May 2024

The fist week of May was spend driving the Catamarca area. From there we drove to Cafayate, a nice town surrounded by coloured rock formations.

Here we we also visited the Garganto del Diablo, a small canyon that ends in a bowl like shape. In the wet season you can probably admire a huge waterfall here. I’m still wondering what the devil has to do with this small canyon? Having said that, almost every country has some natural sight named after the devil and another one named after god, so, yeah.

From there we drove on to Salta. We stayed at the municipal camp ground for a few days and then decided to rent an AirBnb for the following week. It would be nice to get out of the van for a while and Salta is a nice city. Nothing really special but with a few sights to see and shops to visit we wouldn’t be bored either. The weekend before we would move in to the apartment, there was going to be a big gathering of motor cyclists at the camp ground, so we decided to leave and visit Purmamarca, a touristy town known for the coloured mountains surrounding it. By now we have seen many of those coloured mountains, but the are still beautiful enough for a detour.

We spend two nights here and then drove back to Salta to enjoy the luxury of an apartment. So much space! And a toilet and bath, and a sofa, and a big kitchen 😉 All these things you take for granted if you live in a house. It was Finnley’s first time in a house. He really liked the smooth tiled floors, he raced across the floor and chased his toys that were now going really fast! Several times a day we had to get his toys out from underneath the sofa, but well, he had fun. He had slightly less fun when we took him to a vet. Finnley has an over the top obsession with food. This is partially to be expected because he almost starved to death. But he also drinks and pees a lot so we had him checked out. Some of his blood values are slightly off and we were advised to go see an endocrinologist in Buenos Aires. So after a week of luxury, we moved back in to the van to go in to the direction of Buenos Aires, but after a phone call we learned we had to wait three weeks for the appointment. So more about that in our June blog.

Near Cordoba we were in doubt what to do during those three weeks? Head up North and visit the Iguazu waterfalls or stay in the Cordoba area? After a calculation of the costs (Eur500,-more of less) and the distance for this detour (1500 km), we quickly decided not to go north. This gave us the chance to have all the rust repaired on the van. By now we had several holes in the van. In Cordoba there were several places they could fix this and after some consideration we just went with the cheapest one. And yes this turned out fine.

While the van would be in the garage, we would “sadly” have to stay in another apartment again 😉 So we spend another week in Cordoba. Cordoba doesn’t have that much to do, to be honest but we still enjoyed the indoor lifestyle! And this apartment had a sofa a bit higher of the ground, so Finnley could get his own toys out from under it.

While we were in Cordoba the president of Argentina, Javier Milei visited. There was a huge police force, streets were barricaded and helicopters flew over non stop. Lots of people cheered but there were also some people who like him a whole lot less.

We also spend some time at the municipal camp ground in Cordoba where we met up with Kombichronicles again. At this quiet, park-like camp ground Finnley got to go off leash and sort of befriended a little dog! We didn’t go to Buenos Aires until early June, so more about that in our next blog.