Argentina – Overland travel made easy!

We crossed into Argentina at Iguazu, the top of the finger-like strip of land in the ‘Missiones’ region, squashed between Brazil and Paraguay. The Argentinian side of the falls was totally spectacular – surrounded by a lush national park with long walking trails, boardwalks right out into the ‘mouth of the devil’, many other smaller falls to discover, monkeys and lots of cheeky baguette-stealing coatis.

As we started on the long road to Salta, right up in the North West, we quickly realised that camper travel is easy in Argentina. Petrol stations have free Wifi, clean toilets (with toilet paper!!) and even clear, possibly drinkable, water to fill the tank! There are picnic and barbecue areas in almost every town making easy overnight stops, often with small playgrounds for the kids. Our diet has stepped up a notch and luxuries like giant steaks, good cheese and wine are very much back on the menu! (Actually, some meals are made up of just that :) )

It’s birthday and anniversary time again and we spent Florent’s birthday at the site of a meteorite shower in Northern Argentina where several iron-based meteorites, including the world’s 2nd largest, sit out in the open for you to walk around and touch. The 37-tonne fragment from outer space is surprisingly small considering it weighs 10 times what the campervan weighs, but when you imagine it hurtling towards the earth at 16km/s it’s pretty scary!

We spent a beautiful couple of days around Cafayate, a wine-growing region famous for Torrentes white wine, and manage to celebrate our twelfth wedding anniversary with pink bubbles and a chicken roasted in our camp oven in the Cafayate canyon - bliss (even if we were dusty, short on water and surrounded by the kids!). The geology of the area is stunning, and it just gets better as we head north to Purmamarca and the amazing coloured rock formations of the Quebrada de Humahuaca. We cross into Chile at 4200m reaching up to 4800m on the road and the familiar feeling of headaches, reduced vision and the kids’ noses bleeding, not to mention the icy cold at night, has us heading back down rapidly to San Pedro de Atacama, where the climate is much more camping-friendly and where the nights are warm enough to spend long moments by the campfire marvelling at the multi-layered milky way and the complete cover of the stars.

The highlight of our five desert days in San Pedro was an observatory tour with French astronomist Alain Maury who managed to entertain, educate and enlighten us for 1 ½ hours out in the open despite the icy cold, and seeing the rings around Saturn, Magellan’s galaxy and various constellations made up of the approximately 3000 visible stars was really powerful. We leave San Pedro dusty and dirty after 5 days of wild camping but with our heads full of sparkling dreams.

The descent south through the Atacama desert is long and tedious, the grey sand and gravel goes on forever! We finally arrive at the Pan de Azucar National Park, full of end of the world landscapes – volcanic boulders strewn everywhere, evidence of floods, earthquakes and recent tidal waves. The corrugated iron and jib board fishing and holiday houses have been hastily nailed back together and mid-winter these places are beautiful but kind of eerie.

Olivia’s 4th birthday and second birthday on the road is spent on the beach with a self-chosen menu of pancakes, pizza, peanuts and pasta… We're off for a walk on the beach to burn some of that off and try to find some penguins and dolphins!

Bisous, besos, hugs xx