Friday Oct. 1, 2010 Iruya

This morning we weren´t picked up until 10am so after breakfast I went for a quick walk to the look out point again to take more pictures of the amazing mountains in Purmamarca (7 color hills). I took some yesturday too but wanted to see if the colors would be different in the morning. Just a quick note on breakfast here. It´s almost always the same...coffee or cafe con leche, bread with dulce de leche, medialunas (danishes of sort), and maybe cereal or orange juice. Anyway, at 10am Pablo picked us up. Our group was us, Paula and Albert (from Buenos Aires), and our guide Pablo. We stopped at another look out point for pictures of 7 color mountains for more pictures as well as numerous other particularly buautiful spots along the way too. We stopped at the tropic of capricorn. Lunch was in a town called Humahuaca. It was a little touristy to me but pretty none the less. We visited the church and walked around a bit. We took a little video of the stroller ane the abuse it´s been enduring on this trip. Many of the roads and sidewalks are cobble stone so the wheels look all crazy. After lunch started to portion of the drive on very narrow gravel roads as we made our way to Iruya. We went up as high as 4100 meters. The views from this point were incredible. I feel like I keep saying things like that, but seriously, the scenery has been so amazing every day! This time we put local anesthetic drops in Zach´s ears. He did do better this time, because of the drops or just because I dón´t know. The way back down to Iruya (at 2100 meters) way a bit crazy. It was switch back after switch back on a one lane gravel road. Buses take this route too so we´d intermittantly have to pull as close to the side of the mountain as possible to let the buses pass. Wow! And then we arrived in Iruya, a little tiny town snuggled between all these mountains. Iruya is also one of the few most beautiful places on our list. Truly not a lot of tourist here, as there are not a lot of restuarants or other things set up for tourists. I think they get only 2 trucks per week that bring in supplies. This weekend however there was a lot of ´traffic´in because they have an annual festival. They were setting up tons on tents (blue tarps) to get ready. The real festival was starting at noon on Saturday. We left before noon because the roads were going to be closed. Once we got settled at the hostal we had an early dinner and then went for a walk. Given the altitude, we were a little out of breath walking up even slight inclines. It was starting to get cloudy at this point and quite cold. We had to have someone come to our room that evening to start our heater because we couldn´t figure out how to start it. It was gas run, so I don´t think Marc slept well since he was a little paranoid their would be a gas leak. Anyway, all is well...no problems there.