Exciting times driving through Patagonia We’re driving up mostly Ruta 40, which is mostly paved. Unlike Ruta 3 which runs down the Atlantic coast, 40 has hills and scenery but is still fairly barren. There are occasional copses of trees near water and estancias, but other than that just scrubby bushes and sheep.
The parts that aren’t paved or aren’t part of Ruta 40 are gravel of various quality. Sometimes there are nice sections where we can safely do 60 kph. Other times there are severe washboards and or larger stones that require slowing down to 20 kph or less. Yesterday we had some of the latter to the point that our roof top tent moved significantly. We’re still not entirely sure what happened, but we’re a bit surprised that after about 15000 miles and probably nearly 1000 miles on gravel it should have just happened all at once. Perhaps I was overconfident on the gravel and took some sections a bit fast, perhaps there was some soap from a recent car wash that greased the skids, or perhaps something just loosened a bit.
The upshot was two hours of disassembly and bolt tightening this morning. Again, nothing obviously loose or broken, but clear evidence of about a one-inch lateral slide of the tent and some wear against the roof rack. Everything is tightened down now, and another item has been added to the checklist.
Due to some disagreements between the tween contingent of the team and everyone else, Audrey is not allowed to use her AirPods for a week. It is hard to create consequences for a kid who is effectively already ‘stuck in her room’ but now she tries to listen to her music on her phone speakers in the back seat. This is annoying, especially as the acoustics of driving over gravel roads aren’t great and her phone is competing with the sound of the car shaking itself apart. Rather than give in, Taylor Swift has been granted some time in the rotation. So that’s new. Not nearly as good as the Talking Heads and Grateful Dead, but there we go.
The other thing that is new is that we’ve started needing to keep the jerry can filled. It gives us about an extra 80 km, and that has started becoming more necessary as a reserve given the spacing and reliability of gas stations. Another addition to the daily checklist is knowing where the next few gas stations are and what the plan is if one of them is out of gas. We stopped at one the other day that would only sell us 10 liters, which put us in the position of relying on another small gas station 200 km up the road. Luckily they had gas; had they not, it might have made for an adventure.
The destination of this journey was La Cueva de las Manos, or the Cave of Hands. Located along a canyon wall above the Rio Pinturas are hundreds of images of hands and depictions of guanaco hunts and other animals. The hand images are made by holding a hand against a wall and blowing pigment against the hand, leaving a negative image of the hand. The earliest images are from about 9000 years ago and it is awe inspiring to think that they have lasted that long. Clearly the art was meaningful to the people who lived there, but all we have left are the paintings themselves and questions that we will almost certainly never have answers to.
Oh, as we were hiking around the area, one of the rangers told us to keep the kids from picking up rocks because there were “lots of black widows”. Sure enough, as we were walking along the trail, Jessie found this one crossing our path.
As we left in the car, we were wondering what if any of our creations would last even a few thousand years. I think anything in concrete or aluminum has a good chance, but in New England even the concrete probably wouldn’t make it, and the aluminum would also need to be protected over those time scales.
We also wondered about the prevalence of art thousands of years ago. These paintings were preserved, but they were in a lucky spot. It doesn’t take much imagination that the people who made this would have created other works as well, and the stories depicted don’t seem to be the product of people constantly on the edge of survival. We tend to imagine life thousands of years ago as nasty, brutish, and short, but I think these paintings should cause us to doubt Hobbes on that point. The people who made these images had time to create and think, and existed in a society that placed value on this activity.
2 Responses
Very thorough analysis of that civilization, Marcus. I have always wondered how the ancients lived and thought. They almost always had some sort of entertainment or pleasure. Again, what an education you are exposing your kids to. Thanks.
These ancient peoples who did handprints and drawings must not have had any records of writing and storing things that could leave us better information. We, on the other hand, have a plethora of data stored on many different platforms. I hope our civilization survives long enough for someone in the future to decipher it!