Altas Cumbres

With our return flights to the UK edging ever so slightly closer, we began to head east. We hadn’t really been alone for a while or in a genuinely new place and so we cruised along the highway towards a salt flat where we hoped to stay for the night.

We were headed towards Río Cuarto where there was a VW guy who we hoped could help us find a new window mechanism for our broken driver’s door. The mechanism had first broken as we entered Chile in San Pedro de Atacama. I’d bodged it together twice already and now it was really dead. Currently it was permanently closed, not the biggest problem given the temperature for once, but very annoying at toll booths. In recent days it had also started slowly falling open on its own, which was less than ideal from a security perspective. Fellow traveller Adam had already had his engine rebuilt by Horacio here and so he messaged ahead to say we were coming. We pulled up outside the workshop and, after a moment, a man — who of course turned out to be Horacio — invited us inside. We cleared the top bar of the gates to his workshop with only millimetres to spare.

His wife Laura offered us coffee and we sat in the kitchen chatting while Horacio phoned a couple of people he knew regarding our part. He did actually manage to find one here in Argentina, but for £125, which is literal insanity for a window regulator. He explained that the common way to get parts was from Mercado Libre in Brazil, where they were then somewhat smuggled over the border to avoid the insanity that is Argentinian import tax. He told us he would order one, but due to the heavy flooding in southern Brazil it would be a little delayed. Apparently it would take about a week and he could get it sent up to us in Córdoba. We paid the rather painful £50 for it because, at the end of the day, you do need a window that both opens and closes.

We thanked him for all his help and said we’d better get on our way and find somewhere to stop for the night. We had planned to stay by the nearby river. They told us this wasn’t a particularly good idea as apparently it could be dangerous. We had already read on iOverlander that it was a bit of a local hangout spot and, being a Saturday too, we were pretty happy when they invited us to stay instead. At least here the only noise was the incessant whining of their dog at our cats.

Laura cooked us dinner and we ended up having rather a late night. They drank their wine mixed with soda water and ice cubes. When I asked if that was a normal thing to do they said that it wasn’t, but that it helped make the wine last longer. I wasn’t convinced the tactic was actually working as we seemed to be getting through some very large bottles at an alarming pace. Then the whiskey came out. It was gone 3am before we finally went to bed.

The following morning was off to a slow start after our late night. So slow, in fact, that we ended up staying another day. I cooked a lemon drizzle cake by way of thanks and also because they happened to have a lemon tree in the backyard. Horacio eagerly showed me around his workshop and current projects, including a TDI conversion that he informed me “an engineer” had done. He insisted I get down in the pit to look at how the piping had been routed and so I joined him underneath the bus where we both made tutting noises and said things like, “It’s all fine until a stone hits it…”

As well as lemons, he also had a grapefruit tree and he filled a huge bag for us to take away. As I held the bag open beneath the branches, I noticed movement on the ground and, to my surprise, spotted a rather large tortoise ambling around beside the pool.

The following evening was a bit more restrained. None of us really had another late night in us and tomorrow we would definitely be leaving. As we talked about our planned route, Horacio advised us to drive via Altas Cumbres. It wasn’t much further than taking the main road, he said, but infinitely more interesting. The drive over here had been fairly dull and, now that we were waiting on the part anyway, we were in no particular rush to reach Córdoba.

We headed off around lunchtime the following day in cold drizzle. Following the plans from the night before, we turned off the main road and aimed for the first of a string of small towns that sit amongst the low hills rising out of the otherwise completely flat plains we had been driving across.

As the weather was fairly miserable and we were freezing, we didn’t drive too far. At Horacio’s recommendation we stopped at La Cruz and were pretty pleased to find that the municipal campsite appeared to be open, even if the office seemed shut. Several other campers were parked there too and so we took a space a little further down. To my delight, the hook-up was still on and so we made a lengthy dinner in the Remoska which also helped warm the van a bit.

After a pretty quiet night, we almost debated staying again. A free campsite was a pretty sweet deal. In the middle of our pondering, a chap turned up on his motorbike and, working his way down the line, began removing the fittings from the water taps so they couldn’t be used. When I wandered around the side to check the electricity, it too had been switched off. It seemed we had arrived on the final day of the season. Many of the campsites were now closing and most of our fellow campers had already left. Still, the weather was much nicer today and so we headed off on a scenic drive around the first reservoir, Embalse Río Tercero.

We found a gorgeous little spot to ourselves on the water’s edge and made ourselves at home. Later that afternoon we walked into town for a few groceries. Of course, when we had driven through earlier it had been during siesta time. It was very quiet and very picturesque. It felt like the perfect place to sit and consider what we were actually doing with our remaining time on the continent.

Our original plan had been to head north into Paraguay before crossing back down into Uruguay via Argentina. The problem was that it involved a lot of driving. We were both wary of adding so many miles with very little margin for error and it was also expensive to cover such huge distances quickly. Instead, we decided that while we waited for the window part, we would spend the next week hiking. There was an abundance of trails in the hills to the west and we could simply go and spend some time over there instead.

I was actually quite excited by this new plan. We said it would be like our old walking holidays in Scotland where we hiked every day. We’d get into slightly better shape before the wedding, spend less money and probably drink a little less too. Now that we were in no rush, we decided to stay another night at our current spot so that we could properly begin our hiking phase the next day. That evening we enjoyed a particularly lovely bottle of wine, excited to have the next week or so clearly laid out in front of us.

The lovely bright sunshine we woke to the following morning seemed like confirmation that our new plan was a good one. We walked around the lake, leaving Ruby where she was. There were plenty of walking trails along the shore and we passed sailing clubs and little ‘park home’ style buildings which I assumed were only used during the summer months.

We walked down and around a small peninsula that jutted out into the reservoir. Apparently it was some sort of viewpoint, but when we reached the top it was clearly private property. It still provided a pretty view out across the water though before we headed back down and into town. We sat in the sunshine for about half an hour waiting for the supermarket to open, grabbed ourselves another bottle of that rather nice wine and wandered back to Ruby.

The good weather continued the next day, which was ideal because our next walk was already lined up. We headed north towards Córdoba before pulling over at the side of the road to hike to a little waterfall. It’s a small trail through private land and you’re technically supposed to pay a small fee to access it. We walked along the long dirt driveway before turning off onto the trail itself. Here a small wooden hut would normally serve as the ticket booth, but clearly they didn’t bother charging people out of season because it was locked shut. We passed through the gate and carried on.

It was a pleasant hike that took us up and down through woodland until we reached a picturesque little waterfall at the end. It felt good to be out doing some exercise again and, with the chill in the shaded forest air, it was exactly the right weather for walking.

We only encountered one other couple the entire time and we hadn’t even had to pay. We arrived back at the van feeling rather pleased with ourselves for doing so much exercise. It’s not that we enjoy becoming sedentary at times, it’s simply what happens when you travel long distances. Time spent sitting behind the wheel getting somewhere is time not spent doing much else. Yet another reason to forget Paraguay for now and simply enjoy the landscapes around us instead.

To finish off the day, we ended up on the shore of the next reservoir further north, Embalse Los Molinos. We drove a short way down a dirt track which ended on the gravelly shoreline and there we popped the roof up and enjoyed the fading evening sun.