Summer travels...

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So, I finally start the long-overdue recap of my summer travels... lets hope I can remember them...

Being a teacher, I get extremely long summer holidays, which is nice... so I decided to make the most of them. I had decided to go to the north-east of Argentina. I had no real plans, I knew I wanted to visit a couple of places, maybe head into Bolivia... it was more a question of how long my money would last and what I felt like doing. With that in mind I made my way, backpack on my back once more, to the bus terminal in BsAs. Ahead of me was 16 or so hour night bus to Salta.

Salta la linda

Salta is the most developed of the NEastern provinces of Argentina... and it is pretty. I realised that as I was lugging my bag all the way through the town, having decided not to get a taxi/bus to my hostel... oh the joy of being back on the road!!
As I hadn't really planned this trip at all, I was open to all suggestions, my only stipulation was leaving the country by the 12th of Jan to do a visa run. With this in mind, I let myself get talked into a tour agency... well, to be fair, I walked in of my own accord. One of the things I had heard about from other people was a thing called "el Tren de la Nubes" or train cloud. This train apparently goes through some really pretty gorges, up really high and stuff. Well, the train wasn't running as the it's the wrong season, but there were excursions by bus that take you the same way, plus you get to see salt-fields and go to really high altitudes... and never one to turn down an offer, if I booked the Tren de las Nubes I could get other excursions really cheap... hence me leaving the tour agency with a 7am pick-up booked for the next morning to take me via some gorges to Cafayate on a tour of some wineries...

I should probably explain that this part of Argentina is what they call the pre-cordillera in that it is the last mountain range (cordillera) before you get to the Andes which separate Argentina and Chile. Now I'm no geographer nor geologist, but apaprently, at one point, this part of the land was under sea, so now, there are loads of gorges and valleys etc lleno de fossils and all sorts of amazing stone formations. It was through said gorges that our excursion took us. And I have to say the scenery was pretty inspiring, despite having to get up as some ungodly hour to leave. We got to scramble over the rocks and I got carried away taking fotos of the sun... And there were llamas... which kinda smelled... but we got to take our fotos with them! We also got introduced to Coca leaves... the leaves from the plant which cocaine comes from. In this part of the world it is sucked as an antidote to altitude sickness. On this excursion we only went to around 3000m, but we were still offered some hojas, if we wanted to try.
Once through the gorge, we arrived at Cafayate. Cafayate is one of the bigger wine producing areas of Argentina, and we were scheduled to go to 2 different bodegas. It's also where they created wine ice-cream.... On the way back to Salta we got to do some more exploring of the gorges... although the wisdom of climbing up a precarious footpath which appeared to be stuck to the side of a fairly steep hill... just to see the view, having partaken in quite a lot of wine tasting and wine ice-cream... lets just say we all survived...
Having had a long day on my first day in Salta I decided to spend my next day just seeing the sights of Salta itself. I had already seen some on the afternoon I arrived, when I took the cable car up to the top of a really tall hill looking over the city (and then climed down what felt like 6 million steps). So after spending the morning going to museums to look at mummified inca sacrifices and churches, in the afternoon I hopped on the bus and went to visit San Lorenzo. This little village was only 10km outside the city, and all the books raved about how tranquil it was. I only really went as the football team I've adopted out here is called San Lorenzo... pero bueno... it was pretty!
The next day was to be my last in Salta as I gradually made my way further north. I was booked on another excursion, this one following the Tren de las Nubes route into the mountains. For anyone who might be interested, apparently there is a TinTin story where he escapes from bad people on a train going through the mountains to Chile (or something like that), well that train was the aforementioned Tren de las Nubes. Anyway. We went through lots of pretty scenery. We saw fields of tobacco (one of the main produce in the region) and lots of cactus and cardenales which look just like a cactus but aren't. We got to visit the ruins of of a pre-inca settlement, which was pretty stunning. Nobody knows what happened to the community, it just disappeared before the Inca's arrived in area. I got to eat llama meat which was actually really nice, and not at all tough as I had imagined it would be. We also visited the Salinas, or the salt fields. They were pretty amazing. Lots of fun was had trying to take optical illusion fotos... some worked... others didn't!! The last stop of the excursion was in a little village called Purmamarca. I had decided to spend the night there, as opposed to returning to Salta, and would continue my trek north from there.

Purmamarca

What I didn't realise when I arrived in Purmarmca was that there would be trillions of people there. Apparently there was some music festival starting soon and everyone had arrived and filled up all the hostels. After 45 mins of trekking round this tiny village I managed to find a bed in a room let by a family. It would suffice. As for the bathroom... well, put it this way, I've lived in Asia and I didn't want to use it...
But all I really needed was somewhere to lay my head so I couldn't complain. The next morning I went to explore the area. Purmamarca is famous for it's 7 coloured hills. Conveniently there is a walkway which takes you all around the village and allows you to fully appreciate the beauty. And as it was early morning, the sun made it even prettier.
But that was pretty much it for Purmamarca. My next stop was Tilcara.

Tilcara

Tilcara is quite well known amongst young Argentines, and pretty much anyone who has travelled in this part of the country. Lots of people recommended it to me, so I knew I had to go... and I wasn't disappointed. Unfortunatley I couldn't find the hostel a friend had recommended, but as it turned out, I ended up having an amazing time.
After I arrived and settled into the hostel, I went out in search of lunch and the Pukara. Lunch was obviously going to be empanadas. Emapanadas are an Argentine speciality, but especially those from this area. (Technically the Salteña empanadas are the best, and Tilcara is in the provincia de Jujuy... but I wasn't fussy!) The Pukara is another pre-inca ruin, this time a fort. And unlike the ruins in Tastil, this one you get to walk around and explore.
Back at the hostel I got talking to a lady in the common area. She turned out to be the aunt of the hostel owner. The long and short of it was that I ended up going out with them all for the evening. We started out at a Peña where some famous folklore singer was doing a show (she was so famous that I had no clue who she was) but it was a really nice experience. I was then informed that I would be shown a true Tilcareña night out. And I was... from what I can gather it meant going to a few bars to collect friends before heading out to a barn somewhere that sold litres of beer cheap and had a band playing folklore music to which we all danced folklore, or in my case, tried to... this music was interspersed with the lead man of the band (yes, there was a live band in the barn...) asking people from different parts of Argentina to raise their hands and cheer... or the same for the hinchas of various football teams... after being told that there was little chance of the guy ever mentioning Europe or England, I had to become Porteño for the night... the football part was easy enough... I got to cheer for my team San Lorenzo, and boo the Bocas and the Rivers.... Anyway, after the barn decided to close if such a thing is possible... we ended up at another bar, mainly full of locals. By now it was around 5am and I was knackered. Apart from a police raid, to which none of the locals paid any attention but the tourists all scuttled off, nothing of interest really happened... and I stumbled back to hostel as the sun was about to rise.
Due the unplanned festivities of the night before, I gave up on my plan to trek the hour or so to see some rock formation that is supposed to to be pretty. Instead I had a lazy day shopping in the market and going to some of the little museums around the village square.
That night I went out to dinner with the same people from the previous night and a brazilian guy from the hostel before heading back to pack. I had a 3am bus to catch to take me to the Bolivian border.

Bolivia

Now anyone who knows me knows that I like to sleep... and like most human beings, I need it to function. And after reading the accounts of the last few days, one could assume that I was suffering from a severe lack of sleep... and I was. I arrived at the Bolivian border about half an hour before it opened, around 7am. Given the altitude of Bolivia (at the border it was only around 3000m) and the time of day, it was freezing. I wasn't best prepared for the harsh cold that you can get in the north (I really wasn't prepared for this trip at all) but I had bought a lovely and warm jumper in Tilcara... so whilst queueing for the border I did the age old trick of layering as many things as possible to keep warm.
The border crossing was strange. Getting out of Argentina was eaten bread they would say here (personally I prefer the english piece of cake but when in Rome...). We then walk across this piece of no-mans land and walk straight into Bolivia. Then you have to queue to go back out of Bolivia to be able to get your passport stamped... I'm still struggling to find the logic...
Once legally in Bolivia I made my way up to the bus station to buy a ticket for Tupiza. I had chosen Tupiza as it seemed to be the nearest "big" town to the border. From there I would decide what I wanted to do. As Bolivia is a lot cheaper than Argentina I had decided to treat myself to a hotel room as opposed to a hostel. Little did I know how much I would be thankful for doing this... After a long enough wait I was finally on my way to Tupiza. The scenery was pretty spectacular, however, having spent most of the week in a similar landscape on the other side of the border, it wasn't as amazing as the guidebooks made it out to be. When I arrived at Tupiza I set off in search of my hotel. I could have cried when I arrived and saw that I had my own double room (even though I booked a single) with private bathroom with 24 hour hot water (a rarity in Bolivia) and cable TV. Channel surfing I saw that I had Fox Sports... the channel that shows the Premier League matches. A quick calculation to work out the hour in England meant that I had just over an hour until Liverpool were due to kick off... all thoughts of a siesta went out the window. I rushed out to find somewhere to get an early lunch (as after all that I had been through, it was still barely midday). I should mention here that in Argentina, there is no bacon. At all. So when I found café serving Bacon Cheeseburgers all thoughts of trying local cuisine went out the window... After satisfying my hunger pangs I raced back to the hotel to enjoy a hot shower and an afternoon of football.
That evening I noticed that I was still pretty out of it, despite having had a siesta. Wondering if it might be the altitude, I decided to have an early night and see how I felt in the morning. Not very well as the case turned out. I think it was tiredness mixed with the change in temperature and possibly the altitude, but I ended up getting pretty sick. I was kind of fluey and lost my voice at one point. It was then that I decided there was no point doing anything too strenuous, and as I wasn't exactly enamoured with the Bolivian people, as they were constnantly trying to rip me off, not realising that I could speak their language, I took the decision to return to Argentina once the 3 nights I had booked at the hotel were up. I did manage to see some of the area though. I walked up to a viewpoint over the town and went on a horse-riding trek out to some of the gorges which was a really nice experience and a different way of seeing the sights. However I would be lying to say that I wasn't glad to leave the country. The joy I felt when I saw the Argentine border is undescribable!!

Humahuaca

The border town of La Quiaca doesn't really have much going for it, so despite arriving rather late I jumped onto the first bus going south and headed for Humahuaca. With me was a Norwegian grandmother who I had kind of adopted on the bus from Tupiza to the border when there were problems which resulted in us having to change buses, and she was totally bewhildered speaking not one word of Spanish. We arrived at Humahuaca just as the storm that had seemingly followed us from Tupiza arrived. Luckily it was fairly easy to find a hostel.
The next morning I explored the village with BPG (BackPacker Granny) as she liked to call herself, did a bit of shopping at the artesania stalls and then headed to the bus station. Once I had made sure that BPG had a bus ticket reserved for the next morning I jumped on my bus, destino Jujuy capital. The capital city of Jujuy province.

Jujuy

Despite being the capital city, Jujuy is by no means as big as Salta was. Nor was it as nice. I managed to find a hostel no problem and after a shower, set out to explore. There wasn't a lot to see in the city itself. Perhaps the most interesting things were the Lola Mora statues. Lola Mora was a fairly famous Argentine sculptor, and the statues are pretty, even though they were considered risqué in their day.
After a day in Jujuy it was time to move on, my money was running very low and there was still one more place I wanted to go...

Tucuman

My last stop on this trip was to be San Martin de Tucuman, the capital city of Tucuman. At a lot lower altitude, it was a lot warmer. As I trekked through the city trying to get to a hostel I almost wished I was back up north where it was cooler. Almost but not quite! Tucuman is another small city. But it's beautiful, especially coming from Jujuy. Salta is known as La Linda, but for me Tucuman was the prettiest. It has a very European style to it, which could have explained why I liked it so much.
Unfortunately money dictated that I could only spend 1 night in Tucuman, so I tried to see as much as I could. At night, all the old buildings around the main plaza were illuminated, which was simply stunning. And whilst I was sad to leave, as I would have liked to have more time to stay and really get to know the place, I was also more than ready to return home.

I had only been away for 2 weeks, but it felt so much longer. I was able to explore a little corner of this country I now call home... but boy was I glad to be able to sleep in my own bed and use my own bathroom... as for long-distance bus rides... well I'm in no rush to do another one!!

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Photos

Salta
View from the cable car out over the city

Salta
View from the cable car out over the city

Salta
Salta la linda.. a famous poem

Salta
I climbed them all... thankfully going down...

Salta
The Cathedral

Salta
The cathedral

Salta
San Lorenzo

Salta
San Lorenzo

It might look like a pile of rocks...
...and it is... but this is an offering to PachaMama... or the mother earth