscapes lead us to the largely whitewashed, low rise adobe town, hot and dusty and with crane ale in full swing – costumes abound, music and marching (well strolling) an an evening spent at a restaurant with an impressive band playing indigenous folk music.

The next day sees us re-trace our steps south to Salta, our last destination in Argentina. A town with an Hispanic heart (and churches), more beautiful trees, good souvenir shopping and, on our last day, torrential rain storms, which close the cable car to the top of the hill overlooking town and facilitate the souvenir shopping, well by me and Alison M; Andy and Roberto retreat red to a bar and watched Newcastle lose to Man U in the Carabou Cup.

Our utterly fabulous time in Argentina closes with our 1 a.m. departure, by bus, to San Pedro de Atacama, in Chile, but that is for the next instalment.

The car with no number plate: although stopped repeatedly during our road trip at numerous police checks the absence of a number plate appears not to be the cause of the stoppages or of any concern to the police stopping us (we remain unclear why there are so many police checks) UNTIL on our penultimate day when we cross into Salta province en route to Humahuaca when we are stopped three times. At the first, the police officer examines all the car documents, interrogates Roberto and finds the absence of number plate unacceptable and applies a fine to the owner of the vehicle; at the second the police officer repeats the examination/interrogation process and says we cannot lawfully drive the car on public roads, this leads to a mini Mexican stand-off and eventually we are waved through with a shrug; at the third Roberto is able to produce some photographed documentation which the renter of the vehicle eventually provides by wattsapp – responding to messages sent after the first and second stop of the day! We are relieved to hand the car back in Salta, and equally relieved that we do so without damage.

Until next time, adios amigos
ALISON