A Million Minutes in Africa

After crossing the border and spending last night in Uspallata, AR (oooh, Brad Pitt filmed Seven Years in Tibet there) we are now in San Rafael for the night. After visiting a mechanic, tomorrow we are hopefully heading south to the Lake District and Ushuaia.

These are the guys at Antolin garage, who bled the clutch not once but 3 separate times. (We came back twice.)

Before coming back the first time, we drove through Cañon de Atuel, just outside of San Rafael.

In Santiago, we visited the National Library of Chile. This is the main reading room.

Thanks to a contact Laura has, we were able to visit the Centro de Documentation at El Mercurio, the preeminent newspaper in Chile. I talked shop with the news librarians there — you know, indexing, databases, research, clip files. It was interesting to learn how similar their jobs are to mine.

That’s my gracious host, Veronica Vega, on the right.

Valparaiso sits on a bunch of hills overlooking the Pacific ocean. It’s not unlike San Francisco in that way.

Pablo Neruda’s house in Isla Negra is full of his collections. Here are some of his glass knick-knacks.

We had a lovely sunset our first night in Santiago.

Had dinner in a Viking restaurant.

Santiago is a modern city.

The central market is considerably cleaner than many others we’ve visited on this trip.

This guard paces the courtyard of the Presidential Palace.

Old Minis sit in a Santiago courtyard.

Cerro Santa Lucia (a park) offers great views of the Santiago skyline and a place for making out couples to fulfill their exhibitionistic tendencies.

We had dinner with Laura´s lovely sister, Maria Angelica, who lives in Santiago.

New photos have been added! Go as far back as the entry for Puno, Peru.

Last night we stayed in Puente del Inca which is Spanish for ¨windy as heck with nothing to do.¨ Actually, it is just down the street from Aconcagua, the highest peak IN THE AMERICAS at over 6959 meters above sea level according to our book.

It is supposed to take something like 2 weeks to reach the peak and descend, so we just walked around the base and gaped with open mouths.

After we closed our mouths we drove across the border to Chile and tonight we are in Valparaiso. Don´t let the name fool you. For a port town, it is one really nice city. Actually, even if it were not a port town, I suppose you could say it is interesting. But for a town that is a little rough around the edges, they sure charge enough for food and lodging. Soon we will head to Santiago if we can panhandle enough money to fill the gas tank. Gas is about $4.50 per gallon.

This is wine-making country. Lots of trucks full of grapes. Stay tuned for pictures. Some day we will get them on the blog.

Cordoba was strangely like being in some city in Spain.

Alta Gracia is just outside of Cordoba and was where Che Guevara spent a lot of time as a kid playing revolutionary.

Villa General Belgrano is a German town, complete with German cakes.

Some Argentines we met in Bolivia told us to check out Cachi, a little town in the countryside. Here’s a road on the way there.

We were heading out of Cachi and toward Cafayate when we came across 2 motorcyclists with their motorcycle stuck in the mud. They were happy to have Dan pull their bike out of the muck with a rope attached to the truck. This is Marcelo and Edith with Dan after cleaning up:

This rock formation is called El Sapo (the frog).

In Tucuman, we met up with a former student of mine (Dan). Jose welcomed us to his town and we had a great time hanging out and looking at the sites.

Jose showed us around town at night.

cross_danger_road_2

Originally uploaded by Bibliobiker.

We’re testing a new way to upload photos.

On the road from San Antonio de los Cobres to Salta, this is what you see:

What do you get when you cross Italy and France with Latin America?  Yup, you get an Argentina.  The food is fantastic, the hotels are stylish (no bare bulbs dangling from the center of the room on a wire; yes, we are easy to impress), and the people are warm.  Oh yes, and the roads are often paved and fully equipped with guardrails and traffic lights in town. Even the unpaved roads have road signs pointing you in the direction of the next town.  Go ahead and laugh, but we have both pulled out a lot of hair trying to figure out which fork goes mostly in the direction we want. It is very exciting trying to choose the right path when there is no sign and no person around for miles to ask.  Gosh dang, Argentina is a great country so far!

Salta’s cathedral is pink with white icing, whoops, I mean trim.

Here’s Salta’s municipal building.

This part of Argentina is known for its beautiful rock formations. The Quebrada de Humahuaca is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Quebrada means ravine, but this is much more than a mere ravine. It’s hard to believe we hadn’t heard of this before — it’s fantastic. In Purmamarca, our hotel was right in front of a mountain of 7 colors. Really. We counted.

This is how the car looks after driving on “ripio” (unpaved) roads behind buses and trucks and through pools of mud.