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Published: October 8th 2012
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Roadside shrine
The bottles are drink offerings The US Dollar issue reared it's ugly head again today. As we went to pay for the time we had spent at Finca San Antonio, Josephine told us she was expecting us to pay in US dollars. Of course we didn't have any and there was no way we were going to be ale to find any. We ended up coming to an agreement which meant we paid a high exchange rate. Toby wasn't bothered as it was the amount we had been quoted in the first place. Travelling in Argentina with US dollars obviously earns you a discount.
We didn't know where we were going to stay the night tonight, but we knew the route we were taking. We had accommodation booked for tomorrow and thought it would be different to just see how far we got today and make a decision on where to stay when we wanted or needed to.
Our first destination was another San Antonio - San Antonio de Los Cobres. This is a mining town high in the Andes at the end of a famous train ride called the train a Los nubes - the train to the clouds. We weren't taking the
4080 metres
Harriet and Toby are higher train as it apparently only goes on a Saturday and seemed very expensive and anyway we had the car. The road and the train track wind their way up the hills coming together and moving apart at various different points.
The road started for us in a small town called Rosario de Lerma. It was very cute, but we had to navigate a diversion as there was some sort of parade down the Main Street. The diversion took us off our route but never showed us the way back. Thank God for google maps! We stopped briefly in the town as Toby wanted to buy some coco y bica. This is leaves from the cocaine plant and sodium bicarbonate. It is perfectly legal in Salta and Jujuy provinces but nowhere else in Argentina. They sell it at milk bars/ dairys/ corner shops/ kioscos - depending on what country you are from - and it is cheap. Just like the coco tea, it doesn't make you high, just energised. It smells gross and the thought of chewing leaves was not enticing to Fiona.
The road followed the river for a while. The bed was wide and stony and the
river small but fast. The stone was being gathered and sorted into various sizes by workmen. It was mind-blowing to see some of the jobs that were done by hand. Some of the men were shovelling the rock through sieves to separate the finer silt from the gravel, others were smashing large rocks with sledgehammers. Hard work on a hot day.The dustier rocks were obviously used to grade the road. It wasn't advisable to have the window open unless you wanted a mouthful. The road was also incredibly narrow. It was a bit scary when you could see the dust cloud announcing the imminent approach of a huge truck. Luckily every time we encountered one we found a passing spot.
As we got higher the scenery changed once more with the vegetation dying out and cactus appearing. The rocks changed from grey to red and cream pipe organ formations and the air got thinner. Although there were places named on the map, we didn't pass through any major settlements or places to stop until we got to Tastil.
Tastil is an important archeological site with the remains of a pre Inca settlement from 1000 to 500 years ago.
The gate was open to the site and so we drove up to the car park at the top of a hill. It was a great place to have a settlement as there were 360 degree views, but we were glad we drove up. It was just about impossible to breathe and we had to walk slowly around the ruins to avoid getting out of breath and exhausted. It was such a strange feeling. You knew you weren't exerting yourself but felt as if you were running the Olympic 100metres race. The site was huge and well marked but only in Spanish. You could clearly see where the gardens were and the main plaza as well as the houses. It was worth the stop.
From Tastil the road rose to its highest point at 4080 metres. Harriet and Toby climbed higher up the hill behind the sign to try to make it to 4100metres. It was too hard going to get all the way to the top and the wind was brutally cold and strong.Around a few more corners the road levelled out on the puna. It is hard to believe you are so high when you drive across
the flat land with peaks only a few hundred metres above. But the best thing about this puna was the llamas. There were hundreds just by the road. We had been desperate to see some all trip and pulled off the road to take their photos. They weren't so keen to be near us but we got the pictures.
San Antonio de Los Cobres was eerie. The town was dusty and deserted. There was an attractive church with a couple of llamas outside for tourist photos. Everything else was grey. Some locals were selling crafts but they didn't stay around for long. We found a cafe for lunch and watched some soccer. We had noticed the thin air made our breathing difficult but here we also started to feel dizzy and sick. But we still weren't as high as we were going to get on foot today.
The train a Los nubes carries on just beyond San Antonio after passing over a viaduct, apparently the highlight of the trip and our next destination. The viaduct La polvarillo was about 18km from San Antonio along a dirt road watched over by donkeys. Our first glimpse was a little underwhelming
and we were a tad disappointed. We drove to the bottom and climbed to the top. The climb was hard work and Harriet gave up because she couldn't breathe, but Fiona and Toby made it and walked along the rails for a bit. There were gaps in the wooden boards alongside the track and you could see it was a long way down so Fiona wouldn't go far and wasn't too keen on Toby going far either. It seemed much more impressive from on top than from below.
We could have stayed the night in San Antonio, but Harriet and Toby weren't keen. Fiona wasn't keen on driving for loads more hours, but the thought of staying in San Antonio didn't seem a better choice so we carried on. From San Antonio we drove about 100km across the puna. The road was straight and flat and there were virtually no other cars. Toby must have enjoyed his Dukes of Hazzard impersonation yesterday because he did it again today. We got even more air going through an unmarked dip that Harriet actually touched the roof of the car. Again she loved it. There was no damage to us or the
Dusty and desolate
The copper mining town has seen better days car, so we were able to laugh and drive on to the salt plains.
We could see the salt for the last half of the drive over the puna. The result of a huge dried up lake, the salt is up to half a more thick and is a white blanket for miles. The main road that we eventually came to goes across the plain and we stopped to take in the view. You could see huge rectangles where they had cut the salt and piles of it at the side of the road as well as mountains of it on the plains like white haystacks. There were artisans selling salt carvings of llamas which were actually very good, but the wind was bitterly cold, salty and dusty so we didn't stay for long.
We wove our way down the mountain to the small town of Permurmarca. We found a lovely hotel for a fantastic price and went into town for dinner. The restaurants around Salta are famous for their folk music and are known as Penas. We didn't know if we would have time to find one in Salta itself so we chose a restaurant that would
have local music and Toby ordered llama. Fiona and Harriet weren't so adventurous. The music was pretty good but a little loud. We were glad we had come early and only had the music for half the meal. It was a good compromise. It was too dark to see the seven coloured hill that makes Permurmarca famous. That will have to wait until tomorrow.
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