Tuesday 21st January 2025: Tafi el Valle to Belen

 

A moving on day.  We packed and left Tafi just about 10 am.  The road climbs out of what looks like an Alpine valley, with cows, horses and turkeys grazing on the road side.  There were kiosks selling local mozzarella (muzza) and other cheeses.  The air here is warm but not hot. 

However once you pass over the top of the hill, the landscape changes dramatically to arid hillside with cacti and snow topped mountains in the distance.

A strange thing we have noticed here is that the moon does not lie in the sky the same way it does at home i.e waxing from a right hand crescent to  a full moon and waning to a left hand crescent. It's about 90 degrees different.   See above.

We filled up with diesel and headed out towards the Ruta 40.  Unfortunately,  Joan's phone decided to go on strike so we had to navigate by common sense.

Having found our way on to the Ruta 40, we headed south.  There was virtually no traffic and sometimes the impossibly straight roads reached out as far as the eye could see.  The snow capped hills of the Nevados de Aconquija lay to the east.

The heat was building.  The temperature outside was 30 degrees Celcius.  Slowly the kilometres counted. down.

Even without SatNav we found the street where our accommodation was meant to be easily, but we could not locate the house.  Luckily there was a car park and an information centre linked to a statue of Madonna and child, high up on the hill.  There three amazing women did their best to locate our accommodation, ringing the tourist information office and the Mayor to try and get us help.

Eventually we asked to use the WiFi at the centre and we were able to log on to Booking.com and WhatsApp the property.  The owner finally responded and it turns out the accommodation was on the street we were on, but nowhere near the map on Booking.com.

The house was half built with the top floor Work In Progress, but our bit was spacious and with air-con.  We managed to log onto the WiFi and successfully found instructions to reset Joan's phone.

The heat was immense but we walked into town.  All the restaurants were shut as were most of the shops. We found a small supermarket with very limited supplies.

The local church was attractive but shut.

There was the obligatory bust of General San Martin.

The reason we are staying here is because we wanted a rest after travelling through the Altiplano but that did not happen.   Perhaps tomorrow we may do a short journey up there.