Ruta 40 – Cueva de las Manos & Charcamata
Despite the travel agent not know what tours they offer (quite an interesting concept) and after 2 hours of sitting in the office, we managed to book a four day trip along the Ruta 40 from El Chalten to Bariloche.
The Ruta 40 runs from the top of Argentina down to the south, and for the part we were on it was generally on ripio – gravel roads – travelling through nothingness.
After several stops, including one to take photos of 2 rainbows, and 12 hours we rolled into Estancia Cueva de las Manos, we had been quite worried about how we would arrive here, as when we got on the bus in the morning we were told it was 30km from the road and we weren´t sure how we´d get from the road to the Estancia. In fact the Estancia is only 7km from the road and the bus dropped us there!!
We arrived at about 9pm in the pitch black, luckily the generator was working! We were in the middle of nowhere, only 3 of us got off the bus and we really weren´t sure what we were getting ourselves into. Once we´d finally worked out what time breakfast & our trip to Charcamata was the following morning we relaxed slightly!
In the morning, our worries slipped away, the staff were really friendly and the sun was trying to break through the clouds.
Charcamata is a canyon which lies about 30kms from the Estancia, along dirt track & through a couple of rivers (and takes about 2 hours to drive to). We stopped at an old Estancia about half way along. It was interesting to see how people used to live – bascially with not a lot, but in a beautiful surrounding.
The Charcamata cave, which was the main purpose of our visit, is about 85m wide, 27m high and 40m deep and contains cave paintings of hands in negative. The hands look like they could have been done last week with a can of spray paint, but some are about 10,000 years old.
The following day saw us heading to the Cueva de las Manos, a world heritage site, 18kms from the Estancia. The Cueva is very similar to Charcamata, only the paintings are behind a wire fence and there are a lot more people around. It is in a more dramatic setting, set a couple of hundred meters up above the Rio Pintura, but we prefered Charcamata – more more personal and had a lot more atmosphere and the paintings were very similar!
The 14 hour bus journey the following day, through more nothingness, wasn´t a highlight, but we are now in Bariloche and it is time to plan the next adventure!
Tags: Argentina, Cueva de las Manos, Travel
Jenni
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