We woke up on the bus this morning to a very wet view. It was raining out, and we were in a jungle/cloud forest! This was a big surprise, as the guide book had prepared us for desert!
Shortly after waking up we arrived to Salta. After getting some very long and detailed directions from a policeman, we set out in the rain for a hostel that sounded like the nicest (based on the guidebook). Only it wasn't very nice, we felt very unwelcome and awkward and after going through the whole check in process we ended up leaving! The place is called Hostal La Posta and is well rated on Tripadvisor and also got a good write up from Lonely Planet. It's really more of a guest house/B&B than a hostel, as there is only one dorm room. We arrived pretty early, before 10 AM, and the employee that checked us in was dealing with breakfast time for the few other people we saw that were staying there. So it was probably just a bad time to arrive, but we were shown the dorm room and nothing else, no bathroom, nothing about the wifi or anything else in the place. It was really weird, so we left.
A few blocks away we found the very nice and welcoming Hostal Salta Por Siempre. The lady at the desk/owner was incredibly friendly and we immediately felt much more comfortable. It's a neat hotel/hostel with an open air design with rooms surrounding an interior courtyard that is filled with all kinds of nice plants and cactus. It is 8 blocks south of the center and the sidewalks on the way were full of dog poo! And all the buildings looked really run down and crumbling. Salta is supposed to have colonial charm, but we don't see it!
After we were settled we went out to visit some rental car offices and get prices from a few different places. Today is another made up holiday, so a lot of the offices were closed. We were still able to ask at 4 different companies, and the first one we went into ended up being the cheapest, at about $44/day with unlimited kilometers. So we ended up going back there and reserving a car for 4 days starting tomorrow.
For lunch we went to a very popular vegan restaurant called Cherimoya. I found it on Happy Cow, but It is also listed in the Lonely Planet guidebook and rates #4 out of all the restaurants in Salta on Tripadvisor! I love places like this that draw in non-vegans and completely change their stereotypical ideas of what they think vegans eat! We had a wonderful meal! A liter sized papaya mango smoothie, 2 salads and two main dishes, all of which we shared. I am amazed at how many excellent vegan meals we have had in restaurants in Argentina, definitely more than I've ever had in the US!
<a garbanzo bean burger and a meat loaf like thing>
After some grocery shopping, we spent the rest of the day in the hostel. Jeff ended up with some bad intestinal issues, which we think may be related to the junk we ate yesterday. :( We aren't sure how he could've gotten sick though, and not me, because we ate the same things. So tonight we go to bed early and hope for a better tomorrow.
<Here are some examples of the excellent warning on the cigarette packages down here! Each one is different. The top one says tobaco damages your teeth and gums, but it doesn't even need to, the images says it all! And below it says: tobacco dominates you, leave it! If cigarettes were allowed to carry images and warning like this is the US, I wonder if less people would smoke? I think it's great that the images are part of the car oars, you can't peel it off, so the smoker has to see it every time thy go for a cigarette!>
Wednesday, March 25th 2015
It rained heavily overnight and was still raining in the morning. We walked to the rental car place, about 5 blocks, in the rain with all of our stuff. The guy at the office was very helpful, giving us a very detailed description of the road map and then showing us everything about the car. We got a Chevy Celta, it's even smaller than my car! It's a car neither of us had ever heard of. By about 9:30, we were on the road. Jeff was still feeling lousy, so I volunteered to drive. Neither of us wanted to! It's no longer a holiday and there were a lot of cars jamming up the streets this morning! We haven't figured out the etiquette here when it comes to intersections (no stop signs) or the fact that there seem to be no designated lanes and cars just go wherever they want, then add lots of motorcycles and pedestrians to that and it's not a relaxing place to drive! I also had to figure out a new clutch/manual with strange positions for 1st and reverse and got stuck a few times in the middle of intersections! But we safely made it out of town, and that was a great relief.
We spent most of the day driving, covering over 300 kilometers. Unfortunately it was cloudy and rainy most of the way. We gained a lot of elevation. The first few hours were spent on a crazy winding road through cloud forest. In addition to having cows lurking around blind curves, there were also a few rivers running over the road and it was incredibly narrow. For traffic going both directions the road was the same size as a single lane is in Alaska, about 12 feet! Many of the sharp turns were sign posted for one car at a time!
We eventually made it high enough up that we left the cloud forest and got into desert scenery and better road for awhile. It boggles our mind that there is rainforest in the lowland and desert in the mountains. How does that work? The scenery began to look kind of like the stretch of highway between Phoenix and Flagstaff, with big Saguaro like cactus everywhere. According to Lonely Planet, they are candelabra cactus, but they look just like saguaros.
We decided that today we would drive to the farthest destination we had in mind then work our way back to Salta over the next few day. On the way we passed several little mostly native/Quechua villages that blend in with the scenery. The majority of the buildings are built using locally made of Adobe bricks.
The last few hours of the journey were spent driving over the craziest dirt road to the middle of nowhere town, Iruya. Lonely Planet described the town as a "magical" place with "epic" hiking. But we are not so sure we are convinced.
Jeff had to drive this part. I think I would have destroyed the car on some rocks or bad dips in the road, gotten us high centered and cracked the oil pan or something! It was an AWFUL road, and I would have turned around after a few minutes, but Jeff made it the whole way with our tiny low clearance car still in one piece. He drove the car through several rivers, over many rocks and bumps and dips, and I have to say I was impressed! It was definitely a little scary and made us both nervous, as the car scraped bottom on multiple occasions. We went over a 13,000 ft pass and spent a lot of the time in clouds and fog, but we were determined to continue on. After what seemed like an eternity, (about 35 miles and 2 1/2 hours) we were on the steep cobbled streets of Iruya. We wondered why on earth there is a town here and contemplated turning around and leaving immediately, but we knew we wouldn't make it back to the highway before dark! I think normally the road isn't quite so bad, but we are at the end of the rainy season right now, so it's suffered months of rain.
The streets appeared too narrow and steep to drive on, and we awkwardly sat at the entrance to town for awhile trying to decide what to do, when we were waved forward by a police officer and given directions to our hotel. There was a truck blocking the road to the hotel, so we parked on a random side street and walked the rest of the way. The street we have parked on is so narrow that no one could get around us if they wanted to, but we have been assured by the guy who checked us in that our car would be just fine there. We are staying at the Milmahuasi Hostal (450 pesos). It seems pretty nice, but we have spent all of our time in the room. Jeff is still not better and went immediately to bed and is currently sweating out a fever. I hope he is better tomorrow. And I also hope the fog clears and our drive out here doesn't end up being for nothing! It is supposed to be very beautiful here, but it just seems very run down, dirty and poor. Perhaps if we'd arrived on a sunny day we'd have a whole different perception! I hope we get a new one tomorrow!
<We sat at the first river crossing and observed two other cars navigate across before we decided we could try it too!>
<Some pretty donkeys along the road>
<View from the top of the pass. Looking at the road and clouds we are to drive into.>
<Partial mountain views from the pass.>
Thursday, March 26th 2015
Upon waking up and looking out the window, we found it was just as foggy out as last night, if not more so. In the middle of the night the truck that had blocked our path to the hotel had tried to leave via the only available street, which turned out to be too sleep and slick and after multiple attempts he gave up. This was at 4 am and he probably woke up everyone in a three block radius, which is most of the town! So that truck was no longer blocking our path, but a different bigger one was preventing us from leaving!
We went down for breakfast and were surprised to find fresh fruit! We ate plums, apples, pears and a couple tiny peaches that grow locally. After breakfast we got someone from the hostel to go inquire about the truck for us. We were promised it would be moved soon, so we packed up the car and sat in it and waited for an hour!
Finally at about 11:30 we were on our way! The fog had lifted just enough to be able to see the town from a far and a little bit of the mountains. I'm sure it would be gorgeous without clouds, but we still couldn't see much. At the edge of town we arrived back at the sketchy river crossing to find a Hertz rental car sunk in to the bottom of the doors! Seeing it like that and imagining what would become of us made us feel sick to our stomachs! I don't know how long they had been stuck, but within minutes of our arrival a large front end loader had pulled it out. Then some random guy kicked a few rocks around and gave us the go ahead! With knots in our stomachs we proceeded, Jeff gunned it, and miraculously we made it across! Jeff once again proved his skills as a professional driver!
<Iruya, looking West, the way out.>
<Iruya, central plaza/park and church.>
<Looking East back to Iruya on the way out of town.>
Once we got up and away from town we began to drive out of the clouds and actually got to see some nice scenery. The road was pretty neat to see free of fog with its many switch backs and nice vistas. We also got to see a pack of grazing llamas and a few scattered vicuña, small endangered relatives of the llama and guanaco. The road was still every bit as crazy as yesterday, but we enjoyed it much more, and thankfully Jeff is feeling much better!
<Vicuña >
<One of many river crossings, and pampas grass in its native lands! It grows all over San Diego and is very invasive!>
<There was tons of colorful rocks everywhere. The indigenous people build really cool rock walls and fences, some of which were quite long, using just the rocks, no cement or other binding agent.>
Once back on the paved highway we headed South for the town of Tilcara, along the way we stopped to admire some of the plentiful roadside cactus. The views today were much better, which the colors of the mountains much more vivid in the full sun!
By the time we arrived to Tilcara we had driven back into the clouds. It was cool, cloudy and windy, but we found a nice B&B style hotel called La Antigua Tilcara to take refuge in! The building is made of Adobe and has antique furniture and all kinds of neat regional arts and decorations in the Northwest Argentina style (kind of like Southwest US). It is probably the nicest place we have stayed, and at 565 pesos ($44) it's not even the most expensive.
For dinner we went out to a fancy restaurant called El Nuevo Progreso. There were no Happy Cow restaurants in town, so we used TripAdvisor instead, and this place was number one. It was a little more upscale than the places we normally go, but not too expensive. Jeff had pumpkin soup and potatoes and I had quinoa with roasted veggies and a side of potatoes. The potatoes are amazing! They are these tiny heirloom potatoes called Andean potatoes/papas andinas/papines. You can only find them in the Northwest part of the country where there are lots of indigenous peoples. We will be eating as much of them as we can while in this region. We also tried some herbal tea with our meal. They had a mixture of chamomile, Yerba mate and coca. Coca is a big deal here. It is the plant that cocaine is made from, but here the locals chew the leaves, kind of like chewing tobacco. They see it as a medicinal plant and completely separate from cocaine. It's supposed to help alleviate symptoms of altitude sickness and curb hunger and fatigue. Here that is helpful as a majority of the towns are at over 6,000 feet, and the mountains go up to 20,000. In Argentina it's only legal in the Northwest provinces. The tea was good, but we didn't notice any special effects.
After dinner we retired to our luxurious hotel! That's not something we get to say often!!
Friday, March 27th 2015
We awoke to a gloriously clear and much needed sunny day! Breakfast was the usual corn flakes and white bread, but they had a citrus juicer and we were able to make ourselves a glass of orange juice. The bread was also homemade and and they had our favorite jam, Zapallo or pumpkin, which we ate so much of in Ushuaia and have been missing dearly ever since.
After breakfast and checkout we got in the car, and Jeff expertly piloted us up a crazy switch back road to the Throat of the Devil! It is actually called Garganta del Diablo in Spanish. It is a canyon and waterfall area that supplies the town of Tilcara with its water. We took advantage of having a car and drove most of the way up, instead of hiking. On the way we had unobstructed views of Tilcara, the surrounding colorful mountains and the valley below. We hiked for about an hour, up to the falls and back down to a lookout point above the Garganta del Diablo canyon.
Back on the road we headed South for Purmamarca, a town famous for its Cerro del Siete Colores, Hill of Seven Colors. On the way we stopped at Maimara and admired the view of the Paleta del Pintor mountain painters palette). We had stopped here on our way North when it was cloudy, but it looked much nicer in the sun today. We also stopped to top off our gas tank for the second time, bringing our total fuel purchased so far to 440 pesos ($35). Fuel isn't cheap here, about $1 per liter, but at least we have a fuel efficient car.
Approaching Purmamarca, we were blown away by the colors of the 7 color hill. It doesn't look real, with purple and green being the most dominant colors! After a bit of driving around without a town map, we settled on Hostal El Pequeño Inti. It's not a hostel at all, but more like a tiny motel, we haven't yet figured out why so many places call themselves hostels when they are not hostels. Maybe the fact that it ends in al instead of el makes a difference? Anyway it's a cute little motel with only 6 rooms surrounding a central courtyard, and it's run by a nice Quechua (indigenous) lady. It is quite nice and has a the great price of 360 pesos ($29).
After we were settled we went out to walk the 3km road around the 7 colored hill. After about 15 minutes we saw a sign for an eating establishment called Comidas Gabriel that I had read about on TripAdvisor. (Comidas = foods) It's number one in Purmamarca, but is a little strange because it's located in the chefs house. I had read about it and thought it sounded neat, because they do locally sourced vegetarian food and sometimes include llama. It sounded to me kind of like the place we ate in Buenos Aires (Colectivo Felix), and if they were anything alike it would be an amazing meal! I didn't know how to find the place or call them, so I was delighted when we found the sign! We followed the arrow along a small side trail, over a hill to a tiny Adobe one room building 150 meters off the trail. It looked like one of the many indigenous dwellings, and we weren't sure if we'd arrived to the right place, but we talked to the Estonian girlfriend of the chef. He was out looking for goat milk! She told us they had a business meeting tonight and weren't sure if they would be taking guests or not, she thought maybe around 10 might work, but gave us a phone number to call and check back. Hopeful we continued on our walk with amazing views of the colorful surrounding hills.
Back in town we stopped at a sidewalk café for some regional specialties. Not knowing exactly what to expect, we ordered a quinoa empanada, a llama empanada, corn with cheese and an humita. Humita is like a tamale, haven't really figured out how it's different, but it was really good! The corn and cheese was just a corn on the cob with cubes of local goat cheese. I thought we might get some kind of neat giant corn variety, but it was just regular corn. The llama empanada tasted just like a beef one and for all we know it was, but it was interesting to try.
Post snack, we looked at some of the handicrafts for sale in the central plaza. There are about 50 tables set up around 3 sides of the square (not the church side), each table is stacked high with blankets, sweaters and other colorful indigenous handicrafts. Each tables seems to sell the exact same stuff! We also had a look at the church and admired the surrounding ancient algarrobo (carob) trees, one of which is estimated at 700 years old!
We bought some locally produced wine to enjoy while we waited to hear if dinner was a go or not, and some locally produced grape jam. I also bought a Mateo. This is a thing used to drink the Yerba mate tea. It comes with a special straw for drinking the tea that strains out the leaves. Mate is a huge deal here. Hot water for making mate can be found anywhere you go, and people carry big 1 lb bags of the leaves, along with thermoses for hot water, and the Mateo (cups) in these special bags designed just for the purposes of transporting mate!
Back at the hotel, the front desk lady tried to call Comidas Gabriel for us but we got the voicemail. So we went off to our room to enjoy the local rosé wine we bought for 50 pesos ($4). After only a short while we got a knock on our door and it was the front desk lady with a message from Comidas Gabriel! He would come to escort us over at 9:30! Wahoo! That's late for us, but it's the normal time here, and we could live with that for a night.
We had to walk about 15 minutes in the dark though cactus fields to get back to the guys house. Inside was a single table and a curtain blocking the kitchen from view. Gabriel put on a DVD of live classical music and disappeared behind the curtain, along with Marian the Estonian girlfriend. Every so often Marian would come out with a new plate of food and tell us the correct way to eat it for best mouth feel, flavor and enjoyment! In all we got 4 courses. The starter was a delicious quinoa salad with avocado, mote (very large corn kernels, kind of like hominy), onion, tomato, fresh goat cheese and quinoa leaves! They had a quinoa plant growing outside, and some amaranth too! The second plate was quinoa filled raviolis. The third plate was 2 empanada like llama raviolis with no sauce. It again tasted like beef to me, but Jeff really enjoyed it. The final plate was dessert and had to different things: a small piece of coca leaf cake with chocolate on top and dulce de leche inside plus a warm apple pie/tart with dulce de cayote on top. We'd seen cayote on menus the last few days. It's a regional specialty, but we didn't know what exactly it was, turns out it's spaghetti squash! So the apple pie had warm, sweetened spaghetti squash on top! It was so good! All of the food was good! And definitely a lot more fun than going to a restaurant. After our meal Gabriel walked us back by flash light to the edge of town and then we continued the rest of the way on our own. We got back to our hotel just after midnight.
Saturday, March 28th 2015
When we woke up it was foggy out, which made us a little worried. Thankfully the fog quickly broke and the day remained sunny and clear! We were given bread and jam for breakfast at the hotel. The breads are square shaped and crispy and kind of flakey/layered on the outside, but soft inside. These must be the regional specialty.
After we packed up and left the hotel, we hiked to an overlook above the town called Cerro Morado (Purple Hill). The lady running our hotel told us about it, and we were very glad for that, because we wouldn't have known about it otherwise, and it was a great view of the 7 colored hill and the town of Purmamarca.
<Typical buildings in the town of Purmamarca with the 7 colored hill in the background.>
From there we headed West up a very well maintained and very scenic switch back mountain road to Salinas Grandes salt flat. Jeff enjoyed trying to drive our little Chevy as if it were a race car! Since we are at the end of the rainy season for this area, there were a few inches of was covering part of the salt flat. The water made it strange to look at from afar and close up, made you feel like you were seeing things, sort of like an optical illusion. You almost can't tell the water is there, then suddenly you notice it. The highway ran right through the salt flat, so after the initial view point we drove a little ways down the road and stopped again to get a good look at the other side. I jumped out of the car and onto the salt flat only to discover this side wasn't solid like the other side, and I quickly sank in above my boots into the stickiest mud I have ever experienced! I had to really hop around to keep from getting stuck and get safely back to the roadside. It was like quick sand! My shoes got thoroughly coated, and so did my pants. So I crossed to the other side of the street and splashed around and tried to run the muck off. I ended up having to change my shoes and pants, both of which will be out of commission for awhile, maybe until I go home!
<Going up the pass out of Purmamarca.>
<Looking back down the pass, still aways from the top.>
From the salt flat we continued another hour up into the mountains to a little town in the middle of nowhere called Susques. The junction for route 40 is located near the town. This is the highway that runs the length of the country, through Patagonia and all the way to Ushuaia, so it is very famous. We turned onto route 40, which in this area is a dirt road, and for hours we drove through what is known as altiplano or puna, these huge expanses of flat land way up in the mountains. The road was in pretty good condition most of the way, and except for the frequent sandy dry rivers we had to drive through, we weren't worried about getting stuck. We were in lands inhabited by indigenous people, and every so often we'd see an adobe hut, or a little old man on a bicycle in the middle of nowhere, or a herd of goats and sheep with a shepherd herding them along! We also saw lots of grazing llamas and donkeys and wondered what they do with so many donkeys. Interestingly all of the huts we saw had solar panels, and some had direct tv satellite dishes!
<Closer to the volcano we could see old lava flows.>
When we were nearing the pavement again, we passed under an old railway viaduct/bridge called La Polvorilla that is very famous. It is from the rail line known as the train to the clouds (Tren A Las Nubes) and has several impressive waterway and canyon crossings and a zig zag of switch backs going up the Andes. The bridge we saw was at 4,200 meters above sea level or almost 14,000 feet, making it one of the highest rail lines in the world. The bridge spans a 260 meter gap and it is 60 meters tall! The train used to carry passengers and was a big tourist attraction, but it's been out of commission for several years now.
After hours on the dirt we were so happy to be back on pavement near the town of San Antonio de Los Cobres. The town is another high mountain indigenous settlement with streets full of adobe buildings/huts. From there we had 8,500 feet of descent and about 100 miles to cover to get back to Salta.
As we descended down the mountain we saw more cactus and colorful mountains, but eventually we ran out of daylight and had to drive the last bit in the dark. We arrived back to Salta very tired and dying to get out of the car. The city was a complete mess of cars, motorcycles, pedestrians and street vendor pushing giant carts through the street. After a few wrong turns we made it back to the hostel we'd stayed in before only to find it was full. With much reluctance we got back in the car and drove to another hostel. Once we were parked again we went in the first place we found, Hostal Andino, which was really cheap but dirty. We paid 230 pesos or about $18.50 for a room with a bathroom (which is a luxury, most of the time you share with other rooms).
Even though it was late (9:30) we went out to eat at Cherimoya again, figuring it wouldn't be open tomorrow (Sunday). On the way I slipped and went skidding across the sidewalk on a pile of dog poo! It was like in the cartoons when a banana peel is stepped on, the only bright side was that I didn't fall all the way to the ground! Once I got over how angry and disgusted I was, we went in the restaurant! Another great meal was had. The best part was a plate of heirloom potatoes with this strange ultra starchy corn and green pesto like sauce. We will probably never have another corn like that unless we grown it ourselves!
After dinner we went back to our gross hotel room and passed out. The sheets were crusty and didn't seem to have been washed so I slept with all my clothes on on top of the blankets.
Sunday, March 29th 2015
This morning we had to get up early and empty out the car and return it by 9. It was a nice drive over to the rental office, as today is Palm Sunday, and the roads were deserted! We were concerned that we might be questioned about why the car was so dirty, but there was no problem. We didn't have to tell them about our off-roading adventures! We had to pay a 70 peso ($5.50) cleaning fee, but that's it. It's not like in the US where cleaning is included in the price.
Once we were free of the car we took advantage of the late 11am checkout time at our hostel and walked to the bus station to get tickets to Puerto Iguazú. We were a little worried that we might not be able to leave today or tomorrow like we wanted to, because Semana Santa (All Saints week Or maybe Holy Week in English I think?) is starting and it's a big travel week for Argentineans. But luckily we were able to buy tickets out on a 4 pm bus. The ride takes 24 hours and will require 2 transfers. The ticket sales man was feeling generous and gave us a student discount. Apparently it's a law in Argentina that students must get 10% off, and he thought we looked like students! (: This will be our last really long bus ride. We opted for the cama (bed) seat. Tickets were about $100!
We returned to the hostel to eat breakfast. It was not included at this place, and it was probably for the best, as it kept us off the white bread for a day. Instead we had a mixture of polenta and oatmeal with chia seeds and peaches. We then packed up and used the hostel to store our bags for a few hours.
The sky cleared and in the sun, Salta actually looks pretty nice! We had about 4 hours to kill, so we visited the central plaza/park and some pedestrian streets in the area and found that the few blocks around the center actually did have "colonial charm" and were quite pretty! Because it's Palm Sunday, intricate weavings made out of Palm fronds were for sale left and right and it also sounded like the church service was being blasted by loud speaker across the park, but we weren't sure.
We also visited the High Mountain Archeological Museum. It is completely dedicated to Inca culture and the numerous human sacrifices that took place on the high Andes peaks through out Argentina and other South American countries. In 1999, 3 perfectly preserved children's bodies where found at the top of Mt. Llullaillaco, a nearby volcano of over 20,000 feet! The Incas had a very sophisticated civilization and many roads in and around the mountains and even roads to the tops of the mountains where many tombs have been found. We don't normally like museums too much, but we found this one very interesting. Every 6 months a different one of the 3 children is on display and they are so well preserved that it's almost creepy to look at, they still have skin, hair, teeth, eyelashes, and their clothing is perfectly intact, along with over 100 different sacrificial items found with them! Pictures were not allowed, so I won't be posting any here. It's amazing to think that the Incas were mountaineers and even took children to the tops of mountains that many people in modern society wouldn't dream of visiting! They wove multi layered booties just for this purpose, some of which were on display in the museum. For anyone interested in seeing photos, here is the museum website: http://www.maam.gob.ar
For lunch we went to a small, simple and cheap café that supposedly has the best empanadas in town, La Tacita. We tried 4 empanadas, a tamale and some more humitas, which I have figured out are sweeter than tamales and don't have much of a filling, just the corn dough. We also tried Salta provinces beer. Everything was great.
Before getting on the bus we stopped in the grocery store, and were delighted to find the french fry shaped chips we liked so much and the whole grain vegan cookies we had in Patagonia, but this time in chocolate flavor! (: Now we are on the long bus ride. First ride is 13 hours. At 5 AM we switch to another bus, then take a 5 hour ride, have a one hour layover, then one more 5 hour ride. We will be there at 4 pm tomorrow.
All I can say is that was quite an adventure! Terry
ReplyDeleteYes, we are lucky the car was not seriously damaged!
DeleteAll I can say is that was quite an adventure! Terry
ReplyDeleteThe fact the Tren de los Nubes doesn't run from Salta anymore is a real tragedy. Nothing wrong with the tracks, or the lines, or the rolling stock...the people who owned this neat railroad to the clouds refused to pay bribes to local politicians and were shut down. It's a monument to local corruption.
ReplyDeleteI wondered why it wasn't running. We could tell it hasn't gone for some time, as there are now weeds growing around the rail lines. There was a similar neat train track along the pass to Aconcagua. I would imagine there were a number of routes crossing the Andes.
Delete