February 2, 2019 – February 4, 2019
Our parts arrived and Derek successfully super-heroed them into the camper, having to make some adjustments to get the new, different shaped electronics to fit into the old space. We hooked everything up, and all systems were go! We packed up the camper and got the heck out of Coyhaique! Cue Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again”.
We crossed back into Argentina. Every time we cross the border between Chile and Argentina we need to get rid of, or cook, all of our fruit, vegetables and eggs. Sometimes they confiscate Piper’s food, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they take the meat and cheese, other times they do not care…it is really random and may depend a lot on which border you are using and who is working that day. Anyway, we always try to cross with a pretty empty fridge. At this particular border, when Derek started to mention that we had a green pepper on board, the customs agent shushed him, and waved his hands in a “Don’t tell me anymore way”. But we didn’t have many groceries, so we stopped in the town of Perito Moreno (not the famous glacier, that was to come later) to resupply and found a spot in their municipal campground for the night.
The next day we headed out with a couple of hitchhikers (Joel from Argentina and Laura from France, two of the many hitchhikers we have seen in Patagonia) who had approached us the night before about the possibility of a ride, to Cueva de los Manos. The Unesco World Heritage site consists of caves and overhangs with paintings that range from about 9,000 years to about 1,300 years before present, the most famous of which is a series of negatively painted hands. The people would place their hand on the rock and then blow or brush paint over their hand, thus leaving a void where their hand had been.
Joel and Laura were heading the same direction as us, so the four of us loaded back into the truck and continued south. Joel spoke only a little English, but Laura spoke French, English and Spanish, so when we would tire of trying to find the Spanish words for what we wanted to say, she would translate for us. Two days later, we arrived in El Chalten, where we said goodbye to our travel companions.
