In Between The Fat Lizards & Cactuses – Piedra Parada

»A detox diet,« my mom said as we set up our camp and sat by the river, reading books while we’ve already forgotten about the world we left behind, about 4-hour drive on the dirt road ago. After we left the tiny town of Gualjaina, filled up our tank with the last 400 pesos of cash that we got, we drove about an hour more, deeper into the desert. The drive isn’t interesting until you start getting surrounded by the weirdest rock formed towers and giants, rising from the ground. And the closer you get to Piedra Parada, the denser the rock got. I was sleeping the whole drive from Bariloche, while my mom has been picking up all the broke hitchhikers on the way. The last one, a guy from Brazil, came with us all the way to the base camp.

Have you seen my post about what I do, how I live and where I work, check it out!

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I’ve never seen anything like it before. Piedra Parada is a name of a giant rock that »stopped« in the middle of the desert. The area arround it is very undeveloped yet holds a lot of potential! We set up our camp on the other side of the river from the canyon, where we climbed every day, about a one-minute walk from the Brazilian camp. The vast emptiness of a dry Patagonian desert sucked us in, the minute we got there. We arrived on a dusty dirt road, around the wind curved rocky towers and a few of skinny trees that managed to survive by the oasis that the river has created. What an unusual place.

Definitely much different than Bariloche!

Brazilians got it good. They’ve even managed to build a bread oven, besides the wood stove for cooking and wirely-connected place for a parilla. Their camp was a friendly site, full of hammock and yoga vibes. Waking up late, because so far down south – the days are long! For broke, climbing dirtbags, this place is a dream. No rent, no people from the city, barely any tourists and loads of rock to work with! 

After the post-lunch siesta, we crossed the warm river to get to the other side and check out the canyon, we’ve heard so much about. The third sector, was about a 10-minute walk in, was full of routes that met our style of climbing. 20 – 30-meter routes are running over a very unusual rock, that still holds a very enjoyable climbing. I mentioned that the place looks weird, right? It looked like we were on the moon. As a climbing area, the spot isn’t particularly developed. Most of the routes in the canyon were put up by a Petzl Pro climbing trip and those were, easy to say – way too hard for us. From what I’ve gathered, everyone is just waiting for some more crazy white gringos, to come down to Piedra Parada and put up some more routes! It could be a great idea for all the Squamish rock climbers, to kill their time in the winter season. You can still find many interesting routes, with a variety of dificulties. No biggie, just keep your eyes open!

Evenings were chill

I remember, the first day we made my favorite, quinoa stir fry and some homemade hummus! Don’t ask me how, haha. I had been smashing the chickpeas in the bowl for an hour, added some olive oil, black pepper, and lemon. It was very rusticly looking, yet delicious! With my mom, we never compromise when it comes to food. When our options are limited with, for example; backpacking around Patagonia, or camping in the car… the cousine stays the same! Neither of us likes the bagged premade soups or canned food. We always plan ahead and enjoy our meals, just as we were at home. The camp that we had set up, was simple. A Quechua tent, that lasted throughout our last 10 years of family expeditions, was put behind our car, so were saved from the strong Patagonian winds.

I remember sleeping for over 13 hours the first night! Oh, the dreams! The dreams that we had were INSANE! Flowing from one scenario to another, over the whole night to the sounds of river and wind!

Mornings weren’t a rush either

Nobody was in a hurry. I remember my mom asking some of the guys from the other camp what the time was and they explained how they haven’t seen the clock or a watch in days. “When it’s daytime, it’s daytime. We have light and we climb. When it’s dark, it’s night and we sleep.” Man, it wouldn’t be that bad, doing a summer season in Piedra Parada.

Our days were full of climbing, swimming in the river and hanging out with others. towers We scooped up quite a few routes, usually surrounded by mat drinking hippies. By the end of the week, I wasn’t even sure what day it was, let alone what time it was when we woke up. It was ligh then it was dark, that’s all we knew. Our schedule was non-existing, and we moved by the sun, went to bed when the first stars started to rise!

We saved the climb on Piedra Parada for our last day. No plan. We knew some other Brazilians and a German couple was doing the route as well, called Sueno Lento. Which translates from Spanish to Slow Dream. It was perfect because that’s what we’ve been having the whole week! An easy 6+ has a total of 7 beautiful pitches, each more different than the other, which take you right to the top! We started around 11, successfully avoided the hot sun by staying in the shadow, enjoying the views from a big rock. The timings were great since the first ascent was just 3 pitches above us and the ones who came after, started when we were already half way up. Each pitch had something different to offer us, my mom had always preferred chimneys and roofs, I had always been a bigger fan of cracks and slab. In the end, we had a 20-minute walk to the top…and WOOOW. The place is stunning. I have heard, many times, that is similar to Smith Rock and personally, it reminded me of Utah a lot.

With our descent, our situation got more complicated!

Of course, we thought… There is never a thing that goes so smoothly as today’s climb. Something had to go wrong. To get down from the famous rock, there was a 4-5 pitch long repel, flying over a 7c grade route. The first two repels went on without a problem, but when we arrived at the middle anchor and wanted to pull the rope down, it got stuck from both ends, on the cracks above us. The route was too hard to climb itself, way out of our league and we were still over 200 meters above the ground.

Those 3 hours on the wall were long, definitely unexpected. We had no other option but to wait the Brazilos to finish climbing and lower down to our repel. What is time? It went by slow, that’s for sure. We watched the shadow of the big rock getting bigger and bigger until it hit the river. Those guys were not fast climbers, the wait was hard, we ran out of the water a long time ago, we didn’t have any food left either! Around 8pm we finally got some rocks, falling our way! We are saved!

“Piedras!!”

Ah, thank god. Those guys weren’t stupid, they had put together quickly, of what might’ve happened and saved our rope. Which wasn’t easy, but with some tries we got it down. When we lowered to our anchor, I recognized him from the first day. Is the guy that we had picked up, hitchhiking! Karma does go round and round 🙂

We were so happy when we got to the ground. Ended up being on a wall for way longer than we had planned. We slept well that night.

If you are taking a vacation soon, I’d like to invite you to take advantage of this -65$ off Airbnb discount for your next trip! Enjoy it for me as well.

☽ Follow me on Instagram – @alenkaamali – to see more of my adventures ☽

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