Stories From The Road

On a two week road trip, sometimes some stories develop that make you think about them for a long time afterwards.  Here's an example.  While we were in Valparaiso, Anne and Mark wanted to get some Chilean cash.  As an experienced traveler, Mark sometimes takes precautions to avoid being the victim of crime.  As described earlier, the primary strategy Mark uses is appearing as the high risk/low reward target that he is by being large, carrying little cash, dressing poorly, and standing next to better dressed, smaller tourists.  However, every once in a while, Mark will take the extra precaution of carrying two wallets, so if he does get pick-pocketed, maybe he'll still have an i.d. and a little cash in another place.

The camera crew that interviewed Mark

Anyway, in one of Mark's wallets, he has old credit cards, including an old ATM card.  On the way to get cash in Valparaiso, Mark inserted the old card into the ATM.  The ATM then took the card without explanation.  Anne and Mark were panicked.  They were in a foreign country with only Argentine cash (which doesn't get you far in Chile) and their only ATM card had just been eaten.  After getting no help from the customer service people at the bank, they returned to the hotel to try to figure out what to do.... and to watch Gilmore Girls on Netflix (seriously, Rory, what happened to you?)

Long story short, eventually Mark found his current ATM card and realized what he had done.  Anne called the bank to make sure the current card had not been cancelled and Mark was able to get cash the next morning.  But goes to show, even experienced travelers like Mark can be complete morons.

View from the restaurant that HBomb hated.

We actually learned a lot in Valparaiso.  First, the thing about the ATM card.  But that wasn't all.  One day we had lunch at a restaurant with the view from the photo above.  Great location, good food, and two out of the three of us really enjoyed it.  HBomb, however, was the holdout.  For some reason, he did not want to be in that restaurant.

Later that day Anne was having a great time, but Mark was still stressed out by HBomb's reticence to enjoy Valparaiso.  Mark asked Anne how she was having such a good time and that is when he learned that Valparaiso is better after two glasses of wine.

Stairs that would be better after a couple glasses of wine for sure.

The trip, as a whole, was a success, but even so, there was a little tragedy and a little mystery.  Somewhere between Valparaiso and Bahia Inglesa, in Chile, our road trip suffered its lone fatality.  A misguided pigeon decided to see what was going on in the grill of the CRV and flew directly at us head on.  Mark was driving and swerved (a little), but it was a head on collision with little notice.  There was nothing that could be done.  At the next stop for gas, Mark saw the pigeon lodged in the car's grill, but decided to wait until they were bunked for the night to remove it.  Naturally, when they got to the cabana for the night, he forgot about the pigeon.  The next morning when they went to extricate the pigeon from the grill, it was gone!

To this day, no one has any idea where the pigeon went.  And there are absolutely no clues.  In unrelated news, that same morning we found these tracks going across the hood of the car to where the pigeon was lodged in the grill.

unrelated

But at least we know how the pigeon got there in the first place.  There were more than a few times that Anne, Mark and the HBomb wondered how things got to be where they were.  We already mentioned the weird hand in the desert.  I guess we know that got there because an artist put it there, but we really don't know why....  Likewise, this:

Not native to this part of the world

Multi-colored cubes are not naturally occurring in either Argentina or Chile, so someone must have planted these along the side of the road.  We have Johnny Appleseed, they have some guy who throws cube seeds.

Later we saw a bunch of stuff that we could figure out HOW it got there, but were really stumped on figuring out why.  For example:

Good effort

In La Serena, we rented a pretty sweet apartment for our time there.  It was beach side, had all the amenities and was pretty nice all around.  It even had some touches of home.  Like these framed pictures.  It looks like the owner must have a very nice family.  Those people look like models.  Also, there are bar codes there..... The owner of the apartment had gone through the effort to buy picture frames, but had not actually put any photos in them, just left the ones in there from the store.  Why?

Castro can cure what ails ya.

This one might be my favorite.  This was a kiosk selling health supplements in the mall in Salta.  I would draw your attention to the photo of the guy on the bottom left.  Is that Fidel Castro?  Yep.  Selling health products?  Apparently.  Now this is made more stark by the fact we visited this right after Castro's passing on 25 November, but still.... even if he were alive.... that's your spokesman for health products?  Why?

Sorry, I probably should have included this phoenix made of car parts rising from the ashes of other cars with the other art-related "why"s.  But I didn't.  Why?

yuck.

Next - what is this thing and why is it able to hang on to the windshield for like 50 miles at 80 mph?  Seriously?

Anne, Mark and the HBomb ate a little restaurant that had all of this stuff set up for the evening's musical guest.  Most of it is your standard musical fare: chimes, pan flutes and drums.  But that big tube thing - is that one of those things from the Ricola ads?

And I don't want to tell anyone how to set up their sculptures, but wouldn't this roadside sculpture make more sense if it were facing the road?

There are also a series of "why"s based on location.  The little mining town above was not located near any mine.  Why?  The little church below was not located near anything.  In either direction.  Why?

The last mystery was "what happened here"?  Mark has a small device that uses solar energy to recharge iPhones, iPads, etc because he hates being stuck with no battery charge in sunny places (first world problems at their worst).  When this device crossed from the desert of Atacama through the Jama Pass on the way to Argentina, it exploded.  We have three possible explanations.  (1) altitude did something to ...something... which led to .... explosion (2) heat did something similar or (3) the device was so excited to return to Argentina that it literally exploded.  Your guesses/explanations welcome in the comments.

Playgrounds of South America

HBomb has graciously allowed Anne and Mark to believe that the road trip vacation was their idea and that the point of it was to see oceans, deserts, mountains and forests.  In reality, it has become obvious that the whole thing was just a way for HBomb to tour and rate the play grounds of South America.

The ratings were based on scales of playability, other kids getting in the way, and danger.  Here are the results:

Location: Unknown
The first stop on the entire trip was a  pit stop for gas and then to play in the park.  No one wrote down the name of the town, so we can't check in on Yelp or anything for this one.  This playground was right next to a school and the kids did come outside and play what appeared to be kickball on the school grounds while HBomb was playing on the slide.  So it gets points for that.

It loses points for beer bottles.  Lots of em, on the ground, some broken.  So although it ranked high in playability and other kids staying out of the way, it really disqualified itself with the 0.0 score on danger.

Next up: Mendoza, Plaza de Independencia

An obvious favorite for the HBomb.  It scored very well on playability and was safe, even though it was at night.  It did lose points for other kids getting in the way.  HBomb had to climb around and dodge a multitude of Mendozite kids in order to get to the slide.

Top Performer: Valparaiso.

The park right across the street had it all: slides.   Well, that's pretty much all you need really.  HBomb likes slides.  There was an occasional Chilean kid playing there as well, but not enough to get in the way of some good, clean fun.  And, as far as we know, no real danger - except of course for the infectious diseases that are living in that sand....

Speaking of sand: La Serena, Chile.

La Serena had an extensive set up of slides, all on the beach, a 5 minute walk from our apartment.  There were a few other kids, but not enough to make it crowded.  The beach was clean and safe, with the only real danger being jellyfish that washed up on the shore (although we managed to steer clear of them, for the most part).

Humahuaca: Evita Park for the Children

While we were in Purmamarca, we did not find any parks for the HBomb to play in, but while on a drive north, we found one in Humahuaca.  This little park was named after Evita (like half of everything in Argentina) and even had a bust of her in the playground.

The Humahuaca park was a big hit for the helicopter-go-round and the other little kid who helped push it, so good marks on that.  It was crazy hot to the touch on the stuff not in the shade, though, and  HBomb couldn't even use the slide there (tin in the sun is bad on the buns).  So a good park if you play your cards right, second degree butt burns if you don't.

As mentioned in another post, the trip to Salta was a dumpster fire wrapped in a burning empanada.  However, even amongst this mess, HBomb was able to find some good.  He recognized the golden arches of McDonald's, but not as a restaurant, only as a place that he could play.  So we went there and he ran around the slide for 35 minutes or so with a little Salteno kid named Maxi.  So the play land at Mickey D's might have been the best part of the entire Salta stop for the Bomber.

While living the bungalow life in Bahia Inglesa, HBomb was unable to find a suitable park, which makes sense given that the whole town is only about 500 people.  Luckily, we went over to the next town down the road and found a little park.  It ranks high for safety (it had that bouncy surface stuff rather than the sand that most parks have in Argentina), but low for playability.  HBomb had a heckuva time making it up the enclosed ladder in the middle of the apparatus.

And finally: Not worth the risk

In San Pedro de Atacama, the people have put together a fairly decent parks and rec department.  HBomb played in a skate park (no actual skaters were seen), walked by a soccer field and eventually made it to a little kids park.   At first it seemed pretty nice.  There were other kids, but they were inclusive.  There was climbing, slides, the whole nine yards.

And there was even some cute stray dogs.  Big, strong, stray dogs.  Like German Shepherds.  But strays.  But this German Shepherd at the park was friendly and liked the kids.  He even went on the equipment and waited in line to go down the slide with the kids.  How cute.  He really liked those kids, kind of shepherded them around.

But then he realized that Henry was not one of "his kids".  At first he let it go.  But as HBomb ran around more and more the dog got closer and closer to him and eventually started nipping at HBomb.  To his credit, HBomb did not show any fear, and to his credit, the dog didn't actually make any contact, but to Anne and Mark's credit, they decided it was time to go before giving the dog any more opportunities to earn any more credit.

Ruins of Quilmes

Overview of the Quilmes ruins outside of Cafayate

Not unlike the United States, Argentina is a country that was formed by settlers from other countries who encountered native peoples when they first arrived.  One of those native peoples in Argentina is the Quilmes.  They were native to the land around Cafayate, and there are set of ruins in the area around the city.  

The Quilmes people were native to this area, but when the Europeans came, the natives were eventually conquered and sent to live in a different part of the country, near Buenos Aires (the city of Buenos Aires has grown so much since then that the "city" of Quilmes is really better described as a neighborhood or suburb of Buenos Aires).  That city still exists and is called Quilmes.  The Quilmes people (tribe) did not thrive there and eventually abandoned it.  The settlement called Quilmes was then made into a town and subsequent waves of immigrants moved there, including a guy from Germany who started a brewery.  He named one of his beers "Quilmes," after the town in which it was brewed.  This is now a popular brand in Argentina.  So when you say that you are going to see the Quilmes site, it is reasonable that someone might ask why you want to see a brewery.  So to clarify, Anne, Mark and HBomb did not go to the city of Quilmes or the Quilmes brewery, they went to the ruins of the settlement of the Quilmes people.

Upon arrival we noticed that these ruins were old and apparently partially reconstructed.  There several people offering their services as guides, and given Anne's recent beat down by the Valle de la Luna, maybe we should have known enough to hire one.  But we were short on Argentine cash (due the fact that Cafayate was a cash-only town) and decided not to hire anyone.

Current local residents of the ruins.

The ruins had arrows pointing visitors in the direction of the recommended walking tour.  Some of the rooms were also labeled (bedroom, storage, cooking area, etc), so we had enough information to get around without a guide, anyway.

So, we hiked the ruins.  They were built on a gradually inclining hillside, which we toured and then ascended.  Eventually, HBomb got tired, so Mark and HBomb waited in the shade while Anne headed up the hill for a view (again, given the misadventure at Valle de la Luna, they probably should have known better, but....)

Anne made it up the hill and got a good view of the scale of the ruins.  If we had hired a guide we would have probably asked him why the Quilmes lived out here in the middle of a barren wasteland, or maybe if this area used to be more fertile.  But we didn't, so we may never know.

HBomb had a small misadventure while waiting for Anne to return to the base of the ruins.  HBomb decided to run around a little bit, as little boys sometimes do.  And as he sometimes does, he took a corner a little too hot and lost his balance, then instinctively reached out his hand to catch himself.  Unfortunately, he reached his hand in the wrong direction and ended up grabbing a cactus.  He got a nice little poke to the palm, which made him plenty angry, but left him no worse for the wear ultimately.

On the drive back to Cafayate, Anne, Mark and HBomb took a scenic drive through Cafayate wine country.  Apparently, the conditions in this area are unique, and uniquely suited to growing grapes that make delicious, mostly Malbec, wine.  As mentioned, and as you might gather, this area was dry by any reasonable measure.  There were cacti and sand as far as the eye could see.  We did notice the clouds/fog rolling over the mountains in the vineyards on the eastern side.

Without going too into the details (or asking anyone), Anne and Mark just decided that the fog and dry conditions combined to make for good growing conditions.  They didn't have any logical basis for this analysis, but it felt truthy, so just go with it.

Is that cactus making an obscene gesture?

Take It On Down to Siesta Town!

Window seat and a bag of cinnamon Chex.

After escaping from Salta - which actually had really good empanadas, for which that city is somewhat famous - it was back to the road for another scenic drive to Cafayate.

Screw you guys, I'm going home.

Cafayate is a small town, but it known for two things - wine and landscapes.  While Mendoza is the wine capital of Argentina, Cafayate has a pretty robust wine industry as well.  In fact, according to a waiter in Cafayate, the inventor of wine ice cream was from Cafayate.  The other thing Cafayate is known for is the scenic drive you take to get there.  We stopped at three of the main attractions: the Devil's Throat, the Amphitheatre and the Frog.

Someone got their fingerprint on the lens...

First up was the Devil's Throat.  Avid readers of this blog might remember that this is also the name of the coolest part of the waterfalls at Iguazu.  

Entrance to Devil's Throat.

Apparently, naming stuff after the devil's throat is pretty popular in national parks in Argentina.  And the Devil's Throat was definitely worth seeing, but the big show was about 200 feet up the road.  It was labeled with a small sign that just said "Amphitheater."

Anne and HBomb are in the bottom of the Amphitheater building towers out of rocks.

This thing was massive.  And it wrapped around on three sides, so there was a pretty cool echo in there.  Additionally, the area is administered by the local indigenous population, so there were some guys there playing flutes and drums.  It was a pretty cool effect if you stood in just the right place.

 

HBomb spent most of his time at the Amphitheater playing in the sand and building a tower.  Not a bad use of time when you think about it.

HBomb considers the possibilities....

But eventually it was time to move on.  The third landmark was a little further down the road, so we had a chance to take in some of the landscapes:

When the guidebook says "Look for the Amphitheater" or "Don't miss the Devil's Throat," you have some vague idea of what is coming.  But when it just says, "Check out 'El Sapo,'" there is a little room for questioning what that means.  El sapo is "the toad."  Check out the toad?  What are they talking about?  But then when you see it...

Toad.

Not carved, it just looks like that.  So, yeah, check out el sapo.

After that it was on to Cafayate.  As mentioned, this is a wine-producing area.  On this side of the Andes, the conditions are good to grow grapes, particularly malbec grapes.  As a result, the malbec wine industry in Argentina is huge.  How big?  Buy wine from a lady in a barrel on the side of the road big.  That's how big.

What's this called?  Wine?  Ok, I'll try it...

This lady in a barrel was located outside of a vineyard/bodega.  You could take tours of the vineyard and, presumably, buy their wines.  However, if you didn't feel like driving all the way to the bodega, they had highway-side service (at the same price as the bodega!!!).

After securing our purchases, we finally made it to Cafayate.  This was a very cute little town.  However, the thing that made it cute, it's isolation, laid back attitude and old-world sensibilities, are also the things that very nearly turned Mark and Anne into murderers.

So the issue was blood sugar.  Let me explain.  Anne, Mark and the HBomb rolled into Cafayate around 2 pm.  They went to the hotel (which was killa*, more on that later) and checked in and relaxed a bit.  Even took HBomb to the pool for a swim.

Let's hit the pool

When they were ready to go check out the town, it was about 4:30.  What they didn't know about Cafayate was two fold: (1) it was a siesta town and (2) it was almost all "en efectivo" (cash only).

First, siesta.  Hey, who doesn't love taking a break in the middle of the day, maybe going home and grabbing a 2-3 hour nap?  Sounds nice.  The problem for us was that the restaurants just shut down.  No one.  Nothing.  There were some people in the park near our hotel, but all of the cafes and restaurants were shut down.  Most of them were not planning to open until 8, but we were hungry at 4:30.  What to do?

First we walked around hoping to find a unicorn - a restaurant that was open.  We eventually found such a place.  It was a hot dog and hamburger place.  Not exactly a "local flavor" experience, but maybe getting a hot dog for HBomb would be a good idea.  We went in and ordered.  The lady working there swatted away some flies before telling us that she didn't have ANY of the things we wanted, except the hot dog.  But she wasn't going to fire up the stove just to cook a hot dog.  Really?  Really.  Working during siesta time but not filling orders that were too much work?  Let's call that the "working siesta."

Next we saw a restaurant that had just opened its doors and put out the "Abierto" sign, but there was a guy there walking around.  We flagged him down and asked if we could get a table.  He said no.  The restaurant doesn't open until 8 when the staff gets in.... So then why'd you put out the sign that says you're open, tough guy?

So at this point, Mark's blood sugar had dropped.  Mark is not diabetic (that we know of), so his blood sugar scale actually runs from "Will Ferrell in Elf" at the top end, to "Happy Guy" at the mid levels.  You don't need to worry about those levels.  It's when it starts to get to the "I will punch you in the face for a Pop Tart" that things get dicey.  And we were well past that, into the "I will burn down this whole town if I don't get a sandwich" territory.

So, luckily for Mark's criminal record, as well as for the good people of Cafayate, a little before 7, they encountered a guy at a restaurant who was setting out tables on the sidewalk.  We asked if he was open.  He said sure.  Hallelujah!

This, however, brought us to the precipice of issue #2: this was a cash only town.  It's 2016 - there are cash only towns?  Yep.  Apparently, this town has such crappy internet and phone connections that no one is willing to take credit cards for fear that they will not be able to get connected when it was time to pay.  We ended up facing this reality when trying to buy gas on the way out of town.  The gas stations said they couldn't take credit cards, only cash, because they couldn't connect to the grid.  Yikes!

But luckily on this night, the savior in the restaurant not only opened early, but also accepted MasterCard.  

Putting the "chew" in Chewbacca.

I don't remember what we ordered (it's Argentina, so I will guess steaks), but I know we ate like kings!

But we had now been served notice of the cash issue and went to the 2 ATMs in town.  One had a huge line and the other didn't.  That's weird.  I wonder why.  One way to find out.  We went to the less busy ATM and pretty quickly figured out why it was not doing much business.  Step one: insert card. Ok.  Step two, enter your code.  Bueno.  Step 3, select whether you want withdrawal or deposit by pushing the button corresponding to your choice.  Well, here we had an issue - that ATM did not have any buttons that corresponded to my choices.  So..... cancel transaction, go wait in line at the other ATM.  

Our room at Killa was called "El Paso" - which is Spanish for "The Paso"

So, then, having eaten and gotten cash, and really felt that we had EARNED our dinner and cash, it was time to go back to the hotel.  We loved this hotel, it was killer.  And Killa.  That was actually its name.  It was embroidered on the towels, pillowcases and..... robes!  

Killa.