Northern Argentina / Chile

Kacia’s parents, Chuck and Harlowe Kittle, threw caution to the wind and hopped a flight to Argentina to join us for our adventures. The adventure began immediately as we crammed all four of us, and their luggage (some filled with bike tires and other supplies they brought for us) into a small taxi from the Salta airport. We stayed in a guesthouse with a lovely colonial courtyard, and spent a couple of days taking it easy, walking Salta’s historic (and chaotic) streets, admiring the beautiful, but oftentimes tired, architecture.

We rode the teleférico to the top of Cerro San Bernardo to get a terrific view of the city, and of the high Andes in the distance that we’d be traversing in the coming weeks. Because the car moves so much faster than the bikes, it was really important not to go too high, too fast… so we reviewed our route plans, making sure that we would be properly acclimatizing as we toured. Then we rented the appropriately named Renault “Duster”  and set off.

We left Salta toward the southwest, initially finding ourselves on a very rural road trying to go over a pass that had actually been closed for years ("thanks", Google Maps!) After this scenic diversion, we enjoyed a picnic lunch and headed over the correct pass to Los Cardones National Park.

We overnighted in the small town of Cachi, then spent the next day back in the Park, marveling at the cactus, a variety of birds, an old section of Inca Trail now paved over, and spectacular, layered views extending from the valley all the way to the high peaks. In the valley, it was chile pepper harvest season, so fields, empty lots, back yards and hillsides were covered with drying chilies glimmering in every shade of red imaginable.

Driving with your headlights on is obligatory in Argentina. We were alerted by another driver that one of our Duster’s headlights was out, so the next morning we got a replacement bulb from Cachi’s auto parts store, (which interestingly sold automotive lubricants and fluids in bulk), and within minutes, Kacia and her dad had it fixed.

We hiked up quite a hill along the town’s Stations of the Cross trail to the cemetery, full of color, history, and decrepitude. To our surprise, it was adjacent to a dirt airstrip (which piqued our interest as both Kacia’s dad and brother are pilots).

We embarked on our first all-day (80 km, 50 mile) drive on gravel (ripio) roads, and discovered that travelling on ripio can be challenging and exhausting for folks in a car, as well as on bikes! Along the way, we found a stone church, sparkling with glass mosaics embedded in its stucco trim, being spruced up by locals for the upcoming events of holy week.

Further south, we drove through the geologically distinctive Quebrada de las Flechas (Canyon of the Arrows). There we were amazed to encounter some bike tourists on a horribly sandy road, who turned out to be a couple from the U.K. that we’d met weeks before on our bus ride to Ushuaia (2,000 miles to the South)!

Cafayate was a great place to walk around, with lots of public art, colonial buildings and good food. The city’s wine museum taught us little about wine making, but its incorporation of technology, art and poetry into the exhibit was surprising and fun. We checked out the massive desert arroyo (wash) that borders Cafayate - the volume of debris is a testament to how much water can move through the area when it does rain.

Blazing past Salta, we stopped for the night in San Salvador de Jujuy (pronounced “hoo-HOO-ee”), staying in a rustic historical home that is now a guesthouse. In the city center was a dramatic sculpture of Gauchito Gil, the beloved Robin Hood character of Argentina, rebelling against the military, which he deserted to fight for the poor. Roadside shrines to the Gauchito are common throughout Argentina, and are always draped in red flags.

The village is touristy, but has charm, with two 700 year-old algarrobo (carob) trees shading the plaza adjacent to the modest little church. We circumnavigated on foot the Cerro de Siete Colores, astounded by the variety of minerals, and the showy colors they produce, now exposed by uplift and erosion.

Humahuaca is the namesake town for the high mountain valley, the Quebrada de Humahuaca, that we were traversing. In the town, there is an outsized sculpture and plaza at the top of the hill, dedicated to the Heroes of the Independence Movement. The indigenous peoples' role in the movement is clearly celebrated here.

Continuing up the long high mountain valley, we turned off the main road at a road marked by a full building shrine dedicated to…

You guessed it:  El Gauchito

Our spartan guesthouse was clean, had a patio with a great view, and was equipped with tiny electric hot water tanks that were also the actual shower head. Note the wiring is right there in the shower with you!?! (Dad learned the hard way that the cold-water faucet in this poorly grounded setup was energized.)

We spent the next day walking around the town, which had many people out enjoying the Saturday at the town’s dirt fútbol pitch which held multiple matches between teams from several communities throughout the day.

We headed back down the Quebrada to stay in the small, non-touristy town of Maimará, just south of Tilcara. Its setting is also dramatic, flanked by still more painted hills. It was fun and relaxing to be the only gringos in the village where we walked the streets, and tried some chicha morada (sweetened purple corn drink) with fried bread. It was Sunday and the town’s few restaurants were closed, so we cooked dinner for ourselves in the hotel and spent the evening played cards.

Coming down the other side we saw our first vicuñas, and saw far below us the Salinas Grande, the first salt flat of the trip. We stopped on the vast white plain, at elevation 11,300’, having a little fun with the camera and admiring sculptures and small buildings made entirely of bricks of salt. There is a large lithium mine here (think of the vast quantities of lithium batteries our electronic devices and electric cars use) which is being protested by the local indigenous people, saying it’s encroaching on their lands and water supplies. It is always eye-opening to see the ripple impacts of our modern way of life on faraway places and peoples like this.

Despite the elevation, we hiked to over 13,000 feet on the village’s stations of the cross trail, demarcated by sloppily whitewashed rocks. The next day we gassed up and headed west to the Chilean border.

Interestingly, the road didn't descend after crossing the pass. Instead, it headed out onto a very high plateau at about 14,000 feet, and then slowly started going up as we approached Volcán Licancabur, a Mount Fuji-esque peak that would dominate our horizon for days to come (and appear again later during our journey in Bolivia).

As we drove over the southern flanks of Licancabur we reached nearly 16,000 feet and passed within 2 km of Bolivia, and then descended precipitously to the Atacama desert basin, all the way down to elevation 7,900 feet.

San Pedro is a touristy/hippie town set in the Atacama desert, one of the driest places on earth -- with many parts of it receiving less than 1 mm/rain/year. It was founded here because of the presence of a spring. Off of its town square is a beautiful old and rustic adobe church, complete with cactus wood ceilings and leather lashings still holding the roof structure together.

Calama is a serious company town, with the town’s street signs clearly showing they were provided by Codelco, Chile’s nationalized mining corporation. While in town, waiting for the company-provided tour to start, we happened upon a Dominican restaurant run by a warm and chatty family.

We stayed up late one evening stargazing with an indigenous star tours group. After a quick introduction, they gave each of us a heavy wool blanket, and we went out to a terrace with 5 or 6 telescopes set up to take advantage of the very clear and thin Atacama air. They also have an observatory that houses a large telescope through which we observed a globular cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Definitely one way to feel very small.

Laguna Chaxa is vital habitat, especially for three species of flamingos (Andean, Chilean, and James') and the brine shrimp they feed on, as well as many other birds and reptiles. It is set within a completely different kind of salt flat, with incredibly sharp and jagged formations that would be dangerous to walk through if not for the pathways provided in the park. The salt water table was just inches below the crusty surface.

After crossing from Chile to Argentina through another joint border crossing, we saw signs that we were crossing back into civilization, from high tension power lines connecting to a new solar farm under construction, to the historic Tren a las Nubes rail line that connects San Antonio de los Cobres (where we stayed the night) to Salta.