Behind the Wheel Again...
Well I found out the hard way that there isn't much to do in Cordoba, that is unless you're between the ages of 18 and 22, and like the college scene, which I've thankfully outgrown. So Mie and I would spend only one rainy day in Argentina's university city with it's seven colleges and thousands of co-eds. The only excitement came when one hostel worker, who was quite taken with Mie's nose piercing, informed us that the bus drivers of the city were striking (though her exact word was "stroking") and the buses out of Cordoba would be delayed for at least three days, which was three days longer than either of us were willing to wait. At one point, Mie declared she would hitchhike if necessary and I believed her. She's just crazy enough. But after a frantic rush to the bus terminal we discovered, to our infinite relief, that our bus company was not one of the aforementioned striking companies.
So we left Cordoba and arrived in Salta where it was still raining. After a few hours of walking around and talking to different tour companies, and after our horseriding plans fell through, we learned the best thing to do in Salta was to rent a car and explore the surrounding provinces. The only snag was that we needed at least one other person to make it cost effective, by which I mean cheaper than a tour. Fortunately, Lady Luck smiled on us again and delivered us a Swiss girl, who's name Mie and I never actually learned even after two days of being in a car with.
It was a strange sensation to be behind the wheel again and at times, driving around a city like Salta where the majority of roads have no lights and no clear rule indicating right of way, terrifying. But we managed to leave the city early the next morning without causing a major vehicular accident or getting lost, and then we were on our way. At first the scenery was good but not amazing, simply due to the fact that the sun was hidden and it cast all the mountains, which would normally be a bright spectrum of colors, with a brown beige brush. But as the day progressed, the sun persisted and burned off the cloud layer and flooded the valley we were driving through in violets, reds, browns, and greens.
Further north, we came upon a small salt flat. While I thought it was fairly impressive, Mie, who had already seen the largest salt flat in the world in Bolivia, didn't think much of it. But we did stop long enough to get out and take some amazing pictures in the stark, white, and desolate landscape. Standing in the middle of a sea of white which my mind kept insisting must be snow, with the sun blazing down on me, it felt literally like being on an alien world. The horizon stretched out before, casting a brillant reflection of the sky off the low water table floating on top of parts of the salt flats.
Afterwards, we continued east, the landscape changing by the hour. By the time we got to the little northern Argentine town where we would spend the night, a scant hour or so from the Bolivian border, it was already dark. The next day, we had an early start toward the city of Jujuy. As we drove farther south, the bleak landscape that had been our companion for the whole previous day fell away and was replaced by mountains and hills blanketed in lush greens. This transition was further acentuated when we took the longer but more scenic Route 9 back to Salta.
Route 9 was a narrow road winding its way through the mountains between Jujuy and Salta. Years of overgrowth had created leaving tunnels of trees, their branches reaching over the road to block out the sun in a canopy of gently swaying green. The road, while barely large enough for one car, was in fact, two way. That made coming around blind turns especially harrowing and I don't I ever got above 30 kph. I'm not sure what that is in miles, but I doubt its very fast. Still, as I saw packs of motorcycles going the opposite direction, I was struck with a serious case of envy. Despite the tedious slow driving, the scenery more than compensated making it one of the more enjoyable parts of the trip, at least for me.
After we got back to Salta, we dropped off the Swiss girl and continued further south to Cafayate. Along the way we saw some incredible rock formations, some of which I'm sure had to be man-made, including one that was shaped like the Virgin Mary. The day was swealtering hot and our AC didn't work. To compound matters, we were low on gas by the time we turned around and headed back. Mie's constant stopping for pictures every two to five minutes didn't help things either. Finally we agreed only to stop every ten minutes or so. There was so much to see but running out of gas in the middle of nowhere didn't appeal to either of us. Luckily we found a gas station before becoming stranded and made it back to Salta safely. It would be my last adventure in Argentina, by far my favorite country on my trip thus far, before heading off to Bolivia the next day. I could only hope that it treats me half as well as Argentina had.
So we left Cordoba and arrived in Salta where it was still raining. After a few hours of walking around and talking to different tour companies, and after our horseriding plans fell through, we learned the best thing to do in Salta was to rent a car and explore the surrounding provinces. The only snag was that we needed at least one other person to make it cost effective, by which I mean cheaper than a tour. Fortunately, Lady Luck smiled on us again and delivered us a Swiss girl, who's name Mie and I never actually learned even after two days of being in a car with.
It was a strange sensation to be behind the wheel again and at times, driving around a city like Salta where the majority of roads have no lights and no clear rule indicating right of way, terrifying. But we managed to leave the city early the next morning without causing a major vehicular accident or getting lost, and then we were on our way. At first the scenery was good but not amazing, simply due to the fact that the sun was hidden and it cast all the mountains, which would normally be a bright spectrum of colors, with a brown beige brush. But as the day progressed, the sun persisted and burned off the cloud layer and flooded the valley we were driving through in violets, reds, browns, and greens.
Further north, we came upon a small salt flat. While I thought it was fairly impressive, Mie, who had already seen the largest salt flat in the world in Bolivia, didn't think much of it. But we did stop long enough to get out and take some amazing pictures in the stark, white, and desolate landscape. Standing in the middle of a sea of white which my mind kept insisting must be snow, with the sun blazing down on me, it felt literally like being on an alien world. The horizon stretched out before, casting a brillant reflection of the sky off the low water table floating on top of parts of the salt flats.
Afterwards, we continued east, the landscape changing by the hour. By the time we got to the little northern Argentine town where we would spend the night, a scant hour or so from the Bolivian border, it was already dark. The next day, we had an early start toward the city of Jujuy. As we drove farther south, the bleak landscape that had been our companion for the whole previous day fell away and was replaced by mountains and hills blanketed in lush greens. This transition was further acentuated when we took the longer but more scenic Route 9 back to Salta.
Route 9 was a narrow road winding its way through the mountains between Jujuy and Salta. Years of overgrowth had created leaving tunnels of trees, their branches reaching over the road to block out the sun in a canopy of gently swaying green. The road, while barely large enough for one car, was in fact, two way. That made coming around blind turns especially harrowing and I don't I ever got above 30 kph. I'm not sure what that is in miles, but I doubt its very fast. Still, as I saw packs of motorcycles going the opposite direction, I was struck with a serious case of envy. Despite the tedious slow driving, the scenery more than compensated making it one of the more enjoyable parts of the trip, at least for me.
After we got back to Salta, we dropped off the Swiss girl and continued further south to Cafayate. Along the way we saw some incredible rock formations, some of which I'm sure had to be man-made, including one that was shaped like the Virgin Mary. The day was swealtering hot and our AC didn't work. To compound matters, we were low on gas by the time we turned around and headed back. Mie's constant stopping for pictures every two to five minutes didn't help things either. Finally we agreed only to stop every ten minutes or so. There was so much to see but running out of gas in the middle of nowhere didn't appeal to either of us. Luckily we found a gas station before becoming stranded and made it back to Salta safely. It would be my last adventure in Argentina, by far my favorite country on my trip thus far, before heading off to Bolivia the next day. I could only hope that it treats me half as well as Argentina had.
posted by Z at
8:50 AM
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