La Cumbrecita

In keeping with the new hiking plan, we headed off that afternoon for La Cumbrecita. A village that was founded back in 1934 by Helmut Cabjolsky, who was from Berlin. He was a civil engineer who was transferred to Buenos Aires in 1932 and apparently he didn’t think much of the beaches and just missed the landscape back home. Therefore the town of La Cumbrecita looks straight out of Bavaria, right down to its purposefully planted pine forests that now thrive on a once barren landscape. Helmut then began selling off plots to family and friends under the condition that the houses they built on them were in the style of a Swiss, German or Austrian village. Soon a village sprang up and a road to get there along with it. In just three years it started to become a tourist attraction. More recently, in 1996, it was declared a pedestrian town. Visitors must park across the bridge and walk in, as cars are forbidden in the village itself.

It seemed like an interesting place to go and visit anyway, as well as having an abundance of hikes. It was only an hour or so from where we were and we wound slowly through pretty hills until we stopped at a small shed on the side of the road, a man in a hi-vis jacket standing beside some cones. He told us that we had to pay 4,000 pesos to get in and that if we wanted to stay past 10am the following morning, a 24-hour rate of 7,000 pesos would apply. This is pretty expensive going and while you are allowed to camp in the main car park, it is just that, a car park. Considering we’d come from a paid campground that charged half this for the works, it was a bit steep. While we didn’t mind paying to go in maybe for a day, it didn’t really fit with our plans of a week of hiking.

As soon as we parked up, we headed into the village. We thought we’d go and check out the only campsite that is supposedly there and after quite a long walk and some questionable signage, we found it. It didn’t look anything like a campsite when we got there, more a slightly abandoned farm. Not that it mattered anyway. Trying to drive the road in would have been stupid and stressful. It was narrow, steep and polished stone. We weren’t that desperate and so we decided to stay in the nice easy car park.

As we were already out and about and knowing we didn’t want to stay here too long, we decided to go and complete a short walk to one of the nearby waterfalls, the imaginatively named Cascada Grande. It was an interesting little trail, the ground worn away between the knotted roots of trees and if you had to choose somewhere to depict an enchanted forest, this might as well have been it.

It was only around half an hour to reach the long cascade falling into a freezing cold pool below. While other places seemed to be shut and out of season, here was pretty busy. Lots of people sat on the large rocks around the edge, everyone drinking mate. I can only imagine the crowds on a hot summer’s day.

With the light now beginning to dim in the sky, we retraced our steps back to Ruby. I grabbed the guidebook and the laptop and we headed to a bar with some planning in mind, as well as trying out one of the local beers. We looked at the walks around and saw that really there were only two substantial hikes. One to another waterfall in the hills behind the town and another to the viewpoint at the top of, no I’m not joking, Wank Hill. Neither of these were particularly long and we decided that we could probably combine the two into one day-long circular hike.

As we headed back to the van, the evening chill had certainly set in with night. We had climbed up to around 1400m now and it was pretty fresh up here. I was glad we’d managed to get the Wallas working before we came here, it seemed almost certain that it would freeze tonight and I’m not at my best when I’m chilly. Now though, we made some food and enjoyed the lovely warm toasty camper. I wondered if they would come and charge us again, it seemed that the people only operated until about 6pm.

The following morning, we were a little delayed leaving as I made arrangements for a new battery charger. We had decided that we really did need one, however it seemed very hard to even find one that did lithium for sale here in Argentina. I had reached out to some traveller groups in the hope that maybe someone was in Santiago and crossing soon to Mendoza. The chargers we wanted were readily available in Chile. We were in luck and someone responded. They called me in the shop and showed me the lovely nice new charger in the box and then I promptly sent some stranger £200 and hoped for the best. They said they would soon be crossing into Mendoza, as soon as the border reopened as it had shut once again due to snow.

With the beginnings of a plan in place, we packed up some food and water and headed for the hills. It was a long climb up to reach the summit of Cerro Wank. Apparently ‘wanken’ in German translates to something like ‘wobbly’, which now made a bit more sense but was nevertheless still amusing. As we left the village behind we climbed past building plot upon plot. A lot of new homes would soon be here and I hoped it didn’t lose its charm with their arrival. It seemed now that these newer houses, which weren’t located in the village itself, were not subject to the architectural restrictions. Here more traditional concrete structures presided.

As we approached the summit, giant birds soared around us and I squinted into the blue trying to figure out if they were condors or not. Then we made it to the top and looked down on the village below.

From here, we needed to find the end point of the other trail in order to make ourselves a nice loop. It seemed that there were various paths marked on our mapping app and indeed they were pretty clear to see on the ground as well. We headed on, climbing higher still until we reached a stream where we stopped for a breather and to refill our water bottles.

Then the path split. Lee decided he had had enough of listening to my navigating and went for a shortcut. This ended up being infinitely longer as we emerged on a rocky outcrop, high above the stream below which we were supposed to be on the other side of. We scrambled down, picking our way through loose boulders and marshy patches and finally emerged in a field with some cows. Luckily the stream was easy to cross and we were finally back on the right path.

Then we went the wrong way. After a few minutes I realised and we turned around and walked the last short piece of path in the opposite direction so that we could see the waterfall, Cascada Escondida.

Now we simply had to follow the path back down, where we would emerge at the other side of the village. It was a straightforward enough route, but as we finally reached the road again, we were pretty tired. It had been around a 15km hike and we weren’t particularly used to it. We rewarded ourselves with an Irish coffee and had a look at the food menu. That side of things was rather uninspiring though, the only food I wanted to eat was the strudel and that would be something for tomorrow. So we went back to make our own food.

Happily no one had approached us about parking fees yet and so we decided that we would spend the following day here, leaving as soon as the parking attendants were gone in the evening. The next day we headed into town to take some videos and more importantly try the strudel. Lee crashed Steve into the village river, much to the delight of the local teenagers. Still, you can’t blame them, what else were they going to do if not laugh at the tourists? We hoped as it was a very clean stream he’d be ok and left him drying in the sun while I made a beeline for the bar.

We enjoyed a rather boring cup of tea, but a very nice strudel and gave the laptops a cheeky charge. Then we wandered around the endless touristy shops all selling ‘German’ gifts. While there was some rather lovely knitwear available, there was definitely no space to be storing another thing like that. In the end, we found the supermarket where the locals shopped and bought a few cans of some of the local beers to try. Then we swung past the bakery to pick up some French bread. I just couldn’t get enough of being able to buy good, cheap bread. It was such a novelty.

We whiled away a few hours around Ruby, feeding the very insistent stray cats. A beautiful grey fluffy one with the most pointless looking tail and a ginger tom who would have liked nothing better than to molest Aimee. On more than one occasion we found her screaming in the nearby tree, the tom below blocking her escape.

We kept an eye on the parking attendants and when they packed up and headed off, we dropped the roof and made to leave. We were still having problems starting the engine and now every time we wanted to turn it on, I had to run around the back and wiggle one of the cables. Still, it appeared to be working for the moment and when we were somewhere a little better to do the work, I planned to swap the cable. For now, we started her up and powered up the steep hill out of the village, past the now closed hut. We had made it!

The victory didn’t last long though. I should have remembered to top up the coolant tank. We had a minor leak somewhere and the coolant was on the low side, but I hadn’t. Everything was going well until we climbed the final hill a bit further along and the engine pulled in some air and overheated. If the tank is very low, climbing steep hills allows the bottom hose to pull in air, creating an air lock. Lee wanted to make it up the hill so that we could roll down to bump start ourselves, but as the engine temperature hit 110 degrees I was shouting at him to stop. We were only metres from the top, but there was no way I was breaking the freshly rebuilt engine.

Now it was nearly dark and at the side of the road I refilled the bottle, cursing myself for not doing it sooner. Now of course, Ruby wouldn’t start. We tried and tried, but she wouldn’t go. So we ended up rolling her backwards down the road to try and bump start her. As always with this, you’ve got to get the speed just right. Too slow and the car just stops and too fast and you’ll be over-revving the engine for the gear. We had a few bad attempts. Each time it got a bit darker and each time we were running out of straight road. Luckily it was quiet and there was no traffic as we were in quite a dangerous place. Lee kept trying and it coughed but didn’t start. Soon we were at the point where if we didn’t get it the next time, we’d be at the bend. Then we’d have to roll back down a long windy bit of road in the dark, backwards, as it’d be too steep to drive even if we got it going. Thankfully, this final time, she coughed into life. I had been standing in the road, ready to shine a warning light at approaching traffic and now I jumped in and we set off.

The stress wasn’t quite over as now the OBD gauge decided it didn’t want to connect to the engine, meaning we had no idea on the temperature. After what seemed like an age it flashed up: 83. Everything was fine. We drove on, just wanting to arrive back at our familiar spot at the reservoir. This is why we don’t drive at night, because if something can go wrong you can be sure it’ll be the worst possible time. Perhaps it was karma for not paying for the car park, although to be honest we certainly supported the local shops anyway and so I can’t say I feel bad about it. More likely it was Ruby warning me not to put off basic maintenance jobs in the future.