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