FEBRUARY´S FEATURED DOOR OF THE MONTH – CALINGASTA – ARGENTINA

February 5, 2018 SouthAmerica

Many tourists that visit Argentina will focus on its capital Buenos Aires, the Patagonia, Mendoza, Bariloche, Ushuaia, Salta, Cordova, Tierra del Fuego, among other touristic sites. Enjoy their great asados, delicious empanadas, and world recognized wines while listening Tango could be enough. But for us Argentina is a place to make friends, drink yerba mate, and fosters great artists like Roberto Jofre.

And there is so much more. Talking to the locals, we observe the simple life yet with the richness of the place. Calingasta, at the foothills of the Andes, is a town in the San Juan Province that has high desert agriculture its main activity. Locals enjoy hiking on the rugged terrain, rafting in the Castaño River, and skimming the salt lakes in what locals refer to as “Carrovelismo,” which is a type of wind-cart. This sport is practiced in Barreal Blanco or Pampa de Leoncito, a great desert plain and basin. Calingasta is a place to be lost in, nobody will find you there.

There is not much in the town- under stocked small local markets, very basic hotels costing about 10 to 15 dollars a night, some stands of trees along the gravel lined rivers making an oasis in what is otherwise a geological amusement park for all the painted rock formation and the shear endless rough topography. The town fundamentally was based on early mining of veins located off to the east in the barren range. Piles of black slag from a mineral plant right alongside the highway marks this mostly forgotten history.

While staying the night in this town, and then exploring the canyons to the west, we came across this iconic rustic door. The color theme and style may have many in the United States thinking this is a picture from Taos, or New Mexico, but it comes from farther south- way south in South America!

This door picture has been our most popular one out of three hundred pictures we published in Doors of South America. The farm building on its on defines the most humble estate without knowing thousands of people have seen this image without having any understanding about where and what Calingasta is. The horseshoe completing the image above the doorway also whispers that desert oasis dream from luck in the harsh wilderness. This door called our attention thanks to its color, its richness, and of course the adobe walls create a perfect framework for it. Most people walking along the dirt road are probably so familiar with it that they pay no attention to it. We used a subset of this picture for our book cover, elevating its padlock guarded secrets to something symbolic of the South America style.

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