Voyage of the Blonde Treader: Salta

School is back in gear after the week-long break for Easter, or Pascua as they say here. I stayed in capital for a few days and then went to Salta with Jeff and his dad. Someone had told me that going to Salta was like being on another planet, which is the best way I could ever think to describe it. The rock formations and colors were unreal; some were crazy and jagged while others had the entire color spectrum on them. There were fields of cacti and giant salt plains, and wild llama and alpacas. It was beautiful.

Share the road!

Jeff and his dad have a car so we left at 4am on Monday and drove there, and it only took us 21 hours! Haha. It took longer than it was supposed to because we took what we thought was a shortcut on a dirt road along the river. Too bad we went at night because it ended up taking longer than going the normal route. The trek was slow because there were herds of animals standing in the middle of the road that had to be moved, there were also frequent sharp turns going up the mountain, and parts of the road had been washed out, leaving piles of rocks where the road used to be; so, as you can imagine, at night we had to be careful. There were also a few rivers we had to cross, no big deal. Jeff would wade into them to check the depth, which was usually okay, except for the last crossing which was up to his knees. But after 2 hours on the supposed “shortcut” we decided we would risk it versus turning back and adding 4 more hours to the journey. But we made it, rolling into Neil’s place around 1am.

Jeff and the boats!

We stayed at his family’s house for two days in Dique Cabra Corral. They have an amazing view of the lake from their house, I don’t think I have ever seen anything like it. I thought Switzerland and Austria were pretty, but this was unreal. The water was so calm it was like looking into a mirror. The weather was nice too, so they took us out on the boat and Jet Ski and showed us around. The storage system for the boats was crazy, very efficient. I tried wake boarding for the first time which is significantly more fun than snowboarding, but that’s probably because I didn’t break a bone every time I fell over.

It was nice to just sit around in the sun, drink a beer and relax. Especially since we were the only people on the lake, I’m not even exaggerating. I don’t understand how anybody could NOT want to be out on the lake, but apparently they didn’t. It was hard to leave because the Uptons were so welcoming, but we headed out on Thursday to explore the rest of Salta.

The Upton clan, minus Neil.

View from the house

View from my bed

Devi's Throat

We drove from near the city of Salta to Cafayate, which is where a lot of wine is made. We passed by vineyards and this one gorge called Garganta del Diablo (Devil’s Throat) which was pretty cool. We had lunch in Cafayate, which was…interesting. Well, I guess if you call a cockroach running across the bread as they set in on the table and the waitress just shrugging when she sees it, giving you the wrong food, some watered down wine, and taking forever interesting, then yes, that’s the best way I can describe it. Good thing we weren’t a group of American tourists. And by that I mean we flicked the roach off and ate the bread, as well as the food that came out wrong without a second thought. We were hungry. And you can be sure that I drank ALL of the watered down wine (<3 wine). Then we headed out to Cachi where we stayed for the night. Had a significantly better meal there and we stayed in a fairly nice hostel. Kind of hard to go back to the grungy stuff after staying at the Upton’s.

"To look without seeing, the earth is earth no more."

Then we headed through a few more places on the way to the salt plains. The road we were on, Ruta 40, was similar to our “shortcut” except at a much higher altitude. But we were driving during the day this time so the llama and river crossings weren’t quite as surprising. We reached an altitude of 4859 meters above sea level at the peak of the road (that’s a little over 3 miles high for those of you, like me, who don’t speak metric system). But it was super windy so we were quick in celebrating for fear of being blown off the side of the mountain.

Afterwards, we had lunch in San Antonia de Los Cobres and then headed over to the salt plains. These were basically exactly what they sound like, just huge plains of salt covering the ground. They were really cool though because you lose the horizon when looking at them so you can take some pretty crazy pictures. So we did that and then headed out again for Purmamarca. Purmamarca is a place where the rocks are all different colors in one spot. It was crazy. Jeff and I bought some gypsy pants at the market there since we always make fun of Facu for wearing his. Now we can’t really make fun of him anymore…well, maybe.

Rocks in Purmamarca

That night, we headed back to Salta and stayed at a hostel there. Unfortunately our room was right next to the social room where everyone was drinking. And of course, we ran into your typical American tourist. Dear God, I hope I’m not like that. This one guy was just so awful, now I can understand why everyone hates us. I even hate us after listening to him talk. Luckily we got out of there early the next morning to walk around Salta a bit before heading back to Buenos Aires. It only took us 17 hours to get back this time since we didn’t have to take any shortcuts. We arrived around 5am on Easter Sunday. Home sweet Quilmes. Here are a few more pictures from the trip. Enjoy!