Aguas Caliente

After spending a month slowly decomposing and becoming lazier everyday Jamie and I finally dragged ourselves away from the most relaxing place in the world, the farm near 25 de Mayo.....

We caught a shuttle to Buenos Aires and then a bus to Salta ( in NW Arg). The bus trip took 18 hrs, covered 1500kms and was sweeeeeeet. You get hot coffee and mate on tap and alfachoras (sweet biscuits with caramel in the middle) and a seat that is one step short of a bed. The countryside we covered was pretty much flat for 1500kms. Not so here in Jujuy province. The mts rise to 6000+ metres. Many towns and small villages are located at 3000+ metres and the land is rich in precious metals like copper. For the local people tourism is more important than the mining because not many of them are employed by this industry.

We have been trying to save on the pesos so we can stay longer in this beautiful country so we decided to hitchhike around and its been a complete joy doing this. We`ve never actually been stuck in a place without a ride (touch wood). Even in the most random spots we have managed to get a lift from locals and tourists alike. We might have waited for 5 hrs but we got our ride! (we were hitching across a salt plain/desert and only 3 cars went past!)

(JF) Salta train of thought………….

Fat cactus red earth rainshaped pillars but no rain cabras y llamas cold wrists wet seat whisky shade and sun camera rocks collective o hacer dedo conjugations verbs mate soon tren de las nubes too cold to camp atm?

Jujuy province is an incredibly diverse landscape. In this same province you get desert like areas with enormous cactuses and steep, crumbling rose coloured mountains where the temp drops to 4 degrees at night and it blasts you during the day. All you can think of is where you will stop for your next glug of tepid water and whether you will have enough breath left in your lungs to drink and breath at the same time ..... inhale, exhale, next step, next step after that...... This is called the ¨Puna¨, and yet you drop down 500ms and to the east by a couple of kms and there is a sub tropical jungle with nasty biting, yellow midges that attack with such vigour you are left with a blood spot and large welts all over your face and neck after 20 mins of their delightful present. This was of course called the ¨Yungas¨ or jungle. It was practically impossible to trek through it, because the hillsides were so steep and the forest so impassable. It was hot and humid and so so green.

There is one road through the Yunga that is in a constant state of repair, because when the rains come in summer they bring truck loads of sediment down with them and wash out the road. This is what the engineer who picked us up at the nasty biting midge spot (I could have kissed him) was working on. Every bend in the road (and there were a lot) had a stream and every stream was a potential washout.

We`d heard a rumour that near a small town in the Yungas you could walk to Aguas caliente (Thermal Pools). So after the engineer dropped us off in San Francisco we got a fabulous, delicious lunch, asked the guy who fed us where to get to Aguas caliente (we don`t believe in maps), bought some`Off` for the vicious biting midges (I reckon there`s definately a word they`ve left off the label here). Infact bring on the DDT I say. I hates them I does...where was I... oh yes we found a track down into the forest, walked for an hr and a half hoping to see a Jaguar (not a chance brother), crossed a large river, crossed it again, finally found some pools that smelt like rotorua and looked like some sort of snot monsters were growing in them. Really attractive eh. Jamie was braver than me and had a few dips. I took a lot of persuading but I finally had a 2 second dip. The water was actually only about 20C so not that hot.

We camped at the pools that night and cooked polenta with tomato sauce (living like kings we were) on the open fire and were delighted to find that after dark all the nasty bity things disappear.

The next morning we decided in a bid to keep our shoes dry, we would climb the cliffs surrounding the pools and cut across country to the track saving time and wet feet!

Well ....well the only problem was the cliffs were a bit unstable, infact in a constant state of rapid erosion I¨d say. We clambered to the top of a likely looking route only to find a half metre wide ridge line composed of loose red soil and loose red rocks. Probably only held up by the odd, brave cactus growing here and there. So we descended again after much profanity on my behalf because the way back down was almost as bad as the way forward.

After another 3 hrs of walking we were back at San Fran stocking up on more tomato sauce and polenta and waiting for the one and only collectiva (bus) to arrive to take us to Valle Grande.......