Over the last few warm and dry weeks we have got into a nice routine of camping 3 or 4 nights and then a night in a hotel. Finding a campsite has usually not been difficult as they are scattered all over Chile and Argentina. Most towns even have a municipal campsite if we got stuck. Weekends is not a good time for camping as both nations love to come out with family and friends and camp and barbeque large slabs of meat. Their festivities normally include a lot of music and talking until well into the early hours. At a recent campsite just as everything settled down in the site itself a local started a very very loud party. Even the campers complained. The Police were called but they didn't even get out of bed saying it was Saturday so they could play it as loud as they liked. We packed up and drove out of town to a very quiet spot. When we woke we found we had parked in the municipal dump together with fish heads and assorted carcasses. One night when we could not find a campsite we ended up driving off-road behind a large rocky outcrop for the night. It had great views over a valley and we watched a massive rainstorm with great flashes of lightning.

After our night in the dump we drove down a canon (Canon del Atuel) of amazing rock formations of cream, pink, orange and metallic green next to vivid terracotta. The canon runs 20Kms between two lakes. It was very quiet with only a few motorcyclists and cyclists passing us. In fact it was peculiarly quiet. At the end the road got very bad and finally we turned a corner to see a barrier across the road stopping cars because the road was dangerous. Opps. We quickly moved the barrier, watched by several amazed locals, and drove of through hundreds of parked cars. So that’s where everyone was.

Whilst a good supermarket still gets us excited we are still not used to them closing at 1PM until 5PM. A four hour lunch break does seem a bit excessive. Even the big supermarkets, (including a Carrefour) all do this. We wonder what the staff do? Sleep? The towns seem to die away in the afternoon, only to burst back into life in the evenings, most shops not shutting till 10 PM (far too late for us tired travellers).

Our next stop was Uspallata. We wanted to drive along the scenic road to the border. The road passes along a dramatic canyon that appears to suffer a lot from landslides and river erosion. Along the way we stopped at Puente del Inca, a natural stone bridge made from the precipitation of minerals in the thermal springs. Charles Darwin visited the area in the mid 1800's. A Spa built in 1940 has all but vanished, partly destroyed by a landslide and now covered by mineral deposits. It was an eerie sight. Nearby is the highest peak outside the Himalayas at 6962 metres, Cerro Aconcagua. Finally near the border on the original VERY winding road we drove to a height of 3800metres to see the statue of Christ (Monumento al Cristo Redentor). It was erected in 1904 to celebrate the so called May 1902 Pact, signed by Chile and Argentina under the auspices of the British King Edward VII, to determine once and for all the border between the two countries. The statue was made from melted down canons and other weapons. It was snowing so we didn’t hang around. The drive was a touch scary to say the least.

The next day we drove in the opposite direction on the old colonial road, built by the Spanish to reach their mines especially the silver mines at Potosi in Bolivia. Later San Martin boldly marched across Argentina with an army to free Chile and then go onto occupy Lima in Peru, fighting for independence from the Spanish. Later still Charles Darwin journeyed along the road and a plaque dated 2009 commemorates this. The road itself was great if a little daunting with many (over 25) sharp hairpin bends. Can’t say I would have been to keen to march along this road.