Travel Diary: November 2022 (Argentina -the jaw dropping Ruta 40 & Lake District)

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: