Author: StuartandTania

First days in a new country can often be long and tedious affairs and our first day in Peru was no exception.   Firstly, our timing for the border crossing wasn’t great as it was just before the Easter weekend which meant a high volume of people transiting between Chile & Peru in both directions and because the border took “one-stop” to a new level (no matter your direction, everyone used the same counters & officials), it took us a solid 2,5 hours to cross.  

Once free of the border the first priorities were obtaining vehicle insurance, hunting down an ATM and obtaining a local SIM card so we headed for the closest town of Tacna, roughly  60km away.  It had quite a pretty town square and after circling it a few times in a futile attempt to find a parking spot we navigated the narrow streets leading off it and parked a couple of blocks away.   In towns we are always wary of leaving Mr Jones unattended on the street, so Tania stayed in him while Stuart went off hunting.  A few hours later we had money, data on our phone and were on our way back out of town heading towards the coast and hopefully somewhere to pass away the time over Easter.  We had decided that we didn’t want to be on the roads over the Easter weekend when perhaps there would be even more crazy drivers than normal on the roads.  

Arena Blanca just south of the town of ILO had exactly what we were looking for, a large beach on which you could park for free and a couple of restaurants behind the beach where for a “Nuevo Peru Sole” or two you could use the bathroom and take a shower.  During the day the beach was busy and one or two families did camp for a night or two but incredibly not once did we get subjected to what is usually the norm at such locations in South America: competing boom boxes coming from cars late into the night.  Curiosity did get the better of one or two Peruvians over the course of the weekend and they would come over for a chat with us and Mr Jones but in general our first impressions were that they are much more reserved than Argentinians (who are more reserved than Uruguayan’s and of course nobody can be as outgoing as Brazilians).

After 3 nights on the beach we decided to move a little further north to the town of Mollendo, in anticipation of Easter coming to an end, and another free beach camp where you just paid for the use of ablutions but first we stopped in ILO for lunch and our first taste of ceviche. Ceviche is fresh raw white fish which is pickled in lime juice and spiced with chilli, it is served with lots of onion and cilantro.  It has very fresh taste and was quite delicious.

In the meantime, we had learned that Easter does not extend to Monday in Peru and so after a night on the beach in Mollendo we turned Mr Jones nose east and headed inland to the historical town of Arequipa.    Arequipa sits at a relatively high altitude of 2400m and so the road from the coast through the desert is naturally a twisty-turny, slow affair and it was along this that we got to have our first experience of the largely kamikaze nature of Peruvian drivers – they may be reticent when face to face but they certainly aren’t when behind the wheel of a motorised contraption.

Arequipa is an ancient colonial city dating back to the 16th century and the name is derived from the indigenous Quechua language to mean “Let’s stop here”.  Little did we know how much that would apply to us.  

As we had yet to do a proper grocery shop since arriving in Peru our first port of call was a very modern and sophisticated mall with secure parking for Mr Jones but before we got to start the hunt for groceries we got distracted by a “sunglass hut”.  Living the lifestyle we do, good quality sunglasses are essential but they also take quite a beating and ours where definitely needing to be retired so we popped in to see what the pricing was like.  As luck would have it they had a special running, provided you bought two pairs of glasses (which we intended to do), so shortly thereafter we emerged with some nice new glasses. 

The supermarket was massive and of course it takes ages to figure out the layout, plus convert pricing, and so it took us a couple of hours to get through.  On the positive side the variety of fruit and veg was huge and reasonably priced but sadly any savings there are going to be more than offset by the cost of wine and red meat.  You know you are in trouble if the red meat has a security tag on it!   By the time we had scoured all the aisles it was approaching 2pm and we were both a little hungry so Stuart suggested grabbing a bite to eat in the cafeteria style food area inside the supermarket, it was busy with people and appeared well priced so seemed like a good choice.   

Unfortunately that decision was to backfire on us in a big way a few hours later as we both got a severe case of food poisoning and spent the next two days being close friends with the toilet.   Luck was however on our side, as for the first time in 10 days we were camped in a formal campsite with easy access to ablutions.   It would have been a nightmare if we had been camped “wild”, as we had been doing prior to our arrival in Arequipa.

After our 3rd night we finally started to feel vaguely normal again and so headed out for an afternoon exploring the Plaza de Armas (said to be one of South Americas grandest) and the Monasterio de Santa Catalina, a convent which housed approximately 90 secluded nuns and 200 servants from the late 16th century until it opened its doors to the public in 1970.  It has a huge complex of living areas (some of the flats even had private courtyards), areas for worship and prayer plus all the other aspects required in a closed off town, like bathing and cooking facilities.  Novice nuns would enter the convent at the age of 12 (families paying up the equivalent of USD50k for them) and spend the first two years in practical isolation before becoming a nun and being able to mix and socialise with the other nuns.  The only contact the nuns had with the outside world and their families was by speaking to them through a lattice type grill in the speaking rooms.  These grills made it impossible for each party to see the other and all conversations were monitored by an independent nun to ensure they were appropriate.  A very harsh existence in some ways but as we took the guided tour and afterwards wandered the narrow streets ourselves, we could also appreciate how tranquil and spiritual a life it must have been for the nuns.

After a couple more nights, we eventually felt it was safe enough to leave the safety of a campsite and its convenient ablutions, our intention was to slowly wander through the mountains all the while working our way towards Cusco.  After a long climb out of Arequipa in which Mr Jones reached a new altitude record of nearly 4900m asl and then a slightly lesser descent we found ourselves above Colca canyon.  This canyon is reputed to be one of the deepest in the world and at the point we camped was over 1200m deep!  It was truly a spectacular sight which was enhanced even further by the many pretty alpine flowers all around the campsite.

Leaving Colca canyon we opted to take the back roads in the direction of Cusco which meant a day of high altitude driving as we spent most of the day above 4300m as we worked our way up and down valleys to finally arrive at the spectacular Tres Canones (a point where 3 canyons come together).   Along the way we theoretically crossed over one of the most distant source rivers (Rio Hornillos) for the Amazon, which if true will be really cool as in roughly 6 months time we hope to be catching a vehicle barge down the Amazon when we visit the northern part of Brazil and so will “meet” this water again.

The driving through this part of Peru with all the valleys is spectacular but slow going and so with an average speed of only 30km/h we inched our way slowly to Cusco over the course of a few days.

Stuart had been to Cusco in the early 2000’s and remembered it as a rather attractive old Spanish colonial influenced town, so it was a bit of a shock to the system when we were initially faced with a large sprawling urban and industrial zone.  Of course, back then he flew in and would have basically only seen the airport followed by a brief commute to the touristy historical area which he did have a very distinct memory of being full of touts trying to lure you into their restaurant.

That memory also included a bout of food poisoning just as we had had a week prior in Arequipa – in South America Peru is known for its variety of food and flavours but amongst travelers it is also known for sometimes the less than desirable after effects.

Perched high above the historical part of town in Cusco is a well-known overlanders campsite called Quinta Lala.  Perhaps knowing that Stuart’s recollections of Cusco were its large colonial square, the GPS opted to take us right into the square and then via some very narrow, cobblestone alleys in order to get there.  It was definitely not the easiest route and we were most grateful that Mr Jones is not any bigger than he is.

In the campsite was a wide range of overlanders from Chile, Germany, France and the USA and for the first time we started to meet people who were going in the general opposite direction to us, i.e. they were coming down from the North American continent.  Many hours were spent chatting and exchanging information and experiences.  In between we explored Cusco’s historical area, helped out a fellow landy owner with replacing his clutch slave cylinder and purchased tickets for Machu Pichu.

There are three possible ways to visit Machu Picchu:  the first and definitely most common (plus most expensive) is to take a package from Cusco which will most likely include a night in the little town of Agua Calientes below the citadel.  The second and definitely cheapest way is to park your vehicle at a small village called Hidroelectica which is roughly 10km downstream of Agua Calientes and to then walk along the train tracks to Agua Calientes.  You can then either catch the shuttle bus up the mountain to Machu Picchu or if you are really wanting to do the experience as cheap as possible, you can hike up to the top.  While this is an appealing option as it will save you well over USD250 per person, it was not an option we considered as the tendon issues in Tania feet prevent lengthy hikes/walks. 

The third option and the one we opted for, is to drive roughly 2 hours from Cusco over into the Sacred Valley to the village of Ollaytantambo where you can then catch the train to Agua Calientes and as we discovered on our arrival, Ollaytantambo is a very pretty little village with its own set of quite spectacular Inca ruins. 

As a bonus, we could “camp” in a secure parking area with nice clean toilet and shower which was just a few minutes’ walk from the station. This was was something we really appreciated when we hopped off the train at 6pm and others still had a 2hour bus ride back to Cusco.  The risk of “iconic” tourist destinations is that they don’t live up to the hype, thankfully Machu Picchu did not disappoint and we had a great day out:   The train ride there offered constantly changing views, the bus ride up the mountain was as steep as Stuart remembered and the citadel itself was spectacular.   

By the end of the day we were quite tired and feeling our age, when it looked like the carriage we would be in for the train ride back to Ollytantambo was going to be filled with many noisy late-teen backpackers so were pleasantly surprised and most grateful when the conductor offered us an upgrade to the “vista” carriage.  Along with slightly more spacious seating, it come with a free drink and some live entertainment which consisted of a “scary” ghoul and a fashion show by the staff of some very nice-looking alpaca garments.  If the conductor had thought when giving us the upgrade we looked like a couple that would purchase a garment or two, he had misjudged our “look” as sadly apart from being impractical for travel we just don’t have space in Mr Jones for a cardigan you would wear in the city or to work.

After Machu Pichu we had decided it was time to head back towards the coast and hopefully some surfing but in order to do that we had to cross a few mountain ranges and in this part of the world that means a lot of ascending and descending.   Over the course of two & half days and 600km, our ascending and descending statistics were as follows:  ascend to 3600m – descend to 2000m; ascend to 4000m – descend to 1800m; ascend to 4500m – descend to 2800m; ascend to 3800m and finally descend to 600m above sea level.   Naturally all of this means there were hardly any straight sections of road which is tiring for the driver but for a passenger that doesn’t like sheer drop-offs along the road it was even more tiring, not to mention nerve wracking!  What is incredible to consider is that we had read that the Inca Postal runners used to deliver fresh fish, over these very some mountains, from the Pacific Ocean to their emperors who were based inland at places like Cusco and Machu Picchu.

The final descent from the altiplano delivers you once again back into the desert and in our case into the town and region of Nazca.  This region is famous for its wide variety of stone geoglyphs covering the desert floor, many of which can only be viewed by taking a private airplane flight above them.  Fortunately though, there are some on hillsides which are easily viewed and a couple of others can be viewed from a high-rise platform just next to the main road.   Exactly how the intricate shapes were made (considering for most you need to be many hundreds of metres above them, to actually see the shape) and their meaning is cause for much speculation.

The lack of vegetation and dryness of the desert has been great for preserving archaeological treasures such as the Nazca lines for more than 2000 years but what it is also sadly very good at doing is exposing a scourge of modern society.  In all our years of travel we have always come to observe how often dry and barren landscapes appear to have more litter and have concluded that part of the reason for this is that it “stands out” so much more in such a landscape but our experience in Peru is the worse we have ever seen.  From our observations this is not just because the litter has nowhere to “hide” but because apart from regularly seeing items thrown from moving cars, whole bags of rubbish and waste are dumped on the side of the road in these desert areas.  Peru can be proud of its ancient heritage and the efforts they make to preserve that but certainly not of its modern “litter culture”.

Heading north from Nazca, the PanAm drops the last few hundred metres down to the coast near the town of Pisco and never wanders too far from it for the next 250km on the way into Lima.   Along the way we made a couple of stops at the surf spots of Cerro Azul and Punta Rocas.   At Cerro Azul Stuart quickly discovered how easy it was too lose fitness over a 2,5month period and so when faced with a very long paddle and fairly large waves at Punta Rocas he chose to be an observer rather than a participant.      

Below are links to the other pages that complement this travel diary post:

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:

The end of our last travel diary, had us leaving Ushuaia with one thing in mind – finding somewhere that we could have a summer holiday and enjoy some sun, sand and surf. 

The only issue being that in all likelihood we had over 3 000km to travel until that might be possible.  Our timing to leave straight after Christmas was also partly influenced by the fact that the weather forecast showed some very strong winds heading towards Tierra del Fuego in a couple of days, although this did not mean we escaped the wind entirely. 

The 200km from Ushuaia to Rio Grande was a constant battle with head and side winds which were so strong that when we stopped in Rio Grande to fill up with diesel and finally had the wind behind us, it actually blew Mr Jones forwards at 4km/h until Stuart applied the handbrake.  This is no mean feat when you consider that he weighs approximately 2,5tons!!  Our intention had been to camp at the fuel station before continuing to the border crossing, as we had on the way south but with the wind as strong as it was this was really not a viable option and so we pushed on for the border and the Chilean side of Tierra del Fuego hoping to find a more sheltered spot somewhere along the road for the night.  The border crossing would be our 3rd time we crossed from Argentina into Chile and as readers will recall each time we had sacrificed something to the Agricultural border officers due to the strict but random application of what was allowed to cross the border and what not so where fully expecting to make a sacrifice again but what we hadn’t factored in was the power of the wind and how it could keep even the most enthusiastic officer cowering away inside his building –  for a brief moment both ourselves and Mr Jones liked the wind..

After a quick border crossing we battle the wind for a couple more hours until we got to the oil and gas exploration village of Cerro Sombrero (Hat mountain) arriving at 20:45 after a very long day and just a few minutes before sunset, thus ensuring we didn’t break our rule of “avoiding driving at night”.  The facilities were fully locked up but at least the campsite at the bottom of the hill offered a little bit of protection from the wind.  In total we had managed 400km for the day which considering that the headwinds often reduced Mr Jones to a top speed of 40km/h was very good going and at least we were closer to the ferry across the Straits of Magellan.

The following morning we got an early start as based on the queues we had witnessed for the southern boarding point a few days earlier on our way south, we expected a long wait but thankfully we only had to wait an hour before we were steaming across the straits.   The crossing was much rougher this time, thanks to the strong winds, and so after 30 minutes we were very happy to drive back onto mainland South America knowing that no more ferry crossings would be required for many months.  All things considered, our timing to leave Ushuaia was good because as we learnt a few days later, the ferry shut down for 24 hours when the REALLY strong winds arrived.

Leaving the ferry we enjoyed a brief period of tailwinds which blew us along quite nicely for the 50km it takes until you get to the next border crossing which takes you back from Chile to Argentina but luck was most definitely not on our side this time.   Both countries only had a few counters operating which were simultaneously handling both entries and exit which considering it was peak holiday period resulted in total chaos.   The lengthy queues and long wait outside exposed to the elements  forced us to draw comparisons to what we imagine, it must be like to cross from South Africa to Mozambique during the December holidays.  Although there were at least two significant differences, firstly there were no border runners/touts adding to the chaos and secondly the temperature was only 4 degC instead of 30DegC.  Add in the constantly howling wind (and associated wind chill) with the occasional bit of rain (which actually fell as tiny ice drops) and it made the 4hours it took to cross the border a very long and painful process.

The nearest town to the border is Rio Gallegos, which while only being 70km away may as well have been twice that with strong headwinds and so we put our heads down and plodded on as best we could, finally pulling into a YPF fuel station in the early evening.  For both driver and passenger, it had been a long and tiring couple of days and so we succumbed to the convenience of a gas station hamburger (and immediately regretted it) before retiring to Mr Jones to wash away our tiredness with a bit of wine.

Over the next 4 days this daily cycle basically repeated itself of battling strong winds across the boring pampa with the added concern that Mr Jones appeared to be running hotter that we thought he should but given how hard he was being made to work in the winds it was always difficult to be certain if the chief mechanic was being paranoid or if in fact there was an issue with his cooling system.  In an effort to address some of these concerns we had, we decided to change the v-belt tensioner pulley wheel as it seemed like the bearing was running very rough and then a day later over our lunch break we swopped out his thermostat for a new one.

The culmination of all these long days, New Years Eve 2022 spent in another YPF gas station in the “one horse town” of Garayalde.   We think we counted 5 houses and presume they were only there for the employees off the fuel station.  Naturally there were no fireworks to see in the New Year but we did celebrate upon discovering that you could purchase a lovely hot shower for the princely sum of ZAR8 per person.

New Year’s Day 2023 and we decided to head to the beach, as almost all South Africans do on this day each year.  Camerones is a little town, about 80km east of Ruta 3, near to a penguin colony & reserve and it seemed like it had some nice wild camping options along the coast leading to the colony so we decided to make a small diversion from the slog northwards and where hoping that with a bit of luck we could find a spot to take a few rest days.  The drive towards the coast as we descended slightly from the pampas was quite scenic and as we skirted along the coast past many little bays with cold wind-blown water we were reminded a lot of the South African west coast, in particular the area around Paternoster.   The colony itself was for us fairly arbitrary however we did find a spectacular campsite which was wind free and overlooked the ocean so got to spend the afternoon soaking up the sun and just relaxing.

Unfortunately, any plans to spend another day there were blown away around 1am when the wind picked up and buffeted the hell out of Mr Jones, so after a rather disturbed sleep we packed up in the morning to continue our northwards slog.   Hoping to avoid (for as long as possible) getting onto the boring and wind buffeted Ruta 3, we decided to take the scenic but perhaps rougher road along the coastline for before it eventually intersected with Ruta 3.  A small navigational error quite early on in the morning meant we actually landed up heading diagonally inland on what become a very minor road connecting a few farms but perhaps this was a silver lining as for 2 hours we didn’t see a soul, the scenery was quite good and we got to soak up how truly remote many farms and homesteads are in this part of Patagonia.

With all the mileage we had put in over the last couple of months Mr Jones was a little overdue for an oil change, so in the town of Puerto Madryn we pulled in to a lube centre for a quick oil and filter change before heading out to Peninsula Valdez.  At the right time of the year the peninsula offers fantastic whale sightings and if you are really lucky the opportunity of witnessing Orcas hunting seals on the beach.   These Orcas actually charge right out of the water onto the beach to catch their supper!  Mid-summer is not that time of the year which is perhaps a good thing as otherwise the Orca’s may have been feasting on Argentinians who were out soaking up the sun and swimming in the very very cold water.   Our campsite that night was only meters from the waters edge above a stony pebble beach and for the most part it was wind free.

Leaving Peninsula Valdez a few more days of mostly slogging along Ruta 3 followed before finally, 11 days and nearly 3000km after leaving Ushuaia we were finally able to point Mr Jones more east than north and start to search out places for the summer holiday we were seeking.  Our first stop near tiny little seaside village called Balneario Los Angeles offered much hope with a huge free camping area just above the beach, free fresh water from a hand borehole pump (which some fellow campers kindly offered lessons on how to prime after Stuart spent quite some time fruitlessly pumping without obtaining any water) and the possibility of some surfing.   The only downside was there was some wind when we arrived but we had been expecting that and it certainly wasn’t putting off the locals who had driven their vehicles down to the high-water mark and were lined along the beach for a couple of kilometres basking in the sun.  Unfortunately, on our second day there the wind really picked up and sent clouds of sand flying across the landscape and coating us and Mr Jones in a fine layer of grit.  If it hadn’t been for that we could have potentially free camped there for a week but the wind had us packing up in the morning and heading for the next town of Necochea and the possibility of a more formal campsite which would also offer some wind protection.

The campsite in Necochea is huge, we estimated over 300 sites, with all the amenities to be expected at a summer holiday destination – swimming pools, easy access to the beach, organised activities for the kinds and so on.   They also have a cool little thing they do at the entrance where they fly the flags of the various nationalities staying there and we were suitably impressed when a very new looking South African flag was pulled out to welcome us.  And in the strangest of coincidences, not 10 minutes after we had parked Mr Jones in our site a gentlemen walked over and greeted us with “waar van daan kom julle”   (Afrikaans for “where are you from”).  It turned out Max and his wife who are from South Africa had arrived just minutes behind us.

Being peak season, the campsite had a minimum of a 3 day stay which although it wasn’t the perfect destination did allow us to relax, get a few surfs in and spend time kuiering with our fellow SAFFAS.  The only downside was that despite there being theoretically good cellphone signal the network was clearly overloaded with all the holiday makers which meant even to download a book on the kindle was a next to impossible task, so when Denise (Tania mom) birthday rolled around we packed up Mr Jones for a quick trip into town and further away from the crowds in order to make some WhatsApp phone calls. Our “forced” 3 day stay become 4 when we woke up on the 4^th day feeling a little fragile after a long kuier session with Max and his wife the evening prior and thus decided to stay one more night before moving.

A little further up the coast, between Miramar & Mar del Plata, we had our eye on a campsite called La Redonda Eco camp which looked like it would be exactly our kind of vibe and so once we had “recovered” we packed up for what should have been a short hop of only 120km, sadly Mr Jones had other ideas as very soon into the trip Stuart noticed his temperature gauge climbed very quickly at the slightest effort and really struggled to come down.  At this point we were seriously considering renaming Mr Jones to Mrs Jones as “it” was acting very menopausal! 

Initially we stopped and allowed him to cool down before continuing but when he did it again very soon thereafter we began to fear the worst and that we had a major problem especially bearing in mind that we had only just changed a previously faulty thermostat.   Thanks to Mr Jones, Stuart’s physical mechanical skills are continuously improving but diagnosing an issue is a little more complicated.  A combination of having recently changed the thermostat and the fact that many miles ago in Africa a mechanic had told us he thought the water pump was on its last legs had us assuming that this is what exactly had happened –  the water pump was kaput.   All was not lost however as just up the road was a 2 person police checkpoint we could limp too and then as we carry a spare water pump in the spares box, set about changing it while safely parked/camped next to them.

Changing a water pump is in theory not the most complicated task but it is also not the simplest as it requires removal of the fan and a number of pulley wheels along with draining all the coolant out.  Under normal workshop circumstances, once the new water pump was installed you would fill the system with new coolant but being stuck almost exactly between two towns meant this was not an option and so we tried our best to capture as much as we could in a bucket knowing that at least we had water in our big water tank to make up the difference.  All was going well, until an hour before sunset the 8th and final bolt holding the water pump on proved to be particularly tight and stubborn.  Not wanting to shear a bolt and then be truly stranded, we decided it was time for supper and some wine, after all it was already 8pm and tomorrow was another day.  This proved to be an excellent strategy, not only did Tania make a great supper but the wine perhaps brought a bit of clear thinking in which we wondered if perhaps the “new” thermostat could be faulty?  After coffee and breakfast the following morning, Stuart removed the thermostat and tested it in some near boiling water. Lo and behold, it wasn’t opening!  

Having found the cause of our problems, we reassembled everything barring replacing the thermostat and set off a couple of hours later for the nearest town of Miramar which we managed to get to just before the start of siesta and thus order a replacement thermostat.  

As the replacement would take a few days to arrive in town, it didn’t make sense to carry on to the original intended camp of La Redonda but rather to settle in to the one in Miramar.

Once again this was a huge campsite at close to full capacity but unlike the last one didn’t have clearly designated sites so after driving around a bit we thought we had found a perfect spot near the boundary and under some trees and duly set up camp before taking a walk to check out the beaches which were just across the road.  Upon returning to Mr Jones we were met by a security guard (he must have been on siesta when we setup…) who confronted us in an angry and forceful manner.  Despite us trying our best to explain we only speak a little Spanish and do not understand what the problem is, he just got louder and more forceful until eventually all the tiredness and frustration from our recent tribulations come bursting out and Tania proceeded to talk back equally forcibly and loud in Afrikaans!  

That seemed to do the trick and he duly backed off clearly not knowing what we were telling him and we wandered off to the office to find out what the problem may be?  It turns out they don’t want people to camp directly on the boundary fences as it is a perceived security risk and that this was what the security guard had been trying to tell us.  Over the course of our stay we got to witness this some interaction many times and come to realise that he wasn’t ever really angry and instead it was just his natural demeanor.

To make matters worse, in the process of moving Mr Jones 10 metres forward to a “suitably acceptable” spot, Stuart managed to snap his favorite surfboard.  They say that first impressions are often the truest and based on our first couple of hours,  it would not have been surprising if we had only stayed a few days and left as soon as the thermostat arrived in town. In his case it was the opposite and we had an extended stay and really started to enjoy our summer holiday: the vibe in the campsite was good, the beach was an easy walk across the road and overtime we began to exchange pleasantries with the security guard –  he even made sure that nobody took our spot when we took Mr J into town for shopping or to collect the new thermostat and a repaired surfboard.   In between surfing and just chilling, Stuart eventually flushed the entire cooling system and replaced both the coolant and thermostat.

Sixteen days after arriving we eventually upped roots and moved on to a new destination, not that we intended on going far – the “cool eco” campsite we had eyed out a couple of weeks previously was only 15km up the road.  Whereas two weeks prior our arrival in camp had got off to a rocky start our arrival at La Redonda was the exact opposite, it is a small community run campground and so doesn’t have full time staff but one of the campers, Moni, took us under her wing and showed us around and in the process making us instantly feel at home.  

Added to that, Chapadmalal, the village it is located in has a real funky and earthy vibe with a big surfing culture and so despite the camp having more basic facilities which meant we would have to rely on our solar panels for power,  we immediately planned to stay for a couple of weeks as well.  Murphy however was lurking in the background and on the second day the weather turned overcast and we discovered that being South African means Mr Jones is not immune to the scourge of load shedding – his second solar panel was no longer putting out any power!   On sunny days one panel is sufficient to charge the batteries but when it is overcast we need the second panel to be able to remain sustainably off grid.  So just as has been done in South Africa a “state of emergency” was quickly declared and the energy minister procured a new panel before duly setting about making the modifications and brackets necessary to install it.   This did require us spending a night in the bigger town of Mar de Plata while we trawled it in search of a solar panel but as soon as we had one, we headed back to Chapadmalal hoping for an extended and uninterrupted stay.

The La Redonda campsite is perfectly located on small headland with two beaches in coves either side of it, which makes checking the surf conditions really easy as it was literally only a 100m walk from Mr Jones to the top of the cliffs and so an easy routine developed of getting up in the morning, check the surf and then either surf or have breakfast followed by a morning on the beach, back to Mr J for lunch and then a short amble to check the surf in the afternoon.   If the afternoon surf was no good or blown out, then it was either hammock time or solar panel bracket making time – all round a perfect continuation to our summer holiday.

Unbeknown to us the cliffs below camp hold quite a paleontological treasure trove which we discovered one day when there was much excitement down on the beach – a little girl had spotted something in the rocks which intrigued her and pointed it out to her parents, who duly took a photo and set it off for verification.  A couple of hours later a few paleontologists arrived to begin the messy work of trying to excavate a 2,5million year old “gliptodonte”.

We mentioned that we really enjoyed the vibe of the village and the community feel of the campsite and this was further enhanced when on the first weekend there we got invited to join a mini walking tour of the village and greenbelt areas surrounding it, thus giving an insider’s view to places we may not have seen on our own.   It is not often (perhaps because we are always wondering what is around the next corner) that we pause and think: “this is a place we could live”.  In Chapadmalal we however did exactly that. 

The final cherry on the top for us was that only 10km inland is a superb winery which has some fantastic white wine thanks to its location close to the cool ocean.   Tania has really struggled to find nice white wines in South America so as a treat for her birthday we headed inland for a picnic under the trees followed by a little bit of wine shopping.

In previous travel diaries we have written about how the camaraderie that exists among overlanders (who are all far from family), during occasions such as Christmas is something that is quite special and we have generally found the some to be over birthdays.  On previous birthdays we have received simple gifts of a can of beer, a homemade card or a fake birthday cake complete with candles in a tiny little tin that can be carried with you until the next birthday arises.  In all cases it is not the size or nature of the gift but rather the thought and care that comes from strangers who just want to wish you a good day and this day was no different – Moni (our first greeter) and her family presented Tania with a wild flower and some small sweets when we returned from lunch, rounding off what was a very good birthday.

Before we knew it another 2 weeks had passed, meaning we had now spent, in total, over a month enjoying our summer holiday and would need to move on, partly because the weather would soon start to turn, partly because we were beginning to get itchy feet and partly because we knew we had some potentially time-consuming maintenance to be done on Mr Jones and had to be aware of the length of our visa.  The plan was to most likely head into Buenos Aires where we could take an Airbnb while Mr Jones was being attended too but first we backtracked slightly to Miramar so that we could do the usual monthly admin items like laundry, recharging cellphones, etc.

Long discussions and analysis could probably be had regarding whether travelling in an old landy like Mr Jones is a sane thing to do or not but one aspect that is most definitely indisputable is that he is the perfect “wingman” and if it wasn’t for him we probably wouldn’t have met half the awesome people we have.   While leaving the shops in Miramar this fact was proved once again when we got flagged down by a chap called Matio who told us his brother is fanatical about Land Rovers and proceeded to duly invite us to his house and restaurant on the beach for lunch.  What followed was a wonderful afternoon filled with laughter and good times as we got introduced to his family, friends and staff.

Another person we met, most likely thanks to Mr J, was Agustin and his daughter Tatiana.  We had spent a couple of evenings chatting and enjoying each other’s company while camped at La Redonda and during those chats Agustin had offered to help try find a mechanic in Buenos Aires (BA) as he had a friend who owned a landy and could no doubt recommend somebody.  As it turned out the friends landy was nowhere near BA but this did not deter Agustin from putting in a big effort to find an enthusiast, who offered to assist,  in a little town just north of BA called San Antonio de Areca and so once we left the coast we started to work away towards this while stopping along the way at the small towns of Tandil (great shopping for cold meats and cheese), Las Flores and Lobos.

In Las Flores we were able to meet up with some other people Mr Jones had “introduced” us to in the campsite in Miramar, Jose and his wife Clara.   They have a small farm on the outskirts of Las Flores and had invited us to stop past if we happened to pass that way.  Once again, we had a lovely afternoon of socialising around the asado interspersed with bouts of showing Mr Jones off to the various friends of Jose that stopped past throughout the course of the afternoon to admire him.

In the meantime, our paths with the Landy enthusiast had crossed when he went away to the coast for what we initially thought was a long weekend and so had thought we would just hang out in San Antonia de Areca for a couple of days but when his return seemed to get extended more and more we decided to backtrack slightly and visit Agustin at his house on the outskirts of BA.  This would give us the opportunity to take him out for dinner and thank him for all his help and additionally give us a base from which to explore the Tigre delta.  We had initially thought of staying a couple of nights with him but thanks to his great hospitality and a number of dinner dates made with friends of his, it very quickly become  6 days.  As an added bonus over the various late nights we got a real glimpse into middle class Argentinian life.

The landy enthusiast had either not yet returned from Mar del Plata or was no longer enthusiastic about helping us, as we had not had any further communication from him and so we decided we would instead delay the work we wanted to do on Mr Jones until we had headed cross-country to Mendoza.  The standard visa free length of stay in Argentina is 90 days and it was already 64 days since our most recent entry, which while this meant we still had sufficient time to cross the country and attend to the mechanical aspects it would not give us enough time to explore the northwest section of the country, at leisure.  A border run was therefore required and Uruguay was the obvious choice, so on a very hot last day of February we bid farewell to Agustin and ambled our way up the Rio Uruguay to Fray Bentos and its associated border post.

Below you can find links to other parts of the blog which complement the travel diary:

In our last travel diary, we mentioned the strict border controls with regards foodstuffs that exist when entering Chile and how we had also got caught by surprise by an equally strict application of the rules when re-entering Argentina. So, for our second entry into Chile at a relatively tiny border post near the Torres del Paine national park we didn’t expect any issues as in theory by now everything that posed a threat to bio-diversity should have been already discovered and confiscated, needless to say the eager agricultural control officer still managed to find some honey and eggs which they deemed to be unacceptable.

At this point we were still in two minds as to whether it was worth driving a loop through the national park mainly due to the relatively high park fees that are applied.  The main attraction of Torres del Paine is its towering granite peaks and the various single or multi-day hikes that can be done around them but with Tania unable to do long hikes it meant we would at best be viewing the scenery from the car and perhaps an over-priced campsite or two.  

Leaving the border post we still hadn’t fully made up our minds but as it was mid-afternoon we decided to find a free wild camp at which we could hopefully soak up the last rays of the day while enjoying a beer and applying our minds a little more to the decision.  Tania had spotted a check-in on iOverlander which hadn’t been visited for a couple of years, probably because it was on a little driven side road which didn’t head directly to the peaks, but sounded promising and so we set off in search of it.  It turned out to be the perfect spot, perched above two aquamarine lakes with great afternoon sun and distant views of the Torres del Paine massif.

That evening we decided we would skip a full loop through the park and instead to just drive a little further the following morning in order to perhaps get a few closer views.  As it was the following morning we spent more time photographing wild flowers and funky bus shelter which line the road than of the world-famous spires.

Having taken our pictures, we once again turned Mr Jones nose south for 100km run into the small fishing and tourist town that is Puerto Natales. For a town that only has a permanent population of 20 000 it was surprisingly large and bustling, although a lot of the bustle probably has to do with the roughly 65 000 tourists that pass through it each month in December to March, it is no doubt very different the remainder of the year. 

Normally we would go grocery shopping when in such towns but with another set of borders to cross before reaching Ushuaia and knowing that something was bound to be confiscated, we opted to skip that opportunity and instead try and find a tailor or seamstress.   The zips in Stuart’s windproof pants were all falling off, after what must have been a very hot tumble-dryer at our last laundry drop.  It took a bit of searching but we eventually found a nondescript little house and a cute little old lady who could fix them.

Even though it felt like we were almost at our end destination, Ushuaia was still over 700 kilometres, a ferry crossing, a set of border posts and lots of strong winds away so once we had collected the pants the following afternoon we left town hoping to put a dent into the remaining miles.  We only drove 100km before stopping for the day, as in this part of Patagonia the choices for camping are very much determined by the wind and if there is a bit of shelter from it, so when we got to a spot next to a river and opposite a police checkpoint that only had a mild breeze blowing it was an easy decision to stop.

After a peaceful night, we were ready to put in a big day which would include a ferry across the Straights of Magellan and then a longish drive which included another border crossing back into Argentina, across the pampa of Tierra del Fuego.  

When we left South Africa, we had placed a country flag onto the number plate of Mr Jones, thinking that it might help other SAFFA’s spot us, never realising in fact how many people across the continent might recognise the flag.  It has led to many people approaching us with often the opening statement of “are you really from South Africa?”.  On this day as we approached the ferry crossing we were overtaken by a Colombia registered vehicle hooting wildly and the with the passenger hanging out the window waving and shouting.  Initially we thought they were just impressed by Mr Jones but when we both stopped at the ferry terminal we discovered that in fact while the car was Colombian, the couple was a Swiss/South African couple who had got stuck in Colombia during the pandemic and were now driving across South America.  While waiting for the ferry we exchanged numbers so that we could get together once we were both in Ushuaia.

Tierra del Fuego translates as “land of fire” which has something to do with the first Europeans impressions of the natives and the fires they made, we however think it should have rather been called Tierra del Viento (Viento being wind in Spanish) as in particular the route across the barren pampa towards Rio Grande and then south to Ushuaia is incredibly windswept.  Fortunately at the fuel station in Rio Grande we were able to find a sheltered spot tucked in behind the main building and spent a relatively quite night without too much rocking and rolling.

Rio Grande was a surprisingly big, but bleak, town which gave us the opportunity to stock up a bit on fresh food as we were rather low on the essential, after having done 2 border crossings in 4 days with all the restrictions around the movement of fresh food.  Leaving Rio Grande we first drove into a strong headwind and then a crosswind as we skirted along the edges of the Atlantic Ocean on our way south to Ushuaia until the road turned inland and needed to climb over the mountains that protect Ushuaia from the northern windswept portion of Tierra del Fuego.

On the city limits are two towers which probably every Overlander who has ever come this way has stopped in front of in order to take a photo as evidence of the achievement of having reached the most southern town in the world that it is possible to drive too.  Naturally we did the same.

Unfortunately our sense of achievement quickly transformed into one of disappointment as we drove into town and across it, we had pictured a small little village “at the end of the world” tucked between mountains and the beagle channel whereas instead we found a sprawling and rather dirty town with a fairly industrial like harbour area complete with areas of low cost housing encroaching up the mountainside having cut away large swathes of forest for the expansion.  Once through the industrial area the town does have a relatively attractive promenade overlooking the channel complete with both medium and large cruise ships anchored.  During the very short summer of December to March, it is the launch point for cruises to Antarctica.

Camping options in Ushuaia are extremely limited, you can either camp in one of the parking lots along the promenade or there is a large field a few kilometres out of town next to the very touristy train station for the “train to the end of the world”.  Either option offers no facilities but its possible to use the toilets in the station during daylight hours, so we opted for the latter.  One aspect we had expected to be quite different in South America relative to Africa was the presence of huge 4wd trucks, which are basically small apartments on wheels and are typically owned by either German, French or Dutch elderly couples.  Our expectations had been further enhanced at our very first campsite 10 months prior in Uruguay where Mr Jones was dwarfed by these trucks and a few smaller campervans.  At that time most of the owners were preparing to park them for the Southern Hemisphere winter as they headed back to Europe for summer which for us was a surprise as with such expensive rigs and luxurious living conditions you would have thought they might be full time overlanders.  In the subsequent 10 months we have seen very few such trucks and so it was with some surprise that we found the field/campsite full of such trucks – how we have missed them on our journey south we have no idea but clearly Ushuaia is the bottom of a funnel.

Apart from marveling at how we had missed bumping into such huge trucks over the last 20 000km in South America, we were also quite impressed that we found ourselves here just two prior to Christmas.  Before leaving South Africa, we had often tried to explain our route by telling people that we were first going to do a loop through Brazil in order to escape winter and then we thought it might be cool to spend Christmas or New Year at the “end of the world” BUT in reality we basically travel with no fixed plans. In fact, we often usually only decide where we will overnight (at best) the night before, although usually only over coffee on the morning of that day or sometimes it may only be at lunchtime of that day. So after 9 months of relative random wandering we were quite impressed with our timing.

Andreas & Genevieve (the Colombian driving Swiss/South African) couple had invited us to their Airbnb for supper so after a relaxing afternoon in the field/campsite we packed up Mr Jones and drove the few kilometres down the road to their spot.  In a classic example of the “6 degrees of separation” it turned out that for many years both of them had lived in northern Mozambique and knew our mutual friends Winnie and Arthur very well.

In theory being just the two of us could make Christmas Day quite a lonely affair but over the years we have in fact found it to be quite the opposite and this one was no different:  the morning was spent on video calls with friends & family spread all around the world, then Tania made an awesome lamb curry for lunch and finally we joined some fellow overlanders for wine and laughs in the evening until late.   Interestingly one of those couples was one of the campervan owners we had met in Uruguay at the start of our trip, although their camper, while definitively larger than Mr Jones, is still a relative midget compared to most of the “larger apartments on wheels”.

Travelling the way, we do is a constant evolution and sometimes “school fees” must be paid – our journey to Ushuaia had been exactly that.   On the side of Mr Jones door below a map of the world we have a phrase which says “we haven’t been everywhere but it’s on the list” and this lifestyle does afford us the luxury of going slowly and visiting many places however we have come to the realisation that for us, it is not that important to go everywhere and especially to tick off the must visit destinations.  Of course, many people may see Ushuaia differently and more than likely would not like some of the destinations we like – each to his own.

We are not sorry we ventured south into Patagonia and we really enjoyed the northern and central parts (as evidenced by our previous Travel Diaries) but, with the benefit of hindsight, could have easily stopped going south in El Calafate.  It is perhaps the difference between living full-time on the road and doing shorter trips of 3 – 6 months as most others do.  If you come away after a short trip exhausted, it is okay because afterwards you are effectively then taking a holiday from travelling. 

With the above in mind, on Boxing Day we put Mr Jones wheels once more back into motion and fled the world’s most southern city, our intention was to find some beaches and warmer weather.   It was time to have for a summer holiday.

Last months travel diary ended with us exiting Argentina, having spent a very enjoyable 3 weeks driving approximately 1200 Km of Ruta 40 from Mendoza southwards to Bariloche.   Chile is very strict with regards the importation of food, specifically vegetables and meat products and as this was our first entry we had very little idea what to expect and were to an extent dreading it.  The agricultural agents were very friendly but very thorough in their search and before driving away we had donated a number of items to their dustbin, despite thinking we had minimised what could likely be taken.

With Mr Jones a little lighter, we left the border and headed for the nearest town, Osorno, hoping to restock our groceries, withdraw local currency and find a SIM card.  After much searching and multiple stops, we had successfully the first two task but with regards the 3rd we had frustratingly failed. Osorno was quite large, not particularly attractive and offered little in the way of camping so we continued southwards to the smaller town of Frutilla, which sits rather picturesquely on a lake with the towering snow-capped Volcano of Osorno overlooking it. Our experience has been that it is often easier to find items like SIM cards or good butcheries in the smaller towns, perhaps just simply because it is easier to navigate and there are less options and so the following morning we parked Mr J in a side street and set off in search of the elusive SIM.  We did ultimately come right but it still took the better part of the morning to find a shop that could assist but at least this gave us a good opportunity to wander the Main Street and along the way find a nice butchery or two and therefore also restock Mr Jones freezer.

Usually the next challenge once you have obtained a prepaid SIM card is how to load data onto it, for some strange reason in both Brazil and Argentina you can’t use a foreign credit card and need to do it in person in a store (usually different to where you buy the SIM) but thankfully Chile is more advanced in this regard and everything could be done online.   AN IMPORTANT NOTE, for anyone reading this blog and about to enter Chile:  Chile requires all cellphones which connect to their cell/mobile network to be registered within 30 days of first connection, failing which they block the cellphone (IMEI number of the phone) from using the network!   See our Practical Information page for the process required to do this.

With data on our phone and meat in the deep freeze we were free to continue the journey which meant making a short hop of 50km down to Puerto Montt and the official start of the Carretera Austral where we camped on a stoney beach just outside of town.  This was our first sighting of the pacific and as we had read that the tide movement was quite large in this part of the world we camped well back and above what we thought was any evidence of the high-water mark.  In fact, we weren’t far enough back and were most grateful to the drunken teenagers who arrived at 2am and woke us up with their revelry, as when we looked out the window to see what was going on we discovered that the sea was only metres from Mr Jones.  Needless to say, we hastily packed up and moved a bit further away while cheerily greeting the youngsters, it’s not often you are thankful to be woken at an ungodly hour so may as well be nice about it…

The Carretera Austral translates in English to the Southern Highway and creates a land link for the section of Chile Patagonia which is sandwiched between the Andes in the East, the Pacific Ocean with its complex array of Fjords and steep mountains in the west, the Great Patagonian ice field in the South and the Pacific Ocean below Puerto Montt in the North. In total it is 1200km long and was built to provide land access to the roughly 120 000 population (of which roughly 2/3 live in one town) that calls this region home.  Prior to its construction the only possible land access was from a couple of points in Argentina which for the dictatorship of General Pinochet was an unsatisfactory situation.  In 1976 the army began construction and it opened to traffic in 1988 although it still took 14 years for the final 200km to be built.   Highway is an optimistic name for it, as in reality roughly half remains dirt and the other half single lane tar.  There is a strong rivalry between Argentina and Chile with regards to whether Ruta 40 or Careterra Austral is the most beautiful – having driven the bulk of both we consider Argentina the clear winners, simply due to the significantly greater variety of scenery and landscapes along the entire route.

Even though the “highway” officially starts in Puerto Montt, within the first 200km you need to catch two ferries. 

The first ferry crossing is a relatively simple one which requires no logistical planning as you just drive up to the dock, pay upon boarding and 30 minutes later are deposited on the Hornopiren peninsula where if you are slow like Mr Jones then get to enjoy (after having been overtaken by most of the other ferry riders)  a slow and scenic drive across the peninsula to the small town of Hornopiren which is the launch point for a much hour longer ferry.  As we were not yet in peak season there is only one sailing per day, which is early in the morning therefore almost everyone appears to need to spend a night in town.  Apart from what appeared to be some commercial salmon farming the only other reason the town appears to exist is to accommodate the following days ferry passengers.  We had read that this second ferry got very busy and that it was advisable to purchase your ticket in advance so we had tried the day before to do this online via our phones and always got the result that it was fully booked, even for departures 2 weeks away…. Failing to see how this was logistically possible, especially as it was not yet peak season, we had proceeded this far assuming that the town would have a functioning ticket office but upon arrival discovered this was not the case!  While wondering what our next move could be, Stuart had the thought to try access the booking website from our laptop instead of from a phone – we have in the past experienced that some websites just don’t work very well when accessed from a mobile device which was exactly the case here and thankfully we were able to purchase a ticket for the following morning’s sailing.

We had read many articles which claimed the ferry ride was a great opportunity to spot whales, dolphins and other sea creatures from the deck of the ferry, all while marveling at the magnificent scenery you are sailing past.   The views are quite spectacular but generally not very varied so you quickly become accustomed to steep heavily forested hillsides running down onto a stony shoreline and lots of wide-open expanses of blue water and of course it is pretty windy on deck as the ferry steams along and bitterly cold.  So, in fact what we experienced was passengers either stay inside and doze or sit outside in the sun on the leeward side of the vessel and doze while trying to soak up some warmth.

After 5 hours on the ferry, which included quote a prolonged period of rock and rolling, we docked at a tiny little bay known as Caleta Gonzalo which appears to have no other purpose than being the point where the ferry stops.  Everyone’s departure from the ferry was further delayed by 30 minutes as we watched from our vehicles the evacuation of an unfortunate passenger who must have fallen during the rough sea section.  Sitting watching the spectacle unfold we couldn’t figure out why they didn’t let everyone disembark before bringing the ambulance onto the ferry until we touched terra firma and immediately began chewing the dust of those in front of us. It is 60km from the disembarkment point to the town of Chaiten where no doubt most planned to stay and all of this is on a narrow dusty dirt road hemmed in by very tall dense forest which meant the dust just did not disperse.   This section traverses Parque Pumalin and we had intended to take it slow and camp in a few of the national park campsite along the way, so when we got the opportunity after 15km to pull off and leave those in front and behind us to lead the charge we gladly did.  The pull-off point was the start of a short hiking trail into the forest to view a number of ancient Alerce trees which are like the giant redwoods you find in the USA.

After an hour of wandering through the forest, marveling at not only the Alerce trees but also how dense the forest was we returned to Mr Jones and set off for a campsite.  In last month’s travel diary, we mentioned that one of the reasons for us delaying our entry in Chile was that the national parks rangers had been on strike which made accessing most of the parks either extremely difficult or just downright impossible, in theory now the strike was over but as we soon discovered nobody’s had yet been along and removed the chains blocking access to the various campsites dotted along the road.  Perhaps though this was a blessing in disguise, at least for that night, as we found a lovely little spot just off the road which overlooked a beautiful lake and sunset and as an added bonus had a strong stream just next to it meaning we had a plentiful water supply for a hot shower later.  And as most of the vehicles from the ferry had already charged off into Chaiten we had a perfectly peaceful night with no traffic passing.

A chance stop, the following morning at parking area which appeared to have some information boards resulted in Stuart making the impetuous decision to hike up the Chaiten volcano, Tania wisely stayed with Mr Jones.  Not having done any hiking for an awful long time, perhaps he should have read some of the older reviews on iOverlander more carefully which mentioned that the trail was more like a set of one very long and giant steps which ascended over 600m in roughly 3km! The volcano last erupted in 2008, spewing ash 17km into the atmosphere and forcing th evacuation of roughly 5000 residents in the nearby town of Chaiten.  

Two hundred kilometres south of Chaiten is the Queulat Glacier National Park famed for its large hanging glacier which supposedly can be viewed after a relatively short hike but once again we stumbled into access issues.  This time the park was open although not on the Monday afternoon when we arrived, for some strange reason it only operates Tuesday to Sunday and then to further complicate the process you are required to purchase your access ticket online in advance which we only discovered at the gate and naturally there was no cellphone signal in the area so we spent a fair bit of time driving up and down the Ruta 7 searching for both a campsite and either cellphone signal or a useable Wi-Fi signal.  When we did eventually get a connection, the booking website would, as with the ferry website, not work properly on a mobile device.  At this point, after experiencing closed campsites the previous days and now needing to jump through multiple hoops to enter a park our desire to pay money to walk a muddy trail in order to view a large block of hanging ice from afar was rapidly diminishing especially when you can’t help yourself and draw comparisons to the ease of access we had enjoyed for similar parks in Argentina.  When it rained quite heavily overnight which would only serve to make the trails muddier and the glacier was covered in low cloud in the morning, it was an easy decision to decide to skip this attraction and move on south. The glacier could be viewed from the campsite the evening before so we didn’t totally miss out on the opportunity to view it.

One thing we had so far come to realize from Ruta 7/ Careterra Austral is that there are very few diversions off it, so when a cycling couple in the glacier view campsite told us/raved about a 150km loop which they had done a bit further south we decided to make the diversion and hopefully find a few wild campsites along the way in order to make it a multiple day diversion.  As with everything in life, we all have different perspectives and while the route was lovely and quiet, the scenery in our opinion was average and if travelling with a vehicle there were zero opportunities to wild camp as fences ran along the entire route.  Roughly halfway into it, we did find one possible option but it was on top of a windswept hill and would really not have been very restful so we continued on until we joined back on to Ruta 7 and could continue on to the town of Coyahaique.   

With a population of 60 000 inhabitants, Coyhaique is the largest town along Ruta 7 and therefore had a reasonable sized supermarket where we could stock up on essentials, remembering that we had run our fridge and freezer really low in order to be able pass Chile strict border controls. Other than shopping there was no reason to hang around and so having re-stocked we continued to the southward journey towards the next “big” attraction, being Vila Cerro Castillo, in fact it is not the village that is the attraction but rather the mountain Castillo which towers over it with its jagged peaks which resemble a castle.   By this time, we were desperately hoping to find somewhere that could hold us for a few days while we enjoyed the scenery as we had been constantly on the move for a while, at this point.   It was also the day of the World Cup soccer opening ceremony and game and being in soccer mad South America we thought it would be easy to find a bar with a TV, in fact the only tourist attractions were a few small hotel type establishments and a very bleak looking campsite which had no real protection from a gale force wind which was honking outside.  In the meantime, we had also discovered that the hike leading up to the main view point of Cerro Castillo was partially closed as the winter snow had yet to fully melt which meant that even if Stuart had wanted to do the hike it was simply not an option.  And so, we once again moved on South.   

Thankfully only 50km out of the village, down a small side track we found a nice camp spot next to a river which was sufficiently far from the dusty Ruta 7 that we could pass away the rest of the afternoon in peace and quiet and dust free.  As already mentioned with very few opportunities for branching off to smaller attractions, the Carretera austral was very much becoming a case of breaking it up into stages of going from one main attraction to another.  Next on the list was Rio Tranquilo and the nearby marble caves which abut into the lake and can only be accessed by kayak or rubber dinghy.  The pictures we had seen looked quite spectacular and we were quite keen to take a tour, the weather however had other ideas as the wind had not died down from the previous day and in addition it was cold and rainy – all 3 of which do not make for a nice tranquil trip along a lake to some caves.  The weather forecast did not predict a letup in the conditions for a few days and there were no attractive paid camping options in town, so once again we moved on south in search of another wild camp for the night, ideally somewhere that was tucked away from the wind which thankfully we found and it had a great view of an unknown hanging glacier.

We had now reached a point on the Careterra Austral where a decision needed to be made with regards the direction to take, we could either turn east and head back into Argentina or we could continue south to the end of the road at Vila o Higgins with perhaps a side diversion to Caleta Tortel (a village, with no roads, that is built on stilts above a fjord).   The problem with the second option was that it is dead end journey of 300+km meaning you have to return the same way in order to eventually exit to Argentina.  Up until this point, while we had enjoyed parts of it, ultimately the Careterra Austral had not rocked our boat and so we opted to skip the 600km round trip and rather exit to Argentina.

The route to Argentina follows the southern shores of Lago General Carrera (South America 2nd largest lake with a length of over 200km and a surface area in excess of 1800 square kilometres) and for us was the highlight of the Careterra Austral even if it is officially not part of it.  The views were stupendous all the way as the road wound its way up and down and around the shoreline often clinging to cliff edges – think Chapmans Peak drive, just longer, more remote and all on dirt.

We arrived in the border town of Chile Chico in the late afternoon and as we weren’t expecting an onerous process decided to cross immediately, unfortunately for us we got what appeared to be a very new and strict Argentinian official who was intent on searching Mr J and finding animal or other prohibited biological products.  We were well aware of the strict controls Chile applied as mentioned earlier in this diary entry but until this point had not heard of a single traveller encountering issues when entering Argentina, needless to say the official found items to confiscate including for some bizarre reason our muesli!  To add insult to injury he then followed protocols to the T and left us waiting for about 45 minutes while he painstakingly typed up an affidavit to state what had been confiscated. What was meant to be a quick and easy border crossing turned into a rather complicated one and we could only proceed once the affidavit was complete and Stuart had signed it in triplicate. Thankfully there was a cheap and cheerful municipal campsite in town which was wind protected and so it was an easy decision to spend a couple of a nights and recuperate a little from our brief jaunt through Chile.

During our rest day, Tania had spotted a tourist attraction sign for route that hugs the Chilean border on the way south and so instead of heading over to the possibly faster and well-travelled Ruta 40 we opted to take this Ruta 41.  

It was a great choice and the Parque National Patagónia pamphlet we picked up after completing the loop describes it perfectly:  “Ruta 41 – Majestic scenery characterizes the most diverse and unexplored road in Patagonia.  Incredible views of the steppe, rock formations, southern beech forests, lagoons, meltwater waterfalls and the unbeatable view of the Andes mountain, added to the sightings of condors, black necked swans and countless birds make the route an unforgettable experience”.   And to round off a perfect day, we ended up at a cute little (and free) campsite within the National Park which was thankfully quite wind protected and had a few small walks we could do the following day.  The rangers seemed quite surprised to see us, as it seems they don’t get many visitors and asked us to spread the word about their “spot”, so if you happen to find yourself in Parque National Patagonia please do try to stop at Portal El Sauco…

After leaving the park and joining Ruta 40 we got our first introduction to the famed winds and long boring barren sections of the Patagonian steppe where the tallest plant is no higher than calf high (anything taller would probably get blown away) and the fences lining the road are littered with corpses of Guanaco’s ( a relative of both the lama and camel) where they appeared to have failed in their attempt to jump over the fence and have most likely broken their necks when getting snagged on the barb wire.  What did amaze, bewilder and astonish us over the next two days, as we and Mr J battled the winds and boring roads, is the number of cycle tourists that we encountered, there must surely be more pleasurable ways of self-flagellation than peddling a heavily loaded bicycle into relentless head and crosswinds?

The reward at the end of a long two days, the little town of El Chalten which sits below the soaring peaks of Fitzroy, Cerro Torre and others.  We were in town for the scenery but also so that Stuart could do the hike to the glacial lake at the base of Fitzroy which is supposedly one of the best day hikes to do in Patagonia.  Despite El Chalten being a 100% tourist town and that most visitors are either climbers or hikers there are surprisingly only two camping options, one being an organised and expensive site in town and the other being a large and free parking area just at the entrance to town, we opted for the latter and joined an eclectic bunch of international overlanders which made for some nice and interesting chats over the next few days while we waited out a bit of bad weather.  On the 4th day, Stuart was up early as the weather was predicted to be okay and set off for the round-trip hike of 25km which was perhaps a bit further than sensible when you haven’t done any serious hiking for many year, especially as the last kilometre to the base of Fitzroy ascends 400m in just 1km!   Going up was fine and he made good time but the return 12,5km was a rather painful experience as his old ITB issues kicked in which made every bend of the right knee a painful one.  

The day of his hike was also the day Argentina was due to play Holland in the soccer World Cup and so we had made arrangements that assuming he would be able to get back into town in time we would meet at a pub to watch the game.  To co-ordinate our meet-up we had a simple plan – when he had 3km left of the hike he would send a message using the Satellite GPS device we have, confirming where to meet up.  With just over an hour to go until kick-off the message was sent and received along with one extra requirement: Bring painkillers!  

Under normal circumstances, 3km of downhill should take 30minutes or less, so Tania had to hustle to close up Mr J and walk into town herself. Needless to say, she spent a good 30 extra minutes sitting outside the pub wandering if we had somehow missed each other until a rather weary Stuart limped up the main road from the trailhead.  Given that most of the town’s population seemed to be tourists we had underestimated how busy the pubs would get for the game but did eventually find a small local pub where we could stand just inside the door and watch the game.   In the end though we only saw the first half as the legs, despite the recently swallowed painkillers, were a little too tired to stand through the entire game but there was no doubt who had won when an hour later we heard all the hooters and revelry coming from town. Vamos Argentina!

Once a month or thereabouts there is always a need to stall somewhere while you get admin tasks done such as laundry, haircuts and small maintenance items that invariably accumulate.  Having accomplished what we had come to El Chalten for, we moved on south to the larger town of El Calafate.  In Brazil we really enjoyed being able to park off for a few hours at a self-help laundromat while we ran a few loads through the washer and dryer but have yet to stumble across such facilities in this part of the world.  As we had driven into town late on a Saturday, it meant the laundry wouldn’t be ready for collection until Tuesday so we had plenty of time to steadily work through our other tasks and to organise money.

As we have mentioned in previous travel diaries, Argentina’s economy and hyper-inflation has created a semi-formal black-market exchange rate mechanism, known as the “Blue Dollar”. Rumors had been abounding for the last month that the government had reached an agreement with the credit card companies to charge transactions by foreign credit cards at this rate, which would certainly make life easier for us and for the government as it probably would help to formalise tourism related income and bring it into the taxable net however no traveler reported actually being charged this better rate when using their card.   El Calafate is a small town with lots of tourists passing through, all wanting to do exactly the something – “obtain double their money via Western Union” which meant that the only two WU outlets in town had long queues (4+hours) and had a restriction on the amount a person could obtain, effectively ZAR3,5k.    We joined the queues twice over the course of a few days, only to discover a few days later that the blue rate was finally working on credit cards! 

Once we had the bulk of our admin tasks completed it was time to head 70km out of town to its main tourist attraction, the Perito Moreno glacier.  The glacier is huge at 30km long and at its end, it is roughly 5km wide and 70m high and incredibly one of the few glaciers in the world that is not shrinking due to global warming.  Conveniently it ends directly in front of a hill which has allowed the authorities to build a maze of walkways which allows very convenient (and sustainable) access to the thousands that pass by each day.  While standing on these walkways you hear the glacier creaking and groaning as it steadily advances at microscopic pace and if you are incredibly lucky you may be there when a giant chunk of ice breaks free from the face and plunges into the lake with a giant splash.   Naturally there are also many other activities available, if you so desire, such as boat and kayak trips on the lake below the glacier or treks on the glacier itself where you don some crampons and shuffle in big groups across a carefully laid out route on the glacier.  We are not really big fans of such mass tourist destinations where it inevitably feels like you are surrounded by people who are more concerned with snapping a selfie to prove they have “been there, done that” before they quickly move on to the next big thing, after a few hours we decided to skip the curio and coffee shop and rather take lunch next to Mr Jones before heading back to town.

Our time in El Calafate coincided with the World Cup soccer semi-finals and as in a week prior our search for a place to watch Argentina beat Croatia resulted in us enjoying standing room just outside a bar, except this time one of us was not suffering from tired legs and so we got to watch the whole spectacle and subsequent street celebrations when Argentina advanced to the finals.  The atmosphere was so great and the similarities of a country desperately needing hope and something to be proud of reminded us so much of South Africa and the 1995 Rugby World Cup that we decided there and then to stick around for the final, instead of continuing south as we had originally planned.  We however didn’t want to hang around in town for all that period so instead drove back out towards the Perito Merino glacier and a free campsite within the National Park called El Huala where we passed away a very pleasant 3 days with distant views of the glacier and surrounding mountains.

For the final game we thought we would be clever and hit the bars 90 minutes prior to kick-off, pretty sure that that way we would be able to find a table and seat but alas we totally underestimated the enthusiasm of both locals and tourists and ultimately found ourselves back outside the door of the “semi-final” bar.  For us it wasn’t a train smash as we were there to lend a little bit of support while soaking up and enjoying the atmosphere.  It was a great final game full of suspense after Argentina first took a convincing 2-0 lead, then France come back in the second half to level everything which ultimately resulted in penalties which thankfully Argentina prevailed over.  And as expected the celebrations were huge and great to witness.

Leaving town a day later, while filling up with diesel and testing our credit card to see if the blue dollar rate did in fact apply we allowed Mr Jones to “pay it forward”, first by jump starting some Chileans who had car problems and then by picking up a French hitchhiker.   The hitchhiker was heading to El Chalten and we were continuing south hoping to cross back into Chile later in the day, so 50km later we dropped him off at the junction that heads north and wished him good luck in finding his next ride.

The border crossing would bring us back into Chile just outside the Torres del Paine mountain massif and we were still debating whether to do a loop through that national park or to just continue the southward journey to Ushuaia and the “end of the world” but that is a story for the next diary entry.

As usual below you can find links to other parts of the blog which complement the travel diary:

After our wonderful wine tasting/lunch (last months Travel Diary) we had spent a day huddled down in Mr J in the local municipal campsite riding out a spell of cold and wet weather and were happily soaking up some sunshine the following day when our plan for another day in camp was thrown in disarray as a tanker come through the trees spraying some kind of herbicide in the air.  The crew, in full chemical PPE, were as surprised to see us as we them and despite our limited Spanish skills we managed to quickly establish that in fact the campsite was closed.   Our general approach to campsites is to check in for one night and then to extend if we like the place, typically the campsite administration is not too worried about you staying longer, so long as you pay for the extra days on departure and so this is what we had done here and because we were tucked away out of site nobody had realized we were still in camp.

Needless to say, we had to make a very hasty pack-up and departure, fortunately for once we had looked up the previous day where we thought we might go next and so already had our next stop in mind.  The idea was to divert slightly off Ruta 40 to the town of San Rafael and from there to the Atuel canyon.  As you leave town and enter the lower portion of the canyon there are a number of formal campsite options but none looked too appealing, especially as they were falling into shade as the afternoon progressed and so we continued further upriver and past a large dam wall and hydro-electric power plant to a view point which looked over the subsequent dam.  This proved to be a brilliant choice, firstly because we enjoyed sunlight till late together with a magnificent sunset and secondly cause we got to have this amazing and free location all to ourselves.  Both the sunset and the following morning’s early light made taking great photos very easy.

The valley / canyon stretches for roughly 100km upstream which took us the better part of 3 hours to drive not just because the road twists and turns through it but also because there were so many WOW moments that we kept stopping for photos.  In addition to the magnificent natural scenery there are a number of engineering marvels along it to as it forms a very important hydro-electric scheme with a number of tunnels carving through the mountains and at least 3 further generating stations.

Having exited the canyon and not found anything too appealing for camping we headed back westwards towards the Andes and the abandoned hotel “el Sosneado” which is tucked into a valley approximately 60km long surrounded by high snow-capped Andean peaks.  We had chosen to drive there for two reasons, firstly the hotel has a “termas” pool and secondly it is relatively infamous for its high life in its heyday and the possibility that it was used as a hiding place for Nazis post WW2.  Its location is not easy to reach now and can only have been extremely difficult to reach back then.  The wind was howling down the valley when we arrived making it extremely cold and not altogether pleasant and then we discovered that the thermal pool was anything but warm and stank to high heaven as it has an extremely high sulphur content. Perhaps there are some therapeutic benefits to this but there was no way we were venturing in.  The only benefit of the pool was it was surrounded by high stone walls which protected you from the wind and allowed you to soak up the sun, so we made the most of that until sunset.  Thankfully the wind died with the setting sun which saved us from getting seasick inside MR J that night but it was rather chilly, 4 deg C inside him the following morning!

Once we had driven back down the valley from the abandoned hotel we headed for the town of Murangue and its municipal campsite with the intention of spending a few days to allow us to catch-up on the small jobs and maintenance tasks that just accumulate over time.  An aspect that has really surprised and impressed us with Argentina is how many towns have a municipal campsite which while the facilities are often a little tired, they are always spotlessly clean and the camping cost is usually “cheap as chips”.  In this case the cost per night for 2 people was ZAR35, literally cheaper than a packet of crisps in an Argentinian supermarket.

A planned couple night stop quickly turned into 4 which meant we left Murangue well rested and looking forward to the next stage of the journey and what a fantastic stage of Ruta 40 it was.  The road was mostly dirt and the landscape very very dry, often reminding us of the Karoo but the variety of landscape, colours and plants had us constantly slack jawed and stopping for photos.  In between we added a fantastic wild camp tucked away off the road which again had us snapping away like crazy (while Mr. J did his best to photo bomb the pictures!) 

The scenery just got better as we moved a little further south and entered Patagonia’s “Lake District” which now meant huge lakes with snow-capped mountains and volcanoes in the background while the lake shore is surrounded by forests of ancient Monkey Puzzle trees.  Our first stop was Alumine lake where we wild camped both on its lake shore and then later up a valley in the most amazing spot that had us dreaming of the kind of off-grid cabin you could build in such a location. 

Spring in Patagonia is wonderful in that many plants come to life, there are  many different flowers and everything looks lush and of course it brings warmer weather but our fantasies of an off grid cabin soon got a wake-up call when a cold front started to arrive and temperatures dropped dramatically, which made it a perfect time to pack up and move into the town of San Martin de Los Andes, that plus we had been disconnected for a few days so felt like some WiFi.

San Martin de Los Andes is a stunning little village that felt very much like a Swiss alpine village, in summer it thrives on hiking, mountain biking and water sports on the rivers and lake it sits next to and in winter it is a ski and winter sports haven.  It also had many funky looking restaurants and so on an excursion into town after having successfully completed our first Western Union blue dollar exchange we rewarded ourselves with a lunch out.    

In last month’s travel diary we spoke about the multiple exchange rate mechanisms that exist in Argentina and that the blue dollar effectively doubled your buying power, for most travelers this means sending money to themselves via the Western Union(WU) app and then collecting the corresponding pesos at a WU branch.  It may sound and seem complicated but is in reality really simple and means they don’t need to carry lots of physical USD with them prior to arrival in Argentina.   Unfortunately, the WU app is not available to South Africans but “necessity is the mother of invention” and as we were starting to run out of the physical USD we had flown over with we had come up with a plan:  our son (Devon) is living in the UK and can use the WU app from there, so we would send him money via PayPal from our ZA bank account and he would send money back to us via WU. Slightly more complicated but doable and certainly better than the alternative of spending at the official exchange rate. See out Cost of Living sheet to understand the impact on spending power.

After a few days the weather began to improve and so we headed out onto the 7 Lakes route which runs south towards Bariloche but didn’t make it very far as we come across a “libre” campsite only 50km outside of town.   These free camping places belong to the Argentinian national parks authority, they come with no facilities and visitors are expected to take their rubbish away with them. The lack of facilities is no issue for us as we now have a mini toilet setup in our en-suite bathroom and provided we can find a water source (river, lake, tap) we also have a hot shower with the gas geyser we installed before leaving South Africa.

After one night we moved on but made even fewer km’s than the day before as we rounded a bend and spotted another libre sign so turned in out of curiosity and this campsite turned out to be even better than the previous night’s one as it faced nicely north (great sunshine for both us and the solar panels) and was on the banks of a lovely clean river with a great outlook onto the surrounding snow-capped mountains.  Naturally we stayed a couple of nights and only moved on because we felt the need for a cellphone signal and the corresponding WI-FI in order to catch-up on what was happening in the world. Our intended destination for that day was the much lauded (by travel writers) town of Bariloche.

Bariloche, which sits at the southern point of the 7 lakes route, is famous and infamous for probably a few reasons.  Firstly, it was the town that housed a number of Nazis who escaped from Germany at the end of WW2, with the most infamous being the SS Captain Erich Priebke who lived there until he was exposed by a TV journalist and subsequently extradited for his war crimes.  It is also rumored that Josef Mengele spent time here before moving to Brazil where he evaded further capture until his death.  The reason Bariloche was an attractive destination for fleeing Nazis is that it already had a strong Swiss-German community and per the many travel writers this is the real reason to visit – it is meant to have the feeling of an Alpine village on the banks of a large lake accompanied by good food, great beer and even better chocolate. 

Sadly, we cannot attest to any of the latter items as from the moment we entered the outskirts of the city (it is definitely not a village) we took an immediate dislike to it – it felt chaotic dirty and lacking architectural appeal and so we didn’t linger and instead headed for a campsite on the other side.   In our opinion the smaller towns of Villa la Angostura and San Martin de Los Andes are far more attractive.   This meant that the only reason to linger was to make use of the conveniences that a larger town brings, namely shopping and getting laundry done.

Up until this point we had been grappling with when and where to cross the Andes and enter Chile, we wanted to continue our journey south on the famous Carretera Austral which passes through many national parks in Chile but one of the unknowns we faced was that the Chilean Park rangers were on strike which meant that the parks, campsites and trails were officially closed although it seemed some travelers were circumventing the barricades.  This however is not our style and so we were watching the situation closely hoping that the issues resulting in the strike would be resolved soon.

In the meantime, we decided to backtrack on ourselves slightly and go back to the 7 lakes region and visit one of the lakes we had yet to see, namely Lago Traful.  This turned into a really great decision as the road to and around Lago Traful was truly stunning with a huge variety of scenery, meaning we made slow progress on the journey as we kept stopping for photos.  Added to this was that we found two really spectacular campsites and although this time they weren’t “libre” they also weren’t expensive.  

The only downside was that there was no cellphone signal anywhere along the lake and so we were cut-off from being able to monitor the strike status in Chile, therefore after a few days we moved on to civilization in the form of  Villa la Angostura.  Our intention was to spend a night or two in this town as it had looked quite appealing when we had passed through it a little over a week prior, however as we discovered the camping options were extremely limited.  Many places were not open yet (they only open for peak summer season) and those that were open were rather unappealing and expensive for what they offered (or mostly didn’t) so instead we spent a few hours in a side street sitting in Mr. Jones while we caught up on the news, social media and the status of the strike.   In the case of the strike, we discovered that it had in fact ended that day and so a quick decision was made to head out of town to a campsite just short of the border. 

Unfortunately, our hasty decision did slightly backfire on us, as there was no WI-FI or cell signal at the campsite and in our haste we had forgotten to research what is required to get a prepaid SIM card in Chile and to transfer enough cash into our bank accounts to ensure we could revert back to ATM withdrawals once in Chile. Fortunately, the campsite was only 20km from Villa La Angostura and so the following morning we quickly slipped back down the mountain to town in order to do the necessary before heading back up the pass to the border post.  As Murphy would have it, there was a weak but perhaps usable cell signal directly at the border.

The Andes mountains form a natural divide between Argentina and Chile and while this section of the range is quite low in altitude the inhospitable environment means that the border posts are both placed at altitudes which perhaps in winter receive slightly less snowfall and so having stamped out of Argentina we drove for around 40km of “no-mans” land as we climbed up and over the mountains, along the way passing  the remnants of what in winter must be some seriously deep snow drifts – they were big enough in spring time and sufficiently cold looking to ensure we didn’t stop and climb out for any photos.

As usual below you can find links to other parts of the blog which complement the travel diary:

Our 5th and penultimate month in Brazil had really tested our endurance and willingness to travel (September Travel Diary), fortunately the first two weeks of October went much smoother and we were once again able to enjoy our time in Brazil.  Once we received the repaired awning cover back from the auto trimmer shop we pointed Mr Jones nose south for the final haul to Foz do Igaucu, a mere 800km but still two days drive for us and thus another night in a truck stop on the way.  We have, however, come to really enjoy our stays in truck stops and this one was no different. 

Foz do Igauzu is considered the worlds second largest waterfall system, the largest being Victoria Falls in Southern Africa.  Interestingly both Foz Do Igauzu and Victoria falls sit on the borders of three countries, in this case Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil all share either the falls or the river just above them as a boundary.   The similarities however end with the international border comparisons (and of course the throngs of tourists) as Victoria falls is almost one single waterfall whereas Igauzu consists of some 250 cascades (average height:60m) spread over nearly 3 kilometres.  You can visit the falls from both Brazil and Argentina, the Brazilian side allows you to get up close and very very wet as there is walkway across the top of one cascade and directly below the largest one known as “La Garganta del Diablo (the Devils throat).  In the days preceding our visit there had been quite a bit of heavy rain, in fact we delayed our visit in order to do it on sunny day, so the water was flowing particularly strong through the Devils throat and under the walkway – both an awe-inspiring sight and a scary feeling when you consider the force and power of water versus the concrete pillars holding up the walkway!   And as we read a week later, after another spell of heavy rains, they actually had to close the walkways as the water had risen and was flowing over the walkways..

In general, we are not fans of the tourist attractions which attract thousand of visitors per day and standing in line waiting to buy our entrance tickets that morning we had most definitely had our reservations about joining the tourist shuffle, however by taking our time and admiring both the power of the falls but also the small “attractions” that abound we had a great day out.

Apart from visiting the falls, we put our final few days in Brazil to good use by visiting the laundromat, collecting some parcels (our friend Clecio from Chicago who had become Stuart’s personal google translator and go-to for solving problems in Brazil) had kindly ordered some replacement engine temp and coolant level monitoring devices and had them delivered to a friend of his in Foz.  The temperature probe required the manufacture of replacement thermostat housing plug from solid brass which we got done by visiting a “tornearia” (metal turning shop), once again the combination of a super friendly shop owner, the use of Google translate and hand gestures ensured that not being able to speak Portuguese was really not an issue.

We crossed the border to Argentina on a rainy and overcast day with just 8 days remaining of the 6 months per year that we are allowed to stay in Brazil as South Africans.  In Africa border crossings are typically a rather slow affair so when we saw the queue of cars at the Argentinian frontier we were expecting a very long day but in fact it went quite quickly and before we knew it we were driving around Puerto Iguacu  in search of places to change money and to obtain a SIM card for our cellphone, both of which went surprisingly easy and almost before we knew it we had a 10gb of local data on the phone and a large pile of pesos which we hoped would be enough for our first month’s travel.  

Argentina economy is at a macro level in dire straits with hyper-inflation (close to 100% pa) which makes life for ordinary citizens very hard as they struggle with rising prices and assets rapidly diminishing in value.  One of the consequences of this is that there is a parallel and black-market exchange which exists around the USD and Peso known as the “blue dollar”.  Our simplistic understanding of the blue dollar exchange is that for those Argentinians who can afford to and wish to try and preserve some wealth, they are willing to purchase USD at rates far exceeding the official exchange rate, which means if as a traveler you have USD it is possible to change these for Peso at very attractive rates and as a consequence practically halve the “real” cost of any purchases. (see our Practical Information page for the best and easiest way to obtain these Blue dollars)   We first experienced this in April 2022, at that stage the official exchange rate to the USD was 108 and the blue dollar rate 198, now in October it is 138 and 285 respectively.  As we travel over the coming months it will be interesting to see if it really does make travelling cheaper or if local costs are in fact much higher and the blue dollar just equalises this – we expect it to be somewhere between the two scenarios.  

Having completed all our admin we headed out of town and down the “pan handle” that Argentina has between Paraguay and Brazil with our eye on spending the night next to a dam where we understood it was possible to camp for free and even plug Mr J into electricity.  Upon arrival we had mixed feelings; it was very pretty but also rather muddy and did not look very appealing but as it was lunchtime we decided a snack was in order before moving on.  On our way out, Stuart spotted some electricity points on higher and therefore dryer ground which meant our “moving on” had suddenly become only 300m.  We found it quite hard to believe that you could camp for free and still obtain electricity to charge your batteries but as we were to discover over the next few days this was not to be a once off occurrence.

Over the next few days we wandered down the panhandle and slightly westwards along the bottom of Paraguay as we worked our way towards the first touristy destination we had in mind for Argentina, the National Park Ibera.  Along the way we made a brief detour to visit the magnificent ruins of a Jesuit mission at San Ignacio.   

Ibera started out life as a small provincial park until an American billionaire and philanthropist, Doug Tompkins (founder of the outdoor brand North Face) got involved and started buying up many of the farms surrounding it.  He donated the land back to the Argentinian government in 2015 on the condition that a National park was created for the preservation of the wetlands.  Today Ibera is the world’s second largest grassland wetland, after the Pantanal, and they have even begun to re-introduce Jaguar’s along with other animals that had become extinct in the area.  Much of this we didn’t know until we drove into the park. 

We had chosen to enter in the north western section and were hoping to be able to travel from there southwards but as we quickly discovered, the vast wetlands mean that much of the park is not traversable in a motor vehicle and so you have to go in and out along the same tracks.  After thirty kilometres crossing these vast grasslands with plenty of bird and wild life sightings you come to the ranger station of San Nicolas, were to our surprise you can camp for free (we also didn’t have to pay an entrance fee to the park!).   Included in your free camping is a million-star sky, ablutions with running water and if you ask, the rangers will switch on a generator to create hot water which is something we weren’t concerned about as Mr J has his own “en-suite” shower with gas geyser.  A further 7km into the park the road ends and from there it is possible to take a guide and canoe trip on the waterways for some up-close viewing of cayman, capybara and many water birds.    The canoe trip is not very long, partly because the water levels at this time of the year are lower, but only cost the princely sum of ZAR55 per person.   At this point we couldn’t help but marvel at the differences to Brazil, in Brazil there is a general lack of appreciation for nature and it would not have been possible to access the park, let alone camp, without paying either substantial entrance fees and/or being required to take a guide whereas in Argentina we had been able to access the park and camp for free and pay a ridiculous low amount for an excursion.

Surrounding the camp are a number of short walking trails which you can do on your own, while wandering down one of these and busy taking photos of all the wild flowers, we practically bumped into a Marsh Deer who emerged from a thicket of plants.  He wasn’t fazed by us in the slightest which made for some fantastically close up pictures.  Over supper on our second night, we seriously debated staying for a few more days but alas with so much of Argentina still in front of us (and below us) we decided to move on.  

The wine country of Mendoza was calling and we thought we were in for a relatively boring week of driving across the country, as many of the blogs we had previously read were not that complimentary of this part of the country but thankfully and much to our surprise it was in fact an incredibly scenic and varied drive.  First up was a southward leg with the Ibera type grasslands on our left and the Parana river on our right, (South America’s second longest river @ nearly 5000km in length) until we reached Cordoba and could cross under the river via a very impressive tunnel.  

Sometimes the smallest things can leave really lasting impressions and our campsite in a little town of Villa Carlos Laz Paz just outside Cordoba may be one of those – it had the most fantastic hot showers, with great water pressure and unlimited water.  For context, over the last 7 months we have got very used to what is commonly referred to as a “suicide shower”.  It is termed a suicide shower because it is basically a shower head with an electric heating element inside it, which means if there is any dodgy wiring you stand a good chance of having a shocking experience…. Fortunately, in our time here we haven’t had any such experiences but Stuart has vivid memories of a few mild shocks when touching the taps from his trip to Bolivia in the early 2000’s.   The other negative with the suicide shower setup is that in order to have decent hot water, a low volume needs to flow through the shower head which sometimes can mean only a dribble so a normal flowing shower with hot water “on tap” was almost a reason on its own to extend our stay! The campsite itself was nothing special and so alas we did not stay more than one night but MAN those showers were great.

Leaving town, a long but spectacular climb awaited Mr Jones as we took Ruta 34 which winds its way up into the Sierra Grandes ultimately reaching a height of 2000m asl, considering that for the last few months our average altitude has been in the region of 100m this was quite a change.  Along the way we made multiple stops to admire the view and at one point watch the Andean Condor soaring below us.  The condor is the world’s largest flying bird.

Near the summit of the mountain pass we took the turnoff to Parque National Quebrada de Condorita where we hoped to spend the night but first we enjoyed a lovely lunch of cold meats, cheese, olives and pickled onions while parked outside the ranger station.  These delights we had picked up a few days earlier when by chance we stopped outside a very nondescript deli in a small town while on the search for a butchery that sold lamb – Tania had been craving some succulent lamb chops on the braai since before Brazil and so far despite numerous searches had not been successful.  At this stop we also weren’t successful but the quality of the deli and super low prices partly compensated for the disappointment.

The national park has a number of longer trails available which appear very popular, but Tania’s foot and hip issues are not conducive to longer walks so after lunch we undertook one of the shorter trails before settling in at the trailhead for another night of wild and free camping.   We have a phrase called “bush tv” which usually applies to the visual feast when camping in wild areas, whether it be the dramatic landscapes, animals or bird life that can keep you occupied for hours an end as you observe and admire. On this afternoon we instead picked up reception for a little bit of crime drama!   A French paraglider landed a few hundred metres from where we were parked and not long afterwards a park ranger arrived and over the next few hours we binge watched a few episodes as the arrogance of the flyer (who clearly was not allowed to fly over or land in the the park) quickly escalated the conflict, resulting in the arrival of multiple park rangers and ultimately ended with what we assumed was the confiscation of his paraglider and an escort out of the park.

Leaving Parque National Quebrada de Condorita we continued to marvel at the visual spectacle that Ruta 34 gave us, initially high alpine grasslands, then spectacular rock formations and canyons before finally dropping off the mountain to Mina Clavero via a spectacular mountain pass that afforded endless views across the dry lowlands to the west.  It is most definitely not known as the Route of High Summits for no reason.  In Mina Clavero we stopped to grab some empanadas for lunch and for Tania to visit a carnaceria in search of lamb chops.  The lamb chops remained elusive but she did score some very nice sausages and the empanadas, were well worth the wait while they were prepared fresh. 

It is going to sound like a stuck record but the afternoons drive once again left us marveling at the scenery and how much it could change in such a short space of time.  We probably only covered a couple of hundred kilometres for the day but we went from alpine grasslands to meandering through small european style villages along the base of the mountain before finally crossing hot and dry scrubland which felt very much like the Karoo. The day ended just outside the entrance to another national park, this one being Sierra de las Quijadas, as they don’t have camping inside but provided you are self-sufficient you can park outside in a little clearing and visit the park during the day.  This was to be our third national park in Argentina and in all three we had not had to pay an entrance fee or camping fee, such a contrast from Brazil where often even a visit to a minor waterfall would incur an entrance fee and where we did not find a single national park with facilities for camping (everything was privatized).

The park offers a number of walking trails, some longer and some shorter, this time we did a medium length one which took you to various viewpoints overlooking spectacular rock formations.  Once again, a visual spectacle!  

The only downside to the park was that there was zero water available and while we carry quite a lot of filtered water (60l capacity) in Mr J main water tank we prefer to not use that for general use activities like dishes and showers, for that we have the bumper tank and a loose bag with a total capacity of 30l.  After using some of this in the high mountains and not refilling then when we had the opportunity it meant that after two days camping wild this general use water supply was getting low and so after our walk it was time to hit the road and complete the last leg into Mendoza.  Along the way, that afternoon we did stop briefly to admire one more dramatic change in landscapes, being the vast sand dunes @ Bosques Telteca.

The first couple of days in Mendoza were spent in camp as we firstly enjoyed some downtime from the frequent moving interspersed with ticking off the many jobs that accumulate when moving frequently, these can range from simple things like giving the inside of Mr J a spring clean to rotating his tyres which is always a good cross-fit workout for Stuart as it involves removing the spare and “changing” all 4 tyres.   On the 3rd day we ventured into town for more admin related tasks: laundry, finding a place to fill our South African gas cylinder (every country has different connections and so it can get complicated), finding a mechanic to change the gearbox oils and loading data onto our local SIM card.  It was while dropping off laundry that Tania heard a South African accent which it turned out belonged to Pieter & his Argentinian wife, (she has an Afrikaans English accent),  they are both winemakers who live in Hermanus but are in Argentina visiting her family.  Apart from a lovely conversation and comparison of the similarities to life in SA versus Argentina the one key takeaway was that when overseas we all really really miss Woolies!

On our 4th day in Mendoza (nope this isn’t a mini advent calendar), it was Devon’s birthday so given that we couldn’t be with him in person to celebrate, we decided that the next best thing was that we took ourselves out for a lunch and wine tasting.  The only hassle was that you couldn’t really enjoy the wine tasting knowing that you still had to drive across town to get back to camp, so on the 5th day in Mendoza we decided to relocate to an “estanciomento” in town.  An estanciomento is a parking lot and the one we had chosen is regularly used by travelers to park & sleep in overnight while having easy access to town, this sounded ideal as it would allow us to explore central Mendoza during the day and then have a night out on the town later.  Apart from needing to further celebrate Devon’s birthday we still hadn’t had a spoil for Stuart’s 50th a month prior and so figured this was the perfect opportunity.  As it turned out the night on the town didn’t happen as we overindulged on a giant pizza at lunch and so didn’t in fact make it out for supper later – this turned out however to be a blessing in disguise.

The blessing in disguise was that the following day we headed out of Mendoza, after a lovely breakfast in a funky cafe near to our parking, to a wine valley region called Tupangato and here we enjoyed a 4 course lunch with unlimited wine all for the princely sum of ZAR250 per person.  A far better proposition than in downtime Mendoza and in a far more spectacular setting.  As an added bonus the Bodego Jean Bousquet’s Chardonnay was the best we have had since leaving SA and so we left with 6 bottles, the Malbec wasn’t half bad either and you could get it in “papsak” which meant we departed with a few of those as well.

And that rounds off the month of October: after 6 months, it was a sad goodbye to Brazil but it’s been a great introduction to Argentina and we are already trying to figure out how we can stay here for 6 months.

As usual below you can find links to other parts of the blog which complement the travel diary:

Last month’s travel diary (August – Travel Diary) ended with us hopeful that we had got to the bottom of Mr J coolant addiction and that we would soon be looking forward too many trouble-free miles across the continent and so having collected Mr Jones after a couple of days we began September by retracing our steps to the little historical and picturesque town of Pirenopolis. This was to be our third visit (thanks to previous radiator issues and backtracking) so we only paused for the night before heading further west.  While we hoped to find one or two places to spend a couple of nights at, our main goal at this point was to get across to Brazil’s western border with Bolivia and the Pantanal region.

The Pantanal is the world’s largest tropical wetland and one of its largest flooded grasslands, it covers an area slightly larger than England and supports both a large wildlife population as well as huge cattle ranches.  The floodwaters drain out of its basin between April to September making September a prime wildlife viewing month as the animals are more concentrated around the main water sources and rivers.  We hoped to do a river boat tour and get to spot the elusive Jaguar as a way to celebrate Stuart’s upcoming 50th birthday but first we had 1400km on minor roads to cover.

The first two days and 600km went by relatively easy apart from the extreme heat and then as we pulled into a relatively small town called Barra do Garcas, Mr Jones cut-out!  The symptoms appeared like a fuel starvation issue and as we have experienced this previously thanks to dirty diesel clogging pipes and filters, Stuart’s “go-too” solution was to hop out and quickly drain the fuel sedimenter.  This typically releases any vacuum created by a blockage and allows us to get going again, unfortunately this time it was not to be and Mr Jones would cut out as soon as his revs dropped to idle or thereabouts.  Most small Brazilian towns have an excessive amount of speed bumps, as a traffic calming measure, which meant every time we slowed for one of these Mr Jones would cutout.  It was midday on a Saturday with temperatures hovering around 40deg Celsius and the campsite we had been aiming for was only 10km away, with the possibility of shade and a calm environment to problem solve within so we struggled through town by wherever possible keeping the revs up high and when not just restarting every time he died.  With nerves frayed and tempers on edge we arrived at the campsite to find that while there was some shade, it was going to take quite some maneuvering to get Mr J into it which meant multiple “stalls”, restarts and high revs – the poor campsite owner must have really wandered about Stuart’s driving skills…

After lunch and a beer, Stuart put out an SOS WhatsApp to the mechanic in Brasilia (Patrick) for ideas as to what the issue could be and then set about trying to fix it.  Patrick reached out to a fellow Landy owner, who lived in the town to see if he could come out to the campsite and help us, however as he is a tour guide and was out with clients he could only come out the following evening which he duly did – arriving at camp at 8pm.  In the meantime, Stuart had drained and cleaned the fuel sedimeneter, tightened all pipe fittings, changed the fuel lift pump and fuel filter and made a bracket for the filter to fix the mounting we had discovered was loose but all to no avail as Mr Jones would start and run at high revs but die as soon as he idled.  Having by now exhausted both ourselves and any fixes we were capable of, all that could be done was to limp back into town the following day and visit a diesel mechanic.  Stuart did have one more trick up his sleeve for the journey and zip tied a bolt onto the accelerator cable to push it out further at idle and thus keep the revs up for the journey.

The issue turned out to be a broken camshaft in the injector pump which meant another Airbnb stay while it was overhauled and to complicate matters further a public holiday (Independence Day) fell mid-week resulting in an extended stay.  At this point the only positive we could take from the experience was that the Airbnb had air conditioning, as the temperature remained in the upper 30’s all day long and only dropped slightly in the evenings. In last month’s blog we mentioned Clecio, a Landy fanatic who had tracked us down while in Vitoria based on a sighting his friends had made of a foreign Landy driving through town.  Clecio lives in Chicago but had offered his help to us back then “for anything” we needed assistance with, at the time none of us knew how valuable that offer would be and, in this instance, Clecio become Stuart’s personal google translator. The google translate app is very handy but occasionally we would get a WhatsApp from the mechanic which google told us something like “the bomb is being assembled in the van”!  While we had a pretty good idea that he was referring to the injector pump, Clecio was always on hand to give us the correct interruption which in this case was that in Portuguese the word “bomba” can mean bomb or pump depending on context.

When we got news late on the 4th afternoon that Mr Jones was ready, Stuart eagerly set off, despite the heat, for the 5km walk to the mechanic (there were no Ubers in this small town and we had no means of summoning a taxi).  Apart from an expensive bill, all seemed good with Mr Jones until disaster struck only 2km from the mechanic when Mr J’s temperature and low coolant alarms both sounded.  It turned out that somehow, they had created a vacuum in the cooling system while removing and reinstalling the injector pump, exactly how is a mystery but the fact was Mr J had now quickly overheated.  After some arguing in which they refused to accept any responsibility we left town with a bitter taste in our mouth but hopeful that thanks to the alarms, we had detected the issue quick enough and that no lasting damage had been done.

Desperately needing a place to reset, calm down and restore a little bit of mojo we found the perfect spot 300km down the road called “Aguas Quentes do Buritizal”.  Fortunately, the name was deceiving as the water was not hot but a perfect temperature for just soaking in while enjoying the bubbles of the natural spring underfoot.  After a couple of nights and feeling duly rejuvenated we again resumed our journey towards the Pantanal.

The launching point for the boat tours which will hopefully take you to see a Jaguar is a little village called Porto Jofre, of which the last 200km is along a badly corrugated (wash board) road through the Pantanal grasslands with no cellphone signal.  Sadly, within 1km of these corrugations, Mr J come to a grinding halt with once again symptoms of fuel starvation. Once again it was midday and stinking hot and once again we limped forward towards a campsite which was 20km away, every time he cut-out we did our best to freewheel forward into a small patch of shade in which to fiddle and get him started.  At the campsite that afternoon, the long process of trying to figure out the issue began again.  

It was clear that Mr Jones was trying to tell us he didn’t want to go the Pantanal in search of Jaguars and so the following morning having tried all the standard fixes (tightened hoses, looked for leaks, blown compressed air down the pipes, check condition of filter and sedimenter) we set off, hoping to get back to Cuiaba and a mechanic. We didn’t make it 200m down the road before he cut out again and so opted to return to camp and try find an alternative solution.  Mr Jones has 3 fuel tanks, the first two are connected and fuel flows between them naturally whereas the third one requires a small electric fuel pump to transfer fuel from it to the main tank.  The alternative solution Stuart come up with, was to reroute a number of pipes in order that we could use the electric fuel pump to feed the injection pump directly and thus hopefully avoid any vacuums being created.

This solution worked reasonably well but not perfectly as we still ground to a halt a number of times over the course of the next day as we tried to get back to Cuiaba culminating in near disaster when a short in the wiring caused a small fire.  Fortunately, we were quick on the draw with the fire extinguisher and put it out quickly and after some repairs to the now damaged wiring could move forward again.  As we pulled into a truck stop that night (it had taken 10 hours to do 100km), the emotions finally boiled over!  Not only was Mr J broken but we were both physically and mentally exhausted and seriously reconsidering the concept of travelling in Mr Jones.

As with the previous breakdown, once we had got signal on the phone Stuart had sent an SOS to the mechanic in Brasilia and together with one of his customers they had found a garage in Cuiaba for us to visit the following morning.  It was only 30km away but still involved one “forced stop” to quickly reroute the piping in order to transfer fuel from one tank to another and then reroute it back again so that the electric pump could send fuel to the engine.  The recommended garage was expecting us on arrival and immediately set about fixing Mr J.  Eight hours later we were back on the road and holding thumbs that this was the end of our issues even if Stuart did still have another day of work ahead of him to fix some of the burnt electrical wiring we hadn’t needed to fix on the side of the road, two days prior. And Tania had a day of cleaning to try and get rid of as much white fire extinguisher powder from the interior as possible.

Up until this point we had always pushed onwards after leaving a mechanic but this time we decided to take the cautious approach and rather tour around the area, in that way if everything hadn’t been fixed we could go back and request a re-work. Near to Cuiaba is a small mountainous region called Chapada dos Guimaraes and so that is where we headed which unwittingly meant Mr J got a real test as the drive involved some long and very hot climbs.  Thankfully he passed with flying colors which left us feeling more optimistic.

We aren’t ones to really collect and tick-off the places visited but as an interesting side note we now found ourselves in the geographic centre of the continent and with a bit of luck will hopefully reach its southern most point in a few month’s time.

A rather unfortunate side effect of all the mechanical expenses the last month was that our arms at this point had become incredibly short and unfortunately there was nothing to do in the region that did not require dipping into the wallets to pay for a visit to a waterfall or other attraction.  It is something we have struggled with in general throughout the central interior part of the country: the need to pay for visiting any attraction whether it be natural or not.  The concept of tourism generating local revenue is good, but on some days if we had wanted to just visit 3 very average waterfalls it would have cost us in excess of ZAR800!  A real reminder of how lucky we are in South Africa and why South Africa should be an even more popular tourism destination.  A tipping point for us in this particular area was when we wandered into town and sat down at a bar for a drink which had some live music, when calling for the bill an entertainment surcharge was tacked on which was more than the drinks!

With Mr Jones having not exhibited any issues on our little excursion to Chapada dos Guimaraes, we felt comfortable to now point his nose South as we had roughly one month left on our 6-month visa and didn’t want to rush through the south western portion of Brazil. Sadly, Murphy was still hanging around inside Mr J which we were only to discover a couple of days later when during his standard morning routine checks Stuart noticed the coolant level had dropped and when we stopped for lunch it had dropped again!  At this point in time when it came to Mr J and his issues we had very short fuses and you therefore do not need fantastic imaginations to know what the mood was like inside him that afternoon, fortunately we stopped at a lovely campsite on the banks of a river. Apart from the campsite being in a lovely location it also had no cellphone signal or WI-FI, which forced us to switch off and reflect on the status quo.

The summary of that reflection was that while the last month of travelling had been very hard and far from enjoyable we in general did not want to give up on the lifestyle, however we couldn’t (and didn’t want to) do it with a car as unreliable as Mr Jones currently was.  This left us with two options, either ship him home and find an alternative vehicle somewhere in the Americas or alternatively attempt to get to the bottom of his issues while still in Brazil, which has reasonable access to Land Rover parts & expertise.  As Tania wisely pointed out at this point, to ship him home would be costly and would still require additional expenditure to fix him in South Africa, so it was a “no brainer” decision to attempt to fix him now and to then continue travelling with our “own home”.

Having made the decision and to some extent taken a load off our minds, we decided to stay an extra day and enjoy the hot weather and lovely cool river.

The following morning Stuart did his usual pre-drive check of fluid levels and a general engine inspection and was almost grinning when he popped his head out from under the hood.  Any normal person would not be grinning upon discovering lumpy residue on the oil dipstick but for Stuart this confirmed what he had suspected (and feared) for some time, that there was an issue with the cylinder head gasket and it also hopefully indicated that we had found the source of the current issues.   We have always said that Mr Jones is an Officer and a Gentleman in that he has never truly let us down and always gets us to a place of safety, no matter his issue, and it felt like once again he had done that – we had affirmed our commitment to him the day before and he rewarded us by revealing the source of his ailment.  

All that we now needed to do was drive the 200km into the next big town, Campo Grande, and find a suitable Land Rover mechanic.  As soon as we had signal, Stuart put out another SOS to our Brazilian friends for them to recommend a mechanic but as it turned out this time we beat them to the punch as we found a mechanic almost immediately upon our arrival in town.  

It didn’t take long for the mechanic to also confirm the head gasket as being the likely issue.  Unfortunately, we weren’t about to get off that lightly as when he sent the cylinder head off for pressure testing it was discovered that, that also had a crack in it and as that is not a serviceable item the hunt immediately began for a replacement which could only be found in another city out of the state.   Thanks to the marvels of modern logistics this was shipped overnight and arrived the next day.

Stuart’s 50th birthday was approaching and life on the road can make celebrating such events rather strange as you often can’t predict where you may be, who you may be with or even if you will have Wi-Fi so that family and friends can be in contact.  Getting Mr Jones back with a new cylinder head and hopefully the end of his current woes was, weirdly, the best present and then as an added bonus we got to meet up with two fellow South African’s.  We had been chatting with (but never met) Louis & Kareen from @fearless_on_fourwheels since 2021 when we were trying to figure out shipping of vehicles to South America with all the COVID restrictions in place at that time.  Ultimately, they didn’t ship their vehicle and instead opted to purchase a small van in Chile, and as luck would have it they had just entered Brazil and were heading North so our paths crossed.

As our breakdowns had prevented us from going into the real “wild” Pantanal we had been considering doing a short 250km loop that overlanders have termed “the anteater” road thanks to the high probability that you will see Giant Anteaters along it.  It is a dirt road that joins the towns of Rio Verde and Aquidauana as it cuts through the cattle ranching grasslands of the Pantanal with a number of spots where you can wild / free camp.  As Louis & Kareen had also been considering doing it, we decided to drive it together.

Our first night on the anteater road was Stuart’s actual birthday and Kareen very kindly presented a bottle of sparkling red wine (which she had brought from Argentina)) for us to share around the campfire in celebration.  

The following day we took a leisurely game drive along the road before pulling over in a little cutting for the evening.  Even though the road traverses’ cattle ranches (Fazienda’s) we managed to spot a wide variety of animals including: the Giant Anteater, Caymans, Capybara’s, a wild pig/boar with lots of babies; a Jabiru (Giant stork), vultures, and many many smaller birds.

The original idea had been to spread the drive over 3 nights but when torrential rain arrived during night two and we awoke to water lapping at the wheels of Mr J (the cutting we had slept in was in a slight dip) it was obvious that a 3rd night would be just a miserable mud fest and that it was time to head out.    Louis & Kareen’s little van is effectively a Toyota Hi-Ace with a raised roof and as we all know a Hi-Ace can pretty much go anywhere but the rain had made the road very slippery so Mr J escorted them out.  Overall the Hi-Ace did very well over the next 100km and only needed a tow out of a particularly muddy section once, nonetheless Kareen was visibly relieved to reach the tar a few hours later. At this point they headed North and we headed south back towards Campo Grande for another round of repairs to Mr Jones.

Thankfully these repairs were not engine related, the awning on the side of the car has a cover with zips to close it.  Apart from the lifting roof the awning is one of the best upgrades we ever made to Mr J as it is quick to both open and close, which means we use it almost daily for both shelter from the sun and rain.  It has been exposed to some very harsh environments for nearly 7 years and done admirably well but some of the stitching had started to come undone and more importantly the zip to close the cover broke on the Anteater road.  It was time to find someone to fix it, which after a a fairly extensive search in which we cross-crossed Campo Grande having been referred from one possible place to the next we eventually found an auto trimmer who could assist.

And that rounds off the month of September, it will be a month we remember for a very long time thanks to all the mechanical issues but in between we did have some nice days and visit some nice destinations. Most importantly we finished the month enthusiastic for further travels and looking forward to new countries as our Brazilian visa soon comes to an end.

As usual below you can find links to other parts of the blog which complement the travel diary:

Our last travel diary ended at Ponta do Sauipe in Bahia, at that point we had been in Brazil for just over 3 months and had travelled roughly 6000km with most of it having been on the coast.  If the weather had been better we may have been tempted to push a bit further north along the coast but it was not and with an eye on the expiration of our 6-month visa, we had now decided to head inland and then ultimately southwards in order to explore these parts of the country over the remaining couple of months. The coastline along the north-east and northern most reaches together with the Amazon shall have to wait for a return visit.

Considering the vastness of the interior we had been forced to put a rough route and must-see destinations down on paper to ensure we didn’t both run out of time or wander around aimlessly.  The first destination we had identified was the mountainous area of Chapada Diamantina, a mere 500 km inland but at least two days driving considering the relatively slow roads in the region.  The last part of the drive is quite spectacular as you wind up, over and down the mountains and uncanny resemblance to the Cederberg mountains in South Africa had us slack jawed quite a number of times, even the rivers have a black tea colour to them. It had been some hard driving days in hot conditions but we were thoroughly enjoying the change of scenery and prospect off new vistas.

Even the little village of Mucuge where we planned to overnight could have been one of the small towns surrounding the Cederberg, just perhaps a little bit more funky.  The timing of our arrival in town was very fortunate as the campsite had just relocated and we arrived as the last campers were leaving the old one to travel to the new one and so we were able to join them and thus not get lost.  A lot of care has gone into creating the new campsite but although even though we didn’t stay at the original one, it sadly for us lacked the character and positioning of the one in town.  What it lacked in character was more than made up for by the friendliness of the owners and fellow campers, many of whom had been in the area for a couple of months already.  On our second night there a big get together had been arranged to celebrate the opening of the camp, to which were invited and the good news was that a number of the campers spoke English.  We have had a great time in Brazil but with our practically non-existent Portuguese the one aspect we miss in daily life is the ability to have free-flowing conversations with people (other than ourselves) on a regular basis, so apart from the good vibes and food being able to just chat with others made for a wonderful evening. As with the Cederberg, the Diamantina area is very much a hiking and upcoming climbing region, which are activities we don’t really partake in these days so after a couple of days it was time for us to move on.

Our next must-see destination that we had read about was the Jalapao region, which we had read was more spectacular than Chapada Diamantina and less touristy which in the case of the latter we were about to discover was most likely due to its remoteness and difficult access. This time we had 800km of tar and a further 200km of dirt to cover before getting there which would mean at least one night in a truck stop and thankfully just before the dirt section a couple of days in a little piece of paradise.

Overnighting in truck stops may seem rather strange to our average reader but in Brazil it is a common and necessary practice for overland travelers given the huge distances to be covered, while it is by no means a glamorous overnight destination we had so far found them to be safe and to have clean ablutions with free showers.  In addition, we feel a sense of community with the truck drivers, who are also sometimes travelling with their wives while living in their “mobile homes”.    On this leg of the journey though we got to experience a “less than great” truck stop:  upon arrival we didn’t like the vibe as it was quite dirty and filled with shady looking characters thanks probably to it being closer to a town than most of the others we had stayed at, but as it was late in the day and we were exhausted we decided to stay.  Needless to say, as the darkness arrived the “shadiness” got worse as some “ladies of the night” arrived which, in itself, wouldn’t have been the end of the world as they left us alone but halfway through the evening they started to congregate near Mr. Jones and hold rather loud conversations amongst themselves.  It was the one and only time on this trip that we were grateful not to be able to understand Portuguese…

After a very disturbed night another long day lay ahead but at least (based on pictures) we had a little piece of paradise to look forward to known as Lagoa de Serra.  Our GPS doesn’t show any roads leading to it and so once we reached the closest town it did it’s best to lead us astray by taking the most direct straight line to the lake but thankfully we found the correct dirt road leading out of town and after 45 minutes of following our nose drove into what was most definitely a piece of paradise.    Late on the second day a Brazilian couple arrived who could speak English and as with Diamantina a few days prior we made the most of being able to chat with people other than ourselves which made to a late start of our own braai but well worth it.

If we had known what lay ahead, we would have probably stayed a few more days at Lagoa de Serra but as we didn’t and expecting equal bits of paradise we left after just two days and headed into the sandy and dusty Jalapao region.  To get there we needed to traverse 200km of sand roads which varied from rough corrugation (washboard) to thick powder red talcum like sand.  While hard to appreciate when doing it in 40 deg heat and getting caked in a fine layer of sand, the drive is quite spectacular in that initially it crosses farmlands and then a bushveld like savannah.  The farmlands are spectacular simply for their sheer size and remoteness – maize and wheat fields stretch as far as the horizon and when we tried to measure the width of a field we would easily cover 6km before seeing a single break in the planting.  Signs at some small farm roads would indicate that the farmhouse itself was 50km away!

The main reasons to come to Jalapao are for its huge dune field with spectacular sunsets, its crystal-clear rivers (an ironic contrast to the total dryness around them) and its fervedouras.  As we were tired of being covered in dust and there was no camping near the dunes we chose to forgo those and rather find a camping spot with easy access to the latter two attractions in which to cool off, this we found at Prainha do Mambucca.  The river was wonderful to swim in and the fervedoura a bit freaky to float in.  A fervedoura is a very shallow karst spring which appears to have a solid sand bottom but in fact it is more like suspended sand which when you put a limb in creates the sensation that you could fall through the earth.  We have experienced such a sensation once before at the Kapisha hot springs in Zambia, but there the “suspended floor” area was always small pockets.

This video shows the awesome clarity of the rivers

And this video shows the “freaky” suspended floor of the karst spring

A downside of camping near the river was little miggies and flies that left a very painful bite (similar to our borrachudo experience many months before on Ilha Bela) so after a day and half of rest we decided to skip visiting more of the fervedouras and to move onto hopefully greener pastures.  The plan was to split the hot and dusty journey into two by staying at a campsite whose fancy looking sign (nice photos and advertising a pool) we had passed on the way in. Unfortunately it turned out that while the sign was still in very good condition no such campsite existed anymore and so we put our heads down and bolted southwards.

The journey out of Jalapao was not without its challenges – when during the hottest part of the day and in a section of particularly loose, deep sand Mr. J ran out of power and cut-out. A little over a year ago we went down a rabbit hole for quite some time when he would do a similar trick on a regular basis.  In that case we eventually found that the water sedimenter (a pre-filter close to the fuel tank) was full of gunk and that this was occasionally creating a blockage in the fuel lines, so suspecting the same thing, Stuart opened the sedimenter for a while to release any vacuum as a temporary solution.  The unfortunate thing of coming to a grinding halt in soft sand is that getting going again can be rather difficult as the vehicle “sinks into the sand” when it stops and as we were too lazy in the heat to deflate the tires we relied on Mr. J and his low range to get himself out.  When it works it is quite a cool feeling as you literally feel Mr. J struggle, then rise up on the sand and move forward.

The following morning, after another peaceful sleep in a truck stop, Stuart dismantled the fuel sedimenter and cleaned out the little bit of dirt that was inside.  Our intention at this stage had been to travel another 500km south to the Chapada Dos Veadeiros area but when the truck stop owner/manager come over to engage in conversation about our travels and subsequently recommended a little spot only 2 hours away we happily decided to break the journey up and have a short day.  We have come to learn that every Brazilian has a favorite place and often for good reason.  The place he had suggested was Rio Azuis, which as we discovered when we got there is Brazil’s shortest river at only 147m long but with a flow rate of 11000l per second and as its name suggests it is very blue.  

In the parking area where we camped at the river was Brazilian travelling on a motorbike with whom we had a few stunted conversations during the course of the day, thanks to the inability to speak each other’s language.  During one of these interactions he told us about, and showed us videos, of some cave he had visited the day before and offered to take us there if we wanted? So the following morning Mr. Jones followed his motorbike down a narrow dirt track to an isolated car park and we then happily followed him into the caves.   It was a really special morning as we were the only three in the cave, it was free (a rare thing in Brazil) and it was spectacular!

When we posted the pictures  and story on social media later in the day some family members who clearly have watched too many serial murder tv series were quick with the comments like “met a stranger in a camping parking lot, followed him down an isolated dirt road and into a cave, what could possibly go wrong..” but it had never even crossed our mind and is one of the beauties of travelling – meeting kind hearted souls who you know you can immediately trust and then sometimes others who you know you can’t.

By the time we emerged from the caves it was mid-morning and the temperature was already climbing well into the 30’s so after some quick goodbyes and trying our best to express our gratitude for such a unique experience we hit the road for our next destination, the little tourist town of Alto Paraiso de Goias and the Chapada dos Veadeiros natural area.  After a hot drive we were feeling quite frazzled but as we drove through town on the way to the campsite we had this feeling of calm and tranquility and suspected we could definitely make an extended stay.  After the dust and heat we had experienced over the last week the campsite with tall pine trees and grass was a little piece of paradise, as an added bonus there were two Brazilian motor homes their whose owners spoke English.  They were so hospitable and it was such a pleasure to be able to hold a normal conversation that on the first night (despite the very long day) we stayed up for a “kuier” until 1am.  During the course of the week we had many lovely chats, received lots of tips for the remainder of our trip and got to go on a shopping trip with them into town.  

A shopping trip may sound like a strange highlight but for Tania it was really helpful to go shopping with a Portuguese accomplice and receive hints and tips at the local produce and for Stuart it meant an opportunity to visit a hardware store and procure the necessary bits to build a water storage pipe on the front bumper of Mr Jones. We have an internal water tank but that is for clean drinking water which we don’t like to “waste” for simple regular tasks like hand washing, the water pipe now gives us 15l of general use water which we never have to worry about filtering, etc.

Apart from the sense of tranquility the town exuded, every time we wandered around town we were also struck by the number of alien pictures in shops and restaurants which seemed out of place, a little bit of research revealed that the area sits on a giant quartz plate which is believed to give off good energy and that these vibes together with a light emanating from it can be seen from outer space. Hence the alien theme.

All in all, it was great week with the cherry on top being when the owner of the campsite made enquiries on our behalf to see if we could get our COVID booster vaccines at the local clinic and then took us their and acted as interpreter for us.  Once again, a great example of the kindness of Brazilians.

Apart from the fact that we had needed some downtime from travelling the other reason we spent a whole week chilling was that Mr Jones had an appointment with a mechanic in the capital, Brasilia. Owning a Land Rover has its positives and negatives but one of its biggest positives is the community it creates, six weeks prior we had met a fellow called Clecio who had come out looking for us in Vitoria because his mates had spotted a foreign Landy in town.  Clecio is Brazilian and a landy fanatic who lives in Chicago USA but he had offered his help if we ever needed it, so when MR J started to need some work done which was more than a standard service Stuart got in contact and asked if he knew of any mechanics in the areas we were heading too.  He had arranged for us to visit Patrick, who we found out later is considered one of the foremost experts on the engine Mr J has, and so on Sunday we took a leisurely drive into Brazil capital in order to ensure we could be at Patricks workshop bright and early on the Monday.  When every time you need a mechanic, you are in a different location it is always a bit of gamble as to what you may get and usually Stuart prefers to hover around and observe the work but from the moment we arrived at the workshop we had a good feeling and happily left our home in Patrick’s hands as we headed off to an AirBnB for a few days.

The history of Brasilia is quite fascinating:  the concept of moving the capital to a central interior location was first proposed in the 19th century in order to lessen the economic and social reliance of the country on Rio de Janeiro but it was only in the 1950’s that construction actually started and then the central portion and all its infrastructure was built in an incredibly short 4 years.  At that stage it was designed as a city for the future, which meant all areas (office, residential and parks) were connected and divided by large free-flowing highways and interchanges.   Without a car over the next few days we can attest to how short that vision was in allowing freedom of movement on foot.  It is a very spacious city but in the some breath one that lacks intimacy, the parks are huge and largely lacking trees, the monuments are massive cold concrete structures and the roadways very busy but having said that it also seems like quite a calm city.  Our first impressions are therefore not a fair judgement to say if the vision of a city for the future was successful or not.

While Mr Jones was getting love and attention, we used our time to get many loads of laundry done, get haircuts, shop for body care items which you only find in bigger shopping malls and have a couple of meals out.  Tania will tell you, with a bit of drama, that one of these meals nearly cost her her life as Stuart/google maps made her cross three 4 lane highways in peak hour traffic with nor pedestrian crossings or traffic lights in sight – as we mentioned the city is not pedestrian friendly.

One reason we had wanted Mr Jones to spend time with a good mechanic is that he had been “drinking” coolant like we drink wine and in fact his usage had lately seemed to get worse.  With many “remote” kilometres ahead of us over the next months as we head south to Patagonia we had decided now was the time to get to the bottom of his addiction.  The issue has plagued us since just before leaving SA and Stuart’s worst fear was that it could be an internal issue (we are even carrying a full head gasket replacement set for this eventuality) so we were quite relieved when Patrick declared it was definitely not an internal issue and that after some changes of hose clamps to not be experiencing any pressure loss.

This was great news and meant that after two days in the shop we could collect him and now point his nose eastwards in the direction of the Pantanal.  Our excitement was relatively short lived as after a couple of days travel, the coolant levels started to drop again which meant a turnaround for a 500km drive back to Brasilia and the mechanic.  The coolant loss/usage was really starting to be a mystery as Mr J was running well and not overheating but there were no visible signs of leakage.  Even back at Patrick there was a lot of scratching of heads when after 2 hours of over-pressurizing the system no pressure had been lost and no leaks had appeared until eventually we spotted some small leaks at the bottom of the radiator.  While this meant another AirBnB stay while the radiator was repaired, it at least meant we had hopefully got to the bottom of the problem.

And that wraps up the month of August 2022

As usual below you can find links to other parts of the blog which complement the travel diary:

Having renewed our visas, (last month’s blog) and with effectively 4 months available to us to continue exploring Brazil we were exited to continue our northwards trek along the coastline towards the fabled state of Bahia.  When speaking of beautiful beaches almost all Brazilians have recommended Bahia to us.  All that lay between us and Bahia was the state of Espírito Santo and a mere 900km, we have mentioned it before but Brazil is HUGE.  Approximately half way across the state lies the city of Vitoria and so our plan was to break the journey with a stop there to carry out the usual monthly “admin” tasks such as laundry and paying for our internet data.

Unfortunately, at the same time, both of us started to not feel well, although thankfully not bad enough that we couldn’t spend many hours behind the wheel as we slowly worked our way northwards.   It still took us two days to reach Vitoria as the roads in this part of the world despite being main thoroughfares are usually single lane and busy with many trucks, who when an overtaking opportunity presents are just sufficiently slower than Mr Jones to be difficult to pass but when the road winds through long sections of hilly terrain then their speed drops to 30km/h or less and therefore so did ours!    Having traversed the city and its spectacular bridge which crosses the main bay and harbor, we were sitting in the queue at a very busy toll plaza when we had another classic “welcome to Brazil” moment – a random stranger paid our toll fees for us which we only discovered when we got to the toll booth !

Two days of travelling had done nothing to make us feel better and in fact, we were feeling worse with flu-like aches and pains and very scratchy throats, fearing that we may have Covid we did our best to limit contact with other campers and stayed put for 5 days until we were over the worst of it (or so we thought).  We suspect our excursion to watch the World Surf League competition in Saquerema and the crowded beach was the likely source of our woes.

Once we started to feel better and because based on elapsed time we should no longer be infectious (assuming it was Covid) we left the campground to carry out the “admin” tasks mentioned above. In hindsight we probably should have rested a few more days as undertaking a 10 hour day which includes doing multiple loads of laundry at a self-service outlet, shopping and then driving for 5 hours to sleep at a truck stop is probably not the wisest thing to do when still feeling a bit weak.   Admittedly the day was made longer by a lovely encounter we had with a fellow called Clecio who drove into the parking lot of the shops just as we were about to leave.   He is a Brazilian living in Chicago who was home for a holiday and most importantly is a Landy fanatic. Earlier in the morning some of his friends had told him that they had spotted a foreign plated Land Rover driving into town so he had come out in search of us, hoping to say Hello.  After what had been a frustrating morning, it was so lovely to have a chat in English while admiring each other’s vehicles – hopefully if we make it to the states one day we will meet-up again..

As with the other previous nights we have spent in a truck stop, we slept surprisingly well and woke in the morning feeling quite refreshed and ready to continue the journey northwards into Bahia. That feeling disappeared quite quickly when the first 150km took 3 hours to complete thanks to the many trucks and winding roads, sometimes we would be doing only 10km/h and other times desperately trying to seize an overtaking opportunity at 90km/h which is rapidly approaching Mr J’s top speed.  This pace continued throughout the morning so when we pulled off for lunch at the ubiquitous carvery style restaurants that can be found all along Brazil’s main arterial roads it was a quick decision to not try and squeeze an afternoon of driving from ourselves and rather seek out a place to rest up for a few days.  This sadly was not without its pain either, when Mr J had a temporary moment of refusing to start, only adding to our grouchy mood. At this point we were in southern Bahia but it was not living up to expectations: the beaches were very narrow; the sea was brown and it was windy.  We did however get to enjoy some dolphins playing in the water just in front of camp and spotted some whales far offshore.

After a day’s rest and feeling refreshed we decided to move on in search of the fabled beaches and blue water,  based on various sources it appeared that the little village of Transcosco would offer that with some highly rated beaches and a hippy/eco village vibe to the town.  Upon arrival it didn’t take long to turn us off when firstly the beaches all seemed difficult to reach, secondly when we did find a parking we got hassled by a drunk car guard wanting to charge upfront for parking in a public road and thirdly there was a lack of suitable camping options which didn’t require a likely 30minutes plus walk to get to the beaches. So without even looking at the beaches we made a bolt out of town in search of greener pastures (aka some blue water).  Along the way we did make a detour down a small dirt road to a beach which was in fact quite attractive although again the water was dirty but at least this time we could see the likely cause, a river/lagoon was pushing hard out to sea.  We drove away wondering if perhaps flooding rivers was the cause of all the brown water we had seen so far but as South Africans this didn’t make us anymore inclined to swim or surf,  as we are conditioned to be wary of sharks in “dirty” water, Brazilians however don’t seem to have the same concerns.

A couple of days later we found ourselves just south of Ilheus at a spot called Tahiti surf camp, the water was still brown but there were loads of surfers in the water as it fronts onto “Backdoor” which is supposedly one of Brazil’s better point breaks. So after a day of observation Stuart plucked up the courage and headed into the water.  Being a point break with a relatively narrow bay and quite a lot of rocks makes for an intimidating surf which combined with it being rather popular meant much time was spent sitting on the board versus actually catching waves but this was partly made up for by the occasional sighting of a turtle as it popped it’s head out of the water.

The vibe at the campsite was really pleasant, with such a lovely owner who we would have loved to be able to chat with and which made our lack of Portuguese all the more frustrating, nonetheless we spent a lovely week there and as an added bonus got in some much-needed rest.  In the meantime, we had learnt that the brown sea water is a seasonal thing and come summer time it is generally always a lovely translucent blue colour.  By the time we drove away we were starting to feel ourselves again and quietly hopeful that the fatigue from being sick was now well and truly behind us.

A short hop to the northern side of Ilheus brought us to a campsite called Paraiso which with its many palm trees and long open beach instantly made us feel like we could be back in Mozambique.  By this point Stuart had either got used to the brown water or accepted it and enjoyed a few board meetings, even paddling out on his lonesome for one session.

Paraiso was nice but not quite paradise so after 4 days we continued northwards to Itacare, where we did find clean water but not great surfing conditions.  All was not lost however as while we were standing checking out the surf, Tania heard a man talking English to his child and chirped “you speak English!”. This started a conversation that led into being invited to join his family for lunch.  Although American by birth, Michael is equal part Brazilian, as he is married to a Brazilian and is fluent in Portuguese having lived here for 15 years.  It was almost dark when our extended lunch come to an end and we still needed to find somewhere to spend the night but weren’t too concerned as at worst we knew a number of people had spent the night exactly where Mr Jones was parked, the only issue being the lack of toilets so we first headed off in search of an alternative.  Itacare is a very funky town with narrow cobbled streets, colourful building’s and a convoluted one-way system which meant we ended up circling around quite a bit as we found possible places to be either closed or not suitable.  Eventually with it already dark and about to give up and head back to the beach parking, we found a small pousada (small hotel/hostel) that accepted car camping in its parking lot and where able to just squeeze Mr Jones in.  The benefit of this spot was it was close to all the restaurants and night life, so after opening Mr Jones roof we went for a walk to explore and perhaps find something to eat although we weren’t that hungry considering the late lunch we had had earlier.  Initially none of the eateries appealed in the main section but as we wandered down a quieter side street we come across a Mexican restaurant with a very friendly owner who easily managed to entice us to sit down.  Apart from the lovely food they served he was also very proud of the fact that only the best Cachaca (a distilled spirit from sugarcane) was used in his caipirinha’s, even pouring us a sample to drink neat.  He was not wrong about the cachaca, it was smooth and almost buttery to the taste much to our surprise.

We debated staying longer in Itacare and if the camping setup had been more suitable probably would have, so after a short stroll around in the morning during which we twice had to seek out shelter from the tropical downpours that at this time of the year are a regular (almost hourly) occurrence we once again pointed Mr J in a northerly direction towards the Marau peninsula. 

The above-mentioned tropical downpours had turned the 60km road leading onto the peninsula into a mud fest of note but on the positive side we did find blue water there, as a large reef runs along this section of coast and creates almost one huge tidal pool.  With tranquil and clear water, it is very popular to snorkel in.  Our departure from the peninsula was an even muddier affair than our arrival and right towards the end of the dirt road we come across a long traffic jam of trucks at the base of a small hill.  Under normal circumstances such a small incline would almost not be noticed but the combination of the slippery red clay and a heavy load meant a large truck had slid sideways into the embankment and was busy being hauled out by a caterpillar grader.  It gave us flashbacks to a very long day we had had in Western Tanzania, although that time Mr Jones needed the assistance of the caterpillar to get past one bad section. Video of our Tanzania muddy adventure

At this point we were very close to Salvador, which is way further north than we ever thought we would get on this visit to Brazil, all that lay between us was the island of Ilha de Itaparica.  It is Brazil largest island and any google search will show pictures of lovely white sand and crystal clear blue water.  On the surface our campsite, with lovely grass underfoot and surrounded by palm trees, together with the location directly on a beach should have been paradise and a spot we could spend plenty of time at but as has been our experience for much of this 3rd month it just didn’t live up to its potential and so after just 2 days we moved on and caught the hour long ferry ride across the bay to Salvador.

The ferry’s docking coincided with lunchtime and Tania had read of a very cool Middle Eastern restaurant in downtown Salvador, so with the prospect of some different tastes and flavors we eagerly set off to find it.  Unfortunately, the restaurant was no longer in business but by the time we discovered this we had already struggled to find (and paid for) parking so we decided to take a wander around the area.  Something that has baffled us at almost every beach we have visited in over 6000km of coastline is the lack of public toilets, in South Africa almost every beach has them but so far in Brazil we have only found them along Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro.  This busy boulevard and beach in Salvador was no different and as we were both in desperate need of a loo we decided to find a restaurant to eat at and therefore gain access to a toilet.  Being lunchtime on a Sunday meant most establishments were extremely busy and not fancying trying to struggle with the language in a noisy environment we sought out a quieter spot which we found down a little alley off the main boulevard.  With the help of google translate and a lot of patience from the waitress we selected two traditional Bahia dishes, in Stuart’s case google kindly told us it was “shrimp drool”.

Salvador is famous for its Afro-Brazilian culture, the old town and its many colorful buildings and it had been our intention to visit this when there but perhaps it is because we are jaded from travel or from having felt “let down” a few times from visiting the so-called must see tourist attractions and combined with the fact that we had read a few reports of being harassed by touts and con artists we ultimately decided not to visit this area.  Instead we made good use of a rare morning when no tropical storms were forecast to chill on the beach and read our books.  We also made good use of easy access to a self-service laundry facility to catchup on clothes and linen washing. Of course, murphy did show his hand as we were making our way back to Mr J with clean and DRY laundry when a tropical downpour quickly blew in and drenched us.

Salvador brought up the end of 3 months in Brazil and with a long way to go back South to exit the country and many things to see in the interior our thoughts had begun to think about when to turn and were to go inland but first we decided to have one or two more beach stops.  Praia do Forte is only 80km from Salvador and a very popular holiday town, it is also a fairly well-known surfing town and so hoping for one last hoorah in the water we headed there. Normally the more popular holiday spots don’t appeal to us but both Itacare and Praia do Forte ticked many boxes and interestingly in both cases we camped in the parking areas of a pousada, in the latter however we had more space and therefore were able to spend a few days.  Unfortunately, Tania also started to feel ill again and was desperately hoping it wasn’t a reoccurrence of whatever had afflicted us earlier in the month, in the meantime Stuart took his surfboard for a long walk across town to see if he could find the surf break and duly returned a few hours later only having got sand between his toes.  It turns out the spot was very technical with a difficult entry and exit across a sharp reef at low tide and so having watched a number of locals gingerly pick their way across this, any temptation to surf quickly dissipated.  All was not lost though, as later that afternoon at high tide he spotted some guys in the water at a different spot and decided to give it a bash, the waves were average but this was made up for by being surrounded by turtles in the water.  At one point he counted 6 heads pop up at once.

On iOverlander we had eyed out a wild camp spot just north of Praia do Forte which we decided could be good for one or two nights before we turn inland, suspecting that there would be no surf their Stuart rather sadly packed away his boards for the last time until we probably reach Chile in 2023.  As it turned out we found it impossible to reach the spot as despite trying a number of different approaches we either ran into fences or rivers, however every cloud has a silver lining and, in this case, we found Porto de Sauipe which has a lovely big open beach (a rare commodity in this part of the world) and some surfing.  A few days of no rain were forecast so the surfboards were unpacked one last time and we even had to haul out our beach sunshade –  a first for us in South America.  As everyone knows,  weather forecasting is one of the few professions in which it is accepted that you get it wrong a great deal of the time, so after a couple of days the weather turned and with it so did we – it was time to head inland and see a different part of Brazil.

A note of reflection – this post may have sounded a bit negative in respect to the places we have visited or a bit pessimistic in respect to our outlook and if so it probably reflects our mood for the month and perhaps shows that as in “normal” life, when travelling full time not all months are “palm trees and white sandy beaches”.  Certainly, what didn’t help was being sick and feeling fatigued for most of the month, and of course the brown seawater!  We are assured that in the summer Bahia enjoys lovely blue water and in places like Salvador and the Marau peninsula we did get glimpses that this could be true.

As always, below you can find links to additional items which complement this post: