Tue 9.3.2010 by Liz
Well, they don't call them the seven coloured hills for nothing. The colours and landscape that grew before us as we ascended The Andes left us in awe. I've seen photos of this place on the net, but none of them can truly capture it.
When we finally got to our destination, Purmamarca, we were still gasping at the sights. The little hostel (should be called Hotel... but whatever) that I found during my internet research was perfect. The architecture of the town was so interesting, unique to anything we've seen and using the colours of the hills that surrounded them. Our room was beautiful and staff friendly. It was all good!
After we checked in, we were told of a 2km walk through the hills behind the hotel. Well, what better way to spend a beautiful sunny afternoon? With every hill and corner it just kept getting prettier. We got to several hills that Jack just HAD to climb. He was able to get to the very peaks of each, somehow I wasn't game enough to venture.
After sun set behind the hills, the wind chilled me quite a lot, especially since the temperature dropped quickly too. We returned to the car to get some jumpers and then went for a walk around the little town. We scoped out a place for dinner and settled on a venue with live music that night, starting at 9:30pm.
Being a bar more than a restaurant, we weren't expecting much from dinner, but it was surprisingly good! We ordered things that we had no idea what they were. I got a milenesa, which turns out to be a schnitzel type thing. Jack ordered something with llama. Think llama stir-fried with mushrooms and small potatoes. The meals, though not spectacular looking, were super tasty and the live music was entertaining. Nearing the end of our evening out, the town's power suddenly disappeared and the owners quickly brought candles around to each table. It created a nice little atmosphere but alas, we couldn't enjoy it too long as I was basically dropping asleep at the table.
The next day we headed up further to see the Salinas Grandes (big salt flats). The route up to the Salinas took us to an altitude of 4170m above sea level at its highest point. The road going up was a multitude of hair-pin bends and steep climbs, but not too steep for our little car. We wound our way up the hills, navigating the bends and being stuck behind slowly ascending trucks and also pulling over many times and taking photos of the view.
Getting closer to the Salinas, the road levelled out and we could see a flat white glare of the flats on the horizon. The Salinas were indeed grand and surrounded by a landscape of mountains. We turned off the highway that ran across the flats, drove our little car onto the salt and parked with the other cars and tour busses next to small stalls of hand carved salt sculptures and other crafty things. The workers at these stalls were completely clothed from head to toe to protect themselves from getting burned by the sun. You couldn't even see their eyes from the dark sunglasses they wore. And boy, did you need them. We weren't sure how some tourists were walking around without them - the glare was so bright.
The salt flats crystallised into these strange hexagon type shapes, making it appear like a very alien landscape. Rectangle holes were cut into the salt revealing pools of light blue water. The water was so salty that if you dipped your finger in it, upon removal you could clearly see the salt crystallising on your skin.
I was reminded of our altitude when standing up after crouching next to one of the pools. Standing up, not matter what speed I did it at, gave me an instant dizzy feeling and left me a little puffy. After many photos and a bit of running and jumping around, I was quite puffed out and we headed back to the car for the windy drive back down.
Along the way, while we were pulled over taking photos, we noticed a little red car pulled over and the owners peering under the bonnet so we went over the see if we could be of any assistance. Well, it turns out that their radiator cap popped off and all their water and/or coolant boiled out of the radiator. The man put the remainder of his coolant in the radiator but was not enough and besides, he had no cap to keep it in. To help out, we got one of our 10 litre tanks of water and filled up the radiator. Jack then fashioned a cap out of our very useful duct tape and the cap of an empty water bottle. We left the rest of the water with the couple and wished them all the best on their travels - which turns out was all the way to Lima, Peru!
We hope they made it somewhere to get the car properly attended to. It felt good to be able to give someone a hand with their car. It felt like we were repaying karma's debt for having nice people helping us with our car woes in Mercedes.
On the way back from seeing the Salinas we headed to see the ruins in the town of Tilcara, about 25 km north of Purmamarca. We found our way to the town easily but finding our way to the ruins was not so easy even after a nice man gave us directions. After circling the cobble-stoned streets and dusty dirt roads of the town for a while we finally conceding we needed to go to the tourist office and get a map.
With the map in hand, we made our way to the ruins easily, parked the car in their gated car park and entered the site. A small entry fee was exchanged and after receiving our oddly drawn maps and Spanglish translated info we went for our walk around.
The ruins were mostly all reconstructions of the original structures, mostly rebuilt from the original materials that were found on the dig. It was set among a landscape of rocks and large cacti. We walked through the reconstructions of dwellings, barely fitting through some doorways and up the hill to the memorial temple. This was a modern made structure in honour of those who original found the site and started the diggings.
After sitting and enjoying the sun and peacefulness of the surrounding hills, we started to make our way back down as many of the other visitors did. I was not sure what time it was, but the sun was telling me it close to the site's closing time, which was about 6pm.
That night for dinner we went out to a restaurant that we deemed a locals' place, as we saw no other tourists in there. Again, we weren't exactly sure what we were ordering. A platter of meats, one we knew was beef, the other llama, as told to us by the waitress, but the third was and still remains a tasty mystery to us - a tasty mystery.
This was our last night up in Purmamarca and we had plans down out of the peaks and further South. We were really amazed at the Andes and very happy we were able to come see these wonderful surroundings (and I was also happy our car made it and didn't fall apart after being bruised and battered earlier in our trip).
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