Between a Rock and a Riverbed

Of all the wonderful people I've met on my travels anywhere in the world, the ones I find myself reminiscing on and wishing I had nearby later on tend to have a few characteristics: resilient, hilarious, flexible, and willing to do anything. My recent exploits with a Tasmanian reminded me how lovely disasters can be. 

On a Saturday night, the night I arrived in Salta in the north of Argentina, the Brits I'd spent the day eating meat with suggested the best way to see the area was to rent a car and get to the small towns south and west of Salta. I started jumping into conversations around the hostel, trying to find anyone that wasn't leaving the next day. A bright-eyed, eager-looking Aussie chirped up, saying he'd be interested, but that he had already booked a tour with the hostel to the same area. We tried to cancel his reservation or get his money back, with no luck, causing me to think he'd rescind his offer, but he said "that's OK! Renting a car will be way cooler anyway!" We found two Israeli girls who expressed general smiles and enthusiasm for the idea and said we would figure out the details when they returned from the grocery. Tasmanian and I realized it was 8:00 on a Saturday evening and if we were going to get a car at all we'd need to do it before 9:00 and especially before Sunday when most things are closed in any country sharing a history with Spain. 

Tas and I RAN into the center, hitting every rental place we could find in the 15 minutes before most closed. As we arrived on car rental street we realized we didn't know each other's name or where we hailed from, a common occurrence among travelers. The first was out of cars, the second wouldn't rent for fewer than three days, numbers three through six weren't open Saturday evenings, and the seventh was open and had several lovely Chevrolet Classic's available for our pleasure. 

We rented, handing over all his personal information and hopping into the ride, at which point my companion mentions "Wow! This will be fun on the wrong side!" A minor oversight on my part before trusting my life to this guy, but he seemed like fun, so why not!

Back at the hostel we couldn't find our Israeli compatriots, but we told the front desk to let them know we would leave at 8am (so it would be more like 9) and went out for dinner. In the morning Tas informed me that the Israelis had bailed. Before taking that for what it was and just eating twice as much money as we had planned, I decided to fight a former Israeli soldier (verbally) and then hit the road. I lived, at least!

Only once in the two days did I realize we were driving on the left side, and not as a joke, as we pulled out of a turnoff back onto the road. I kindly pointed out that while this place may be dreadfully dusty and look an awful lot like parts of Australia, we were not in fact in his country, to which he responded "Oh of course not! If we were there would be a lot more damn 'Roos around!"

It was a beautiful first day, we spent a solid part of the afternoon eating goat barbecue, enjoying the regional "viagra"-flavor of ice cream (comes from a plant, we're really not sure and it didn't seem to have the expected effects), and pretending we cared about the 2000 year old Incan ruins when really we just wanted to look at the incredible succulents selection - Cacti are really neat. I even cut into one just to see how succulent they are. Things were beautiful. So beautiful that I got a standard-driving lesson, which I passed with flying colors, and we coasted right into a nice family-run hostel where we had our own kitchen. Imagine what happens when two people this silly end up together on the road before they actually know each other...

Day two started out beautifully: we were on the road early, into the beautiful Argentine desert sun, weaving between rock formations I've only dreamed of on long, winding dirt roads where I got to drive again so the GoPro could be held out the window. I pretty much nailed it again, other than trying to go from stopped to third... Sleep apparently took my edge off. What should have been a 4 hour trip took us 2.5 and we were ecstatic with the good time we were making. We took a turn off towards a remote lake on a dead-end road, driving along a beautiful river...

...until it dawned upon my driver that we might have a little bit of a problem...

So things could have been better, but we laughed about it and his mechanic/oil-drilling background made it smooth and easy to fix. We decided to head back towards town now that we had no spare for another incident. Coming out of town we failed to notice the following hidden trick of the road

and found ourselves going up, up, UP what ultimately was nothing more than the riverbed it appeared to be. The man of our duo explored up the river to find that it only got worse until it finally linked up with a bigger road, one that would undoubtedly give us another flat, so we started to turn the car around in the riverbed. What seemed like a great idea and an easy fix put us quite literally with a large rock under the back left (just-replaced) tire and the low front bumper wedged into the rocky riverbed. I couldn't tell you how we got out of it, but I think I'll always believe in the intelligence and ability of the Australian people.

It was an incredible adventure, with all the beauty of cactus country and new friendship. I hope all my adventures continue to find someone so carefree, humorous, and light-hearted and I hope that in the face of companions that lack that fun I might be able to whip my Ginger Charms into being more of a Fun-Creator. Something to strive for, at least.