2018-01-06 Day 247 Sat

A couple of cattle strolled past. Later a horseman and his two dogs. No one in Argentina seems to be interested or care we are camped in their area. In other places we used to have the locals come up to chat and find out what we were up to. Not here, no interaction much at all. Not even an acknowledgement.

We drove back past the parque entrance along the road thru the parque - fenced on both sides. Odd that we were disallowed from stopping on the road-side. No signage to this effect.

It was a neat drive with great hills to look at and a few tunnels. Certainly worth the drive. Drove up a gorge with lots of color; the first color we have seen in the hills in Argentina. Stopped for lunch at the lookout. A quick stop and walk down to a river to see the gorge on Rio Jachal.

Decided to go up Paso Agua del Negra. We had tried form the Chile side, traveled 100km’s up the valley only to be turned back 80km’s short for road closure/road works. We did no want to pass over into Chile this time, but just drive up and back down. The pass is at 4750m alt so we planned to spend the night at some springs at 3600m. We thought we could cope with the altitude. However when we got to the emigration station at 5pm we were told that we could not travel at night and to come back tomorrow. Well we gave up and continued south; stopped 90km short.

More dirt roads, no trees and no camp in site. Rock walls were bulldozed up about 10 meters from road to encourage the flood waters to run into the creeks. So getting off was more difficult. We finally found a navigable creek bed and drove up that and parked among the cactus.