Next Stop: Unknown

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!