ARGENTINA: Beneath the Beauty of the Mountains

The mountains are beautiful and I absolutely love them.

They are also a force of nature and need to be respected. 

On our last day in Cafayate we needed to drive 3 hours through the mountains back to Salta to catch a flight.

We did not factor the unpredictability and force of nature.

NOTE TO SELF, or, should I say LESSON LEARNED: 

Nature does not always cooperate and/or operate on the same schedule that we do.

Our last night in Cafayate it rained. Actually, it poured for about 15 minutes creating raging water in the city streets.

The next morning it was grey but no rain. The police stopped us outside the town asking us where we were going. Through Google Translate we knew there was an issue, but weren't really sure what it was.

About 45 minutes later we discovered the issue. 

Mudslides blocked the highway. People tried to drive over them. Which created more problems.

A front end loader had come to move the mud, but, it got stuck. 

A truck came to pull it out. The chain link rope kept breaking and getting smaller and smaller. Eventually the truck got it out and the front end loader could start clearing a path. 

As one of the local ladies said to me "the mud made everyone equal" because we all had to wait. 

The next problem was that everyone on both sides of the mudslide got stacked up. So once the path was clear traffic still couldn't move forward.

All in all, we spent 3 hours waiting.

Once through this mudslide there were still more mini slides on the highway, but fortunately they were passable.

And then last but not least, once we got through all the mudslides we had to stop for goats to cross. 

FINAL SCORE that day: Nature: 1 Travelers: 0