24-hour bus ride – yippee! We got on the bus early and were very much the minority, the only tourists and the only people over five feet tall. Andean people of all ages boarded the bus, including a lady, at least 100 years old, who used my face to steady herself.
It was pretty enjoyable as far as 24-hour bus rides go. The scenery was amazing. All day we saw the the Andes to our right, so straight and tall, with perfectly flat fields leading up to them.
Along the road were some pretty ramshackle stands and houses. The cars here are pretty old school too.
The next morning at sunrise we saw the coloured mountains that the region is known for.
The villages in this area were clusters of houses, all identical, with the water tanks elevated above.
The best part of the bus ride is that we gradually got to an elevation of 3,300, which meant we didn’t suffer much from altitude sickness.
We got to Humahuaca, found our hostel and headed out to explore. The sun here is blazing, but its very cold in the shade.
It’s a small town with very dusty roads, simple stucco buildings, and a bunch of healthy looking albeit dirty stray dogs. There was a celebration at the church and all the kids were dressed up in traditional clothing.
We went to the market and found some amazing fresh fruit and vegetables for dinner. It was very good prices for everything except the quinoa, which was the same price as at home, and sadly probably out of the price range of most of the locals.
Other than the market, there were a couple of bakeries with pastries and alfajores, and a few convenience stores all selling the same cookies, candy and dulce de leche. They love sweet stuff here.
We headed across the “river” which was just a wide flat riverbed, with a tiny stream winding through and walked up to a lookout in the hills across from the town. Wild cacti everywhere – we hadn’t seen this before.
We befriended a cat at the top of the lookout who followed us back down. Humahuaca in the distance.
The ceiling and a lot of the furniture in the hostel was made from cactus wood. I don’t think this is a very rapidly renewable resource.
In the afternoon we took a tour with 4 others from our hostel to Hornacal, also known as the mountain of 14 colours. By tour I mean we packed into a pickup truck 25 kilometers across and one kilometer up to reach this point. We picked up a local boy and drove him a ways to cut down his 3 hour walk over the mountains to his village. The road was all hairpin turns as it zigzagged up the mountain.
On the way up the mountain we kept seeing glimpses of the colours – unnaturally bright pink.
The view was incredible, layers of colours zigzagging in the mountain. We were about 4,300 meters up here and it was pretty hard to walk up the hill from the lookout.
Are there 14 colours?
We rode in the truck bed on the way back – very dusty.
We had a very early night to catch our 4:00 am bus the next morning.
Meanwhile... 