Post for Dad: Foamer stuff!

As Pedro and I headed west from Salta, capital, towards the Vineyards (and tasting rooms) of Cafayate, we stopped at the tiny town of Alemania.  It was once connected by train to the urban centers to the east, but now that the railroads have been abandoned there are only a handful of families who still live there.

The town in snuggled between red rocky hills covered in cactus.  The bridge into town was once a railroad bridge.

Dad, as you can see, we were thinking of you when we took these pictures.

The train station was built in 1916 and was recently  rennovated; it has a lot of cool architectural detail.  I chatted a bit with a woman who runs a craft co-op inside.  Apparently the town is in such good shape because a few years ago a thriller set in the U.S. southwest was filmed here.  The place does give off a ghost-town vibe; we saw only one person on the street while we were there.

Post for Grandpa: Goats!

Driving west from Salta capital, we stopped at a cute little tourist trap featuring goats.  Not sure what breed they were, but they were cute and climbed all over everything just like grandpa's goats.

Massive kitchen disaster

Recently I decided that one of the things I want to do with all my downtime back here in Buenos Aires is to learn how to make really good bread.  I’ve made 3 loaves so far with mixed to positive results.  The first loaf was a simple white French bread,  It had a nice texture, perhaps a wee bit dense but somehow with an awesome thick crunchy crust.  The next day it was still delicious, but I decided to change flour brands because the fragrance had just a touch of ode de grocery store.  Not overwhelming but who wants old musty flour.

My second loaf was an attempt at a multigrain French loaf that worked out pretty well too.  Cracked wheat with linen seeds, walnuts, and a brown glossy crust thanks to brushed egg on top.  Again just a wee bit dense.

Leveraging the same recipe, yesterday I started my third loaf.  I eliminated the all purpose flour from the recipe since the mass-market whole wheat down here appears to just be white flour with wheat germ mixed in.  I also let the bread rise overnight in the hopes that I’d get some nice air bubbles.  The results…eh.  The texture is a little lighter, but maybe the dough was too wet because the bread spread outwards instead of upwards.

These three loaves, however, are not the source of Pedro and my current misfortune.

My original idea around 5 days ago was to make sourdough bread.  But sourdough bread requires that I make sourdough starter, which is basically a awesome little biology experiment in catching wild yeasts on our kitchen counter using only flour and water.  The end result is supposed to grow into a beery-smelling little pet who, I discovered through extensive online research, many people name.

Our counter pet doesn’t yet have a name.  But it does have an odor.  One we discovered while taking out the trash today.

Part of the process of growing our pet is discarding half of it every day and feeding it new flour and water.  Being a conscientious person, I elected not to pour the goo down the drain for fear that it would turn into cement in some curve of the plumbing.  Instead I tossed portions of our pet into the trash, and since we normally take the trash out every day, I didn’t foresee any problems.  Except that yesterday we went to a barbecue.  So the trash can had bits of yesterday’s kitchen pet, to which I added more this morning.

A few minutes ago Pedro decided to take out the trash.  He opened the bin, and it smelled a little unpleasant.  Then he lifted the bag and was subjected to an unforeseen attack.  Apparently our pet decided to turn himself into a biological weapon.  There was a cry from the kitchen as Pedro was assaulted by noxious gases, then a frantic “Hurry, hurry, hurry!” as the brown pet-juice leaked through the seams of the plastic bag, burning the wretched smell into the floor.

Within the next few days our pet will have to stand trial; to decide whether he’s just too bad to ever turn good.  I don’t know where I went wrong in nurturing him, but only once before have I smelled something so foul.

In Miami I bought a cute mini pumpkin one Halloween, and set it on top of the tv as decoration.  There the cute little pumpkin stayed for around 9 months until my parents came for a visit and we for some reason decided to throw it away.  At the slightest touch, the little pumpkin suddenly melted all over the tv set, and the smell that filled the air was akin to a diaper filled by a baby who had had a wicked night of drinking the day before.

I had hoped never to revisit that day.  Shudder.

Salta: Salinas Grandes

One of the places that Seba drove us to was the Salinas Grandes de Salta.  Before you ask, the province name Salta has nothing to do with salt; salta is spanish for leap :)

Heading west out of the Quebrada de Humauaca we drove up up up to the Cuesta de Lipan (14,680 ft), gateway to the Argentine altiplano.  The altiplano is basically a wide flat plain at a bit over 11,000 ft elevation and stretching between eastern and western peaks of the Andes.  The Salinas Grandes are salt flats in what was once a lake.  The above picture captures the Salinas in the distance.

There is a small salt operation in the salinas, and the preparations for a somewhat bigger tourist operation.  On the side of the road it appears that someone is building a restaurant out of salt:

Next the the restaurant there was a turbo solar-cooker that I know that Mom will want to build as soon as she sees this picture.

I think a slight flaw in their business model is that the only thing on the menu out by the tables seems to be cat.

Opposite the "restaurant" we walked around the salt production areas.  Rectangular pools are cut into the salt-pan, salt is purified by the water and then shovelled into heaps to be carted away.

Seba and Pedro were arrested for trespassing and sentenced to 2 minutes hard labor.

My favorite part of the day, though, was the llama ride.
A few more pictures here

Jujuy! La Quebrada de Humauaca

You've got to love a province that is called Jujuy (pronounced who-hooey).  The name is just fun, something you might yell at the top of a slide at Raging Waters.  But Jujuy has a whole lot more going for it than just a moniker that sounds like a giggle.  It has the mind-blowing Quebrada de Humauaca, a section of the Andes where God decided to take an impressionist approach to landscaping:

This is what the finished work looks like.  Actually, I should say that this is NOT what the finished work looks like.  The colors in real life are fantastically vivid and unfortunately amateur photography really can't do it justice.  Why not?

Let's say you're driving up a mountain road.  The surrounding mountains are vast and eerily shaded by deep gray storm clouds high above.  But, lo, off in the distance someone must have spoken, "let there be light."

To which you reply, "Light is great and all, but could we have a little less than Hiroshima perhaps?"

And a sad little dog chimes in, "I agee."











But I digress.  The Quebrada de Humauaca stretches north-south along the top of the province of Jujuy, which incidentally is shaped like a boot and shares a border with Bolivia.  Sebastian, an old college friend of Pedro's, spent a weekend driving us around it at breakneck speeds, impressing us not only with the awesomeness of nature but also the awesomeness of the Chevrolet Vectra's ability to defy inertial force.   Let's just say that coming out of every curve I had to blink several times in amazement.

The first town that we visited was Purmamarca, a surprisingly unpretentious little town considering the geological jewel it sits upon.   We drove on a dirt road that skirts the hill behind the town and marveled at the colors of the rocks.  Seba showed us some natural and man made optical illusions.

This cliff, a natural optical illusion, looks like it is white underneath but has been covered with red mud from above.  But in scraping the mud a bit we found that the red clay is the base, and who knows where the white streaks have come from.

I will let you determine how this man-made optical illusion manages to capture Pedro and I at different moments in time.

After leaving Purmamarca we continued north along the Quebrada de Humauaca to stay for a couple of nights in the town of Tilcara.  Tilcara was once a sleepy little green oasis dotted with adobe houses.  It's grown a bit in the 10 years since Pedro last camped there, but it is still a really pleasant town even if tourism has become the main business.  Tilcara's principal draw is its large Pucara, the remains of a precolombian fortified city.  The above picture shows some of the reconstructed buildings of the Pucara de Tilcara.  It also gives you an idea of how dry the landscape is;  one might think one was in the southwest.

For more pictures click here.

La Rioja

This city really doesn't deserve a post, I consider this to be a warning to all NEVER to come to this place.  Really, you don't need to.

I´m not sure about the precise english translation of Rioja, but I think it translates loosely to "Purgatory" on the optimistic side, or pessimistically as one of the circles of Dante´s hell. The city is fairly small, located in a basin next to some mountains around 300km from Mendoza, and once you arrive it takes a supreme effort to leave.  There is such high demand to leave La Rioja that all of the bus seats that recline into beds are booked up almost a week in advance.  


So when we arrived at 8 pm on November 17th, after a day of touring desert national parks in up to 117 degree heat and then a 4 hour busride in a beatup old bus without airconditioning, we found that our options were pretty limited.  In order to escape we had a 6 hour bus ride in front of us in a normal seat that could begin at 12am, 3am or 8am.  After much discussion and much visitation to the ticket counters of different buslines which we learned later were collectively selling tickets for the same buses, we decided to give ourselves some relief, find a hotel somewhere, and take a shower.  


By 10pm we had managed to insult one taxi driver for supposing that he would have change, and two hotelkeepers for requesting to view a hotel room and thus insinuating that their establishments might be sub-par.  But at last we had a room at the PLAZA hotel downtown, a four star establishment with a rooftop pool, a delicious continental breakfast (besides the ubiquitous awful coffee) and interior decor rivalling Motel 6.  At 10pm with the temperature still in the 90s and not a breath of wind, that pool felt great and we were the only ones in it!

Desert Parks: Ischigualasto and Talampaya

November 17th was the day of the Desert Parks for Pedro and I.  

In the morning we visitted Parque Nacional Ischigualasto, also known as Valley of the Moon due to it´s barren landscape.  In the area of the park, continental uplift of the Andes has exposed around 45 million years of sedimentation from the Triassic period.  On the western edge of the park are the oldest dark yellow rocks, in the middle of the park are grey and light pink sediment from a middle period, and to the east are the the tall red cliffs from the late triassic.  The place is a goldmine of dinosaur bones.  We took a 3.5 hour bus tour with stops to see various rock formations caused by wind erosion and such. 

 We didn´t seen any dinosaur bones on site other than in the museum, but we did see some leaf impressions and lots of cool rocks.

In the afternoon we went to Parque Nacional Talampaya.  Again a desert park with rock formations caused by wind erosion, but what was really impressive were the dramatic red canyons that were formed by fractures in the rock.  The canyon walls are vertical and around 300 feet tall, separated by 100 feet or so of flat red sand and bright green acacia-looking trees. 

 There are also a lot of yellow-flowered bushes that look a bit like scotch broom, but they have no leaves and photosynthesize through their green bark.  

At the entrance to one of the canyons of Talampaya there is an incredible series of petroglyphs from around 500AD. 

Click here for more pictures of the parks

The fauna of the parks are apparently paid, because we got great photo-ops of Guanacos (look like llamas), a Condor, a Suri (looks like an emu), and a grey fox.  All throughout the desert areas we´ve visitted so far, there have been tons of small tan colored hawks (still need to find the exact name).