San Luis-Villa General Belgrano-Humahuaca-Iruya-San Isidro-Iruya-…

As usual, I’ve waited too long to write a blog and now there is too much to say without being bored of writing and you being bored of reading…so be prepared to be bored. When I last left off we were on a bus from the dog rescue to couch surfing. Since then we couch surfed in San Luis (worst, weirdest), relaxed in the German settled Villa General Belgrano (best, weirdest) and explored a tiny area in the north of Argentina called Iruya (best) with a quick stop in Humahuaca (good) on the way. Again in reverse chronological order:

We’re on the bus AGAIN.This time a slow-ass 4+ hour journey  from Iruya to Tilcara. The reason it is so slow is that the first 48km are on a dirt road that goes from 8400 feet to 13,200 feet (and back down again), and that goes back and forth more times than _______ (fill in blank for fun). It is unbelievable that this road exists and that multiple buses use it every day. It is also unbelievably beautiful.

Earlier today I convinced Haley to hike straight up a mountain that people had advised us was not a good idea, but they were not good sources and I could tell (using my poker skills). Remind me to write a book “Training for travel via Poker”. Well, we were both happy when we only had to go straight up for about 1 hour to about 10,000ft to get to a spectacular lookout over the valley and Iruya town. (best) This time we brought our temporary dog Lobo. We all drank water and ate avo, tomato and cheese sandwiches at the top. When we climbed to the lookout we saw 3 people.  The first was a guy bringing his horse down from the cerro (the peak) where the horse ate delicious grass (he also mentioned that there were other guys up higher branding cows – we saw the fire and heard the cows – Haley was not happy about the latter part).  The second was a guy coming down with a small backpack on doing who knows what, and the third was a 70 yr old (estimated) indigenous woman. She told us she was resting when we saw her, which seemed like a good idea as she was 70 and climbing straight up a hill that we had huffed and puffed to get up. When we asked her where she was going she said that she was going to her casa which is ridiculous (see pic below).  Not only was there no house in sight, meaning she had a lot further to go, it is crazy that anyone lives where she explained her house was.  I wish I could explain better how amazed we were that people actually came up this trail and that this trail even existed at all.(weirdest)

Yesterday we hiked back to Iruya from a tiny town called San Isidro (population: 280) and did laundry by hand on our balcony at Hosteria Asunta and ate chicken twice at the feria, where all the people from all the surrounding villages get together to sell stuff and play bingo every month. Unfortunately we were too late to play bingo. The day before that we hiked to San Isidro (3 hours) with another temporary dog, Pancho, who stuck close after we gave him a piece of a less than average factura (pastry) as we were heading out of Iruya. Part of the way there we met up with 3 nice fellow travelers from Buenos Aires (Pablo, Kique and Caro) and the 6 (Pancho included) of us continued, chewing coco leaves and getting wet crossing the river multiple times all the way up to San Isidro.  We arrived at picturesque San Isidro, ate empanadas at the only open comedor in town (Pancho too) and wandered the single track trails that made up San Isidro’s “streets”. (best)

Also, pigs welcomed us back to iruya

 

 

 

Haley and I decided to spend a night in this tiny village mostly just to experience something very far from anything we had experienced so far. We found a great little room at Hospedaje Laura with a view out over the valley and settled in for what turned out to be a stormy night. Haley thought it might be the most remote place we have ever stayed and I disagreed, but still can’t think of a more remote place. We were the only two non-locals in the town that night and we ate empanadas at the only place that would cook them for us after I begged Teresa the chef to step away from carving up her recently (like an hour before) killed cow to do just that (Haley noted she had blood on her shoes when she served us dinner – apparently they bring a cow down from the cerro once a week to slaughter and sell, so Wednesday nights aren’t great for Teresa). (weirdest) It rained hard in the night and we both woke up in the night wondering if we might be stranded in San Isidro for a bit, but the rain had stopped when we woke up and all that was left was a very cool and spooky fog to walk home in. On the way back we also found the trail that doesn’t require any river crossing and tried our best to mark it for the next people.

Before San Isidro we had spent 2 nights in Iruya and done a little bit of exploring.  Our first full day we wandered the streets of Iruya and headed up a small canyon off the main river.  We did a little rock climbing to be able to get a little closer to the waterfall we could see but after about 30 minutes we met our match.  We also explored the main river canyon, chatting with some workers who were, via old fashioned manual labor, moving huge rocks and digging with pick axes and shovels to keep the flow of this giant riverbed from eroding the town of Iruya.  We were feeling pretty lucky to have the lives we have when.

 

 

Our first night in Iruya we arrived just after dark after an amazingly scenic bus ride and a really pleasant day in Humahuaca.  Humahuaca is a largely indigineous town about 70km away from Iruya.  We wandered around, ate our first really good food in Argentina – street/market meal of Pollo Picante sitting amongst locals, looking up at the Quebrada de Humahuaca.  We also checked out an electronic benediction from the main town church (weird), looked in vain for an ice cream cone (worst), and hiked up to a couple of really nice view points out over the valley (best).  The 10,000 foot altitude was not lost on us as we climbed up to said viewpoints.

We got to Humahuaca on an insanely beautiful ride from Juyjuy through the Quebrada (canyon) de Humahuaca.  Pic below.

We got to Juyjuy on an overnight Cama Suite bus after a nice few days of (well-deserved chilling – see San Luis below) in Villa General Belrgrano . We had a sweet room at a place with gorgeous grounds in the trees outside of town.  We spent a few days wandering the cute streets of this German-settled town, drinking artisanal beer, hiking up to some view points (as usual) and chilling on the gorgeous grounds of our hotel (chillest).

 

Villa General Belgrano was kind of an accident because – as I mentioned in the last post – we went to San Luis after we left Crisitina and the dogs.  This, however, was a mistake (worst).  We had our first couch surfing experience (pretty sure this is hit or miss – host was great, the accommodations and neighborhood were NOT) and it turned out that San Luis really did not have a lot to offer, at least not for us.  After one bad day in “La Florida” (we lasted about 10 minutes once we arrived, it took about 5 hours total travel to and from) and one weird(est) but fun day in Potrero de los Funes (we walked 11km on a virtually empty mountain road to get to this town with a racetrack, literally, for a main road around its lake.  There we had a snack in a floating restaurant on the lake and played electronic roulette in the sad hotel casino (we won).  We could not get out of there fast enough.

 

So that’s it. Now we are on our way to spend our last night in Northern Argentina in the town of Tilcara en route – finally – to Buenos Aires for our last couple of weeks in Argentina.  Sorry again for the long post.  Thanks for reading and caring.

 

 

Other Notes:

 

The suburb of La Punta outside San Luis might be the most depressing place we have ever visited.

We are pretty sure the residents of Iruya and San Isidro have never experienced stress in their lives.  And the street dogs of Iruya are the happiest and healthiest we have seen anywhere.  Probably not a coincidence.

Haley is worried that the coca leaves (same plant that is used to make cocaine) we ate on the trail to San Isidro (a local tradition in Northern Argentina, it is supposed to help with the altitude) will make her test positive for cocaine if she gets drug tested in the near future.

I left the atm card in the atm machine again in San Luis.  Miraculously, we were able to get it back the next morning after coughing up a passport and about 10,000 signatures to the bank jefe.

We fed carrots to a lot of burros in Iruya.  Everyone has one.

Haley wrote at least half of this post.