Salta & Jujuy

I’m going to do much less thinkpiece writing and much more raw photo dump for this one.

I caught a flight from Mendoza to Salta city in NW Argentina, at the basin of the Andes. The city of Salta used to be the old seat of the Argentine government, back when it was connected to the mines of Potosí, so the city itself has lots of old colonial buildings. It would be charming, but it’s kind of dirty and reminds me of Philly (in a bad way). I took maybe four photos here. Here’s two of them.

I have gone on a big road trip with a british couple I met at a hostel here–Tats and Sammy. They’ve just recently graduated from university in the UK and are currently traveling for 4 months through South America before beginning their postgrad lives. They have been the ideal travel family. We’ve been making jokes, cooking meals, listening to podcasts about the history of the KK, and jamming out to tunes in the rental. It’s been a great time. I’m sad to say goodbye to my british niece and nephew.

This has easily been one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. Red rocks and huge mountains and cactuses and scorched earth. It reminds me of Arizona or Nevada but more dramatic.

Each day we drove between 5-7 hours, covering over 1k km in the past week (650 miles). On the second day, we bounced along a gravel road in our rented 2 wheel drive sedan for five hours. I remember looking over and seeing Tatiana holding onto the frame of the car for dear life.

We first drove south from Salta, to Cafayate on the first night. We passed by this massive red formation of rocks along the way, called La Garganta del Diablo or “The Devil’s Throat.”

There’s an Argentine movie (Relatos Salvajes) in which two dudes driving through Salta get into a road rage battle and end up blowing each other up in their cars. The bridge was right along our route for the first day, so made the british couple suffer through my nerdy excursion. There politely endured, I was hyped!

This is Pasquale, a hitchiker who we picked up between Cafayate and Cachi, along a gravel road. He was a nice dude, barely spoke a word, just nodded out in the backseat and got out when we stopped for lunch. I hope you are well Pasquale!

We stopped in Cachi on the second night, a super cute colonial town with whitewashed stone buildings. As it was the Thursday on a long weekend before Easter, the town was poppin. Every hostel we tried had sold out every bed they had. Finally, we got a room and walked over to a vineyard to suck down some Torrontés, the white wine that Salta is famous for. It was a great night.

Waking up in Cachi, we could suddenly see a huge snow capped mountain off in the distance. Then, within 20 minutes we were driving through a valley of cactuses before reaching a mountain peak where it was green and lush and looked like Lord of the Rings. The landscape diversity here is insane.

Yesterday we drove up to Hornocal, a mountain sitting at 4300m. We bought coca leaves in the town to chew as we drove up the gravel switchbacks to combat altitude sickness. The view was worth it.

We’ve been cooking nice dinners at the hostel the past two nights. We made a steak with andean potatoes and bought a bottle of malbec at the shop down the road. It’s made the road feel like home for a bit. It’s been a great week :)