After an hour driving down the Paso de Jama into Chile the driver suggested we stop to let the brakes cool down. What he failed to mention was that he had his foot right down on the pedal and nothing was happening. The road was a good tarmac road and fairly straight. We had dropped over 3Km in an hour, doing 60KPH. I reckon that's a constant 1:20 drop. By this time it was getting dark so we camped by the side of the road. We are getting quite adept at this wild c...

Yes this is the last blog entry from Argentina, dedicated to Riley Pullan, because of his interest in trains. The final leg of our journey through Argentina involved high altitudes, bad roads and a train line. The train line is called 'tren a las nubes' (train to the clouds). It was designed by a Pennsylvanian engineer and took 20 years to build from 1921. It was originally used to service Borax mines in the mountains but is now only operated occasionally as a t...

This entry is dedicated to our friend Mia who loves rocks. So we are back in Argentina for the last time. The Argentinian customs was interesting. Firstly we had to queue (the first time ever) outside the office in the blazing midday sun. Everything was slowly handwritten in two ledgers after the officer had returned from the kitchen where he was cooking lunch and then a very camp Customs officer wanted to inspect Gerty but got no further than the kitchen arrang...

We left Vicuna driving south (Peter hates going back on ourselves but the border pass was not quite far enough south) to visit a small park. A little way along the very bumpy road a loud clunk alerted us to a problem. It turned out to be a broken rear shock absorber. The mechanic on board quickly got to work and replaced it with the spare. We felt it wiser to return to Vicuna and search for another spare before we headed out on any further bumpy roads. We couldn...

North of Cordoba at a small town called Cerro Colorado we visited a site with petroglyphs, including one of a Spanish conquistador on his horse. They were drawn by the Comechinones indigenous tribe between the 10th century and the arrival of the Spanish. There are around 35,000 in the hills around the town. The night before visiting the petroglyphs we made the mistake of camping at a site next to a livestock farm; goats, pigs, cows and horses. We spent an hour ...