Leaving Paraguay for North Argentina the following day gave us hope that we would be leaving this insufferable heat. Salta, our next desired destination, sat over 1,150m above sea level, and enjoyed temperate climates. However, this lay 1,200km away still, and our thoughts always returned to the raised eyebrows and sideways glances we had previously encountered.
Unfortunately for our sweat-stained wardrobes, the weather did not change for the positive. We were even greeted by the occasional small wildfires in the fields either side of the national road. Nothing to worry the laid-back Argentinians, but definitely an eye-opening experience for us.
That night was another easy decision – hotel. No drop in temperatures meant campervan sleeping was out of the question. We were lucky to find a wonderful, modern establishment on the outskirts of a town called of Resistencia. The staff there could not have been more helpful, even allowing us to use the beautiful pool for a couple of hours after breakfast the next morning.
As Salta was still 800km away, we knew we would have to stop somewhere in the middle. Incredibly, the forecast was for even warmer weather that day and night. Crossing Argentina can be a long, rather testing affair. There really is not much in the middle of Argentina, and we were about to fall victims of this reality. We set our targets on a town halfway between Resistencia and Salta. The appropriately named “Monte Quemado” or “Burnt Mountain” is not a hub for foreign tourists. Nor is it likely to ever be given its dearth of places to rest your head.
Checking into the Hotel Adriana was a bittersweet moment. One the one hand, we were pleased to be able to get out of the campervan. On the other, we were more than apprehensive as to what we would find behind the rather unkept facade. They say that you should not judge a book by its cover. Unfortunately in this instance, both were pretty bad. Sporting the only open restaurant in the town, we choose to eat a pack of biscuits and go straight to bed instead. This should tell you what we thought of the place. Fawlty Towers would have seemed like a palace.
The night was long. Daytime temperatures had reached 44 degrees and overnight it would not drop below 35 degrees. The air con was put to max on arrival at 9pm. I think we felt the first real benefits at about 1am, as the aged system battled Mother Nature. I think I nodded off close to 3am, but it was all just a sweaty blur. Morning greeted us with more blazing sunshine. Our all-inclusive package offered us breakfast, but again we politely declined.
We were then Salta bound, determined that neither heat nor tiredness, sweat nor hunger would stop us from arriving that day. For the fourth day in a row, the kids were champions, quietly sitting/suffering though the ongoing heatwave as we drove. And little by little we did it, leaving the burning Chaco Province for first the Salta Province, and then the city of Salta itself. Arriving in the city’s municipal campsite was a wonderful feeling.
We had suffered heat and humidity along the way that we had never experienced elsehere. But we had overcome it. There had been no mutiny or any sign of it (the soft drinks and ice-pops at regular intervals definitely helped). And it actually brought us closer together as a family. So while I don’t wish to go through such a situation like this again, I certainly feel that every cloud (or lack thereof) does have a silver lining!
Click here to read the “Driving Fun At High Altitude (Part 1 of 2)” blog post
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