The tour that spoke to my love of Ecology

The last city I hit on my tour was in northern Argentina. A friend of mine here in PY highly recommended that I visit a city called Salta and I was NOT disappointed! I was expecting a small town nestled in the mountains. It turned out to be quite a large city, yet it didn’t feel like a big city. There was green and mountains everywhere, just beautiful.
Of course it turned out to be quite an adventure to get there. I took a bus from La Serena, Chile to Mendoza, Argentina and then a second bus up to Salta. The bus ride to Salta started off without a/c, which NO ONE was very happy with. What I also realized was that about every so often the bus would pull over and the guys would run with water to the back and throw it on something back there! Yea, that wasn’t super encouraging! We finally got to a bus terminal and they just threw buckets and buckets of water on some mechanical part in the back. Fortunately, that somehow gave us a/c for the next part of the ride. When we got to another terminal, we actually ended up switching buses! Because of all that, I knew we would be getting into Salta late. Around 8am, we pulled over to the side of the road and a bunch of people got off the bus and onto another bus. I didn’t think much of it b/c I was VERY tired and the trip had already been a little weird. After that we hit a car accident and had to sit on the bus for an hour and wait for traffic to clear. It was when we finally hit a city called Jujuy that I started to think something was wrong with this picture. I recognized the name of the town and knew it was near Salta. So I decided to ask the bus driver how much time was left. This is when I discovered that all the people who had gotten off the bus earlier were the ones going to Salta. From that intersection we stopped at, Salta is about 45 minutes west. So the bus drops the Salta people off and then continues going north – it doesn’t actually go into town to the terminal (I of course kept expecting us to show up in the Salta terminal). The bus driver was a bit shocked I was asking him this to say the least. I asked him for my bag and he then told me it was in Salta. At this point in time I had been on a bus for close to two days and therefore was VERY tired, hungry and now very embarrassed by my situation – yea NOT pretty. Fortunately, the guy was very nice. He called the bus terminal in Salta and found out that my bag was still there. He also showed me the bus company where I needed to buy my bus ticket to get back to Salta (a 2 hour bus ride south!) In end, I ate lunch, got on a new bus and finally made it to my hostel in Salta. Whew, was that exhausting!

Once I got settled into the hostel and talked with the guy who worked there about cool stuff to do in the area. I decided to take an all day tour the next day and it was awesome! The tour was small – only 4 of us, plus our tour guide. Our guide’s name was JuanJo and he and I actually have the same birthday – crazy! We drove in a big loop northwest of Salta – 520km to be exact and it was amazing. I studied Ecology in college, so I have always had a love of nature/plants and animals. This trip ended up being perfect for me! As you can see from the pictures below, the landscape changed like every 10 minutes. One minute it was green and lush, the next minute it was filled with cactus and the next minute it was brown and dry. Just beautiful and unbelievable at the same time!













Along the way we saw a ton of llamas. The people in Argentina use the wool to make blankets, sweaters… I thought about buying something made with this wool, but then quickly realized that I don't live anywhere where I need to wear llama wool to stay warm! (thank goodness for that LOL) (BTW : totally felt like the Yellowstone tourist here- as in everyone stopped on the side of the road to take a photo of the bear!)


We also saw an animal called a Vicuna. It is related to the camel and we are told can run SUPER fast! We walked up slowly to get a few photos so we wouldn’t spook them.


For the first half of the trip we were heading up in elevation. San Antonio de Cobres is about 12-13,000 feet up and is where we stopped to have lunch. We were def a bit short of breath, with heads and chests hurting a bit – it was a weird sensation actually! But we all def felt better after eating some lunch and drinking some caffeine.

After lunch, it was off to the salt flats –the white line in the distance is the salt flats!


I don’t even know if I have words to describe just how amazing the salt flats were! We came at a super cool time – the rainy season. This meant that a) we had to take off our shoes to walk on the salt flats and that b) all the water made it look like icy and snowy. What was weird was that the weather was warm and the salt and water weren’t cold and icy so the whole thing definitely messed with your mind a bit! With the white clouds in the sky and the white on the ground, there was just white EVERYWHERE – gorgeous!


We quickly realized that the water was giving us super cool reflection shots. So we first started by taking our “Jesus walking on water photo” LOL. Does it look like I am walking on water??

Then we just had fun and took a bunch of fun photos.



By the way, walking on salt is definitely not easy or all that pleasant. It looks like sand, but it is millions of tiny salt crystals that you are walking on. We found a few soft spots, but my feet were definitely hurting the next day!
But despite that, it was an amazing experience to be there. We stayed there for about an hour before our guide reminded us that we needed to get going!


After that we drove to the highest spot on our trip – 4170m up (like 13,000 feet or so). I got out of the car to take a photo and was definitely feeling a bit light-headed and dizzy…so weird!

The windy rode we drove back down after reaching the highest point.

After that it was time to head back down and finish the day. We saw some remarkable landscapes and animals on this trip. It was after this tour that I quickly realized that I am officially addicted to traveling now. I have done quite a lot of traveling in the US, but not much internationally. I had been a little nervous about traveling around South America by myself. But at the end of the trip, I realized that I had been able to get myself from place a to b, eat and sleep, and fortunately, the worst things that happened to me was my camera breaking and me missing a few buses (yes more than one! LOL) … so I am definitely coming off this trip with A LOT more confidence about seeing the world! I was actually having a hard time wanting to come back to PY - despite feeling pretty tired, I really wanted to keep traveling. I also realized that while seeing the cities and monuments is nice an all, history and such just really isn’t my thing. Yes it would still be cool to see the Eiffel Tower in Paris or the Coliseum in Rome. But after this trip, I want to see the places in the world that I have learned about in my Ecology classes or that I have taught my students about. The world is absolutely gorgeous out there and I can't wait to see more!