Trees! Rocks! Colours!

And it was evening, and it was morning, the last day. After nearly two weeks, I was heading out of the desert and into a region where plant matter grew taller than your knees. The desert is a beautiful place full of wondrous and strange things, but the sparse or nonexistent vegetation was surprisingly hard to cope with. Shade just isn’t the same when it’s provided by, say, the shadow of your Land Cruiser. And so, when the bus from the Bolivian border at last descended below the tree line, it was extremely comforting to see the canopy creep up the canyon sides with more and more boldness as we made our way down the Quebreda de Humahuaca, the canyon road that leads from the border down out of the mountains to the plateaus of north-western Argentina. And the Quebrada itself seemed to rejoice in the return of the trees with a geological rainbow that evoked (deliberately?) more than anything a temperate forest at the height of autumn. The blue, green, pink, red, orange, white, black and grey bands of rock, undulating in high-amplitude ribbons along the canyon, may well have been the most beautiful rock formations I’ve seen in my life. I will regret forever not putting down the empanadas I’d purchased from a vendor at the bus station – to this day, still the best empanadas I’ve had all trip (de pollo; carne goes to an Irish bar in Salta) – to take a few photos from the bus. Never mind stopping. But the city of Salta beckoned, with its paved roads, ubiquitous electricity, cafes, peñas, and patios. Tilcara, Purmamarca, Humahuaca, these are the towns along the Quebrada – google them, project the images on your wall, and then multiply them by afternoon light to the power of deep blue sky, and you’ll see what I mean. It’s a place worth exploring in detail, I think. Some other trip, I suppose.