“You can’t go up into the mountains with tourists like that. You have tires with almost no profile, no winter tires, no tow rope. Do you have a satellite phone? You don’t go up into the mountains like that.” Marcelo our fellow traveler is venting his anger. He’s right. We are stuck in a snowdrift with our four-wheel drive. At 3,900 meters (12,800 feet) above sea level. The car cannot be pushed forward or backward. Marcelo tries to jump on the loading area to swing, unfortunately it doesn’t help. Matthias tries to push snow away in front of the tires with his shoes, but that doesn’t work either. We’re stuck. Fortunately, some tourists arrive behind us with a four-wheel drive with wider tires and a tow rope. They pull us downhill out of the snowdrift. We try another track with the car located a little deeper. But even here the snow doesn’t allow us any further. What a pity, actually we wanted to see the “Laguna brava”. The drive to this point has been beautiful especially because of Marcelo and Graciana. The landscape is raw, here and there one can find petrified fossils. But still the laguna would have been a highlight. And that’s what we booked the four-wheel drive tour for. What do we do now? Are we paying full price? Are we paying half price? Or nothing at all, as Marcelo suggests? Marcelo worked as an engineer in the oil sector in Patagonia. There, equipment of a different kind is available, for him this tour is an unprofessional improvisation. No matter who you ask, everyone has a different opinion. Matthias would have liked to know in advance that it’s going up to more than 3000 meters altitude. As a matter of fact more than 4000 meters, in which case the legitimate question about snow would have come across our minds. And what the agency will do in case we can’t reach the laguna. What bothers me most is that the driver seems to be completely unprepared. Like this is his first tour. He carries no equipment and also has no plan how to get such a four-wheel drive car out of the snow drift.
Marcelo does not want to pay the agency because he does not believe that the service has been provided. Matthias says that the locals earn their money and feed their families with these tours. If we don’t pay anything, they not only won’t earn anything, they’ll lose money, because of the consumed fuel. I think we should only pay half, because we only got half.
Such decisions are not easy for us. Anyone who travels knows it’s not gonna be like Germany. Otherwise you could stay right at home. Of course, mainly you’d like to get to know the beautiful otherness like music, customs, dances, history, fauna and flora, food, religions and views of people from other countries. But you can’t run away from everyday things that are not like at home: hygiene, water pressure in the toilet, hot and drinking water supply, opening hours, indoor and outdoor temperatures, food and health care. Security in the country is also part of this. In Iran we got stuck in the ski lift because the lifts have certainly more than 50 years on the clock. In India in the Himalayas, a fellow traveler suffered from altitude sickness and oxygen saturation could be measured. But oxygen? Wasn’t available just like a satellite phone.
Now we are in Argentina in winter and are stuck with summer tires without any equipment. Quickly other tourists pull us out of the snowdrift with their car. On the way back we see rugged mountain landscapes, lama-like guanacos, emu-like suris, indigenous rock formations and talk with Graciana about everything and anything. We return to our village with mixed feelings. Now we’re all going to the agency.
What would you do if you were us? We are looking forward to your comments!
Update: Here’s how the story went on
We all went to the agency and talked to the employee selling the tours. She felt visibly uncomfortable with four tourists complaining and arguing. She was also very young (in her early 20s). Marcelo told her clearly that it wasn’t her fault, but we want to talk to the boss. Otherwise he wouldn’t pay anything. We also said that we want to talk to the boss, but that we would pay something.
So the boss of the agency came to our hostel in the evening, because he is not only the boss of the agency, but also of the hostel. Unfortunately, he lied to me (in Spanish) from start to finish, everything. Firstly he told us we had been safe the whole time. At no time there had been any danger, because the car had an emergency button that the driver could trigger. Then an emergency call would be sent and someone would drive up to us. In addition, we also had been monitored by GPS, if a car does not move for more than an hour on the monitor, then an emergency system would also be triggered and someone would be on his way. (Unfortunately, I don’t believe a single word of that, because the technology in Argentina is – not yet so far.) Also, we would have had oxygen for all of us all night and a shovel, even dry food behind the seats of Matthias, Graciana and me. Too funny, because there was no space, because there was the empty loading area of the pickpup and he could never have had so many oxygen bottles with him. Then the conversation took a turn so that the driver was at fault from his point of view and that he had everything with him – just didn’t use it. He would no longer hire the driver for his agency. I told him that the preparation by his agency was also inadequate. And he told me that nothing had happened to us. But I said that it would be nice if you were prepared in case something happens and you could make use of snow chains and a shovel. And not the other way around. He said we were a little over-excited because Marcelo had incited us. Marcelo also had gone back to the agency and had harassed his employees. Since I was there, I refuted it. Thereupon the lie was piled up even more that Marcelo had come back alone to the agency afterwards. Which, of course, is also not true. Together with Matthias we decided to pay the agency an amount so that the fuel and a certain part of the driver are covered. That resulted in about half the price. The next day we were able to talk to his employee again reasonably and without lies and gave him the money. The end of the story? Since I booked the hostel via Airbnb, I got a bad review from him that suggests I was not very communicative and didn’t respect the house rules. My review for him was only concerning the hostel and accordingly good. After that I couldn’t resist writing a bad review for his agency at Google and Tripadvisor.
