Cachi

the last etapa on our trip was the mountain road form cachi to salta. cachi itself is another laid back, not too special, but really beautiful village in the valley of calchaquies. for the fame of ruta 40 also really touristic, but still charming.

leaving cachi we also have to leave ruta 40, which means being on a ruta with a boring random number, but also getting back to asfalt. so advancing really fast on nice paved highway we cruse through the sierra and climb up the mountains again. to get to salta we have to cross a pass on 3400 metres. kinda chilly up there, with a really nice view into greeen green valleys, decorated with puffy white clouds. beautiful, sucks that my camera couldnt get that picture as a whole. up and up the mountain the climate changed, and with it the vegetation.

green grass and short but very green trees make the new picture. in the valleys between the hills youd find some houses, not even villages, i wonder what kind of people might live there. going down the serpentine road from the pass was actually the real adventure of the day. theyre reconstructing the road, so one kilometre after the pass the asphalt ends, again, and we have to manage our renault clio (!) on the dirt. between all the construction machines and -workers. and cattle. ooon the road, where else?

Angastuco and Molinos

on the way out of the quebrada, somewhere, i lost conciousness. woke up again at the plaza of san carlos, where we stopped for getting coffee. and sitting there we enjoyed the extraordinary view, alongside the cathedral over to the mountainranges of the andes. you might think, its possible to get bored of this view? nah. the topping was another two guys on horses riding by, pure farmlife.

after that we went on, back on ruta 40. well.. whats there of ruta 40. i thought, personally, that a route, important and well known, might be.. a good route. a highway. or at least paved. but nnoooouu. some kilometres after leaving san carlos the asphalt ends and we are driving along on the dirt. an adventure i tell you. cactus all around. desert, houses made of soil and stone, cattle and sheep and whatever animal living here along the road. driving into the sunset in between the coloured canions of salta. if i would be any sentimental i would have had tears in my eyes.

finalizing that emotional ride and with the last daylight we entered the valley of angastuco. angastuco is another village of.. uumm 1000? inhabitants. probably less. streets of sand, cactus, dogs, dirt, village people. everything my heart needs. a sky with all the stars you can imagine at night. theres like one "hostel" in town, an old lady renting out beds in her huge house, one hotel, three places where they sell food.

next morning we continue on our dirt road, stopping at el carmen. thats an old chapel built in 17hundrets on a hill with an extraordinary view. its not right away a beautiful chapel, but it got this magic of bein reeally old. and the farm right next to it got again the wild wild west charme.

ooon we go, next stop molinos. the name means windmills. didnt find any. but what we found was another charming church, lunch, aaand vicunias. another kind of llama. extra-size sheep :) apparently an almost extinct type of llama, living here in the sierras. in molinos theres a breeder of vicunias and we had the great opportunity to shoot some pictures. cuuute :)

aaand back to the dirt road, finishing our trip of this day in cachi del valle. cachi is something like the last stop before salta on this mountain track, and the last town on ruta 40 for us. the ruta would go up up and uup the mountains to villages that have never seen asphalt. we turn right the next day, towards the andes to cross to the next valley of salta.

in cachi we went to the cemetary, which is out of town on a hill, with a beautiful view of the sierra. pics following.

Cafayate and its Quebrada

the very same evening we arrive in cafayate, a little bit better than a tourist village, a tourist town in the andes of salta. refreshing 1680m low and full of argentineans and europeans cafayate is not quite what i would call chilled. various artesania stores and markets, restaurants, bars, hostels. what makes it charming are the mountains in the background. cafayate is in the center of the valles calchaquies, surrounded by mountain ranges.

main attraction for backpackers seems again the wine of the region, we are recommended like 6 differend wineries. well, again we are rather intrested in the nature around, which is actually aswell stunning. 6km from town starts the quebrada de cafayate. this is a more than 60km long valley of naturally built stone sculptures. wind and weather over million of years caused the spacey formation of rocks in the valley. it looks a little bit like a moon valley, or at least as beautiful. on the first 40km you find the main attraction of the quebrada.

these include a giant stone-frog, a huge formation looking like a castle, an obelisc and the famous amphie theatre. this is a formation of rocks formed like a theatre, causing surprising sound effects for the visitors. might be the reason why there is always a crowd of screaming people in, clapping hands and singing. for me those were the real attraction..

Amaicha and Ruinas de Quilmes

at the end of day one, after a high class foto shooting cactus and we, we and cactus, we arrive in amaicha del valle. amaicha was one of my personal favorites on this trip, after all the cities ive seen finally i arrived in argentina :)

amaicha might have like what.. maybe some thousand inhabitants? plus five or six tourists every night, probably for the one and only reason, its situated on the ruta 40, mentiones earlier. its pretty, charming for not having paved streets and no defined opening times for stores. like ten blocks between the highway and the wilderness on the other end of the village are whats available for walks, a huge quite green plaza for being a desert and cactus everywhere.

dont know, how would you describe the magic of a place? if you could it wouldnt be that magic anymore.. i loved it for the old dude with his gaucho hat in the morning buying cheese on the plaza. for the guy in the farmacy that didnt know when the internet place opens. cause you never know.. for the huge fiesta on the plaza friday night, just because it was a friday night.

our first excursion this day was headed to the waterfall of amaicha. 5min away from the village, up the hills, hidden by another million of cactus, theres a little river. people of the village made it a kinda mini national park, sacrificing the pachamama, mother earth. theres people down at the waterfall, helping the visitors to climb it, and watching out that they leave with all their garbage. the waterfall itself was like.. tiny, cute, nothing compared to iguazu but incredibly beautiful. in between the canions, some rays of sunlight entering.

if you wanted to get to the end of the canion you had to well.. climb up. get wet baby.. we had loads of fun with the waterfall-assistans climbin the ladder, trying not to be soaking. without success :)

after getting lost in the canion when walking back to the car (cause there were two ways, which is one more than only one) we started right away to excursion two. this time some kilometers up the highway to the sacred town of quilmes. this is a town of ruines, alongside a mountain in the sierra. and of course a bunch of cactus, just to mention. quilmes has been a "major city" to the indians of quilmes, until the destruction by the spanish conquerors. today the territory belongs to the indians again, and is a hidden attraction for local tourism. didnt see other europeans :)

on the way to cafayate we stopped for coffee in i-dont-remember-the-name; the old lady serving was happy to know where france is :)

Mollares y Tafi del Valle

crossing the green greeeen jungle of tucuman we made our way to the mountains, climbin up to 2000m over sea level. first destination was mollares, a little village like two hours from tucuman. from the boiling heat and humidity of tucuman we switched climate to chilly mountain weather, cloudy and wet. anyway, think the pictures are pretty enough!

mollares had a certain amount of menhires, huge blocks of stone from ancient indian times with impressive symbols and reliefs craved in - and that right next to a river, before entering a village. but as humanity always got a sense of destroying itself and all that has been there before, a lot of the beautiful menhires have been destroyed by vandalists. so the town decided to move the stones from their initial place to a kind of garden in towncenter, now with nice descriptions placed next to them.

but still.. the natural magic of the stones is missing, as you just walk a circle taking a look at them and leave the garden again. pity.

right after that we went on to tafi del valle, capital of this municipality. tafi is the perfect spot to start excursions to all the beautiful sites in the valley, but actually doesnt have much to see when in town. besides the artesanias market.

all the way up to mollares and tafi is green and greener, jungle so to say. but leaving tafi and going up a little bit more the mountains the climate changes surprisingly fast. the green grass disappears, the trees change their faces, are shorter and broader, get less and less and when you start getting bored by seeing dry grass you finally make out a cactus.

CACTUS. i mean what i say. this plant was gonna follow me for two weeks from there.. and i still remember that sensation when seeing the first giant cactus in the landscape, looking like a mutated version of ikeas house plants. like maybe 2-5m high and thick as a tree, there are millions of them out in the sierra of argentina. and aparently they are as durable as trees aswell, in the area we crossed it seemed kinda common to use cactus as wood for furniture. pictures follow.

next destination: amaicha

Tucumán

next night after aconcagua i had another overnight bus, this time to santiago del estero. why there? who knows. i spent like ten minutes at the bus terminal, then i went on to tucuman. crusing.

tucuman is capital of the provincia de tucuman, a town like mendoza, just erm... green. i was told its the jardin de argentina, the garden. well, when arriving at the busterminal you wont see much green. but better than green, what i found there was laurine and her friends from france, lea and natalie :) so from there on it was me and three french. whod ever believe that? haha by now i can swear in french, lets see what else i can learn.

aaand the girls came up with some more ideas, one of them quite brite id say. we rent a car. a three-door volkswagen, shiny white jumper. not actually the jeep thingy youd need for off-highway in argentina, but how do they say here es lo que hay :)

besides that they had an idea what to do! thats what i was missing, what im generally missing i think. so we entered the car, me, three french, four huge backpacks, two cds of cumbia, one travelguide.

ruta 40

primary objective is reach salta, via ruta 40 through the mountains. ruta 40 is the famous panermicana, which starts somewhere in alaska and goes down to tierra del fuego in patagonia. but just that it got a name doesnt mean the route is something.. serious? well it is serious, for the thousands of travellers that go up and down the two americas. and aswell its a serious challenge. but its not a highway. its not actually a street. route just wants to say.. there is a way.

and i thought the guy of the car rental is kidding us when saying "like ten kilometers from there the asphalt ends". well he was right. the next three days we should manage ourselves on dirt roads :)

upcoming stories: mollares, tafi del valle, amaicha, catarata de amaicha, ruinas de quilmes, cafayate, quebrada de cafayate, san carlos, angastuco, molinos, cachi aaaaand salta.

a lot to tell, we were quite active these days

Mendoza

arriving at 8am in buenos aires after a night on bus and boat, still with all the impressions of uruguay in my head, it was this moment when crossing leandro alem avenue i knew i had to get away again. hundreds of ugly, stinky trucks passing by in front of me made the decision easy.

so pretty fast marion had her bus ticket to.. away. this time mendoza, the capital of wine production in argentina. anyway, thats not the reason why im here, i got higher objectives. i wanted to see the highest mountain of america, the aconcagua.

mendoza city

so after one night in buenos aires i packed my stuff again and left to the super busy bus terminal. the bus to mendoza takes like 15 hours, so another night sleepless in argentina. even more thrilling getting back to consciousness the next day, looking out the window and seeing.. what?? no mountain. i should explain, my expectation of mendoza was that it would be in the mountains. and if not that then at least .. dont know, hills that would indicate that theres one of the highest mountainranges in the world close. but nothing, the country around mendoza is as flat as patagonia. and as dry.

they say mendoza is an oasis, the water they need comes from the rivers around town and all green in town just grows thanks for human help. including the enormous wine fields, everyting is watered artificially. kinda scary.. it looks quite green here. in the flatlands.

on the horizon to the west of mendoza you can make out the mountains i was missing, aparently hiiiigh mountains. mendoza is something around 700m sealevel. the mountains in the back go up to 6000m. yeeheah, compared to that our alps might look like hills. not even half as high :P

me in the high mountains

so turning into tourist again i booked a tour to see these mountains. named "high mountain tour" it promised all i wanted. starting at 7am, cause there is like almost 200 kilometers to drive to get to aconcagua. but lets start at the beginning. we did a first stop at a laguna, aparently a lake of glaciar water, leftover from long time ago when here everything was glaciar. looong time ago, right now its really hot here.

and on we go to puente de picheuta. a bridge. nothing more, nothing less, a little bridge over an even smaller river. supposed to have been built by incas, so a precious artefact. dont touch it.

the really important impressions of this part of the trip were actually the mountains. finally they began to rise and rise, the road stopped being straight like a hairline. all together nothing comparable with the alps, might the andes have a really different history i dont know, but they look completely different. at least here. deserted canions, lots of soil but not a single serious tree in sight. and colours! the ground here contains several minerals, that give the mountains there characteristic layers of colours. yellow for sulfur (schwefel), green for copper (!!) and red for iron. impressive. sad but the colours are not that shiny in the pictures, sorrrry.

next stop in the trip was the famous puente del inca, the inca bridge. this is.. well i dont know honestly. a bridge, naturally "grown", of sand, soil, stones and termal water. shiny yellow, the bridge doesnt really fit into the landscape. it got its name cause it was used as a major route for crossing the andes by the incas. in the 1930s there was a spa hotel built into the hill aside the river, using the termal spring water here. sounded weird to me that in the 30s there were people, obviously with money, travelling out into the andes to get some wellness. but well, today you can see the ruines of what was a hotel before.

aconcagua

final and most desired stop on the tour was the aconcagua. its a national park where you walk like half an hour in the deserted landscape until you arrive at a viewpoint to get some pictures of the mountain. to mention, the mountain itself doesnt look that special on the pictures. thats first because the viewpoint is already on 2950something meters. second, the place is still like 40km(!) away from the mountain. by car you cant get closer, youd have to walk. and sorry im not gonna walk 40km. although i was tempted to join the hiking tour..

the tip of aconcagua itself is 6962m above sealevel. i would have loved to see it just from a bit closer. anyway, being up at 3000m was an experience for itself. the air is getting thinner and you get tired so much faster. haha and you notice who smoked too much in his life and who didnt. impressive was the wind up there. so hardcore, you could barely walk straight. and with the wind came the dust. i still got the dirt in my hair. and clothes. and ears. and probably nose.

alltogether a beautiful experience. people who know me i dont need to tell that i even liked the dust. on the way down a group of mulis passed our way, running downhill. following them was a group of shepherds on horses.

THE picture of the andenes, i swear :)