Then, a nice flashback of three weeks back and here we are back to Salta. Get there on a Saturday afternoon and the streets of the center is the delusion, are full of people going to shop around ...
find an agency open for booking a tour the next day, which is Sunday and I would find myself walking.
Wonder if there's a place to buy a pair of shoes and the type of the agency amused smiles and gives me three or four addresses. I understand why the barely restrained laughter soon: there are two or three streets that are literally one shoe shop, dozens unodietrolaltro without interruption. A nightmare for me that I get bored after 5 minutes when I have to buy some clothes, and then all that offer stun you.
I did not want to buy another pair of hiking shoes, and since I do not have shoes I try to find an honorable compromise. Indeed I take this opportunity to thank the two Swiss friends who had advised me at the time the brand right: it has been a board rather than guessed, I was fine even though they were new and not run-in and despite all my difficulties with the shoes .. .
short, I was ready for exciting new adventures.
The wait for Skip was very high, was the only destination in addition to the capital did not want to miss. Much of the charm, as well as photographs that showed me Roberto L., was due to the desire to climb on the legendary "tren a las Nubes."
It 's a train that runs nearly 220 km rising from 1200 meters to 4200 (making it the third highest train in the world), but without being a cog railway, with strange zigzag, crossing 29 bridges, 21 tunnels and 13 viaducts. The landscape is incredible Quebrada del Toro, and climb and climb up to enter full Puna. The attraction to this trip was very strong, a bit 'you can understand looking at the pictures of site. Even two or three years because the train is not running, and before leaving it seemed that Italy would again be inaugurated in April ... Fortunate coincidence, I thought.
But no, because the work to restore the path I'm late and it seems that will not reopen before the summer (ours).
So, to console the disappointment, I took a two-day hike, some of which retraces the route of the famous train.
We start at dawn from Salta and slowly begins to rise. Soon we enter the Quebrada del Toro, who is initially characterized by a rich vegetation, the Indians lost homes, which terrace the ground where it is not even thinkable, and the train tracks that normally follow the other side of the mountain . A couple of times we do get to cross the bridges of iron on the Quebrada, saying, jokingly, that the van is not there does with all the above ... 
In fact, the initial stops are mostly for the lungs to get used to the climb. We also stopped near a train bridge in Las Nubes, let us go, if you will, walk away. He quite impressed because it has no side protection, and under the sleepers see a big jump in the Quebrada ... In reality it is still early, the sun has not yet entered in the Quebrada and we are still sleepy. We offer coffee and alfahores and allocated. The guide is
Martin, the best I've found saltegne weeks, and in the group being organized now creates a subset of "jovines" of four people, me, the Dutch couple with whom I continued to rent a car and a girl from Buenos Aires, Ana Maria. Ana Maria and Arien Both of working at the airport (of course, Ana Maria in Buenos Aires and to Arien Amesterdam) but Arien is also a photographer (a woman's car with three obiettivoni), and works for magazines photographing skateboarding skaters.
Manon instead does a wonderful job: working for a Dutch governmental organization, raising funds from the lottery and private deals to help projects (particularly micro-credit type but not only) in developing countries. Very often, say 3-4 times per year, mostly sent on a mission to establish personal contacts with the community local, and so she travels the world almost always in incredible places, and moreover he does so for a noble cause (I explained in detail some of the projects funded and it really seems to work). 
However, we go up and the vegetation begins to become thinner, they begin to appear Cardones, also thin out the tiny settlements of the Indians (except schools always spit out in the most absurd), the mountains, private green plants, they discover their multicolored coat. We climb and climb, from time to time admiring the acrobatics of the train tracks (do not use the lift forces him to significant changes to overcome the most difficult slopes). Martin advises us to fund our stock of coca leaves, and explains all their virtues. We arrive in Santa Rosa de Tastil, the "country" the greatest first pitch. We stopped to stretch our legs, there is little more than a church, a school, a few tourist shops and very few houses. There is also a tiny museum that tells the customs of the Indians who first inhabited the settlement number.
A little higher up a detour on a road incredibly dangerous Tastil brings us to the ruins of one of the most important settlements of the pre-Inca. The ruins are very great, although tiring because all clinging to explore, and at this altitude (We're almost to 4000 feet) climb is tiring. It seems that there were about 3000 people who lived in this because that was an important strategic location for the crossing of the Andes. Back on our way and continue to climb, to reach our coveted step, where the quebrada increasingly tightens around us. On the other hand, here she is, Pune. The time to get a bit ', after the pass, and we find ourselves in this incredible plateau.
We stopped immediately, however, in the village of San Antonio los Cobres, which is near the point of arrival of the train a las Nubes (actually a little further on is the viaduct Polverilla, the most spectacular, at 4200 meters). San Antonio is there, dusty and in the middle of the sea of \u200b\u200bPuna.
There are even public housing tidy and brand new. Housing in height. We're going to eat and even try to drink the tea made from coca leaves, which actually looks like a tea ... 
There is plenty to see, San Antonio is more of a good base to explore the Puna or the Andes. But they just go up two children out of school that tells us a bit 'over the country and then we recite poems, delicious. off again and we head into the Puna on a road of red earth, there are no indications and would be easy to get lost, to go there alone ...
There are vicunas we cross the street, farmers and shepherds who suddenly emerge, in the middle of nowhere, next to nothing, that you wonder what they are doing, there ... The few isolated houses are almost camouflaged, like being in a desert (and in fact, the Puna is) but populated with plants, animals and some men, from time to time. 
Then, from afar, a spot of white light, like a reflection but an increasingly large and dazzling: the Salinas Grandes. At the heart of the Puna, at the junction of two legendary roads, Route 40 and the so-called "corridor bioceanico, a road linking the two oceans through the Andes in one of the few places (the other is to believe Mendoza) where you can do it all year round, even in winter. They all told me that among other things, the road to Chile from here is beautiful, after the Paso de Jama we still want to almost 300 km to meet the first country in Chile ... 
With the van we go in the salt and stopped right in the middle. The dazzling white, the sun is very strong and doubles its intensity on salt. 
The locals, including some artisans selling items to tourists, are completely covered, including a kind of balaclava and sunglasses, they make a lot terrorists rather than traders. This is because the conditions of work (or life) on the salt are incredibly hard in a few years, the wind that brings the salt causes skin cancer, and it takes even less to go blind, just a few months. Absurd as such a beautiful thing, a desert of salt, can be so cruel. It is hard to keep my eyes open, it is difficult to take pictures with the sun that makes you not see anything of what you are framing ...
Salt and ground form of geometric designs, and feeling very strong, between the Andes in the background, the Puna and all that white round the eye, is to stay within a landscape not terrestrial, but some other planet. 
There is also a bench there in the middle of the salt. Surreal.
Come back, unfortunately I missed the whole landscape of the pass, except for a couple of stops, because the salt we have uploaded 4 persons in another van that was broken, and of course to sell the seats and it was my turn Arian ...
pity because the scenery looks amazing with this road that rolled downhill, after the pass ... Purmamarca arrive in the country, where we stop us kids to sleep while the others continue and return to Salta.
Purmamarca But I will speak again.
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