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Published: July 20th 2006
La Rioja, though dull by day turned out to be more interesting by night. By then we´d settled down in the store room that the hotel owner had set up for us to use and temporarily settled our stomachs with some rather dubious yellow candyfoss from an enthusiastic and talkative street vendor. We coped with this by adopting the standard British approach when confronted with an excitable person, first tried by us in Madrid airport, of assuing that what´s being said is whatever is most convinient for ourselves and acting accordingly, often leaving foreigners so shocked that we are allowed to proceed unimpeded. Thus we had been the first to board our flight on the assuption that the fellow was shouting "Yes of course you should board first, please continue" and in a similar manner procceded through La Rojia with some remarkably cheap candyfloss, where we were actively encouraged to walk on the grass in the plazas.
At night a street market opened up in the centre of town selling just about every standard good we didn´t need (I managed to leave my thick jumper in England and we both need gloves) so I bought a mate pot (for drinking
The spanish meal
All the residents including owners.what passes as tea in South America, with a strainer in the steel straw which accompanies the pot) and we ate one of the finest hamburgers of my life under a photo of Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, while Ian scandalously equalized in the South American chess seires (5-5).
Escaped the next day on the twice weekly bus out of La Rioja and arrived 4 hours of consistently dull scenery later. Los Andes Valle Fertille occupies a plain just short of two national parks which were the reason for our less than simple route south from Salta to Mendoza. Our hostel, the ony one in town, was occupied by us, the owners, and a Spanish middle aged couple with similar intentions to our own. The town was occupied by our hostel, about 5 shops (Which came in two varieties, closed or stupidly expensive), a restertaunt, a patisery (which occupied the same category as the later group of shops, while the resteraunt spent most its time imitating the former), a plaza and four stray dogs. Plus some houses. With the execption of a few stand alone houses on the road inbetween we seemed to have come from the 2nd to
the 1st least intrinsicaly exciting place in South America. Luckily both the owners and Spaniards were some of the friendliest people we´ve met thus far (which is up against some stiff competition) and the Spanish couple (Who both spoke excellent English) cooked the 6 of us a traditional dish from their part of Spain and plied us with wine to round it off. The owners then brought out a bottle of a traditional Andean drink, made from herbs, mixed with coke and strongly alchoholic (Farmet or something like that). We passed a social evening listening to my ipod, which had been pluged into the hostel speaker system, and consuming steadlily more of this drink before heading to bed tired and content.
We had to set off for the parks at 8 the next morning which meant getting up at 7, an hour I haven´t had to get up at since my days in the Army. Therefore somewhat less content we arrived in the park known as the Valley of the Moon, where a tropical lakes´ existence was cut short by the rise of the Andes to the west. Subsiquently the lake dried up, life ceased or moved, and over
Strange rock
Wind carved. a vast expanse (About the area of a mid sized English county) nothing animal lives. It had been descibed in the guide book as one of the quietest places on Earth and a chap we met in Salta had backed this up. He had however clearly had more money than us (In fairness he´d just quit his job in London) since we were forced to travel with a group of about 30 people inluding several children and our ability to appreciate the silence of the place wa correspondingly reduced. The scenery however, and its geological history, constantly elucidated by our bilingual Spanish friends, was just as striking. Several volcanos had been active in the area since the arrival of the Andes which had showered random fragments of rock around the plain, which over several hundred million years had been shaped into the oddest formations. The valley is also (Apparently) world famous for being the site of the oldest excavated dinosaur, and a museam at the end had reconstructed for visitors benifit. Ian and I waited for our friends to finish what looked a distinctly unexciting tour of the museam, while amusing ourselves by studyin a highly comic diagramtical display about
the end of the dinosaurs - David
Following the Valley of the Moon our whirl wind tour took us to a national park named Talampaya, which nearly boarders the Valle De La Luna but takes a drive approaching an hour to get to the entrance; which is in the middle. We entered and paid our money at the gate only to find out that we had to pay more to get the tour that takes you to the intresting parts - ie anywhere beyond the car park. The cheek. On our tour full of Argentines we were the only English speakers, and the tour was given with an arrogance that supposed if we couldn´t speak Spanish we shouldn´t be there, luckiy our Spanish friends were still their to help. The first stop was the Petrographs - expecting something similar to the Aboriginal cave art from Austrailia I was looking forward to be inspired. This was not the case; the drawings, technically carvings into the rocks that had fallen from the cliffs above, were themselves reasonablly impressive, but were let down by the parks´ interpretation of what the drawings meant. These were normally badly translated into English with a content
that was shocking; they seemed to be able to make some extraordinarily sophisticated links between a couple of lines on a rock an the structure of the society of the peoples that drew them. They then finished each description with a wonderfully elaborate and pointless retorical question, as if to make you think deeply about the situation. As we had to say behind the group to read these signs, due to the chrildren in the group climbing all over the signs whie he was speaking, the tour leader got rather annoyed with us for "holding up the group". At least that´s what my Spanish made out, David assured me he was shouting at us to take our time and appreciate the the research that had gone on in the park. We eventualy made our peace with the tour guide who after a conversation about our travels at one of the points seemed to reclassify us from annoying pests to Englishmen.
On the way back to the tour we were delighted by the sight of several condors sweeping down from the cliffs in the canyon mouth. The tour guide then very excitedly announced that he had found puma tracks in
the sand, two paw prints. The prints were pretty large around the size of my palm . As we then headed into the canyon which is 4 km long and has walls that are 180 to 200m height we came across a small area in the desert floor that had an abundace of trees. This was due to an underground river, and the trees here were as old as 200 years; I know you´re all as impressed with that as I was. We ventured up to the vertical cliff wall which had strange perfect semicircles cut into the side, stood in one of these cuts and looked up at the daunting 200m high red sandstone cliff. The guide encouraged us to partake in a shout of HOLLA; the clarity of the echo was uncanny as it came back to you after 2 seconds of eiry silence as loud as if the peson next to you had shouted it.
We drove out of the canyon past various rock formations that looked like things; the camel, monk, cathedral etc. The otherside of the canyon was a large open space of rocky scrubland with the occasional tower of rock penetrating the skyline,
Looking up
One of the odd circular indents, about 200m. of course as we had now become accustomed to there was the dominant line of the Andes to the west. Sitting here was at last quiet once we had let the rest of the tour go back to the bus, and it was a strange sensation trying to hear something and not being able to.
The minibus tour then took us back to the park entrence in the endless dessert scrubland where we picked up our driver who took us back to Vally Fertille and to the best asado yet as with the empty hostal miraculously filled up for the occasion - along the way we managed to see a rare type of lama common in this area.
When backpacking you become accustomed to having to checkout of hostels early and then sit around waiting for a bus to take you on your way. We had checked out by 9:45 (A very respectable time), we then proceeded to the shabby bus station to book a bus to San Juan which we found out left at 5 pm as the 2 pm bus was "broken", a typical occurance, and this meant we had a 7 hour wait. To fill
this time we comtemplated taking the guided city tour, a "city" with only 3000 people. Curious as to how this could take five hours we enquired and got the answer, we think, " you walk slowly around the city taking in the main points of interest". We pointed out that these were fairly thin on the ground and were then informed "you the walk out of the city to a nearby lake", which is in the city tour not in the city; interesting. We finally got a shrug and "Tourists do it". We opted not to and instead watched several pump films.
On the bus journey, the appearence of a hugh lake below us in the valley became apparent, as the light was hitting the scubland in such a way that it appeared to shimmer a dark blue. Arriving at San Juan I managed to book us a bus that left two minutes later to Mendoza. David decided snacks were in order so after loading the bags left to aquire some. Just as David was out of earshot and sight the busdriver decided it was time to go, with me still standing one foot on the pavement and one foot on the bus. With no concern for my safety the bus driver continued to pull back with me bridgeing the gap to the platform and trying to plead with the driver in my best "talking to forginers English". As he was getting rapidy annoyed a couple of minutes later, me still in the same position, Dave strolled back oblivios to the circumstance, and rather unconcerned when informed.
Finally arrived in Mendoza and walked into town where we were picked up by a crusing dune buggy from the hostel we were heading too. -Ian
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Jane Mayhew
non-member comment
Mayhem HQ
Hiya guys, i am getting more disallusioned about staying behind working hard while you have such a brill adventure!! Its been really hot in UK and all i really want to do is chill out in the hammock but toooooo much to do. We are all well peaceful at home which has its goodpoints but much prefer the chaos you you all at home! Love Mum