After seven months of travelling in, out of, and through
Argentina, my final stop was its far north.
So I kidnapped one of Fer’s grad students, Flavia, a friend who I had
met two years prior when she was a student and I was helping teach the
Geobiology course, and we set off to do some exploring.
I picked up Flavia in her temporary home of Tucumán, or
rather I met her at the bus station after an overnight bus from Córdoba and we
both jumped on a bus from there to the city of Salta. From there, we picked our
way to the car rental agency for which I had what I hoped was a valid internet
voucher for a three-day car rental—I was a bit nervous since the price I had
found online was less than half what everyone else in the area charged, and I
was hoping it wasn't a scam. Turned out it was only a half-scam. First, the car
rental agency wasn't open when we arrived, but the hours on the door assured us
that it would open later that evening. So we went to a restaurant around the
corner and proceeded to order, in succession, everything on the menu only to be
told that they didn't have that (You don’t even have empanadas? Or coffee? Or beer? Seriously??) until finally Flavia
sarcastically asked what they did
have and we both ended up with water and salads. Two hours later, we returned
to the car rental agency, which was unaware of our booking but had a vehicle
available and was willing to honor the price on my printout, with one
exception: they wouldn't throw in the GPS unit and the extra driver that was
supposed to be included in the price. I tried arguing for a discount, but to no
avail. At least we had a car.
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| Our car (the silver one) picked up in Salta |
It was my first time behind a wheel since I drove up to
Portland from Los Angeles way back in August the year prior to drop my car off
at my parents’ house before flying to Santiago for the start of this whole
adventure. It felt good. Great. It felt great. God I love driving. Especially
in places like Los Angeles and Argentina where driving laws are generally
viewed as suggestions vs. rules, which turns getting from Point A to Point B is
like a contest to see who has the biggest balls / can be the fastest, most
cunning maniac. My favorite game. We tanked up on the way out of town
(Argentina is like Oregon, where there are station attendants who fill your
tank for you) and made a beeline south for Lago Embalse Cabra Corral, where
Fernando’s Ricardo had said we could find road cuts with extensive lacustrine
carbonate deposits, including stromatolites.
About an hour later, we found them. We had just turned a
corner and exited a tunnel of trees when I saw a gleaming bank of a roadcut to
my left. The color screamed carbonate, so I slowed, and sure enough I spotted
resistant benches that called to me. Flavia protested that we weren't there
yet, this couldn't be them, but I pulled over anyways to check it out. And it
was a stromatolite goldmine. Several benches of big, beautiful, brainy
stromatolites. Big concretions. Little
stromatoliltes. Stromatolites everywhere. We stayed and played for a while
before deciding, since the sun was setting, to keep driving up the road and see
if we could find any more.
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| Stromatolite! |
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| Flavia inspecting the stratigraphy |
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The cool thing about this particular site is that the formation (Yacoraite) is tipped such that the road cuts across its many layers, which means that you get
to drive back in time in a giant lake system (also argued to be shallow marine) as you follow the road. The
stromatolites we started with were toward the top of the formation,
representing the most recent deposits, formed around 68 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous (elsewhere in the formation, there are dinosaur bones and tracks, but who cares about dinosaurs when there are stromatolites?). As we took our magic drive back in time,
we saw alternations between shale and carbonates, reminiscent of the Green
River Formation in Wyoming where I did part of my PhD thesis work, saw some
bright red paleosols, big deltaic deposits, and plenty of things that I didn't know the meaning of but was too busy driving to look in the field guide. We
stopped a few more times and found more stromatolitic deposits, but the best
ones were the first ones, so we eventually decided to turn around and go back.
Since taking fossils and artifacts out of Argentina is highly illegal and I didn't want to risk getting arrested this time (I had to meet my aunt in Peru
in a week, otherwise I might have tried it. Getting arrested in a foreign
country is an item on my bucket list and getting arrested over a stromatolite
would make a great story) I didn't take any samples, but my field assistant may
have…
The sun went down and we set off in search of food, stopping
at a cavernous but empty (bad sign? We were too hungry to care) restaurant in a
tiny village on the side of the road. They had tamales. I loooooove tamales.
They also had beer, although it only came in a giant 1.5L bottle and, since
Flavia neither drinks nor drives, that left me with a lot of responsibility. I
had a few swigs, intending to cap it and save the rest for once we had camped
for the night, but was chased down on my way out of the restaurant. Apparently
you can’t take an open container of alcohol from a restaurant in Argentina.
This had never come up before, so I was unaware, but the waitress literally
chasing us down the street made for a pretty memorable scene (it was really good
beer!).
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| Tamales! |
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| Dinner: tamales & beer |
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I wanted to camp off in the hills somewhere, but Flavia
preferred a campground, deeming it safer. Not wanting to drag her out somewhere
where she’d be too freaked out to sleep, I went along with the “find a
campground” plan, although personally I always consider “no people” to be safer
(and quieter and better for a good night’s rest) than “with people”. In the end
we decided to head to the municipal campground back in Salta, which was
mentioned in Lonely Planet as one of the best campgrounds in the country, spent
an hour driving through what seemed like sketchy back-streets in Salta trying
to find the damned place, and finally found an urban campground surrounded by
the Salta ghetto behind tall barbed-wire fencing. Inside were strange toothless
men and party music blaring and I wanted to sleep anywhere but there, but it
was late, and we didn't really have other options, so... I drove—despite the
campground manager’s wishes that we camp next to him (heeeeellll no,
creeper)—to the far end of the campground which was darker (i.e., not directly
under a spotlight) and semi-quiet despite the neighbors up until the wee hours
of the morning drinking and chatting, set up my tent on the lawn, locked Flavia
(with the car keys) into the car, shoved in my earplugs, took a sleeping pill,
crawled into my sleeping bag, and tried to sleep. It wasn't ideal, but it was
better than driving all night. We woke up with the sun next to what turned out
to be an immense, dry swimming pool, which may have explained why the campground
got such a glowing Lonely Planet report in other years or seasons. We got the
hell out, stopping only for gas station pastries and coffee for breakfast on
the way out of dodge.
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| The giant swimming pool at the urban campground in Salta |
First, we went for a romantic drive through the jungle on a
windy narrow mountain road. After months of Patagonia, jungle was pretty novel.
So green! So lush! Then we passed the city of Jujuy and headed for the
mountains—the real ones, the Andes. Our goal: lunch in Purmamarca, home of the
Cerro de las Siete Colores (Hill of the Seven Colors). We were there by one. Flavia desperately
needed a restroom, so we booked it into the first café we found, but got a
familiar line: the only thing they had available for eating were cheese
sandwiches. Screw that, I said, so we offered to pay a dollar to use the
restroom and went somewhere else to get our food. Good thing, because we found
a great restaurant that served, get this, Llama steaks. They were delicious.
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| Llama for lunch |
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| Colorful wares for sale in Purmamarca |
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After lunch, we put the 4WD capabilities of our non-4WD
vehicle to the test and explored around the area trying to get a better view of
this so-called seven-colored hill. It was really impressive. I wished I had a
geologist with me to explain everything, but we had left the range of the field
guide (which was also in Portugese, making it a rather difficult read), and pulling out my laptop to consult the papers on regional geology I
had downloaded seemed like a good way to make my navigator puke and/or break my
laptop.
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| Exploring around the Cerro de las Siete Colores |
We continued on toward the heart of the Andes up a steep
half-dirt-half-paved road that switched back and forth through the desert up
into the mountains. We could both feel the altitude, the air tasted different, noticeably
thinner. We crossed rows of mountains, spotting snow in the distance, until dropping
onto the Antiplano, the massive high-altitude plateau (the largest outside
Tibet, and the visual similarities are striking) that characterizes much of
northern Argentina and Chile as well as most of Bolivia and southern Peru. We
drove on toward the Chilean border where we reached our next objective of the
day: Salinas Grandes, a huge salt flat (the third largest in the world) that is
twice as big as Utah’s famous Bonneville Salt Flat. We parked the car and
walked out onto the salt flat, Flavia quickly getting an altitude headache at
the nearly 3500m elevation while I felt my body responding to the low oxygen
levels (“Breathe faster! Faster!”). We poked around, hoping to see endoliths,
but although we did see faint colors in some of the hypersaline pools, there
was no life visible in any of the crusts we saw, although we didn't have rock
hammers with us to break away fresh chunks. It was beautiful, salt flats always
are.
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| Vicuña standing guard over the Andean Antiplano |
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| Salinas Grandes |
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| Salt sculptor working in Salinas Grandes |
I wanted to camp there, in the mountains, so we drove off on
a side road until I felt like we were far enough from where anyone could see
us, then turned the car 90 degrees and drove straight out into the sand rim of
the salt flats, avoiding deep sand as best I could (because wouldn't that be
exciting: getting my rental car stuck in a sand drift in the middle of the
Andes). The little 2WD rental handled like a champ on the uneven, soft terrain.
I drove toward cross-country toward the salt flat until the car was no longer
easily visible from the side road. I was hoping to get closer to the rim of the
salt flat, but decided not to take any more getting-stuck risks. It was a nice
spot, with 360 degree views of mountains and a nice view of the salt. We were
just in time for sunset. I quickly set up my tent, unpacked our dinner and a
bottle of wine I had bought myself, and we sat and watched the mountains turn
pink, and then purple, and then dark as we ate and drank wine straight out of the bottle (even Flavia, who doesn't drink, had a few sips). Flavia retreated back to the car, but I
laid with my head out of the tent for a long time.
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| Our campsite in the Antiplano |
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| Our campsite, as reflected in the bottle of wine we shared that night |
The stars were out.
Not just out. The altitude, the long distance from any towns
and sources of light, the dryness of the air, and the temporary absence of the
moon conspired to make probably the darkest night I had ever witnessed, and the
stars were like a glittering ocean overhead. The milky way was bright, and
other dull celestial clouds were visible. It was hard to sleep, I was so
awestruck by the show over my head. Eventually the moon came up like a
spotlight, and I had to bury my head inside my sleeping bag to sleep.
I was awake just before dawn, and sat in the sand and
watched the sunrise paint the mountains and salt flats with a range of pastel
colors. I felt peace again, something I had been missing in the previous month
of nonstop activity and travel. It’s like John Muir’s quote (John Muir has all the best quotes):
“Climb the mountains and get
their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into
trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their
energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.”
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| Llama tracks in the desert at our campsite |
The mountains have always been my cathedral, the place where I’m
reminded of my soul and my place in the world. If I go too long without
spending quiet time in them, I get antsy, agitated, nervous, stressed. I need
them.
Eventually Flavia woke up and we ate breakfast, packed up camp (although
I had intentionally parked it on top of a set of bushes, I was a bit worried
that the car might have settled into the sand during the night and would be
difficult to get out…it was fine), and made our way through a thick fog back down the Andes. We made
a detour to stop for lunch in the scenic pueblo of Humahuaca before continuing
back down to drop the car off in Salta.
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| The drive that morning looked like this. |
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| Flavia demonstrating the fierceness innate in Northern Argentinians |
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| Humahuaca |
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| The colorful, scalloped hills of the Quebrada de Humahuaca |
We made it to Salta just in time for
Flavia's bus back to Tucuman, and just in time for me to wait an hour and a
half for the car rental people to bother to show up so that I could drop the
keys off. I thought several times of just leaving the keys in the glove box and
dropping the car there for them to deal with on their own watch, but after
making a dozen phone calls was finally able to wake a napping person who
promised someone would be “right there”, “right there” meaning 40 minutes
later. I almost missed my bus back to Jujuy, but made it to the bus station
with a whopping five minutes to spare. And, of course my travel luck being what
it is, I happened to be walking through the main park en route to the bus
station just as the weekly pan flute circle started up, so I got a free show in
on my way.
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