2008 August 02 « a+b ramblings

Faithful Readers,

Thank you for bearing with us. It´s been several days since we last posted from the mountain town of Upsallata, the gateway to Andean skiing, the home of the now-rundown Gran Hotel where Perron and his cronies used to gather to ski and flaunt their ill-gotten gains, where for 12 straight hours I slept off a painful sinus cold, where I pilfered a bottle of extra virgin olive oil from the hotel restaurant, and where we embarked on a 1,500-mile journey that yesterday delivered us safely into the bosom of Salta. Ah, beautiful, lively, friendly, delicious Salta.

I must admit that when we arrived here yesterday, I had a 10-minute meltdown during which I railed at not having clean pants, lamented the ubiquitous lack of road signage on Argentine highways, and basically cursed all Argentine cities to the bowels of hell. It was my first meltdown in almost 5 weeks, so I figured I was entitled. What sequence of events left me teetering on the brink of insanity, you ask? Let´s start at the beginning…

I awoke in a fog on Wednesday morning having fallen asleep at 8:30 the night before with a pounding headache and the kind of sinus pressure that would make a shy, bald buddhist monk reflect on his life and plan a mass murder. The day began slowly, but the worst of the cold seemed to´ve passed and after considering just throwing in the towel and heading back to Mendoza for a couple of days, Allison and I got increasingly excited to hit the road toward our next destination, the small, isolated mountain town of Barreal.

The trip began like any other: towering, snow-capped Andean peaks above us, a sky so blue it was almost black, the road slicing like a knife through the high-desert landscape of scrub and dirt. Then things got interesting. Our beautiful paved road abruptly turned to dirt and rocks. After a minute or two on that road, we were sure it would turn back to pavement. After 10 minutes, we thought, maybe not. After 30 minutes, we thought, ¨Yup, we´re screwed.¨ Spine-jarring terrain aside, it was an amazing experience to drive three hours on that dirt road into the middle of nowhere, past stunning mountain scenery, desert landscapes, ancient dry lakebeds and a host of other natural wonders I won´t even list here. Our only concern, of course, was for the state of our automobile…a small Chevy hatchback that we´d christened ¨The Gnat.¨ Our concern only grew when halfway through our journey we passed a family that had piled out of their minivan while good ol´dad was down on his hands and knees changing a flat (read disintegrated) tire.

Frances of Rome, the patron saint of automobile travel, was with us that day though as we pulled into Barreal without event. And our luck kept getting better. The posada at which Allison had made a reservation was good beyond our wildest dreams. On about 20 acres of land, it had the feel of a horse ranch in some desert oasis in New Mexico. Our room was huge, with an adobe fireplace that already had a fire burning in it when we entered. With grins plastered on both our faces, we headed out for a long walk down to the Rio de la Plata that cuts through the desert and gives life to the town and the thousands of slender poplar trees that engulf it.

The night passed with a fine dinner at the posada, lots of red wine and an hour of stargazing through crystal clear, pitch-black skies before we crashed out in our comfortable bed with full bellies, dizzy heads and a fire roaring in the fireplace. Morning, a small setback: we awoke to find that The Gnat hadn´t fared as well as we´d thought. The rear left tire was flat as a pancake. No problem, we swapped out the bad tire for the good spare, bid Barreal farewell and headed out for the city of San Juan where we´d return the car that night and hop an overnight bus to Salta, some 1,500 kilometers north.

The drive that day to San Juan was even more stunning than the drive to Barreal and, luckily for The Gnat, was mostly paved. About an hour into the drive we were smack dab in the middle of more jaw-dropping, eye-popping high-desert terrain, the hills and mountain folded, crunched, bruised by the formation of the Andes to the west and then eroded by infrequent but torrential downpours, revealing an incredible array of colors and patterns in the underlying strata. Passing through this fantastical landscape, we saw the mouth of a dry riverbed gaping from between two gigantic rock formations so we pulled over, hiked up to the riverbed and followed its twisting, winding path into the mountains for almost an hour. Anything I could write about that experience would seem merely hyperbolic, so I won´t even try.

After the hike we pressed on through more and more and more breathtaking terrain, following the course of the Rio da la Plata out of the valley and into the lowlands. The time in San Juan was unremarkable but fine, and we caught our overnight bus to Salta without a problem. The 14-hour busride was long, as you can imagine, but we slept most of the night (the long-distance buses here are DE-LUXE, complete with seats that recline into beds) and arrived in Salta a little after noon.

So…the straw that broke the camel´s back and caused my meltdown…

When we arrived in Salta, we realized that we´d lost the power cord for my laptop and both batteries I brought with me were completely drained. A small setback, I know, but after being on a bus for fourteen hours and having a few days that had been up and down and the sinus cold and everything, it basically just pissed me off to the point that I had to scream about SOMETHING. Luckily, Dennis is FedExing us an extra power cord that´ll arrive early next week and we´ll be back on the air with pictures and other multimedia to entertain our readers, including a short film entitled ¨Desert Bootie Dance¨and some sweeping panoramas of the desert landscape we´ve come to love as our own.

For now, I´m signing off…

The High Desert Pre-Andean Landscape Around Barreal