The beginning of March saw us returning to Uruguay, almost exactly 11 months since we had first received Mr Jones in Montevideo and taken our first tentative steps in beginning to explore South America. Those tentative steps had seen us exploring Uruguay for a month and we had left with slightly conflicted feelings about the country, on the one hand it was very expensive in respect to food and other daily items and in many ways seemed quite old fashioned but on the positive we had always felt super safe, welcome and had enjoyed the down to earth wholesome family atmosphere that seemed to exist throughout the country. What we had forgotten about was the incredible neatness and organised feeling of everything which immediately hit us as we drove away from the border and towards the little town off Nuevo Berlin where we had our eye on staying at a free municipal park on the banks of the Rio Uruguay.
It was very hot and on our second morning there, one of the municipal workers who drives the rubbish collection truck, briefly spoke with us and said he would come around later with ice. That afternoon he pitched up in his private car and a cooler box full of frozen 2l water bottles as a gift for us so that we could keep our food and drinks cold, all the while not knowing that we have a fully functional freezer inside Mr Jones. While we were attempting to chat with and thank him for his kindness he then proceeded to also give us a gift of a large amethyst stone, thankfully we could return the favour with a small stone we had from Africa – sometimes Tania little collection of random stones in the front of Mr Jones have their use. This selfless act, confirmed firstly our year-old impressions of Uruguay and secondly, that so often it is the people you encounter that truly add richness to travel. Thanks Mauri, it was a pleasure meeting you and good luck with your own travel dreams to Africa.
After a couple of relaxing days, we crossed back into Argentina at the Paysundu border so that we could renew our visa period. We have become accustomed to quick and easy border crossing so where quite surprised when we drove up and encountered a long line of cars which over the course of an hour steadily inched forward until we were able to enter the actual border post and it’s one-stop drive through counters, there is none of that craziness associated with African border posts where you ward off “touts/runners” telling you how bad the queues are and so forth, here you just drive up and present you passport together with vehicle papers before typically being on your way.
Over the course of the next 5 days we wandered approximately 1200km across Argentina agricultural heartland towards Mendoza which included passing through what many consider to be Argentina most dangerous city, Rosario. Rosario is currently famous and infamous for two things, it is the home town of Argentina’s soccer idol (Lionel Messi) and it is currently caught up in some rather violent drug wars between rival smuggling gangs. In the end, Rosario was a non-event for us as the national road bypasses around the city and the city will instead probably remain more memorable for us for the incredible approach to it – the last 50km crosses the huge floodplain/delta of the Parana river. The Parana river is South America’s second largest (after the Amazon) and is 4880km long, originating in Brazil before crossing Paraguay and Argentina.
Once in Mendoza we quickly set about visiting the mechanic we had been so impressed with when last there in October 2022 in order to establish how serious he thought the oil leak was behind the engine and if he could repair it. Unfortunately for us, with Mr Jones being as heavy as he is, he did not have a sufficiently strong lift in order to perform the job but fortunately (or at least for now we are hoping so) he didn’t consider the leak too serious and suggested we could delay the repair to somewhere else down the road. In the meantime, though, we took the decision to replace Mr Jones radiator and hopefully eliminate once and for all his/her menopausal issues which have followed us around for almost our entire time in South America.
A couple of days later having installed a new radiator and been partially successful, with only a little drama, in carrying out other normal mundane tasks (see Captain log entry for 8 March) we attempted to flee dodge and start the northwards trek into what for us was the unexplored north western region of Catamarca. Only 50km outside Mendoza we stopped for a quick couple of photos at striking white wall/monument and thankfully, as we were about to get going again Stuart noticed a wet patch under Mr Jones. Suspecting that one of the pipe hose clamps just needed to be tightened a little more after the radiator installation, he popped the bonnet to in fact discover that the one cooling pipe now had a small hole in it, which fortunately was not too severe and could be “bandaged” up with some self-sealing tape. So back to Mendoza we went, to purchase a new pipe and install it in the campsite that afternoon once Mr Jones had cooled down.
The route we had been attempting to take out of town was Ruta 52 and had been recommended to us by the mechanic as a much more attractive alternative to Ruta 40 when going north from Mendoza. The following day, when we did successfully leave Mendoza, we discovered how good a recommendation it was and also how fortunate we had been to discover the leak when we did as only 5km later the road climbed and climbed up an amazing mountain pass (at least Stuart thought so, Tania not so much, as she is scared of height’s). Once again Mr Jones had been an “officer and a gentleman” by warning us early enough and thus ensuring he did not breakdown in a really difficult and remote place, as the height gain from Mendoza to the top of the pass was in excess of 2500m.
Once we had descended the mountain we continued our northwards wandering over the course of the next few days across an increasingly barren terrain, which perhaps we had by now becoming desensitized too. We could see the beauty and enjoyed seeing the contrasts in landscape, especially when we got our first taste of the “7 coloured mountains” but for us mostly the highlights of those days was the occasional meeting of interesting travelers, whether it was some fellow overlanders at a “dinosaur” park or some French-Canadians who were cycle touring with their young kids on bicycles which were specially designed to allow them to carry all their kit and for the kids to have the ability to also pedal. For everyone who has travelled with small kids in the luxury of a car with most likely these days individual entertainment screens and still had to put up with “are we there yet” questions you can only stand in awe of such a family.
As we were travelling in an incredibly barren area with large distances between towns or any kind of infrastructure we had asked the cyclists how they manage with water when it can sometimes take them 3 – 4 days to get from one town to another and learnt that they rely on the roadside shrines you see dotted all around the country. Not all the shrines are the same but one recurring theme we had seen in these dry parts was huge piles of water bottles next to a shrine, which to the uninformed at first glance just looks like a large rubbish heap. With our curiosity now piqued we researched the subject and learnt of the pagan saint: “ Difunta Correa”. The water bottles are an offering by truck drivers and fellow travelers to quench the eternal thirst of her.
Legend has it that she died while travelling through the desert to rescue her sick husband who had been forcibly recruited during one of Argentina’s civil wars in the 1800’s. Gauchos (cowboys) found her body days later and incredibly her baby was still alive and feeding from her breast. Her followers believe she performs miracles and intercedes for the living, which in the case of cross-country cyclists means precious water. Inspired by the story and looking to “pay it forward”, we left our own offering a couple of days later.
While camped at the dinosaur park (Ischigualasto), Stuart noticed another wet patch under Mr Jones but this time it was from his rear end – he was now dripping diesel! Initially suspecting that it could be a perished rubber hose at the bottom of his tank we thought we would drive him until he ran out of fuel and then carry out a quick replacement on the roadside of the offending hose. This might sound like a crazy idea, especially considering that we were in the middle of a desert with no cellphone signal but Mr Jones has an auxiliary tank from which we could then transfer fuel to carry on the journey once the repair was made. However, as we continued to drive and monitor the leak, doubts began to creep in that it wasn’t the hose as the hose was not always wet but other parts of the underside were. A decision was thus made to divert to the little town of Chilecito in order to find a mechanic.
Having not grown up in an environment that observes “siesta” we are regularly caught out by the event itself as well as what the hours of siesta actually are and which business’s/people observe it! In fairness to ourselves, the hours do seem to vary from town to town and region to region – sometimes it is just a few hours over midday and sometimes it is longer, sometimes it starts at 12 and other times at 13:00. In the case of Chilecito it appeared to start around 13:00 and ran until either 16:00 or 17:00, business dependent, which meant for us a long wait through the afternoon as we had arrived in town just past 13:00. Of course, the one advantage of arriving during siesta is there is very little traffic or activity which makes navigating tiny streets in search of addresses much less stressful. Once we had located a mechanic, we headed off to the central plaza to while away the afternoon by sitting under the trees and perhaps enjoy an ice cream.
When the garage did eventually open they were very helpful in attending to us almost immediately and within an hour or so had managed to move the bash-plate from under the fuel tank and identify a small puncture in the tank. The bash-plate is meant to act as protection from rocks and stones but in this case had actually been the cause of the issue, a tiny piece of gravel had managed to get wedged between it and the tank and overtime the little bit of movement that existed was enough for it to rub a hole in the tank.
The great thing about driving an older vehicle is that the fuel tanks are still metal and so the hole could be soldered closed but it would necessitate the removal of the tank and that meant Mr J would be stuck in the garage overnight and more importantly we would be without a home…. This meant a last minute and frantic search of online booking sites to see if we could find accommodation for the night and the results were rather dire, so when the foreman mentioned he had an acquaintance with a cabin outside of town who rented it at a reasonable rate we took him up on the offer but were not too hopeful of the quality. Fortunately, our doubts were unfounded and we were dropped off at a lovely modern one bedroom cottage high up the valley above the city.
The downside of the cottage’s location is we were totally dependent on the workshop coming to fetch us when Mr Jones was ready which they duly did at 16:00 the following day. Attractive camping options in town were non-existent so after a quick stop to fill-up with diesel we used the long evening daylight hours to drive 120km north to a suitable spot, a small riverside camp in an otherwise very barren landscape.
Over the course of the next few days we steadily worked our way northwards to the town of Cafayate which sits in the arid Calcahqui valley and is famed for it’s quality wines, in particular the white wines from the torrentes grape (only found in Northern Argentina). Town is perhaps an optimistic term for the size of Cafayate but that is also a good thing as it meant the campsite located just outside town was within easy walking distance of the town square and the many wineries that have tasting rooms in the streets running off from the square. Good quality white wine (for our South African tastes) has generally been very hard to find in Argentina, so Tania in particular, was looking forward to finding some nice bottles with which to stock up Mr Jones wine cellar (if Cafayate can call itself a town we think we can call our little wine cupboard a cellar…).
Unfortunately, our expectations were rather quickly dashed, in South Africa wine tastings are generally a rather relaxed affair whereas here they were rather a rushed one of 5 meager pouring’s all sampled within half an hour and to add insult to injury the torrentes white was while crisp, lacking in any substantial flavour. It is perhaps the first time we have ever walked out of a tasting without at least purchasing a couple of bottles.
Not being ready to quite give up on the touristy offerings of Cafayate and the convenient campsite location we decided to have both a lunch and a supper out on the town square. Having learnt the delights and value for money offering of the “plate of the day” in Mendoza we selected a restaurant which seemed to have a decent variety for it’s 3 courses on offer only to discover once they had already served our entree that the local specialty for the main course were not available, grrr! That aside, the overall meal was still quite good.
For supper we opted to try the local craft brewery, hoping to get some nice artisanal beers but in this case they only sold the beer in 1 litre bottles which makes it rather difficult to try two different flavours with supper and they didn’t offer any “slider” tasters to even help with selecting your one large bottle meaning we ended up ordering carafes of wine at a craft brewery – 2nd / 3rd grrrr for the town! All in all, Cafayate was a disappointment but nonetheless it did make a good break for a couple of nights.
In the campsite we had met another Land Rover from Belgium and they told us about a “great” spot called “Utopia” run by a South African/German couple, which even had grass to camp on, a bit further north. We hadn’t initially planned to take the lesser travelled road that led up the valley to Utopia but changed our plans thinking that it would be great to meet a fellow countryman and that it sounded like exactly the place we could stop and rest at for a while.
The drive to camp was quite spectacular and definitely worth the detour but sadly the camping was disappointing and while we stayed 2 nights, the second was simply out of politeness. The facilities or lack thereof were incredibly rustic and while we are quite used to that when we wild camp, if you are paying for camping you expect a certain level of amenities. The owners have grand plans for creating Utopia (and from what we can tell, have had for the better part of 5 years) but probably need to come down off the high cloud they spend most of the day floating on in order to implement them. On the positive side, we weren’t short of things to talk about as we undertook the next leg of the journey towards Salta.
The drive across to Salta was spectacular as it first crossed another desert national park, then climbed up to 3500m asl before a long winding descent all the way into Salta at only 1200m asl. Over the course of the day the scenery and vegetation changed dramatically as we went from the desert to high alpine grasslands and finally down to a lush semi-tropical environment.
In the campsite while parking Mr Jones next to a giant mobile apartment (a large 4×4 MAN truck) we were quite surprised to see how the grass had been cut around their tyres indicating that it had been parked there for quite some time. Later while chatting with Werner & Sylvia we discovered the reason for this, they were experiencing mechanical issues and struggling to find a workshop that could work on such a vehicle. They had, had to resort to casting the net 2000km wide and across borders, proof that even owning a EUR1million plus vehicle does not make you immune from mechanical adventures when Overlanding. At least prior to owning the truck they had holidayed regularly in South Africa and actually owned a Landy for those holidays so were probably quite well prepared for their current situation.
Two hundred kilometres north of Salta lies the super touristy town of Purmamarca, which is understandable given the very colourful mountains that loom above it. It is also the last opportunity you have to turn west and cross the Andes into Chile. Apart from wanting to see the colourful mountains we also chose to overnight in town for altitude acclimatisation purposes as it sits at 2300m asl. It also gave us the perfect opportunity to go out for one last meal and spend our last pesos.
The Paso de Jama (pass over the Andes) rises from Purmamarca to a high point of just over 4800m asl, an altitude at which it is quite possible to start feeling the early effects of altitude sickness and as Tania does not have the best lungs in the world we wanted to take a couple of acclimatisation stops along the way, the first being the town and we planned on spending a second night in the high desert at about 3500m. With plenty of time on our hand on our way to this planned wild camp, we stopped for a couple of hours at the Salinas Grande salt flats and attempted to get some Instagram worthy photos using the reflections and distortion worthy landscape. There was just one flaw in our plan, we forgot to google what poses worked best so after watching a few people we set about trying to imitate them. Ultimately, we were clueless but nonetheless the results come out okay.
After a very peaceful night in our million star location, Mr Jones was a little reluctant to start, perhaps becuse he knew what was ahead but more likely because old diesel engines simply don’t like starting when at a reasonably high altitude and it is cold. Much to our surprise however neither he or Tania exhibited too many negative effects of the altitude, in Mr Jones case he belched a lot of smoke and for Tania she had a mild headache.
The headache however could have also come, from the once again random and illogical application of the rules by the Chilean border guards with regards the importation of animal and agricultural products. When in Patagonia we experienced these while doing the unavoidable multiple crossings between Argentina and Chile and so thought we had prepared well by pre-cooking and freezing whatever meat we still had and not attempting to cross with any fruit or vegetables at all. Unfortunately we encountered a very determined official who went through the entire fridge, freezer and food drawers with a fine tooth comb and in her esteemed opinion decided that: artisinal cheese & blue cheese wasn’t acceptable but that “normal” cheese was (please note all 3 were in the some type of clear freezer bag so how she could tell the difference is anybody’s guess); and that unground black pepper corns could be a danger and suddenly start growing in the atacama desert (the driest desert in the world)!!
Leaving the border, you continue a little way along the highlands before beginning the descent into San Pedro de Atacama on what must be the straightest downhill road we have seen, you drop 1000m over 30km with only a few mild curves the entire way. Adding to our irritation with Chile was when one of the only two “campsites” in town charged in excess of R400 to sleep in their gravel yard with no electricity hookup, poor water pressure in the showers and even poorer Wi-Fi. They however have a captive market as most towns in Chile have a very bad reputation for Overlander vehicles being broken into and San Pedro de Atacama was no exception meaning any Overlander passing this way has no choice but to cough up for a safe night’s sleep.
A town with an even worse reputation for thievery is the larger Calama, a further 200km west of San Pedro de Atacama but at least it has some decent size supermarkets so when we passed through there the following day, Stuart stayed in Mr Jones while Tania went shopping. As soon as the shopping was done we hightailed it out of town intending to put as much distance as we could under our belts for the day. This entailed a long boring drive across the Atacama Desert which can only be described as a wasteland interspersed with mining areas. It is hard to imagine why anyone would have chosen to settle here or even travel through it prior to the modern convenience of a motor vehicle but as with many harsh parts of the world, the “wasteland” holds a huge wealth of minerals. In the late 1800’s through to mid 1900’s the area boomed from the extraction of nitrate’s (fertiliser) which was exported to Europe. As so often occurs in areas of mineral wealth, it also creates great conflict and, in this case, resulted in the “great pacific war” where Chile, Peru and Bolivia all fought over the area. World War 1 interrupted and then finally brought a brief end to the boom times when thanks to sanctions Germany was forced to invent a chemical alternative for nitrates and for a few decades thereafter the region didn’t grow but once again is thriving thanks to the extraction of copper, gas and more recently the “supposedly” green energy solution of Lithuim for batteries.
Just before the sun was setting we pulled into a gas station / truck stop but not before we had first stopped at a campsite and been quoted a jaw dropping R600 to camp for the night next to a dusty bush with fine talcum powdered sand all around which floated up to calf height with every step you took. When Stuart told the lady, “thanks but no thanks its very expensive”, she was quite taken aback and told us it was only R300 per person. In the truck stop we spent the night for free apart from paying R15 for a lovely warm shower and as a bonus we were parked on paving so no dusty feet when stepping in and out of Mr Jones.
By now it should be fairly clear that we don’t have much affinity for Chile and while our intention was to move northwards into Peru as soon as possible we also didn’t want to spend days just trucking and were hoping to find somewhere on the coast to spend a couple of nights. The first town we tried was Iquique, which was only 50km west across the desert from the truck stop. One of the reasons the Atacama is so dry is that it sits on a high plateau which ranges from 1000m closest to the Pacific and over 4000m at the Andes. The low points of 1000m are literally as the crow flies only 2km or less from the ocean which as it is an ocean with cold currents coming up from the Antarctic does not allow for any moisture to rise. We got to experience the end of this dramatic plateau as we drove to Iquique.
Suitable camping options in town were non-existent and so after spending a little time on the beachfront watching life we turned Mr Jones nose back up the winding road leading out of town in search of an alternative option which we found later in the day in the form of an old historical mining and fishing village called Pisagua. As with Iquique, you reach the town by descending a spectacular road across what is basically a sand dune. On the one end of town was a simple parking/camping area directly above the beach with access to free toilets and showers. A friendly Chilean couple who were also camping there took us under their wings upon our arrival and couldn’t stress enough that the village was very tranquilo and safe (even without us asking about that). We stayed 3 days and if there had been some waves may have stayed longer.
Our last stop in Chile was the town of Arica just before the border where Tania fell victim to a robbery, fortunately it was only of her shopping trolley. As we were still extremely wary of potential break-in’s when leaving Mr Jones unattended, Stuart had stayed with him when Tania went shopping. Apart from the brief stop in Calama for some essentials we had not yet shopped in Chile and the cupboards were looking a bit bare, especially of wine, so this was going to be a big one. New countries mean, getting to grips with different exchange rates and pricing plus how large supermarkets are laid out so the first few shops are always a slow process and right towards the end of her 2-hour shopping ordeal Tania had left her trolley while exploring an aisle only to come back a short while later and find it gone! We can only assume an employee assumed the trolley was abandoned, either that or somebody else fancied her wine selection. After calming down, we started the process again but this time together as by now Stuart had observed enough in the car park to feel comfortable that there weren’t any dodgy characters hanging around.
Stuart’s mom birthday was in 2 days’ time and as we weren’t sure if we would be able to obtain a local SIM card for the phones immediately when we crossed into Peru we decided to hang around in Arica for an extra day so that we would be able to call her for her birthday. That meant after a little driving around town to explore, spending the day chilling on the beach. The waves were really small but seeing as he had yet to hold a “board meeting” in Chile, Stuart decided to get a surfboard out and enjoyed a short but fun session.
And that wraps up roughly 5 months in Argentina and 0,5 months in Chile since leaving Brazil in mid-October 2022.
Below you can find links to the other pages that complement this blog / travel diary post:
Captain(s) Log: March 2023 (an insight into the daily highs and lows of life on the road)
Overnight Locations (an overview of the locations we slept and hence an idea of our route)
Maintenance Log (everything it takes to keep Mr Jones purring)
