The end of the Andes

Immediately after my last post both Nicole and I were stricken by the most sever dose of food poisoning that either of us can remember. I had left Nicole at the hotel to go to the internet as she had been feeling a bit off colour and by the time I returned she was already throwing up and I wasn´t far behind. Needless to say we had a great night taking turns running for the bathroom and I am sure the other people sharing our hotel enjoyed the sound-effects which continued until after 2am. The next day we were both shattered and ditched our crappy hostel for a nice hotel around the corner so we could recuperate in comfort – and besides the bathroom smelt bad…… Best we can figure is the culprit was a bottle of orange juice we had shared that afternoon. It was the only thing we had both drunk or eaten. Apparently a while ago in South Aussie there was a case of salmonella in OJ which nailed enough people to get into the news.

The day after, with our stomachs mostly under control we headed out of Tafi del Valle for the town of Cachi via the ruins of the Indian city of Quilmers. There were some nicely restored dry stone walls with plenty of giant cactus for scenery and was an interesting enough place to poke around. Cachi was a nice enough small town, but the only place in Argentina so far that I have had a bad steak. It was tough enough that even the local stray dog had trouble chewing it up….

The drive from Cachi to Salta was amazing, again. We crossed through a high pass from absolute total desert and dropped into a valley of dense rainforest. It is just crazy how quickly the country can change. One side of a mountain can get 2500mm of rain per year, the other side gets 25mm.

Salta initially didn´t do much for us. We greatly preferred Mendoza with its leafy avenues, but there were still some nice parks and plazas in Salta and it grew on us a bit after we had a look around. The Tren de los Nubes (train to the clouds) which Mike and Kylie took whilst they were here only ran once a week on a Saturday so, after some confused conversation with a tour guide, we decided just to drive the route ourselves. The train goes up into the mountains toward the Chile border to La Polerilla Viaduct at an altitude of 4200m, and then come back again along the same route. We opted to drive a loop following the train to the Viaduct but then head further north past a large salt lake and down to the town of Purmamarca. Not knowing what a viaduct actually was we were a bit surprised to find it is just a train bridge. At 60m high it was a decent enough bridge, but it was just a bridge. I guess if they called it a bridge then illiterate people like us wouldn´t drive for hours to look at it. In any case the drive itself was worth the effort for the amazing scenery and I was able to set a new personal altitude record at 4200m. By the way, walking up a 60m hill at 4200m is actually pretty damn hard work. Guess that is no surprise for those of you who were recently hiking in the Himalayas but was a bit of surprise for us non-mountain men.

The Salinas Grande was a bit underwhelming and didn´t inspire us to stop the car, but the mountain pass that followed was probably the best we had seen, topping out at 4170m. Some of the other passes we had been up slowly wound their way up a wide valley so you didn´t really feel high. This time we went almost straight up with astounding views, crossed over the top and we greeted by an even more amazing view before dropping straight back down nearly 2000m. You really understand how high you are when you drive down down down for ages only to find that you are still well above the highest point in Australia!
We had a great room in Purmamarca with a nice view of the ¨hill of 7 colours¨. The Andes are like nothing I have ever seen, or even imagined. They are almost completely devoid of vegetation in most places, with the exception of giant cactus, but the soil/rock changes colour almost everywhere you look. The place is just massive piles of multicolored dirt eroded into all sorts of crazy shapes. It is like a massive moonscape on acid and a geologists paradise.

Farewelling Purmamarca we had one final drive up the world heritage listed Quebrda de Humahuaca valley. Whist it was a lovely drive, it wasn´t any more impressive than many other areas we had recently driven through. With that we turned our back on the Andes for now and pointed the car across the Chaco aiming for Correntes on the mighty Rio Parana.

The Chaco is a vast low plain of semi-arid looking scrub stretching across most of northern Argentina. There are only a few dodgy towns spread over hundreds of km, so accommodation options were limited. Darkness found us in the town of Monte Quemado about half way across and looking for a room of the night. There was a hotel sign on the highway with an address in town, which would have been much more useful if combined with some street signs. After dodging a few pigs and navigating the muddy streets, including a lake in the main street which threatened to swamp our little car, we found our way to the salubrious establishment complete with large drunk, partially clothed, inbred lurking in reception. I was starting to feel like we had walked into a scene from Deliverance. Somewhere over the faint banjo music I heard a pig squeal…. After settling into our uncomfortable overpriced hotel room we went for another drive around town to give the locals something to stare at, but it hadn´t got any better although maybe there were a few more nervous looking pigs about. That evening we were serenaded to sleep by the sounds of someone vomiting up their dinner, 15 beers and most likely a few vital organs outside our room about 1am. At 0830 the next day the hotel helpfully turned off the air conditioner for us and then someone tried to enter the room. We decided it was time to head off before we ended up bound and gagged in a basement and I can promise you that the best view of Monte Quemado is in your rear vision mirror.

Having narrowly escaped being made to squeal like a pig we arrived in Corrientes keen for some civilisation. Corrientes is on the Rio Parana which is a damn big river and apparently home to some good sized Dorado too, which I am keen to catch. Unfortunately accommodation was hard to come by once again and we found ourselves in a pretty crappy hotel a bit out of town. Anyway, it kept the rain off – and there was plenty of that. Following our 9am wake up call, which we had mistakenly ordered the previous afternoon with our dodgy Spanish, we staggered downstairs to find the lobby flooded and our car sitting in a lake which used to be a road. Luckily it wasn´t too deep for our little car and we managed to make our way out of town dodging fallen trees and powerlines. Seemed it had been quite a night.

Heading down the river we settled on the town of La Paz, about 400km south of Corrientes, where we are now. La Paz is a pretty nice town and we have a good hotel next to the plaza for a reasonable price so life is looking up. Despite it being closed season for Dorado at the moment I have managed to line up a charter for tomorrow, although the river is in full flood so I am not overly hopeful of catching much. Anyway, we´ll have a crack and see what happens. Stay tuned and I´ll let you know how we go.