The third day of our roadtrip leads us from Cafayate, the wine area, across dry land to the Ruinas of Quilmes. An for the ‘indigenas’ sacred place where an old civilization used to reside to be wiped out by the spanish and the vanishing of fresh water in the area. Up till this day they are still fighting the government over land rights.
It was also an interesting day because we got stuck twice. The first time only for about five minutes because I was so handy to drive into loose sand. Fortunately two friendly locals with a shovel helped us out.
The second time we went out of gas in the middle of nowhere. This was caused by me not having the experience of driving uphill. We had more than enough to make it, but because of the incline gasoline floats to the back of the tank causing distruptions in the engine. Secondly Argentina is seriously out of ‘super’ (euro 97/98/95) gas in the northern part. Which means that in all gas stations they where out. Even (later) in Salta it was hard to find. Weird for one of the more prosperous countries of South-America.
We had to leave our car and hitchhike back to Amaicha del Valle to get gas. Not only has the gas station hardly any gas, but also no jerrycan we could use. After a short search the people at the ‘remis’ ( taxi / collectivo’s ) could help us with both the gas, the jerrycans, the transport back and filling up our tank manually. After a more than 2-hours delay we reached tired but satisfied the town of Tafi del Valle. Please note that Amaicha and Tafi are about 20 km apart but a whole different climate.
