Desert

We leave behind us San Martin del los Andes, a village on the shores of Lake Lácar and very reminiscent of a village in the Alps. After all, we are still in the Andes. However, Ruta 40 soon takes us to a completely new landscape: the pampas. The verdant mountains, interspersed with sharp, snow-covered peaks, give way to softer hills, like waves that slowly dissipate. The mountains become a distant memory, the trees disappear, taking away the last remnants of green. In their place are large tufts of dry grass scattered like cotton balls, forming a soft veil over these arid hills. At sunset, the brushwoods glow a deep gold colour that stands out against the cerulean blue of the sky, so motionless and devoid of hues that it looks like a thick, creamy liquid. I wonder what this sky would taste like. The rain gives way to dust, and if before we could not open the windows to avoid getting wet, now we have to keep them closed to avoid breathing in the dust. Thus begins the desert crossing to San Pedro de Atacama, thousands of kilometres in an endless nothingness of gold and silver, under a scorching sun and a freezing moon. The temperature range is indeed crazy. While during the day we gasp and complain for our dry lips, in the evening the temperatures drop to almost zero degrees and we have to take refuge in our warm and comfortable sleeping bags!

Every evening, the sunset creates a twilight of a thousand colours, with the red on the horizon dressing up all the colours of the rainbow to finally reach the dark blue of the distant sky. The moon is almost full and its light so strong that it creates outlined shadows. The absence of noise is so intense that it becomes deafening. We hold our breath and remain motionless to listen to the silence, and here it is the beating of my heart that becomes deafening, along with the rustling that some windblown hair creates at the contact with my jacket. I had never been able to listen to the movement of my hair.

The sun rises late, at 8 a.m., and the sky heralds its arrival with hues of pink and violet. As we drink our coffee, the first rays begin to warm us, within an hour we go from socks and wool cap to shorts and T-shirt. The distances between one town and another are enormous, there is nothing between them, not even a telephone signal. The houses are made of brick and no longer of wood, as was the case in Chilloe. Life flows quietly between the dusty streets, the fountains without a drop of water, and the playgrounds without a blade of grass.

The second night we stop at the edge of a river, the Rio Grande. The presence of a rivulet of water is only revealed by a few green trees, because it is difficult to see these meagre, thin rivulets, which drag like corpses between the immense stone valleys. We are further north and a mild wind blows in the evening, for the first time we can sit outside after dark without freezing. However, the wind increases and slowly everything becomes covered in dust: the chairs, the glasses, the bottle of wine we are enjoying, the phones, and so do we. Dust creeps in everywhere, and even inside our van, in the bed, everything is covered in a trickle of dust. No matter how hard we try to remove it, the dust remains, so fine that it seems fluid, almost sticky. After vain attempts, we give up: the coffee is sandy, the biscuits a bit crunchy, even brushing our teeth it seems as if the normal toothpaste has turned into toothpaste with 'active granules'.

The days continue getting hotter and hotter, drier and drier. We travel kilometres of straight road, if we are lucky we make one bend a day. Every now and then we encounter stretches of dirt road (sometimes stretching up to 100km) that slow us down and shake us as if we were in a shaker. It's just us and few tumbleweed bouncing around. In this desolation, however, the hours sitting in the car are rewarded by the most spectacular scenery I have ever seen in my life. The golden hills turn into coloured rocks streaked with pink, yellow, blue, green. We pass through canyons with deep burgundy rocks and soil dotted with immense dark green cacti. Glacial lakes (the few we encounter) add a deep blue tint to the desert hills. In the vicinity of Mendoza and Cafayate, the landscape cools down and green expanses of vineyards and olive trees appear. Further north, the land turns to sand and the gold and red colour that we passed through earlier turns to pink. For kilometres we cross pink hills dotted with golden bushes and covered by a very clear blue sky without a single cloud. And as we go on, salt expanses, snow-capped volcano peaks and lagoon waters tinged with green, yellow and pink appear. And so, for the second time on this trip around the world, I feel as if I am on another planet. The loneliness of this encroachment increases the feeling of being on an alien land, but flamingos and llamas appear every now and then, just to remind us that all this wonder is still on our own planet.

Friendliest person: A mechanic and his wife. We were looking for a petrol station, as we didn't have enough petrol to get as far as the one in the town after that was pointed out on the iOverlander app. Not only did he sell us 10 litres of benzine which meant we didn't run out of gas in the middle of the desert, but he also gave us useful information about the route we were to take.

Music: Inocente by La Delio Valdez

Food: the Malbec wine of Mendoza

Highlights of the trip: One morning we washed in the water of a small canyon. We had to walk along a small path lined with immense cacti until we reached a small pool of cold water where, with the help of a pot, we managed to take a refreshing shower.

Lowlights of the trip: 100km of dirt road where we could not exceed 20km per hour