A couple of hours by bus north of Salta the green agricultural lushness abruptly gives way, as the altitude rises, to barren rocky mountainsides dotted with cactus. Our destination was Tilcara in the far north of Argentina, a dusty funky small town with a slight ‘wild west’ feel about it. The mountains in these parts are known for their bright multi-coloured layers exposed by centuries of erosion and are popular with hikers and sightseers for this reason.
We spent two days in Tilcara, hiking into the surrounding countryside and wandering around town in the early evening when it had cooled off. Our longest hike was to ‘Devil’s Throat’. On the way out of town a large dog awoke as we walked past and it decided to join us; in fact it came with us all the way to the summit, several kilometres out of town. No doubt it’s done this many times before with other hikers; not a bad way for a likeable dog to amuse itself in Tilcara.
Then on Saturday morning we took a bus to the nearby village of Purmamarca, also well-known and popular with visitors for its own surrounding coloured mountains. In fact Purmamarca seemed to be entirely a tourist town, with no other industry or reason for being. We stayed a night and spent an afternoon hiking around its multi-hued hillsides too.
And that brought the final curtain down on our time in Argentina; a great country to visit. Over the past three months we’d come and gone several times across its borders but this time we wouldn’t be returning. The Atacama Desert of northern Chile beckoned.
