My travels with Jay: Uruguay y El Norte

My friend Jay teaches the LSATs. In between his busy seasons, he travels anywhere from one to three months. This year for Jay's annual "make everyone jealous while he travels the world" journey he decided to come down to South America for six weeks. I was lucky to be graced by his presence for two weeks in Argentina before he went to Peru and Colombia. After spending 5 days in Buenos Aires, Jay and I set off on two separate trips.

Our first was to Uruguay. We started with a day in oldest town in Uruguay: Colonia del Sacramento. Colonia, facing Buenos Aires, is a short one-hour ferry ride across the Río de la Plata. Expats living in Argentina, often make day trips out of Colonia when it's time to renew their 3-month tourist visa. I never had to do that as I traveled outside of the country so often.   After spending the day riding around on a motto, we boarded a bus to Montevideo. The week before Jay and I had met Kelsey’s friend Andrea. Originally from northern California, Andrea currently lives in Montevideo, where her father is from. After having met me twice and only knowing Jay a few hours, she was so kind as to let us stay at her apartment while in town. We had a great time exploring the city, which despite being the largest city in Uruguay is a lot smaller and more laid back than Buenos Aires.

After Montevideo we headed to the beach. First stop: Punta del Diablo - a seaside village in the Rocha province of Uruguay. The permanent population consists of about 600 inhabitants, mostly fishermen and artisans. However during high tourism season (December through February), the population swells to approximately 25,000, mostly Argentineans, Brazilians and Europeans on holiday. The main rocky point, which extends more than 600 feet, and two other rocky points, together form a devil’s trident – giving this town its name, “Punta Del Diablo”.

We stayed at a cute little hostel, El Diablo Tranquilo, which was right on the beach. We had a great time relaxing while we soaked up the sun. Jay even got to surf for a bit. On our last night we took a sunset horse back ride through the Parque Nacional Santa Teresa ending with a nice gallop along the ocean.

On our way back we made an afternoon stop in Punta del Este just to say we did. We really wanted to take pictures at the Monumento los Dedos - a sculpture of five fingers partially submerged in sand. After successfully finding the sculpture located on Parada 4 at Brava Beach we spent a few hours lying out before heading back. Jay made friends with a group of Argentine ladies, after being their photog they asked him to join in a picture. Always the smooth talker.

Our second trip was the northwest of Argentina. We ventured up to discover places where the people, food, culture and backdrop show a VERY different side to Argentina than Buenos Aires. Here is my opinion of the best way to do it. Fly into Jujuy and out of Salta (if you are on more of a budget and have time, busses take about 20 hrs from Buenos Aires). You will need two or three days in Jujuy and two in Salta.

In Jujuy we stayed in a really good hostel: Club Hostel. It's cheap, centrally located and you can book all tours from there. We took two tours. The first day we went to all of the small towns in the area: Humahuaca, Tilcara and Purmamarca. The towns were so precious.  They all had small artisan marts set among the amazing scenery of Cerro de los Siete Colores (Hill of 7 colors) - a group of hills that has various colors due to their minerals makeup.

The next day we took a tour to the Salinas Grandes. These vast salt flats, which cover almost 8,300 square km of land, stretch from northern Argentina into the south of Bolivia. In order to reach the Salinas Grandes we had to take National Route 52 and travel 126km more along the Lipán Slope up to Abra de Potrerillo, where the salt flats are located. While driving we reached an altitude of 4,170 meters (13,681 feet)! You could really feel the difference in the air. We had a great time taking pictures at the Salinas Grandes!

If you’re looking to stay in a slightly nicer place than a hostel, we stayed at an amazing boutique hotel in Purmamarca on the second night -El Refugio de Coquena. We were dropped off after our tour of the Quebrada de Humahuaca. The look on the faces of our group members when we pulled into the driveway of the hotel was priceless!

From Jujuy, you can take a 2-hour bus to Salta. There you can spend the rest of the day wandering around the city visiting the 8th century Cabildo and the neo-classical style Cathedral on the perimeter of the 9 de Julio central square as well as the Saint Francis Church a few blocks away. Then go to Cerro de San Bernardo. Its summit, from which visitors can get an awe-inspiring view of the city and the entire valley, can be reached by car, cable car or stairway. At night go to Balcarce Street to taste the local cuisine and watch folkloric dance shows.

On our second day we took a tour to Cafayate to try the local Torrontés wine. The road to and from Cafayate, was covered with the gorgeous rocks formations of Quebrada de Sierra Carahuasi and Quebrada de Cafayate. Jay described it as the Grand Canyon on acid.

I am so happy to have experienced this beautiful region! And highly suggest all people traveling through Argentina make sure to put this on their itinerary.