In the parking area at the garganta del diablo in the valle the day before, we picked up 2 North American girls looking for a ride to Salta. It quickly got dark and I spent a couple hours chewing coca and squinting through the windshield between us and the rain and dark night, thinking about how much better it is to drive during the day and wishing that the lines in the road were light reflective. A low point during the drive was when Smiley realized that the glass inside the fancy metal thermos he bought the night before (the 2nd thermos purchase of the Road Trip) had completely shattered and pieces of glass were spread over his lap and the car floor while Radiohead's Kid A skipped painfully. After Smiley shouted for me to pull over the car, brushed himself free of shards and got back in, we agreed that skipping CDs is a pet peeve of us both. It was super chilly when we finally arrived in Salta and parked the VW Gol in the parking lot of a Casino next to our hostel. We went out for empanadas of charqi (jerky) and tamales at Dona Salta and spent the night in Salta. The 4th day began with a trip to the amazing mercado in Salta for supplies consisting of grapefruits, mandarins, goat cheese, tomatoes, bread, avocado, coca leaves, sodium bicarbonate and lama and alpaca sweaters. We then journeyed up into the province of Jujuy on a narrow, super windy road, sipping warm mate and gazing at the snow on the tree branches and the thick clouds hiding the mountains. More suffering of skipping discs, but the Police's Walking on the Moon worked. Que frio!
The sisters: Jenny and Julia plus Smiley in Tilcara
outside Tilcara along Ruta 9
in Purmamarca
well, we decided to extend the road trip to 5 days because the landscape was just too awesome
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