Sealed road?

We awoke unsure if Eddie would be alive, but luckily he was, and even luckier, willing to drive us again today, this time to Purmamarca.  The promise of a sealed, paved road (for the most part) awaited.  That and stunning scenery of course.

Pretty soon we entered the National Park of Cactuses (or cacti- apparently you can use either term.  Trust us, we spent a lot of time talking about it).  It was amazing.  And we got some pretty fun cacti shots.

The next landscape we reached was more rock mountains of gorgeous colours from the minerals.  There was so much to see I couldn’t keep up and soon found myself in trouble from Rita for failing to point yet another epic view from my vantage point!

This followed by a winding canyon of more stunning scenery as we descended from about 4100 metres.  You could tell we were getting close to Bolivia at this point.

We decided to try a local comedor in the town of General Belgrano, which seemed to us to offer not much more than sweat and flies, or maybe that was just our experience at lunch.  We did manage to find an oasis of a petrol station with air conditioning and functioning washrooms, fortifying us for the drive through the afternoon heat to Purmamarca.

The drive to Purmamarca was again gorgeous, as was the surrounding mountains of the town, including the famous “hill of seven colours”.  The town itself was, well, interesting.  First, it’s all unpaved, meaning it’s quite dirty, which seems to rub off on the temporary inhabitants, who in the wise words of Rita, were composed of “unwashed guitar carrying hippies”.  It also meant the buildings, made of dirt too it seemed, blended into the streets, which blended into the mountains.  It was a weird place.

Purmamarca from a distance- if you look closely you might be able to spot the hippies

We managed to find a decent place to stay with a great view, left Eddie and Rita to recover from another long day, and grabbed a glass of wine at a restaurant with loud live folk music.  At 9:30pm we were so exhausted Marieke was convinced it was actually 11:30pm, probably because she was too tired to compute 24 hour time, so we decided it was time to turn in.

View from our balcony

More photos:

Rita in front of Capilla de San Rafael