David and Edel

Oak barrels in a Maipu winery.

The city of Mendoza is Argentina’s wine growing capital, and we had made sure to meet up with a genuine Frenchman so that we wouldn’t look like complete amateurs when visiting the wineries. Matteo had arrived from New Zealand via Chile, and sported the same spectacular jetlag that we caught ourselves a few months back on the same long east-bound flight. Alcohol is one of the worst ways to try to cure a jetlag, but Matteo was brave and willing to try anyway. Apart from visiting an underwhelming modern art museum in the city center we accomplished little during our first few days in Mendoza. We moved hostel after three days as we are now stuck in high season and the room we were in was booked out – luckily we found another hotel closeby that had a room free. And no wonder…something was terribly wrong with this room – the place was a bit cheaper and had fan instead of a/c, but something else was heating the room up as a furnace… It kept least 10 degrees Celsius hotter than anywhere else in the hotel, clocking in at 32 degrees already at 7am in the morning! We checked the walls and floor but couldn’t figure out where all the heat was coming from… After two nights of awful sleep with the slow ceiling fan only gently stirring the air we found a third hotel to move to.

Bottles in a Maipu winery.

We went rafting one of the days – there’s a fast flowing brown river with lots of rapids an hour out of town. The water was higher than usual in the river and it was great fun. Between the rapids I asked the raft-leader if anyone ever fell off, “oh rarely, maybe three times in a season”, then ten seconds later someone fell off the raft just in front of us (the person was quickly recovered luckily). Matteo went paragliding the next day, then we organized to do the main thing people come to Mendoza for: bike around between the wineries for a day. Being good students we commenced the sampling already the evening before, so we got a bit of a late start and only made it to two different wineries during the day, plus a small olive farm. One of the wineries was very traditional, giant oak barrels, the second more modern with huge metal cylinders. It was nice to bike around in the sunshine, stop by the side of the road here and there for some bread, cheese and olives, then sample a few more wines…better the more kilometers you’ve biked. It was nearly too hot to drink wine though really…but it probably wouldn’t have been too good an idea to ask for a cold beer…

Matteo (and Lukas) and Edel in Valparaiso.

After eight nights in Mendoza – one of our longer stops for the whole trip – we had our final Argentinean steak and then the three of us got a long bus-ride across the Andes back to Santiago, then to Valparaiso, the cute rundown sea-port town me and Edel visited already once while making our way south in Chile three months ago. We were stressing a bit to make the bus…ending up with the only taxi driver in all of Latin America that stops for amber, and arrived at the station with just two minutes to spare – before having to wait an hour for the delayed bus. It got even more late during the border crossing 3,200 meters up in the mountains – standing still for hours in the queue. Once we got inside the checkpoint all counters except two were closed…long queues but the people behind all the other counters were busy playing patience on the computer or doing their facebook… The bus was meant to reach Santiago at 5pm but got there at 9pm..luckily we still found a bus to Valparaiso and the hostel there had kept the room we booked.

Epic looking feline in Valparaiso.

We spent two nights in Valparaiso, walking around town and looking at all the cool graffiti (some had been cleaned since out last visit – La Ganja es una Deidad no more unfortunately…) and riding the funky funicular lifts. Next we headed to Pichilemu – Chile’s surf capital – and signed up for some lessons at a surf lodge outside town. Matteo had already mastered the art in New Zealand, but me and Edel took a lesson with a real long-haired surfer-dude who thought everything was “epic”.

At least we look like surfers!

This beach was a bit less beginner-friendly than the one Matteo had surfed in New Zealand, but he still managed to stand up on the board unlike us. There were crazy waves running out from the beach to meet the real waves in a big splash, and currents dragging you along as you fight the waves trying to get back out. The hardest part was just getting far enough out to even get to try – my routine would be something like this: struggle for half an hour to paddle out, big waves beating me in the face, get tipped over and go under, swallow some water, get a bruise from someone else’s board, and find myself all the way back at the beach again without even having tried to catch a wave! Did get to catch a few waves eventually, body-boarding along the whole way to the shore with the wave breaking underneath me, but didn’t get as far as standing up on my feet. Just as often the wave would just pass by below without taking me along, completely ignoring all my frantic paddling.

Street in Valparaiso.

I had probably swallowed a gallon of sea water at the end, with another gallon lodged in my sinuses (exiting gracefully through the nose in large quantities whenever I’d tilt my head…). Still fun though, but awfully hard work. Like snowboarding if you had to climb the whole mountain between each run instead of taking the lift… We went back a second day, and I managed to surf standing on my knees at least. Then I paddled out a bit too far “too catch that perfect wave” and the current caught me and dragged me some kilometer down along the beach. I was paddling until I was blue in the face but couldn’t quite tell if I was getting closer to or further away from the beach… Once I finally got back we decided to call it for the day. Me and Edel would fly to Bogota after this, but I looked in no shape to cross borders…three day stubble I didn’t want to shave due to a bad sunburn, blood-shot eyes from the waves beating me in the face – looking in the mirror even I would think I was smuggling! Then again, who ever heard of anyone smuggling drugs in to Colombia?

Stayed out of the water and sun the last day, then went in to town for leaving drinks with Matteo. Slept most of the bus to Santiago the next day, as well as the flight to Buenos Aires, the nine hour airport stopover, and the flight to Bogota…

After leaving Tilcara we got a bus to Jujuy, then another to the small town Libertador close to the Calilegua national park. In Libertador we got a collectivo taxi to take us another bit further to Calilegua town, which the guidebook recommended as a nicer place to stay, though when we got there the town’s only little hostel was full. Luckily the same taxi driver spotted us again when driving around looking for people for the return journey, and we checked in to a hotel back in Libertador instead. When we went for something to eat in the evening we noticed the whole town was overrun by one-inch bugs, thousands of them running around or lying crushed everywhere on the sidewalk.

Bus to Calilegua.

In the morning we got the one daily bus to the national park, after having breakfast in the hotel while being interviewed by the fairly-drunken staff…“which part of America is Ireland in now again?”… The bus had a nice countryside feel to it, finally limping out of town an hour late packed with people and the aisle stacked high with sacks of potatoes. The road runs through the national park to a couple isolated villages on the other side – we got off at the second ranger station “Mesada de las Colmenas” somewhere in the middle of the park, planning to do a trek from there. The ranger station was unmanned, but a faded map outside suggested the trek should start nearby – we eventually found where it branched off from the road, unsigned except for a fallen-down rotting sign a hundred meters into the trek reminding you not to forget to register… It hadn’t been walked in a while it seemed – overgrown and lots of spiderwebs across the trail kept getting stuck in my face. It was boiling hot when we started the trek, even though we were 1200 meters up, and the trail was a steep downhill, through dense forest covered in epiphytes; bromeliads and even cactus growing up in the trees.

Natural shower in Calilegua.

At the end of the climb down we came to a small river and a waterfall. The water was cold and refreshing and we were hot and sweaty from the walk – we hadn’t brought any swim gear but luckily I’m Swedish and we seemed to be all alone in the park. We stayed a couple hours by the stream, lunching on tuna, bread and olives we’d packed, before starting the long climb back up (did meet someone on the way actually…). When we got back to the ranger station we started walking back along the road – nice views out over the forested hills in the park but it was boiling hot and now we had less shade…it was all downhill at least luckily. When we got a lift some 6-7 kilometers later we were almost completely out of water, and it was great to feel the breeze in our face sitting on the back of the pickup.

Back in the comfort of the hotel in Libertador I discovered there might be something to be said for not “going Swedish” in the national park – I counted a full 30 ticks sucking blood from my leg! Got a bus back to Salta the next day (…more ham and cheese sandwiches), then a long 20 hour bus took us (minus our contraband apples which were confiscated by an armed guard..) south to Mendoza. The city of Mendoza is a wine growing Mecca, and we had organized to bring with us a genuine Frenchman so we wouldn’t make complete fools of ourselves. Matteo had already arrived from Chile and was waiting in the hostel.

Forest in the Calilegua national park.

Iglesia San Francisco in Salta.

Salta is quite a nice city, lots of old colonial architecture, and still very hot even though it’s at 1200 meters altitude up in the mountains – not as humid as the area we left behind though. Teresa organized to finish her trip and go home, and me and Edel looked into visiting some of the cloud-forest reserves to the north. The El Rey park was difficult to get to this time of the year – one person we talked to explained that we’d need to rent our own 4×4 and then continued on to explain the safest way to cross a high river without getting the car swept away… Remembering something we had seen in Tibet Edel talked some sense into me and we aimed to get to the slightly more accessible Calilegua national park instead, after first heading to visit a couple villages up in the mountain desert.

Before leaving Salta we went to a museum set up to display the mummies of three children found on 6700 meters altitude on a mountain nearby, sacrificed by the Incas. Incredibly well preserved, as were the number of small offerings left with them, made of gold and colourful seashells and feathers from every corner of the Inca empire.

Pigeons at the Salta plaza.

We didn’t have much luck with food in Salta, while it is a big city the cuisine in parts of Argentina can get a bit repetitive…little but pizza and sandwiches on most menus. Ham and cheese is a particular obsession..you get ham and cheese sandwiches on every long bus you take and in restaurants ham and cheese gets put in absolutely everything..even a side of potatoes can arrive at the table covered in the stuff. A lasagna I had in Mendoza some week later in fact was nothing except ham and cheese..in layer after layer. Edel did manage to find one place in Salta prepared to cook seafood, though the pyromaniacs in the kitchen turned her squid into something reminding me of the Cape Horn sailing book I’m reading at the moment, where the starving sailors start eating old leather anti-chafing gear from the ship… The guidebook did list a couple alternative places, but the one lebanese and two vegetarian restaurants we tried to find had closed down (maybe burned down by the same pyromaniac?). Fruit is so hated that we even had an armed guard confiscate our peaches, apples and plums on the Mendoza bus a while later! (maybe something to do with Mendoza being an important wine-growing region?)

Cactus by the Pucara ruined fortress.

From Salta we headed for Tilcara, a cute little desert town of adobe houses at 2450 meters altitude. It is domestic tourism high-season now and many places were full when we got there. We walked off in a random direction from the bus station, and after checking a couple places a young boy spotted us on the street and led us to his mums house where we could rent the basement floor for three nights. Tilcara offered a nice break from the monotone food we’d been eating for a while recently, with some lovely restaurants serving creative quinoa dishes and even real vegetables!

Purmamarca town.

In Tilcara the first day we went to the Pucara ruins – a pre-Colombian fortress on a hill just outside town, overgrown by tall cactus. The ruins are dominated by a huge pyramid – built in the 1950’s as a monument by the early archeologists to celebrate themselves! The following day we hopped on a bus further north to another small town called Humahuaca at nearly 3000 meters – popping north of the Tropic of Capricorn on the way for the first time in three months. Humahuaca has a nice town square with an old church, and a gigantic modern independence monument up on a big hill. We picked up a couple things on the market in town, and had some good empanadas before heading back to Tilcara to catch a different bus south to a third town called Purmamarca.

Hilltop concert.

Purmamarca sits at the foot of “Cerro de los Siete Colores”, a series of multi-coloured hills behind town. We were on the way down after taking some photos from the hill when we were hijacked by a group of Argentinians who were doing an improvised concert up on the hilltop – they got more and more people to come up and join them and after a while there was a good crowd sitting up on the hill, playing guitar and drums and sharing paper carton wine, Argentinian songs and Manu Chao. We had thought they were a band at first but apparently they had just met earlier that day! Lovely spontaneity…

Cactus by Purmamarca.

After we emerged from the Ibera swamps we headed for San Ignacio, a small town close to a number of old Jesuit mission ruins. The Jesuits set up a number of large missions in the Paraguay-Argentina-Brazil jungle area, to eliminate the indigenous Guarani culture and way of life by turning them into good little Christians, in exchange for protecting them against the plantation owners who wanted to eliminate the indigenous culture and way of life by turning them into slaves. The first still being a lot more fun than the second thousands of Guarani moved to the missions. After some hundred years the Jesuits were kicked out by the Spanish crown, when they had become “too powerful”.

Strangler fig on the Loreto ruins.

We explored the ruins in San Ignacio itself first, buildings made of red brick with some of the stone carvings and decorations still surviving. In the afternoon we got a taxi to take us to the nearby Loreta and Santa Ana ruins, joined by an Argentinian student with a talent for talking his way out of the entrance fee. These ruins were less restored, still overgrown and in places covered by strangler figs to remind a little of some of the Angkor ruins. Santa Ana had a graveyard which had been used again in the early 1900’s – bit of a spooky place with open and broken coffins lying around in crumbling cemetery ruins…big tree roots growing through the roofs. Thousands of big spiders and cicadas were filling the trees.

The Trinidad ruins in Paraguay.

The next day we headed for Paraguay, to visit the Trinidad ruins on that side of the border. It took quite a number of buses to get there – beginning with one back again to Posadas, then three buses first to the border, across a several kilometer long bridge to the second border, then to the town Encarnacion on the Paraguayan side, then finally a bus to Trinidad. We entered the country legally this time, getting our passport stamped (unlike on our 5-minute sightseeing trip from Iguazu). The bus was crowded, India-style nearly. Encarnacion looks quite chaotic, partly flooded by red muddy water the day we passed through. The Trinidad ruins an hour north are much better preserved/restored than the ones on the Argentinian side – covering a big field with well tended lawns and lots of intact decorations and sculptures. The heat and strong sun as we walked around the ruins was brutal. Unfortunately once we arrived we didn’t have enough Paraguayan money for the tickets (we hadn’t found a proper changing place so had changed on the street..only as much as we thought we needed) – luckily they let us pay with Argentinian pesos instead.

Edel and Teresa in the Trinidad ruins.

On the way back we flagged a bus to Encarnacion from the road, then got another border-crossing bus but this time we got stuck on the long bridge. Crossing into Argentina seems more popular… We were standing up in the crowded bus now slowly turning into a sauna without the wind as we were hardly moving. Only gained maybe ten meters every few minutes, and I could feel drops of sweat running down my arms and legs. We could hop off and walk of course, but it would have been about 40 minutes to walk in either direction from the middle of the bridge, and we had ran out of water…nearly 40 degrees in the shade, of which there was none. Luckily the driver too was getting restless and eventually he got fed up enough to drive in the oncoming lane against traffic across the rest of the bridge.

We had a 20 hour bus to Salta, 1200km to the west, booked for the next evening. Had planned to pop back in to the San Ignacio ruins during the way, but the ticket, though valid for 15 days, allowed only one entrance… Saw some spectacular lightning in the evening from the bus to Salta – I was watching it for 40 minutes before I fell asleep and the sky never stayed dark for more than a second.