iz1986
Gallivanting with Green!
Going on an Asian adventure across a bit of the world from Sri Lanka to India to Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam and eventually New Zealand. Travelling and teaching my way around I'll try to fly as little as possible, eat as much as...
364 posts
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
Last Seen Blogs
hillheadjoiners
Hillhead Joiners
gregsx
𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐠𝐠
deepdreamercalzoneeclipse-blog
Thuh_Kanin
elegantpsychicshoemuffin-blog
This Is Me
zombehshark
:3
Text
El Mojon
The landscape in northwestern Argentina is truly stunning and never samey, despite the seemingly endless open space up there. Hills (of up to 4, 100m for us!!!) roll into salt flats that roll into llama-filled plains :-) Probably the best bit of this adventure for me was visiting the little empire of a local man called Sandy. There, he lives, runs a museum and feeds visitors...amongst so many more missions! We were lucky Sandy’s place was open to visitors, as he certainly had no strict opening times for it, and we certainly didn’t book. Set on a vast open plain surrounded in the distance by mountains, low-rise buildings, a church and various innovative creations scatter the space. As soon as I jumped out of the jeep, I felt the harsh, hot air engulf me, and this is what Sandy tries his best to always live and work with. The altitude and weather were different, but pretty full on, every time I left the vehicle up there. The days there are clear and hot, the evenings far cooler.
It can be tough to live life in such extreme and remote circumstances, but Sandy’s determination to do it well was inspirational. I spoke to him in my limited Spanish as he showed us around his creations. The cute church they’d built looked almost animated with its clean, white, higglety-pigglety stone against the bright blue sky background. Inside, important festivals and occasions were marked with colourful pictures and offerings from the little community. A cooker (that looked more like modern art to me) used a centra, metal hoop hold food towards the strong sun, soon cooking it to be eaten. The museum housed a puma’s head, killed by Sandy’s ancestors in the area for stealing their cattle long ago. An interesting example of a metre-high ring of sticks and vegetation used by locals on plains to protect them from the weather. Other projects included a greenhouse protecting fruit trees from the elements, animal pens fenced off using animal dung and a dug-out garden to lower and protect what might survive these conditions. Still to come was a trout pool, previously stopped by the water boiling (and presumably the fish in it too!) in the sun. Slightly premature boiled fish before, but a fab idea, I’m sure Sandy will pull off one day...
Inside the modest restaurant Sandy had built, lots of visitors’ business cards spelt out greetings and the restaurant’s name (EL MOJON - the milestone) Furniture made of solid salt blocks and chairs covered in animal furs added to the authentic atmosphere of the place. A delicious three course meal followed, including bread made using llama fat, no less. The starter was a salty soup with tiny pasta bits in it, the main course was a lamb and potato stew and dessert was a semolina apple pudding. Every mouthful was delicious fuel for me after an early start, and morning spent on the road. Really unique sites, tastes and landscapes all round.
0 notes
Text
Salty Salta
Before heading to Cambridge (and now Argentina!) I lived in London for a while with friends. The flat I lived in was opposite to the one Frank lived in, and we all used to hang out quite a bit. It was excellent timing to not only have the chance to share flats with friends like that then, but also to meet Frank in Argentina now. With him coming down from Bolivia, and me travelling up from Buenos Aires, Salta was the perfect place for us to cross paths. It was brilliant to catch up with a friend from home, having both been travelling solo for a while before. The people I’ve met as I’ve moved from place to place, or established myself for longer in Buenos Aires are interesting, but seeing a familiar face at this stage was well-timed. Without having to expend much energy on initial interactions as we already knew a bit about each other, it was easier to relax and discuss our friends in common etc.
We took to the road to go further north with our trusty tour guide, Gareth. You can take the man out of England, but not England out of the man it seems, as he was a typically ‘salt of the earth’ Brit with lots of banter. Despite enjoying finding different cultures, languages and people as I travel, it was great to relax easily into this well-organised tour and friendly company. We climbed past the quiet town known as the ‘gateway to the Andes’, and up along the tracks of the ‘train to the clouds’, which used to run there. The truck we drove in was a spacious and comfortable lookout from which to see the stunning landscape outside roll by, rapidly changing as we went. We hit 4, 080m above sea level, and the highs of seeing the scenery (no pun intended) distracted me from any feeling of queasiness from the altitude. Below us, beautiful hills stretched in stripes of all kinds of colours, as far as the eye could see. After a refreshment and llama wool shopping stop (standard!) in San Antonio De Los Cobres, a little lower down the mountain, we made our way to the province of Jujuy.
The dirt road to this new province seemed to stretch forever, and outside the truck, winds sped along the straight, flat road. It was scattered with sturdy bushes, the eerie, red stone ruins of old buildings, and even the odd llama or vicuna. On the horizon, mountains beautifully broke the flatness of the planes, and really caught my eye because of it. I guess from growing up in Scotland, there’s always something comforting to me to see hills or mountains, even far off.
A less familiar site marked our next stop along the way, as the horizon glowed white and we came to the Salinas Grandes Salt Flats. The photos and stories about these or similar salt flats could not have prepared me for this white world. I was pretty bewildered by its incredible appearance, atmosphere and effect on the landscape. Dirt road was replaced by bright white, salty land as far as the eye could see. It was such a spectacle, but surprisingly deserted, despite this. This area of salt stretches for over 200km, occasionally interrupted by neatly cut rows of rectangular, turquoise pools where the white stuff is extracted and eventually packed into bulging bags nearby. When the Andes rose tectonically this area became a basin, cut off from the sea in humid then arid environments. The evaporation of salty water from the rainy season here leaves behind this layer of salt, with water beneath it. In short, spectacular stuff.
0 notes
Text
Up north!
After a few days in Buenos Aires to go back to school, stay in another area and turn myself around, I was back at Jorge Newbury Domestic Airport for another adventure. It’s a handy airport with the best views from an airport I’ve ever seen. The sun was rising over the water as I made my way to the airport, where people fish and eat along the water’s edge. There’s an eye-catching, big mock-Tudor building along the way, and town is so nearby you can see it too. Really not a bad place to fly from.
This time I was off to the northwestern provinces of Salta and Jujuy, which have loads of history, countryside and atmosphere around them. They are a far cry from Buenos Aires, despite my definite soft spot for the big city. My first impressions of Salta, when I flew into the main city of the province of the same name, were its warmth, the more aboriginal appearances of many of its people and the inevitable abundance of willing taxi drivers at the ready to take me from the airport onwards. I was whisked away to my Air BnB without any hassle, and had some hassle getting into the building, but got there in the end, with the help of a few friendly shopkeepers.
Chatting to a couple of locals on the slow-paced street I stayed on also emphasised the small-town feel of the place compared to Buenos Aires. Another excellent little language exchange to stumble upon, I attempted to chat in Spanish with an old man, sitting on a decorative tiled doorstep. He told me all about his beloved Coca leaves, with the odd English phrase thrown in there. The leaves he was carrying in his pocket come from the Coca plant which Cocaine is made from. Although laws about the use of the leaves vary across South America, in Salta it is still legal to chew them. They are lodged inside the cheek and combined with ilucta to activate alkaloids in the leaves which help with altitude sickness (key up here!), boost energy and numb the face. Not necessarily the experience I was after in Salta, instead I opted to put tasty food in my mouth, meet my friend and former neighbour and explore the street art of the area.
0 notes
