Our Promaster van intrigues people on the road partly because the RAM brand is a desirable pick up and they’ve never seen a van with the famous logo, so they imagine my Ram is something intriguing…
…and partly they are curious because most foreigners they meet in Argentina are driving rentals. One guy came up to me at the salt flats and asked why I had a Florida tag on my van. Because we drove from Florida..? I said slowly. That led to a long explanation about my Fiat Ducato that has a gasoline engine, and retirement, and having no offspring and so forth, all the angles of my life on the road. His eyes lit up. You’re doing retirement properly he said. You’d be surprised how positive people we meet are about our random nomad life. In the States we’re homeless bums, here we are living large.
One fellow traveler in the mountains coming from Chile had a warning for me as we talked about the 15,900 foot Jama Pass just ahead. He said to be careful as the roads in Argentina continue to be steep in the mountains of Jujuy Province on the road to the city of Salta, our destination. He wasn’t kidding.
In the US this would be a National Park, but around here it’s just another day on the road.
This drive was a wonder, another surprise on a continent that’s full of them.
Highway 52 from the Salt Flats to the town of Purmamarca was a Disney ride and utterly amazing.
I fear mere photographs usually taken from the front of a moving van with whatever light was available won’t do justice to the countryside we drove through.
I can say that we have driven the Andes in various chunks from Santa Marta on Colombia’s Caribbean coast to the Martial Mountains, the backdrop to the Southernmost City of the Americas, Ushuaia and this drive was among the most spectacular.
Highway 52 from the salt flats descended through a canyon to the side of the mountain and from there descended thousands of feet zig zagging into one valley or canyon after another.
There were no signs of life, no power lines, no side roads, no huts or farms or fences. Just the road descending for turn after turn.
You can see from the screen shot an estimated 48 minutes to drive 25 miles with a speed of 19 miles per hour doesn’t compute.
Saguaro cactus at 12,000 feet.
Layne too was photographing as we went. We stopped for a 45 minute break to cool the brakes but it was a long afternoon of descending to 8,000 feet.
Eventually at lower elevations we saw signs of life, herds of goats and guanacos, adobe houses, kitchen gardens and fields of corn. I’ve never been to Central Asia (yet) but if we drive there one day I expect Tajikistan would look a lot like this.
Civilization: a bus, a church and power lines, all you need.
The valley floor around 9,000 feet.
This village was the goal. Purmamarca has been connected to the outside world with decent paved highways and the idea has been to make it a transport hub and tourist center. The tourist thing is going great guns as we shall see. But for now we paused, bought a couple of souvenirs and a sun hat for Layne. We’ll be coming back to the village later.
The plan was to press on in the valley driving north toward Bolivia 150 miles away. Except we were going to drive one hour, find a camp and the next day (Monday) we’d go and look at the Mountain of 14 colors. And by the way it was another epic Andean drive - on dirt, always my favorite.
