Salta la linda

Salta the beautiful. Personally, I don´t find the town of Salta so beautiful, though the three hills to one side (don´t ask me which) and the houses at their base are quite nice. But the province of Salta... Vancouver has extraordinary natural beauty, and so does a fair chunk of the western US. But I was taken aback by the extraordinary beauty of the Salta landscape. While in some ways it is similar to the desertscape of Arizona and New Mexico, ít is different, and on a whole different scale.
The road to Cachi: The lush subtropical jungle changes quickly to a low green cover in the precordillera. Mountains rise up out of the ground, but with crevises that create amazing shadows, especially when combined with those of the clouds. The scale is just a bit larger than life, so that you first lose yourself in the scenery, and then are in a moment brought back to realize just how small you are. There should be giants walking the hills and not humans. And this happens again and again as you change terrains. In the Quebrada de Cordones the green becomes desert, and you find yourself in a cactus forest (dense for cacti, but they are well spread out from one another). The cordon cactus is used for wood, the planks are distinguished by the holes marking them. On the west side of the canyon great mineral mountains rise up. Giant striated triangles, layers of copper oxide, iron oxide, sulfur oxide, lead and perhaps some other mineral ores. The area is rich in mineral resources. The roads are for the most part dirt and unpaved. Cachi is a small quaint whitewashed town that has been there for centuries and existed through all sorts of wars.


San Antonio de los Cobres, Salinas Grandes, and Purmarca: More amazing scenery on the road to San Antonio -- normally a train runs the route, but it is closed regularly in December for maintenance. There are amazing valleys of lush green again, and again the triangles of oxides of different colors. San Antonio is a mining town, and we tourists are greeted by children and old women trying to sell us toy sized llamas. I am most impressed with the salt flats of Salinas -- NaCl at 3600m above sea level. A giant sea of white pentagonal crystal stretching out as far as the eye can see. We visit the pools where they harvest the salt. A day´s work can get 13 pesos worth of salt. Another pass, this one at 4000m, and we head down a steep and windy road through more andean foothills. Purmamarca is a quaint older town, with some Inca heritage, I think, but to me it feels dominated by the tourist industry. The setting is quite astonishing though.



Cafayate (Cafa-ja-te): The town itself is nothing much. The wine produced there is unique to the area -- Torrontes -- but is not very good. The goat cheese is better. A heladeria has a wine sorbet, that definitely tastes of the wine -- kind of cool, but a bit much. The tuna sorbet is delicious (not fish, but rather the cactus fruit). The drive there and back: through a canyon of rich red sandstone. The layers are straight lines. The morning light hits the rock and makes it glow. The scale, once again, is something otherworldly. There is another Devil´s Throat (how many are there in Argentina?) A giant red gorge, and there we all sit at the bottom, swallowed already. Are we supposed to hope that the devil decides to vomit? A little ways down a natural ampitheatre, with amazing acoustics. A symphony plays there once a year. It must sound incredible.


Salta es mui linda.