By Hugo Pooley, AIB
The Cono Sur or, believe it or not, Southern Cone, is the region comprising Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay. December before Christmas is, for me, the best period to travel there, for it is summer time with lovely fruit - frutillas, duraznos, damascos… - but the locals are not yet on holiday.
Twelve years after my first visit to Mendoza, when I had the drive of a lifetime from Santiago de Chile crossing the Andes at Los Penitentes pass and coming down through Uspallata; eleven after a road trip from Córdoba to Salta and back, also not far from my route this time.
I flew into Buenos Aires Ezeiza airport early on 5 Dec. Had chosen to skip Buenos Aires because I’ve been there before and don’t really buy into their assertion that it is the Paris of the southern hemisphere. Had to transfer to Aeroparque, by the great grey green River Plate, for the flight on to Mendoza, arriving at lunch time. I took in the Italian monument to Columbus looking north from the river shore by Aeroparque towards its counterparts in Madrid, Barcelona…
On the map Mendoza is 990 km west of Buenos Aires, but only 180 km east of Santiago - over the Andes. My great grandfather died here in 1917. I spent three days in the city before hiring a car.
In this fine city I visited parks & museums and stocked up on maps, binoculars and a thermos for water. The establishments dealing in black market (aka real rate!) currency are known as cuevas. But this time a friendly local dealer called by arrangement at the apartment I had rented and (for USD 1200 cash) supplied me with 1000 x 1000 peso notes: a millionaire at last, haha! When I first came to Argentina the dollar was worth 5 pesos, now it is around 900. There are no coins; after all, the 10 peso note is only worth one euro cent! The governments have clearly been in denial, for - with the exception of some rare 2000s - there is no banknote in circulation greater than the 1000, €1. The resulting bags full of banknotes are quite inconvenient.
Talking of inflation, this trip happened to coincide with the inauguration of Javier Milei, the new, self-styled “anarcho-capitalist” - non Peronista - President with the chainsaw, but that is a different story (see “ridiculous”, below).
The same source as had recommended the cueva man referred me to one Sergio, who from a discreet, likely clandestine, establishment on a good residential road, hired me a white VW Gol (sic – made in Brazil) in good condition, for 35 dollars per day.
My general idea was to drive the Ruta (Nacional) 40 northwards from Mendoza: it is considered iconic, and not just because it runs for 5200 km parallel to the Andes. I had very much enjoyed a long portion of it still further north back in 2012. Which left the slight problem that one does prefer a circuit rather than an out-and-back-the-same-way route. Thus, and quelling my instinct not to go back, “as a dog returneth to his vomit“, I began by heading west to Uspallata: a strange small town I fell in love with years ago, a crossroads in an oasis, the first place that doesn’t look like a moonscape when coming down from Los Penitentes pass into Argentina. So as to then loop up via Calingasta and not hit the Ruta 40 till a bit north of San Juan.
In the latter part of the 150 km from Mendoza to Uspallata, sections of the road run next to the former narrow-gauge Transandine railway that was built between 1887 and 1908, stretching from Mendoza up and over the pass and then down towards Santiago. It was constructed under the management of two English brothers from Chile; Englishmen, of course - I have vivid memories of the railway museum by the Villa Inglesa at Sapucai, Paraguay. A quite extraordinary endeavour when you see the engineering required to adapt it to the brutal landscape, and hard to understand how it could ever be profitable. Plus whole sections and bridges had to be regularly rebuilt on account of being washed away by floods of snowmelt (“A glacial flood in 1934 destroyed 124 km”). On the steeper sections nearer the pass it was a rack railway. I photographed rails dated 1890 and marked “TOUGHENED” in English - all brought over the Atlantic by boat!
Uspallata is a Mapuche Indian word. I found the town somewhat changed. Still dusty and with a 1950s feel. But there are now several very hip camp establishments offering wooden cabins with views west to the Andes, and east to another mountain range; not to mention the limpid night skies. Thus it is somewhat reminiscent of Namibia. The YPF filling station at the crossroads was the nerve centre of the place when I was last here, so I was saddened to find it closed for long-term refacción – refurbishment.
Proceeding north from Uspallata, on Ruta 149, I had my first taste this time of ripio – sections of dirt road. These and the general hugeness of the spaces always remind me of Western Australia.
But there is definitely ripio and ripio: while some stretches are known to be too tough to drive in an ordinary car (the car hire man warned me off the Villavicencio road), much of it is well graded and can be negotiated at a good speed. You have, however, to be ready for bádenes, or dips, and other incidents requiring swift reduction of speed. And try to close the windows while you are changing down, or the interior of the car fills with the dust cloud catching up with you!
For it turned out that the air conditioning in the Gol did not work, and the heat was considerable. I put up with this for a few days, remembering when there was no such thing as A/C, but in Chilecito on day 6 I found a mechanic with the competence and the technology to check the coolant gas, recharge it, and replace the resucio - very dirty - air filter. Phew!
I was now seeing maybe one other vehicle per hour. Barreal, my next overnight stop, was seriously quiet. The streets in town, in the midst of lush greenery, are also mostly not paved. Having earlier secured a hotel reservation, I extended my afternoon visit to the Parque Nacional Leoncito (where I saw no little lions, but they do have pumas) with a frugal dinner at the on-site proveeduría followed by an information session at one of the astronomical observatories there. Thus I arrived at the accommodation at about 23h; g**gle maps really came into its own! Say what you like about its diminishing our navigational skills, but without it I could not have found the hotel, in the dark, up dusty roads away from the centre.
The following day began with a welcome swim in the decent-sized pileta, or swimming pool, at the hotel, followed by a visit to the first in a series of rather poor museums stocked mostly with nondescript allegedly ancient stones and nineteenth-century valve radios, typewriters and suchlike... Even the inevitable plaza in the middle of town was quiet. In comparison with previous trips, this time I noticed a considerable decrease in the slightly pathetic albiceleste - white and sky blue - signboards and makeshift monuments stridently proclaiming “Malvinas argentinas”, or “the Falklands are Argentinian”, in these town squares. Further out of town, the Parador del Río was a charming spot where local families enjoy the cool and amenities provided by the rushing Río Los Patos.
I was improvising my route as I went along. And as in 2012, often the next visit or overnight stop was the result of talking with people en route. For this, a local SIM card in a spare phone is indispensable, enabling one to call ahead to hotels after figuring out where the next bed is to be, but without using exorbitant roaming on one’s European phone. In fact I was making a lot of local calls, and using considerable amounts of data; extraordinarily, without ever in the whole fortnight exhausting the 1000 peso (€1) top-up I had purchased. It is also true that <maps.me> and, to an extent, g**gle maps, work without network connection. G**gle also comes into its own for researching accommodation & restaurants, because of the lacunae of different kinds (among them, whole large towns) in the Lonely Planet guidebook.
The guidebook did invaluably indicate that, “As the crow flies, the most direct route between Rodeo and Barreal is via RP 412. But unless you’re a crow or in a 4WD with high clearance, do not be tempted … very rough and rocky … take RP 149, an incredibly scenic route passing through dramatic desert mountain landscapes.” It was also becoming apparent to me that the mythical RN 40 and towns along it are not universally fascinating, and there are looong (20 km or more!) straights through the scrub and desert; plus I was still keen on loops away from RN 40, so as to reserve it for the quicker drive back to Mendoza at the end of the trip. So after duly taking RP 149 east from Calingasta and nearly reaching Ruta 40, I headed back west again along a good paved road, with steady gradients for over 10 km at times, to Rodeo. Wonderful rocky landscapes.
The main drag in Rodeo is as straight as a die, on a slope, and 5 km long. Directions provided at the municipal tourist office included a mention of the third traffic light and the explanation, “we use them as reference points; but they don’t actually work.” I put up at Posta Huayra, down in the woods towards the dique, or reservoir, where I was allocated an isolated five-bed dorm shack among the eucalyptus trees. A curious establishment with a neo-hippy feel, where I watched the new finance minister’s televised lecture on the shock therapy to be imposed on the nation; this, interestingly, in the company of two well-to-do Argentinian half-brothers (“we only slaughtered 9000 head of beef last month”) who were travelling on huge BMW motorcycles - not something I’d like to do on ripio.
On 13 Dec. I drove 330 km, past Villa Unión, to Chilecito; the last section was the unbelievable Cuesta de Miranda, which I was not expecting.
Chilecito (altitude 1080 m, population, a sizeable 34,000) owes its existence to a past mining boom in the nearby cordillera. Tourists can visit the museum and extraordinary cable carril, or cable car, built in the first decade of last century <https://www.lanacion.com.ar/lifestyle/la-mejicana-cable-carril-mas-alto-del-nid2338837/>, to bring gold ore down over a distance of 35 km from Famatina, 3500 metres higher up. There are seven “stations” interspersed along the line, up into the mountains, where there were workshops and steam engines to power the cable-bearing iron gondolas laden with mineral. Some of the pylons supporting the steadily sloping cable are much higher than others, due to the mountainous terrain; all the iron work was made in Leipzig and brought by ship and train! The profits went to a syndicate - the Famatina Mining Company… in London! En fin, you have to see it.
While driving the road, actually more like a rocky riverbed and rather tiresome, to the third “station” I spotted this Andean tinamou, which although it behaves like a flightless bird, apparently can fly if it really tries!
Another bird species that is evocative of this region is the great kiskadee: pitogüe, or bienteveo. The latter Spanish name, like the Brazilian Portuguese bem-te-vi and indeed the English, is onomatopoeic, from its unmistakable call: “ti-ti-tí”. Hear here!
Great kiskadee
In Chilecito I paused to take stock and figure out how far north I might reach before turning back again in order to fly out of Mendoza. The answer, basically, was: western Catamarca. A 200 km day then took me to Fiambalá, which had been recommended. Increasingly, I was reminded again of Western Australia. Further south there had been green and irrigated areas, albeit starkly delimited, depending on the availability of vertiente, or runoff water; although much of the frothy snowmelt coursing down the rivers seems to be heading untapped for the sea. Now, however, I was traversing far more arid landscapes interspersed with broad parched riverbeds, with the cordillera always rising in the west. Often I did not see another soul for ten or twenty kilometers: just big space under big sky, with the Zonda or foehn wind coming down from the mountains…
Water delimited
Fiambalá was the climate extreme for me too: it was tempting to stay indoors with the A/C on. Cold water taps run hot. Have you ever had a green crust form around the armpits of your shirts during a day in the heat? The fine sand blowing from the desert whips up dramatic dust clouds in the evenings and penetrates indoors too, creating constant cleaning work. This, despite only tiny apertures in the adobe architecture, which is evocative of caricature US cartoons of a Mexican desert village. I took to rising at 6, although breakfast was not until 7; at Posada las Cañas it was served in the oratorio, or chapel.
A visit to the Dunas Mágicas was underwhelming; perhaps I am jaded by so much travel. The termas further up in the hills were a bit more fun: a succession of a dozen pools of sulphurous spring water in which to immerse oneself, gradated from very hot to unbearable. The grandly named Museo del Hombre presented yet another display of poor relics of indigenous civilizations, but followed by a surprising section on the seismiles - peaks of over 6000 m high for which the town is the last one to set out from - and the succession of pioneers who first conquered them over the last hundred years.
On 17 December I drove the first 100 km west up the ruta de los seismiles as far as Cortaderas, alt. 3360 m, and unsurprisingly much cooler than Fiambalá. There is nothing there but a large hostelry catering to mountaineers, a lake with flamingos and vicunas, and huge views. Not for the first time I stopped for conversation with a solo long-distance cyclist who might commonly be considered insane. Lorenzo, Italian, fully intending to climb the Ojos del Salado volcano (6893 m) - sans bicycle, reassuringly! Since I, however, am saner than in my youth, I turned around after lunch at Cortaderas; but not without casting regretful glances up the road and towards the seismiles!
There are, I think, three road passes across to Chile along this stretch of the Andes. Los Penitentes (for Uspallata) I have already mentioned. Agua Negra (aka La serena) is approached from Rodeo; I considered driving up to look at it, but it transpired not only that this involves several hours of ripio, and then snow by the roadside, but also that the customs post waaay below on the Argentinian side will not let you even try to set off up towards it after 4 p.m.
This was the beginning of the return leg of my journey; the Ruta 40 option back to Mendoza was almost 800 km. With a plane to catch on 21 December, and again in a disappointingly sensible spirit, I had not only opted to spend three days on this, but also chose to cover a greater distance in the early stages than required by the average. I dashed more than 300 km on the first day, overnighting at the unremarkable town of Villa Unión; but was still able to take in some of the main sights on the ruta del adobe section of Ruta 40 in the morning: the 18th-century Iglesia de San Pedro and Comandancia de Armas, the settlement at Anillaco… A splendidly rudimentary form of colonial architecture using a “hand-shaped, sun-dried mix of mud, straw and manure” but still capable of creating wonderfully atmospheric churches. Excellent pics here.
Another long day, via the Vallecito Encantado and Huaco, involved a big dusty detour in search of a much hyped hostería for lunch, but it was thoroughly closed! So on to San Juan, main town of the eponymous province. I almost fell foul of a 160-stretch of the main road with no filling station.
San Juan was a pleasant surprise: bustling, almost cosmopolitan, after my time in the wilds, and with good restaurants. I ascended the campanario in the evening, and the morning after, with Mendoza just a half day’s drive away, took the time to visit the Museo Casa Natal Sarmiento. This splendid museum is devoted to D.F. Sarmiento, a prolific 19th-century writer of humble origins who became President of the Republic; and whose “Recuerdos de Provincia” I was supposed to read at university half a century ago, as part of a paper called “Argentina and Mexico 1840-1940”. Little did I know then that some twenty years later my Latin American studies were to become central to my professional activity and to my interests… (por no saber, I didn’t even know Spanish much, jeje!).
Back in Mendoza I reclaimed the cost of the A/C repair from the good Sergio, who nonetheless kindly drove me to the airport. I shall not describe here my overnight stay in Santiago de Chile, in order to take the Iberia flight thence home to Madrid, except to recommend the prior short hop over the Andes: stunning views, even with reduced, summer, snow cover!
All in all a wonderful trip: I count myself extremely fortunate.
ADDENDA
I fear I cannot say anything original about the beef in Argentina. You can freeze it, or vacuum wrap it and bring it by air, but still it won’t taste as amazing once in Europe. Is this because they have so much space to raise cattle on? But the same is true of the US… The parrilla, or grill on which the asado is prepared, ranges from the huge arrays tended by specialist staff in top-end restaurants to lowly roadside affairs; however the meat, best savoured jugoso, or medium rare, is universally superb. Portions tend to be extreme too. The type of restaurant known as rodizio over the border in Brazil is arguably the next level…
The carcass is dissected in different ways in different cultures - just as, for lexical purposes, are other realities, as any translator or interpreter will tell you! So there are not precise equivalents between cuts - the portions of reality have differing perimeters… But I recommend the bife de chorizo, which has nothing to do with chorizo and tends to be translated as sirloin steak. When stocking up for a weekend in the campo, the locals buy beef ribs in a tira, or strip, as it were, by the metre, ready to unroll onto the grill when required!
I paid between 7000 and 38000 ARS (pesos) - €9 to €42 - per night for accommodation. It is key to find availability on the internet, but then phone the hotel to book direct, for one will thus save at least half of the price offered online to gringos!
Perhaps I should confess that the cars I hire on these trips tend to take a certain amount of punishment. Bumps on the underside don’t show on inspection at the end of the hire! When heading for the dunes at Saujil, near Fiambalá, I misjudged a dusty, rocky track on an upward slope and succeeded in immobilizing the VW in deep depressions created by my foolishly spinning the wheels. Soon after, a giant off-duty policeman from Tinogasta, named Teddy, accompanied by his slightly less large son, came by in a pickup truck. They helped me out, but the classic methods involving the insertion of brushwood etc. under the wheels were to no avail, it wouldn’t budge. Here I think the cop - not just brawn - understood what I had not: sinking the vehicle into the terrain had led to the front or engine section in fact being perched on a rock protruding slightly above the sand. Thus the solution was not to push, nor to pull, but to raise and then move it until it was no longer lifted off its means of traction! Never yet have I not been helped out of such scrapes by the “kindness of strangers”.
When I told my Argentinian friend Tom A. that I was preparing a short list of things in Argentina that seem ridiculous, he sportingly queried the adjective, “short”! Here it is:
- Gauchito Gil, an outlaw folk saint, Robin Hood of the pampa, or excuse to leave red flags and empty booze bottles at innumerable roadside shrines. Difunta Correa is another one, preferring mineral water bottles, sometimes by the thousand, since supposedly she died of thirst (but her baby did not…).
- San Expedito, aka S Expeditus, patron of impossible and urgent causes, lags behind in numbers of shrines, but at least he’s a proper saint!
- national obsession with Fernet Branca: it is produced there too (remember, the Argentinians are sometimes described as “a nation of Italians who speak Spanish, wish they were English but act like the French”, haha). Also with dulce de leche.
- voting for politicians who you know will screw you
- the notion that voters might be swayed by painting candidates’ names all over rocks and ruins by the roadside
- local notables and implausibly abstruse associations like to put up plaques in the vicinity of monuments so as to express support for the general spirit thereof; these are sometimes so numerous that special long walls have to be provided to bear them. A modest example may be seen at the Parque Eva Perón in Madrid.
IAN FLEMING'S BROTHER ON ITALICS IN TRAVEL BOOKS:
“From my youth up I have lost no opportunity of mocking what may be called the Nullah (or Ravine) School of Literature. Whenever an author thrusts his way through the zareba, or flings himself down behind the boma, or breasts the slope of a kopje, or scans the undulating surface of the chapada, he loses my confidence. When he says that he sat down to an appetizing dish of tumbo or that what should he see at that moment but a magnificent conka, I feel that he is (a) taking advantage of me and (b) making a fool of himself. I resent being peppered with these outlandish italics. They make me feel uninitiated, and they make him seem pretentious. Sometimes he has the grace to explain what he is talking about: as in the sentence The bajja (or hut) was full of ghoils — young unmarried women — who, while cooking the dô, a kind of native cake, uttered low crooning cries of “0 Kwait”, which can be freely translated as “Welcome, Red-faced One. Life is very frequently disappointing, is it not?” But this does not improve matters much, for the best prose is not so cumbered with asides…”
- Peter Fleming, “Brazilian Adventure”, published 1934
