Upon learning that I would be living in Argentina for nearly a year, I resolved to maximize my time in the United States. I ate at all my favorite restaurants, I religiously followed the entire season of the Texas Longhorns, and I fulfilled one of my longtime fantasies to take a cross-country road trip. For whatever reason, I never had the opportunity to embark on this stereotypical rite of passage during my college years. While my friends were off doing ski trips or attending BCS bowl games, I was either studying abroad, writing a thesis, working at an internship, or had some other prior obligation. At any rate, the timing never worked out. Last summer, I finally got the opportunity to bring this dream to life, and it could not have been more poetic. We were a group of four 20-somethings, all out of college and more or less the same phase in our life, and looking to have a good time. It was like a really nerdy, B-list version of “The Hangover” without the debauchery or a congruent Zach Galifianakis character.
Without much of a plan or itinerary, we simply got on I-10 and started heading west, like young men. It was one of the most fun, spontaneous things I’ve ever done. Developed completely organically, the journey eventually materialized into a four corners road trip which took us through some of the most beautiful landscapes I’d ever seen. It also made me a little sad to realize that in all my visits abroad, there was still so much for me to see in my own country.
Flashforward about 9 months. Selene and I had moved into our apartment in Tucumán, and there was still a week before classes would start. We wanted to take advantage of this free time to visit Cafayate, a good “mid-distance trip”: Long enough that we would need to stay overnight, close enough that it required minimal planning. The bus ride through Salta province was surprisingly reminiscent of the dusty red mesas and deserts in the Western United States.
Moreover, the thing to do in Cafayate is to visit the Quebradas de Conchas, also known as the Valles Calchaquíes. The trip itself reminded me most of our day at the Arches National Park in Utah. Pretty much, there is a standard “route” to follow along the highway, and you can park your car to explore whenever you please. In Argentina, for those who aren’t fortunate enough to have your own 4WD, several tour companies will drive you out, stopping at all the prerequisite photo ops. A few of them were more novelty than anything else– a rock formation that resembled a toad or a farm where you could feed domestic llamas. Some of our party were quite enamored by these attractions. For me, however, these were the most memorable highlights:
Los Castillos: This stop was supposed to be on the more imposing and spectacular formations on the route. I say “supposed” because as we were heading to the cliffs, we heard a deafening crack. The sky was overcast so we just assumed I was thunder. And then, like a gathering storm, the Castillo began to fall. And fall. And FALL.
We were a group of 15 people, and all of us were frozen in our tracks. Our guide, who up until this point had been talking up the Castillos as reminiscent of the spires in Disneyland, clapped his hand over his mouth with a description that could only be described as “Oh shit.” It was one of the most bizarre and surreal moments of my life, not unlike roasting a marshmallow at a live volcano. We had just witnessed the sudden, arbitrary decimation of a millions year-old landmass. If not for the imminent danger of the entire situation, it would be comical. Just 15 minutes beforehand, we were snapping pictures of cacti and posing in cave windows. Now we were looking at a huge pile of rubble, debris, and dust. I secretly thank the group of silly British travelers in our group who arrived late, because if not for them, we may have left on time and ended up a few meters closer to the cliff face.
Oops.
La Yesera – After a few less impressive stops (granted, it’s hard to follow a rockslide), we pulled over for an extended hike through the La Yesera, a spectacular group of technicolor hills and canyons with bands of color forming Seussian patterns in the rock. The guide explained that the vivid colors were due to the oxidation of several layers of different metals, but it was hard to believe that they occurred naturally. They seemed more at home in a Lewis Carroll novel.
Welcome to the town of Who-ville
You can't see me!
After hours of hiking and waiting impatiently for our vanmates to snap their share of pictures, we were getting kind of burnt out with the canyons. Although the Quebradas certainly were beautiful, the sun was beginning to set, a chill was beginning to set in, and we were having a hard time appreciating some of the topographical nuances. It was a shame, since the last stops, La Garganta del Diablo (the Devil’s Throat) and El Anfiteatro (the Amphitheatre) are supposed to be brilliant in daylight. As such, we did what I always seem to end up doing as the day winds down in a national park: take silly pictures.
P.S. Silly photos from the epic Going West to Seek our Fortunes trip available here. Thanks for the memories, guys.
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