One Apple A Day #173
Lago Posada, January 7th, 2017
Saturday or Today’s late afternoon. Our original plan was to camp somewhere in Chile and return to Argentina the day after. But that plan was made weeks ago when we were just dreaming. Then we did a night in our tiny tent, and we drove a truck on white roads. These two experiences combined suggested us to go for the border. So we left the Caretera Austral, and we took a route labelled X-83. A very thin line on the map, almost invisible. The X-83 isn’t a proper road. It is more a trail climbing the mountains towards the Argentinian side of the Andes. The distance to the border is less than 50 km, but it took us a good 3 hours. Our slow pace wasn’t due to the trail. Yes, it was stip, narrow and bumpy but also fun to drive so we didn’t hold back our truck. No, the main reason was the scenario. We had to stop at almost every corner; the big mountains similar to our Alps, big canyons reminding us of the western movies we saw when we were kids, flat and dry lands that resemble Africa of Australia (even if we never saw any of them), dry lakes, the guanacos running free beside us, swamps with pink flamingos. It has been as if all the documentaries about nature we have seen in years had concentrated in a single place. And we were in the middle of that place.
And then, after all this beauty, we reached the border.