Jujuy and leaving Salta

What news since my arrival at Salta? Well for one, I’ve met Agustin, a super nice guy whom I’ve got in contact with through Couchsurfing. Agustin let me stay at his place to enjoy all the comfort his hamac could give me (turns out that it can give quite a of lot of it). I had never really slept in a hamac before, but they’re brilliant! If you have not tried it yet, go get your hamac and hang it around the living room! You’ll thank me later.

Hamac aside, Agustin walked me around to have a look at the city and we even went for a hike in the woods. This all ended with sipping some mate on the edge of a mountain river. Can’t get any cooler than that, can it now?

I’ve also had the pleasure to go to the Salta emergency service, to get my finger check. Well see, my left ring finger decided for some reason to stop answering to any stimuli (try playing violin with this condition). After some 2h I got a consultation with a neurologist who told me to get vitamins. Well vitamins haven’t had any effet as far as I can tell, doesn’t keep me from dutifully taking them thrice a day though.

For my final day at Salta I went on a touristic tour of the mountains about, not feeling confident enough (yet!) to climb the 4000 meters. Next time! Although the tour was a bit of a rush “great guys, you now have 24m 42s to take a picture in this location and go to the bathroom before we take off again”, it did lead us to splendid places, which would surely have been worth a stretch of a few minutes more in the schedule.

Here are some pictures of the things I saw!

Now, notice how Argentinians disregard the “do not enter” sign. I bet they could teach us French a few tricks. The salinas are yet another jawdropping sight. They go on for tens (hundreds?) of kilometres. All the minerals from the near volcanos have been trapped in this valley, which led to this concentration of crystals. Lastly, the view with the many-coloured mountains is quite spectacular as well: they get their different shades from the erosion of the different minerals they contain. Although I long since quit the arcane study of geology, they must be a veritable mine of information for those rock-lovers!

And today is the day where I take off Salta. Heading for… well, Iguazú. Duh. That’s just about 1600km away from here. Surely a trifle when you have been climbing mountains and valleys for the past 300km! Also, keen to avoid any human contact any road loaded with cars and trucks, I took yet again the mountain roads. A pleasant adventure I might say. Well, there has been some difficult passages (ever tried pushing a fully loaded bike across a river 35cm high ? WELL I DID!). I even got you a picture. You’ll excuse the lack of bicycle in the picture, the setup was difficult enough alone, since not a single animal (birds, spiders and snakes) wanted to help.

At last, that all led me to an isolated, abandoned (is it?) field, where I could pitch my tent for the night with the blissful quiet of the countryside birds blasting ear splitting noises which sounded like they were coming straight from hell. Seriously, I’d give much to see the bird capable of producing a weird mix of car honk, alarm clock, toad cry and hungry cat all in one go.

So I found a bird. Look at this haircut, wouldn’t surprise me if it was this one. Ah, those punks.

All that led me to go back to the road, finding for the following night a small village. After much negotiation on weither I should pitch my tent on the village plaza or in the municipal building (I honestly just wanted to sleep, but it seemed important), I finally ended up in the building, right after a dance lessons for teenagers which was quite entertaining to watch. Oh, and I should clearly study a bit the history of football and the names of the players if I want to have any kind of conversation with the boys in these villages!