Argentina.6: La Puna

Point of reference: Salta lies at 1100 meters above sea level, about 3600 feet. The highest point on the journey described below was 4080 meters, about 13,460 feet.

For the first time since I stepped off the plane in Buenos Aires, I sweated. Rarely has that ever been so exciting, but waking up in the nicely heated hostel room with a damp shirt was a treat, given how cold Argentina's cold snap was.

My warmth was short-lived, but for the best of reasons. We were about to depart for our first venture into the great Andes, the famed spine of South America, the mountain chain that produces those tasty creamy chocolate mints.

It wasn't even 6:30 when Jessie's cell phone alarm woke us up, but I hopped out of bed and dressed quickly, gathering the few things I wanted to take in a little bag. I walked into the courtyard to make sure Chris was up, brushed my teeth, and joined the others in the lobby for breakfast. Desayuno was remarkably good, a sweet croissant (medialuna) with some sweet coffee (Argentines like sweets almost as much as beef.)

The van pulled up soon after and collected the three of us, and we were off. We met our driver, Ceasar, our guide Eugenia (whose English was pretty good compared with what I've heard in this country), and the other passengers -- Marcus from Switzerland and three Argentine women whose names I could barely understand.

At a pit stop for snacks, Eugenia began to explain our tour, first in Spanish. Those who understood the native tounge listened intently, laughing at certain points while Chris and I sat silently. I listened as well, still pretending that I could gleam something from Spanish, but soon gave up.

Eugenia switched to English and told us that we were headed through the Lerma Valley, into the Del Toro Gorge, and climbing up to 4100 meters on our way towards the Salinas Grandes, the salt flats. "If that elevation is too much," she assured us, "Ceasar will give mouth-breathing to the girls and I will give it to the boys." Did we pay extra for this trip, I wondered?

The clouds cleared and the sun began to peek its head up as we drove out the valley, whizzing by trucks and bikes alike. We turned right on a dirt road and entered the Del Toro "gorge". As Eugenia explained herself, in Argentina "gorge" was used to describe any area between two mountains. Americans would much more likely call this a canyon.

My pondering over linguistic differences ended as I realized the lush vegitation around us had virtually disappeared and we were in scrub desert broken occaisionally by cacti. We were following the route of the Tren a las Nubes, the train to the clouds, which had broken down a year and a half ago with a full load of people at 4100 meters. The train was designed originally in 1921 by an American named Richard Maury or something like that.

To climb the incredible 3000 meters of its ascent into the clouds, the train needed a lot of "tyoonels" and "sweetchbacks," Eugenia told us as we paused on the side of the road for a closer look. I love funnily accented English, it makes me feel better about not understanding the native language.

We wound farther up the side of the canyon, passing numerous hoodoos, those eeriely thin canyon formations made famous by Zion National Park in the US. Above the Lerma Valley, the desert started at 1500 meters, where we entered the habitat of los cardones, the desert cacti that gave our hostel its name. Los cardones seem identical to the saguaro cactus of the Sonoran desert in the southwestern US and northern Mexico, but when I mentioned the name to Eugenia, she had never heard of it.

Presently the rocks took on an impressive palatte of colors. Deep purples, oranges, and blue-greens appeared in clearly defined layers. The colors come from various mineral oxides -- iron, silica, copper, and others. As we marveled, Eugenia brought out her mate gourd and began that curious tradition, pouring in sugar and tea leaves and adding hot water from a thermos.

She turned to us in the front row and asked, "Have you tried the mate?" I had attempted to get mate in a cafe, but it was just a tea bag, not the full setup I had seen so many times.

"Not really," I replied, accepting the small wooden cup and taking a sip. "Muchas gracias," I said as I handed it back.

"No, you're supposed to drink the entire thing before you give it back," Chris interrupted. His Lonely Planet-derived knowledge saved me from potential embarassment, and I quickly sucked down the rest of the cup, then handed it back. It was a hearty tea, similar to the strongest green teas, but made softer by the sugar Eugenia had added.

Mate is perhaps the most fascinating of Argentina's customs. It's pretty hard to compare it to anything in the US, because we have nothing so common and so addictive as this. Drinking the tea, which is a mild stimulant, cuts across class and ethnic lines in Argentina. Virtually everyone here totes around a small gourd to hold the tea, a filtering straw to drink out of, a supply of the ground yerba mate leaves, and a thermos of hot water refilled easily even at gas stations.

Argentines drink it like it's going out of style, but it's also a communal exercise. The gourd is usually passed back and forth, from husband to wife or among all guests if you're gathered at someone's house. It's not really served in restaurants, though, so Eugenia's generosity was my rare opportunity to sample this most Argentine of rituals.

The van passes more oddly colored rocks, including a ridge striped in dark brown and white like a marble bagel. We turn suddenly and begin to climb an arroyo, topping out at 3100 meters (10,200 feet.) The barren landscape changes -- here the rocks lying on the nearby slopes are bigger, owing to the constant freezing and unfreezing at this altitude.

We paused in the town of Santa Rosa de Tastil for a bathroom break and had our first taste of the intense winds tat the Andean desert can produce. What would have otherwise been a fairly nice day turned nearly insufferable due to the constant high winds. Jessie, Chris, and I waited in the lee of a small building until it was time to get back in the van.

We turned up a small dirt road just past the town and headed to the archaeological ruins from the Tastil Indians, who had lived here from 1336 to 1449, when their city seemed to get too big for the amount of water available. Looking at this beautifully desolate land, I marveled that anyone would want to live there at all.

Yet the Tastil Indians did create a community on a mountaintop where they could easily see invaders coming, and even managed to farm on nearby slopes, as we could see from rectangular shapes on the far side of the valley blow.

Back in the van, Eugenia produced a small bag of green leaves and began to explain the Andean tradition of chewing coca leaves. "The coca leaf is not a drug," she said. "It takes 250 grams of leaves to make one gram of cocaine, and you cannot do it without adding chemistry. It is like grapes are not wine."

Eugenia showed us how to break off the little stem and stick the coca leaves in our cheeks like chewing tobacco, only without the spitting. We each grabbed a pinch of leaves and shoved them up by our gums. Coca leaves, our guide explained, are very good for staving off the effects of altitude sickness. They're also a mild stimulant and good for digestion.

The cocal leaves didn't seem to do much for me, but at the same time I experienced few side effects of altitude, despite the fact that we were gaining 10,000 feet in one day. I did feel a bit lightheaded, and Jessie dozed off briefly. Later, on the return trip, I found myself unable to fight off fatigue and fell asleep myself.

We had entered la puna -- the cold desert. Above 3500 meters, los cardones do not grow, and the desert is broad and rolling, with little but some scrub grasses to break the landscape. The winds grew more and more fierce as we passed the Abro Blanco, a high point on the road at 4080 meters -- a whopping 13,440 feet. I had never been so high in my life.

We were cruising down the National Road 40, the longest and highest road in the world, stretching the spine of the Andes. For being such an important road, it was dusty and rutted. Sand blew everywhere -- these were the famed viento blancos, or white winds, according to Eugenia.

After an hour of driving across la puna, we came upon the small mining town of San Antonio de Los Cobres. This quiet town was the site of a new government housing project, but still boasted little other than a stop on the Train to the Clouds.

We pulled up to a restaurant and ducked in out of the howling winds. Meat was the order of the day again, and Chris, Jessie, and I pulled off the trifecta -- bife, stew, and a milanese napolitano. The food was actually quite good and for a place that took in vanloads of tourists, pretty cheap at 17 pesos each.

Chris and I ventured into the town to experience the white winds for ourselves and quickly learned why they were so infamous. Dust and small rocks swirled everywhere, pelting us from all sides. Without a hood, I often had to hold my hands up to protect my head. On a side street, schoolchildren huddled under a blanket and squealed as the winds gusted. Clearly not even the natives were accustomed to this ferocity.

Back in the restaurant, we learned some bad news. The winds were so bad that we would be unable to continue the trip to the salt flats and had to turn around. I was too blown away by what I had already seen of la puna to be disappointed.

Most of us slept on and off on the way back. We stopped at Abro Blanco for pictures and did our best not to get blown over in what must have been 80-plus mph winds. It made for funny pictures, but Eugenia gestured at us to get back in the van, fearing that Chris and I might get blown into a nearby gully.

Back in Salta, we used our 30-peso refunds towards the next day's trip to Cachi and headed off to warm places. We hopped from cafe to cafe, having drinks and munching on empanadas. The evening ended at a locals' bar where men watched Boca, the most popular Argentine soccer club, play a team from Colombia. Cerveza and empanadas filled us up enough to warrant skipping dinner, and we turned in to the hostel early, preparing for another morning.