And back into Argentina - la ultima vez!

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For every crossing between Chile and Argentina you have to cross the Andes range...one woman I remember she had some breathing problems but all 4 of us (me, Sara, Thalia and Agata) were doing fine, mainly sleeping. We left behind Chile with the best impressions and with an urge to go back again - after all Chile has over 150 active volcanoes (I think that is around 10-15% of total active volcanoes in the world) and I still have not done any volcano walking...definitely a candidate country for the future.
We arrived in Salta, coming down from the altiplano of the Atacama desert to the cloud forests of this region...it was boiling hot and sticky all the time.
Salta is just beautiful, very colonial and the Cathedral and the Iglesia San Francisco are probably the most amazing churches that I have seen in Latin America, the former pink and the latter yellow. We paid a visit to the Archaeological Museum there to check out the Inca mummies and particularly the 6-yr old ''girl of lightning'' mummy discovered at the top of this mountain (Mountains were Gods for the Incas). The coldness and ice on top of this mountain had preserved the mummy for hundreds of years - you can see the skin intact and the teeth sticking out from her mouth - nice!
Northern Argentina is completely different from what we had seen so far in Cordoba, Mendoza, Buenos Aires and Patagonia. Not just the landscape but also the culture and people; here the indigenous presence is much more dominant and present, with the outdoor markets and the women with their colourful dresses and carrying blankets. Even the buses are of lower quality than the rest of the country - some double bookings were not avoided but nothing serious.
From Salta we went north to Humahuaca - what a place really! This cobblestone village is very laid back and surrounded by awesome countryside. We went for a day walk to the surrounding canyon and the scenery was just mind-blowing. At the canyon edges the rocks/sediments had been eroded by heavy rainfalls through the years creating these spectacular pillars - you would think that you could touch them like legos and they would collapse. Thank God nothing collapsed!
To cross into Bolivia you have to get to La Quiaca (Argentina), where you walk across the bridge to Villazon (Bolivia). All 4 of us went through fine at the Argentinian border, but then at the Bolivian border I had some issues - for some reason Cyprus needs a separate visa from Italy, Poland or Greece (as always) but in the end we managed to sort it out - a bit back and forth across the borders is always fun. I was now officially in Bolivia...yeahhhhhhhhh

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