Santa Rosa de Tastil
Tuesday, 13 November 2007
We left Purmamarca to return to Salta and saw some more spectacular colors along the way.
There is a good museum in Salta that displays mummies and household items from Incan times that were discovered several years ago in burial sites at the top of Llullaillaco, a 22,000 foot volcano. Look under multimedia on the museum’s page for a video.
Salta’s main square is a lively place, with outdoor cafes, the Incan museum, and the pink Cathedral. We wandered through a market and nice park, but decided not to ride the cable car above the city.
The next day drove up another canyon to see the ruins of an old Indian town at Santa Rosa de Tastil. Then we continued up the highway to the next mountain pass to see what there was to see.
Santa Rosa de Tastil is a little village 60 miles from Salta and at 10,000 feet. There are ruins there of an Indian town, pre–Columbus, that had 400 houses.
Here is another of the attractive churches in the provinces of Salta and Jujuy.
About 2,000 people once lived here at the Santa Rosa de Tastil site. Alas, all that remains are the stone outlines of the structures.
It was pretty lonely out here.
Make sure to look at the satellite view on the map.
This is the view looking to the northwest from Abra Blanca, a pass at 13,300 feet. The volcano off in the distance is 15,300 feet high. The Sico Pass at the Chilean border is 100 miles up the mostly gravel highway. There is a railroad out there, somewhere. It is not in use now, but may be restarted in a couple years. The passenger service from Salta is called Tren a las Nubes, the Train to the Clouds. It meanders around and crosses two salt flats before heading on into Chile.
We had a fabulous week in the northwest of Argentina, with its remarkable landscapes and culture. Next—Back to Salta for a flight to, yes, Buenos Aires, and then to catch a flight to El Calafate, a small city in Patagonia, where we will see a large glacier.
