Leaving Mendoza
3.6.09
Today's blog is dedicated to Dave Mcnaughton and Declan Walsh for Dave gave me the Pearl after I left Vodafone and my old Pearl failed and Declan undoubtedly organised the roaming coverage that allows this email to be sent.
After nearly a month without a working BlackBerry, I have come to the realisation that I am an addict and that I was suffering depression without my always on always connected BlackBerry service.
Thank you for the rescue. :-)
It was with some sadness that we departed from Mendoza on Monday and headed into the relative wilderness of north western Argentina.
It was less than 10km and the landscape opened up into a flat, arid, nearly desert like environment. Anita once again fell into the role of 'lead out girl` while I enjoyed closely following her rear ...... wheel. It is a system that is working very well for us and meant that despite a late start we still managed 68 km for the day.
The landscape descended about 180 vertical metres from Mendoza (over about 68km) to a lake called Lago Seca. In reality the area is a salt plain/ floodplain and not so dis-similar I suspect to Lake Eyer in the outback.
We found an excellent 'wild camp' off the highway behind some strange and thorny Argentinian salt bush trees with a view to the Andes and even the high Andes behind them.
The earth was cracked and dry like a desert. However the clouds came in on sunset and it was a warm evening and morning the next day.
Anita slept well but I was on Stuart Bragg army reserves alert waiting for someone to ambush us. Of course no one ever came close though I swear I heard some people whistling and calling but I suspect it was goat herders similar to those we had seen during the day.
Yesterday (Tuesday) we awoke, ate the delicious porridge that Anita prepared, packed up our lives and rolled on towards tiny towns like San Carlos and Media Agua. We had a good chat in Spanish with Jose, the watermelon(Sandia) man. We chowed down on a whole (smallish) watermelon at his stall for about 80cents.
It was an excellent day of touring and even though it was nearly dead flat there was lots of variation in the terrain. One minute there was salt bush and then vineyard and then a planted forest of poplars, followed by watermelon patches, and nearly always the roads were lined with huge gum trees.
As the day drew to a close we came to the Rio (river) San Juan and we found the perfect camp spot away from the road and near the water.
Today we hope to make it to Difunta Correa, a shrine dedicated to a woman that died of thirst following her husband. The amazing thing was that when some men found her body they also found her son alive still suckling on her breast.
You can see little Difunta Correa shrines all over the country. The truck drivers have made it their patron saint by all accounts.
Will be an interesting day.
We are now half way there and stopped for lunch in a town called Caucete. Low and Behold 5 fellows are in the same Parrillada. They are on a tour of Argentina looking for an appropriate place to build an earth station for talking to satellites. Amazing who you meet in the middle of nowhere.
Stuart (and Anita)
Sent via BlackBerry® from Vodafone
Posted byStuart Kane at 2:38 PM
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