From Tilcara we headed North for a break from our holiday ;) .. we went to the (nice) Malka hostel, a recommendation from Maaike’s friend Eefje. Another stunning drive through a very eroded landscape.

Tilcara has a nice feel about the place. A pre-colonialisation town with a partly restored Incan town/fort. They made a monument to the archaeologists who investigated the place. They built the monument at the top of the town..

Unfortunately several houses, workrooms and a main square used during the Incaic Period were destroyed to build the monument

…
Nowadays, together with the rebuilding of the structures and the vehicle road, the monument is a sign of the different interventions made during the 20th Century. Pucara de Tilcara does not only provide information regarding the people of the past, but also about the development of Archaeology as a discipline.

They also have a lovely botanical garden, featuring lots and lots of cacti!

We also did a quick walk up the hill overlooking the “fort”, which gave a nice view of the prominence of the terrain, as well as the size. There were about 2,000 people living there back in the day.

The following day we did a hike up to Garganta del Diablo, a big canyon a 4km hike from town. It was created during some tectonic upheaval. It looks like there used to be a way to get down to the canyon floor, but it looks like that has been nuked at some point. It’d be fun to abseil down and have a wander about.

Another long bus ride, this time from Mendoza to Salta. 20 odd hours or something. Good time for reading books, and updating my vimwiki_markdown gem. Essential for all those vim readers out there ;)

It has been quite nice using the laptop on the long bus rides, even though I only get 4-5 hours of battery as it’s a little old. However, once in Bolivia and Peru, I’ll not use it on the busses.. too much asking for trouble.

Anyway, Salta, founded in 1582, and with quite a lot of nice 19th century buildings, it’s a nice place to walk around for a day or two. Lots of cathedrals. I quite liked the Franciscan one where they had some nice monastic chants playing over the speakers. I also liked the floor that made me feel like I was in an Escher painting.

A definite highlight was the high altitude archaeology museum. For the Inca, mountains were places of worship, and so there are a lot of burial places high high up on the mountains. There was an amazing find of 3 complete mummies up on Mount Llullaillaco. Somewhat controversial as it meant removing the bodies from the mountain. They were probably from rich families, and the children would have had a ceremonial marriage cementing relations between families / geographical areas. Then the children were brought back to their villages, feted, then brought up the hill, given a ceremonial drink to knock them out and finally buried alive. An interesting exhibition though and worth a visit if you’re in the area.

We also took a visit to the Museo de Ciencias Naturales (natural history?). Lots of armadillos. I likes armadillos I does, and pretty bufferflies, and very tiny birds and a Trilobite

On my brother Matthews advice, we took a day trip from Mendoza to Puente del Inca and surrounds. It’s a beautiful drive up there from Mendoza, crazy eroded rock everywhere.

Along the way passing an old historic (pre Spanish) bridge, now mapped on OpenStreetMaps ;) . They diverted the river a little to keep the bridge from being eroded.

We also passed Aconcagua, the highest mountain outside of Asia(6,961m), before heading steeply up to the (old) border crossing into Chile. They have now built a tunnel, so most traffic goes that way. We did see bikers coming up to the crossing though, so I’m not sure if they aren’t allowed through the tunnel, or if they just like a very long hot ascent.

The highlight thought was Puente del Inca. It’s not a bridge made by the Inca ;) but a natural phenomenon, except for the hotel which is built into it (long since abandoned, after upsetting the natural balance of the place). There are a couple of different theories as to how the bridge was formed. Maybe an ice-bridge formed, allowed the calcification to start, then melted. Another that there was a landslide slowing and altering the flow of the river, allowing the salts to precipitate, then the river re-established its natural course and the bridge was left in place. Who knows. Darwin also popped by when he was in the area.

The hotel was used for treating rheumatism, skin diseases and syphilis amongst others. They had to have fans to pump air around, as otherwise you’d suffocate from the high CO2 concentrations. I wonder at what point they worked that out? ;)

One thing to note is the train track (abandoned) which runs all the way up the valley. A huge feat of engineering I guess, but a little expensive to maintain I suppose. I wonder if they’ll turn it into a bike-ride someday?!

19 hours bus ride from Barriloche to Mendoza. Maaike slept most of the way. It’s awful travelling with someone who is a ridiculously good sleeper. Just lying there, sleeping, happily… rubbing it in for 19 hours. Still, I saw an amazingly amazing lightning storm while we drove, so there were some perks ;)

Anyway, Mendoza. I like it. I liked our Hostel (Hostel Mora). Very fast and reliable Internet. And free breakfast, with pancakes! I know it’s not all about the Internet and breakfast, but .. well… makes me happy ;) Mendoza has really nice wide open tree lined streets. There are a surprising amount of holes where the trees are coming up, the sorts of places you could easily fall into while drunk.

Mendoza has been nuked by a few earthquakes over the years, hence the wide streets and not particularly tall buildings. Not everything has been repaired – at least, this monastery wasn’t. The museum we went to had lots of info, but all in Spanish. Google Translate did help, but it’d be very nice to be fluent here.

It is, as you may know, wine country too. We took the bus out to Maipu and walked to a couple of them. We could/should have hired bikes, but we were happy with just the couple we did see. Also chanced across a distillery which is now added to OpenStreetMaps ;) . Tasty stuff. Interesting to hear the (Swiss) proprietors stories about running a business here. Backhanders, rent going up %30 in a few months time (inflation is on the up here), the costs of exporting being fairly prohibitive. Tasty spirits though :) Mind you, the OSM app let me down a tiny bit here, one of the roads we tried to go down was private (had a gate across it), we did find another marked road which we managed to snicker through.

Then the wine tasting. I’m so uncultured, I just enjoy the taste and I’m not too worried about the colour (other than is it reddish or whiteish). I also wonder how much is autosuggestion when they talk about peppery notes etc. Still, learned how you’re supposed to evaluate/appreciate the wine. Also learned that to call yourself a varietal (Malbec etc.) then it depends on the country, but you don’t have to have 100% of that grape in the bottle. In Argentina, you have to have at least 85%.

Another interesting thing we learned was that they combat frost by using fuel oil… ick. In NZ they have big blowers (or helicopters!) to move the air. Seems a little more pleasant (if way more expensive). The other thing we learned was that, due to climate change, they can now grow the Cabernet Sauvingon grape here. Harrumph.

I love the open street map project. It’s like Google maps, only created and edited by regular people. It has been invaluable while travelling (with the OSMAnd+ app). Sometimes things get out of date, like when we were on the Huemul circuit, the park had just made a new tyrolean crossing, and so the map was out of date. I took a GPS reading of the new location of the track, and then changed the content on OpenStreetMap

View Larger Map

So, now the tyrolean is marked, the track is correct, and all is well in the world.

I love it, really feels like being part of a worldwide community. And while I do think Google is generally decent, I would rather any “work” I do was available for free to a wider community.

Me gusta OSM!