We spent a couple of days in the city before heading off on a road trip up north. One of the highlights was a visit to the museo de Arqueologia de Alta Montana which documented the discovery of 3 incan child mummies found at an altitude of 6700m buried at the top of volvan Llullailaco. These mummies were only discovered in 1999 and are the best preserved mummies ever found due to the unique climate conditions in which they were buried. They are believed to have been sacrificed 500 years ago, just prior to the Spanish conquest. The reason for this sacrifice was for these childern to act as mediators between the people and the gods. It was quite a surreal experience to actually see the mummies on display at the museum - they looked like sleeping people!!
The car we hired for our 3 day road trip was a VW Gol, yep I didn't forget the 'f' - this is Argentina's cheapo 'Golf' model with no power steering, central locking or auto windows! Our adventure started with a drive up through the surrounding mountains on our way to Purmamarca and the Cerros de Los Siete Colores - the hills of seven colours. It was a stunning drive, and an interesting one, the road was around 4m in width in areas with a line in the middle - hilarious, as if by placing a line on the road means that there is enough space for 2 way traffic. As you can imagine, it was a slightly hairy drive at times!
Arriving into Purmamarca was mesmerising - the surrounding mountains of the town are multicoloured with cacti clinging to the hills as far as the eye can see. We set up camp for the night at the foot of the mountains and were delighted to find that we were not bombarded by stray dogs and dealing with freezing temperatures, however we had something new to contend with - red dust and lots of it! At about 2am after a complete pounding of dusty wind we woke up covered in dust and were forced to retreat to the car for the rest of the night.
On the second day, feeling remarkably refreshed despite a night sleeping in the car, we started to feel the real effects of altitude as we approached 3000m above sea level - chest and sinus pain, nausea and breathlessness. Nothing that a few brews of coca tea couldn't fix. We drove 50km on a very windy dirt road that snakes its way to a tiny town called Iruya, to get there though we got to a dizzying height of 4000m and felt quite sick. Luckily we were not at this altitude for long. Tom had his photo taken at the top and it was an effort to open the car door due to the gale that was blowing up there! The town of Iruya is set in a pretty valley with only 1000 inhabitants. Pigs were wandering the streets and terrorising the stray dogs which was a refreshing change!
That night we stayed in Tilcara - 170km south of Iruya. We were absolutely exhausted and luckily for us we completely landed on our feet and found a basic hostel for the equivalent of $5 US dollars each which even included home made pizza and red wine! We had the most unexpected night attempting to converse in Spanish while eating and drinking next to a fire under a starry sky with a big group of Argentinians! A great way to end a truly awesome 'wild west' road trip.
No comments:
Post a Comment