Today was an utterly wasted day. V joins me tomorrow and things will start to get back to travel normal. V and I are on different schedules partly because I had a credit with Air Canada for a trip that I had cancelled some time ago and that needed to be used within a year or be lost. I made my flight bookings with Air Canada and the only flight combination that worked for me was the flight that I described yesterday. As an aside don't ever make the mistake that I did and book flights with an airline who books all the flight itineraries on other airlines. My ticketing carrier is AC but my flights were with Lufthansa going out and will be with Air Brussels returning. When you need to talk with someone or make any changes AC and the other airline point at each other, wink, and say, Not my problem. You need to be a certified hostage negotiator in order to make any adjustments or get current information....[Continue Reading]

Long, long day. Lufthansa to Frankfurt in Business and then a flight to Addis with a stop in Khartoum en route, also Lufthansa Business. In the 24 hours leading up to departure I had my usual fit of nostalgia and early homesickness. Weird but I guess it's good to get it out of the way early so that it doesn't actually get in the way while on the road. Nevertheless it is inevitable, no matter how many times I travel, that I always get homesick before I leave. Once underway all is good, but the preliminary pre-departure mood always includes a significant component of early homesickness, nostalgia for my cats and a deep sense of wonder about quite why I'm doing this. I find that as I'm getting older this mood comes earlier and is more intense; I suppose that the logical extension is that one day I may just say, enough, I'd rather stay home with the cats and rip up the tickets. Mood always passes but.....

Easy start to the day, up late with beautiful sunshine but a cool breeze blowing as we are still at 2700 metres. Leisurely breakfast and then 4 hours to relax on the outdoor veranda while I caught up the blog and V read. Have loved the trip and the landscapes but it was nice just to chill for a brief moment...

Long, long day. Packed up and off early for our drive which will be 350k but will take at least 8 hours since there are no paved roads. The first couple of hours were through enormously wide expanses and fields of basalt froth which were blown out of the multiple volcanoes that dot the landscape as far as the eye can see off in the distance. Our track passes along the edges of waves of this material whose height reaches about 2 or 3 metres and which appears to be a black rocky foam filled with air bubbles. It would be impossible to make a road over or through it so we skirt the edge of the basalt lava flow which is so hard that edges are still razor sharp after a million years....

Fabulous sunset last night but we were so late getting in to our hotel, El Piñon, and getting settled in that we didn't get any shots. Feeling the altitude. Yesterday in Cafayete we were at about 1700 metres. Getting to the Puna yesterday we climbed and when we crossed the mountain pass that took us to Catamarca province in the Puna region we were, and are, at 3500 metres. When concentrating on other things altitude not particularly noticeable, but I woke up a couple of times last night very aware of being short of breath and of the need to breathe more deeply. V and I both have prescriptions for a drug that is supposed to minimize altitude symptoms which we were to have started taking two days before altitude....

Adolfo arrived at 8:30 and we set off. Long drive ahead of us and we will climb up the mountain pass into the Puna late in the day. Paved roads and good driving up the Calchaquíes valley. Smaller fields under agriculture, clearly family run, rather than the large industrial plantings that we have seen the last two days, both tobacco and vineyards. As well lots of mixed grazing, sheep, goats an some cattle....