Argentina - Salta I

One my first day in Salta I participated in an excursion called "Tren a las Nubes", which supposedly should track the path of this famous train ride between Argentina and Chile. Of course no travel guide includes the information that the train is not running anymore. They closed it a couple of months ago to renovate the tracks and the trains. The plan is to open next winter, however given what I have seen (nothing) I highly doubt that it will be reopened any time soon. Unfortunately like so many other things in Argentina there was no maintenance performed for a long time. The tracks look completely worn out and abandoned. Anyways, we were three tourists, two girls from France (Severine and Claudine) and our guide in a little Renault Kangoo. We started out at 7:00 am in the morning.

Our first stop was Pumamarca and the "Cerro de los siete colores" (The seven colored rock), as seen above.

Next we went to the little village of Pumamarca. Nothing really exciting here, an old church and a arts & crafts market targeted at tourists. Not to mention the fact that I got ripped off in the cafe, but noticed too late.

Pumamarca has a lot of little dirt roads, no pavements. Due to the ever increasing number of tourists there is a lot of construction and I would not be surprised if the village will use its charme soon.

Our next milestone was a mountain pass reaching over 4000m. It was a little road winding up the mountain, our driver speeding a little and passing trucks and buses on the way up. You could definitely feel the change in elevation.

What goes up, must come down ..... We were approaching the salt flats of Salta (in the background), straight down.

There are a few workers who dig these squares to produce pure salt. The salt on the surface is pretty "polluted" with dirt and other things, so they dig these squares 4 x 2 meters approximately and use the sun to evaporate the water. Upon finishing of this process there remains 97% pure salt.

Simple tables made of salt rock .... but it looked kind of mystic .....

Of course you can not dig salt all day long, so some of the workers picked up some skills and carve art work out of salt blocks, e.g. little llamas and other things. They are completely wrapped up in cloth as protection against the strong sun and the reflections from the salt surface.

A cemetery on a hill top, people around here that you are closer to the goods on a mountain top, that's why many sacrifices, holy places and cemeteries are on mountains.

Riding on a dirt road through "nothing" .... however there were lots of llamas and also donkeys.

Not to forget the Vicunas (same family like the lamas, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicu%C3%B1a for more details) that we saw as well.

Finally we reached a little town were we had lunch, I do not quite remember the name. We were an attraction for all the little kids in town and everybody tried to sell us something.

Next we explored some old pre-Incan ruins on top of a mountain, controlling access to three valleys at the same time. There are a lot of speculations why the city was abandoned, but no facts.

The cactus are pretty much the only thing that grows on the hill sides. It produces a fruit that is eatable, the wood can be used as fire wood or create art work.

Finally we reached the train tracks of the "Tren a las nubes", see more info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tren_a_las_nubes . The route with all its bridges (29 of them), tunnels (21), viaducts and protection against land slides and water is amazing. Also the zig zag approach that has been used to master the necessary gains in elevation. Here you see Captain Adventure crossing ''La Polvorilla'', a curved viaduct which is 224 meters long and 70 meters high.