March 31, 2006
Day 184
This was a long day of walking. First, I took a bus to Potrero de los Funes, a small town near San Luis. My main goal was to see a waterfall that looked impressive in the brochures I saw last night.
I took a path that ran somewhat parallel to the river on which the waterfall was located. Eventually, the path went up a large hill and steered away from the river. Then the path ran out and I was forced to walk through an endless gauntlet of prickly bushes. After awhile, I realized that what I was doing was stupid. I was walking through some really rough terrain wearing sandals, and I was getting cut up. I could still hear the water from the river, though, so I worked my way down the hill and walked along the river instead.
There wasn't much of a path along the river, but I didn't mind because my sandals made it easy to walk through the water. So I guess wearing them today was both a good and bad idea. When I finally reached the waterfall, I was a bit disappointed. It looked a lot better in the tourism information posters than in real life. That probably should not have been such a surprise to me.
Eventually, I walked back to Potrero and began my quest to find a convent. I asked around and found out that it was only 5 KM away, but that it was uphill. They weren't kidding. After walking straight uphill for over an hour, I got to the top. The convent didn't appear to be open to the public at the time because there were several nuns carrying water around and praying. It looked really small anyway, so I went back to the top of the hill. The view of the area was great. It was such a clear day, I could see the curvature of the Earth. I watched a great sunset and walked another 6 KM downhill to La Punta, the city on the other side of the hill, at which point I took a bus back to San Luis. I'm glad I stopped here on the way to Buenos Aires because the area is really nice and there are almost no tourists to be seen.
