I thought our 3 day tour to Cachi and Cafayate was amazing and it was. But when we headed north to the Jujuy area and in particular the hills surrounding Purmamarca we often looked at each other in disbelief. The red, orange, brown, blue, green and even purple colour seen is sometimes referred to as a painters palate, something not often seen in real life. Even some of the colours like the green in particular was a shade I had never seen in nature before. I could have spent hours just gawking at the beauty before me.
There was more to captivate us as we continued on to Humahuaca and then back to Tilcara where we visited some Inca ruins before stopping for the evening. There we toured the market before filled our bellies with llama and quinoa stew.
Thinking we had seen the best on this tour we were greeted with more surprising sights the following day. A winding road that climbed to 4170 metres put us on top of the mountain range before we descended 1000 meters or more to Salinas Grandes (salt flats). What a sight to see! Being from Canada it looked like an enormous ice rink that you could walk on. We learned about how the salt is harvested and used, before we continued on.
We were now in a large puna area, flat and surrounded by mountains. Before long we left our paved road behind and headed down a sand and gravel road that appeared to be out in the middle of nowhere. How our driver/guide Graciela navigated this road was impressive. The water from recent rains left behind pools of water on the road, big ruts from other vehicles and sudden detour routes around road sections that were still not passably.
As we bounced along in the vehicle we kept our eyes peeled for herds of animals. And we saw many; goats, sheep, donkeys, cows, guanaco and llama in many different colours. We even spotted a few homes and herders, hearty souls to brave it in this barren and windy back country.
In San Antonio de los Cobres we stopped for lunch and although I thoroughly enjoyed the back country driving it was nice to get on pavement again. The almost two hour drive back to Salta rewarded us once more with more mountains of a different kind along with intermittent colours that we stopped to try and capture in a picture. But nothing can really show the depth and spectacular beauty that only the eyes can behold. You have to see this area yourself to appreciate it.
