Northern Argentina is full of cool stuff. Rocks, deserts, salt. Bigger rocks. A bridge. Stuff like that. And, yeah, maybe that doesn’t sound super-cool or anything but when you’re actually there and you see this huge rock that’s all weird-shaped and whatnot, you get a pretty different opinion, let me tell you.
So pretty much everyone agrees that the best way to see all the cool stuff around Salta and Jujuy and Humahuaca and wherever, is to rent a car and take a Northern Argentina road trip. By the way, “Jujuy” is pronounced “hoo-hoo-wee”. Not what you expected, huh?
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Anyway, like I was saying, we rented a car in Salta. A little Toyota. We always try to get the smallest car they have, partially because they are easier to drive and park on skinny little roads in the strange little towns we usually go to, and partially because those cars are usually the cheapest and when it comes to spending money on rental cars, we usually try to pay as little as we can. Although I still miss the cool orange Fiat we got in Barcelona. It was small, too, and pretty cheap, but so much oranger than any of the other cars we’ve rented so far.
So we drove that little Toyota to a place called Tilcara in a really nice valley called the Quebrada de Humahuaca. Tilcara is a small town with lots of adobe houses and the odd palm tree and loads of places selling llama stuff. Not, like, llama wool or hooves or testicles or anything, mostly just souvenirs and toys and things that LOOK like llamas. A lot of them were real fuzzy. Enough to make Laynni think twice. She was really tempted by the alpaca sweaters. I think they call them that because they’re made from alpaca wool, because most of them were way too small to fit on an alpaca. Who knows what goes on behind the scenes, though?
In 2009, we took a bus from Bolivia down into Argentina and we stayed in Tilcara for 2 nights. But now we don’t remember anything from that time, not really. The only reason we even know we stayed there is because I read it in my own blog. Memories, eh? Even after spending 4 more nights in Tilcara, we still didn’t recognize much. Maybe the one bridge, kinda. Maybe the town’s just changed a lot, or maybe we’ve just been to lots more dusty little towns like Tilcara. Or maybe after our last visit some mysterious guy in a suit wiped our memories, Men in Black style. Maybe there’s a lot more to Tilcara than meets the eye.
Just down the road from Tilcara is another dusty little village called Purmamarca. We thought there were lots of tourists in Tilcara but, man, that was nothing compared to Purmamarca. It had way more tourists, way more cafés and bars and even more alpaca sweaters, if you can believe it. Plus, scarves and llama pillows and llama keychains. The whole shebang, really.
Most people go to Purmamarca to see the coloured hills. Which is funny, because that’s why we went, too. We walked around Paseo de los Colorados looking at the coloured hills and taking photos and things like that. The hike was pretty easy, just the one hill, not even too big. Once we took a little detour up a ravine, you know, to be a bit adventurous and that, and it got really narrow and reddish and at one spot there was a little shrine with a pile of money, I guess offerings to the god of the rocks or something. Or maybe the god of colours. Or god of ravines. I doubt it was specifically for the god of coloured rock ravines, though, I just don’t think a god like that would have enough to do, really. I left 10 cents, though, just to be safe.
We had some pretty good empanadas and a fairly normal beer on the square in Purmamarca, then took a few photos, you know, village streets and coloured hills and that, then called it a day. Actually, we did stop off on our way back at this hill by the road called Paseo de la Cruz. We followed a path all the way around the hill and ended up right back at our car, which was pretty handy, to be honest.
We stayed at a funky little adobe hotel in Tilcara called Karallantay that we mostly enjoyed. Our room had a set of bunk beds, which seemed kind of neat until we realized there were no sheets on them, so we just had to use the regular bed after all. There was a shared kitchen, too, which came in handy for breakfast and stuff, even though it wasn’t much of a kitchen. There was only one pan and one bowl. There were at least 20 kinds of tea, though. Except I don’t drink tea, so it didn’t take long for the novelty to wear off.
One morning we drove up to La Garganta del Diablo, which translates to “Devil’s Throat”. Latin America loves to name stuff that so we’ve been to lots of devil throats, more than necessary, maybe. Although that doesn’t really seem like the best description for a small, pretty waterfall, if you ask me. The trail was pretty bumpy, though, so at least that part made sense. And I got stung by a bee on the way out, which definitely had a hint of evil to it. On the way there, I got a photo taken with Lionel Messi. Not the real Messi, though, just a big weird statue of him in front of some farm. Gotta say, so far Messi seems pretty popular in these parts.
Then we drove up to Abra de Cortaderas above Huacalera on a tiny, rough, winding road. There were amazing views and no people so we took a couple photos and didn’t say much and went back down and continued on to Humahuaca, another very touristy town. At least it seemed touristy because of the cute little church, the narrow cobblestoned streets and the big, fancy memorial statue of some dude cheering for something, himself maybe. Plus, there were a lot of tourists.
I asked a cop for directions and he hooked us up with some guy selling tours to see some more coloured hills, this time in a jeep. Apparently it takes an hour to get there and you get an hour to look around and point at the best parts and stuff, then an hour to get back. We thought about it but decided to have a beer in the sun instead, which worked out better because some guy wanted to have a whole conversation about us sitting in the sun, then a lady sat on the curb and started breastfeeding. Seemed less touristy, I guess is the thing.
Laynni read about a restaurant in Tilcara with these really good braised ribs that everyone raved about and, not gonna lie, that sounded pretty good, but it turns out it didn’t open until, like, 8 or something, and there was just no way we were waiting that long, so we found the only restaurant in town already open at 6:30 and had some disgusting pizza instead. On the road we passed a dead pigeon, and right away I looked at Laynni because of that whole thing when she kicked a pigeon in Salta. By accident, she said, but who knows for sure? Plus, there was that one that flew into her head in Nepal. Things were definitely starting to add up.
The next day I talked her into doing a “big hike”, the kind with hiking poles and sunscreen and merino socks and all that. She said okay but I could tell by the look on her face she wasn’t real into it. The trail was called the “Paleta de Pintura” which apparently means “Painter’s Palette”, which is a pretty cool name, sure, but in the end it was mostly rocks and hills and a big valley and not a single painting, or even anyone working on a painting, at least not that we saw. We did have a dog with us for awhile but then he ran off chasing a rabbit and never came back. Hopefully it all worked out for him.
After a few days we left the valley and climbed a steep, winding road to a wide-open desert to a place called Salinas Grandes, which means “Big Salt”. On account of all the salt, I think. Most people just call them the “salt flats”, which makes sense when you think about it because the whole place really is very flat. And salty, we learned. It is a really popular place and loads of people take tours all the way from Salta that stop in Purmamarca to see the coloured hills then come up to the white salt flats. I think the different colours is what really gets people excited.
Everybody needs a guide to go out and see the salt, to make sure you don’t just like fill up on salt and beat it, I guess, and our guide got on a motorbike and told us to follow in our car. So we did and it worked, we ended up at some pretty cool places. Her name was Celeste and she told us lots of stuff about the salt flats, and the salt, and the little ponds, and tons of other stuff, I think, but she only spoke Spanish so I can’t be sure about all of it.
We told her our Spanish wasn’t that great, you know, even compared to young kids, so she started out speaking nice and slow which was super-helpful. But as she got more into it she started speeding up, really getting going, and it wasn’t so easy any more. Sometimes she’d speak real fast for, like, 2 or 3 minutes about geology and physics and, of course, salt and lots of salt-related things, I think, then I would translate it for Laynni, just say something like “She says it’s from volcanoes”. Then Celeste would kind of frown and sigh, then start talking again.
After we were finished learning about salt (Salinas Grandes is the 4th-largest salt flat in the world) she took some “perspective” photos of us. She had some pretty good ideas, better than mine, I’d say. Even my “I’m crushing Laynni’s head” photo didn’t work out great, probably because Celeste didn’t seem like much of a Kids in the Hall fan, or maybe she just doesn’t like Mark McKinney, which I get, he can be a bit much at times, he’s usually pretty good, though.
From there, it was a long 3-hour drive to a dusty little town called San Antonio de los Cobres. The road was all gravel and sometimes rough and we usually could only drive about 60 km/hr, which seemed pretty slow at the time but, boy, we had no idea how good we had it. We could have really enjoyed that road if we’d known. We saw some guanacos, too. And some alpacas with colourful ribbons on their heads.
To be honest, San Antonio de los Cobres didn’t look like a great place. But we didn’t try their empanadas so it’s hard to say. It was Halloween, too, and we didn’t think they celebrate that in Argentina but then we saw two adults with little plastic pumpkin candy baskets full of booze. So now we don’t know what to think.
Just outside town on an even rougher road is the Polvorilla Viaduct, this really tall train bridge across a steep valley. Most people come by train on popular tours from Salta and see if from the top but the road ended at the bottom so I needed to climb to the top, which was pretty tiring but no one else did it so I got to have a pee at the top, all by myself, with no one around to rush me or tell me not to pee there or anything like that. At the bottom you could pay 1000 pesos to take a picture with a statue of a condor but we didn’t want to.
Then we headed back to Ruta 40. That’s a really famous road that goes all the way from the top of Argentina to the bottom and tourists come from all over the world to see it even though it’s mostly crap. The road is crap, not the scenery, the scenery is really quite nice most of the time. Which is probably why people like it.
We didn’t really care about Ruta 40 but Google Maps said we should take it, on account of us wanting to get to Cachi, so we were like, yeah, sure, why not? The first part after we left San Antonio was quite rough, all washboarded and full of potholes and super-annoying, and a few places we had to slow right down to get through some spots that looked like maybe water had come through there at one time. Maybe recently, even.
I was getting tired of driving on crappy roads and we said we hoped this part didn’t last long because we still had, like, 140 kilometres to go. Then we joked and said, ha ha, what if this is actually the BEST part and, you know, hours from now we’re looking back and wishing it was still like that this, and how we should have appreciated it more at the time? And we laughed, of course, because we didn’t really think that, we were just being funny.
Well, it ended up not being so funny after all. Pretty soon we went through an even lower area with more rocks and more washouts and we had to drive really slow and, to be honest, it really sucked. But we could see the hills coming ahead and we thought, hey, maybe it will be better once we’re go up there.
But it wasn’t. No sir. From there we headed way up, adding twists and turns and steep drops to all the rocks and potholes and whatnot. It took a really long time and we passed a few 4x4s coming down the other way. I’ll bet they were surprised to see our little Toyota. Nobody said anything, though, so I guess they were cool with it.
We could see the top of the pass coming and after a long, long time we made it up there. The pass was called Abra del Acay, and it was high and cold. The sign said 4,895 metres, but on our GPS and the internet people said it’s actually 4,970 metres. Either one is pretty high, let me tell you. It is also the highest point on the entire Ruta 40, so that’s saying something, too. So we hoped the road would be better heading down the other side.
But it wasn’t. You might be surprised to hear that it was actually worse. A lot worse. We were surprised, too. A lot more rocks, bigger ones now, and tons of holes, bigger ones, and some really steep cliffs that always seemed to be steepest when the road was super-narrow, sometimes even partially washed away, so we had no room to avoid the biggest rocks or go the best way to not bottom out or any of that important stuff. But, you know, hitting rocks seemed better than sliding off the side and down the cliff, so I think we made the right choice most of the time. If we didn’t know better, we’d think maybe people shouldn’t really be driving on that road. Not us, anyway. Really beautiful, though, so that was cool.
Getting down that road took a long time, and felt even longer, I think, because we were so stressed and everything, wondering if maybe we were going to find a spot we couldn’t get by. Because we weren’t too pumped about turning around and going back, that’s for sure, and it’s not like there was anywhere to turn around anyway. And going back up to the pass in reverse would probably suck even more that going forward, I figured.
But we kept puttering along and eventually made it down to this really nice valley, with a stream and lots of green trees and red rocks, kind of like an oasis or something. Plus, it was a lot flatter now. So it made sense to think the road might be better from there.
But it wasn’t. At least we weren’t worried about falling off a cliff any more but, for some reason, the road kept crossing the stream, back and forth, like when they were building it they couldn’t make up their mind, or maybe the people who made it all had big trucks, so maybe crossing streams is, you know, fun for them, more fun, probably, than it was for us. Like I said, our car was pretty small so crossing the stream all the time sucked, especially when you couldn’t tell how deep the water was. We mostly just assumed it would be fine because, like I said, we didn’t really have a choice any more.
And mostly it was fine, other than a few surprise rocks and the one time the tires started spinning in the water and we got really tense for a second thinking, uh oh, what if they don’t stop spinning? I mean, we’re basically normal strong, not terrible I don’t think, but probably not pushing a car up a hill out of a stream strong, if you know what I’m saying. But luckily the tires did stop spinning and we got out again and eventually the road kind of went away from the stream and even though it was pretty and all, we were still kind of relieved about that. Ahead we could see the valley getting flatter and wider and even though we were kind of grouchy and kind of feeling annoyed about things, overall, we hoped maybe the road would be better now.
And finally it was. We passed a couple farms and said “hey, that’s a good sign, right?” then an actual village where we looked at each other and smiled a little bit because, hey, we weren’t stranded on some shitty road up in the mountains or, you know, dead at the bottom of a gorge, so were definitely a little happy about that.
At one spot we got the car up to 60km/hr or so, and we both cheered. It was a fun moment. But when, a little bit later, the road changed to pavement, that was almost too much for us, and we didn’t cheer, just kind of stared straight ahead, trying not to cry, it was so smooth and beautiful, we thought maybe we couldn’t take it.
Altogether it took us 5 hours to drive 140 km, plus the 4 and half hours we drove in the morning. Which, looking back, is probably too much driving for one day, and way too much time to only drive that far. Now we’re thinking we probably should have gone a different way. Our car was a real trooper, though, mad props.
Cachi is cool. It’s a cute little town with a very nice square, a weird plain yellow church and lots of flies, but no flyswatters. We stayed in Cabaña Paraíso Cachi, a nice little cottage on a hill with a view of town and the hills and a really old dog who was curious but lazy and liked to hang out right next to the “Beware of Dog” sign, like it made him feel tough or something, like in the old days.
We stayed for 2 nights and rewarded Toyo the Toyota with a day of smooth highway driving to some of the coolest sights around Cachi. We weren’t really in the middle of nowhere anymore, at least not as much, and we started seeing lots of tourists again, mostly people on more tours from Salta.
First, there was Los Cardones, this huge field of cacti, all different shapes. One made us think of those Inflatable Tube Men you see at car dealerships and tire shops. I tried to be one for a minute but it was harder than I expected, probably because I have bones and joints and stuff, not just air.
Argentina also seems really proud of the Recta del Tin Tin (Tin Tin Straight Line), this 500-year old road with a weird name, but we weren’t sold on it. It’s just this really straight road, with no turns for, like, 18 km, and apparently that is so unusual in Argentina that it is now a famous tourist attraction. The tourism website called it an “incredible stretch of road” but, I don’t know, it didn’t seem that cool to us, maybe because it would be one of the shortest stretches of straight highway in Saskatchewan. I did enjoy driving on it, though, at least for awhile, just cruising along with two fingers on the wheel, nice and cool and that, and I even said to Laynni “hey, I almost forgot how easy driving can be”. Which made her chuckle a little. But then I almost fell asleep and I remembered that, yeah, it’s always something.
Next stop was at the Mirador Ojo del Condor, which means Eye of the Condor, which was a low hill you could climb and look out over the cactus fields and see the mountains and all that. But, I mean, don’t get me wrong, it was nice enough, it just seemed like most condors would have a better view than just looking out from a hill a little bit higher than the road, even with just one eye.
And that was that for the straight road, right away we were back into the curves and climbing up hills and going through little valleys and stuff till we got to Piedra del Molino. The name means “millstone” but it was actually just a really tiny stone church. At first there were only a few other tourists there but then, all of a sudden, three tourist vans showed up and suddenly there were people everywhere, way too many, I think, considering how small that church was. No joke, we got the hell out of there.
I think our favourite part of the day was walking in Valle Encantado. That means “enchanted valley” which seems unlikely, because it seemed like a pretty normal valley to me, no surprising spells or magic stuff or even reclusive wizards, at least not that we saw. Mostly it just seemed like Scotland but with more birds.
The next day we were back on Ruta 40 for, like, 5 hours, which meant more gravel roads and dust and washboard. Not sure that road is my favourite, all things considered. The scenery was okay but not as good as the other days. Except in the Quebrada de las Flechas, that section was pretty cool. The name means Canyon of Arrows, they say because the rock formations look kind of like arrows. A bit of a stretch, really, but it is definitely pretty neat.
We saw lots of motorbikes but not many other cars except for a black Range Rover that tailgated us for awhile then decided to pass on a blind corner, then just stopped in the middle of the road to take photos or something while we waited behind him. And Laynni was excited to try the chips she found that were both ketchup AND barbeque flavour. But they weren’t really much of either one, she said, and it made her a bit owly for the rest of the day.
The road finally changed to pavement right before we got to Cafayate and we were excited again that there the car didn’t have any new shakes, rattles or shimmies. There are lots of hotels in Cafayate and we stayed at one called Cerro de la Cruz that was kind of like a motel except the cars go on the inside and have to park really carefully because there wasn’t nearly enough room for all of them, even though they had a parking chart and everything.
Cafayate is a big wine destination but we don’t drink wine so I thought about not even mentioning it but, you know, figured it couldn’t hurt. In the morning there was bird shit on our windshield and also some red stuff that looked like blood, maybe bird period, I guessed. But then I thought, hey, do birds get periods? And if they do, how do they deal with it? I mean, without hands? Not easy, I bet.
The last day of our big road trip we drove from Cafayate back to Salta through the Quebrada de las Conchas (Shells Ravine) and there were loads of tourists sites along the way. So the plan was just to hit them one after another – stop, wander, take some photos, get back in the car, crank the AC, drink some water, head off to the next one. It was a good plan, I think, and worked pretty good until we started running into all the people coming out on tours from Salta. It was Saturday so this was probably a big day for tours and such. It sure seemed like it.
First up was Los Medanos, a sort of medium-sized sand dune. The views were interesting, I guess, mostly because of the mountains way far off, and the curious German Shepherd who kept sniffing me. I never could tell what he decided.
Los Colorados was much cooler, a bunch of huge red rocks and red cliffs and a little canyon full of cactus and normal-coloured rocks. Plus, we were the only ones there so, you know, pee wherever, right?
The Quebrada las Conchas viewpoint was fine, I guess, then I really liked the Mirador los Castillos, even though Laynni said she didn’t really get the castle part. Well, they’re kind of square like castles, I think, I said. She just kind of grunted like she wasn’t really buying it, though.
Las Ventanas were supposed to be some arches and “windows” in the rocks, plural. Well, we found one and it worked well enough for what we had in mind.
El Obelisco was tall and pointy, not nearly as tall and pointy as real obelisks but, you know, as far as rocks go, it definitely had an obelisk feel to it. El Vagino, on the other hand, was a stretch, I think. I mean, I’m no expert, but it was just kind of a crack in the rocks which, ok, sure, I can see the connection, but the rest of it just didn’t really match up. Too rocky, mainly.
Sendero los Estratos, though, was a cool ravine with some slot canyons with ridges and coloured lines, like “stratas” I guess. We ran into a family there and the woman was wearing a Lululemon belt bag just like Laynni’s so right away we knew we could probably say stuff in English if we needed to. It didn’t really come up, though.
One of the most popular sights is this big rock called El Sapo because they say it looks like a frog. I’m not so sure, although I guess it looks a little more like a frog now that someone put a white rock where the eye would be. But it still doesn’t have any feet, webbed ones or regular ones, and there is no real mouth and I think that flat, wide weird mouth is kind of what makes a frog a frog, if you ask me. Another guy was there looking at it at the same time, except he looked a little more impressed, like maybe it was actually really similar to the frogs where he lived. He asked if we wanted a photo of the two of us in front of it but we definitely didn’t, although we were still nice about it, even though Laynni kind of accidentally laughed out loud when he asked.
At Mirador Tres Cruces we ran into the first big set of tours from Salta, and all sorts of people were there, milling around, climbing rocks, taking photos, looking bored, stuff like that. They were all sweating, though, because it was getting pretty hot at that point. We got stuck in a long line heading up the trail to the main viewpoint and it was real slow and confusing because some people were going up while some tried to go down and there was only one railing and some people weren’t in such great shape and were finding the hill pretty tricky, like the heavy guy in front of me, his back was so sweaty, it was hard to picture it drying anytime soon. Their van probably had AC and all, but still, there was just too much sweat, I think. It was going to take awhile.
The next stop was at this round opening in the rocks where we were surrounded by tall cliffs that they called The Amphitheatre, I guess because of the shape and the way the sound echoed around in there. It was hard to tell, though, because there was a guy playing the trombone the whole time and, yeah, we could definitely hear it, really loud, like, but it wasn’t a very big place so I think we would have heard it no matter what. Plus, it didn’t sound very good.
Then the last stop of the day was at another La Garganta del Diablo, this one was a smaller canyon with no waterfall, we’re not sure what the “devil” part of it was. Maybe the slippery rock that made it a bit harder to climb up into the canyon? Or maybe it was a bit more evil further in. So we decided not to chance it and went back to the car to eat our lunch instead. Which was probably for the best because the last couple we saw go into the valley never came back. Sure, we were only there for about 15 minutes, maybe they weren’t done exploring. Or maybe they were dead. Either way, we needed to head back to Salta so I could watch the Arsenal game.
When we dropped the car off I told the lady sorry about all the dust and she just laughed, like, maybe most of the cars are dusty when people drop them off. Or maybe she was laughing about some inside joke I didn’t know about. But it was probably about the dust. Anyway, we made it to our new Salta hotel by 4 pm.
So, yeah, I’d say it was a pretty good road trip.
Our Northern Argentina Road Trip Map
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