Daily Archives: March 15, 2008

We have now crossed the border beween Chile and Argentina, in one direction or the other, eleven times.  The most vivid and, shall we say, poignant of the crossings occurred the day after we left El Chalten.  But, let’s start at the beginning.

After leaving El Chalten, our drive northward on Ruta 40 was long and uneventful.  The landscape mimicked Mongolia to such a remarkable extent that we were sometimes confused about where we actually were.  The only two differences were a) bits of brown grass growing in Argentina and b) more Bactrian camels in Mongolia (also more cars, or at least more really old cars).

Our stop the first day was Bajo Caracoles, little more than a gas station with rooms surrounded by a few scruffy hostels, immortalized by Bruce Chatwin in Songlines as the crossroads to nowhere.  Well, I’m here to tell you Bruce was wrong.  To the Eastof Bajo Caracoles are the Cuevos de los Manos, cliffs on which were discovered hand silhouettes painted for some ritual observations 9,000 years ago.  We reached these isolated cliff sites late in the afternoon and were the only ones there.

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