Uruguay’s East Coast
April 7, 2010
Another epic day of travel brought us to Uruguay’s east coast. This time we sprung for a private 1st class carriage (still on a double decker bus though, of course). We had glam visions of a private room and chairs that folded into a queen size bed. This was not the case however, as the primary benefit of a private 1st class appeared to be a curtain partitioning our chairs from the other schmucks on he over night bus. After the bus, we took cruise liner from Buenos Aires, Argentina to Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay. Word from the wise to other travelers: do not attempt to travel from BA to Uruguay on holy week (Easter for you American’s). As is typical for us we bought our boat ticket last minute and were required to purchase a super executive fare, complete with a champagne toast as we left dock. This came with a complimentary 100% fare pump and leather couches. Then once we got to Colonia, we discovered that every single bed within 45 kms from the ferry terminal was sold out for the night. Oops – guess this was another one of those instances where we should have booked ahead. Fortunately we had our camping gear and there were still a few spots of grass left where we could pitch a tent.
Colonia del Sacramento is a quant town with coble stone streets and tons of mom & pop style restaurants with dining areas that spill out onto the sidewalk. We enjoyed people watching – wealthy folks from Buenos Aires totting Tory Birch bags and wearing Hermes scarves dinned at cafes besides North Face clad backpackers like us. If we’d had money to burn we could have stayed for several days dining on steak and pasta, but we decided to move farther north along the coast.
Our target was Punta del Diablo via Punta del Este (Uruguay’s infamous beach town where bare buns of the rich and famous roam). The weather in April though wasn’t warm enough to entice crowds and we had the beaches entirely to ourselves.
We rented a car in Punta del Este and drove up the coast at our own pace, stopping along the way. We climbed the windy staircase at Jose Ignacio’s lighthouse, but missed out on dining at the town’s restaurant La Huella that we’d heard so much about on the Food Network. Foiled again by South America’s strange eating patterns.
Lucas and I at the top of the lighthouse in Jose Ignacio
The staircase was cramped and steep – and traffic was flowing up and down.
Another view of the light house. It definitely was a scenic picnic spot along the route.
We didn’t really know what to expect of Punta del Diablo. A couple of German girls we’d met the week before turned us on to the place. They said it had beautiful beaches, an easy vibe and was more affordable that Punta del Este and some of the other towns farther south. What we found was a sleepy fishing village with loamy white sand and strong waves. Most of the tourists there, and there were only a handful, were serious surfers with dreadlocks deep tans and that ubiquitous string and bead jewelry they always seem to be wearing. Prices were as good as promised and our private sea view room only set us back $45 a night.
We eked out our last three remaining days in South America walking along the abandoned beaches, eating seafood and watching the waves. Punta del Diablo was a relaxing footnote for this leg of our trip, before heading back to the US.
View from our private balcony in Punta del Diablo.
A local family watching the waves. Yes, a horse and buggy is the typical means of transport in these parts.
No, this is not an abandoned house. A scraggly bearded fisherman stared back at us through the windows.
Fishing boats like this one lined the towns coast.
Tren a las Nubes – Salta, Argentina
March 30, 2010
Every guide book I’d read said that if you go to North Argentina you can’t miss Salta, but they never really explained why in a way that I found satisfactory. Supposedly it was very European and the landscape was beautiful. Fine, but isn’t all of Argentina? Despite Lonely Planet’s vague descriptions of the greatness of Salta we headed our way their via yet another overnight bus. Gotta love those 1st class 20+ hour bus rides!
We were only allotting two days in Salta which seemed a bit ridiculous considering how long we drove to get there. But I really wanted to ride the Tren a las Nubes, or Train to the Clouds. Sounds magical, right? Maybe we’d see the Carebears up there!!
Our train adventure began at 6:30 AM in the morning and lasted until 11 PM at night. It was one seriously long excursion. But first, we took in the sites of Salta.
Salta truly is a lovely town, perhaps my favorite in all of Argentina. Like Goldie Locks would say, it’s “just right”. The buildings aren’t too tall, the town isn’t too small, the restaurants aren’t too ritzy or too provincial, the people are friendly, the museums excellent and the architecture is bits of lovely and bits of horrid – just as I’d come to expect of the best of South American cities. I imagine if Lucas and I were Argentineans and we’d tired of the Buenos Aires pace, Salta is where we’d move to.
One museum in particular, the High Andes museum or something like that, featured three astonishingly well preserved mummies from the Incan culture in the area. You could see the fingernails and eyelashes on these things. Amazing! They were discovered in 1999 on a high altitude expedition, frozen in the ground, most likely as Incan sacrifices.
For anyone thinking of taking the Tren a las Nubes, make sure you get a Hostelling International Card. It’s worth 15% off – a savings of about $18 and the card only cost $16. Pretty easy math. Plus, we get a price break at future HI hostels for the next year. It would have also given us 10% off the NaviMag back in Chile… wish we’d known that then!
The train was pretty comfy. We sat back in our chairs and watched the sun light up the landscape as we sipped coffee and snacked on baked goods. The scenery was pretty awesome. I don’t think Lucas sat down for more than two minutes the entire trip. He kept bopping between one window and the next taking photo after photo.
We saw hundreds of the same Giant Cacti that we’d seen in the San Juan Provence. I just love the way the light is catching them in this photo.
Most of the terrain we traveled through was pretty stark. Very Eastern Washington-esque. The dry side of mountains look pretty much the same everywhere. It’s funny how the more you travel, the more similarities you find between different parts of the world and places from your own home turf.
As we got to higher altitudes, the staff passed out coca leaves and gave a demonstration on how to effectively use them to decrease the risk of altitude sickness. Yes, coca leaves are used to make cocaine. No, one leaf isn’t going to give you a buzz even remotely close to what cocaine would… you’d need a garbage sack full to do that, apparently. Lucas tried the coca, I wasn’t a firm believer and skipped it. No need to feel like a cow chewing its cud if you don’t need to. For all those interested, you fold the leaf into a small straw shape chew it a bit so it becomes flat and then stick it between your teeth and gums. Kind of like a baseball player uses chew. Yuck.
Here is a photo of one of the small town we passed. I think it had a population of like, two.
Part of the way we traveled parallel to a road. Those who don’t want to spring the big bucks for the train squash themselves into minivans and drive up the mountain range taking photos of the train. Doesn’t sound likely nearly as much fun to me!
Before we’d even left on our “round the world” adventures, Lucas found a photo on flickr or somewhere that he liked of a guy sticking his head out of a train. The guy had long hair like Lucas and it was billowing all around. We’d really wanted to take a similar photo and thought the Tren a las Nubes might provide just the opportunity. Unfortunately, it moves at about 15 miles per hour. Not exactly fast enough to get any sort of billowing hair going on. Oh well.
Here I am at the mountain range looking happy. And below you can see all of the other tourists milling about checking out handicrafts that were for sale. This point marks an elevation of 4,200 meters or 13,750 feet.
At first Lucas and I were milling about with everyone else. We bought a hand woven shall and then started to walk up to the viewpoint. Then very rapidly I felt completely exhausted and my vision pinholed to the smallest prick of light. Essentially, my world went black. I knew I was prone to altitude sickness so I’d taken some diamox earlier, but apparently it wasn’t an adequate prevention. Lucas had to help me hobble down to the medic train car. Embarrassing! Our friend wasn’t quite as fortunate, she didn’t have a Lucas looking out for her and she fainted! Good thing they had fresh oxygen on board. Yum!
After we’d gone back down a few hundred meters I started to feel better, though I didn’t venture off the train again. Lucas got off at the next sight seeing stop and snapped a few shots of the locals.
He thought these girls were just so adorable. These sticks that they were selling were supposedly like viagra. Kind of a strange image when you know that about their wares.
The llama caught this woman by surprise when he decided to sample her snack. She smiled and then turned and gave him some of her biscuits.
Lucas says there is no particular story about this little guy. He was just “wearing a hat and looking cute”. From here on out it was all down hill, ha ha. It took us several hours to get back to Salta. And while the scenery was just as lovely on the way back as it was on the way out, we spent most of our time socializing with our neighbors.
Now, on to Uruguay!
Talambaya & Ishigualasta
March 27, 2010
Our next stops on the list are the national parks of Talambaya and Ishigualasta. We had read a lot about them in the guidebooks and were looking forward to checking them out… both from a photographic and natural history perspective. The first thing we noticed was the temperature… it was HOT. We didn’t realize that the parks are really desserts in disguise! We grabbed a quick lunch at the cantina, and then hopped into a van with a few other folks for a guided tour of the Talambaya.
The park is famous for it’s petroglyphs, which are 500+ year old rock carvings that were drawn by the native inhabitants of the region. The petroglyphs show the lifestyle and culture of the people, and were used as markers for trade or migration routes in the area.
The rocks here are massive columns that rise straight up out of the ground, leaving interesting fissures and designs all around. The colors were vibrant red and orange. Occasionally we would spot a condor flying above us.
Panorama showing a slice of the park, and a wider view of the surroundings.
More interesting rock formations that dot the dessert.
Lucas taking some shots of the scenery
The resident population of Talambaya Park, the Guanacos. They look like a mix between a llama and a deer! I bet they are tasty! However, the park ranger told us they are a protected species, and that they are no longer hunted. Bummer… I wouldn’t mind a big Guanaco steak!
We wanted to see more of the park, but our guided tour was only 3 hours. We discovered that you can see the park on foot or bicycle if you plan in advance. In fact, many people take a couple days and camp in the park, but it requires a significant amount of preparation, as there are no services here. No water, food, etc. It would have been fun to know this so we could have purchased all the necessary things in advance to camp here. We considered going into the nearest town to buy supplies, but it would take us nearly half a day to drive to the closest town and back. So, we decided to continue on to Ishigualasto national park.
The drive between the two parks is very dry and dotted with huge cacti. We decided we’d stop along the side of the road and get a little closer to some of them. We found one that looked accessible and made our way to it. They look much better from afar than up close. They are gnarly looking plants, pitted with holes, discolorations, and dead stuff hanging everywhere… generally uninviting! They typically grow about 11mm per year, and these were over 600 years old!
This cactus had some sort of bud growing off it. Maybe it had managed enough energy to spawn offspring?
When we got to Ishiqualasto, we didn’t think we’d arrived in time for the last tour. Fortunately, they have a “night” tour of the park, and it would be leaving in only a few minutes! We signed up and waited for our guide to show up. He told us it would be a driving tour, and we’d ride around the park inside a vehicle. Setting outside the entrance was this massive vehicle, and I was super excited to take a ride in it. It could have driven over our little rental car without a hiccup. I started checking it out and immediately wanted one! It turns out the vehicle wasn’t a park vehicle, but was owned by another couple also visiting the park. They had built the vehicle in Italy, and transported it over sea to South America by cargo vessel, for a 1 year trip overland. They were traveling from the southern tip of Argentina all the way north to Mexico.
They let me take a look inside and around the monster, and it looked really fun! Every part had a backup, or two! Spare axles, leaf springs, wheels, tires, pretty much anything which could break on the trip was doubled up and latched into storage on the carriage of the vehicle. It had a full kitchen, beds, shower, everything you need to survive harsh terrain.
The tour guide ended up riding with us in our vehicle, and we drove through the park with the monster truck following us. We would stop at all the sites in the park, get out, and take a walk around while the guide explained everything to us. This park is known as the “valle de la luna”, or valley of the moon. Much of the surface looks like the moon. Void of life, water, and even color.
There are many interesting geological formations in the park… and this one is called “Canta de Bochas”, or the ball field. These stones have made their way to the surface over thousands of years, forming perfectly round spheres. Evidently, when it does rain (which is very rarely), water rushes through this valley like a torrent, clearing away the loose soil and exposing these boulders. The rushing water erodes the rocks and looser material around them, leaving these for our viewing pleasure.
Along with the spheres, tall spires of rocks called “the mushroom” and “the submarine” have been formed. There are hundreds scattered about, but those two are the most famous. They even make the monster truck look small! Unfortunately, it was getting dark, so the pictures didn’t come out too great! Oh well, I guess we’ll have to make another trip there sometime in the future!
Barreal to Guandacol
March 26, 2010
We woke up at our Barreal campsite early, eager for a hot shower to wake us from a night of little sleep (the neighborhood dogs were wild that night). The night before it had seemed that the entire camp (ok, okay about six people) were enjoying a lovely wood fired hot shower. Guess that’s only a night time thing though, because they didn’t even have the cold water running in the morning! Oh well, one more day without a shower. Wouldn’t be the first time!
We packed up our tiny Chevy Corsa, and headed out of town. At this point, we had two choices. 1) Continue right back the way we’d come, along those windy roads, almost all the way back to San Juan before heading north towards our next stop. Or, 2) drive through the Calllingasta Valley and loop around north the slightly longer way. The obvious choice seemed to be to take the new route. Except for this way had a fairly substantial (but unquantifiable with the map we had) section of unpaved road. No big deal, we thought. We’d tackled a 20 mile stretch of unpaved road the day before without problem. So we set out for route number two.
At first the road was lovely. We sped through small towns where it seemed that everyone was out an about on their bicycle. All of the homes we passed were adobe, mud looking sort of things. But each was livened up with a carefully maintained garden of dahlia’s and roses. Quite romantic, in the artistic genre sort of way.
We passed two locals going the opposite direction on dirt bikes, and then the road ended. And we didn’t see another human, or even any signs of human life for near five hours. Just us, an impossibly dusty, bumpy ‘road’ and our worry as to whether we’d made a horribly stupid decision. Well, all things turned out alright for us in the end, but there were a few tense moments as we jumped and jiggled along the way while our car scraped boulders, threw up rocks, and completely bathed itself in red dirt.
As the sun began to set, we started thinking about our options for sleeping. We had all of our camp gear, and we’d passed through the occasional small town (we’re taking maybe 500 people) after we’d gotten back on the main drag, but we hadn’t found anywhere that seemed inviting. We took a chance and turned off the main highway to explore a small town of Guandacol. We’d seen a sign about a hotel and were itching for a shower. This town, like all of the others consisted of small adobe houses, and things weren’t looking promising for a warm shower. Surprisingly, their hotel was just perfect. Clean, comfy beds, a freezing pool for us to jump in, and ahh hot showers!
Before we ventured on our dusty way, we passed Cerro Alcazar — Totally gorgeous red rocks that we drove right through.
This road doesn’t invalidate our car rental insurance does it?
Deep in the middle of nowhere, half way between Barreal and Guandacol, shortly after we decided we couldn’t turn back and shortly before we realized that we were at least 100 kms from another living soul.
Do you see that smudge on the horizon? Someone took the time to erect a cross in this wilderness. How did they get the supplies there? Who comes out to appreciate it?
This is a typical shrine to the patron saint of travelers. Story goes, a woman and her newborn baby were traveling through the desert. Some misfortune befell them, and they became stranded without food, or water, or rescue. The woman died, but her child miraculously survived by suckling on her breast. Argentine’s set up these displays all along the highway an leave drinks, snacks and the occasional fan belts. She’s a modern saint, after all!
San Juan to Barreal, Argentina
March 25, 2010
We arrived in San Juan late in the night (around 2:30am) from our bus ride from Mendoza. We figured it would be difficult finding a taxi that late at night, but as soon as we stepped out of the terminal, there was one waiting for us. We loaded our baggage and negotiated a 10 peso fare for our 10 minute ride to the hostel. 2 minutes later we arrived! No, the taxi wasn’t crazy fast, there must have been a typo on the website, and hostel wasn’t really that far away! Oh well!
We woke up the next morning to a ghost town. The entire city was empty. For a while, I thought we were in one of those movies where everyone was turned into dust except you… very eerie to walk around and not see a single soul. Turns out there was some unknown holiday, and everyone stayed up until dawn partying, and thus everyone who would normally be out and about was still sleeping. We couldn’t even find a convenience store open! When we finally made it to the bus station, there were a few people milling about.
We hopped the local #23 bus to Zonda to see the Cave winery there we’d heard so much about. Evidently, this company makes champagne in a cave, and the temperature is perfect there for the process. We were afraid they wouldn’t be open, since everything else was closed, but after ringing the bell, some one came and opened the gate for us. He didn’t speak English, but in my broken Spanish we determined that it was ok for us to take a look around. The cave started out pretty cool, leading into the mountain with very to see except stone! Here and there a little side cave was dug out, where they would store various stuff. We made it to the tasting room when someone came and yelled at us, very loudly and pointed back to the entrance of the cave. We had no idea what he said, but from the wild gestures, it seemed like we weren’t supposed to be there. As we walked back, we met up with a tour group and fell into step with them. I’ve no idea where they came from, as there is only one way in, and one way out, and we didn’t pass them! The tour was all in Spanish, and worked its way through the machinery, ending in a quick and small taste of Champagne, which was actually quite good. (I’m not much of a Champagne person myself.) We walked back to the tasting room to find that there was no tasting, but we could buy a few bottles if we desired. No thanks!
We decided to rent a car and drive around to some of the touristy places in the San Juan Province. The area is quite large, and taking a bus everywhere just didn’t seem very feasible. Our first destination was the city/town of Barreal. Getting there was an amazing drive! Once outside of San Juan, the landscape was a barren wasteland. It was arid desert after desert, with mountains of desert in between. We were starting to get thirsty and our map showed a city not far ahead. When we got there, we wondered how it could actually be on the map!
Evidently at one time there was a thriving city of maybe 10 people who lived here on the railroad junction. We guessed that when the railway stopped, the town died. There was one house that was occupied (the rest had no roofs like the one above), and he sold refreshments at an absolute bargain of double the normal price. We continued on, and passed through between two peaks of the mountain, and hit a one lane dirt road. It was quite beautiful in it’s total lack of life. Then all of a sudden, we started following a river, and the contrast was astounding. Tucked in between the desert hills as this beautiful scenery. Such a difference a little water makes!
The water looked so inviting, I wanted to for a swim, but it was impossibly hot out there, and we needed to move fast to get to our destination while they were open for tours. We are headed to the Astronomy complex in El Leoncito National Park. There are two telescopes here, and we were hoping to do a night tour and possibly sleep in the complex and check out the amazing night stars. We hadn’t been able to make a reservation, but had our fingers crossed! When we got there, we found out that one telescope was closed, and thus our lack of getting a lunar visit. However, we did get to take a tour of the other scope!
The complex sits at an elevation of around 2,600 meters, and this area is known to have more than 320 perfectly clear nights per year. It is located in a national park known for wildlife and a little desert oasis. Cool eh?
After touring the complex we took a walk through the national park. We were keeping our eyes out for the Puma who like to roam about and hunt for the guanacos. We found the guanacos, but sadly no puma!
Jenn found a nice place to stop and cool off from the heat. When we were recovered, we headed back to go check out the salt / mud flats at the base of the mountain. They were super cool! It wasn’t salt however… it was all mud! So much mud that you could see a mirage just looking out across it. We had some fun playing in the dirt and taking some interesting photos. As it started to get dark, we headed back into Barreal to find some food and camping. We found both, nothing like Argentine beef and a bottle of beer to finish off an awesome day in the Argentine wilderness!
Jenn: trying to guess how hot it was out here! Whew!
Lucas: Self portrait!
If only I had a guitar in my hands…
Jenn getting some good air!
Close-up view of the scorched earth
