Tilcara

Day 112 – The too secret swimming hole

Erin had committed to getting up in the morning to snap some shots of the sunrise colours over town (as I’d done the previous morning’s early duties by trying to keep up with Marvin).  She also took the opportunity afforded by being up early to do some trip coordinating with Anna who is coming to join us for a few weeks in April.

The sun starting to light up the hills behind Tilcara.

Once Erin had got some snaps and I’d finished my lie in we set of to embark on a bit of acclimatising, with a walk up to the Garganta del Diablo (Devil’s Throat).  First up a road, then up a much narrower and steeper trail, we were disappointed to reappear on the road and discover that our destination was not reserved exclusively for those who’d slogged uphill on foot.  The gorge and waterfall were however quite pretty, and to beat the crowds we headed upstream in search of a swimming hole.  A thirty minute bash up a gorge later and we came to a small waterfall that not only blocked out way, but also lacked a secret swimming hole!

Donkeys heading the other way down the trail.

The inconsiderate waterfall.

We were parched from the long walk uphill.

After lunch (Lamb stew with Andean potatoes for me, Traditional salad with Quinoa for Erin) Erin opted to head back to the hostel and catch up on some emails while I went and rented a dodgy old mountain bike to do some exploring.

First I headed for Pucará, a Pre-Columbian village perched on the hill overlooking town.  Some of the buildings had been restored but it was a little underwhelming in all.  Especially underwhelming was the huge ‘Turkish Pyramid’ monument dedicated to the original archaeologists and erected right at the top of the hill!

One of the reconstructed dwellings at Pucará.

 
Livestock corrals.

Next I battled into a strong headwind up the main road for a bout 45 minutes to get to Maimará and Paleta del Pintor (Painter’s Palette Hill) so I could snap some shots of the cemetery in front of the colourful hill.

 
Maimará Cemetery with Paleta del Pintor in the background.

The ride home was considerably easier with the wind at my tail.  That night one of Erin’s dog friends first let himself in through our front door before settling down to sleep on our front porch…

 

Day 113 -  Welcome to Bolivia

Our plan was to catch a bus to the border, walk across, and then get a train to Tupiza, from where we intended to book a tour of Bolivia’s South West Corner.  We were doing well until we got to the outskirts of La Quiaza (the final town north in Argentina, 5171km north of Ushuaia where we started over two months ago) where the road was blocked.  From what I could tell the locals had blocked the road to protest in favour of bilingual education in schools (Spanish & Quecha). 

All the buses pulled up by the side of the road short of the blockade.

So we had to walk the last 2km or so to the border, getting slightly lost in the process and being redirected by a concerned Argentine Police Officer.  Unlike the many Argentine-Chilean border crossing we’d undertaken in the past couple of months, almost all of the traffic crossing this border was on foot.  It seems that trucks stop short of the border and freight companies simply pay Bolivians to cart the stuff across the old rail bridge (the bridge without any customs or immigration checks).  They must get paid per load or even per kilogram because they carry an awful lot and some of them run in lines like ants back and forth!

[No photos sorry, police (and smugglers) tend to get touchy with people taking photos around international borders, to get a feel try it as you go through security at the airport next time!]

Argentine immigration was done in a matter of minutes, the Bolivian side of things was significantly slower, but did move quicker once we discovered the ‘gringo’ line.  It seems if we’d been Bolivian it would have taken hours to cross.  At the train station we were greeted with the news that the train was ‘muy, muy tarde’ or very, very late.  Ten hours late approximately, though the guy behind the counter didn’t even seem prepared to stand by that.  The train has the distinct advantage over the bus of running on rails, rather than barely existent, potholed, rutted, and severely corrugated dirt road.  However we weren’t willing to wait more than twelve hours for the luxury of a smooth ride, so we trudged back to the bus terminal, breaking the news to other backpackers on the way.

Bus tickets bought we went in search of lunch, where we got our first taste of Bolivian value.  Lunch consisted of Chicken Noodle Soup, Carrot Fritters, Chicken with Veggies and Orange Mousse.  It was so huge that Erin couldn’t finish hers despite the fact we’d missed breakfast.  It cost less than A$5 each!

Boarding the bus a woman pushed in front of Erin (quite aggressively) and then wouldn’t get out of the way.  This wasn’t the first time this had happened today, let alone this week, and after saying ‘permiso’ (excuse me) twice Erin snapped and gently pushed back.  The woman went psycho!  Yelling and screaming, waving her hands in air and calling her all the names under the sun.  It turned out that this time the woman wasn’t trying to secure a seat on the bus but collect the ‘terminal fee’, something which is normally charged as part of the ticket in the other countries we’d visited.  The woman had been napping on the job and had let half the bus on without paying, which is why she’d so frantically pushed in.  Anyway, we paid the fee and got onto the bus, leaving the woman to mutter to herself!

The bus was predictably old and suspension-less and the road predictably bumpy and at times scary.  Though they did appear to be realigning the road and sealing it, it was only about 5% complete (about another 70% was at various stages of completion, but most works looked practically abandoned). 

Our bus fared better than another which we passed in a ditch.

In Tupiza we managed to book ourselves with our preferred tour company on a tour departing the next day, before heading out for another cheap meal (probably the best pizza we’ve had so far in South America) and an early night.

Salta

Day 110 – Touring the markets of NW Argentina day 2 and Puppy World

We got off the cold and shonky bus and had a pleasant walk through the park to our hostel.  Having breakfasted, befriending another English couple, Rhiannon and Marvin in the process, we set off to explore the town.  It being Sunday most of the stores were closed, so after a quick whizz through the centre square we headed for the Sunday market.  Erin’s carefully selected acquisitions on this occasion included a pair of ‘crazy bird’ earrings and some wooden llama toothpick thingies.  By this stage it was midafternoon and getting pretty hot, so we skulked back to the hostel to wait for the temperature to ease.

Funky red church (Convento de San Bernardo)

 
Colonial architecture around the main plaza.

When it had cooled off some more I headed out for a run around the park.  Sunday afternoon is obviously the time for Salta’s young and old (and canine) to hit the park.  There were bands playing, children covering play equipment, couples pedalling boats around the little lake, craft stalls set up all over the place and a pet adoption tent!  Recalling the special clause in our marriage contract the obliges me to immediately notify Erin if there is a playpen full of puppies in the vicinity, I headed back to the hostel to fetch her.  Rhiannon came along too and I left them to coo while I finished my run.

 
The girls returned to the hostel a little dejected though as many of the puppies seemed much younger than the ‘required age’ that they can be taken from their mothers and children where pulling and dropping them like they were teddy bears.

That night we chatted with Rhiannon and Marvin again about our plans for north and the commune/farm they had been working on for a few months, which sounded pretty cool if we had more time.

Day 111 – I must befriend slower people

Last night before bed I had mentioned to Marvin that I was considering running up nearby Cerro 20 de Febrero.  As there is a cablecar to the top Erin and Rhiannon were not particularly interested.  Marvin, however had had the same idea, what’s more he had decided it would be nice to be up there for sunrise.  My evening self having not properly taking into consideration the feelings of my morning self, I agreed.  To make matters worse, Erin kindly informed me as we hopped into bed that Marvin gets up at 5am every morning to meditate and seemed like a very fit person!

So at 6:30 we headed out of town up the hill.  We had intended to take the road to the top, rather than the stairs, but a navigational error saw us running up the stairs instead.  When I had to slow to a walk about half way up Marvin kindly slowed his jog to my pace and we made it to the top in time to see the lights of Salta below.  Unfortunately the weather was a bit overcast so there was no sunrise of sorts, but the red glow on the hills behind Salta was beautiful nonetheless.  With slightly more spare air in our lungs we had a good chat as we jogged easily back down the road.

After breakfast we decided to move on towards Quebrada de Humahuaca and the village of Tilcara.  Little adobe villages like Tilcara line a deep valley with an almost lunar feel (not that I’ve been to the moon).  There were no more dormitory beds available in the place we had chosen to stay, Malka Hostel (link), but the lady kindly put us in a cabin for the same price.  The hostel is up on the hill in a shady grove overlooking town, it’s quite beautiful.  It was quite a puff up that small hill, as we were also experiencing our first effects of being at altitude. 

The view over town from the hostel.

 
The town’s main church, I can’t find it’s name anywhere.

 
A mural on the side of a shop.

 
Erin relaxing after a hard day’s bus riding!

Córdoba

Day 108 – 4 months after arriving in Argentina, finally a Tango Show

Our hostel in Córdoba wasn’t hard to miss as we wearily walked from our night bus!  Formerly two houses converted into one big hostel it’s been brightly decorated inside and out (Hostel Che Salguero bills itself as an ‘Art Hostel’ (link)).

 
The front of Hostel Che Salguero.

Our wander around town included a few highlights, for example a church with a missing steeple (Parroquia Sagrado Corazón de Jesús de los Capuchinos whose steeple was omitted on purpose to symbolise human imperfection) and Cripta Jesuítica (built in the early 18th century, buried and forgotten when the Jesuits were expelled in 1829 and rediscovered underneath one of Córdoba’s main thoroughfares by Telecom in 1989 whilst they were laying a cable!).

 
Parroquia Sagrado Corazón de Jesús de los Capuchinos.

Iglesia de la Compañia de Jesús, a 350 year old church with ‘a cedar roof in the form of a ship’s hull’!

 
Cripta Jesuítica.

That afternoon we headed for the municipal pool in an attempt to beat the heat, only to wander around lost for half an hour before finding out that the pool had shut for the summer (prematurely in our opinion!).  When the weather cooled a bit I had another crack at going for a run, this time (not the day after a wine tour) I didn’t feel too bad.

This evening we decided to capitalise on our last opportunity to see an Argentine Tango Show.  When we arrived at the venue it turned out the show didn’t start until 11:30pm and that the set dinner was a bit overpriced.  So we reserved a spot for the show and headed out find dinner elsewhere.  The first spot we sat down at was a funky courtyard full of carefully selected junk like old sewing machines, lamps and agricultural equipment.  The menu wasn’t that appealing but they did have an ice lemon drink which was delicious and quickly consumed.

Erin in the funky bar.

Me eagerly anticipating the frozen lemons.

So we deferred to our ‘Cloney Planet’ (as a Polish girl we met in Púcon called it) and headed for one of their ‘our picks’.  La Nieta ‘e La Pancha is on a multi levelled wooden deck overlooking the street below, a bit reminiscent of Hummingbird in Melbourne.  Service was slow, but my meal was very tasty, Pork on a Pea and Ham Mash!

Back at the Tango show we ordered a Sangria (incorrectly as in turned out, because what we got was white not red!) and settled down for the show.   We were surprised to learn that Tango Shows are as much about singing as they are about dancing, but we weren’t disappointed as the couple singing were quite talented, especially the bloke.  Toward the end of the show the performers acknowledged their guests from around Córdoba, Argentina and the Globe.  Most of the patrons seemed to be Argentinean, a good sign we thought.

 
Our talented Tango Singer.

[Insert video?]

Day 109 – Touring the markets of NW Argentina day 1

In the morning we overcame our fear of museums and headed to Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes Emilio Caraffa.  We were surprised to find ourselves pretty much the only people there, despite the ridiculously cheap A$1 entrance fee.  Some of the exhibitions weren’t so great, like the one belonging to the guy obsessed with dots and squares, but others were really good, like the field of warrior statues made from scrap wood and metal, and the huge reel of paper going round the room with intermingling patterns (link?).

The exterior of the fine art museum.

In the evening  before catching our night bus to Salta we headed to the artisans market where Erin picked up a snazzy wood inlay ring (to match my wedding ring) and a purple wallet to replace the one that was stolen.

Mendoza

Day 105 – Shopping for a rainy day

We made a rather slow start in the morning (just for a change), so by the time we hit the shops for one of our last chances of being able to replace Erin’s rain jacket, siesta was just starting.  (You’d think we would have gotten used to it by now…) Resigned to three hours of barely anything being open we had a slow lunch and mailed some photo backup DVDs home. 

Since we’d arrived in Mendoza we’d been seeing pictures of models on billboards, posters, on the backs of buses, in shop windows, etc. but they didn’t appear to be advertising anything.  Eventually it dawned on us that they were competitors in the Vendimia Festival Queen competition, part of Mendoza’s upcoming wine festival.  Aspiring competitors (or those with wealthy supporters I suppose) take out advertising in the hope of swaying the voters. 

A collection of Vendimia posters, each girls seems to represent a different area around Mendoza.

 
Next we stumbled upon full size cutouts of the contestants. 

And finally happened upon the actual women coming out of their hotel (by accident of course!).  Erin wondered if they had to walk around fully dressed up for the remainder of the week!

Back at the hostel I took full advantage of the nice pool in the back garden (our first hostel pool since Iguazu), while the hostel cat befriended Erin whilst she was lounging poolside.

 

Day 106 -  Bikes and Wines

A short bus ride out of Mendoza put us in Maipu, where a dense collection of wineries makes for a popular bicycle tour amongst backpackers.  Erin opted for a mountain bike, while I went for a cruiser, our first stop was Bodega La Rural (bodega means winery).  The huge old vats in the cellar were impressive, as was the collection of winemaking equipment, some up to a century old.  After tasting their ‘exclusive’ Cab Sav we bought ourselves a glass of Torrontes, an Argentine specialty that I’ve taken a fancy to.

Big barrels at Bodega La Rural

 
Grape bags made of hide in the museum.

 

 

Next we tried to visit Trapiche, but they were inconsiderately closed for lunch, so we decided to move on to the next stop.  Almacen del Sur is a working farm that produce delicatessen goods for sale locally.  They also have a restaurant, with tables under a huge tree in their beautiful garden.  We were tempted by their (cheaper) ‘biker' menu’, but instead splashed out ($25!) and went for the wine tour menu, which included such delights as Patagonian Prawns, Red Peppers Stuffed with Hake and Potato and Cheese Croquettes with Olive Paste.  All quite delicious, and we sat there for quite some time enjoying the food, but more wineries beckoned.

An array of local delights.

After lunch we hit Tempus Alba, a posh new winery with a deck overlooking the vines.  The Canadian waitresses gave us a spiel on the tasting options, which included (a pricey) Malbec that they had been specially breeding on site for the last several years.

Our final stop was Viña el Cerno where we befriended an English couple, Flick and Tom.  Between chatting with them and waiting for the bike company to come replace my bike, which had forgotten how to keep it’s chain on for more than 50m, we were a little late back to the bike rental place.  A policeman on a motorbike followed us all the way back to the rental place and we figured it was to make sure we weren’t too wobbly!  But, as it turns out, apparently bikers aren’t supposed to be on the roads after 6.30pm (it was only 6.45) and if they are, the bike rental place must “pay a fee” for their service (of returning said bikers).  The guy from the rental place tried briefly to talk some extra money out of us (to cover the apparent fee),  but lost interest quickly when they realised they were dealing with someone who likes a good argument, especially with a few under the belt, conceding they took a while to replace the bike.

It turns out it was Flicks birthday and so back in town we had a nice night out to celebrate, visiting the local Italian festival, getting some tips regarding places further north and polishing off another couple of bottle of local produce.  Overall it was a most enjoyable day!

Day 107 – Remembering how to exercise

While Erin caught up on some correspondence I decided that I was about three months overdue for a run.  So I ran across town to Mendoza’s sprawling Parque General San Martin, I even found some exercise equipment and tried pitifully to remind my muscles what exercise was like (they weren’t impressed and are still complaining many days later).

One of the park’s many fountains.

 
Mendoza’s rowing lake.

That afternoon was spent planning future endeavours, blogging, splashing around in the pool, and generally killing time until our night bus.

On a brief trip out to the shops I was reminded of a peculiar Argentine quirk that I keep forgetting to write about.  Argentina has a severe shortage of coins, resulting in every cashier asking for you to surrender your change.  Of course if you do this you have no change for the next cashier, so each trip to the shops involves a careful consideration of the mood (and scariness) of the cashier and the shops ability to tender change.  On a number of occasions where neither party has been in possession of the required coinage I have seen change given in sweets or other items kept conveniently close to the checkout!

Valparaiso

Day 102 – The cradle that rocked

At about 3.30am this morning we awoke to 15 seconds of gentle rumble, enough to wake us up, followed by a terrifying minute of violent shunting side to side where the walls of our dorm roomed turned to jelly and plaster chunks began to rain onto us in the dark. It didn’t take long for us to work out what was going on! Our room was first door on the right and in our sleepiness the right thing to do seemed to be follow everyone else out onto the street. Matt grabbed me and I grabbed my doona to shelter our heads (and the fact that I was only in my underwear!) and we sprinted the 10 metres onto the street. Short of breath from leaping out of bed (we were both on top bunks) and the sprint, we stood looking wide eyed at each other and also around looking for hazards.

[Matt – I woke up and thought there was a big truck going past, until I realised we were on a pedestrian street with the nearest truck route hundreds of meters away. When the rumble all of a sudden turned to big side to side movements I worked out what was happening. Obviously the German guy in the bunk below Erin was a bit quicker off the mark than me, because I saw him shoot out of the room before I could even sit up (impressive given his ankle was so badly strained he hadn’t been off the couch in two days!). I followed suit, pausing long enough to collect my pants and Erin. Getting up the hallway was like being really drunk, every step you took seemed to land somewhere else and nothing would stay still, but once we were on the street things were a bit clearer. The biggest of the aftershocks in the morning sent the German guy shooting out of the room again. I know how he feels, more than a week later my heart still jumps every time an actual truck goes past!]

It being Friday night, the drunks from the bar next door had also poured out onto the street and thought it was hilarious, yelling and clapping! The rumbling was over shortly and then the banter began, everyone both excited from the adrenaline rush, but not knowing what to do next. When nothing had happened for about 30 minutes, Ricardo the night manager took a walk through the house. It appeared the building, built after the 1905 quakes that destroyed the old part of town, had stood up to the test very well and despite being a mess looked to be only superficially damaged. He let us back in through the cloud of plaster dust to quickly grab shoes and pants and then we were ordered back onto the street to wait for aftershocks.

We spent another hour or so on the street and during that time there were only two or three little rumbles, enough to make us nervous. We had no idea how long you should wait for aftershocks or what to do and our Lonely Planet guide was useless on the matter, stating that earthquakes were a fact of life in Chile but nothing more! So by mutual agreement at about 5am we filed back inside to shake out our sheets full of plaster and try and get back to sleep. The power was out at this stage and so we figured there was nothing much else we could do.

Needless to say we dozed at best, with another decent sized aftershock hitting at about 7am [Magnitude 8.8 - OFFSHORE MAULE, CHILE]. By 8.30am the power had come back on and so the whole hostel was out of bed again and huddled in the lounge watching the news, trying to work out the details. The hostel managers and another friend who was staying for the weekend pulled together a decent breakfast of fruit and eggs, serving coffee and not letting anyone else lift a finger.

Some of the plaster chunks that had fallen onto our bed.

An adobe wall in stairwell of the hostel – not too bad.

Some more superficial damage.

We checked to see if the internet was working and given it was we looked to see what we could find out. When we saw that the earthquake had measured 8.8 on the Richter scale (and somewhere in the 6’s where we were) we figured it would make the news at home and thought we had better send some messages!!! The rest of the hostel too was eager to send messages home and so for the remainder of the day our laptop was passed from person to person. Being so close to Santiago, many were at the end of their trips and waiting to fly home so were also desperately trying to find out if flights would be cancelled and what they should do. We were a little more relaxed about such things as we had planned to spend some time in Valparaiso on the coast before heading back inland to Mendoza.

There were over 30 aftershocks over the course of the day. All small but still enough to stop every person mid speech, anticipating if a move should be made (see the above link for the list!). We spent the day inside the hostel, playing board games and picking the brains of other travellers who had come from the direction we were going. I’m not sure Jenga was the best game to play, but Matt and our new friends Ben and Erin persisted, that being one of the only multilingual options! Jorge and his father braved the queues at the supermarket and cooked a big lunch for us and after surveying the damage to our dorm room (being the worst one) moved us into a roomy double upstairs that had sustained much less damage.

The view from our new room. We would not have fancied being in some of those houses on stilts during the quake, but amazingly they look untouched!

Later that evening, we went for a brief walk to the corner shop with a few of the others. We weren’t sure what we would find, as we had just been watching images of people in Hawaii going crazy in the panic of the resulting tsunami. A survey of the area showed that almost all of the buildings in the old part of town were similar to ours, only superficially damaged, although it was a little alarming that many of the ornate concrete facades had fallen down at the front of the buildings, making our decision to run out the front probably a poor one. We read up later and I had had the right idea to pull the doona over our heads, but it seems we should have stayed in bed and waited it out. Next time…

There were rumbles again all through the night, but we did manage to get some sleep, exhausted from an eventful 24 hours!

Day 103 – All is well in Valparaiso

Late the next morning after another cooked breakfast, we decided to go for a longer walk around town to survey the damage and take shots of the graffiti that this town was famous for. We also thought we would survey the craziness at the bus station and see if we could get tickets to Mendoza in the near future.

The view from the Bellavista area where we stayed.

The steep streets that wind up the hills.

Some more colourful creations.

Much of the area is pedestrian access only.

One of the neat little houses, with the hills full of them in the background.

Many of the streets in the old part are cobblestoned, with replacement streets also being paved and not asphalt.

A disused ascensor judging by the plants growing inside the little carriage. We also had a couple of trips in some non-disused ascensors, these snazzy boxes on a pendulum cable take you up and down hills for about 5oc a ride. There are about a dozen left in Valparaiso and Matt was particularly taken by them! (And I, happy not to take the stairs!)

From our walk, it appeared that what was shown on TV in relation to Valparaiso, was a bit of a dramatisation. Yes we did see a number of buildings devastated in the newer part of town (where it is more likely that developers have paid their way to an earthquake proof certificate) but these were maybe one in one hundred, and mostly on the main street in the flat part of town closer to the coast.

The unstacked shelves in a pharmacy.

Some carnage near the bus station, also featured on CNN.

S0me more damage on the main street through town.

The bus station wasn’t crazy at all, business as usual, and we were able to get a ticket to Mendoza for 8am the next morning. All of the guys in the hostel were also able to get tickets to either Mendoza and then on to Buenos Aires to try and pick up flights from BsAs or down to Santiago to take a risk and wait for the airport to reopen. So we were quite lonely at the hostel that night as it was just us and Jorge left!

Day 104 – Over the hills and far away!

Up and out early we walked to the bus station in the dark, were on our bus at 8am and braced ready for the eight hour journey east. About an hour into the trip we met our first section of ‘dodgy’ road. A section of an overpass had separated and lifted about 10 or 15 cm causing a large ‘bump’ in our bus ride – but it was ok, there were witches hats on either side!!!!

We managed to stay awake to get some great snaps of the very high pass the bus route took over the Andes and its 15 switchbacks and some of the other baron but spectacular scenery along the way. The border crossing was slow as usual, but by far not the slowest, and we were in Mendoza, wine country, before dinnertime.

[NB the tiny tunnel ahead through the rock]

We’d lost another day travelling but were happy to be back in Argentina where hostel managers give you a private room even though you didn’t pay for it, guys give you their ticket in the queue so you don’t have to go to the end even though you’ve been queuing longer than everyone else and couldn’t find the secret number dispenser, waitresses chase you down the street to give you your jacket back and other nice things like this.