The Drive: Feb 6th

Browns, reds, oranges, greens, pinks, creams, yellows, greys, teals....The colours of The Andes leave you speechlees. Ale and I drove almost to the border of Chile with our jaws on our laps. The colours and formations are like I've never seen including the Puentes de Incas - 'The Inca's Bridge'. A naturally formed bridge created by all the deposit of salts and minerals from nearby hot springs. Known by the Incas and studied by Charles Darwin.

And that was just the beginning of our 13.5 hour journey.

We backtracked down the Andes and drove through the flatlands/desert on their Eastern side. The land is so incredibly vast and the roads so incredibly unpredictable. We drove an hour on gravel, on temporary roads hastily created on dry riverbeds and on potholed bitumen. We watched sheets of rain hit the earth to our west while we remained dry. We passed through shabby little villages where houses are still made of mud bricks and horses walk freely around. We inched along roads broken by rockslides.

After 12 hours, we were exhausted, only to find that the storm tunnel we'd driven through had left the only road to San Juan flooded by broken rivers in 4 places. It was 9.30pm and although the number of cars we had seen all day were countable on one hand, we suddenly found ourselves in a queue of 5 vehicles deciding to cross or not. Honestly, there was literally nowhere else to go but forward which is what we all finally decided to do. Very exciting off road driving for Ale in our small Chev Merina. What a legend!

It was an emotional moment seeing the lights of San Juan for the first time. We finally crawled into town at 10.30pm.

Is it possible to experience nature overload?