headed west

This is me, delighted that an expert mini-van driver was the one to bring us up this road - it had more hairpin bends than I can begin to count (more coca leaves, though I think we only went up to about 10, 000 feet today).  Stunning scenery: first forest, then the altiplano: impossible to photograph, at least from a moving vehicle, and convey the full scope and magnificence of it all - and completely unspoilt (no lithium mines in these parts: that would be yesterday).  The road, I should add, is a dirt road.

It seemed to be something of a local food tour: we kept stopping (a) for the view (b) so that we could stock up on local delicacies like llama salami (which sounds like something from a children's book.  I did try a little piece: it was regrettably tasty).

And then into the Cardones National Park, which is full of, yes, cardones.  Not sure what they are in English ... not exactly cacti, but not not ... stretching as far as the eye can see ...

More viewpoints, more food for sale;

more cardones;

and then it was as though I'd space-traveled and gone to New Mexico: we were in the chile capital of Argentina.  I can only imagine they export a lot, since so much of their food is so bland.

More chiles drying in the sun, in an Abiquiu-like setting.

Cachi was a really lovely little C18th colonial town - very peaceful, and a long way from anywhere,

with time, for once, to sit and draw in the plaza,

and visit the very simple church,

Then back the way we came.  I'd seen several red-bedecked shrines on the way up, and wondered why. Remember Gauchito Gil, last seen on the back of a food truck in Bariloche, the Argentinian Robin Hood?  They are all shrines to him!

We went on a Cardones Interpretive Loop, and the subjects were waiting for their portraits.

And look who crossed our path!  Guanacos!  I also, very fleetingly, saw what can only have been a condor, and a lot of blue and yellow macaws by the chile drying spot.  But nature seems to have been very incidental in the minds of people in the van to food.  They had a very lively conversation about the best ways to cook quinoa.

The long and winding road, again.

And at our final pit-stop ... how could one eat them, however delicious and healthy their meat?

Just look at those eyelashes.  I wanted to bring this little guy home.

Evening view: rocks, river and goats.

And finally, one of the best meals I've had (no llamas involved): some pimiento flavored goats cheese, and a jar of big white beans marinated in vinegar and oil and spices and chile - bought from the stall I photographed above.  It may lack a tidy table setting, but I'm writing this ...

 

Headed north

An amazing day's outing, if a long one, to the Quebrada de Humahuaca, north of Salta, and very mountainous, and conspicuously more indigenous in its population (7.8%) than anywhere else I've been.  Above, a boy and his young llama; below, some stripey rock formations just before Purmamarca.

The entrance to Purmamarca (there are check points everywhere in this country);

the very lovely and simple church of Santa Rosa - founded in the C17th, though this building dates from the C18th;

street scene in Purmamarca.

And on to Huacalera: street art;

the town square;

a street ...

and after that, when we stopped in Humahuaca, I did the unthinkable, and left my cell phone in the van when we transferred to small cars to go to the summit where one can see the amazing rock formations of the Serranía del Hornocal.  I mean - how could I?? (though I suspect I could very well remember them better, as a result).  It was a long and rough ride up to 14,250 ish feet, with us chewing coca leaves against altitude sickness - I usually get a headache at 13,000 feet, and didn't, so I guess the worked.

Then back down to Humahuaca:

Then, driving back, a stunning visit (no photos allowed inside) to Uquia and its church: inside are one of the few complete series of Arquebusier Angels in the Andean colonial world (aka depictions of angels with guns, and in Spanish colonial uniform) - I've been fascinated by this genre ever since I saw such paintings in Denver Art Gallery.

This is one of the most meta photos I've ever taken: goats crossing the Tropic of Capricorn (that may not actually be true, since it shifts northwards by about 15 meters a year, due to changes in the sun's axis.  But hey, we got out of the van to see a marker for the T of C, and a huge sundial, so officially this is the line that delineates the boundary between the tropics and the southern temperate zone).

On the right, a California sweatshirt, on the young woman filling up her thermos that doubtless has mate leaves in it.  I realize why I'm so wary of mate: it's because the last time I had it was on an island on Lake Titikaka. and it - or rather, presumably, the water used to make it - gave me giardia, which was ... uncomfortable, for an age.

Overlooking Maimará - or rather, overlooking cemeteries outside Maimará - this gives a sense, in miniature, of the rock formations I can't show you: these are known as the Painter's Palette.

and then the clouds started to roll in - here, above a Saturday afternoon soccer game.

Today reminded me so much of the kind of travel I did thirty years plus ago, and it was brilliant - but, long.  And off again tomorrow!

 

more Salta

The Basilica Menor of San Francisco is remarkable not just for the elegance of its tall tower (round here, they call it a miracle that Salta has never recently been hit by a major earthquake), but for the carved marble curtains over its outer doors.  The inside includes a dome with Argentinian flags streaming down from it.

A few blocks away is the very lovely Convento San Bernardo, originally built in 1586 and used as a monastery and hospital by the Bethlemite Fathers - an order founded in Guatemala in 1658 and best known for providing hospitals and medical care in South America.  Mind you, this (a previous version? some of this?) was destroyed in an earthquake in 1696, and then rebuilt in the mid C18th.

which is when - at least one can see the date here! - this carob-wood door was carved by local indigenous artists.

Round the corner, this mural was on the facade of the local National Parks office: they don't have iffy NASCAR races and caged wrestling bouts in theirs, I think - but I'm off to one early in the morning, and will report back.

And nearby, a fish.

At last, I got into the cathedral when there wasn't a mass.

Then to the Anthropological Museum, where one isn't allowed to take pictures: I should think not, either, since the central attraction - "attraction"? - is the perfectly preserved corpse of an Incan boy who was sacrificed in the 1500s - that seems very recent - who was found in 1999, together with two other equally immaculate corpses (a girl of c. 13, a slightly younger boy around 4 or 5 - I think they rotate them in the display), frozen into the icepack and thermafrost at the top of a tall volcano on the Argentina/Chile border.  The Children of Lullaillaco were, like other similar victims, made to participate in ceremonial marriages in Cuzco before being walked back, drugged (they already had been fed coca leaves and maize beer for months to make them woozy), and then left, entombed, when asleep, to suffocate.  It's not surprising local indigenous people have mixed feelings about them being displayed, but I certainly learned a lot about sacrificial rituals (and Inca pottery - that I could draw - and ritual gifts with feathers or cameloids).  I think it was the fact that when these children were alive, the printing press had been invented; Chaucer was writing, and so on that made me understand a bit better than before why the conquistadores were so keen to - well, conquer.  Cultural and religious difference is one thing: child sacrifice maybe is another.

The Sala de la Escritora has a very comfortable huge day bed, to which I retreated to work, after that, before having a slow dinner here - and no, I did not have the llama carpaccio.  Imagine!!  At this time of the year, it's been mushrooms mushrooms mushrooms all the way.

 

to Salta

It was a long day traveling - off and into an Uber in Córdoba at 6.30 a.m., and arrived in Salta, in the north west, just about an hour before sunset.  Argentina is a huge country - but everything passes through Buenos Aires, unless one's driving, or taking (very) long-distance buses, so I'm feeling that I'm getting to know the airports - especially the Aeroparque - well.  Arriving into Salta was wonderful, with a backdrop of the high Andes, and then (after another Uber - a godsend here) a stunning hotel: my room is called La Escritora, and not just any old writer, but Juana Manuela Gorriti, a very radical nineteenth century writer who composed in a number of genres; lived in Peru and for a while was married to the president of Bolivia; and was very much a feminist, arguing for women to be integrated into intellectual, literary and political life; she wrote novels and short stories - oh, and she came from Salta, indeed.  Clearly this is the hotel room I've always been meant to have, with a bathroom decorated especially for me.

One thing I came here knowing something about, and want to learn more, are the ongoing protests against lithium mining in the region.

Here's the cathedral, by dusk

and by night;

here the rather stunning Basilica Menor y Convento San Francisco.

This was nearing the southern end, really, of the Spanish invasion (though obviously they pushed on south to Cordoba and beyond) so the streets have far more of a feel of a genuinely Latin American country, and things are more chaotic - many motor-bikes - it reminds me very faintly of Arequipa, in Peru.  More tomorrow!