We have now completed our tour of the Salta area of Argentina, spending six days driving through both the “Northern loop” and “Southern loop.”  This is a large area, where we often feel we are driving through the Painted Desert of Arizona. Though we are high in the Andes, often topping 10,000 ft, this entire region was underwater in the past.  The colors of the mountain cliffs are a combination of iron, copper, and fossils.

Though we started this portion of the trip under heavy rain, it cleared by noon, and the rest of the trip involved clear blue skies. As we wound through switchbacks to get up one side of the mountain and then down the other side, each corner turned revealed more colors that were so vivid they almost did not seem real.

One afternoon found us walking around Cafayate, when we came across a small stage being set up with scores of white plastic chairs.  Reading the sign next to the stage, we saw they were about to put on “Romeo and Juliet Unplugged” — a comedy musical based on the Shakespeare play, targeted at small school children.  We decided to grab back row seats and see how this went.  Though the play was cute, it didn’t seem the timing was appropriate for such young children — they were mostly fidgeting and ignoring the play by the halfway point. I think it could have been a lot more successful if half the story line were removed (it went over the kid’s heads anyway), and cut the length to half an hour.

Besides gorgeous scenery, the Salta area is known for high altitude wineries. Both the world’s highest vineyard (where grapes are grown) and the world’s highest winery (where grapes are processed into wine) are in this region.  Unfortunately, we did not like the taste of most of the wines from this region. They have a much higher alcohol content than more traditional wines, which may be part of the issue.  Also, we found the wineries here less than inviting in many cases.  Though I am glad we came and saw it, I would not recommend Salta for a wine tour.

One stop we were looking forward to was the Salinas Grandes. This is a large salt desert covering 2,300 square miles, and I envisioned a huge expanse of salt bed.  To our amazement, it was mostly underwater — in a desert!? It turns out that it does not rain on the plain, but it had rained the prior week in the surrounding mountains, and that water runs off into the lake bed.  The lake is actively mined for salt, potassium and lithium and is dry for about half the year, with up to a few inches of water the rest of the time.

One of most enjoyable parts of this segment of our Argentina travel was observing the local indigenous people going about their daily lives — be it milking goats or selling hats to (mostly Argentinian) tourists.

Closing out Salta with a few images that didn’t fit anywhere else, but I liked too much not to include… 🙂