Salta and Jujuy

Let's continue with my 'photo blog'. 


I spent a few days in Cafayate in a very nice hostel with an even nicer receptionist. But then came a day when I had to leave. And I did leave. For an hour. I cycled 4km outside of the town in the direction of the Quebrada de las Conchas and with each 100m I was less and less sure if I really wanted to go there then. The gorge/valley was all covered in very dark clouds and even if it didn't rain yet it could any moment. I calculated the days left till the end and decided to come back to Cafayate. It was an impressive cycling day - whole 8km, preparation, heavy breakfast, special cream on my ass... 
The next day I repeated my plan and that time I didn't return to Cafayate but entered the quebrada. It got cloudy in the gorge but at least at didn't look as bad as a day before.
Quebrada de las Conchas is a gorge with rocks of all possible strange colours and is definitely one of the highlights of the area. I was a bit unlucky with the weather though so couldn't appreciate the colours at their best. And of course there would have been something wrong if I didn't have to cycle against the wind. 

I'm entering the Quebrada de las Conchas (looking back)

getting deeper into the quebrada; the wind picked up and reached pretty ridiculous speed creating clouds of dust in dry river bed; unfortunately I had to go exactly against that wind

the road was climbing gently on this section (again looking back) though in general throughout the day I was going very slightly down

Quebrada de las Conchas and the Conchas river

It seems that in South America each country or even each province of each country has to have its 'garganta del diablo' - the devil's throat; this is the Garganta del Diablo in the Quebrada de las Conchas - looking inside the throat

looking outside from the throat

After a tough day of cycling I left the quebrada to find myself all of a sudden in a very different environment of green, humid forest, almost an introduction to the jungle. Due to the location of the towns I had to split very unevenly the distance between Cafayate and Salta (around 190km) - on the first day I cycled 130km and then had an easy day of just reaching Salta after 60km of riding. But just before Salta...

... I had a good reason to celebrate with cookies and juice - I had just covered 4000km; it would be my last round number on the odometer 

Salta, pretty big city in the north-west corner of Argentina

a cabildo (colonial town hall) in Salta

I spent two nights in Salta. It happened to be a weekend and the first night I witnessed a milonga on the main square. I spent almost an hour hypnotised watching people dancing tango. Next day I visited the MAAM museum (Museum Arqueologia de Alta Montana) where bodies of three Inca kids are kept. They were found on the summit of Llullaillaco volcano in 1999 and then the museum was built especially for the 'kids'. They were offered to the gods, not sacrificed. That means they were not killed on the summit. They got drunk on chicha and buried alive and the reason of their death was suffocation and hypothermia. Still though, they were very special, chosen kids and gained high status because of it and the preparation for this ceremony lasted easily over a year. The kids were first sent to Cusco to be blessed by the Inca himself. The kids were buried with a lot of artefacts, little figurines dressed with traditional clothes and decorated with feather. Due to the fact that they spent around 500 years at the altitude of 6700m, under the ground at around -20 C in relatively sterile conditions the colours of the feather and clothes are pretty much as if they were made a few months ago. It's unbelievable. I was lucky I got to the museum in time for a guided tour (in Spanish though so I understood only part of it).


And then I left for Jujuy. I took the old road between Salta and Jujuy which half way through gets only 4m wide and leads through the cloud forest. I can easily say that this was one of the most beautiful days of my trip but you won't see it on the pictures as it got cloudy and I wasn't taking any pictures.

around 10km outside of Salta; a very wide river bed

reaching a pass on the way to Jujuy; I then got to another valley where the cloud forest started

I got to Jujuy and then started the last part of my trip but I'll tell you about it another time (soon).