If Shona’s Thelma does that make me Louise?

We hopped on a night bus from San Martin and headed north to the city of San Juan, bit of a culture shock as the last big city we'd been in was Mendoza over 2 months ago! We spent the day chilling in the warmth and planning our next few days as we'd decided to hire a car and go on a small road trip. Having studied the maps we'd sorted a route that meant we could visit 2 national parks, take in a couple of cool towns and clock up some serious miles in the process. So in our little Vauxhall Corsa… I know not quite what we had in mind either! We set off out of the scary city and into the countryside, long straight roads with mountains on one side and desert on the other awaited us – we hardly saw another car for hours and when we did Shona soon overtook them! We reached the Ischigualasto national park just in time to go in and explore, the park is also called "Valle de Luna" (every country seems to have one!) and has a 40km drive through it stopping at strange rock formations, weird moon landscapes (hence the name), a section of perfectly rounded boulders, fossils and more but even with all this I still think Shona enjoyed being a rally driver round the park more! We got back to the rangers station and asked the guy if we could camp anywhere in the park which he agreed to, so we excitedly set up camp just on the edge of a cliff overlooking some of the park as the sun set – perfect! We ate dinner with a couple of foxes and spent the rest of the night huddled in sleeping bags listening to animals scurry around outside the tent hoping that something bigger didn't head our way like a puma! Caught sunrise and then headed off for a quick trek, getting slightly lost, before heading back to the car and onto the next park – Talampaya. From sand rock we'd now entered red canyons and the best way to see it was on a trek with a park ranger, we walked amongst 200m high red rocks climbing through little passages leading from one side to the other while condors circled overhead – oh and having one of those Spanglish conversation about football! After the trek we gave the ranger a lift home as it was on our way (kinda!) and then headed to the small village of Huaco but at the end of town the road we needed to take we about 2 foot under water!! Having watched a few 4×4’s get in trouble crossing we thought best not try in a corsa! Ok, time for a detour which happened to be stunning if not a little scary driving up a steep mountain pass on barely even a dirt track. Got to the town of Rodeo just as the sun was setting over the lake the town is famed for – its supposedly one of the best windsurfing places in the world because the winds daily hit 100kmph – joy we have to set up a tent! The following morning we left town and headed out on even more amazingly beautiful roads to the village of Barreal, on route we found a small dried out lake bed that had car tyre marks heading down to it – proved to tempting for us! We booted our poor little corsa around it for 20 mins before thinking perhaps the insurance and hire company wouldn’t appreciate it! Arrived in the leafy, quiet and picturesque town of Barreal later that day and headed straight out to an even bigger dried out lake – ok we drove around this one too but that wasn’t why we'd come here! It's used for land yachting and we wanted to see if we could give it a go but when we got there it was too windy and no one was out. Drove up to a small national park for a quick trek and to check out an observatory which was shut before going back to town to set up the tent and explore. After another quick walk in the morning through Barreal’s leafy dirt streets it was time to make tracks back to San Juan, first stopping in a place called Ullum just outside which had a huge man made lake and dam. Returned one very dirty car to the hire company hoping that they couldn’t find any signs of misuse! We'd driven for 3 days, over 1500km, camped in 3 cool places and had had a fantastic time – made us wish we'd had a car more often!