Barreal and the Calingasta Valley

I have not been to places much more beautiful than the Calingasta Valley and Barreal. North of Upsallata begins fifty miles of a rocky dirt road (sorry Hertz!) that leads through a desolate flat valley, beneath the towering Andes -- a series of peaks above twenty thousand feet. Dark mountains with swooping gestures of ice, these mountains looked like the Orcas that prey upon sea lions on the beaches of Peninsula Valdes. We climbed the "pre-cordilleras" on the eastern side of the valley and just marveled at the view of this valley.