Northwest Argentina

The last few weeks in the north of the country have been really great, have discovered some really magical places and met loads of friendly people. The gentle pace of life and warm dry climate of this part of Argentina has proved to be just the tonic. Spent a few days in the small and relaxed town of Cafayate, exploring the nearby Quebrada de Cayafate, an impressive canyon of polychrome rock formations. Here the canyon is much grander in scale than those at Ischigualasto and Talampaya, with the erosion creating wierd and wonderful landforms such as The Devil´s Throat, The Castles and The Amphitheatre. The next day went trekking in a smaller canyon formed by the Rio Colorado to some waterfalls, where the candlebra-shaped Cordon cactus dominates the landscape.







Had a brief stopover in Salta, spending a pleasant afternoon strolling the steets of one of Argentina´s better preserved colonial cities then travelled north to the Quebrada de Humahuaca. A UNESCO world heritage site of Quechua towns linked by a sweeping canyon, where yellows, oranges, reds and purples form rainbows on the rocks surface. Humahuaca, is a picturesque community of adobe houses and cobbled streets 3000m high on the Andean puna. Here the way of life has more in common with Bolivia than the rest of the country, the indigenous people scratch out a living farming in the dry barren environment. Easter Sunday dawned with a thick blanket of cloud obscuring views of the canyon. Semana Santa celebrations were in full swing in the town of Tilcara, where a large crowd of Indians followed an effigy of Christ in a chaotic musical procession around town. The small but impressive pre-Columbian ruins of El Pulcara, a fortified town set atop a small hill, proved to be an excellent distraction for a few hours, while the cloud slowly lifted, revealing the bright colours of the canyon in all their glory.









A long journey across country to the Iguazu Falls on the Brazilian border now awaits me.