Although I may have stayed a little longer than I really needed too, Cachi has been fun. It has such a nice, laid-back pace, the people are really friendly and the town is clean, funky and quaint. Good for a little day outing :)
I caught the 9am bus (along with half of the town) and to my complete amazement, but bus actually left EARLY! They started packing people on around 8:40 and we pulled away before the strike of 9. Wonders never cease!
The ride starts out across the flat upper plateau of the mountain range. The hillsides are all different colours and dotted with the cardòn cacti everywhere. Then, about 1hr in, the show starts!
All of a sudden, the road circles around at the top of this huge, and I mean HUGE, valley with a series of streams all meeting into one river at the valley floor.
t's incredible to think that buses, packed with people and gear, along with cars, trucks, mules and cyclists make their way along this road every day. In most places the road is barely one-vehicle wide, so the smaller of the meeting vehicles has to retreat (in reverse!) to one of the passing areas and pull off while the bigger one goes by. Yikes!
I caught the 9am bus (along with half of the town) and to my complete amazement, but bus actually left EARLY! They started packing people on around 8:40 and we pulled away before the strike of 9. Wonders never cease!
The ride starts out across the flat upper plateau of the mountain range. The hillsides are all different colours and dotted with the cardòn cacti everywhere. Then, about 1hr in, the show starts!
All of a sudden, the road circles around at the top of this huge, and I mean HUGE, valley with a series of streams all meeting into one river at the valley floor.
t's incredible to think that buses, packed with people and gear, along with cars, trucks, mules and cyclists make their way along this road every day. In most places the road is barely one-vehicle wide, so the smaller of the meeting vehicles has to retreat (in reverse!) to one of the passing areas and pull off while the bigger one goes by. Yikes!
The road crawls along the edge of the mountains, slowly switching by 150 degree hairpin turns back and forth down into the valley. Wild!
I'm struck by how incredibly green everything is! I know this is a valley and they are rivers running (sometimes torrentially) across the road in places, but there are also cacti everywhere. Kinda a wierd but wonderful combination.
Of course my camera would choose now to get low on batteries, so I had to sit back, enjoy the view and select shots carefully (and quickly). Once we got down into the valley, the road runs along the floor where the river leads out of the valley.
With the valley now behind us, the bus pulled into a pit stop- probably to let the brake pads cool off as much as anything else! Then it was a relatively easy, uneventful ride the rest of the way back to Salta. What a trip!
I tried to get a ticket for a bus from Salta to Cordoba, leaving tonight, but with the end of the holiday week and most people taking an extra day, the buses are jammed full. So, I have another unplanned day in Salta. A blessing probably, because it gave me a chance to clean up a bit (and man, my clothes are due!), get some groceries from one of the most comprehensive markets I've been to here (I even treated myself to Fruit Loops Kel!!!) and have time to cook and relax by the pool at Salta's municipal campground. How sweet is that?!
I don't leave for Cordoba until 9:30pm (that's 21:30 Tera, right?!) tomorrow night, so I will have the day tomorrow to finish up exploring Salta. Then I'm off to Cordoba, back into the mountains!
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