I did not drive south through Chile as originally planned. Someone from my hometown – Penzberg – that a friend from school knows, has a winery in Barreal, Argentina. I checked on the map and it was “only” 750km away. a bit more than a days drive. So I changed plans and went over there first; thinking that I could still drive back again. It was not that far off after all.
So I made my way over there. Across the mountain pass over to Argentina. It was a nice drive and going up the windy road and over the border at dusk was a very nice drive. Sadly the dashcam videos of that were overwritten before I got to download them.
Crossing the border was interesting because I straight up drove by the immigration point and the border police turned me back on the next checkpoint (just 15km after that) and I had to drive back to do all the paperwork. It turns out that I can’t just cross back into Chile and back to Argentina without getting a new travel permit from the notary again, which is a bit stupid. That was part of my decision to leave Chile behind for now and only return to it at the end of the journey. So far that was a good turn of events because everything is about 2/3 cheaper over here in Argentina.
After buying an Argentinian SIM card I started driving north to Barreal but I did not want to drive on the unsealed dirt road during the night so I stopped in a small side road in a dry riverbed.
The next day drove on. There were still around 100km to Barreal. Half of that was on an unpaved (although well kept) road and there was a Gendarmerie (the Argentinan border police) checkpoint on the way. There are always checkpoints between innerstate borders.
Barreal
The small town of Barreal has a small German population. Some of them are here for more than 30 years already. My contact built his house about 10 years ago. We cooked together and I stayed for a night. He showed me his estate and all the adventures that he already did all over the globe and recommendations for where to go next.
He also told me about the weird money situation that they have going on here. Apparently there is an official currency conversion rate (CCR) and an unofficial rate (the so called “Blue”). The official rate is about half of the unofficial one which in the past made it very prohibitive to use a credit card because they would use the official rate which would give you a way worse rate than converting cash in a so called “cueva” (spanish for cave; their word for an unofficial cash conversion place). But luckily there has recently been a change that makes (at least German) credit cards use a rate which is very close to the unofficial (i.e. the better) one.
I stayed with him for a night and then I was on my way south again, hoping to get to the south before winter arrived and it gets too cold for hiking.
Sadly I did not take any pictures of his house. It was a really nice place.
Cerro Alcánzar
One of the places he recommended next to Barreal was this canyon around cerro Alcánzar.
Climbing the mountain
It was not easy to get up there. I suppose it is not intended. There was a trail that I followed but it did not lead all the way to the top. I had to climb the final couple of meters.
While I was up there 4 birds took interest and checked out what I was doing up there. I don’t know what kind of birds they were but they might have been female condors. Maybe.
Cerro 7 Colores
On the way back to barreal I saw another sign pointing to el cerro 7 colores. It was not a long way so I checked it out.
Pampa del Leoncito
Another place he recommended was a huge (a couple of square kilometers) clay lake which you could drive on. It was super flat and cool to drive around on. Kind of like salt flats but without salt.
Danach bin ich zurück nach Uspallata auf den Campingplatz gefahren und währenddessen mit 130 km/h über die Schotterpiste gebrettert. Das war lustig 😁
Persönliches highlight bei 33:22.
In Uspallata I spent the night in the campsite of the community (basically every town here has a campsite. Really cool!)