We got off the bus in San Juan, and almost died! SO unused to the heat, and had had a icky night on the bus with no a/c! Never good! So we headed off to pick up our hire car which I´d speedily booked online. We arrived there in one piece and managed to find out all the important info and finish the booking with a guy that didnt speak any english, and my car rental vocabulary wasnt exactly up to scratch!!
Off in our car, driving on the wrong side of the road we got out of the mental city and all was much much better driving down empty roads where you could see for miles in all directions. Driving on the other side definately wasnt as strange as I had expected, and naturally changed gears on the right, it actually made a bit more sense that way!
We were soon driving through complete deser! Amazing rock landscape, through some huge mountains, we both absolutely loved it! Had always seen people in films, normally america driving down roads where it faded into the horizon and had always wanted that, and here we definately had it, I absolutely loved the driving. We arrived late at a town called Barreal, spent a couple of hours popping into every place to find accomodation, in such need for a shower tonight was not possible to be a sleep in the car night! Everywhere was full and so we ended up somewhere out of our budget, but reeeeealy nice!
Following day we dragged ourselved out of our dead comfy bed, had breakfast outside in beautiful surroundings and were soon off on our way! James was driving, and we somehow went a different route to planned which worked out perfectly. We were heading to a smaller town, Rodeo, about 4 hours away. The weather was amazing, many many more long empty roads through desert and amazing scenery, its days like these that Im really going to miss when home. We made it to Rodeo in good time, and drove around the surroundings for a bit, a stunning reserviour was just on the outskirts, which is apparently famous for windsurfing… Back into the town and we found ourselves a great house to stay in, pousada don kuky! The owner spoke no english, but was very patient with my basic spanish and eventually we had it all sorted. This town had a lot less tourists, we only spotted 2! And so we had the house to ourselves to cook in.
The next morning we went back to the reservior for the morning light on the way to Huaco, an even smaller town. The first hour of the drive was seriously bumpy roads like a rollacoaster where if there´s a car infront of you it dissapears with every dip!
Huaco was a really picturesque town, definately the best til last, small things like driving past a really little kid on the back of a horse with a backpack on, the style of life was soo different it was beautiful. There was one hostel, where a really nice guy who lives in San Juan was staying (every tourist in these places where Argentinians having a break). He introduced us to everyone and we had a great sit down lunch at a really long table. We were told we were the only tourists in town. We went for a wander and this fact became very evident as we found all the locals staring at us a whole lot more than we stared at them! Always a true sign! We spent the rest of the day at the hostel talking to people, and the owner drew us an excellent map for the next day with distances and times to the spots we were going to drive to the next day. 3 hours through the dessert and we´d arrive at 2 National Parks.
We set off really early as everyone had stressed to us how important it was not to be driving where we were driving during the middle of the day. We hadnt planned to go to the first national park, but James didnt want to miss out, so we drove around some huge red cannons, and after about 10minutes were in the middle of a dust storm, quite something! The next park was the really interesting scientific one, lots of dinasours had been dug up here over the years, and the lunar landscape was incredible. It turned out we didnt need to concern ourselves with dying in the sun and the clouds had set in and it rained, something that happens in this area only once or twice a year haha. The lunar park was incredible, we took a million pictures, but it doesnt look half as impressive in them! The rocks where white, green, blue, yellow and red, flags marking points which need further excavation, and a plant which was durassic age! I was disappointed to find it was really just a fossil, and not a real plant which had stood the test of time haha!!
We ended the tour (cars in convey) and headed to our last town for the night which was nothing exciting, to head off the next morning to return the car to San Juan.
Here are the pictures, which should hopefully make a lot more sense now there is a blog to match!
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