Sat. Oct. 2, 2010 Humahuaca gorge then back to Salta

We had breakfast at our hostal and were picked up at 9am. We drove to the other side of the Rio Grande (the other side of Iruya) to pick up Paula & Albert for our drive through the Humahuaca gorge back to Salta. Leaving Iruya was much different from our drive in. This time there was thick, thick fog. It was all white, could see probably less than 20 feet in front of us. Being that we were on cliff edges everything looked white! The real bummer of this is we missed out on all the amazing scenery on our way out. By the time we got back to the summit at 4100 meters the ground was covered in frost and we didn´t have the view we had the day before. Zach again didn´t have any problems with the altitude. Things started to clear up on our way back down on the other side. We stopped in Tilcara to visit the ruins and then for lunch. The ruins, Pucara', are another pre-incan site. These were a little more restored than those at Tastil. The views again were beautiful from the ruins too but it was really cold and windy. After lunch, we headed for Jujuy. We stopped for a short time to walk around a bit at the central square. It was a little differant than many of the other squares in that it wasn´t very commercial...no restaurants and hotels like many other citíes. Instead it had a police station and other municipal buildings. It also didn´t have the colonial buildings like Salta has. I think it was destroyed in a war along the way and was rebuilt. I don´t really feel like I saw much of Jujuy given it´s a fairly large city, but I haven´t heard all that much positive feed back from others about it so hopefully we didn´t miss much. After that, we went back to Salta. As usual, Zach was not interested in a nap when we got back so we went for a walk. We walked around the local market to check out the food and other items for sale. It was interesting, as most local markets are. We also checked out a couple of churches/cathedrals. All very beautiful. It seems like in Salta there´s a church at every other street corner. I´m told 90% of Argentinians are Catholic. We ended up having an "early" dinner to try to get Zach to bed at a reasonable time.