HUMAHUACA GORGE

Well a picture says a thousand words. So maybe I should just shut up and let you see some pictures. You'll immediately recognize the Seven-Coloured Mountain. I wasn't exaggerating, was I? It all happened when the earth's plates smashed up, with mineral deposits being hoisted in vast swaths of rock. And being so dry, there's no vegetation to cover over the colours.












Note the cross on top of the hill. It's the town cemetery. Like the Incas, people still choose the highest place in the area to bury their dead.



The Three Amigos

alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5424593412873579458" />

A confession: Our second last night in Tilcara we did the stupidest thing tourists can do. It was a lovely restaurant -- but we ate the shrimp in the salad. Uh, it's a long way from the sea to the mountains, and even if the frig is good at the restaurant, who knows about the transportation. Suffice to say, we spent a day painting the wall from both ends. Pablo was a great nurse -- filled us up on Gatorade and got us to the hospital. In Argentina they treat tourists for free! Gotta say the hospital gave me the most painful shot of my life, though. Almost as painful as my first colonoscopy which I had WITHOUT Demurral. AAA!!!

Anyway, next trip, we'll take Pablo's advice and pack lots of socks. :) For the joke, see last post.:)

And hey, if you're going to be sick for a day, what better B&B to be sick in that the Poseda de Luz. Luz gave us this goregous suite with its own "rock garden". Also, on the bright side, what better way to lose weight after weeks of piggery?





Next post we'll be waddling onto a plane in Jujuy for a last three fun-filled days in other parts of Buenos Aires -- B.A. -- Big Apple, South American style.

Yrs.,

Allan

CACHI -- PLUS A PRE-INCAN CIVILIZATION

Cachi is a very small and very beautiful colonial town about a five hour drive from anywhere, aka Salta. It's in the pocket between two sets of mountains, so that despite how arid everything is around it, it's actually quite lush from the underground water that pools from the surrounding mountains. This shot is taken from the town cemetery, the highest point in the area. The custom of burying the dead on mountain peaks comes from both Incan and pre-Incan civiliations.

The main building in Cachi is the town square. Simple and stark, and quite beautiful for that.



Inside the white building is a museum with an open-air courtyard containing a series of rocks with pre-Incan carvings.



We had lunch away from the tour buses at an EXCELLENT restaurant up the street from the town square. It's called Platos y Diseño and I highly recommend it. After that, Pablo got us back to Salta for an evening walk, then picked us up early the next morning for a drive to the Humahuaca Gorge -- one of the most stunning days of our trip. From rock carving we got to see the layout of a pre-Incan town of several thousand people. When the Inca arrived, the earlier people simply left. The foundations are all made of granite boulders; as you can imagine, they've stayed exactly where the first people put them.







BTW, in Salta there's a museum containing the mummified bodies of three children sacrificed by the Inca. They weren't selected from the poor and thrown in wells to drown, as the Aztec priests did in their sacrifices. (Nor were their still-beating hearts removed.) Instead, they came from royal families throughout the region and were "wedded" symbolically at a regional ceremony before being brought back to their villages where they were frozen at the tops of mountains. (Boys as well as girls, in an early and rare example of gender equity.) The priests gave the children corn booze and, when they were passed out, put them in stone holes and let them freeze to death. Apparently the bodies were found with their muscles relaxed, so the deaths were painless. (I´ll bet they found that such a relief.) The point was to bond various clans together. It's believed there are hundreds and hundreds bodies in these stone graves, preserved by the freezing mountaintop air. May they rest in peace.

I leave you with a shot of the rugged landscape.



Tomorrow, the amazing salt plains, llamas, and farms who really want to get away from the crowd.

Cheers,

Allan

PAGING DR. FREUD!

Mixed in with the mountains in the Cachi gorge are stretches of cactus plains.



Careful where you sit!



Pablo also took us on walks through the rugged countryside.



And into cattle canyons.



But the real point of this post is to show you the fun we had driving. Remember how I told you that drivers here are crazy? I mean outside Buenos Aires, even cities like Salta with oiver 600,000 people have almost no stop lights or stop signs. Cars race up to an intersection. If there's a hole in the traffic flow they floor it. Otherwise -- AAA!!! As a pedestrian, it feels like being in a carnival game of Whack-A-Mole where you're the mole!

Same craziness here in the mountains. A single dotted line means, feel free to drive on the wrong side of the road -- in fact, we insist! A double solid line when approaching a hairpin turn where you can't see what's ahead means, "Hey, it's up to you, bro." On the few occasions Argentinians are serious, they actually paint huge exclamation marks in the lanes, and then it's kinda like, "Don't say we didn't warn you!"

Here Pablo shows us the happy-go-lucky driving spirit that makes traveling here so much fun.

1) Talk to passengers in the backseat to make sure they're happy. Use your hands to make your points.



2) At curves, take your eyes off the road and flash a smile out the window at pretty girls hitchhiking. Or just check yourself out in the side mirror.



3) As you sail through the air over the cliff, reassure the screaming passengers in the back seat.



4) Leap before the crash and have lunch ready for when your passengers climb back to the road. (If they're kinda dead, make them a nice stone marker. Flowers optional.)



Next stop Cachi, salt flats, and pre-Incan settlements!

Till then,

Allan