really high desert
So here we are in the the ubiquitos internet salon. In this small town in the side hills of the Andes mountains, we can sit down at the computer, AND if we knew how, could send pictures, sound, in real time. All this will cost around 40 cents. If we spend an hour.
Lunch today at Cachi was roast goat and home grown high (really High) mountain potatoes in a cafe featuring gutted 50's TVs with the picture tubes replaced with fish tanks, and another aquarium of axolotls! All washed down with about a liter of local beer. $10 for three.
Dinner tonight was with our driver and our guide, we covered health care, and the logistics of dry snow through a liter of local red wine and big amounts of beef. Of course it was all expressed in spanglish, once again. The tour started at 7 am in Salta. They picked us up in a Ford pick-up powered by diesel, and we drove for around 10 hours. Everything from rain forest to high desert to Utah style rock formations tho different. This road was mostly unpaved (think one or three steps down from our forest service road with lots of grade and hairpin turns and at least one monument - big cross, small chapel, garish artificial flowers- to a 28 fatality bus plunge when the driver fell asleep at the wheel)(not to worry - OUR driver is chewing cocoa leaves to keep alert) through the most amazing geologic rock formations that I have ever seen. The colors ranged from red to black to green to blue, and that is just describing the soil. The road ranged from some asphalt to newly graded compact sand, ( mostly the later), went from 3000 to 10,000 feet. Extremely isolated, extremely, made area around Tonasket look like a thriving metropolis. Saw 4 Condors feeding on a dead wild burro, saw a tree full of wild parrots, saw many other brown birds with orange bills that we could not identify. Saw guanaco running across a plain through a forest of sagauro like cactus that were 8 meters high.
Tomorrow we continue on with the same guide and truck back to Salta, then catch the overnight Flecha bus to Buenos Aires.
Lunch today at Cachi was roast goat and home grown high (really High) mountain potatoes in a cafe featuring gutted 50's TVs with the picture tubes replaced with fish tanks, and another aquarium of axolotls! All washed down with about a liter of local beer. $10 for three.
Dinner tonight was with our driver and our guide, we covered health care, and the logistics of dry snow through a liter of local red wine and big amounts of beef. Of course it was all expressed in spanglish, once again. The tour started at 7 am in Salta. They picked us up in a Ford pick-up powered by diesel, and we drove for around 10 hours. Everything from rain forest to high desert to Utah style rock formations tho different. This road was mostly unpaved (think one or three steps down from our forest service road with lots of grade and hairpin turns and at least one monument - big cross, small chapel, garish artificial flowers- to a 28 fatality bus plunge when the driver fell asleep at the wheel)(not to worry - OUR driver is chewing cocoa leaves to keep alert) through the most amazing geologic rock formations that I have ever seen. The colors ranged from red to black to green to blue, and that is just describing the soil. The road ranged from some asphalt to newly graded compact sand, ( mostly the later), went from 3000 to 10,000 feet. Extremely isolated, extremely, made area around Tonasket look like a thriving metropolis. Saw 4 Condors feeding on a dead wild burro, saw a tree full of wild parrots, saw many other brown birds with orange bills that we could not identify. Saw guanaco running across a plain through a forest of sagauro like cactus that were 8 meters high.
Tomorrow we continue on with the same guide and truck back to Salta, then catch the overnight Flecha bus to Buenos Aires.
posted by Axolotl at 6:49 PM
3 Comments:
I will be awarded a scholarship next week! I don't know how much, though. About 10 other people in the department got it too. It's probably for like 50 dollars.
I'll go buy argentinian steak.
good point. So does the last syllable rhyme with fine, mean, or sin?
And where does the emPHAsis go?
I feel like if I had more Argentine friends I would know this.
P.S. A whole tank of axolotls? In a TV? I'm impressed
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