Salta, Argentina - Day 3

Today I took another tour north of the city which had highlights of “train to the clouds”, the salt flats, and a 4200 meter marker. The train to the clouds is a train that goes up an extremely steep hill that uses a method called switch backs in order to ascend very steep mountains. The train goes from left to right on the track in a “Z” shape up the mountain instead of going straight up or around. The salt flats were amazing and provide some interesting pictures with the white background as a background to reduce depth perception. The 4200 meter mark (13,800 ft) was a marker on a hill that we drove up to and it was the highest elevation that I had been to so far. Just for perspective, the highest mountain in Europe is the Mont Blanc Massif in the Swiss Alps and that sits at about 4800 meters (15,775 ft) above sea level. Denver, the mile high city, is 1,609 m (5,280 ft). We DROVE to 4200 meters.

So I had a reservation to stay in Purmamarca that evening and get picked up by a car to go to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile the following morning. I would normally take a bus to San Pedro but the buses were fully booked for 2 solid weeks because it was the Argentinean summer vacation period and a lot of people are traveling. So I guess my question would be if you have that much demand that your booked solid for 2 weeks why not do one of two things – 1. Raise your prices to lower demand or make more money 2. Increase the supply of buses temporarily??? Helllooooo, no bus company should be booked solid for 2 weeks straight, rent some crappy busses and crappier bus drivers and fill the demand. Anyway so I had to pay $110 dollars for a 6 hour taxi ride. The travel agency, which had a monopoly on the cab rides to San Pedro, is loving the bus companies right now.

So I arrive in Purmamarca at 7pm and go to the hostel where I had a reservation and for some reason the hostel doesn’t have the reservation. So this girl from the tour and I walk around the town with our bags in search of a place, but every place is booked solid. Then we find out there is a rock festival going on in the next town and all the beds are taken. A Rock Festival? In a village in northern Argentina? OKAAAAAAY so how are they going to have enough electricity to support the concert? I don’t think the town had internet, and the village electricity was probably generated with a bunch of kids running on a hamster wheel or blowing on a wind turbine. We finally find a person’s house that put a ton of beds (like more than I’ve seen in one place outside of a mattress store or higher than I can count) in one room. Well beggars can’t be choosers and at this point in the night my back hurt from carrying my bag around for an hour or so. Thanks rock concert.

Salta, Argentina - Day 3

Salta, Argentina - Day 2

Today I took an all day tour of 4 small villages north of Salta which covered a total of about 250km or about 150 miles. These villages were my first taste of a more rural “traditional” Latin America culture which I was expecting when I started planning this trip. You know…the colorful traditional clothing, the unique handicrafts, the fresh foods made from local ingredients, and the dirty children happily playing with sticks and pig bladders. Ok so I didn’t see any animal parts being thrown around, but the rest of my perception (right or wrong) of South American living was unveiled today.

The first place was Purmamarca, a small village with the 7 colored mountains nearby. The second place was Tilcara, a small village about 2500 meters above sea level. The key to this city is the archeological site of Purcara de Tilcara, the ruins of a pre Inca Puracar people. The archeological site was atop a large hill which had a panoramic view of the area for protection from invaders. The third place we visited was Humahuaca, a UNESCO site for its fine example of pre Inca life and architecture. The fourth place was Jujuy, the capital city of the area. We also visited the marker for the Tropic of Capricorn, a major line of latitude in the southern hemisphere.

Salta, Argentina - Day 2

Luang Prabang, Laos - Day 3

I got to hike through elephant poop…barefoot.

So we stayed overnight in the village which was really fascinating. The villagers had a chief who was one of the taller guys in the tribe and had one of the best looking woman for his wife. But best of all…he had one of two TV antennas in the village. They hosted TV night where what seemed like the entire village squished into their living room and watched the wife channel surf the Thai TV channels.

The next day I woke up early around 6 am and it started raining shortly after. So we started hiking down the mountain after breakfast in a steady downpour. The trail was a complete mud slide. I would just slide down the mountain; and I had two sticks that I would periodically stick in the mud to stop myself from careening out of control. So for most of the hike the mud was the slippery variety which required a lot of effort to not fall off the trail. Then we hit another type of mud that was more clay like and it stuck to anything it touched. After hiking about 5 minutes in the clay like mud it would constantly build up on the bottom of my sandals until I was basically walking on stilts. Stilts that weighed 25 lbs. I couldn’t get the mud off my sandals it was caked on so hard. So I took my sandals off and proceeded to slide down the mountain barefoot. It was smooth sliding until I hit these HUGE pot holes which looked like a couple moon landings took place on the trail. I asked the guide what these were and he said that they were elephant footprints. Then I noticed the large mounds of poop scattered along the trail which were slowly “melting” into the trail as the rain mixed them in with the mud and made little poop pools in the elephant footprints. And I still couldn’t put my sandals on because I would be sliding all over the place – not that they would have offered much protection from the feces mud mixture. LOVELY!

Luang Prabang, Laos - Day 3

Luang Prabang, Laos - Day 2

So I decided to do a two day trek with an overnight stay in village. This would have been one of the highlights of the trip if it wasn’t pouring both days. Now I’d been traveling during the rainy season in South East Asia so I figured I would get stuck in the rain sometime but so far I had been lucky. The only rain that I got was a little bit in Sapa for a couple hours. It also had to happen on the days that I decided to do a trek. I was trekking with two girls from Italy and one from Spain along with our guide. We first took a boat that looked about as sturdy as one of those paper boats that I made when I was 10 and floated in my sink until it sank. If you leaned a little the entire boat rocked, so you tried to do your best to mimic a statue while one of the guys on the boat was bailing water. The water was extremely fast and viscous as it was engorged with the past monsoons. We were crossing the river to a point perpendicular to where we were starting, but the water was so fast that we had to go up stream a bit then boat down across the river. The combo of the fast water, preposterously paper thin boat, and the bailer only having two arms and one small bucket didn’t lead me to have much faith in this trip. And of course safety regulations like life jackets are nonexistent in the interior of a third world country. And if there were life jackets they were probably pillaged a long time ago to be made into pillows or something more ingenious and practical than a life saving device.

Somehow we managed to skitter across the river and hiked up the mountain in the rain - luckily I had a poncho from my Sapa trip. I only had flip flops and because of the rainy and muddy conditions sliding a bit on the way up. But it was better than the girls who had sneakers. As we had to cross a couple rivers, they had to keep taking them off and putting them on. After an hour or so they were soaked and covered in mud. Sandals were cleaner and more convenient; you just a little less traction when climbing…which isn’t the problem…going down in where lies the issue. So we climbed for 4 hours, made it to the top and then got a small bowl of fried rice to eat. I’m trying to remember the last time I ate so little fried rice in one sitting when rice was the only available food item, especially after a grueling 4 hour hike…I’ll let you know when I think of it.

Luang Prabang, Laos - Day 2

Sapa, Vietnam - Day 3

Sapa, Vietnam - Day 3

Sapa, Vietnam - Day 2

Sapa, Vietnam - Day 2

Sapa, Vietnam - Day 1

Sapa, Vietnam - Day 1