(note: this happened before the Salar de Uyuni trip, but got posted out of order - whoops).

Quebrada de Humahuaca

After a great time in Salta and Cafayate (and less great, but still fun in the grimy Jujuy) we took a tour up through the Jungle near Salta, into the "Quebrada de Humahuaca." Quebrada is the local Spanish term used for a valley or gorge. There are many quebradas in the area all with a "de Something" on the end. We visited the Quebrada de Llerma(?) between Salta and Cafayate back in 2000 and had a great time. That, combined with the expensive guide, set our expectations for the Quebrada de Humahuaca quite high. In fact, it turned out to be pretty typical and even included a portion where our guide handed us off to his "best most recommended friends" so that they could try to sell us useless stuff at gringo-landia prices. Bummer.

But, along the way we saw a lot of great stuff all the same:

A nest of the ornero bird on an abandoned telephone poll.

Nikki in the mountians de los siete colores. Basically there are lots of different minerals laid in bands next to each other so that the mountains are vivid shades of white, red, orange, tan, green, maroon, and even brown.

The town of Maimara has a fairly unique system of above ground mausoleam/tomb/condos. It also is located right in front of a beautiful natural feature where the brush covered hills are interrupted by a flowing "painter's brush stroke" of sandstone. Quite impressive.

We toured the ruins of Tilcara where thick stone walls and roofs of adobe on top of straw on top of bamboo all help to keep the buildings at a cool 60 degrees while the outside sun has brought the temperature up to 100. The system only works in areas with high diurnal temperature changes (i.e. cold at night, hot in day) which are conveniently the places that produce the best wines :) Also note: I've been advocating us building a house that will take advantage of this system for a long time while Nikki only realized it was a good system when we visited this ruins.

The trip ended in the tiny northern Argentina town of Humahuaca (namesake of the valley) which is a fairly typical 1 story colonial village which is slowly being expanded with more modern buildings. This adobe bell tower sits on the top of the hill which overlooks the town just above the town square.