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Published: August 6th 2007
After Iquique my next and last port of stay in Chile was San Pedro de Atacama. As the name shows, it’s right in the middle of the desert and at the feet of the Andes. After hardly seeing any tourists since Bariloche, it felt weird being back in a backpackers gathering spot. I only stayed there two days because of its cash-cow hostels and greedy tour agencies. However, the whole lot was still enjoyable. As soon as I got to San Pedro, I went off on a tour to see the sun set in the Valle de Luna. It’s a spectacular place that just looks like being on the moon with the mix of light and its unusual rock formation. On the next day, I had no time to rest and went on a tour that kicked me out of bed at 4am. I went to visit the Tatio Geysers, hot springs that are at 4400m.
The next day I left San Pedro for the north of Argentina and the city of Salta. It’s the biggest city in the north of the country. It’s a very picturesque place with its colonial buildings and bright coloured churches. As for the night
life and from what I can remember, it was pretty good… I met up with the same frenchies from Patagonia and after two days in Salta filled with Argentinean steak and beer, we rented a car to do a 4 day road trip in the southern part of the region. At first, when we arrived at the car rental to pick up what was supposed to be a descent Fiat Punto, we literally thought the rental woman was taking the piss. She showed us an old 1980’s Fiat Uno and insisted it was a Punto or a “Fiat uno punto uno”. There was no way the three of us could fit in there and do a 1000km on top of each other, mostly Raph who’s almost 2m high and a 100kg.
We tetchily refused the car and got upgraded to a Fiat Palio…still a dump but at least slightly bigger.
Our road trip ended being a Colin McRae session, crossing rivers, going through canyons, desert to semi-jungle and all with a car that struggled to reach 60km/h. The whole journey took us four days visiting different valleys or what they call “quebradas”. Our first day was driving on very busy
and snaky gravel roads with enough space for one car to scrape through. The most reassuring thing was seeing memorial shrines every fifty metres of some punter who missed a curved and found himself 50m further down. Apart from the stressful driving, we got to see some amazing landscapes driving from one valley to the other and got the chance to stay in some very rustic and colonial places.
On our third day, we went to visit the ruins of Quilmes. Those ruins are Argentina’s most extensive and preserved ruins of an old pre-Colombian city. Apparently 5000 indigenous lived there and the conquistadores just wiped the whole city. They deported the whole 5000 to the Buenos Aires region and all died from foreign diseases. Now sadly, all that is left from them are those ruins, a rubbish football team and their national beer. After that cultural detour, we continued our drive through the Quebrada of Cafayate. That place is well known for its distinctive sandstone landforms such as the amphitheatre. This is a sort of cave where musicians go and practice. There were also other rocks that looked like a giant castle or my personal favourite el sapo (the toad).
After our outback adventure, we went back to Salta and handed our junkyard Palio that used to be white. The rental woman wasn’t impressed by the state of the car and we had to pay extra for the thorough cleaning.
At the end, I stayed just one last night in Salta and had one last big session with the frenchies. From there and on the next day, we went our own ways again. I took a bus to the northern border of Argentina to the city of La Quiaca, right next to Bolivia.
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Gordon Dunlop
non-member comment
Hola hombre!
Good to hear from you Nico - as always looks amazing and I wish I was out there! Just been working away myself though got the chance of a job down south which moves on to Europe after 9 months which would be ideal. Keep it real mate and will speak to you soon.