Visiting the Moon AKA Northern Chile

Well folks, I have made it out of Argentina after 5 wks of seeing what I am going to call a fair amount of what that country has to offer and am now in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile. Yes Chile. Again.

In order to arrive in SP de Atacama I was on a 12 hour bus ride that rose to 4,100 meters. No wonder I was sucking air a little. Thankfully I was not ill though and the town of Atacama is only at 2,400M so I have been okay.  Absolutely HATED my hostel when I arrived so have had to move each of my three nights. Seems places that are even remotely decent are mostly booked and tomorrow I leave for my three day trip through Bolivia´s Salt Flats in Uyuni. Above right photo is of the MUCH smaller salt flats in Argentina which we passed through on the bus ride here. Stunning and once again I need to write a letter to the window makers of these buses. They really don´t get in the way of what you see or photograph.

Here´s a recap of what I got up to in my 3 additional days in Chile... Day one I visited the Valley of the Moon and basically went to about 5 different locations where nature has made some pretty incredible formations. They have names like the Three (or 2.5 Mary´s) which are said to look like ladies praying and the Valley of the Moon (as I mentioned.) Which shows how the glaciers have moved and carved the mountains etc all around Atacama.  It´s all pretty damn stunning and I don´t think my camera is doing any of this justice because it is all just so vast but again here´s a glimpse from the camera Shan so graciously donated to my continuous adventures.  

Day two started at 4am... yes 4am and took us up to 4,700Meters where we had to bundle up like we were about to board the peak to peak chair at Whistler to ensure we would be in place for 7am when the geisers ¨went mental¨ in technical terms.  It was pretty fun to watch all the different kinds of geisers that there are but I will admit I was not sure ¨where I was¨or ¨how I got there¨at about 5am when I was freezing my tail off in the pitch black wobblying around in a mini bus.

One definite perk was that we got to hop into the thermal baths after the sun finally came up so we all managed to get warm again before the lengthly drive back. I shouldn´t sound so grumbly considering it is scenes like the below that we were passing through the entire time.  

Of course there was some wildlife thrown in as well  for good photographing measure.

Okay gang I just spent WAY too much time at an internet cafe becasue none of the three hostels I have stayed at in this town seem to have a hostel computer that works. Yes I´ll be including this in my comment card at the end of each stay.

Here´s hoping you are all as well and happy as I was when the below image was snapped! Off to

Bolivia in the morning!

ox

b

A foodie post for my FOX

I have mentioned, in previous posts, that my ¨sister in law¨Foxy loves to photograph food and has even commented on this blog when I have mentioned a meal but failed to photograph it.

Sincere appologies Foxy. 

To show how much I do adore you here is a post dedicated to the food I have recently enjoyed... or skipped for obvious reasons

Begining with my first sampling of Llama in Purmamarca. Wonderfully cooked and marinated in Malbec. Please note that those I travel with do not adore me when I pull out my camera and tell them to move all items not related to my ¨food shot¨ from the area around my plate. See what I am willing to do for you FOX?

Later I had Llama stew, which is a typical fare here in northern Argentina. Mine however also had quinoa and a zillion veggies which is a rare thing in these parts. I delighted in this for dinner, again paired with a Malbec and closed the meal sharing a chocolate brownie and ice cream (helado) with Martha. Admittedly I am not your typical backpacker anymore. 

We only managed to take a photo after a few bites and I think you can understand why. 

I mean come on. 

Tell me you don´t wish, at this moment, that Bill Gates had found a way to make a photo come to life ¨literally¨ so you could have some of this tasty treat right now yourself? 

I have seen you enjoy a desert, my quasai sister, and I know you would! :) 

 Salta is known for their empinadas so when we were back in town for a night we made sure to try the ¨carne¨= beef, Pollo = chicken and the local meat = ???. They were all terrific with a spicy salsa the restaurant provided. First spice I´ve encountered in my 6 weeks in Argentina.  Dinner cost us just under $10 CND each and we had a bottle of Malbec, Empinada starters and 1/4 of a bonless grilled chicken with salad. The boneless chicken did not attend the photo shoot. Sorry

 Once we were in Cafayate it seemed the thing to do was to eat GOAT so of course we did. Visited the local goat cheese producer for our app paried with a white Torrontes wine and then moved to roasted goat and risotto (home made risotto) for dinner. Yes Malbec made an appearance.

Typically breakfast is bread (sweetened) and jam. Marth and I took to enhancing the meal with soft boiled eggs and avocado and I thank dinasaur bones that I remembered to bring decaf Starbucks sleaves of coffee with me or else I´d never have coffee on this continent.   I am now no longer with Martha but did meet two guys from Puerto Rico who are studying to be lawyers in Buenos Aires starting in a few weeks and we enjoyed some seafood pasta last night now that I am in San Pedro de Atacama. 

Okay so now I´ll show you the less glam side of eating...  When on long bus rides I tend to ride with Andesmar. To be clear I am referring to 12 hour PLUS rides. They serve a snack and lunch.... check it out.

Here´s a look see at the local market where Martha and I shopped to make our risotto.  To the left is the fruit and veg. It took us more than one try to find the best one in town. These guys actually polish their fruit. Below is the butcher. I´m not going to show you what the blades looked like. Let´s just say we ordered the goat from a local restaurant. You can also buy ketchup in bags and Dulce de Leche would be your best friend Fox if you were here.

They spread it on everything.

 

Okay so that´s my attempt at giving you a glimpse into the food.

Give the little one a hug for me. Hope the rest of you are well and don´t start coming up with requests as well. This one took me forever :)

ox

b

  

El Norte (part 2)... still can´t get used to how pretty it is here

Okay folks so I was told that blogs should be brief. I seem to be losing that battle but honestly there has just been so much beauty lately that I feel compelled to have a part two of the north. Please skip past this post if you feel you´ve had enough. I will understand and more importantly I´ll never know :) Win Win.

After a quick one night stay (for the second time) in Salta I have now traveled 4 hours south west to a town called Cafayate. Another wine town though with the lack of any tours to the vineyards you might not know it.

To the left is the pink cathedral in the central square of Salta. Martha keeps making fun of me for saying I have ¨Loved Salta¨ because honestly I haven´t really seen Salta. I have used it as a hub to get to towns around the area. Fine. Adjustment made. ¨I have Loved the area around Salta.¨ They have graffiti too. Maybe that´s what I will do when I get home. Become a graffiti artist. Nah, probably won´t put a kid through college. Ugh. Oh well.

So the journey to Cafayate was epic. Once again we had the first row seats at the top of the bus so I could really capture the ride.
Points of note. 1. They adore a good arrow. If I had thought to count them I would have quit because there were just WAY too many and they all showed up a millisecond before the driver would have to turn anyways so not sure why they use them. PS as you can see in photo and subsequent POINT number 2 the road is constantly being washed away by the river so ¨detours¨are rampant. As Martha so perfectly coined it. ¨I don´t think these roads were built for bus journeys¨ because at times we were basically as wide as the hirpin turn.  Good thing they had workers, ahem I mean metal shaped workers to warn us of oncoming road work.

Below is a sample of the views we experienced for the 4 hour journey. As some of you know  I tend to get a case of narcolepsy when I travel in motorized vehicles. Not the case for this journey. Now if the journey from Toronto to Montreal was this pretty I wouldn´t have such an issue traveling it more. 

Our prize for arriving in this quaint little town was, for one, a great hostel where we booked a private room to take a break while we can from dorms with complete strangers (since Martha and I now joke that we are good friends who can say anything to eachother and not be offended) as well as a mission to complete. Joe from my office mentioned a vineyard in Northern Argentina that, he told me, is one of the best vineyards in the world. He didn´t seem confident that I could locate it but obliged me by sharing the name. Bodega San Pedro de Yacochuya. Well my friends after biking uphill (rising 400 meters to 2500meters above sea level) in the baking sun with no shade and even less water... take a wild stab at what Martha and I found.  Yep... to the left is a photo of the vineyard and below is my girl Martha displaying our wines of choice from said vineyard to be enjoyed with our home made risotto last evening.   Yes I love me a mission. :) 

We bought a 2007 Malbec that cost about $50USD so you can imagine what it would cost in YOUR local restaurant if they even exported to Canada and a bottle of white Torrontes for about $13USD. I agree the range is vast but both went down a dream last night. 

Our plan is to try out some more wines tonight and get some ¨take away goat¨ to pair with our left over risotto for tonight´s meal. Our last dinner together before Martha heads south to Mendoza and I take a hard left back into Chile to a town called San Pedro de Atacama which is said to have some killer star gazing, volcanoes and some active geisers that are worth checking out before I book my tour to Uyuni, Bolivia to see the largest salt flats in the general area.

Because I think you all must enjoy a little humour in each day I will close with some photos of the local animals we have come across. The first claims to be a pigeon that was hanging around the bus terminal in Tilcara. Have you ever seen a more oil soaked, thread bear feathered ¨bird? Thing couldn´t even fly so when buses came into the station they almost ran over him but he was a fast runner? Weird.

Then there was this buck toothed dog at the lunch place we stopped in at yesterday. How does a dog get buck teeth? I swear the dogs in this town are the most mixed race I have ever encountered. Martha doing her best impersonation. 

We also found a random donkey wandering around town yesterday afternoon. Just saying.

Good Times. Lots of Laughs. xox Stacey

El Norte (part 1)... and to think I wasn´t sure I´d come this way

So after Iguazu I was fortunate enough to catch yet another flight, this time to Salta in the northern part of Argentina. Salta is known for more wine makers and the neighbouring area Jujuy is stunningly beautiful. Let me show you... once again from the wing of my plane, enjoying some sunrise walks and later on from the seat of some buses.

This is in Purmamarca the tinniest little town about 4 blocks by 4 blocks known for the fact that the surrounding mountains are seven deep shades of red, orange, green etc. Such a worthwhile sunrise walk.

I traveled to Purmamarca & later Tilcara via bus, three buses to get there, to be accurate, and one back to Salta. One 2.5hr journey from Salta to Jujuy city with a scrubby bus station and then another 1hr bus to our final destination for one night of Purmamarca.  (In the photo above left is Melanie (from Burlington Canada) showing what the Semi Cama buses are like. TVs playing english or spanish films pretty loud and chairs that lean back.) This wasn´t the nicest bus I have been on ... pretty similar to Greyhound in Canada.

Driving further north to Tilcara which is about 2400meters above sea level and only 45mins from Purmamarca was one bus. Finally the return trip was direct so only took 3hrs.  In the photo to the Right (above) you can see our view from the return bus. We had front row, top level seats. This is Jujuy station and so is the photo to the left. I would rate this as one of the less desirable stations to land at for any period of time and will say that I can imagine most of my friends mumbling ¨dude we need to get the hell out of dodge¨ if any of you had been with me. Not sure if I should bethankful that none of you were or not. I actually kinda like these little slivers of other people´s ¨reality¨ when I travel but I will admit I like them to be short lived.

This little gem of a lady was working at one of the stalls just outside the terminal. I think it is fair to say she is in need of a ¨tag out¨with some other staff member. She seems to be due for a 40 winker as Shan would say. I honestly never caught her with her eyes open. Even while she spoke to a lady in the adjacent stall.

 Poor lass. 

Okay so back to the scenery, which I think might rival that of Patagonia.

I am in awe, by the way, of the fact that Argentina possesses such breadth in terms of landscape. I shouldn´t be since I have traveled so much of Routa 40 (the road that connects Ushuaia, Argentina with Alaska) but none the less it seems to pay to have a country that is tall vs wide. I guess that is a little like a person´s physique. Hmmm. Okay, moving on.

Below photo on the left shows a graveyard on the way to Tilcara and the stunning mountains behind. Can´t believe bus windows don´t ruin these shots more.  To the right is more of our sunrise walk in Purmamarca. I can only imagine you will become sick of these landscape photos but I just can´t seem to put my camera away. With every turn I think, this is insane!

Purmamarca probably had the best markets I have seen so far. Tons of sweaters made of llama wool, carvings, jewels, stuffed llamas (the knit kind) and ceramics. I managed to drop some pesos around town to add some items to my collection at home. Here Martha (the english girl I am currently traveling with) is browsing.

The night we were there there happened to be a beautifu electrical storm that my camera managed to capture. I adore a thunder and lightening show so here´s a glimpse on the off chance you feel the same.

BAM!

xox

b