Salta

The bus ride to Salta took 20 hours. I have never seen that many action movies (bad ones might I add) in my life. The bus companies in this country seem to love Hollywood trash. Our last movie was directed by, based on a screenplay of, and with the main actor being Steve Segal. Do I need to add more?

We arrived on Friday afternoon and were quickly enamored by Salta’s beauty. This Northwestern capital had its charm - clean streets, lovely architecture, green spaces, and mountains everywhere around! Albeit being completely exhausted, we hit the bars that night, only to realize that the town, quite like Buenos Aires, does not come to live until early morning hours. By the time the streets were hopping, we were already heading to bed - we had a jungle trip planned for the next day. We took a public bus to Libertador, and from there we hired a cab to Calilegua National Park. Libertador itself was an interesting stop. The town is in the epicenter of this sugar cane growing region and a home of the largest sugar making factory in the world. In a smart move, the family that owns the factory donated the land in the surrounding mountains to the state under the condition that it will become a national park with protected status. This was the only way to secure supply of high quality water to their sugar cane plantations - to make sure that the cloud forest, a natural water sponge, stayed in place. The taxi driver gave us a quick tour of the plant and we headed for the jungle through the fields of sugar cane and the mango groves. We arrived with the sunset and so we pitched the tent and went to bed to run away from the mosquito clouds hanging around us. Next day we walked in the river bed, tracing the animal tracks ranging from those of puma to the largest rodent on the earth. Then, back in the jungle, we finally saw the toucans! They sounded like ducks, looked like clowns, but moved with the elegance of an eagle. We also saw a frog orgy - a female specimen sandwiched between two males. They looked quite happy in their union. We shared a ride back to Libertador with an Australian couple, and took an evening bus back to Salta, entertained by another batch of high quality Hollywood production.

In the evening we were lucky to find two girls (Maria from Spain and Sophs from New Zealand) who had similar travel plans and so we could share a rented car. We had four days to hit the back roads in the most spectacular and also bizarre mountains. The variety of landscape (ranging from complete desert and salt flats to cloud forest), the history of human settlement in this region (with 6000 years old ruins), and some of the highest vineyards in the world made this a fascinating journey. The first day was brutal. In just a few hours in the car we climbed to 4000 meters altitude and for the life of us could not find any food on the way. We finally came to a village that looked promising, but the only restaurant was closed! Not giving up, we took a side road in a search for goat cheese - there were goats everywhere in these valleys - but disappointingly, this was the wrong season for cheese making - the goats are on their break, just getting pregnant. The side trip was still worth it though. One of the farmers that we approached gave us a tour of the surrounding mountains, full of ancient ruins and rock paintings. Chewing coca leaves and wearing high rubber boots, he led the way up the hill, pointing at llama engravings in the rock. Unfortunately, overwhelmed by the sun, altitude, and lack of sugar in the blood stream, we were forced to retreat to the car rather quickly to seek shade and to look for food. We had an amazing dinner in a dusty town on the altiplano, managed to get the most amazing cheese here which must have been sitting in their fridge for ages, and headed to the salt flats, with the sunset in front of us. It was already night when we finally arrived to the salt lake and camped out on the salt bed. The surrounding landscape and the whole night were quite surreal. The stars and the moon in the sky, the white salt flats around us, and the eerie quietness. 3000 meters high, it got cold rather quickly and we headed to the tent. But there were stars in the tent as well! Any quick movement caused an explosion of dozens of fire sparks, a result of high density of electric particles in the air. The sunrise on the salt flats, resembling the ocean, was equally overwhelming.

Sophs, one of our companions had already seen the south part of our journey, and so next day we headed back to Salta to drop her off. At the hostel we happened to stumble on Kate whom I knew from the Navimag boat trip in Chile, and we again traveled in 4, now to the south. The scenery again did not cease to amaze us. Mountains colored in red, blue, and yellow, cactus trees 5 meters high, deep gorges carved by millions years of water activity, and llamas and guanacos roaming around. We stayed in a small town, this time in a proper house, and next day headed to Cafayate, home of the highest vineyards in the world. In fact, the whole valley was filled with the wine trees there! We visited one of the oldest vineyards (Bodega Etchart), and sampled their wines. When in the bodega, I got quickly distracted by a wall filled with hundreds of wine bottles. The light was perfect, coming from a small window in the wall, shedding light on these jewels. I took one of the bottles out, disturbing the dust that collected on it, and carefully placed it on the oak table so the light just touched the bottle.

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