"Rainbows in the earth" Iruya by the___gecko

The next afternoon I decided to head north with Tobi to a town called tilcara as he had the same as mine in direction of travel.

Ive been traveling with him since then which has been very interesting. Tilcara itself is surrounded by the most amazing coloured mountains I have ever seen.

Talk about a rainbow mountain range. We hired bikes so we could enjoy it at our pace. Our own pace was slow, way to slow infact that we ended up having to catch a bus to return to Tilcara in time to get the bike back.

Well, it was a combination of things. Stopping at every point to view these incredible layers of soil that ranged from unique greens, to yellows, reds, oranges and maroons and enjoying the walk around the sand stone mountains in the town called Purmamarca.

This town is famous for the 7 coloured mountain which in itself is a dense rainbow of colour amongst other mountains the same but not quite as defined. Plus it has impressive purple colours in it, unique to itself in which the other mountains only colour that comes close is a lighter maroon.

We scaled a sandstone mountain while there, which was the real reason we were to late to return by road in time and our excuse to be lazy and not cycle back. It was on the down walk where we saw perhaps the most amazing site of the hole day and that is saying something considering the colour show we had all day was metre by metre spectacular.

A maoi was what we saw. For those who dont know what a maoi is. Its one of those stoned statues that are littered around Easter Island off Chile.

Ok, it wasnt a real maoi but when you see the picture. Google maoi and see the resemblence to this natural land mark. This spun me right out. If I dont get to see the real thing, the universe always blesses me with a alternative that makes the discovering more amazing due to it being random and unexpected.

Anyway, when the bus arrived we went on a search ourselves with the buses under compartments to try and stash the bikes so we could get back to Tilcara on it.

We were dam lucky. Most the compartments were to small for the bikes and 2 were full of luggage. The last 2 we checked, one was empty which was good for Tobi and the one I opened had parcels in it.

With a bit of whodini manovring I got my bike in and then nearly damaged the parcel getting the dam thing out again. But it survived and we did to and got the bikes back in time.

In Tilcara I saw the best display of local music since the drum beating at the soccer game on the first day of Carnaval. Not so much the music itself, but the bloody strange horns this guy was playing. One of them stretched to probably about 12 foot in length which he nearly tore the hanging lights out with a couple of times. It was here I found only the second soya bean milanesa on my journey which I had firstly with a side salad and then in a sandwich.

The meals are very cheap, but very small in this part of the country.

We then travelled to a town called Iruya. This was awesome to. Set at the end of a 2 and half hour ride on dirt track in mountains around over 4000 metres, this was as authentic as you could get to a local village.

Amazing to walk at night as there are donkeys just roaming the streets like people.

No hot water meant showering only in the day as it was quite called at night.

However, there was another town even more authentic than this one. Only accessible by foot or donkey, 7 kilometres through 2 different valleys was a town called San Isidro.

This town not only had no cars, but also only had selected solar power in which our hostal had none. A candle was the light we needed to use to light up our room.

The getting there was not hard, despite the altitude which was around 2900 metres. But I as usual had to make the way there harder than it should have been.

I lead poor ol Tobi who now has a bung knee, up one of the mountains to walk along what looked like a Inca trail. Im sure it was a trail at one stage because it went threw a cool little tunnel which like the door ways in alot of the places Ive stayed are low enough that I have to duck my head.

However not far on the flip side of the tunnel we came to an abrupt dead end. Straight down. The path obviously years old had been destroyed by falling boulders to create a near vertical valley. We had to move our way back through the tunnel and up a little valley to find another path.

Did we find one. We thought so, but not really, but we kept on heading on until the same thing happened again. This time we realized we had a choice. Either to go to the top of the 4000 metre plus mountain we were on, or head back down the valley. Ofcourse we did the later, which in itself was a adventure.

After finding a hostel in the night, we went in search of food. Ofcourse this being one of the most remote towns in Argentina, all we found was the snack stall at the hostel we were staying at. This was hell fun searching the shelves with our torches. We ate tuna, tomato rolls for dinner and had an apple for desert.

Ofcourse the biggest highlight of this town was seeing the stars as the sky was as brightly lit as if you were camped out in the middle of nowhere.

On leaving the town a very cool little disabled girl who we had met on a earlier walk came chasing us and tried desperately to take her to her school. She grabbed my hand, obviously thinking I was in need of urgent handicap attention and tried dragging me there.

It was sad when we tried to explain we had to leave, her disapointed noooo, brought a tear to my eye. But Tobi was a smart lad who had a small coloured ball in his backpack which he gave to her and made her happy. She ofcourse tried poking his eye out with it first.

On the way back we didnt do any detours. Had a slack night back at Iruya before the 6 in the morning bus back to a town called Humawacka (I think) to catch the bus to Bolivia