jujuy and purmamarca

after a sad sad goodbye in salta i entered my bus to jujuy, depressed of course for bein on my own again. its like when travelling alone all you gotta do is to follow your objectives and maintain yourself. but the level of personal entertainment is quite low without people to share your trip.

soou, my ears got quite big when i grasped in the salta hostel that theres other travellers going my direction, following the very same objectives. so after breakfast i put the cutest face i got, asking if i could add myself to the trio of argentinians, on their way up north. what i got was a fcourse and a mail address for communication. and after a quite boring afternoon in jujuy capital, which is not actually that beautiful, i started the communication and found the guys again in purmamarca the very same evening.

purmamarca is a village like an hour from jujuy city, enclosed in colorful mountains und right next to the known cerro de siete colores (mountain of seven colors). well i actually saw nothing of this when i arrived in the middle of the night, was rather busy with getting internet connection. not that easy and everything i had to say when getting on my facebook was "and.. now?", to some boys i didnt actually know. and so bright was my smile when i got the answer from a blackberry, yeah come over here we got a place to sleep for you.

a room with space for like 20 people, on matrasses and sleeping bags, built of soil and stones, aswell the bathroom as rustical as it could be and i swear ive barely ever been that happy to see a place like this. and as purmamarca is a tourist party village, more village but also party, we had a great night out before going to sleep on the soil ground.

should mention, my white knights, to name them leandro, matias and hernan were travelling by car. one car. three guys. all their stuff. and next morning the question, you come with us?? how could i say no. didnt understand how, but they made it somehow to compress all the car-content so i would fit in. and in the end i had the most comfortable place in front next to the driver :)

so we took off, middle of the day, from purmamarca to the cerro for a mate and later on to the salinas of jujuy. upcoming story!!

Salta

BAAAM. left the jungle, the sierra, the mountains, the (almost) lonelyness to go back to town. we arrive in salta right on time for sunset behind the green mountains that enclose the town.

thousands of people on the streets, cars, animals, everyone screaming. southamerica. latin america. how i wished for that when i arrived in argentina half a year ago.. a dude on the street with his bike and a basket full of cheese to sell. a car driving by with blareing loud cumbia, in austria hed get a ticket for that. a women walkin by with five kids, in front of her next to her on her and all around her. lazy dogs strolling around the busy streets, searching for garbage that could have been food long time ago. garbage bags, rather on the street than next to the street. shops that apparently sell everything, and probably would sell you even more if youd pay for it. and their jukebox of folklore and local music, entertaining you still, when youre already another block down the road.

how i lllove this charming chaos, but that one moment, setting a foot on saltenio ground i was in pain. missing the empty sierras, the dust and the cactus. anyway, if theres something i learned lately then its to adapt. on a trip life always comes up with another adventure :)

so we get all our stuff out of the car, ready to hand it in the next day, move in to our hostel and start downtown right away. salta is also called la linda, the beauty, i guess for the beautiful city center. the plaza is impressing, one beautiful building after another all around. a huge, pink (?) cathedral, the much more famous iglesia de san francisco which you find in all the travel guides no the first page of the salta chapter. and more beautiful buildings, see pictures.

i was bewitched by the green rainforest mountains in the back, always had the impression, caused by mentioned travel guides, that salta would be desert. veeery wrong, afternoon one in town the heat and humidity collapsed and heavy rain made any more sightseeing impossible. plan b: museum of anthropology. loads of info about the region, further information on request.

we spent two night together in salta, day nr. 3 our ways split. laurine and lea headed down south to mendoza, natalie stayed in salta to go up to bolivia in the near future. and meeeee haha who knows i let you know with the next creative entry of my beloved blog!!

cheers

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