First Vanlife week in South America: Crossing the Grand/High Sierras of Argentina

Challenges/Amusements of this week: driving in Argentina, figuring out how to find campsites, communicating in Spanish, rapidly changing climate, and regulations of national parks (it hasn’t really been challenging and not bad at all, these are just differences we’re getting accustomed to)

Getting out of Buenos Aires has been freeing.  Don’t get me wrong, the city is beautiful and full of important history, but I didn’t appreciate how much I like camping in the wild until we were faced with parking Lola in the large metropolis that is Buenos Aires.  For that matter, parking her in any town or city seems somewhat dangerous.  

Alongside parking, figuring out where we are going to stay the night is our #1 priority on a daily basis.  You have to stop somewhere, ask any person living in a van!  In the US it was easy to boondock on a quiet neighborhood street or in a Walmart parking lot.  There is something to be said for being in your home country.  You know how things operate, you have a gut feeling about what is safe and what is not.  We are out of our element here…and we’re also not that polished with the language!  We have been told to stay in the center of the twon, do not go to the outskirts of town.  We’ve also learned that one of the safest places to park is at a gas station.  To me this is absolutely insane.  I feel this goes against all our American beliefs of how to stay safe!

We’ve parked at gas stations on two occasions so far. One was in a tiny, tiny town, it was getting late and we needed a place to stay; the other time was when we were half way to a national park.  So both times, it was out of necessity.  Both of the experiences were quite pleasant though!  When we asked the gas station attendants in our sad-sounding Spanish if we can stay (?Es possible que nosotros estacionamos por la noche?), they say yes without batting an eyelash, it makes us think that this is just what Argentinians do.  Todd and I are starting to think it may also be because of our pitiful Spanish…Whatever works Man!  At our 2nd stay, we even got strong and free Wifi!  We got to watch Netflix!!!!  Joking aside, Argentinians are very kind people and more than glad to help us out when we have questions.

Aside from the #1 priority of finding a safe place to spend the night, we are thoroughly enjoying ourselves because we’re out in the wild!  Driving west of Buenos Aires we got into many kilometers of farmland.  Beautiful green pastures with tall trees and grasses, interspersed with marshes every once in a while, and giant trees lining the road.  

We stopped in the town of San Antonio de Areco, known for its gauchos (cowboys with red berets vs. cowboy hats), silversmithing, and upcoming gaucho festival.  We attended an awesome campfire/party!  This was a beautiful view into local culture and an awesome way to experience their folk customs.  There was lots of dancing!  We also chatted it up with a local group of kids and they told us about what its like to be from San Antonio de Areco.

Then we hit the Córdoba province which is at the geographical center of Argentina and pretty remote.  Lots of horses, sheep, and vacation property that is waiting to be developed.  The sun was shining all the way.

Just outside of Alta Gracia was our first national park destination: Nacional Parque de Quebrabra de los Condores.  This is where we started to gain altitude.  We drove through our first mountain pass and we felt cold!  It was a welcome feeling for the both of us.  Todd admired many retaining walls and the quality of the highway.  (Es muy tipico por el, y no es un nouvel experience para mi.)  We figure it’s a major route towards Mendoza.

The next couple of days we spent hiking around looking for 3m wide condors, green lizards, and pumas.  We were warned by one farmer not to go out alone at night because the pumas can be aggressive!  They pounce on the horses!

It is beautiful country out here, without much human influence.  Rolling hills with smooth rocks, gurgling streams, and lots of granite, feldspar, mica, and quartz.  

We also stopped at Parque Nacional Sierra de las Quijadas.  It is vastly different than Quebrada de los Condores, but only 5 hours away.  This is where we also realized there is a lot of bureaucracy in the National Parks. They seem to be very concerned about your safety and go to great lengths to record all your information and explain trail paths (more challenging trails require a guide, at an additional cost!) and safety precautions. The weather here is also HOT HOT HOT.  In the mornings we’ve had very overcast (almost threatening to rain) clouds, then it clears up by 12 and the sun makes the temperature go into the 90s.  We have never been to Bryce National Canyon or the Grand Canyon, but we think they are similar to this park.  A wide flat valley surrounded by beautiful red spires of eroding rock.  We found ash in several of the spire layers, that was cool!

But I can’t wait to hit the wineries!  We tried a couple of random bottles from Carrefour.  Truthfully though, I’m really curious about what the winery culture is like.  I hope it isn’t stuffy and expensive.  It would be really cool if we could stumble upon a small winery and talk to the vintners to see how their grape growing is different than that of the west coast.  It would be really cool if we could communicate that in Spanish…And I wouldn’t mind trying some amazing wine!