Take It On Down to Siesta Town!

Window seat and a bag of cinnamon Chex.

After escaping from Salta - which actually had really good empanadas, for which that city is somewhat famous - it was back to the road for another scenic drive to Cafayate.

Screw you guys, I'm going home.

Cafayate is a small town, but it known for two things - wine and landscapes.  While Mendoza is the wine capital of Argentina, Cafayate has a pretty robust wine industry as well.  In fact, according to a waiter in Cafayate, the inventor of wine ice cream was from Cafayate.  The other thing Cafayate is known for is the scenic drive you take to get there.  We stopped at three of the main attractions: the Devil's Throat, the Amphitheatre and the Frog.

Someone got their fingerprint on the lens...

First up was the Devil's Throat.  Avid readers of this blog might remember that this is also the name of the coolest part of the waterfalls at Iguazu.  

Entrance to Devil's Throat.

Apparently, naming stuff after the devil's throat is pretty popular in national parks in Argentina.  And the Devil's Throat was definitely worth seeing, but the big show was about 200 feet up the road.  It was labeled with a small sign that just said "Amphitheater."

Anne and HBomb are in the bottom of the Amphitheater building towers out of rocks.

This thing was massive.  And it wrapped around on three sides, so there was a pretty cool echo in there.  Additionally, the area is administered by the local indigenous population, so there were some guys there playing flutes and drums.  It was a pretty cool effect if you stood in just the right place.

 

HBomb spent most of his time at the Amphitheater playing in the sand and building a tower.  Not a bad use of time when you think about it.

HBomb considers the possibilities....

But eventually it was time to move on.  The third landmark was a little further down the road, so we had a chance to take in some of the landscapes:

When the guidebook says "Look for the Amphitheater" or "Don't miss the Devil's Throat," you have some vague idea of what is coming.  But when it just says, "Check out 'El Sapo,'" there is a little room for questioning what that means.  El sapo is "the toad."  Check out the toad?  What are they talking about?  But then when you see it...

Toad.

Not carved, it just looks like that.  So, yeah, check out el sapo.

After that it was on to Cafayate.  As mentioned, this is a wine-producing area.  On this side of the Andes, the conditions are good to grow grapes, particularly malbec grapes.  As a result, the malbec wine industry in Argentina is huge.  How big?  Buy wine from a lady in a barrel on the side of the road big.  That's how big.

What's this called?  Wine?  Ok, I'll try it...

This lady in a barrel was located outside of a vineyard/bodega.  You could take tours of the vineyard and, presumably, buy their wines.  However, if you didn't feel like driving all the way to the bodega, they had highway-side service (at the same price as the bodega!!!).

After securing our purchases, we finally made it to Cafayate.  This was a very cute little town.  However, the thing that made it cute, it's isolation, laid back attitude and old-world sensibilities, are also the things that very nearly turned Mark and Anne into murderers.

So the issue was blood sugar.  Let me explain.  Anne, Mark and the HBomb rolled into Cafayate around 2 pm.  They went to the hotel (which was killa*, more on that later) and checked in and relaxed a bit.  Even took HBomb to the pool for a swim.

Let's hit the pool

When they were ready to go check out the town, it was about 4:30.  What they didn't know about Cafayate was two fold: (1) it was a siesta town and (2) it was almost all "en efectivo" (cash only).

First, siesta.  Hey, who doesn't love taking a break in the middle of the day, maybe going home and grabbing a 2-3 hour nap?  Sounds nice.  The problem for us was that the restaurants just shut down.  No one.  Nothing.  There were some people in the park near our hotel, but all of the cafes and restaurants were shut down.  Most of them were not planning to open until 8, but we were hungry at 4:30.  What to do?

First we walked around hoping to find a unicorn - a restaurant that was open.  We eventually found such a place.  It was a hot dog and hamburger place.  Not exactly a "local flavor" experience, but maybe getting a hot dog for HBomb would be a good idea.  We went in and ordered.  The lady working there swatted away some flies before telling us that she didn't have ANY of the things we wanted, except the hot dog.  But she wasn't going to fire up the stove just to cook a hot dog.  Really?  Really.  Working during siesta time but not filling orders that were too much work?  Let's call that the "working siesta."

Next we saw a restaurant that had just opened its doors and put out the "Abierto" sign, but there was a guy there walking around.  We flagged him down and asked if we could get a table.  He said no.  The restaurant doesn't open until 8 when the staff gets in.... So then why'd you put out the sign that says you're open, tough guy?

So at this point, Mark's blood sugar had dropped.  Mark is not diabetic (that we know of), so his blood sugar scale actually runs from "Will Ferrell in Elf" at the top end, to "Happy Guy" at the mid levels.  You don't need to worry about those levels.  It's when it starts to get to the "I will punch you in the face for a Pop Tart" that things get dicey.  And we were well past that, into the "I will burn down this whole town if I don't get a sandwich" territory.

So, luckily for Mark's criminal record, as well as for the good people of Cafayate, a little before 7, they encountered a guy at a restaurant who was setting out tables on the sidewalk.  We asked if he was open.  He said sure.  Hallelujah!

This, however, brought us to the precipice of issue #2: this was a cash only town.  It's 2016 - there are cash only towns?  Yep.  Apparently, this town has such crappy internet and phone connections that no one is willing to take credit cards for fear that they will not be able to get connected when it was time to pay.  We ended up facing this reality when trying to buy gas on the way out of town.  The gas stations said they couldn't take credit cards, only cash, because they couldn't connect to the grid.  Yikes!

But luckily on this night, the savior in the restaurant not only opened early, but also accepted MasterCard.  

Putting the "chew" in Chewbacca.

I don't remember what we ordered (it's Argentina, so I will guess steaks), but I know we ate like kings!

But we had now been served notice of the cash issue and went to the 2 ATMs in town.  One had a huge line and the other didn't.  That's weird.  I wonder why.  One way to find out.  We went to the less busy ATM and pretty quickly figured out why it was not doing much business.  Step one: insert card. Ok.  Step two, enter your code.  Bueno.  Step 3, select whether you want withdrawal or deposit by pushing the button corresponding to your choice.  Well, here we had an issue - that ATM did not have any buttons that corresponded to my choices.  So..... cancel transaction, go wait in line at the other ATM.  

Our room at Killa was called "El Paso" - which is Spanish for "The Paso"

So, then, having eaten and gotten cash, and really felt that we had EARNED our dinner and cash, it was time to go back to the hotel.  We loved this hotel, it was killer.  And Killa.  That was actually its name.  It was embroidered on the towels, pillowcases and..... robes!  

Killa.

2 out of 3 Americans Hate Salta

Anne maintains that Salta is a cute little city in northern Argentina.  It has pretty architecture and has been re-built a few times following battles and earthquakes and what not, which has led to it being a beautiful conglomeration of old and new, artistic and functional all at the same time.

Mark and HBomb thought it sucked.

First, Mark's complaints.  While Mark acknowledges that the city is indeed, pretty and historical and all of that jazz, he was upset by the traffic and the hotel.  The hotel was all like "if you steal a towel, we'll charge you $80."  I mean, how did they know I was planning to steal their towels?  Obviously, I was, but still.  There's a protocol to this stuff, hotel.  Very uncool.

HBomb had a more experience-based dislike for the city.  First, there was this statue of a green dude, apparently chewing on his lip for some reason.  It was in the main square and looked like a photo opportunity to tourists like Anne and Mark.  Apparently, HBomb thought it was a monster.  Thanks, but no thanks.  So, we moved on to the history and culture.

Mark, Anne and HBomb visited the Church of St. Francis.  It's a beautiful church with classical architecture and what not.

HBomb hated it.  He used the wildly-effective "wet noodle" method to escape from the stroller prior to entering the church.  So Anne and Mark each toured the church individually.  Anne mostly loved the whole experience.  However the Christmas decorations in this church, and the whole town really, threw her off.  The big thing is to put out a nativity scene.  And mostly, they are just like the ones in the U.S. - you got yer wise men, Mary, Joseph, some animals all in a manger.  The difference was the baby Jesus.  For some reason, all of the baby Jesuses had enormous heads, usually larger than the heads on Mary and Joseph.  Anne has to deal with enormous heads enough in real life and doesn't need that in her nativity scenes!!!

Relaxing in Purmamarca

After the harrowing drive through the mountain pass, Mark, Anne and HBomb made it to Purmamarca.  This was one of the "must see" stops on this road trip.  In fact, the Argentina side of the road trip was planned around this stop.  There is no big city up in this area (Salta is kind of big, not totally big, though) and the big attraction is the landscape.  There is a series of several small towns next to one another in this area and we stayed in one called Purmamarca, and then took beautiful, scenic drives to several of the others.

But first a word about the Purmamarca experience.  The big thing in this little town is the Piedra de los siete colores (~Stone of the 7 Colors).  There is a photo of it at the top of this post.  Here are some more:

Just before sunrise.

Surprisingly (or not), you could walk right up to it, but no climbing allowed.

The town is still small and not terribly busy, but there is a constant flow of tourists from the bus station to the town.  Other than the big rock, the town is known for local artisan markets and its historic church.  Mark very nearly missed seeing all of it.  Upon their arrival at the hotel outside of Purmamarca, Mark decided that he had arrived at the place he wanted to be.  The hotel had DirecTv and it was a Sunday.  After pushing a few buttons, we were chilling in Purmamarca with some NFL games on the tube.  We left it on the Spanish announcers option.  Even though they said "Gigantes" instead of "Giants" and yelled "Goooooolllll!!!!" instead of "touchdown," it was still better than listening to Aikman and Joe Buck.

HBomb administers nasal spray to a dozing Mark.

It had been a long drive through a high mountain pass, so we decided to spend the afternoon and evening in the very spacious room.  The hotel was like a motel, we drove up to our room and parked outside of it.  But it was very nice.  The room was like a suite and had a full size fridge and kitchenette.  The guy at the desk was awesome as well.  He didn't have room service, but he offered to cook up a pizza for us.  So it was looking like the beginnings of a very relaxing night....then the bikers rolled in.

About a dozen or so bikers rolled in as the sun was going down and took three or four of the rooms to our left.  Mark moved the car so that they could all park next to one another and then shared intel.  They had been road tripping from Brazil and were on the way to Chile (they were on the way to San Pedro).  We passed on our map of that area and told them that there was a gas station at the border but not another one for 160 km.  They gave us a little info about the drives around the area (we already knew it, but when a bunch of bikers want to give you some info, just listen and thank them).  Anyway, it turns out they weren't exactly Hell's Angels.  Once they figured out that we had a kid, they promised to get to bed early (and they did, mas or menos).  Thanks guys.

"To the Rescue!!!"

The next day we drove up the Quebrada de Humahuaca.  This is a valley in the province of Jujuy which mostly looks like the 7 colored stone pictured at the top of this post, but with different variations of color combinations.  We drove north to a small town called Humahuaca and found a small park for HBomb to work out some of his energy.  He went to this helicopter-go-round and demanded to ride for about 45 minutes.  As we went around in circles he yelled out "To the Rescue!" -  a line he knows from the SuperWhy program he watches from PBS.  In that show, the characters jump in spaceships (mas o menos) and go to the rescue, so he was imagining and playing.  Which was good.  Unfortunately, he pronunciation was terrible.  Somehow, the "res" in "rescue" had morphed to "effs" sound.  So it sounded like he was yelling "To the Eff-You!!!!!"

Gracias, amigo.

For the most part, Mark was the engine of the Copter-Go-Round.  However, Mark is no spring chicken, so when he needed a break, one of the local chicos stepped in to give HBomb a push.  You know what they say, the people are nicer up in the provinces.

After the playground time, the group went on to the next town.  One of the highlights of the very scenic drive was the cemetery on the outskirts of Maimara.  Maimara is a tiny little town, but on the outskirts of town was a very pretty little cemetery.  They have built up family crypts and plots on the side of one of the hills in a very pretty setting.

Finally, we needed to stop for souvenirs.  This place caught out attention on the way north, so on our way back to the hotel, we stopped in to check it out.

Although it looks like it could have been a subsidiary of Wall Drug or something on Route 66 in Arizona, it was actually a pretty sophisticated shop.  They had paintings, wine, cheese, ceramics, crafts and lots and lots of llama stuff.

Serious llama drama.

This is mostly because this area has lots and lots of llamas.  They use the wool to make everything from hats to shoes and it was available for sale here.  Unfortunately, HBomb was not in the mood to hand out with llamas on this particular day.  And since it was so hot and dry, Anne and Mark could not even imagine a possible use of wool.

Things You Might (think you) See at 14,000 Feet

The Licancabur Volcano bids us farewell as we leave San Pedro de Atacama.

After Anne's defeat at the Valle de La Luna, it was time to head out.  San Pedro was a fun little town, although quirky (you could order a drink there, but only if you also ordered food - they would not just serve you a drink at a bar), but it was time to move on.  It was also time to cross back into Argentina. The border between Chile and Argentina is mostly formed by the Andes Mountains.  The crossing we made was at Paso Jama, which sits at about 13,780 feet.  The road to the pass gets up to over 15 thousand feet on the Chilean side.  So hold on to your oxygen, ladies and gentlemen, it might be a bumpy ride.

Mark's mom doesn't want any blog posts that don't have at least one photo of HBomb.

You want wild donkeys?  We got wild donkeys.

The initial drive out of San Pedro was fairly eventful.  There was a nice view of mountains and high desert, as well as the occasional wild donkey or llama sighting.

Anne deals with the local traffic (llamas on the road in a no passing zone)

As we continued higher into the mountains, the traffic steadily dropped off.  The majority of other travelers making this trip were trucks hauling loads across the border.  Not a lot of people were doing the road trip through this part of Chile and Argentina.  We were the only weirdos giving it a go.  We also noticed a lot of shrines built on the side of the road, apparently to honor saints or mark the location of accidents.  Other than that, though, not a lot of signs of civilization for miles at a time (except the road, I guess, that's a sign of civilization).

Although it was still a desert (we thought) and we were at super high altitude, we did encounter some lagoons.  The whole area is a flamingo and wildlife preserve, and we did spot some flamingos at the langoons, although probably not enough to justify an entire preserve.

 Somewhere around here, we reached the highest point of our trip, over 15,700 feet.  Mark and HBomb definitely felt it, although Anne claims she didn't notice it.  HBomber dealt with it by sleeping and popping his ears.  Mark remembers feeling sleepy and happy that Anne was driving and not him.  He may have been acting a little goofy when the air got thin.

Mark exhibits signs of altitude sickness?

Eventually we crossed the border from Chile into Argentina.  The border crossing at Jama was much more efficient than the one we had crossed a week earlier.  They had the steps clearly marked (Paso 1, paso 2, etc) and the customs and passport control officers seemed to know what they were doing.  They even had a medical officer there to treat anyone with altitude sickness or other maladies.  We were no worse for the wear due to the altitude and actually felt pretty good at the border crossing, but we also had not yet realized that we had already reached the highest point on our trip (15K feet and change) and were actually 2000 feet lower than we had been.  We had some delay, which they explained was due to the fact that even though Mark, Anne and HBomb entered Argentina on visas at the same time and would be staying the exact same amount of time, each had a different expiration date on their visa.  This caused a bit of confusion, but before long we were on our way.

Salty

The whole area, including parts of Valle de la Luna and other parts around San Pedro, were coated with salt.  As the trip moved further into Argentina, the salt became thicker and more a part of the landscape until, eventually, we reached Salinas Grandes.

Salinas Grandes is a large salt flat in Argentina.  The highway actually crossed right through it, so you really couldn't miss it.  The salt flats stretch for miles and if you go deep into it, it becomes white and clear in all directions.  We chose to stick close to the highway, which meant we really saw just the fringes of the salt flats.  Additionally, there is some seasonal dirtiness that we encountered, meaning the salt flats were not going to be as bright and impressive as they might be at another time of year.  All that being said, it was still a pretty impressive sight.

Saltier....

Salt grande

After we crossed the border and the top part of the salt flats, we had just a couple of more mountains to traverse.  While on our way to the mountains in Mendoza had been a slow, gradual climb,  the way down in the province of Jujuy (pronounced who-who'-E) was abrupt and super curvy.

Garmin says: sharp left, sharp U turn, slight left, sharp right, sharp left,  etc....

It got dodgy on the way down the mountain.  As you might expect, cars took advantage of both lanes when making the hairpin turns.  Unfortunately, some of these are blind hairpin turns.  Anne, HBomb and Mark were a bit surprised to come around one of the corners to see a Ford Fiesta in their lane about 100 feet in front of them.  Given the strength of the driving skills of Argentines (i.e. not much strength), it was reasonably certain that we were going to have a head on collision with a Fiesta.  Luckily, the driver was on the ball and the (super handsome) driver of our vehicle kept his cool and everyone got back in their own lane prior to playing crash bang boom on the side of a mountain.

The road behind us....

So after a day that included leaving a desert, ascending the Andes Mountains, crossing an international border, then coming back down the other side of the mountains, we finally got eyes on the prize, which was our next stop in Purmamarca.

Purmamarca