As I waited outside on the street at 7am to be picked up, I was introduced to a Salteño custom. As every car came down the street, it would flick its high beams. I was like, "What are they flicking their high beams for? It's light out. It's a one way street so there's no opposing traffic. Huh?" But as the day went on, when driving on tiny winding back roads, as cars passed each other drivers would either wave to each other, or flick their high beams to say "Hi!" So when I was being "flicked" at in the morning, it was just guys passing in cars being like " Hey there..." They were also probably letting me know that they could give me a ride, assuming that since I was standing by the side of the road I was waiting for a bus. People driving by a bus stop will often stop and see if you're going the same way as them and give you a lift if you want.
Anyway, so our guide, a young little guy named Eduardo, finally arrived. With me on the excursion were a rather quiet and boring couple from Patagonia and this middle-aged British guy named Chris, who didn't really speak or understand Spanish very well. Though it was nice to be able to chat effortlessly in English for a bit, his unabashed Anglo-ness got a little old after a while.
We drove up through Purmamarca, which I had visited the day previous, and then out came the coca leaf as we drove up this incedibly serpentine road up all these mountians to an elevation of more than 3000m. This is the reason why it's better to go on organized excursions around Salta as opposed to renting a car yourself. Besides the obvious advantage of having a guide who can tell you about everything you go by and who knows where they're going, they know how to drive on tiny twisting dirt roads and up mountains and in the desert. And they have heavy-duty vehicles that can handle the terrain.
Or so I thought. We'd just finished visiting the Salinas Grandes, more than 200 square kilometres of desert-like salt flats, and were about 15km down a 70km stretch of rough dirt road in these deserted desert plains when the truck stalled. And then stalled again. " I don't like the sound of that," said Eduardo, and neither did I. We were seriously so in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing but desert, llamas and wide open sky for kilometres and kilometres around. And maybe a half dozen trucks go down the road a day and there's no electricity, et alone cell phone service, for kilometres.So, inside my head, I'm trying to think how the apple I have in my backpack will sustain me for the two days we'll have to wait until a truck goes by. But after about 15 minutes of the men huddling around the open hood, they figured out it was a wire that had come loose on the bumpy dirt road, and so we headed on.
About 50 kilometres on we stopped for lunch of traditional food at this tiny village in the middle of the plains. Open plains for miles, with mountains in the distance on every side. We got a tour around the village - everything was made of adobe and we saw the animals that rpoduced the food we had just eaten.
We then drove a while more through the plains to San Antonio de los Cobres, a rather industrial village of 3500 that despite its idyllic location was pretty drab and ugly. I did pick up some sunglasses to repace the pair I lost ( They were $5 and they're Gucci! Really! That's what it said on the package!) at the general store and had a chat with the teenage boy working there at the same time, whom I assured that in Canada we don't speak Spanish, but rather English and French. ( I took his comment as a compliment on my Spanish abilities.)
As we drove back through more and more spectacular landscapes ( which are just to amazing to try to describe in) and the Quebrada del Toro as night fell, I realized I was really getting into Salta. It took a couple of days, but then it starts to grow on you.
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