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Published: August 6th 2007
Beautiful Scenes
The quebrada opened up into a wonderful green clearing at one stage. was a general in the Argentine civil war back in 1820. He was born in Salta and led an army of Gauchos which is commemorated in June here in the city. The house in which he received his fatal wounds is now a folkloric restaurant (peña). We decided to go for a meal there and, whilst the food and atmosphere were good, the promised espectacular was really nothing different or better to what we have seen in much cheaper places. It was good to see Bolivian president Evo Morales playing the panpipes though!
The next day we took the bus 5km out from our house to the Quebrada de San Lorenzo. Now we always thought a quebrada was a dried up river bed, akin to an Arabic wadi but it would appear we were mistaken. It is in fact just a river valley in the mountains. Anyway, they are usually beautiful places and so, having one on the doorstep, it would be rude not to visit.
We climbed up the valley for a couple of hours, climbing over rocks and jumping over the river. Thankfully the water level was quite low but that didn't stop Trish from washing
her walking boots with alarming regularity! Mind you, with some of the horse manure she stepped in, it was probably needed!!
It was a truly beautiful day, pleasantly warm and very sunny. We saw an enormous flock of parrots swarming around and the noise they made was incredible. We also saw lots of colourful butterflies so I tried to get a few photos. At one stage we gave way to a small herd of cows. This was very surprising as we saw no grazing land at all, and it was quite a steep path where we encountered them. My mother would have been terrified!!
Not knowing how far the track would go (or even if it DID end) we turned around after a couple of hours. We took a different track down and it was so much easier. There was no climbing over rocks or jumping over water at all. Now why didn't we find that one for the way up?
Down at the bottom is a lovely cafe/restaurant where we sat and had a beer and enjoyed the sunshine. It was packed, but we doubt many of those eating and drinking had done the walking we
Water Obstacle
The path crossed the river several times. had!
Before reaching the cafe, we came across a couple of ladies cooking bread and buñuelos (a type of doughnut). For a couple of pesos we had a lovely snack and we hope they arethere again next time we visit. Next time we will take the easy route up and hopefully explore a bit further, but for now, we were happy with a great day out.
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