Lads on tour(s) - part I

SAN SALVADOR DE JUJUY, ARGENTINA - 25th March 2010

After two long days of bus tours, both involving waking up at 6.15am, Tom and I can be forgiven for having a lazy day. Despite going to bed earlier than I have done at any other time in 2 months here in South America (11pm), we still struggled out of our damn comfortable Cassa del Barros beds for a 10am breakfast, and at this stage have achieved little else today.  Tales of travel must be told, however, and we begin this episode bright and early on Tuesday morning as Tom and I stumbled out of Las Rejas in Salta and into our Cachi tour minibus with nothing but a few medias lunas (croissants in everything but name) and a couple of coffees stopping us from collapsing into fatigue-induced slumber.

Cachi is a tiny little town that lies about 100km southwest of Salta as the condor flies, but the fun of the tour is the spectacular 4 hour, 155km drive there via Cuesta del Obispo; combining rising latitude with a route that begins in riverside, jungle-type forest, it progresses up a few thousand metres to offer some stunning mountain-side scenery and continues to flat, cactus-filled desert as far as the eye can see, ultimately leaving you in Valles Calchaquíes, where little Cachi sits on what used to be the main route across the Andes.  I could wax lyrical about each of one of these fantastic landscapes, but will let some photos do the talking instead.

Condors deserve more than a passing mention. These eagle-like birds of prey (right), ubiquitous with this part of the world, grace the skies in and around the huge, towering Andean valleys, where the valley floor disappears under hundreds of metres of depth and cloud cover, and the height of the bordering mountains is more often than not concealed behind the hazy mass of this same cloud. The condor, patrolling these vistas, will never be seen alone - they mate for life (fairly rare among birds) and are totally loyal to their partner, to extent that that when a female dies, the male will, apparently, commit suicide by flying high into the sky before nosediving, kamikaze-style, like an arrow back down to earth.  This "romantic suicide" is just for males, mind you - if it's the female left behind then she'll just float off and find herself a new lad condor and pick up where she left off.

The fact that there is scant scientific evidence for these "romantic suicides" doesn't stop tour guides (like ours) proclaiming them as gospel truth - the reality of knackered, 50+ year old birds just running out of steam and falling to a grim death clearly wasn't so appealing to the ancient Incas, who considered condors a sacred link between the sky and the underworld.  Either way, we had this explained to us at the top of a mountain where Tom, Keith (a Mancunian who was the only other English-speaker on our tour) and I were being entertained and frustrated in equal measure by the audacity, stupidity, or general antisociability of some woman who, it seemed, had set herself the goal of single-handedly ruining as many photos as humanly possible.  Atop of this hill stood a chapel and, adjacent, a solitary cross looking out over the cloud-filled valley.  Clearly, everyone is going to want to take photos of this - the most poignant landmark at a beautiful location.  So where does the stupid woman decide to walk over to and plonk her butt?  Right on the base of the cross - right when all 3 of us have our cameras pointing right at it.  In all seriousness, it could not have been more patently obvious what we were trying to do and, given she proceeded to sit for a good 10 minutes, she'd have been hard pushed to do a better job of pissing on a parade.

Nonetheless, the photos were eventually taken, and for your enjoyment can be found below.

Lunch in a traditional little place outside of Cachi saw some excellent meat consumption (asado - chicken, sausage, beef - proper man food*), and the hour we had to explore the little town itself proved to be more than enough to see some random archaeological bits and pieces in a museum, get ourselves some ½ peso ice cream (8p),watch a dog bite off far more than he could chew and spend half an hour unsuccessfully attempting to dislodge the meat from his big canine tooth, and finally tie Tom to "the death swing" (see right). 

With the hour expired, it was back on the minibus for the ride back to Salta - a ride I can tell you absolutely nothing about save the fact that minibus seats are surprisingly conducive to shut-eye.  But R&R wouldn't last long - once back in Salta I got turfed out of Las Rejas as it was fully booked on the third night, so was forced to wander a few blocks down the road to Hostel Quara which, to be surprise and slight chagrin, turned out to be cleaner, more comfortable, with better (or at least hotter) staff and all for about half the price!  Still, there was minimal time to enjoy the surroundings; 24 hours on from yesterday's failed attempt, tonight we were hitting La Casona del Molino come what may.  What we had learned from yesterday's debacle was that walking was a bad idea, so the three of us (Keith having joined our motley crew) hopped in a cab and enjoyed a couple of rounds of excellent Salta Negra beer accompanied by many an empanada, before some excellent main courses (I went for locro, a local speciality in northern Argentina and Bolivia that is essentially a massive beef stew).  The food was good, but the charm of the place and the source of its reputation is its clientèle.  Every night, loads of locals head over to the place to eat, drink, and be merry, but most importantly bring all their instruments and (once a critical level of alcoholic consumption has been reached) strike up a good old fashioned sing-song.  Great times.

Waking up 6.15am had been anything but fun, but the next day's tour to Humahuaca involved a repeat performance - rendering a savage night out very much off the cards...

(to be continued...)

* Ed Sherrington would certainly approve